Annual highway fuel taxes are collected by the Treasury Department and placed in the Highway Trust Fund (HTF). There is, however, no direct connection between the taxes collected by the Treasury Department and the gallons of on-highway fuel use, which can lead to a discrepancy between these totals. This study was conducted to determine how much of a discrepancy exists between the total fuel usages estimated based on highway revenue funds as reported by the Treasury Department and the total fuel usages used in the apportionment of the HTF to the States. The analysis was conducted using data from Highway Statistics Tables MF-27 and FE-9 for the years 1991-2001. It was found that the overall discrepancy is relatively small, mostly within 5% difference. The amount of the discrepancy varies from year to year and varies among the three fuel types (gasoline, gasohol, special fuels). Several potential explanations for these discrepancies were identified, including issues on data, tax measurement, gallon measurement, HTF receipts, and timing. Data anomalies caused by outside forces, such as deferment of tax payments from one fiscal year to the next, can skew fuel tax data. Fuel tax evasion can lead to differences between actual fuel use and …

Under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy/National Energy Technology Laboratory, a multi-disciplinary team led by the Advanced Power and Energy Program of the University of California at Irvine is defining the system engineering issues associated with the integration of key components and subsystems into power plant systems that meet performance and emission goals of the Vision 21 program. The study efforts have narrowed down the myriad of fuel processing, power generation, and emission control technologies to selected scenarios that identify those combinations having the potential to achieve the Vision 21 program goals of high efficiency and minimized environmental impact while using fossil fuels. The technology levels considered are based on projected technical and manufacturing advances being made in industry and on advances identified in current and future government supported research. Included in these advanced systems are solid oxide fuel cells and advanced cycle gas turbines. The results of this investigation will serve as a guide for the U. S. Department of Energy in identifying the research areas and technologies that warrant further support.

This first CMSN project has been operating since the summer of 1999. The main achievement of the project was to bring together a community of materials scientists, physicists and mathematicians who share a common interest in the properties of interfaces and the impact of those properties on microstructural evolution. Six full workshops were held at Carnegie Mellon (CMU), Northwestern (NWU), Santa Fe, Northeastern University (NEU), National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), Ames Laboratory, and at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD) respectively. Substantial scientific results were obtained through the sustained contact between the members of the project. A recent issue of Interface Science (volume 10, issue 2/3, July 2002) was dedicated to the output of the project. The results include: the development of methods for extracting anisotropic boundary energy and mobility from molecular dynamics simulations of solid/liquid interfaces in nickel; the extraction of anisotropic energies and mobilities in aluminum from similar MD simulations; the application of parallel computation to the calculation of interfacial properties; the development of a method to extract interfacial properties from the fluctuations in interface position through consideration of interfacial stiffness; the use of anisotropic interface properties in studies of abnormal grain growth; the …

Oak Ridge National Laboratory performed a study of experience credit for professional engineering licensure for the Department of Energy's Industrial Assessment Center (IAC) Program. One of the study's goals was to determine how state licensure boards grant experience credit for engineering licensure, particularly in regards to IAC experience and experience prior to graduation. Another goal involved passing IAC information to state licensure boards to allow the boards to become familiar with the program and determine if they would grant credit to IAC graduates. The National Council of Examiners for Engineers and Surveyors (NCEES) has adopted a document, the ''Model Law''. This document empowers states to create state engineering boards and oversee engineering licensure. The board can also interpret and adopt rules and regulations. The Model Law also gives a general ''process'' for engineering licensure, the ''Model Law Engineer''. The Model Law Engineer requires that an applicant for professional licensure, or professional engineering (PE) licensure, obtain a combination of formal education and professional experience and successfully complete the fundamentals of engineering (FE) and PE exams. The Model Law states that a PE applicant must obtain four years of ''acceptable'' engineering experience after graduation to be allowed to sit for the PE …

Recent measurements of the infrared (IR) absorption coefficient of CH and CD capsules differ significantly from earlier estimated values from thin flat samples. The optimum wavelength for IR enhanced layering of DT and D{sub 2} ice layers inside of a NIF scale hohlraum depends on the relative ice and capsule absorption coefficients. This update of a previous memo shows the maximum ice heating with IR as a function of ice and capsule absorption instead of at discrete wavelengths. Also discussed is the leverage of other parameters, such as the IR absorption of the hohlraum wall and thermal conductivities of the support rods and exchange gas. The most likely capsule and ice absorption values limit the IR heating to between 2-7 Q{sub DT}. We find most leverage of the IR heating comes from increasing the ice to capsule absorption ratio. As before, this is the conduction only limit to IR, with convection potentially playing a large role.

