Fermilab experiment E835 has studied reactions {bar p}p {yields} {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}, {pi}{sup 0}{eta}, {eta}{eta}, {pi}{sup 0}{eta}' and {eta}{eta}' in the energy region of the {chi}{sub c0}(1{sup 3} P{sub 0}) from 3340 MeV to 3470 MeV. Interference between resonant and continuum production is observed in the {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0} and {eta}{eta} channels, and the product of the input and output branching fractions is measured. Limits on resonant production are set for the {pi}{sup 0}{eta} and {pi}{sup 0}{eta}' channels. An indication of interference is observed in the {eta}{eta}' channel. The technique for extracting resonance parameters in an environment dominated by continuum production is described.

Today, hadron physics research occurs at Fermilab as parts of broader experimental programs. This is very likely to be the case in the future. Thus, much of this presentation focuses on our vision of that future--a future aimed at making Fermilab the host laboratory for the International Linear Collider (ILC). Given the uncertainties associated with the ILC--the level of needed R&D, the ILC costs, and the timing--Fermilab is also preparing for other program choices. I will describe these latter efforts, efforts focused on a Proton Driver to increase the numbers of protons available for experiments. As examples of the hadron physics which will be coming from Fermilab, I summarize three experiments: MIPP/E907 which is running currently, and MINERvA and Drell-Yan/E906 which are scheduled for future running periods. Hadron physics coming from the Tevatron Collider program will be summarized by Arthur Maciel in another talk at Hadron05.

Operating temperature greatly affects the performance and life of batteries in electric and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Increased attention is necessary to battery thermal management. Electrochemical models and finite element analysis tools are available for predicting the thermal performance of batteries, but each has limitations. This study describes an electro-thermal finite element approach that predicts the thermal performance of a battery cell or module with realistic geometry.

Rhodospirillum rubrum is a phototrophic purple nonsulfur bacterium known for its unique and well-studied nitrogen fixation and carbon monoxide oxidation systems and as a source of hydrogen and biodegradable plastic production. To better understand this organism and to facilitate assembly of its sequence, three whole-genome restriction endonuclease maps (XbaI, NheI, and HindIII) of R. rubrum strain ATCC 11170 were created by optical mapping. Optical mapping is a system for creating whole-genome ordered restriction endonuclease maps from randomly sheared genomic DNA molecules extracted from cells. During the sequence finishing process, all three optical maps confirmed a putative error in sequence assembly, while the HindIII map acted as a scaffold for high-resolution alignment with sequence contigs spanning the whole genome. In addition to highlighting optical mapping's role in the assembly and confirmation of genome sequence, this work underscores the unique niche in resolution occupied by the optical mapping system. With a resolution ranging from 6.5 kb (previously published) to 45 kb (reported here), optical mapping advances a "molecular cytogenetics" approach to solving problems in genomic analysis.

The Idaho National Laboratory (INL), in conjunction with the University of Idaho, is evaluating novel approaches for using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a quicker and safer method for monitoring biotic resources. Evaluating vegetative cover is an important factor in understanding the sustainability of many ecosystems. In assessing vegetative cover, methods that improve accuracy and cost efficiency could revolutionize how biotic resources are monitored on western federal lands. Sagebrush steppe ecosystems provide important habitat for a variety of species, some of which are important indicator species (e.g., sage grouse). Improved methods are needed to support monitoring these habitats because there are not enough resource specialists or funds available for comprehensive ground evaluation of these ecosystems. In this project, two types of UAV platforms (fixed wing and helicopter) were used to collect still-frame imagery to assess cover in sagebrush steppe ecosystems. This paper discusses the process for collecting and analyzing imagery from the UAVs to (1) estimate total percent cover, (2) estimate percent cover for six different types of vegetation, and (3) locate sage grouse based on representative decoys. The field plots were located on the INL site west of Idaho Falls, Idaho, in areas with varying amounts and types of …

