Toxicity tests conducted on water collected from impacted locations in SRS streams often failed chronic toxicity tests and sometimes failed acute toxicity tests (Specht 1995). These findings prompted SRS to determine the cause of the failures. Some SRS NPDES outfalls were also failing chronic toxicity tests, even though no toxicant could be identified and when TIEs were performed, none of the TIE treatments removed the toxicity. Ultimately, it was determined that the failures were due to the low hardness of SRS surface waters, rather than to the presence of a toxicant. The species of cladoceran that the EPA recommends for toxicity testing, Ceriodaphnia dubia, is stressed by the very low hardness of SRS waters. SRS developed an alternate species toxicity test that is similar to the EPA test, but uses an indigenous cladoceran, Daphnia ambigua (Specht and Harmon, 1997; Harmon et al., 2003). In 2001, SCDHEC approved the use of D. ambigua for toxicity testing at SRS, contingent upon approval by EPA Region 4. In 2002, EPA Region 4 approved the use of this species for compliance toxicity testing at SRS. Ultimately, the use of this species demonstrated that SRS effluents were not toxic, and most toxicity testing requirements were …

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Over the last few years various scientific experiments and Grid projects have developed different catalogs for keeping track of their data files. Some projects use specialized file catalogs, others use distributed replica catalogs to reference files at different locations. Due to this diversity of catalogs, it is very hard to manage files across Grid projects, or to replace one catalog with another. In this paper we introduce a new Grid service called the Replica Registration Service (RRS). It can be thought of as an abstraction of the concepts for registering files and their replicas. In addition to traditional single file registration operations, the RRS supports collective file registration requests and keeps persistent registration queues. This approach is of particular importance for large-scale usage where thousands of files are copied and registered. Moreover, the RRS supports a set of error directives that are triggered in case of registration failures. Our goal is to provide a single uniform interface for various file catalogs to support the registration of files across multiple Grid projects, and to make Grid clients oblivious to the specific catalog used.

In this paper, we propose a new strategy for optimizing the placement of bin boundaries to minimize the cost of query evaluation using bitmap indices with binning. For attributes with a large number of distinct values, often the most efficient index scheme is a bitmap index with binning. However, this type of index may not be able to fully resolve some user queries. To fully resolve these queries, one has to access parts of the original data to check whether certain candidate records actually satisfy the specified conditions. We call this procedure the candidate check, which usually dominates the total query processing time. Given a set of user queries, we seek to minimize the total time required to answer the queries by optimally placing the bin boundaries. We show that our dynamic programming based algorithm can efficiently determine the bin boundaries. We verify our analysis with some real user queries from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. For queries that require significant amount of time to perform candidate check, using our optimal bin boundaries reduces the candidate check time by a factor of 2 and the total query processing time by 40 percent.

This report summarizes activities that have taken place in the last six (6) months (January 2005-June 2005) under the DOE-NETL cooperative agreement ''Adaptive Management and Planning Models for Cultural Resources in Oil and Gas Fields, New Mexico and Wyoming'' DE-FC26-02NT15445. This project examines the practices and results of cultural resource investigation and management in two different oil and gas producing areas of the United States: southeastern New Mexico and the Powder River Basin of Wyoming. The project evaluates how cultural resource investigations have been conducted in the past and considers how investigation and management could be pursued differently in the future. The study relies upon full database population for cultural resource inventories and resources and geomorphological studies. These are the basis for analysis of cultural resource occurrence, strategies for finding and evaluating cultural resources, and recommendations for future management practices. Activities can be summarized as occurring in either Wyoming or New Mexico. Gnomon as project lead, worked in both areas.

In mineral soil, organic matter (OM) accumulates mainly on and around surfaces of silt- and clay-size particles. When fractionated according to particle density, C and N concentration (per g fraction) and C/N of these soil organo-mineral particles decrease with increasing particle density across soils of widely divergent texture, mineralogy, location, and management. The variation in particle density is explained potentially by two factors: (1) a decrease in the mass ratio of organic to mineral phase of these particles, and (2) variations in density of the mineral phase. The first explanation implies that the thickness of the organic accumulations decreases with increasing particle density. The decrease in C/N can be explained at least partially by especially stable sorption of cationic peptidic compounds (amine, amide, and pyrrole) directly to mineral surfaces, a phenomenon well documented both empirically and theoretically. These peptidic compounds, along with ligand-exchanged carboxylic compounds, could then form a stable inner organic layer onto which less polar organics could sorb more readily than onto the highly charged mineral surfaces (''onion'' layering model). To explore mechanisms underlying this trend in C concentration and C/N with particle density, we sequentially density fractionated an Oregon andic soil at 1.65, 1.85, 2.00, 2.28, and …

2005 annual report of research conducted by the Savannah River Ecology Laboratory, a research unit of The University of Georgia operating on the Savannah River Site, Aiken, South Carolina

This report documents the analysis of data collected for Well ER-6-2 during fiscal year (FY) 2004 Yucca Flat well development and testing program (herein referred to as the ''testing program''). Participants in Well ER-6-2 field development and hydraulic testing activities were: Stoller-Navarro Joint Venture (SNJV), Bechtel Nevada (BN), Desert Research Institute (DRI), Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas-Harry Reid Center (UNLV-HRC). The analyses of data collected from the Well ER-6-2 testing program were performed by the SNJV.