Large simulation codes can take on the order of hours to compile from scratch. In Kull, which uses generic programming techniques, a significant portion of the time is spent generating and compiling template instantiations. I would like to investigate methods that would decrease the overall compilation time for large codes. These would be methods which could then be applied, hopefully, as standard practice to any large code. Success is measured by the overall decrease in wall clock time a developer spends waiting for an executable. Analyzing the make system of a slow to build project can benefit all developers on the project. Taking the time to analyze the number of processors used over the life of the build and restructuring the system to maximize the parallelization can significantly reduce build times. Distributing the build across multiple machines with the same configuration can increase the number of available processors for building and can help evenly balance the load. Becoming familiar with compiler options can have its benefits as well. The time improvements of the sum can be significant. Initial compilation time for Kull on OSF1 was {approx} 3 hours. Final time on OSF1 after completion is 16 minutes. Initial compilation time …

The natural vantage point for performing Earth-centric operations from space is geosynchronous orbit (GEO); a platform there moves at the same rate as the Earth's surface, so appears to continually ''hover'' over a fixed site on the Earth. Unlike spacecraft in other orbits, which rapidly fly-over targets, a GEO-based platform remains in-position all the time. In order to insure continual access to sites using low earth orbit (LEO) platforms, one needs a large enough constellation ({approx} 50) of spacecraft so that one is always overhead; in contrast, a single GEO platform provides continuous coverage over sites throughout Euro-Asia. This permanent coverage comes, unfortunately, with a stiff price-tag; geosynchronous orbit is 36,000 km high, so space platforms there must operate at ranges roughly 100 times greater than ones located in LEO. For optical-based applications, this extreme range is difficult to deal with; for surveillance the price is a 100-fold loss of resolution, for laser weapons it is a 10,000-fold loss in flux-on-target. These huge performance penalties are almost always unacceptable, preventing us from successfully using GEO-based platforms. In practice, we are forced to either settle for brief, infrequent access to targets, or, if we demand continuous coverage, to invest in large, …

We were funded by ASR to use data collected during ISDAC and TWP-ICE to evaluate models with a variety of temporal and spatial scales, to evaluate ground-based remote sensing retrievals and to develop cloud parameterizations with the end goal of improving the modeling of cloud processes and properties and their impact on atmospheric radiation. In particular, we proposed to: 1) Calculate distributions of microphysical properties observed in arctic stratus during ISDAC for initializing and evaluating LES and GCMs, and for developing parameterizations of effective particle sizes, mean fall velocities, and mean single-scattering properties for such models; 2) Improve representations of particle sizes, fall velocities and scattering properties for tropical and arctic cirrus using TWP-ICE, ISDAC and M-PACE data, and to determine the contributions that small ice crystals, with maximum dimensions D less than 50 μm, make to mass and radiative properties; 3) Study fundamental interactions between clouds and radiation by improving representations of small quasi-spherical particles and their scattering properties. We were additionally funded 1-year by ASR to use RACORO data to develop an integrated product of cloud microphysical properties. We accomplished all of our goals.

The work conducted under this grant demonstrated that the hyperthermophilic bacterium Thermotoga neapolitana carries out glucose and lactose transport in a sodium-dependent manner and that energization of anaerobic cells is required to observe transport. We also demonstrated that Thermotoga maritima carries out maltose and glucose transport using periplasmic sugar binding proteins. We began defining patterns of expression of genes encoding sugar transport and catabolic functions in both T. maritima and T. neapolitana. We began a collaborative effort to identify all the genes regulated at the transcriptional level in response to sugars substrates. These funds also allowed us to begin an examination of the functions of several periplasmic substrate binding proteins encoded in the genome of T. maritima.