These proceedings contain papers prepared for the 27th Seismic Research Review: Ground-Based Nuclear Explosion Monitoring Technologies, held 20-22 September, 2005 in Rancho Mirage, California. These papers represent the combined research related to ground-based nuclear explosion monitoring funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), Air Force Technical Applications Center (AFTAC), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), US Army Space and Missile Defense Command, and other invited sponsors. The scientific objectives of the research are to improve the United States capability to detect, locate, and identify nuclear explosions. The purpose of the meeting is to provide the sponsoring agencies, as well as potential users, an opportunity to review research accomplished during the preceding year and to discuss areas of investigation for the coming year. For the researchers, it provides a forum for the exchange of scientific information toward achieving program goals, and an opportunity to discuss results and future plans. Paper topics include: seismic regionalization and calibration; detection and location of sources; wave propagation from source to receiver; the nature of seismic sources, including mining practices; hydroacoustic, infrasound, and radionuclide methods; on-site inspection; and data processing.

The design of future high energy coolers relies heavily on extending the results of cooling force measurements into new regimes by using simulation codes. In order to carefully benchmark these codes we have accurately measured the longitudinal friction force in CELSIUS by recording the phase shift between the beam and the RF voltage while varying the RF frequency. Moreover, parameter dependencies on the electron current, solenoid magnetic field and magnetic field alignment were carried out.

Failure rates for large power supplies at a fusion facility are critical knowledge needed to estimate availability of the facility or to set priorties for repairs and spare components. A study of the "failure to operate on demand" and "failure to continue to operate" failure rates has been performed for the large power supplies at DIII-D, which provide power to the magnet coils, the neutral beam injectors, the electron cyclotron heating systems, and the fast wave systems. When one of the power supplies fails to operate, the research program has to be either temporarily changed or halted. If one of the power supplies for the toroidal or ohmic heating coils fails, the operations have to be suspended or the research is continued at de-rated parameters until a repair is completed. If one of the power supplies used in the auxiliary plasma heating systems fails the research is often temporarily changed until a repair is completed. The power supplies are operated remotely and repairs are only performed when the power supplies are off line, so that failure of a power supply does not cause any risk to personnel. The DIII-D Trouble Report database was used to determine the number of power …

Markets for renewable electricity have grown significantly in recent years, motivated in part by federal tax incentives and in part by state renewables portfolio standards and renewable energy funds. State renewables portfolio standards, for example, motivated approximately 45% of the 4,300 MW of wind power installed in the U.S. from 2001 through 2004, while renewable energy funds supported an additional 15% of these installations. Despite the importance of these state policies, a less widely recognized driver for renewable energy market growth is poised to also play an important role in the coming years: utility integrated resource planning (IRP). Formal resource planning processes have re-emerged in recent years as an important tool for utilities and regulators, particularly in regions where retail competition has failed to take root. In the western United States, recent resource plans contemplate a significant amount of renewable energy additions. These planned additions - primarily coming from wind power - are motivated by the improved economics of wind power, a growing acceptance of wind by electric utilities, and an increasing recognition of the inherent risks (e.g., natural gas price risk, environmental compliance risk) in fossil-based generation portfolios. The treatment of renewable energy in utility resource plans is not …

An ongoing issue within human-computer interaction (HCI) is the need for simplified or “discount” methods. The current economic slowdown has necessitated innovative methods that are results driven and cost effective. The myriad methods of design and usability are currently being cost-justified, and new techniques are actively being explored that meet current budgets and needs. Recent efforts in human reliability analysis (HRA) are highlighted by the ten-year development of the Standardized Plant Analysis Risk HRA (SPAR-H) method. The SPAR-H method has been used primarily for determining humancentered risk at nuclear power plants. The SPAR-H method, however, shares task analysis underpinnings with HCI. Despite this methodological overlap, there is currently no HRA approach deployed in heuristic usability evaluation. This paper presents an extension of the existing SPAR-H method to be used as part of heuristic usability evaluation in HCI.

