We have successfully demonstrated spectrally-resolved x-ray scattering in a variety of dense plasmas as a powerful new technique for providing microscopic dense plasma parameters unattainable by other means. The results have also been used to distinguish between ionization balance models. This has led to 10 published or to be published papers, 8 invited talks and significant interest from both internal and external experimental plasma physicists and the international statistical plasma physics theory community.

Molecular dynamics simulations of a bulk melts of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) are utilized to study chain conformation and ordering under constant uniaxial tension. We find that large extensions induce chain ordering in the direction of applied tension. We also find that voids are created via a cavitation mechanism. This study represents a validation of the current model for PDMS and benchmark for the future study of mechanical properties of PDMS melts enriched with fillers under tension.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) construction project was completed at BNL in 1999, with the first data-taking runs in the summer of 2000. Since then the early measurements at RHIC have yielded a wealth of data, from four independent detectors, each with its international collaboration of scientists: BRAHMS, PHENIX, PHOBOS, and STAR [1]. For the first time, collisions of heavy nuclei have been carried out at colliding-beam energies that have previously been accessible only for high-energy physics experiments with collisions of ''elementary'' particles such as protons and electrons. It is at these high energies that the predictions of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the fundamental theory that describes the role of quarks and gluons in nuclear matter, come into play, and new phenomena are sought that may illuminate our view of the basic structure of matter on the sub-atomic scale, with important implications for the origins of matter on the cosmic scale. The RHIC experiments have recorded data from collisions of gold nuclei at the highest energies ever achieved in man-made particle accelerators. These collisions, of which hundreds of millions have now been examined, result in final states of unprecedented complexity, with thousands of produced particles radiating …

There is potential for earthquakes in the United Arab Emirates and in the Zagros mountains to cause structural damage and pose a threat to safety of people. Damaging effects from earthquakes can be mitigated by knowledge of the location and size of earthquakes, effects on construction, and monitoring these effects over time. Although a general idea of seismicity in the UAE may be determined with data from global seismic networks, these global networks do not have the sensitivity to record smaller seismic events and do not have the necessary accuracy to locate the events. A National Seismic Monitoring Observatory is needed for the UAE that consists of a modern seismic network and a multidisciplinary staff that can analyze and interpret the data from the network. A seismic network is essential to locate earthquakes, determine event magnitudes, identify active faults and measure ground motions from earthquakes. Such a network can provide the data necessary for a reliable seismic hazard assessment in the UAE. The National Seismic Monitoring Observatory would ideally be situated at a university that would provide access to the wide range of disciplines needed in operating the network and providing expertise in analysis and interpretation.

The purpose of this project is to develop a greater understanding of the kinetics involved during a liquid-solid phase transition occurring at high pressure and temperature. Kinetic limitations are known to play a large role in the dynamics of solidification at low temperatures, determining, e.g., whether a material crystallizes upon freezing or becomes an amorphous solid. The role of kinetics is not at all understood in transitions at high temperature when extreme pressures are involved. In order to investigate time scales during a dynamic compression experiment we needed to create an ability to alter the length of time spent by the sample in the transition region. Traditionally, the extreme high-pressure phase diagram is studied through a few static and dynamic techniques: static compression involving diamond anvil cells (DAC) [1], shock compression [2, 3], and quasi-isentropic compression [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. Static DAC experiments explore equilibrium material properties along an isotherm or an isobar [1]. Dynamic material properties can be explored with shock compression [2, 3], probing single states on the Hugoniot, or with quasi-isentropic compression [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. In the case of shocks, pressures variation typically occurs on a sub-nanosecond time scale or …

The last underground nuclear tests were conducted by India and Pakistan in May 1998. Although the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty has not entered force, an International Monitoring System (IMS), established by the treaty is nearing completion. This system includes 170 seismic stations, a number of them originally established by IRIS. The station IRIS station NIL (Nilore, Pakistan) is close to a planned IMS primary station and recorded some very interesting seismograms from the May 18, 1998 Indian test. We carefully calibrated the path to NIL using a prior Mw 4.4 that occurred on April 4, 1995 about 110 km north of the Indian test site. We used joint epicentral location techniques along with teleseismic P waves and regional surface waves to fix the epicenter, depth, mechanism and moment of this event. From these we obtained a velocity model for the path to NIL and created explosion synthetic seismograms to compare with the data. Interestingly the observed Rayleigh waves are reversed, consistent with an implosion rather than an explosion source. The preferred explanation is that the explosion released tectonic stress near the source region, which can be modeled as a thrust earthquake of approximate Mw 4.0 plus a pure explosion. This …

