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Plutonium Immobilization Project -- Robotic canister loading
The Plutonium Immobilization Program (PIP) is a joint venture between the Savannah River Site (SRS), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). When operational in 2008, the PIP will fulfill the nation's nonproliferation commitment by placing surplus weapons-grade plutonium in a permanently stable ceramic form and making it unattractive for reuse. Since there are significant radiation and security concerns, the program team is developing novel and unique technology to remotely perform plutonium immobilization tasks. The remote task covered in this paper employs a jointed arm robot to load seven 3.5 inch diameter, 135-pound cylinders (magazines) through the 4 inch diameter neck of a stainless steel canister. Working through the narrow canister neck, the robot secures the magazines into a specially designed rack pre-installed in the canister. To provide the deterrent effect, the canisters are filled with a mixture of high-level waste and glass at the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF)
Comparison of Coulomb Blockade Thermometers with the International Temperature Scale PLTS-2000
The operation of the primary Coulomb blockade thermometer (CBT) is based on a
measurement of bias voltage dependent conductance of arrays of tunnel junctions
between normal metal electrodes. Here we report on a comparison of a CBT with a
high accuracy realization of the PLTS-2000 temperature scale in the range from
0.008 K to 0.65 K. An overall agreement of about 1% was found for temperatures
above 0.25 K. For lower temperatures increasing differences are caused by
thermalization problems which are accounted for by numerical calculations based
on electron-phonon decoupling.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Evolutionary prisoner's dilemma games with optional participation
Competition among cooperators, defectors, and loners is studied in an
evolutionary prisoner's dilemma game with optional participation. Loners are
risk averse i.e. unwilling to participate and rather rely on small but fixed
earnings. This results in a rock-scissors-paper type cyclic dominance of the
three strategies. The players are located either on square lattices or random
regular graphs with the same connectivity. Occasionally, every player
reassesses its strategy by sampling the payoffs in its neighborhood. The loner
strategy efficiently prevents successful spreading of selfish, defective
behavior and avoids deadlocks in states of mutual defection. On square
lattices, Monte Carlo simulations reveal self-organizing patterns driven by the
cyclic dominance, whereas on random regular graphs different types of
oscillatory behavior are observed: the temptation to defect determines whether
damped, periodic or increasing oscillations occur. These results are compared
to predictions by pair approximation. Although pair approximation is incapable
of distinguishing the two scenarios because of the equal connectivity, the
average frequencies as well as the oscillations on random regular graphs are
well reproduced.Comment: 6 pages, 7 figure
Photon-Photon Scattering, Pion Polarizability and Chiral Symmetry
Recent attempts to detect the pion polarizability via analysis of
measurements are examined. The connection
between calculations based on dispersion relations and on chiral perturbation
theory is established by matching the low energy chiral amplitude with that
given by a full dispersive treatment. Using the values for the polarizability
required by chiral symmetry, predicted and experimental cross sections are
shown to be in agreement.Comment: 21 pages(+10 figures available on request), LATEX, UMHEP-38
Consistent Anisotropic Repulsions for Simple Molecules
We extract atom-atom potentials from the effective spherical potentials that
suc cessfully model Hugoniot experiments on molecular fluids, e.g., and
. In the case of the resulting potentials compare very well with the
atom-atom potentials used in studies of solid-state propertie s, while for
they are considerably softer at short distances. Ground state (T=0K) and
room temperatu re calculations performed with the new potential resolve
the previous discrepancy between experimental and theoretical results.Comment: RevTeX, 5 figure
Decoupling in an expanding universe: boundary RG-flow affects initial conditions for inflation
We study decoupling in FRW spacetimes, emphasizing a Lagrangian description
throughout. To account for the vacuum choice ambiguity in cosmological
settings, we introduce an arbitrary boundary action representing the initial
conditions. RG flow in these spacetimes naturally affects the boundary
interactions. As a consequence the boundary conditions are sensitive to
high-energy physics through irrelevant terms in the boundary action. Using
scalar field theory as an example, we derive the leading dimension four
irrelevant boundary operators. We discuss how the known vacuum choices, e.g.
the Bunch-Davies vacuum, appear in the Lagrangian description and square with
decoupling. For all choices of boundary conditions encoded by relevant boundary
operators, of which the known ones are a subset, backreaction is under control.
All, moreover, will generically feel the influence of high-energy physics
through irrelevant (dimension four) boundary corrections. Having established a
coherent effective field theory framework including the vacuum choice
ambiguity, we derive an explicit expression for the power spectrum of
inflationary density perturbations including the leading high energy
corrections. In accordance with the dimensionality of the leading irrelevant
operators, the effect of high energy physics is linearly proportional to the
Hubble radius H and the scale of new physics L= 1/M.Comment: LaTeX plus axodraw figures. v2: minor corrections; refs added. JHEP
style: 34 pages + 18 pages appendi
Motion of influential players can support cooperation in Prisoner's Dilemma
We study a spatial Prisoner's dilemma game with two types (A and B) of
players located on a square lattice. Players following either cooperator or
defector strategies play Prisoner's Dilemma games with their 24 nearest
neighbors. The players are allowed to adopt one of their neighbor's strategy
with a probability dependent on the payoff difference and type of the given
neighbor. Players A and B have different efficiency in the transfer of their
own strategy therefore the strategy adoption probability is reduced by a
multiplicative factor (w < 1) from the players of type B. We report that the
motion of the influential payers (type A) can improve remarkably the
maintenance of cooperation even for their low densities.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure
A Model for the Development of the Rhizobial and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbioses in Legumes and Its Use to Understand the Roles of Ethylene in the Establishment of these two Symbioses
We propose a model depicting the development of nodulation and arbuscular mycorrhizae. Both processes are dissected into many steps, using Pisum sativum L. nodulation mutants as a guideline. For nodulation, we distinguish two main developmental programs, one epidermal and one cortical. Whereas Nod factors alone affect the cortical program, bacteria are required to trigger the epidermal events. We propose that the two programs of the rhizobial symbiosis evolved separately and that, over time, they came to function together. The distinction between these two programs does not exist for arbuscular mycorrhizae development despite events occurring in both root tissues. Mutations that affect both symbioses are restricted to the epidermal program. We propose here sites of action and potential roles for ethylene during the formation of the two symbioses with a specific hypothesis for nodule organogenesis. Assuming the epidermis does not make ethylene, the microsymbionts probably first encounter a regulatory level of ethylene at the epidermis–outermost cortical cell layer interface. Depending on the hormone concentrations there, infection will either progress or be blocked. In the former case, ethylene affects the cortex cytoskeleton, allowing reorganization that facilitates infection; in the latter case, ethylene acts on several enzymes that interfere with infection thread growth, causing it to abort. Throughout this review, the difficulty of generalizing the roles of ethylene is emphasized and numerous examples are given to demonstrate the diversity that exists in plants
Observation of Orbitally Excited B_s Mesons
We report the first observation of two narrow resonances consistent with
states of orbitally excited (L=1) B_s mesons using 1 fb^{-1} of ppbar
collisions at sqrt{s} = 1.96 TeV collected with the CDF II detector at the
Fermilab Tevatron. We use two-body decays into K^- and B^+ mesons reconstructed
as B^+ \to J/\psi K^+, J/\psi \to \mu^+ \mu^- or B^+ \to \bar{D}^0 \pi^+,
\bar{D}^0 \to K^+ \pi^-. We deduce the masses of the two states to be m(B_{s1})
= 5829.4 +- 0.7 MeV/c^2 and m(B_{s2}^*) = 5839.7 +- 0.7 MeV/c^2.Comment: Version accepted and published by Phys. Rev. Let
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