Improve understanding of the earthquake hazard in the Las Vegas Valley and to assess the state of preparedness of the area's population and structures for the next big earthquake. 1. Enhance the seismic monitoring network in the Las Vegas Valley 2. Improve understanding of deep basin structure through active-source seismic refraction and reflection testing 3. Improve understanding of dynamic response of shallow sediments through seismic testing and correlations with lithology 4. Develop credible earthquake scenarios by laboratory and field studies, literature review and analyses 5. Refine ground motion expectations around the Las Vegas Valley through simulations 6. Assess current building standards in light of improved understanding of hazards 7. Perform risk assessment for structures and infrastructures, with emphasis on lifelines and critical structures 8. Encourage and facilitate broad and open technical interchange regarding earthquake safety in southern Nevada and efforts to inform citizens of earthquake hazards and mitigation opportunities

A detailed understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which chemical signals control cell behavior is needed if the complex biological processes of embryogenesis, development, health and disease are to be completely understood. Yet, if we are to fully understand the molecular mechanisms controlling cell behavior, measurements at the single cell level are needed to supplement information gained from population level studies. One of the major challenges to accomplishing studies at the single cell level has been a lack of physical tools to complement the powerful molecular biological assays which have provided much of what we currently know about cell behavior. The goal of this exploratory project is the development of an experimental platform that facilitates integrated observation, tracking and analysis of the responses of many individual cells to controlled environmental factors (e.g. extracellular signals). Toward this goal, we developed chemically-patterned microarrays of both adherent and suspension mammalian cell types. A novel chemical patterning methodology, based on photocatalytic lithography, was developed to construct biomolecule and cell arrays that facilitate analysis of biological function. Our patterning techniques rely on inexpensive stamp materials and visible light, and do not necessitate mass transport or specified substrates. Patterned silicon and glass substrates are modified such …

The focus of this article is on how one group of researchersthe DOE SciDAC Visualization and Analytics Center for EnablingTechnologies (VACET) is tackling the daunting task of enabling knowledgediscovery through visualization and analytics on some of the world slargest and most complex datasets and on some of the world's largestcomputational platforms. As a Center for Enabling Technology, VACET smission is the creation of usable, production-quality visualization andknowledge discovery software infrastructure that runs on large, parallelcomputer systems at DOE's Open Computing facilities and that providessolutions to challenging visual data exploration and knowledge discoveryneeds of modern science, particularly the DOE sciencecommunity.

This report presents results from bench-scale treatability studies conducted under site-specific conditions to optimize the polyphosphate amendment for implementation of a field-scale technology demonstration to treat aqueous uranium within the 300 Area aquifer of the Hanford site. The general treatability testing approach consists of conducting studies with site sediment and under site conditions, in order to develop an effective chemical formulation for the polyphosphate amendments and evaluate the transport properties of these amendments under site conditions. Phosphorus-31 (31P) NMR was utilized to determine the effects of Hanford groundwater and sediment on the degradation of inorganic phosphates. Static batch tests were conducted to optimize the composition of the polyphosphate formulation for the precipitation of apatite and autunite, as well as to quantify the kinetics, loading and stability of apatite as a long-term sorbent for uranium. Dynamic column tests were used to further optimize the polyphosphate formulation for emplacement within the subsurface and the formation of autunite and apatite. In addition, dynamic testing quantified the stability of autunite and apatite under relevant site conditions. Results of this investigation provide valuable information for designing a full-scale remediation of uranium in the 300 aquifer.

This study focused on how climate change-induced effects on weather will translate into changes in wildland fire severity and outcomes in California, particularly on the effectiveness of initial attack at limiting the number of fires that escape initial attack. The results indicate that subtle shifts in fire behavior of the sort that might be induced by the climate changes anticipated for the next century are of sufficient magnitude to generate an appreciable increase in the number of fires that escape initial attack. Such escapes are of considerable importance in wildland fire protection planning, given the high cost to society of a catastrophic escape like those experienced in recent decades in the Berkeley-Oakland, Santa Barbara, San Diego, or Los Angeles areas. However, at least for the three study areas considered, it would appear that relatively modest augmentations to existing firefighting resources might be sufficient to compensate for change-induced changes in wildland fire outcomes.

This report documents a project undertaken for theCalifornia Urban Water Conservation Council (the Council) to create a newmethod of accounting for the diverse environmental benefits of raw watersavings. The environmental benefits (EB) model was designed to providewater utilities with a practical tool that they can use to assign amonetary value to the benefits that may accrue from implementing any ofthe Council-recommended Best Management Practices. The model treats onlyenvironmental services associated directly with water, and is intended tocover miscellaneous impacts that are not currently accounted for in anyother cost-benefit analysis.

