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The Joint Architecture Standard (JAS) program at Sandia National Laboratories requires the use of a reliable data delivery protocol over SpaceWire. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration at the Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, developed and specified a reliable protocol for its Geostationary Operational Environment Satellite known as GOES-R Reliable Data Delivery Protocol (GRDDP). The JAS program implemented and tested GRDDP and then suggested a number of modifications to the original specification to meet its program specific requirements. This document details the full RDDP specification as modified for JAS. The JAS Reliable Data Delivery Protocol uses the lower-level SpaceWire data link layer to provide reliable packet delivery services to one or more higher-level host application processes. This document specifies the functional requirements for JRDDP but does not specify the interfaces to the lower- or higher-level processes, which may be implementation-dependent.

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This report highlights the issue of one-fifth of medicare patients in 2005 being readmitted to a hospital within thirty days time. These readmissions put a strain on the budget, the majority of which it is estimated may be avoidable. The report notes that Medicare as a program is working on moving around those difficulties, without reducing the quality of care.

The development of In{sub x}Ga{sub 1-x} N/GaN thin film growth by Molecular Beam Epitaxy has opened a new route towards energy efficient solid-state lighting. Blue and green LED's became available that can be used to match the whole color spectrum of visible light with the potential to match the eye response curve. Moreover, the efficiency of such devices largely exceeds that of incandescent light sources (tungsten filaments) and even competes favorably with lighting by fluorescent lamps. It is, however, also seen in Figure 1 that it is essential to improve on the luminous performance of green LED's in order to mimic the eye response curve. This lack of sufficiently efficient green LED's relates to particularities of the In{sub x}Ga{sub 1-x}N materials system. This ternary alloy system is polar and large strain is generated during a lattice mismatched thin film growth because of the significantly different lattice parameters between GaN and InN and common substrates such as sapphire. Moreover, it is challenging to incorporate indium into GaN at typical growth temperatures because a miscibility gap exists that can be modified by strain effects. As a result a large parameter space needs exploration to optimize the growth of In{sub x}Ga{sub 1-x}N and …

This project had the goal(s) of understanding the mechanism(s) of extracellular electron transport (EET) in the microbe Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, and a number of other strains and species in the genus Shewanella. The major accomplishments included sequencing, annotation, and analysis of more than 20 Shewanella genomes. The comparative genomics enabled the beginning of a systems biology approach to this genus. Another major contribution involved the study of gene regulation, primarily in the model organism, MR-1. As part of this work, we took advantage of special facilities at the DOE: e.g., the synchrotron radiation facility at ANL, where we successfully used this system for elemental characterization of single cells in different metabolic states (1). We began work with purified enzymes, and identification of partially purified enzymes, leading to initial characterization of several of the 42 c-type cytochromes from MR-1 (2). As the genome became annotated, we began experiments on transcriptome analysis under different conditions of growth, the first step towards systems biology (3,4). Conductive appendages of Shewanella, called bacterial nanowires were identified and characterized during this work (5, 11, 20,21). For the first time, it was possible to measure the electron transfer rate between single cells and a solid substrate (20), …

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Legacy Management conducted annual sampling at the Rulison, Colorado, Site for the Long-Term Hydrologic Monitoring Program (LTHMP) on May 18, 2011. The samples were shipped to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Radiation and Indoor Environments National Laboratory in Las Vegas, Nevada, for analysis. All requested analyses were successfully completed, with the exception of the determination of tritium concentration by the enrichment method. The laboratory no longer provides that service. Samples were analyzed for gamma-emitting radionuclides by high-resolution gamma spectrometry and for tritium using the conventional method. Starting in 2012, DOE will retain a different laboratory that provides the enriched tritium analysis service.