Discrete {gamma}-ray spectra have been measured for nuclei populated in {sup 191}Ir(n{sub 4}xn{gamma}) with x{<=}11, as a function of incident neutron energy using neutrons from the 'white' neutron source at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center's WNR facility. The energy of the neutrons was determined using the time-of-flight technique. The data were taken using the GEANIE spectrometer. The cross sections for emission of 202 {gamma} rays of {sup 181-191}Ir were determined for neutron energies 0.2 MeV < E{sub n} < 300 MeV. Comparison with model calculations, using the GNASH reaction model, and with GEANIE results from the similar {sup 193}Ir(n{sub 4}xn{gamma}) reactions is made.

The Heavy Ion Fusion Virtual National Laboratory (HIFVNL) is developing the intense ion beams needed to drive matter to the High Energy Density (HED) regimes required for Inertial Fusion Energy (IFE) and other applications. An interim goal is a facility for Warm Dense Matter (WDM) studies, wherein a target is heated volumetrically without being shocked, so that well-defined states of matter at 1 to 10 eV are generated within a diagnosable region. In the approach we are pursuing, low to medium mass ions with energies just above the Bragg peak are directed onto thin target ''foils'', which may in fact be foams with mean densities 1% to 10% of solid. This approach complements that being pursued at GSI, wherein high-energy ion beams deposit a small fraction of their energy in a cylindrical target. We present the beam requirements for WDM experiments. We discuss neutralized drift compression and final focus experiments and modeling. We describe suitable accelerator architectures based on Drift-Tube Linac, RF, single-gap, Ionization-Front Accelerator, and Pulse-Line Ion Accelerator concepts. The last of these is being pursued experimentally in the HIF-VNL. Finally, we discuss plans toward a user facility for target experiments.

Protein arrays are the best tool for the rapid analysis of a whole proteome thus helping to identify all the protein/protein interactions in a living cell and they can also be used as powerful biosensors. The objective of this proposal is to develop a new entropically activated ligation method based in the naturally occurring protein trans-splicing process. This method will be used for the generation of spatially addressable arrays of multiple protein components by standard photolithographic techniques. Key to our approach is the use of the protein trans-splicing process. This naturally occurring process will allow us to create a truly generic and highly efficient method for the covalent attachment of proteins through its C-terminus to any solid support.

Electronics based on carbon nanotubes (CNT) has received a lot of attention recently because of its tremendous application potential, such as active components and interconnects in nanochips, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), display devices, and chemical and biological sensors. However, as with most nanoelectronic systems, successful commercial deployment implies structural control at the molecular level. To this end, it is clearly necessary to understand the effect of contacts, topological defects, dopants, and chemisorbed atoms and molecules on the electronic transport through CNT's. This paper summarizes our computational efforts to address some of the above questions. Examples include: wetting properties and bonding strength of metal contacts on the CNT surface, the effect of Stone-Wales defects on the chemisorption of O{sub 2} and NH3, and how such chemisorbed species and defects effect the electronic transmission and conductance. Our approach is based on first-principles density functional theory (DFT) to compute equilibrium structures, and nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) methods, using both DFT and semi-empirical tight-binding formalisms, for computing electronic transport properties.

Density Functional Theory (DFT) is used to investigate the action of hydrogen getter 1,4-diphenyl-butadiyne, or DPB, on Pd(110) surface. We study reaction pathways and energetics of several relevant processes, including H{sub 2} adsorption, dissociation and migration on the metal surface, getter-metal interaction, and the energetics of H uptake by the getter. We also explore the effect of impurities like CO and CO{sub 2} on the action of the getter. Activation barriers for certain reactions are computed to shed light on the feasibility of such processes at room temperature.

A large number of partial {gamma}-ray cross sections produced in neutron-induced reactions with neutrons in the energy range 1 < E{sub n}(MeV) < 200 have been measured over the past eight years. Partial {gamma}-ray cross sections are measured as a function of incident neutron energy using the time-of-flight technique. Reaction channel cross sections were deduced from these measurements with the aid of nuclear modeling. Enabling facilities are the intense 'white' source of neutrons at the LANSCE/WNR 60R 20-meter flight path, and the precision {gamma}-ray spectrometry of the Compton-suppressed Ge detector array GEANIE. The first focus of the measurements was on the {sup 239}Pu(n,2n) cross section, followed by a series of other experiments on nuclei throughout the periodic table, with an emphasis on neutron-fluence activation detectors (or 'RadChem detectors'). Representative measurements will be presented, along with the techniques. Experiments in progress and future plans are mentioned.

