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We present measurements of elliptic flow and event-by-event fluctuations established by the PHOBOS experiment. Elliptic flow scaled by participant eccentricity is found to be similar for both systems when collisions with the same number of participants or the same particle area density are compared. The agreement of elliptic flow between Au+Au and Cu+Cu collisions provides evidence that the matter is created in the initial stage of relativistic heavy ion collisions with transverse granularity similar to that of the participant nucleons. The event-by-event fluctuation results reveal that the initial collision geometry is translated into the final state azimuthal particle distribution, leading to an event-by-event proportionality between the observed elliptic flow and initial eccentricity.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Order 450.1, Environmental Protection Program, requires each DOE site to conduct environmental monitoring. Environmental monitoring at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) is conducted in order to: (a) Verify and support compliance with applicable federal, state, and local environmental laws, regulations, permits, and orders; (b) Establish baselines and characterize trends in the physical, chemical, and biological condition of effluent and environmental media; (c) Identify potential environmental problems and evaluate the need for remedial actions or measures to mitigate the problem; (d) Detect, characterize, and report unplanned releases; (e) Evaluate the effectiveness of effluent treatment and control, and pollution abatement programs; and (f) Determine compliance with commitments made in environmental impact statements, environmental assessments, safety analysis reports, or other official DOE documents. This Environmental Monitoring Plan (EMP) has been written to contain the rationale and design criteria for the monitoring program, extent and frequency of monitoring and measurements, procedures for laboratory analyses, quality assurance (QA) requirements, program implementation procedures, and direction for the preparation and disposition of reports. Changes to the environmental monitoring program may be necessary to allow the use of advanced technology and new data collection techniques. This EMP will document any proposed changes …

A total of 66 urine samples, 6 blank fecal and 6 spiked artificial fecal samples were submitted during the report period (April 1, 2006 through March 31, 2007) to General Engineering Laboratories, South Carolina by the Hanford Internal Dosimetry Program (IDP) to check the accuracy, precision, and detection levels of their analyses. Urine analyses for tritium, Sr, 238Pu, 239Pu, 241Am, 243Am 235U, 238U, elemental uranium and fecal analyses for 241Am, 238Pu and 239Pu were tested this year. The number of QC urine samples submitted during the report period represented 1.7% of the total samples submitted. In addition to the samples provided by IDP, GEL was also required to conduct their own QC program, and submit the results of analyses to IDP. About 36% of the analyses processed by GEL during the second year of this contract were quality control samples. GEL tested the performance of 16 radioisotopes, all of which met or exceeded the specifications in the Statement of Work. IDP concluded that GEL was performing well for all analyses tested, and concerns identified earlier were satisfactorily resolved.

This paper presents the results of a broad investigation into the effects of the electron energy distribution function on the predictions of non-LTE collisional-radiative atomic kinetics models. The effects of non-Maxwellian and suprathermal (''hot'') electron distributions on collisional rates (including three-body recombination) are studied. It is shown that most collisional rates are fairly insensitive to the functional form and characteristic energy of the electron distribution function as long as the characteristic energy is larger than the threshold energy for the collisional process. Collisional excitation and ionization rates, however, are highly sensitive to the fraction of hot electrons. This permits the development of robust spectroscopic diagnostics that can be used to characterize the electron density, bulk electron temperature, and hot electron fraction of plasmas with non-equilibrium electron distribution functions (EDFs). Hot electrons are shown to increase and spread out plasma charge state distributions, amplify the intensities of emission lines fed by direct collisional excitation and radiative cascades, and alter the structure of satellite features in both K- and L-shell spectra. The characteristic energy, functional form, and spatial properties of hot electron distributions in plasmas are open to characterization through their effects on high-energy continuum and line emission and on the polarization …

On January 25, and 26, 2007, an NWChem meeting was held that was attended by 65 scientists from 29 institutions including 22 universities and 5 national laboratories. The goals of the meeting were to look at major scientific challenges that could be addressed by computational modeling in environmental molecular sciences, and to identify the associated capability development needs. In addition, insights were sought into petascale computing developments in computational chemistry. During the meeting common themes were identified that will drive the need for the development of new or improved capabilities in NWChem. Crucial areas of development that the developer's team will be focusing on are (1) modeling of dynamics and kinetics in chemical transformations, (2) modeling of chemistry at interfaces and in the condensed phase, and (3) spanning longer time scales in biological processes modeled with molecular dynamics. Various computational chemistry methodologies were discussed during the meeting, which will provide the basis for the capability developments in the near or long term future of NWChem.