This project was established with a new interagency agreement between the Department of Energy and the Department of Transportation to provide collaborative research, development, and benchmarking of advanced three-dimensional computational mechanics analysis methods to the aerodynamics and hydraulics laboratories at the Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center for a period of five years, beginning in October 2010. The analysis methods employ well-benchmarked and supported commercial computational mechanics software. Computational mechanics encompasses the areas of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Computational Wind Engineering (CWE), Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM), and Computational Multiphysics Mechanics (CMM) applied in Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) problems. The major areas of focus of the project are wind and water loads on bridges - superstructure, deck, cables, and substructure (including soil), primarily during storms and flood events - and the risks that these loads pose to structural failure. For flood events at bridges, another major focus of the work is assessment of the risk to bridges caused by scour of stream and riverbed material away from the foundations of a bridge. Other areas of current research include modeling of flow through culverts to assess them for fish passage, modeling of the salt spray transport into bridge girders to address suitability of using weathering …

This report briefly surveys decisions of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens in death penalty cases. Justice Stevens's position on the death penalty has undergone a thorough transformation during his tenure on the Court.

The ITER three dimensional diagnostic response to an n=3 resonant magnetic perturbation is modeled using the STELLOPT code. The in-vessel coils apply a resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) fi eld which generates a 4 cm edge displacement from axisymmetry as modeled by the VMEC 3D equilibrium code. Forward modeling of flux loop and magnetic probe response with the DIAGNO code indicates up to 20 % changes in measured plasma signals. Simulated LIDAR measurements of electron temperature indicate 2 cm shifts on the low field side of the plasma. This suggests that the ITER diagnostic will be able to diagnose the 3D structure of the equilibria.

Report that brings a 1983 NOAA Technical Memorandum titled "recovery records of adult green turtles observed or originally tagged at French Frigate Shoals, Northwestern Hawaiian Islands" up to date. Report includes some novel ways to present information gathered in more than 40 years of systematic monitoring at FFS. (pg. iii)

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In GAO’s audits of the Congressional Award Foundation’s (Foundation) financial statements for fiscal years 2012 and 2011, it found that the Foundation’s financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. GAO also identified no material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting, and no reportable noncompliance with laws and regulations it tested."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

The goal of this project is to study the fundamental physical phenoena associated with air ingress in very high temperature reactors (VHTRs). Air ingress may occur due to a nupture of primary piping and a subsequent breach in the primary pressure boundary in helium-cooled and graphite-moderated VHTRs. Significant air ingress is a concern because it introduces potential to expose the fuel, graphite support rods, and core to a risk of severe graphite oxidation. Two of the most probable air ingress scenarios involve rupture of a control rod or fuel access standpipe, and rupture in the main coolant pipe on the lower part of the reactor pressure vessel. Therefor, establishing a fundamental understanding of air ingress phenomena is critical in order to rationally evaluate safety of existing VHTRs and develop new designs that mimimize these risks. But despite this importance, progress toward development these predictive capabilities has been slowed by the complex nature of the underlaying phenomena. The combination of interdiffusion among multiple species, molecular diffusion, natural convection, and complex geometries, as well as the multiple chemical reactions involved, impose significant roadblocks to both modeling and experiment design. The project team will employ a coordinated experimental and computational effort that will …

Corn is the highest yielding crop on earth and probably the most valuable agricultural product of the United States. Because it converts sun energy through photosynthesis into starch and proteins, we addressed energy savings by focusing on protein quality. People and animals require essential amino acids derived from the digestion of proteins. If proteins are relatively low in certain essential amino acids, the crop becomes nutritionally defective and has to be supplemented. Such deficiency affects meat and fish production and countries where corn is a staple. Because corn seed proteins have relatively low levels of lysine and methionine, a diet has to be supplemented with soybeans for the missing lysine and with chemically synthesized methionine. We therefore have studied genes expressed during maize seed development and their chromosomal organization. A critical technical requirement for the understanding of the molecular structure of genes and their positional information was DNA sequencing. Because of the length of sequences, DNA sequencing methods themselves were insufficient for this type of analysis. We therefore developed the so-called “DNA shotgun sequencing” strategy, where overlapping DNA fragments were sequenced in parallel and used to reconstruct large DNA molecules via overlaps. Our publications became the most frequently cited ones …

This report discusses selected legal issues that frequently arise in the context of recent legislation to address vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure to cyber threats, efforts to protect government networks from cyber threats, and proposals to facilitate and encourage sharing of cyber threat information among private sector and government entities.

