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This research has accomplished its primary objectives of developing accurate and efficient radiation codes, validating them with measurements and higher resolution models, and providing these advancements to the global modeling community to enhance the treatment of cloud and radiative processes in weather and climate prediction models. A critical component of this research has been the development of the longwave and shortwave broadband radiative transfer code for general circulation model (GCM) applications, RRTMG, which is based on the single-column reference code, RRTM, also developed at AER. RRTMG is a rigorously tested radiation model that retains a considerable level of accuracy relative to higher resolution models and measurements despite the performance enhancements that have made it possible to apply this radiation code successfully to global dynamical models. This model includes the radiative effects of all significant atmospheric gases, and it treats the absorption and scattering from liquid and ice clouds and aerosols. RRTMG also includes a statistical technique for representing small-scale cloud variability, such as cloud fraction and the vertical overlap of clouds, which has been shown to improve cloud radiative forcing in global models. This development approach has provided a direct link from observations to the enhanced radiative transfer provided by …

This report presents the atmospheric dispersion coefficients used in Tank Farms safety analysis. The basis equations for calculating radiological and toxicological exposures are also included. In this revision, the time averaging for toxicological consequence evaluations is clarified based on a review of DOE complex guidance and a review of tank farm chemicals.

Robust performance evaluation represents one of the most challenging aspects of groundwater pump-and-treat (P&T) remedy implementation. In most cases, the primary goal of the P&T system is hydraulic containment, and ultimately recovery, of contaminants to protect downgradient receptors. Estimating the extent of hydraulic containment is particularly challenging under changing flow patterns due to variable pumping, boundaries and/or other conditions. We present a systematic approach to estimate hydraulic containment using multiple lines of evidence based on (a) water-level mapping and (b) groundwater modeling. Capture Frequency Maps (CFMs) are developed by particle tracking on water-level maps developed for each available water level data set using universal kriging. In a similar manner, Capture Efficiency Maps (CEMs) are developed by particle tracking on water-levels calculated using a transient groundwater flow model: tracking is undertaken independently for each stress period using a very low effective porosity, depicting the 'instantaneous' fate of each particle each stress period. Although conceptually similar, the two methods differ in their underlying assumptions and their limitations: their use together identifies areas where containment may be reliable (i.e., where the methods are in agreement) and where containment is uncertain (typically, where the methods disagree). A field-scale example is presented to illustrate these …

We report on the mineralogy, petrology, chemistry, oxygen isotopes, {sup 26}Al-{sup 26}Mg and {sup 36}Cl-{sup 36}S isotope systematics of the Allende chondrule Al3509 discovered and described by [1] and [2]. This spherical object ({approx}1cm {phi}) contains {approx}10% Na and 1% Cl, and nearly pure {sup 129}Xe [({sup 129}Xe/{sup 127}I) = 1.1 x 10{sup -4} (3)]. This high enrichment in halogens makes it of interest in searching for radiogenic {sup 36}S from {sup 36}Cl (t{sub 1/2} {approx} 0.3 Ma) decay. While there is strong evidence for the presence of {sup 36}Cl in sodalite and wadalite in CV CAIs [4,5], some sodalites show no evidence for excesses of {sup 36}S ({sup 36}S*). In contrast, high inferred initial {sup 36}Cl/{sup 35}Cl = 2 x 10{sup -5} has been found in wadalite from the Allende CAI AJEF [5]. The observed {sup 36}S excesses in sodalite are not correlated with radiogenic {sup 26}Mg, decay product of {sup 26}Al (t{sub 1/2} {approx} 0.72 Ma) [4]. From the inferred initial {sup 36}Cl/{sup 35}Cl ratios and consideration of both AGB and SNe stellar sources, {sup 36}Cl must be the product of charged particle irradiation within the early solar system. However, neither the specific nuclear production mechanism nor the …

Access to Hanford's single-shell radioactive waste storage tank C-107 was significantly improved when workers completed the cut of a 55-inch diameter hole in the top of the tank. The core and its associated cutting equipment were removed from the tank and encased in a plastic sleeve to prevent any potential spread of contamination. The larger tank opening allows use of a new more efficient robotic arm to complete tank retrieval.