In this paper we use the extensive integrations produced for the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) to examine the relationship between ENSO and the monsoon at interannual and decadal timescales. We begin with an analysis of the monsoon simulation in the 20th century integrations. Six of the 18 models were found to have a reasonably realistic representation of monsoon precipitation climatology. For each of these six models SST and anomalous precipitation evolution along the equatorial Pacific during El Nino events display considerable differences when compared to observations. Out of these six models only four (GFDL{_}CM{_}2.0, GFDL{_}CM{_}2.1, MRI, and MPI{_}ECHAM5) exhibit a robust ENSO-monsoon contemporaneous teleconnection, including the known inverse relationship between ENSO and rainfall variations over India. Lagged correlations between the all-India rainfall (AIR) index and Nino3.4 SST reveal that three models represent the timing of the teleconnection, including the spring predictability barrier which is manifested as the transition from positive to negative correlations prior to the monsoon onset. Furthermore, only one of these three models (GFDL{_}CM{_}2.1) captures the observed phase lag with the strongest anticorrelation of SST peaking 2-3 months after the summer monsoon, which is partially attributable to the intensity of simulated El Nino itself. We find that …

A complete coal combustion and flue gas treatment scheme was designed, constructed, and operated at bench scale as a product of cooperative research between US DOE’s Albany Research Center (ARC) and Jupiter Oxygen Corporation. The combustion gas generated using this oxy-fuel coal combustion process was effectively captured using an integrated pollutant removal (IPR) process. Supporting laboratory-scale research focuses on elements of IPR such as extraction of particulates, SO2, and mercury, and on the character of the liquid and vapor phase compositions for the CO2 - N2 - O2 mixture at the temperature and pressure conditions found at the end of the process. Future pilot-scale work will be necessary to generate economic and engineering data that will apply to full-scale oxy-fuel/IPR systems.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Industry Trends Program (ITP) collects and analyses industry-wide data, assesses the safety significance of results, and communicates results to Congress and other stakeholders. This paper outlines potential enhancements in the ITP to comprehensively cover the Initiating Events Cornerstone of Safety. Future work will address other cornerstones of safety. The proposed Tier 1 activity involves collecting data on ten categories of risk-significant initiating events, trending the results, and comparing early performance with prediction limits (allowable numbers of events, above which NRC action may occur). Tier 1 results would be used to monitor industry performance at the level of individual categories of initiating events. The proposed Tier 2 activity involves integrating the information for individual categories of initiating events into a single risk-based indicator, termed the Baseline Risk Index for Initiating Events or BRIIE. The BRIIE would be evaluated yearly and compared against a threshold. BRIIE results would be reported to Congress on a yearly basis.

The design study of the block type 15-Tesla RHQT Nb{sub 3}Al dipole magnet, and its merits over Nb{sub 3}Sn magnets are presented. The copper stabilized RHQT Nb{sub 3}Al strand is now becoming commercially available for the application to the accelerator magnets. A 1 mm diameter RHQT Nb{sub 3}Al strand with filament size about 50 {mu}, non-copper Jc about 1000 A/mm{sup 2} at 15 Tesla at 4.2K, copper ratio of 50%, can now be produced over several hundred meters. The stress and strain characteristics of the Nb{sub 3}Al strand are superior to the Nb{sub 3}Sn strand. Another advantage is that it can tolerate a longitudinal strain up to 0.55%. The RHQT Nb{sub 3}Al Rutherford cable will have less chance of contamination of the stabilizer, compared to Nb{sub 3}Sn cable. These characteristics of the RHQT Nb{sub 3}Al will be beneficial for designing and producing 15-Tesla dipole magnets. An example 15-Tesla magnet cross section, utilizing the RHQT Nb{sub 3}Sn strand is presented. A systematic investigation on RHQT Nb{sub 3}Al strands, its Rutherford cables, and building a small racetrack magnet for cable testing are proposed.