As the US seeks to develop an energy strategy that reduces the reliance on foreign oil, there is a renewed interest in the research and development of the Fischer Tropsch synthesis for converting syngas into long chain hydrocarbon products. This report investigates some of the basic elementary steps for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis over ideal Pt, Ru and carbon-covered Pt and Ru metal surfaces by using ab initio density functional theoretical calculations. We examine in detail the adsorption sites as well as the binding energies for C, CH, CH{sub 2}, CH3 and CH4 on Pt(111), Ru(0001), 2x2-C-Pt(111) and 2x2-C-Ru(0001). The results indicate that the binding energies increase with decreasing the hydrogen in the fragment molecule, i.e. CH{sub 4} < CH{sub 3} < CH{sub 2} < CH < C. More specifically the work analyzes the elementary steps involved in the activation of methane. This is simply the reverse set of steps necessary for the hydrogenation of C to CH{sub 4}. The results indicate that these hydrocarbon intermediates bind more strongly to Ru than Pt. The introduction of co-adsorbed carbon atoms onto both Ru(0001) as well as Pt(111) significantly increased the overall energies as well as the activation barriers for C-H bond activation. The …

The DOE-funded accelerator BNCT program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has resulted in the only operating accelerator-based epithermal neutron beam facility capable of generating significant dose rates in the world. With five separate beamlines and two different epithermal neutron beam assemblies installed, we are currently capable of treating patients with rheumatoid arthritis in less than 15 minutes (knee joints) or 4 minutes (finger joints) or irradiating patients with shallow brain tumors to a healthy tissue dose of 12.6 Gy in 3.6 hours. The accelerator, designed by Newton scientific Incorporated, is located in dedicated laboratory space that MIT renovated specifically for this project. The Laboratory for Accelerator Beam Applications consists of an accelerator room, a control room, a shielded radiation vault, and additional laboratory space nearby. In addition to the design, construction and characterization of the tandem electrostatic accelerator, this program also resulted in other significant accomplishments. Assemblies for generating epithermal neutron beams were designed, constructed and experimentally evaluated using mixed-field dosimetry techniques. Strategies for target construction and target cooling were implemented and tested. We demonstrated that the method of submerged jet impingement using water as the coolant is capable of handling power densities of up to 6 x 10(sup …

The trans-polyproline (PII) oligomers (Figure 1) are unusually rigid peptide structures which have been extensively studied by our group for peptide mediated intramolecular electron transfer (ET) at long distances. We have previously studied ET across a series of metal ion donor (D) acceptor (A) oligoproline peptides with different distances, driving forces and reorganizational energies. The majority of these experiments involve generating the ET intermediate using pulse radiolysis methods, although more recently photochemical methods are also used. Results of these studies showed that ET across peptides can vary by more than twelve orders of magnitude. Using ruthenium bipyridine donors, ET reaction rate constants across several proline residues (n = 4 - 9) occurred in the millisecond (ms) to {micro}s timescale, thus limiting the proline peptide conformational motions to only minor changes (far smaller than the large changes that occur on the ms to sec timescale, such as trans to cis proline isomerization). The present report describes our large data base of experimental results for D-peptide-A complexes in terms of a model where the involvement of both superexchange and hopping (hole and electron) mechanisms account for the long range ET rate constants observed. Our data shows that the change from superexchange to …

Final technical report for the KSU reactor sharing program indicating institutions and participants

Under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Energy/National Energy Technology Laboratory, a multi-disciplinary team led by the Advanced Power and Energy Program of the University of California at Irvine is defining the system engineering issues associated with the integration of key components and subsystems into power plant systems that meet performance and emission goals of the Vision 21 program. The study efforts have narrowed down the myriad of fuel processing, power generation, and emission control technologies to selected scenarios that identify those combinations having the potential to achieve the Vision 21 program goals of high efficiency and minimized environmental impact while using fossil fuels. The technology levels considered are based on projected technical and manufacturing advances being made in industry and on advances identified in current and future government supported research. Included in these advanced systems are solid oxide fuel cells and advanced cycle gas turbines. The results of this investigation will serve as a guide for the U. S. Department of Energy in identifying the research areas and technologies that warrant further support.