The Collaboratory for Multi-scale Chemical Science (CMCS) is developing a powerful informatics-based approach to synthesizing multi-scale information to support a systems-based research approach and is applying it in support of combustion research. An open source multi-scale informatics toolkit is being developed that addresses a number of issues core to the emerging concept of knowledge grids including provenance tracking and lightweight federation of data and application resources into cross-scale information flows. The CMCS portal is currently in use by a number of high-profile pilot groups and is playing a significant role in enabling their efforts to improve and extend community maintained chemical reference information.

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) techniques have been used to detect areas of low crosslink density in damaged silicone parts in an effort to develop a QA/QC protocol to be used in the development of new parts. Model materials of varying crosslink density first demonstrated the applicability of the method. Analysis of damaged pads has been shown to be clearly distinguishable by MRI. It is our belief that both the T{sub 2} weighted SPI NMR and the T{sub 2} weighted water/fat suppression MRI experiments can be used to map out the location of different cross-linking densities, ultimately determining the quality or homogeneity in polymers.

During the past two years, we have succeeded in implementing an efficient parallel Importance Sampling Monte-Carlo (ISMC) scheme with application towards rarely occurring transition events, of great abundance in materials science and chemistry. The inefficiency of the standard atomistic modeling techniques for these problems may be traced to the extremely low probability of sampling system trajectories, or paths, that lead to a successful transition event. Instead of following the conventional approach of developing smart algorithms for searching transition paths, we tackle this problem by explicitly enhancing the probability of sampling successful transition events by means of an importance function. By selecting it appropriately, one focuses predominantly on the successful transition paths while discarding most irrelevant ones. In this manner, the rare-event problem is reformulated into an optimization problem for finding the best-possible importance function. Utilizing efficient iterative minimization algorithms, our IS approach can now be used to calculate the rate of occurrence of low-probability transition phenomena of short duration (short successful paths), but which involve collective degrees of freedom of many atoms.

Comparative genomics provides the means to demarcate functional regions in anonymous DNA sequences. The successful application of this method to identifying novel genes is currently shifting to deciphering the noncoding encryption of gene regulation across genomes. To facilitate the use of comparative genomics to practical applications in genetics and genomics we have developed several analytical and visualization tools for the analysis of arbitrary sequences and whole genomes. These tools include two alignment tools: zPicture and Mulan; a phylogenetic shadowing tool: eShadow for identifying lineage- and species-specific functional elements; two evolutionary conserved transcription factor analysis tools: rVista and multiTF; a tool for extracting cis-regulatory modules governing the expression of co-regulated genes, CREME; and a dynamic portal to multiple vertebrate and invertebrate genome alignments, the ECR Browser. Here we briefly describe each one of these tools and provide specific examples on their practical applications. All the tools are publicly available at the http://www.dcode.org/ web site.

To provide a compact high-brightness heavy-ion beam source for Heavy Ion Fusion (HIF) accelerators, we have been experimenting with merging multi-beamlets in an injector which uses an RF plasma source. In an 80-kV 20-microsecond experiment, the RF plasma source has produced up to 5 mA of Ar{sup +} in a single beamlet. An extraction current density of 100 mA/cm{sup 2} was achieved, and the thermal temperature of the ions was below 1 eV. We have tested at full voltage gradient the first 4 gaps of an injector design. Einzel lens were used to focus the beamlets while reducing the beamlet to beamlet space charge interaction. We were able to reach greater than 100 kV/cm in the first four gaps. We also performed experiments on a converging 119 multi-beamlet source. Although the source has the same optics as a full 1.6 MV injector system, these test were carried out at 400 kV due to the test stand HV limit. We have measured the beam's emittance after the beamlets are merged and passed through an electrostatic quadrupole (ESQ). Our goal is to confirm the emittance growth and to demonstrate the technical feasibility of building a driver-scale HIF injector.