This report is one of four reports written to provide background information regarding immobilization technologies remaining under consideration for supplemental immobilization of Hanford's low-activity waste. This paper provides the reader a general understanding of joule-heated ceramic lined melters and their application to Hanford's low-activity waste.

Every action in biology is performed by dynamic proteins that convert between multiple states in order to engage their functions. Often binding to various ligands is essential for the rates of desired transitions to be enhanced. The goal of computational biology is to study these transitions and discover the different states to fully understand the protein's normal and diseased function, design drugs to target/bias specific states, and understand all of the interactions in between. We have developed a new methodology that is capable of calculating the absolute free energy of proteins while taking into account all the interactions with the solvent molecules. The efficiency of the new scheme is an order of magnitude greater than any existing technique. This method is now implemented in the massively parallel popular MD program package NAMD. This now makes it possible to calculate the relative stability of different conformational states of biological macromolecules as well as their binding free energies to various ligands.

This report is one in the series of 'POINT' reports that over the years have presented temperature dependent cross sections for the then current version of ENDF/B. In each case I have used my personal computer at home and publicly available data and codes. I have used these in combination to produce the temperature dependent cross sections used in applications and presented in this report. I should mention that today anyone with a personal computer can produce these results. The latest ENDF/B-VII.1 beta2 data library was recently and is now freely available through the National Nuclear Data Center (NNDC), Brookhaven National Laboratory. This release completely supersedes all preceding releases of ENDF/B. As distributed the ENDF/B-VII.1 data includes cross sections represented in the form of a combination of resonance parameters and/or tabulated energy dependent cross sections, nominally at 0 Kelvin temperature. For use in our applications the ENDF/B-VII.1 library has been processed into cross sections at eight neutron reactor like temperatures, between 0 and 2100 Kelvin, in steps of 300 Kelvin (the exception being 293.6 Kelvin, for exact room temperature at 20 Celsius). It has also been processed to five astrophysics like temperatures, 1, 10, 100 eV, 1 and 10 keV. …

Ca-Al-rich inclusions (CAIs) found in primitive chondrites record processes and conditions of the earliest solar system as they are the oldest known solid objects formed in the solar system [1,2]. CAIs with fractionation and unidentified nuclear anomalies (FUN CAIs; [3]) are very rare and thusfar found exclusively in CV carbonaceous chondrites (e.g., Allende and Vigarano)[4]. FUN CAIs are characterized by large nucleosynthetic anomalies in several elements (Ca, Ti, Si, Sr, Ba, Nd, and Sm), large mass-dependant isotope fractionation (Mg, Si, and O), and very little initial {sup 26}Al [4,5 and reference therein]. Formation of FUN CAIs by thermal processing of presolar dust aggregates prior to the injection of {sup 26}Al into the protoplanetary disk has been proposed. More recently [5] proposed that FUN CAIs formed from a protosolar molecular cloud after injection of {sup 26}Al but before {sup 26}Al and {sup 27}Al were completely homogenized. Therefore discovering more FUN CAIs to perform U-Pb and other short-lived chronometric dating will provide key constraints on the age of the solar system, the isotopic composition of the protosolar molecular cloud, the earliest stages of the thermal processing in the solar system and the timing of {sup 26}Al and other short-lived radionuclide injection into …

Savannah River Remediation, LLC (SRR) is implementing a statistical sampling strategy for In-Service Inspection (ISI) of Liquid Waste (LW) Tanks at the United States Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS) in Aiken, South Carolina. As a component of SRS's corrosion control program, the ISI program assesses tank wall structural integrity through the use of ultrasonic testing (UT). The statistical strategy for ISI is based on the random sampling of a number of vertically oriented unit areas, called strips, within each tank. The number of strips to inspect was determined so as to attain, over time, a high probability of observing at least one of the worst 5% in terms of pitting and corrosion across all tanks. The probability estimation to determine the number of strips to inspect was performed using the hypergeometric distribution. Statistical tolerance limits for pit depth and corrosion rates were calculated by fitting the lognormal distribution to the data. In addition to the strip sampling strategy, a single strip within each tank was identified to serve as the baseline for a longitudinal assessment of the tank safe operational life. The statistical sampling strategy enables the ISI program to develop individual profiles of LW tank wall structural …

