This report summarizes technical progress April-September 2005 on the Phase II program ''On-Line Self-Calibrating Single Crystal Sapphire Optical Sensor Instrumentation for Accurate and Reliable Coal Gasifier Temperature Measurement'', funded by the Federal Energy Technology Center of the U.S. Department of Energy, and performed by the Center for Photonics Technology of the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. The outcome of the first phase of this program was the selection of broadband polarimetric differential interferometry (BPDI) for further prototype instrumentation development. This approach is based on the measurement of the optical path difference (OPD) between two orthogonally polarized light beams in a single-crystal sapphire disk. The objective of this program is to bring the sensor technology, which has already been demonstrated in the laboratory, to a level where the sensor can be deployed in the harsh industrial environments and will become commercially viable. Due to the difficulties described on the last report, field testing of the BPDI system has not continued to date. However, we have developed an alternative high temperature sensing solution, which is described in this report. The sensing system will be installed and tested at TECO's Polk Power Station. Following a site visit in …

This report describes the deployment and demonstration of the first phase of the I/O infrastructure for Purple. The report and the references herein are intended to certify the completion of the following Level 2 Milestone from the ASC FY04-05 Implementation Plan, due at the end of Quarter 4 in FY05. The milestone is defined as follows: ''External networking infrastructure installation and performance analysis will be completed for the initial delivery of Purple. The external networking infrastructure includes incorporation of a new 10 Gigabit Ethernet fabric linking the platform to the LLNL High Performance Storage System (HPSS) and other center equipment. The LLNL archive will be upgraded to HPSS Release 5.1 to support the requirements of the machine and performance analysis will be completed using the newly deployed I/O infrastructure. Demonstrated throughput to the archive for this infrastructure will be a minimum of 1.5GB/s with a target of 3GB/s. Since Purple delivery is not scheduled until late Q3, demonstration of these performance goals will use parts of Purple and/or an aggregate of other existing resources.''

I survey motivations for education and outreach initiatives in the American context and explore the value of communicating physics for physicists and for the wider society. I describe the roles of large institutions, professional organizations, and funding agencies and cite some individual actions, local activities, and coordinated national programs. I note the emergence of transnational enterprises--not only to carry out research, but to communicate physics. A brief appendix collects some useful internet resources.

We describe the serendipitous discovery in the spectroscopic data of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey of a star-like object, SDSSJ103913.70+533029.7, at a heliocentric radial velocity of +1012 km s{sup -1}. Its proximity in position and velocity to the spiral galaxy NGC 3310 suggests an association with the galaxy. At this distance, SDSSJ103913.70+533029.7 has the luminosity of a super star cluster and a projected distance of 17 kpc from NGC 3310. Its spectroscopic and photometric properties imply a mass of > 10{sup 6} M{sub {circle_dot}} and an age close to that of the tidal shells seen around NGC 3310, suggesting that it formed in the event which formed the shells.

The Homeland Security Act mandates development of a national, risk-based system to support planning for, response to and recovery from emergency situations involving large-scale toxic exposures. To prepare for and manage consequences effectively, planners and responders need not only to identify zones of potentially elevated individual risk, but also to predict expected casualties. Emergency response support systems now define ''consequences'' by mapping areas in which toxic chemical concentrations do or may exceed Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGLs) or similar guidelines. However, because AEGLs do not estimate expected risks, current unqualified claims that such maps support consequence management are misleading. Intentionally protective, AEGLs incorporate various safety/uncertainty factors depending on scope and quality of chemical-specific toxicity data. Some of these factors are irrelevant, and others need to be modified, whenever resource constraints or exposure-scenario complexities require responders to make critical trade-off (triage) decisions in order to minimize expected casualties. AEGL-exceedance zones cannot consistently be aggregated, compared, or used to calculate expected casualties, and so may seriously misguide emergency response triage decisions. Methods and tools well established and readily available to support environmental health protection are not yet developed for chemically related environmental health triage. Effective triage decisions involving chemical risks require a …