A 3-L sludge slurry sample from Tank 12 was characterized and then processed through an aluminum dissolution demonstration. The dominant constituent of the sludge was found to be aluminum in the form of boehmite. The iron content was minor, about one-tenth that of the aluminum. The salt content of the supernatant was relatively high, with a sodium concentration of {approx}7 M. Due to these characteristics, the yield stress and plastic viscosity of the unprocessed slurry were relatively high (19 Pa and 27 cP), and the settling rate of the sludge was relatively low ({approx}20% settling over a two and a half week period). Prior to performing aluminum dissolution, plutonium and gadolinium were added to the slurry to simulate receipt of plutonium waste from H-Canyon. Aluminum dissolution was performed over a 26 day period at a temperature of 65 C. Approximately 60% of the insoluble aluminum dissolved during the demonstration, with the rate of dissolution slowing significantly by the end of the demonstration period. In contrast, approximately 20% of the plutonium and less than 1% of the gadolinium partitioned to the liquid phase. However, about a third of the liquid phase plutonium became solubilized prior to the dissolution period, when the …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Effective tax rates (ETR) differ from statutory tax rates in that they attempt to measure taxes paid as a proportion of economic income, while statutory rates indicate the amount of tax liability (before any credits) relative to taxable income, which is defined by tax law and reflects tax benefits and subsidies built into the law. Lacking access to detailed data from tax returns, most researchers have estimated ETRs based on data from financial statements. A common measure of tax liability used in past estimates has been the current tax expense--either federal only or worldwide (which comprises federal, foreign, and U.S. state and local income taxes). The most common measure of income for these estimates has been some variant of pretax net book income. GAO was able to compare book tax expenses to tax liabilities actually reported on corporate income tax returns."

This white paper makes a case for Sandia National Laboratories investments in complex adaptive systems science and technology (S&T) -- investments that could enable higher-value-added and more-robustly-engineered solutions to challenges of importance to Sandia's national security mission and to the nation. Complex adaptive systems are ubiquitous in Sandia's national security mission areas. We often ignore the adaptive complexity of these systems by narrowing our 'aperture of concern' to systems or subsystems with a limited range of function exposed to a limited range of environments over limited periods of time. But by widening our aperture of concern we could increase our impact considerably. To do so, the science and technology of complex adaptive systems must mature considerably. Despite an explosion of interest outside of Sandia, however, that science and technology is still in its youth. What has been missing is contact with real (rather than model) systems and real domain-area detail. With its center-of-gravity as an engineering laboratory, Sandia's has made considerable progress applying existing science and technology to real complex adaptive systems. It has focused much less, however, on advancing the science and technology itself. But its close contact with real systems and real domain-area detail represents a powerful strength …

A resolution of inquiry is a simple resolution making a direct request or demand of the President or the head of an executive department to furnish the House with specific factual information in the Administration's possession. Under the rules and precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives, such resolutions, if properly drafted, are given a privileged parliamentary status. This means that, under certain circumstances, a resolution of inquiry can be brought up on the House floor even if the committee to which it was referred has not reported it and the majority party leadership has not scheduled it for consideration. This report discusses the background, purpose, and efficiency of these inquiries.

Final technical progress report of Halotechnics Subcontract No. NEU-2-11979-01. Halotechnics has demonstrated an advanced thermal energy storage system with a novel molten salt operating at 700 degrees C. The molten salt and storage system will enable the use of advanced power cycles such as supercritical steam and supercritical carbon dioxide in next generation CSP plants. The salt consists of low cost, earth abundant materials.

Report that provides background information regarding the Immigration and Naturalization Service rules and regulations and discusses the "immigration detainer", a document by which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) advises other law enforcement agencies that it seeks custody of individual aliens whom these agencies are detaining.

The purpose of this study was to: (1) identify the more dominant design parameters that can serve as the quantitative measure of how prototypic a given melter is, (2) run the existing DWPF models to simulate the data collected using both DWPF and non-DWPF melter configurations, (3) confirm the validity of the selected design parameters by determining if the agreement between the model predictions and data is reasonably good in light of the design and operating conditions employed in each data set, and (4) run Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations to gain new insights into how fluid mixing is affected by the configuration of melter internals and to further apply the new insights to explaining, for example, why the agreement is not good.