The structure, dynamical and electronic properties of liquid water utilizing different hybrid density functionals were tested within the plane wave framework of first principles molecular dynamics simulations. The computational approach, which employs modified functionals with short-ranged Hartree-Fock exchange, was first tested in calculations of the structural and bonding properties of the water dimer and cyclic water trimer. Liquid water simulations were performed at the state point of 350 K at the experimental density. Simulations included three different hybrid functionals, a meta functional, four gradient corrected functionals, the local density and Hartree-Fock approximation. It is found that hybrid functionals are superior in reproducing the experimental structure and dynamical properties as measured by the radial distribution function and self diffusion constant when compared to the pure density functionals. The local density and Hartree-Fock approximations show strongly over- and under-structured liquids, respectively. Hydrogen bond analysis shows that the hybrid functionals give slightly smaller averaged numbers of hydrogen bonds and similar hydrogen bond populations as pure density functionals. The average molecular dipole moments in the liquid from the three hybrid functionals are lower than from the corresponding pure density functionals.

Scrap materials containing plutonium (Pu) metal were dissolved at the Savannah River Site (SRS) as part of a program to disposition nuclear materials during the deactivation of the FB-Line facility. Some of these items contained both Pu and beryllium (Be) metal as a composite material. The Pu and Be metals were physically separated to minimize the amount of Be associated with the Pu; however, a dissolution flowsheet was required to dissolve small amounts of Be combined with the Pu metal using a dissolving solution containing nitric acid (HNO{sub 3}) and potassium fluoride (KF). Since the dissolution of Pu metal in HNO{sub 3}/fluoride (F{sup -}) solutions was well understood, the primary focus of the flowsheet development was the dissolution of Be metal. Initially, small-scale experiments were used to measure the dissolution rate of Be metal foils using conditions effective for the dissolution of Pu metal. The experiments demonstrated that the dissolution rate was nearly independent of the HNO{sub 3} concentration over the limited range of investigation and only a moderate to weak function of the F{sup -} concentration. The effect of temperature was more pronounced, significantly increasing the dissolution rate between 40 and 105 C. The offgas analysis from three Be …

While the purpose of geologic storage of CO{sub 2} in deep saline formations is to trap greenhouse gases underground, the potential exists for CO{sub 2} to escape from the target reservoir, migrate upward along permeable pathways, and discharge at the land surface. Such discharge is not necessarily a serious concern, as CO{sub 2} is a naturally abundant and relatively benign gas in low concentrations. However, there is a potential risk to health, safety and environment (HSE) in the event that large localized fluxes of CO{sub 2} were to occur at the land surface, especially where CO{sub 2} could accumulate. In this paper, we develop possible scenarios for large CO{sub 2} fluxes based on the analysis of natural analogues, where large releases of gas have been observed. We are particularly interested in scenarios which could generate sudden, possibly self-enhancing, or even eruptive release events. The probability for such events may be low, but the circumstances under which they might occur and potential consequences need to be evaluated in order to design appropriate site selection and risk management strategies. Numerical modeling of hypothetical test cases is needed to determine critical conditions for such events, to evaluate whether such conditions may be possible …

To augment steady-state design calculations, dynamic models of three offgas systems that will be used in the Waste Treatment Plant now under construction at the Hanford Site were developed using Aspen Custom Modeler{trademark}. The offgas systems modeled were those for the High Level Waste (HLW) melters, Low Activity Waste (LAW) melters and HLW Pulse Jet Ventilation (PJV) system. The models do not include offgas chemistry but only consider the two major species in the offgas stream which are air and water vapor. This is sufficient to perform material and energy balance calculations that accurately show the dynamic behavior of gas pressure, temperature, humidity and flow throughout the systems. The models are structured to perform pressure drop calculations across the various unit operations using a combination of standard engineering calculations and empirical data based correlations for specific pieces of equipment. The models include process controllers, gas ducting, control valves, exhaust fans and the offgas treatment equipment. The models were successfully used to analyze a large number of operating scenarios including both normal and off-normal conditions.

Internal, high-aspect-ratio pore channels with their long axes parallel to the m(10{bar 1}0) plane of sapphire were generated through sequential application of photolithography, ion-beam etching and solid-state diffusion bonding. The axial orientation of channels within the m plane was systematically varied to sample a range of bounding-surface crystallographies. The morphologic evolution of these pore channels during anneals at 1700 C was recorded by postanneal optical microscopy. The development and growth of periodic axial variations in the pore channel radius was observed, and ultimately led to the formation of discrete pores. The wavelength and average pore spacing, assumed to reflect the kinetically dominant perturbation wavelength, varied with the in-plane pore channel orientation, as did the time for complete channel breakup. Results are compared to those previously obtained when pore channels were etched into c(0001)-plane sapphire and annealed under similar conditions. The results indicate a strong effect of surface stability on the evolution behavior.

The gas phase is generally ignored in remediation of metals and radionuclides because it is assumed that there is no efficient way to exploit it. In the literal sense, all remediations involve the gas phase because this phase is linked to the liquid and solid phases by vapor pressure and thermodynamic relationships. Remediation methods that specifically use the gas phase as a central feature have primarily targeted volatile organic contaminants, not metals and radionuclides. Unlike many organic contaminants, the vapor pressure and Henry's Law constants of metals and radionuclides are not generally conducive to direct air stripping of dissolved contaminants. Nevertheless, the gas phase can play an important role in remediation of inorganic contaminants and provide opportunities for efficient, cost effective remediation. The objective here is to explore ways in which manipulation of the gas phase can be used to facilitate remediation of metals and radionuclides.

This paper summarizes an experiment designed to assess the validity of essay grading between holistic and analytic human graders and a computerized grader based on latent semantic analysis. The validity of the grade was gauged by the extent to which the student’s knowledge of the topic correlated with the grader’s expert knowledge. To assess knowledge, Pathfinder networks were generated by the student essay writers, the holistic and analytic graders, and the computerized grader. It was found that the computer generated grades more closely matched the definition of valid grading than did human generated grades.

The Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences recently completed a critical review of the scientific literature pertaining to the association of indoor dampness and mold contamination with adverse health effects. In this paper, we report the results of quantitative meta-analysis of the studies reviewed in the IOM report. We developed point estimates and confidence intervals (CIs) to summarize the association of several respiratory and asthma-related health outcomes with the presence of dampness and mold in homes. The odds ratios and confidence intervals from the original studies were transformed to the log scale and random effect models were applied to the log odds ratios and their variance. Models were constructed both accounting for the correlation between multiple results within the studies analyzed and ignoring such potential correlation. Central estimates of ORs for the health outcomes ranged from 1.32 to 2.10, with most central estimates between 1.3 and 1.8. Confidence intervals (95%) excluded unity except in two of 28 instances, and in most cases the lower bound of the CI exceeded 1.2. In general, the two meta-analysis methods produced similar estimates for ORs and CIs. Based on the results of the meta-analyses, building dampness and mold are associated …

The ligand rearrangement reaction of Cr(CO)6 is studied in a series of alcohol solutions using ultrafast, infrared spectroscopy and Brownian dynamics simulations.

Process gas tritium stripper technology has gone from catalytic oxidation followed by absorption on molecular sieve/zeolite beds to non-evaporate metal getter technology. SAES Getters produces a number of commercial getter products including St 909. St 909, a Zr-Mn-Fe alloy, is sold in pellet form, can decompose (''crack'') a number of process gas impurities, and retains lower levels of tritium than other getters. The performance of this material to remove process impurities, especially methane, under of variety of operating conditions has been part of a Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) for five years. St 909 has been tested at the bench (6 gram) scale, the pilot (500 gram) scale, and at the full (5300) gram scale under a variety of test conditions. This paper gives a brief summary of test results obtained for the different scale tests.