[en] The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center is a single purpose laboratory operated by Stanford University for the Department of Energy. Its mission is to do research in High Energy (particle) physics. This research involves the use of large and complex electronic detectors. Each of these detectors is a multi-million dollar device. A part of each detector is a computer for process control and data logging. Most detectors at SLAC now use VAX 11/780s for this purpose. Most detectors record digital data via this process control computer. Consequently, physics today is not bounded by the cost of analog to digital conversion as it was in the past, and the physicist is able to run larger experiments than were feasible a decade ago. Today a medium sized experiment will produce several hundred full reels of 6250 BPI tape whereas a large experiment is a couple of thousand reels. The raw data must first be transformed into physics events using data transformation programs. The physicists then use subsets of the data to understand what went on. The subset may be anywhere from a few megabytes to 5 or 6 gigabytes of data (30 or 40 full reels of tape). This searching would be best solved interactively (if computers and I/0 devices were fast enough). Instead what we find are very dynamic batch programs that are generally changed every run. The result is that on any day there are probably around 50 to 100 physicists interacting with a half dozen different experiments who are causing us to mount around 750 to 1000 tapes a day. This has been the style of computing for the last decade. Our going to VM is part of our effort to change this style of computing and to make physics computing more effective

[en] In 1956 the newly formed Ecology Branch of the Atomic Energy Commission's (AEC) National Reactor Testing Station (NRTS), now called the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL), under the Department of Energy, initiated a project, using aerial photos taken in 1949, 1953, and 1954 to prepare a vegetation map of the site. This area was designated a National Environmental Research Park (NERP) in 1975. The first map prepared by N. R. French and Ray McBride was produced in 1958, and differentiated vegetation types on the basis of the two most prominent species of plants occurring in each type. This map gave adequate resolution between major vegetation types only in the complex mosaic of types at the northern end of the site, designating everything else as one homogeneous vegetation classification: Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush) and Chrysothamnus viscidifluorus (green rabbitbrush). To improve the resolution of the vegetation map and thereby make it more useful in distinguishing habitats in all parts of the site, efforts were immediately begun to reclassify the vegetation types on the basis of the three (instead of two) most prominent species of plants representative of each type. This effort was continued on a low-priority basis for several years. In 1965 a vegetation map, according to the three species designation, was prepared by Ray McBride. The map was never documented in a formal report, but was reproduced in a thesis by Harniss (1968) and was referenced by Harniss and West (1973a) in their outline of the vegetation types of the NRTS. It is the purpose of this report to document the original vegetation type map prepared by the late Ray McBride and to provide general descriptions of the different vegetation types. The map has been revised and redrawn, and is appended to this report. Because vegetation is intimately related to soil development, a preliminary soil type map prepared and discussed by Adrian H. Dahl is included in this report

[en] The operations safety requirements (OSRs) presented in this report define the conditions, safe boundaries, and management control needed for safely conducting operations with radioactive materials in the Pacific Northwest Laboratory (PNL) 306-W building. The safety requirements are organized in five sections. Safety limits are safety-related process variables that are observable and measurable. Limiting conditions cover: equipment and technical conditions and characteristics of the facility and operations necessary for continued safe operation. Surveillance requirements prescribe the requirements for checking systems and components that are essential to safety. Equipment design controls require that changes to process equipment and systems be independently checked and approved to assure that the changes will have no adverse effect on safety. Administrative controls describe and discuss the organization and administrative systems and procedures to be used for safe operation of the facility. Details of the implementation of the operations safety requirements are prescribed by internal PNL documents such as criticality safety specifications and radiation work procedures

[en] The Pantex Plant Radiation Worker Certification program is designed to educate users of radiation emitting equipment in the basic areas of radiation safety. Formal classroom instruction is supplemented with on-the-job training. Certification is granted upon the completion of written and oral proficiency examinations. In addition, the program has provisions for training and designating maintenance and repair personnel to work only on specific equipment

[en] Plant and animal fossils have been recovered from several different types of sediment at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL). Based on woodrat middens and pollen from cave sediments, the Holocene vegetation history has been one of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) steppe that became increasingly similar to shadscale (Atriplex spp.) steppe, culminating ca. 7000 years ago. A radiocarbon date on snail shells from ''ancient'' Lake Terreton shows that the basin was filled as recently as 700 years ago. Fossils of aquatic organisms were found in aeolian sediments, indicating that lake and stream sediments may be an important source of the aeolian sediment at the INEL

[en] A brief description of the proposed SLAC Linear Collider is given. This machine would investigate the possibilities and limitations of linear Colliders while at the same time producing thousands of Z⁰ particles per day for the study of the weak interactions

[en] This article is a review of a report by the Office of Technology Assessment of the US Congress. In this report, OTA concluded that management of weapons grade plutonium and uranium should be transferred from the Energy Department to a less secretive organization. In a major new report on DOE's nuclear warhead dismantlement program, OTA called for the creation of an interagency task force to map out plans for the interim storage and final disposition of hundreds of tons of plutonium and thousands of tons of highly enriched uranium

[en] In most large computer installations, files are moved between on-line disk and mass storage (tape, integrated mass storage device) either automatically by the system or specifically at the direction of the user. This is the first of two papers which study the selection of algorithms for the automatic migration of files between mass storage and disk. The use of the text editor data sets at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) computer installation is examined through the analysis of thirteen months of file reference data. Most files are used very few times. Of those that are used sufficiently frequently that their reference patterns may be examined, about a third show declining rates of reference during their lifetime; of the remainder, very few (about 5%) show correlated interreference intervals, and interreference intervals (in days) appear to be more skewed than would occur with the Bernoulli process. Thus, about two-thirds of all sufficiently active files appear to be referenced as a renewal process with a skewed interreference distribution. A large number of other file reference statistics (file lifetimes, interference distributions, moments, means, number of uses/file, file sizes, file rates of reference, etc.) are computed and presented. The results are applied in the following paper to the development and comparative evaluation of file migration algorithms. 17 figures, 13 tables

[en] None

[en] The symposium covered all aspects of ecological research being conducted at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory Site in southeastern Idaho. Entries wer made for the individual papers