The need to protect national critical infrastructure has led to the development of a threat analysis framework. The threat analysis framework can be used to identify the elements required to quantify threats against critical infrastructure assets and provide a means of distributing actionable threat information to critical infrastructure entities for the protection of infrastructure assets. This document identifies and describes five key elements needed to perform a comprehensive analysis of threat: the identification of an adversary, the development of generic threat profiles, the identification of generic attack paths, the discovery of adversary intent, and the identification of mitigation strategies.

Software is among the most complex human artifacts, and visualization is widely acknowledged as important to understanding software. In this paper, we consider the problem of understanding a software system's architecture through visualization. Whereas traditional visualizations use multiple stakeholder-specific views to present different kinds of task-specific information, we propose an additional visualization technique that unifies the presentation of various kinds of architecture-level information, thereby allowing a variety of stakeholders to quickly see and communicate current development, quality, and costs of a software system. For future empirical evaluation of multi-aspect, single-view architectural visualizations, we have implemented our idea in an existing visualization tool, Vizz3D. Our implementation includes techniques, such as the use of a city metaphor, that reduce visual complexity in order to support single-view visualizations of large-scale programs.

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The case of {gamma}-ray absorption due to photon-photon pair production of jet photons in the external photon environments, such as the accretion disk and the broad-line region radiation fields, of {gamma}-ray--loud active galactic nuclei (AGNs) that exhibit strong emission lines is considered. I demonstrate that this 'local opacity,' if detected, will almost unavoidably be redshift-dependent in the sub-TeV range. This introduces nonnegligible biases and complicates approaches for studying the evolution of the extragalactic background light with contemporary GeV instruments such as the Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST ), where the {gamma}-ray horizon is probed by means of statistical analysis of absorption features (e.g., the Fazio-Stecker relation) in AGN spectra at various redshifts. It particularly applies to strong-line quasars, where external photon fields are potentially involved in {gamma}-ray production.

This paper covers the progress accomplished by the U.S. DOE's Controlled Hydrogen Fleet and Infrastructure Demonstration and Validation Project since inception, including results from analysis of six months of new data.

Thirty-one years have passed since the United States Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) [1]. The 1976 law essentially eliminated future production of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) within the United States and greatly limited the use of previously manufactured PCBs and PCB products. The ultimate objective of the law was the complete elimination of these chemicals due to concerns about their potentially toxic effects on health and the environment. PCBs were manufactured in the United States between 1929 and 1977. They were highly valued for their fire and heat-resistance properties and for their chemical stability. As a result, PCBs were used in a variety of thermally and/or chemically stressful applications. They did not conduct electricity and therefore were particularly well-suited for use as insulating fluids in high-voltage electric equipment. PCBs were also used in various other applications, such as in hydraulic and heat transfer fluids. Strict controls on the use and disposal of PCBs were imposed by the TSCA implementing regulations at 40 CFR 761 [2]. As a result, most heavy users of PCB products worked hard to curtail their PCB use. Many organizations that once used substantial amounts of PCBs, subsequently declared themselves ''PCB free''. Unfortunately, in many …

We analyzed the carbon fluxes in the central metabolism ofGeobacter metallireducens strain GS-15 using 13C isotopomer modeling.Acetate labeled in the 1st or 2nd position was the sole carbon source,and Fe-NTA was the sole terminal electron acceptor. The measured labeledacetate uptake rate was 21 mmol/gdw/h in the exponential growth phase.The resulting isotope labeling pattern of amino acids allowed an accuratedetermination of the in vivo global metabolic reaction rates (fluxes)through the central metabolic pathways using a computational isotopomermodel. The tracer experiments showed that G. metallireducens containedcomplete biosynthesis pathways for essential metabolism, and this strainmight also have an unusual isoleucine biosynthesis route (usingacetyl-CoA and pyruvate as the precursors). The model indicated that over90 percent of the acetate was completely oxidized to CO2 via a completetricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle while reducing iron. Pyruvate carboxylaseand phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase were present under theseconditions, but enzymes in the glyoxylate shunt and malic enzyme wereabsent. Gluconeogenesis and the pentose phosphate pathway were mainlyemployed for biosynthesis and accounted for less than 3 percent of totalcarbon consumption. The model also indicated surprisingly highreversibility in the reaction between oxoglutarate and succinate. Thisstep operates close to the thermodynamic equilibrium possibly becausesuccinate is synthesized via a transferase reaction, and the conversionof oxoglutarate to succinate …