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The Savannah River Remediation (SRR) Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) has identified a technical issue related to the amount of antifoam added to the Chemical Process Cell (CPC). Specifically, due to the long duration of the concentration and reflux cycles for the Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank (SRAT), additional antifoam has been required. The additional antifoam has been found to impact the melter flammability analysis as an additional source of carbon and hydrogen. To better understand and control the carbon and hydrogen contributors to the melter flammability analysis, SRR's Waste Solidification Engineering (WSE) has requested, via a Technical Task Request (TTR), that the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) conduct an error evaluation of the measurements of key Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) anions. SRNL issued a Task Technical and Quality Assurance Plan (TTQAP) [2] in response to that request, and the work reported here was conducted under the auspices of that TTQAP. The TTR instructs SRNL to conduct an error evaluation of anion measurements generated by the DWPF Laboratory using Ion Chromatography (IC) performed on SME samples. The anions of interest include nitrate, oxalate, and formate. Recent measurements of SME samples for these anions as well as measurements of total organic …

Tactics to selectively enhance cancer radioresponse are of great interest. Cancer cells actively elaborate and remodel their extracellular matrix (ECM) to aid in survival and progression. Previous work has shown that {beta}1-integrin inhibitory antibodies can enhance the growth-inhibitory and apoptotic responses of human breast cancer cell lines to ionizing radiation, either when cells are cultured in three-dimensional laminin-rich ECM (3D lrECM) or grown as xenografts in mice. Here, we show that a specific {alpha} heterodimer of {beta}1-integrin preferentially mediates a prosurvival signal in human breast cancer cells that can be specifically targeted for therapy. 3D lrECM culture conditions were used to compare {alpha}-integrin heterodimer expression in malignant and nonmalignant cell lines. Under these conditions, we found that expression of {alpha}5{beta}1-integrin was upregulated in malignant cells compared with nonmalignant breast cells. Similarly, we found that normal and oncofetal splice variants of fibronectin, the primary ECM ligand of {alpha}5{beta}1-integrin, were also strikingly upregulated in malignant cell lines compared with nonmalignant acini. Cell treatment with a peptide that disrupts the interactions of {alpha}5{beta}1-integrin with fibronectin promoted apoptosis in malignant cells and further heightened the apoptotic effects of radiation. In support of these results, an analysis of gene expression array data from breast cancer …

Knowledge of poloidal velocity is necessary for the determination of the radial electric field, Er, which along with its gradient is linked to turbulence suppression and transport barrier formation. Recent measurements of poloidal flow on conventional tokamaks have been reported to be an order of magnitude larger than expected from neoclassical theory. In contrast, recent poloidal velocity measurements on the NSTX spherical torus [S. M. Kaye et al., Phys. Plasmas 8, 1977 (2001)] are near or below neoclassical estimates. A novel charge exchange recombination spectroscopy diagnostic is used, which features active and passive sets of up/down symmetric views to produce line-integrated poloidal velocity measurements that do not need atomic physics corrections. Local profiles are obtained with an inversion. Poloidal velocity measurements are compared with neoclassical values computed with the codes NCLASS [W. A. Houlberg et al., Phys. Plasmas 4, 3230 (1997)] and GTC-Neo [W. X. Wang, et al., Phys. Plasmas 13, 082501 (2006)], which has been updated to handle impurities. __________________________________________________

A heterogeneous continuum model is proposed to describe the dispersion of a dense Aluminum particle cloud in an explosion. Let {alpha}{sub 1} denote the volume fraction occupied by the gas and {alpha}{sub 2} the fraction occupied by the solid, satisfying the volume conservation relation: {alpha}{sub 1} + {alpha}{sub 2} = 1. When the particle phase occupies a non-negligible volume fraction (i.e., {alpha}{sub 2} > 0), additional terms, proportional to {alpha}{sub 2}, appear in the conservation laws for two-phase flows. These include: (i) a particle pressure (due to particle collisions), (ii) a corresponding sound speed (which produces real eigenvalues for the particle phase system), (iii) an Archimedes force induced on the particle phase (by the gas pressure gradient), and (iv) multi-particle drag effects (which enhance the momentum coupling between phases). These effects modify the accelerations and energy distributions in the phases; we call this the Dense Heterogeneous Continuum Model. A characteristics analysis of the Model equations indicates that the system is hyperbolic with real eigenvalues for the gas phase: {l_brace}v{sub 1}, v{sub 1} {+-} {alpha}{sub 1}{r_brace} and for the 'particle gas' phase: {l_brace}v{sub 2}, v{sub 2} {+-}{alpha}{sub 2}{r_brace} and the particles: {l_brace}v{sub 2}{r_brace}, where v{sub i} and {alpha}{sub i} denote the …