The first part of this report argues the average time between signal events for X-rays from negative muon capture on SNM is from a few to a few 10's of minutes, depending on how sophisticated one care's to make the detector. The second part of this report argues that the recoil proton background in the energy resolution window can be orders of magnitude larger than the expected signal. How could one evade this result? Firstly, one could conceive of a very highly segmented muon counter (or electromagnetic calorimeter) system to actually detect a stopping muon. This would be extraordinarily expensive for a large area and volume of a cargo container. There are also quite a few assumptions we applied to make the calculations tractable. For instance, we assumed the detector was fully efficient for a neutron recoil. probably something like 25% or 50% is more appropriate. However, probably the biggest uncertainty is the neutron energy spectrum. The Boehm et al. paper discusses the range of spectrum parameterizations, some of which are considerably softer and will lower the high-energy proton yield. This outcome is certainly possible. However, given the difference between signal and background rates, it would take a considerable change …

CVD diamond detector signals from Deuterium-Tritium implosions have been simulated in order to study the feasibility of measuring areal density using the ratio of downscattered to primary neutrons during the ignition campaign at the NIF. Simulated neutron spectra for three ''typical'' DT implosions were weighted with the CVD diamond sensitivity to obtain an estimated signal at several distances from the target chamber center. The 14 MeV peak was found to have an amplitude about three orders of magnitude larger than the down-scattered signal for the three spectra. At a target to detector distance of 17 m (just outside the target bay wall) and for a 1 cm{sup 2} wafer, signals are large enough to be recorded, well above any background and electronic noise. The uncertainty in the areal density measurement comes mainly from the uncertainty in the CVD diamond energy dependent sensitivity, the accuracy of the background simulation, and the effect of the saturation of both detector and electronics after the large 14 MeV peak. Nevertheless, the results found in this study are encouraging, and the remaining sources of uncertainty should now be addressed.

One of the most exciting scientific discoveries in the last decade of the twentieth century was the first detection of planets orbiting a star other than our own. By now more than 130 extrasolar planets have been discovered indirectly, by observing the gravitational effects of the planet on the radial velocity of its parent star. This technique has fundamental limitations: it is most sensitive to planets close to their star, and it determines only a planet's orbital period and a lower limit on the planet's mass. As a result, all the planetary systems found so far are very different from our own--they have giant Jupiter-sized planets orbiting close to their star, where the terrestrial planets are found in our solar system. Such systems have overturned the conventional paradigm of planet formation, but have no room in them for habitable Earth-like planets. A powerful complement to radial velocity detections of extrasolar planets will be direct imaging--seeing photons from the planet itself. Such a detection would allow photometric measurements to determine the temperature and radius of a planet. Also, direct detection is most sensitive to planets in wide orbits, and hence more capable of seeing solar systems resembling our own, since a …

Mesoscale simulations have traditionally been used to investigate structural morphology of polymer in solution, melts and blends. Recently we have been pushing such modeling methods to important areas of Nanotechnology and Drug delivery that are well out of reach of classical molecular dynamics. This paper summarizes our efforts in three important emerging areas: (1) polymer-nanotube composites; (2) drug diffusivity through cell membranes; and (3) solvent exchange in nanoporous membranes. The first two applications are based on a bead-spring-based approach as encoded in the Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) module. The last application used density-based Mesoscale modeling as implemented in the Mesodyn module.

Within the scope of the Accelerator Driven System (ADS) concept for nuclear waste management applications, the burnup uncertainty estimates due to uncertainty in the activation cross sections (XSs) are important regarding both the safety and the efficiency of the waste burning process. We have applied both sensitivity analysis and Monte Carlo methodology to actinides burnup calculations in a lead-bismuth cooled subcritical ADS. The sensitivity analysis is used to identify the reaction XSs and the dominant chains that contribute most significantly to the uncertainty. The Monte Carlo methodology gives the burnup uncertainty estimates due to the synergetic/global effect of the complete set of XS uncertainties. These uncertainty estimates are valuable to assess the need of any experimental or systematic reevaluation of some uncertainty XSs for ADS.

A responsibility of the Laser Safety Officer (LSO) is to perform laser safety audits. The American National Standard Z136.1 Safe use of Lasers references this requirement in several sections: (1) Section 1.3.2 LSO Specific Responsibilities states under Hazard Evaluation, ''The LSO shall be responsible for hazards evaluation of laser work areas''; (2) Section 1.3.2.8, Safety Features Audits, ''The LSO shall ensure that the safety features of the laser installation facilities and laser equipment are audited periodically to assure proper operation''; and (3) Appendix D, under Survey and Inspections, it states, ''the LSO will survey by inspection, as considered necessary, all areas where laser equipment is used''. Therefore, for facilities using Class 3B and or Class 4 lasers, audits for laser safety compliance are expected to be conducted. The composition, frequency and rigueur of that inspection/audit rests in the hands of the LSO. A common practice for institutions is to develop laser audit checklists or survey forms. In many institutions, a sole Laser Safety Officer (LSO) or a number of Deputy LSO's perform these audits. For that matter, there are institutions that request users to perform a self-assessment audit. Many items on the common audit list and the associated findings are …

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