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This report summarizes the results of a three-year collaboration between Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute (KAERI) to identify and quantify the performance of innovative design features in metallic-fueled, sodium-cooled fast reactor designs. The objective of the work was to establish the reliability and safety margin enhancements provided by design innovations offering significant potential for construction, maintenance, and operating cost reductions. The project goal was accomplished with a combination of advanced model development (Task 1), analysis of innovative design and safety features (Tasks 2 and 3), and planning of key safety experiments (Task 4). Task 1--Computational Methods for Analysis of Passive Safety Design Features: An advanced three-dimensional subassembly thermal-hydraulic model was developed jointly and implemented in ANL and KAERI computer codes. The objective of the model development effort was to provide a high-accuracy capability to predict fuel, cladding, coolant, and structural temperatures in reactor fuel subassemblies, and thereby reduce the uncertainties associated with lower fidelity models previously used for safety and design analysis. The project included model formulation, implementation, and verification by application to available reactor tests performed at EBR-II. Task 2--Comparative Analysis and Evaluation of Innovative Design Features: Integrated safety assessments of innovative liquid …

Freshwater demands are steadily increasing throughout the United States. As its population increases, more water is needed for domestic use (drinking, cooking, cleaning, etc.) and to supply power and food. In arid parts of the country, existing freshwater supplies are not able to meet the increasing demands for water. New water users are often forced to look to alternative sources of water to meet their needs. Over the past few years, utilities in many locations, including parts of the country not traditionally water-poor (e.g., Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and North Carolina) have needed to reevaluate the availability of water to meet their cooling needs. This trend will only become more extreme with time. Other trends are likely to increase pressure on freshwater supplies, too. For example, as populations increase, they will require more food. This in turn will likely increase demands for water by the agricultural sector. Another example is the recent increased interest in producing biofuels. Additional water will be required to grow more crops to serve as the raw materials for biofuels and to process the raw materials into biofuels. This report provides information about an opportunity to reuse an abundant water source -- treated municipal wastewater, …

Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 166, Storage Yards and Contaminated Materials, is listed in the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) of 1996 (FFACO, 1996). CAU 166 consists of seven Corrective Action Sites (CASs) located in Areas 2, 3, 5, and 18 of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), which is located approximately 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada (Figure 1). CAU 166 consists of the following CASs: (1) CAS 02-42-01, Cond. Release Storage Yd - North; (2) CAS 02-42-02, Cond. Release Storage Yd - South; (3) CAS 02-99-10, D-38 Storage Area; (4) CAS 03-42-01, Conditional Release Storage Yard; (5) CAS 05-19-02, Contaminated Soil and Drum; (6) CAS 18-01-01, Aboveground Storage Tank; and (7) CAS 18-99-03, Wax Piles/Oil Stain. Details of the site history and site characterization results for CAU 166 are provided in the approved Corrective Action Investigation Plan (CAIP) (U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office [NNSA/NSO], 2006) and in the approved Corrective Action Decision Document (CADD) (NNSA/NSO, 2007).

Nuclear forensics has become increasingly important in the fight against illicit trafficking in nuclear and other radioactive materials. The illicit trafficking of nuclear materials is, of course, an international problem; nuclear materials may be mined and milled in one country, manufactured in a second country, diverted at a third location, and detected at a fourth. There have been a number of articles in public policy journals in the past year that call for greater interaction between the U. S. and the rest of the world on the topic of nuclear forensics. Some believe that such international cooperation would help provide a more certain capability to identify the source of the nuclear material used in a terrorist event. An improved international nuclear forensics capability would also be important as part of the IAEA verification toolkit, particularly linked to increased access provided by the additional protocol. A recent study has found that, although international progress has been made in securing weapons-usable HEU and Pu, the effort is still insufficient. They found that nuclear material, located in 40 countries, could be obtained by terrorists and criminals and used for a crude nuclear weapon. Through 2006, the IAEA Illicit Trafficking Database had recorded a …