The Electron Positron Proton Spectrometer (EPPS) is mounted in a TIM (Ten-Inch Manipulator) system on the Omega-60 or Omega-EP laser facilities at the University of Rochester, Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), when in use, see Fig. 1. The Spectrometer assembly, shown in Fig. 2, is constructed of a steel box containing magnets, surrounded by Lead 6% Antimony shielding with SS threaded insert, sitting on an Aluminum 6061-T6 plate.

Phase diagrams of refractory metals remain essentially unknown. Moreover, there is an ongoing controversy over the high pressure (P) melting temperatures of these metals: results of diamond anvil cell (DAC) and shock wave experiments differ by at least a factor of two. From an extensive ab initio study on tantalum we discovered that the body-centered cubic phase, its physical phase at ambient conditions, transforms to another solid phase, possibly hexagonal omega phase, at high temperature (T). Hence the sample motion observed in DAC experiments is not due to melting but internal stresses accompanying a solid-solid transformation, as explained in more detail in our work. In view of our results on tantalum and previous work on molybdenum, as well as other published data, it is highly plausible that high-PT polymorphism is a general feature of Groups V and VI refractory metals.

Here we review experimental data and models of the ignition of aluminum (Al) particles and clouds in explosion fields. The review considers: (i) ignition temperatures measured for single Al particles in torch experiments; (ii) thermal explosion models of the ignition of single Al particles; and (iii) the unsteady ignition Al particles clouds in reflected shock environments. These are used to develop an empirical ignition model appropriate for numerical simulations of Al particle combustion in shock dispersed fuel explosions.

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We report on a reflection microscope that operates at 13.2-nm wavelength with a spatial resolution of 55{+-}3 nm. The microscope uses a table-top EUV laser to acquire images of photolithography masks in 20 seconds.

This report is part of a series of reports on building energy efficiency codes in countries associated with the Asian Pacific Partnership (APP) - Australia, South Korea, Japan, China, India, and the United States of America. This reports gives an overview of the development of building energy codes in India, including national energy policies related to building energy codes, history of building energy codes in India, recent national projects and activities to promote building energy codes. The report also provides a review of current building energy codes (such as building envelope, HVAC, lighting, and water heating) for commercial buildings in India.

We have recently examined a large number of points in the parameter space of the phenomenological MSSM, the 19-dimensional parameter space of the CP-conserving MSSM with Minimal Flavor Violation. We determined whether each of these points satisfied existing experimental and theoretical constraints. This analysis provides insight into general features of the MSSM without reference to a particular SUSY breaking scenario or any other assumptions at the GUT scale. This study opens up new possibilities for SUSY phenomenology both in colliders and in astrophysical experiments. Here we shall discuss the implications of this analysis relevant to the study of dark matter.

Carbon-climate, like other environmental sciences, has been changing. Large-scalesynthesis studies are becoming more common. These synthesis studies are often conducted by science teams that are geographically distributed and on datasets that are global in scale. A broad array of collaboration and data analytics tools are now available that could support these science teams. However, building tools that scientists actually use is hard. Also, moving scientists from an informal collaboration structure to one mediated by technology often exposes inconsistencies in the understanding of the rules of engagement between collaborators. We have developed a scientific collaboration portal, called fluxdata.org, which serves the community of scientists providing and analyzing the global FLUXNET carbon-flux synthesis dataset. Key things we learned or re-learned during our portal development include: minimize the barrier to entry, provide features on a just-in-time basis, development of requirements is an on-going process, provide incentives to change leaders and leverage the opportunity they represent, automate as much as possible, and you can only learn how to make it better if people depend on it enough to give you feedback. In addition, we also learned that splitting the portal roles between scientists and computer scientists improved user adoption and trust. The fluxdata.org portal …