This Corrective Action Decision Document/Closure Report has been prepared for Corrective Action Unit 554, Area 23 Release Site, located in Mercury at the Nevada Test Site, Nevada, in accordance with the ''Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order'' (1996). Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 554 is comprised of one corrective action site (CAS): (1) CAS 23-02-08, USTs 23-115-1, 2, 3/Spill 530-90-002. The purpose of this Corrective Action Decision Document/Closure Report is to provide justification and documentation supporting the recommendation for closure of CAU 554 with no further corrective action. To achieve this, corrective action investigation (CAI) activities were performed from January 18 through May 5, 2005, as set forth in the ''Corrective Action Investigation Plan for Corrective Action Unit 554: Area 23 Release Site'' (NNSA/NSO, 2004) and Records of Technical Change No. 1 and No. 2. The purpose of the CAI was to fulfill the following data needs as defined during the data quality objective (DQO) process: (1) Determine whether contaminants of concern are present. (2) If contaminants of concern are present, determine their nature and extent. (3) Provide sufficient information and data to complete appropriate corrective actions. The CAU 554 dataset from the investigation results was evaluated based on the data …

The D0 experiment enjoyed a very successful data-collection run at the Fermilab Tevatron collider between 1992 and 1996. Since then, the detector has been upgraded to take advantage of improvements to the Tevatron and to enhance its physics capabilities. We describe the new elements of the detector, including the silicon microstrip tracker, central fiber tracker, solenoidal magnet, preshower detectors, forward muon detector, and forward proton detector. The uranium/liquid-argon calorimeters and central muon detector, remaining from Run I, are discussed briefly. We also present the associated electronics, triggering, and data acquisition systems, along with the design and implementation of software specific to D0.

The report summarizes research conducted at three naturally occurring geologic CO{sub 2} fields in the US. The fields are natural analogs useful for the design of engineered long-term storage of anthropogenic CO{sub 2} in geologic formations. Geologic, engineering, and operational databases were developed for McElmo Dome in Colorado; St. Johns Dome in Arizona and New Mexico; and Jackson Dome in Mississippi. The three study sites stored a total of 2.4 billion t (46 Tcf) of CO{sub 2} equivalent to 1.5 years of power plant emissions in the US and comparable in size with the largest proposed sequestration projects. The three CO{sub 2} fields offer a scientifically useful range of contrasting geologic settings (carbonate vs. sandstone reservoir; supercritical vs. free gas state; normally pressured vs. overpressured), as well as different stages of commercial development (mostly undeveloped to mature). The current study relied mainly on existing data provided by the CO{sub 2} field operator partners, augmented with new geochemical data. Additional study at these unique natural CO{sub 2} accumulations could further help guide the development of safe and cost-effective design and operation methods for engineered CO{sub 2} storage sites.

The study described in this report used mathematical modeling to estimate health risks from exposure to depleted uranium (DU) during the 1991 Gulf War for both U.S. troops and nearby Iraqi civilians. The analysis found that the risks of DU-induced leukemia or birth defects are far too small to result in an observable increase in these health effects among exposed veterans or Iraqi civilians. Only a few veterans in vehicles accidentally struck by U.S. DU munitions are predicted to have inhaled sufficient quantities of DU particulate to incur any significant health risk (i.e., the possibility of temporary kidney damage from the chemical toxicity of uranium and about a 1% chance of fatal lung cancer). The health risk to all downwind civilians is predicted to be extremely small. Recommendations for monitoring are made for certain exposed groups. Although the study found fairly large calculational uncertainties, the models developed and used are generally valid. The analysis was also used to assess potential uranium health hazards for workers in the weapons complex. No illnesses are projected for uranium workers following standard guidelines; nonetheless, some research suggests that more conservative guidelines should be considered.

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The thermochemical database of species involved in combustion processes is and has been available for free use for over 25 years. It was first published in print in 1984, approximately 8 years after it was first assembled, and contained 215 species at the time. This is the 7th printed edition and most likely will be the last one in print in the present format, which involves substantial manual labor. The database currently contains more than 1300 species, specifically organic molecules and radicals, but also inorganic species connected to combustion and air pollution. Since 1991 this database is freely available on the internet, at the Technion-IIT ftp server, and it is continuously expanded and corrected. The database is mirrored daily at an official mirror site, and at random at about a dozen unofficial mirror and 'finger' sites. The present edition contains numerous corrections and many recalculations of data of provisory type by the G3//B3LYP method, a high-accuracy composite ab initio calculation. About 300 species are newly calculated and are not yet published elsewhere. In anticipation of the full coupling, which is under development, the database started incorporating the available (as yet unpublished) values from Active Thermochemical Tables. The electronic version now …