A 5.6-m-long lake sediment core from Bear Lake, Alaska, located 22 km southeast of Redoubt Volcano, contains 67 tephra layers deposited over the last 8750 cal yr, comprising 15% of the total thickness of recovered sediment. Using 12 AMS {sup 14}C ages, along with the {sup 137}Cs and {sup 210}Pb activities of recent sediment, we evaluated different models to determine the age-depth relation of sediment, and to determine the age of each tephra deposit. The age model is based on a cubic smooth spline function that was passed through the adjusted tephra-free depth of each dated layer. The estimated age uncertainty of the 67 tephras averages {+-} 105 yr (1{sigma}). Tephra-fall frequency at Bear Lake was among the highest during the past 500 yr, with eight tephras deposited compared to an average of 3.7 per 500 yr over the last 8500 yr. Other periods of increased tephra fall occurred 2500-3500, 4500-5000, and 7000-7500 cal yr. Our record suggests that Bear Lake experienced extended periods (1000-2000 yr) of increased tephra fall separated by shorter periods (500-1000 yr) of apparent quiescence. The Bear Lake sediment core affords the most comprehensive tephrochronology from the base of the Redoubt Volcano to date, with an …

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Canary rockfish (Sebastes pinniger) have long been an important part of recreational and commercial rockfish fishing from southeast Alaska to southern California, but localized stock abundances have declined considerably. Based on age estimates from otoliths and other structures, lifespan estimates vary from about 20 years to over 80 years. For the purpose of monitoring stocks, age composition is routinely estimated by counting growth zones in otoliths; however, age estimation procedures and lifespan estimates remain largely unvalidated. Typical age validation techniques have limited application for canary rockfish because they are deep dwelling and may be long lived. In this study, the unaged otolith of the pair from fish aged at the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada was used in one of two age validation techniques: (1) lead-radium dating and (2) bomb radiocarbon ({sup 14}C) dating. Age estimate accuracy and the validity of age estimation procedures were validated based on the results from each technique. Lead-radium dating proved successful in determining a minimum estimate of lifespan was 53 years and provided support for age estimation procedures up to about 50-60 years. These findings were further supported by {Delta}{sup 14}C data, which indicated a minimum estimate of lifespan was 44 {+-} 3 …

Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 543: Liquid Disposal Units is listed in Appendix III of the ''Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order'' (FFACO) which was agreed to by the state of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the U.S. Department of Defense (FFACO, 1996). CAU 543 sites are located in Areas 6 and 15 of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), which is approximately 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. CAU 543 consists of the following seven Corrective Action Sites (CASs) (Figure 1): CAS 06-07-01, Decon Pad; CAS 15-01-03, Aboveground Storage Tank; CAS 15-04-01, Septic Tank; CAS 15-05-01, Leachfield; CAS 15-08-01, Liquid Manure Tank; CAS 15-23-01, Underground Radioactive Material Area; and CAS 15-23-03, Contaminated Sump, Piping. All Area 15 CASs are located at the former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Farm, which operated from 1963 to 1981 and was used to support animal experiments involving the uptake of radionuclides. Each of the Area 15 CASs, except CAS 15-23-01, is associated with the disposal of waste effluent from Building 15-06, which was the primary location of the various tests and experiments conducted onsite. Waste effluent disposal from Building 15-06 involved piping, sumps, outfalls, a septic tank with leachfield, underground storage …

Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 537 is identified in the ''Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order'' (FFACO) of 1996 as Waste Sites. CAU 537 is located in Areas 3 and 19 of the Nevada Test Site, approximately 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, and consists of the following two Corrective Action Sites (CASs): CAS 03-23-06, Bucket; Yellow Tagged Bags; and CAS 19-19-01, Trash Pit. CAU 537 closure activities were conducted in April 2007 according to the FFACO and Revision 3 of the Sectored Clean-up Work Plan for Housekeeping Category Waste Sites (U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office [NNSA/NSO], 2003). At CAS 03-23-06, closure activities included removal and disposal of a 15-foot (ft) by 15-ft by 8-ft tall wooden shed containing wood and metal debris and a 5-gallon plastic bucket containing deteriorated plastic bags with yellow radioactive contamination tape. The debris was transported to the Area 9 U10c Landfill for disposal after being screened for radiological contamination according to the ''NV/YMP Radiological Control Manual'' (NNSA/NSO, 2004). At CAS 19-19-01, closure activities included segregation, removal, and disposal of non-friable, non-regulated asbestos-containing material (ACM) and construction debris. The ACM was determined to be non-friable by waste characterization samples …

Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 151, Septic Systems and Discharge Area, is listed in the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) of 1996 (FFACO, 1996). CAU 151 consists of eight Corrective Action Sites (CASs) located in Areas 2, 12, and 18 of the Nevada Test Site (NTS), which is located approximately 65 miles northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada.