[en] Samples of surface water were collected at 10 sites and ground water at 5 sites. Surface-water analyses included trace elements, radiochemicals, and pesticides. Concentrations in the water generally were less than national standards for public water supplies, with the exception of selenium. The median concentration of dissolved selenium was 7.5 microgm/L in 24 samples of surface and groundwater. Of the 11 samples that contained dissolved-selenium concentrations greater than the national standard for public water supplies of 10 microgm/L, 10 of the samples were collected at sites on streams that are not used for public water supplies; the eleventh sample was collected from a shallow well. Dissolved-selenium concentrations ranged from less than 1 to 300 microgm/L. Concentrations of dissolved selenium in the North Plate River, which supplies drinking water for several municipalities, ranged from less than 1 to 4 microgm/L. The dissolved-selenium concentration and selenium discharge in the North Platte River increased in the downstream direction. The four principal tributaries that receive drainage from the Kendrick Reclamation Project contributed substantially to the increase in selenium concentration and discharge in the North Platte River. Bottom-sediment samples from the North Platte River contained selenium contents of 1.2 microgm/g or less. 6 figs., 17 tabs

[en] The authors have designed, fabricated and successfully tested a Josephson integrated circuit that is used to limit the range of an analog input signal. This is a very useful function when applied to existing Josephson comparator designs in that it extends the useful dynamic range of the comparator and can thus enable the construction of A/D converters with more resolution than previously possible. The circuit consists of a single Josephson junction with a suppressed critical current. The impedance of this suppressed junction consists of the nonlinear quasiparticle resistance in parallel with the capacitance of the junction. When connected to ground, this device has the appearance of a bilateral diode which can be used to shunt signals outside a +- V/sub g/ range. In implementation, the junction capacitance is used to advantage as one pole of a second-order low-pass filter, the other element of which is a thin-film inductor. This filter can perform the function of a slew-rate limiting filter at the input to a high-speed comparator. The authors have fabricated individual junctions and measured their suppression characteristics and have found a 2 μ x 4.5 μ junction with a nominal critical current of 170 μA can be suppressed to less than 4 μA of critical current with a 14 mA control current. Complete limiter circuits have been fabricated and tested for both their dc and transient characteristics, the latter of which was done using a Josephson sampling technique. Experimental results along with details of the circuit design and testing techniques are presented

[en] A Josephson Analog-to-Digital (A/D) converter which employs Self-Gating-AND (SGA) circuits as comparators has been designed and experimentally investigated. A functional description of the SGA is presented and the design of a four-bit A/D converter is described. High-speed measurements demonstrate four-bit quantization of 280 MHz sinusiodal inputs, and three-bit quantization of 499 MHz inputs at a 1.0 GHz conversion rate

[en] We have developed a custom amplifier board coupled to a large-format 16-channel Hamamatsu silicon photomultiplier device for use as the light sensor for the electromagnetic calorimeters in the Muon g - 2 experiment at Fermilab. The calorimeter absorber is an array of lead-fluoride crystals, which produces short-duration Cherenkov light. The detector sits in the high magnetic field of the muon storage ring. The SiPMs selected, and their accompanying custom electronics, must preserve the short pulse shape, have high quantum efficiency, be non-magnetic, exhibit gain stability under varying rate conditions, and cover a fairly large fraction of the crystal exit surface area. We describe an optimized design that employs the new-generation of thru-silicon via devices. The performance is documented in a series of bench and beam tests.

[en] Semiconductor detectors in general have a dead layer at their surfaces that is either a result of natural or induced passivation, or is formed during the process of making a contact. Charged particles passing through this region produce ionization that is incompletely collected and recorded, which leads to departures from the ideal in both energy deposition and resolution. The silicon p–i–n diode used in the KATRIN neutrino-mass experiment has such a dead layer. We have constructed a detailed Monte Carlo model for the passage of electrons from vacuum into a silicon detector, and compared the measured energy spectra to the predicted ones for a range of energies from 12 to 20 keV. The comparison provides experimental evidence that a substantial fraction of the ionization produced in the “dead” layer evidently escapes by diffusion, with 46% being collected in the depletion zone and the balance being neutralized at the contact or by bulk recombination. The most elementary model of a thinner dead layer from which no charge is collected is strongly disfavored