This best practices guide for residential HVAC system retrofits is aimed at contractors who want guidance on delivering energy efficient, cost effective and innovative products. It has been developed around the idea of having packages of changes to the building HVAC system and building envelope that are climate and house construction dependent. These packages include materials, procedures and equipment and are designed to remove some of the guesswork from a builder, contractor, installer or homeowner decisions about how best to carry out HVAC changes. The packages are not meant to be taken as rigid requirements--instead they are systems engineered guidelines that form the basis for energy efficient retrofits. Similar approaches have been taken previously for new construction to develop extremely energy efficient homes that are comfortable safe and durable, and often cost less than standard construction. This is best epitomized by the Building America program whose partners have built thousands of residences throughout the U.S. using these principles. The differences between retrofitting and new construction tend to limit the changes one can make to a building, so these packages rely on relatively simple and non-intrusive technologies and techniques. The retrofits also focus on changes to a building that will give …

This report summarizes the work done during the second quarter of the project. Effort is directed in two areas: (1) The use of a novel method to achieve a given porosity level with high contiguity and thus conductivity. (2) Relate the measured conductivity to porosity and contiguity. The rationale for these experiments was to develop cathodes with high ionic conductivity, so that the effective polarization resistance will be concomitantly lowered.

Artificial intelligence tools, fuzzy logic and neural networks were used to evaluate the potential of the behind pipe Mesaverde formation in BMG's Mancos formation wells. A fractal geostatistical mapping algorithm was also used to predict Mesaverde production. Additionally, a conventional geological study was conducted. To date one Mesaverde completion has been performed. The Janet No.3 Mesaverde completion was non-economic. Both the AI method and the geostatistical methods predicted the failure of the Janet No.3. The Gavilan No.1 in the Mesaverde was completed during the course of the study and was an extremely good well. This well was not included in the statistical dataset. The AI method predicted very good production while the fractal map predicted a poor producer.

This is the seventh year of a multi-year project, monitoring the outmigration and survival of juvenile salmonids in the lower Umatilla River. This project both supplements and complements ongoing and completed work within the Umatilla River basin. Knowledge gained on juvenile outmigration and survival assists researchers and managers in adapting hatchery practices, flow enhancement strategies, canal and fish ladder operations, and supplementation and enhancement efforts of natural and restored fish populations. Findings from this study also measure the success of upriver habitat improvement projects and provide an overall evaluation of the Umatilla River fisheries restoration program. The general objectives for 2001 were to: (1) Estimate migrant abundance and survival and determine migration parameters of PIT-tagged hatchery and natural juvenile salmonids; (2) Monitor natural production and estimate overall abundance of pacific lamprey, chinook and coho salmon and summer steelhead; (3) Assess the condition and health of migrants and determine length-frequency distributions through time; (4) Investigate the effects of canal and fishway operations and environmental conditions on fish migration and survival; (5) Investigate and implement improved tag monitoring capabilities; and (6) Participate in planning and coordination activities within the basin and disseminate results. More specifically, 2001 objectives included the ongoing evaluation of …

To test experimentally, the prior theoretical deduction that active-site residue Lys166 of ribulose-bisphosphate carboxylase participates in the carboxylation step of overall catalysis, site-directed mutants and chemically rescued site-directed mutants were characterized by kinetics and product analysis. Although position-166 mutants are able to catalyze normal enolization of ribulose bisphosphate, the enediol intermediate does not undergo carboxylation but rather eliminates phosphate. Furthermore, the chemically rescued mutant (aminoethylation of the severely impaired Lys66Cys mutant) generates a highly active mimic, which displays an enhanced carboxylation/oxygenation partition ratio. These two distinct lines of experimentation document a crucial role of Lys166 in carboxylation and in discrimination between CO{sub 2} and O{sub 2}. To ascertain whether Lys166 functions as an acid or base in facilitation of enolization, the chemically rescued mutant bearing {sup 15}N was titrated by NM R. From pH 6.5-9.5, the amino group of Lys166 remains unprotonated, indicating that it promotes enolization by hydrogen bonding to the ketone group of the substrate.