Hydrogen is a clean burning, non-polluting transportation fuel. It is also a renewable energy carrier that can be produced from non-fossil fuel resources such as solar, wind and biomass. Utilizing hydrogen as an alternative fuel for vehicles will diversify the resources of energy, and reduce dependence on oil in the transportation sector. Additionally, clean burning hydrogen fuel will also alleviate air pollution that is a very severe problem in many parts of world, especially major metropolitan areas in developing countries, such as India and China. In our efforts to foster international collaborations in the research, development, and demonstration of hydrogen technologies, through a USAID/DOE cost-shared project, Energy Conversion Devices, Inc.,(www.ovonic.com) a leading materials and alternative energy company, in collaboration with Bajaj Auto Limited, India's largest three-wheeler taxi manufacturer, has successfully developed and demonstrated prototype hydrogen ICE three-wheelers in the United States and India. ECD's proprietary Ovonic solid-state hydrogen storage technology is utilized on-board to provide a means of compact, low pressure, and safe hydrogen fuel. These prototype hydrogen three-wheelers have demonstrated comparable performance to the original CNG version of the vehicle, achieving a driving range of 130 km. The hydrogen storage system capable of storing 1 kg hydrogen can be …

A probabilistic performance assessment has been conducted to evaluate the fate and transport of radionuclides (americium-241, cesium-137, cobalt-60, plutonium-238, plutonium-239, radium-226, radon-222, strontium-90, thorium-232, tritium, uranium-238), heavy metals (lead and cadmium), and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at the Mixed Waste Landfill (MWL). Probabilistic analyses were performed to quantify uncertainties inherent in the system and models for a 1,000-year period, and sensitivity analyses were performed to identify parameters and processes that were most important to the simulated performance metrics. Comparisons between simulated results and measured values at the MWL were made to gain confidence in the models and perform calibrations when data were available. In addition, long-term monitoring requirements and triggers were recommended based on the results of the quantified uncertainty and sensitivity analyses. At least one-hundred realizations were simulated for each scenario defined in the performance assessment. Conservative values and assumptions were used to define values and distributions of uncertain input parameters when site data were not available. Results showed that exposure to tritium via the air pathway exceeded the regulatory metric of 10 mrem/year in about 2% of the simulated realizations when the receptor was located at the MWL (continuously exposed to the air directly above the MWL). Simulations …

This Streamlined Approach for Environmental Restoration (SAFER) Plan addresses closure for Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 540, Spill Sites, identified in the ''Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order''. Corrective Action Unit 540 consists of the nine following Corrective Action Sites (CASs) located in Areas 12 and 19 of the Nevada Test Site: (1) 12-44-01, ER 12-1, Well Site Release; (2) 12-99-01, Oil Stained Dirt; (3) 19-25-02, Oil Spill; (4) 19-25-04, Oil Spill; (5) 19-25-05, Oil Spill; (6) 19-25-06, Oil Spill; (7) 19-25-07, Oil Spill; (8) 19-25-08, Oil Spills (3); and (9) 19-44-03, U-19bf Drill Site Release. This plan provides the methodology for field activities needed to gather the necessary information for closing each CAS. There is sufficient information and process knowledge from historical documentation and investigations of similar sites regarding the expected nature and extent of potential contaminants to recommend closure of CAU 540 using the SAFER process. The data quality objective process developed for this CAU identified the following expected closure options: (1) investigation and confirmation that no contamination exists above the final action levels (FALs), leading to a no further action declaration; (2) characterization of the nature and extent of contamination, leading to closure in place with use restrictions; …

The main aim of physics research is to obtain a consistent description of nature leading to a detailed understanding of the phenomena observed in experiments. The field of particle physics focuses on the discovery and understanding of the fundamental particles and the forces by which they interact with each other. Using methods from group theory, the present knowledge can be mathematically described by the so-called ''Standard Model'', which interprets the fundamental particles (quarks and leptons) as quantum-mechanical fields interacting via the electromagnetic, weak and strong force. These interactions are mediated via gauge particles such as the photon (for the electromagnetic force), W{sup {+-}} and Z{sup 0} (for the weak force) and gluons (for the strong force). Gravitation is not yet included in this description as it presently cannot be formulated in a way to be incorporated in the Standard Model. However, the gravitational force is negligibly small on microscopic levels. The validity of this mathematical approach is tested experimentally by accelerating particles such as electrons and protons, as well as their antiparticles, to high energies and observing the reactions as these particles collide using sophisticated detectors. Due to the high energy of the particles involved, these detectors need to be …