OAK-B135 Results obtained during this funding period: (1) Phylogenetic footprinting of AG regulatory sequences Sequences necessary and sufficient for AGAMOUS (AG) expression in the center of Arabidopsis flowers are located in the second intron, which is about 3 kb in size. This intron contains binding sites for two transcription factors, LEAFY (LFY) and WUSCHEL (WUS), which are direct activators of AG. We used the new method of phylogenetic shadowing to identify new regulatory elements. Among 29 Brassicaceae, several other motifs, but not the LFY and WUS binding sites previously identified, are largely invariant. Using reporter gene analyses, we tested six of these motifs and found that they are all functionally important for activity of AG regulatory sequences in A. thaliana. (2) Repression of AG by MADS box genes A candidate for repressing AG in the shoot apical meristem has been the MADS box gene FUL, since it is expressed in the shoot apical meristem and since an activated version (FUL:VP16) leads to ectopic AG expression in the shoot apical meristem. However, there is no ectopic AG expression in full single mutants. We therefore started to generate VP16 fusions of several other MADS box genes expressed in the shoot apical meristem, …

Our component of this project focuses on the reaction of contaminant-containing fluids with carbonate mineral surfaces in order to better understand the dissolution-growth and related solid-solution processes that ultimately affect contaminant mobility in settings containing carbonates or carbonate grain coatings. Our collaborators (Stanford, PNNL) have focused on other aspects of carbonate and carbonate mineral surfaces as part of the overall project. Because some of the sediments through which contaminants leaking from the Hanford waste have carbonate grain coatings; better understanding the chemistry of carbonate-contaminant interaction constitutes fundamental chemistry needed in order to construct better models of contaminant transport through carbonate-containing sediments.

Reservoir simulations of different fields in the Green River Formation are reported. Most extensive simulations were performed on the Monument Butte Northeast unit. Log data were used to construct detailed geostatistical models, which were upscaled to obtain reasonable number of grid blocks for reservoir simulation. Porosities, permeabilities, and water saturations required for reservoir simulation were thus generated. Comparison of the production results with the field data revealed that there was a phenomenological deficiency in the model. This was addressed by incorporating hydraulic fractures into the models. With this change, much better agreement between simulation results and field data was obtained. Two other fields, Brundage Canyon and Uteland Butte, were simulated in primary production. Only preliminary simulations were undertaken since a number of critical data elements were missing and could not be obtained from the operators. These studies revealed that the production performance of the Brundage Canyon field is much better than what can be predicted from simulations of a typical non-fractured, undersaturated reservoir. Uteland Butte field performance was that of a typical undersaturated reservoir.

Both the longitudinal and transverse beam impedance measurements for the Tevatron C0 and F0 lambertsons are presented. The C0 lambertsons were designed for circulating beam to travel through the 1 inch high by 6 inch wide field region. In the F0 lambertsons, circulating beam passes through the 2.5 inch high by 4 in ch wide field free region. The more recently designed F0 lambertsons have significantly less impedance than the older C0 lambertsons. Transverse impedance scales as one over the diameter of the aperture cubed. The three C0 style lambertsons were recently removed from the Tevatron. Four of the F0 lambertsons remain. Nine of the F0 style lambertsons are in the Main Injector and three more are required for Numi.

A new kind of fishbone instability associated with circulating energetic ions is predicted. The considered instability is essentially the energetic particle mode; it is characterized by m/n not equal to 1 (m and n are the poloidal and toroidal mode numbers, respectively). The mode is localized inside the flux surface where the safety factor (q) is q* = m/n, its amplitude being maximum near q*. The instability arises in plasmas with small shear inside the q* surface and q(0) > 1. A possibility to explain recent experimental observations of the m = 2 fishbone oscillations accompanied by strong changes of the neutron emission during tangential neutral-beam injection in the National Spherical Torus Experiment [M. Ono, et al., Nucl. Fusion 40 (2000) 557] is shown.