Many human genes are associated with dispersed arrays of transcriptional enhancers that regulate their expression in time and space. Studies in invertebrate model systems have suggested that these elements function as discrete and independent regulatory units, but the in vivo combinatorial properties of vertebrate enhancers remain poorly understood. To explore the modularity and regulatory autonomy of human developmental enhancers, we experimentally concatenated up to four enhancers from different genes and used a transgenic mouse assay to compare the in vivo activity of these compound elements with that of the single modules. In all of the six different combinations of elements tested, the reporter gene activity patterns were additive without signs of interference between the individual modules, indicating that regulatory specificity was maintained despite the presence of closely-positioned heterologous enhancers. Even in cases where two elements drove expression in close anatomical proximity, such as within neighboring subregions of the developing limb bud, the compound patterns did not show signs of cross-inhibition between individual elements or novel expression sites. These data indicate that human developmental enhancers are highly modular and functionally autonomous and suggest that genomic enhancer shuffling may have contributed to the evolution of complex gene expression patterns in vertebrates

The Liquid Lithium Divertor (LLD) on NSTX will be the first test of a fully-toroidal liquid lithium divertor in a high-power magnetic confinement device. It will replace part of the lower outboard divertor between a specified inside and outside radius, and ultimately provide a lithium surface exposed to the plasma with enough depth to absorb a significant particle flux. There are numerous technical challenges involved in the design. The lithium layer must be as thin as possible, and maintained at a temperature between 200 and 400 degrees Celsius to minimize lithium evaporation. This requirement leads to the use of a thick copper substrate, with a thin stainless steel layer bonded to the plasma-facing surface. A porous molybdenum layer is then plasma-sprayed onto the stainless steel, to provide a coating that facilitates full wetting of the surface by the liquid lithium. Other challenges include the design of a robust, vacuumcompatible heating and cooling system for the LLD. Replacement graphite tiles that provided the proper interface between the existing outer divertor and the LLD also had to be designed, as well as accommodation for special LLD diagnostics. This paper describes the mechanical design of the LLD, and presents analyses showing the performance …

The method of transient coaxial helicity injection (CHI) has previously been used in the HITII experiment at the University of Washington to produce 100 kA of closed flux current. The generation of the plasma current by CHI involves the process of magnetic reconnection, which has been experimentally controlled in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory to allow this potentially unstable phenomenon to reorganize the magnetic field lines to form closed, nested magnetic surfaces carrying a plasma current up to 160 kA. This is a world record for non-inductive closed-flux current generation, and demonstrates the high current capability of this method.

Anomaly mediation solves the supersymmetric flavor and CP problems. This is because the superconformal anomaly dictates that supersymmetry breaking is transmitted through nearly flavor-blind infrared physics that is highly predictive and UV insensitive. Slepton mass squareds, however, are predicted to be negative. This can be solved by adding D-terms for U(1)_Y and U(1)_{B-L} while retaining the UV insensitivity. In this paper we consider electroweak symmetry breaking via UV insensitive anomaly mediation in several models. For the MSSM we find a stable vacuum when tanbeta< 1, but in this region the top Yukawa coupling blows up only slightly above the supersymmetry breaking scale. For the NMSSM, we find a stable electroweak breaking vacuum but with a chargino that is too light. Replacing the cubic singlet term in the NMSSM superpotential with a term linear in the singlet wefind a stable vacuum and viable spectrum. Most of the parameter region with correct vacua requires a large superpotential coupling, precisely what is expected in the"Fat Higgs'" model in which the superpotential is generated dynamically. We have therefore found the first viable UV complete, UV insensitive supersymmetry breaking model that solves the flavor and CP problems automatically: the Fat Higgs model with UV insensitive …

This report is a high level summary of the eight major projects funded by the Agile Machining and Inspection Non-Nuclear Readiness (NNR) project (FY06.0422.3.04.R1). The largest project of the group is the Rapid Response project in which the six major sub categories are summarized. This project focused on the operations of the machining departments that will comprise Special Applications Machining (SAM) in the Kansas City Responsive Infrastructure Manufacturing & Sourcing (KCRIMS) project. This project was aimed at upgrading older machine tools, developing new inspection tools, eliminating Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM) in the handling of classified Numerical Control (NC) programs by installing the CRONOS network, and developing methods to automatically load Coordinated-Measuring Machine (CMM) inspection data into bomb books and product score cards. Finally, the project personnel leaned perations of some of the machine tool cells, and now have the model to continue this activity.

The National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) required precise positioning of the field coils in order to generate suitable magnetic fields. A set of three modular field coils were assembled to form the Half Field-Period Assemblies (HPA). Final assembly of the HPA required a welded shear plate to join individual coils in the nose region due to the geometric limitations and the strength constraints. Each of the modular coil windings was wound on a stainless steel alloy (Stellalloy) casting. The alloy is similar to austenitic 316 stainless steel. During the initial welding trials, severe distortion, of approximately 1/16", was observed in the joint caused by weld shrinkage. The distortion was well outside the requirements of the design. Solutions were attempted through several simultaneous routes. The joint design was modified, welding processes were changed, and specialized heat reduction techniques were utilized. A final joint design was selected to reduce the amount of weld material needed to be deposited, while maintaining adequate penetration and strength. Several welding processes and techniques using Miller Axcess equipment were utilized that significantly reduced heat input. The final assembly of the HPA was successful. Distortion was controlled to 0.012", well within the acceptable design tolerance range of 0.020" …

The method of Kruskal-Newton diagrams for the solution of differential equations with boundary layers is shown to provide rapid intuitive understanding of layer scaling and can result in the conceptual simplification of some problems. The method is illustrated using equations arising in the theory of pattern formation and in plasma physics.

The Nez Perce Tribe, through funding provided by the Bonneville Power Administration, has implemented a small scale chinook salmon supplementation program on Johnson Creek, a tributary in the South Fork of the Salmon River, Idaho. The Johnson Creek Artificial Propagation Enhancement project was established to enhance the number of threatened Snake River spring/summer chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) returning to Johnson Creek to spawn through artificial propagation. This was the sixth season of adult chinook broodstock collection in Johnson Creek following collections in 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2003. Weir installation was completed on June 21, 2004 with the first chinook captured on June 22, 2004 and the last fish captured on September 6, 2004. The weir was removed on September 18, 2004. A total of 338 adult chinook, including jacks, were captured during the season. Of these, 211 were of natural origin, 111 were hatchery origin Johnson Creek supplementation fish, and 16 were adipose fin clipped fish from other hatchery operations and therefore strays into Johnson Creek. Over the course of the run, 57 natural origin Johnson Creek adult chinook were retained for broodstock, transported to the South Fork Salmon River adult holding and spawning facility and held until spawned. …

The Kootenai River ecosystem has experienced numerous ecological changes since the early 1900s. Some of the largest impacts to habitat, biological communities, and ecological function resulted from levee construction along the 120 km of river upstream from Kootenay Lake, completed by the 1950s, and the construction and operation of Libby Dam, completed in 1972 on the river near Libby Montana. Levee construction isolated tens of thousands of hectares of historic functioning floodplain habitat from the river channel, eliminating nutrient production and habitat diversity crucial to the functioning of a large river-floodplain ecosystem. Libby Dam continues to create large changes in the timing, duration, and magnitude of river flows, and greatly reduces sediment and nutrient transport to downstream river reaches. These changes have contributed to the ecological collapse of the post-development Kootenai River ecosystem and its native biological communities. In response to this artificial loss of nutrients, experimental nutrient addition was initiated in the Kootenay Lake's North Arm in 1992, the South Arm in 2004, and in the Kootenai River at the Idaho-Montana border during 2005. This report characterizes the macroinvertebrate community in the Kootenai River and its response to experimental nutrient addition during 2005 and 2006. This report also provides …

A testing program evaluating actual tank waste was developed in response to Task 4 from the M-12 External Flowsheet Review Team (EFRT) issue response plan.() The test program was subdivided into logical increments. The bulk water-insoluble solid wastes that are anticipated to be delivered to the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) were identified according to type such that the actual waste testing could be targeted to the relevant categories. Eight broad waste groupings were defined. Samples available from the 222S archive were identified and obtained for testing. The actual waste-testing program included homogenizing the samples by group, characterizing the solids and aqueous phases, and performing parametric leaching tests. Two of the eight defined groups—bismuth phosphate sludge (Group 1) and bismuth phosphate saltcake (Group 2)—are the subjects of this report. The Group 1 waste was anticipated to be high in phosphorus and was implicitly assumed to be present as BiPO4 (however, results presented here indicate that the phosphate in Group 1 is actually present as amorphous iron(III) phosphate). The Group 2 waste was also anticipated to be high in phosphorus, but because of the relatively low bismuth content and higher aluminum content, it was anticipated that the Group 2 waste …

NSTX high-power divertor plasma experiments have shown, for the first time, significant and frequent benefits from lithium coatings applied to plasma facing components. Lithium pellet injection on NSTX introduced lithium pellets with masses 1 to 5 mg via He discharges. Lithium coatings have also been applied with an oven that directed a collimated stream of lithium vapor toward the graphite tiles of the lower center stack and divertor. Lithium depositions from a few mg to 1 g have been applied between discharges. Benefits from the lithium coating were sometimes, but not always seen. These improvements sometimes included decreases plasma density, inductive flux consumption, and ELM frequency, and increases in electron temperature, ion temperature, energy confinement and periods of MHD quiescence. In addition, reductions in lower divertor D, C, and O luminosity were measured.

The proliferation of expensive technology in diagnostic medicine demands objective, meaningful assessments of diagnostic performance. Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis is now recognized widely as the best approach to the task of measuring and specifying diagnostic accuracy (Metz, 1978; Swets and Pickett, 1982; Beck and Schultz, 1986; Metz, 1986; Hanley, 1989; Zweig and Campbell, 1993), which is defined as the extent to which diagnoses agree with actual states of health or disease (Fryback and Thornbury, 1991; National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, 1995). The primary advantage of ROC analysis over alternative methodologies is that it separates differences among diagnostic decisions that are due to actual differences in discrimination capacity from those that are due to decision-threshold effects (e.g., ''under-reading'' or ''over-reading''). An ROC curve measures diagnostic accuracy by displaying True Positive Fraction (TPF: the fraction of patients actually having the disease in question that is diagnosed correctly as ''positive'') as a function of False Positive Fraction (FPF: the fraction of patients actually without the disease that is diagnosed incorrectly as ''positive''). Different points on the ROC curve--i.e., different compromises between the specificity and the sensitivity of a diagnostic test, for a given inherent accuracy--can be achieved by adopting different …

The remediation of subsurface contaminants is a critical problem for the Department of Energy, other government agencies, and our nation. Severe contamination of soil and groundwater exists at several DOE sites due to various methods of intentional and unintentional release. Given the difficulties involved in conventional removal or separation processes, it is vital to develop methods to transform contaminants and contaminated earth/water to reduce risks to human health and the environment. Transformation of the contaminants themselves may involve conversion to other immobile species that do not migrate into well water or surface waters, as is proposed for metals and radionuclides; or degradation to harmless molecules, as is desired for organic contaminants. Transformation of contaminated earth (as opposed to the contaminants themselves) may entail reductions in volume or release of bound contaminants for remediation. Research at Rensselaer focused on the development of haloalkane dehalogenase as a critical enzyme in the dehalogenation of contaminated materials (ultimately trichloroethylene and related pollutants). A combination of bioinformatic investigation and experimental work was performed. The bioinformatics was focused on identifying a range of dehalogenase enzymes that could be obtained from the known proteomes of major microorganisms. This work identified several candidate enzymes that could be obtained …

This report provides information on groundwater monitoring at the Solid Waste Landfill during the quarterly time period July to September 2006. Conditions remain very similar to those reported in the previous quarterly report. Six background threshold values, one WAC 173-200 Groundwater Quality Criterion, and one WAC 246-290-310 Maximum Contaminant Level were exceeded. The results that exceed applicable limits are consistent with the type of waste disposed to the landfill including sewage and chlorinated hydrocarbons from either the sewage or the 1100 Area heavy equipment garage and bus shop.

In early 2006 we designed and built low energy consumption, pump-operated system, for dosing of the liquid nutrient in the summer 2006 season. This operated successfully, and the system was used again during the 2007 and 2008 seasons for dosing. During the early winter period, 2008, laboratory tests were made of the liquid nutrient pump system, and it was noted that small amounts of air were being entrained on the suction side of the pump, during conditions when the inlet pressure was low. It was believed that this was the cause of diurnal fluctuations in the flow supplied, characteristic of the 2007 year flow data. Replacement of '0' rings on the inlet side of the pumps was the solution to this problem, and when tested in the field during the summer season, the flow supplied was found to be stable. A decision was made by the IKERT committee at the meeting of 20th to 21st May 2008 (held in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho) to use an injection flow rate of liquid fertilizer (polyammonium phosphate 10-34-0) to achieve a target phosphorus concentration of 3.0 {micro}g/L, after complete mixing in the river. This target concentration was the same as that used in 2006 …

In this project General Electric Energy and Environmental Research Corporation conducts a preliminary field evaluation of a novel technology, referred to as Hg/NO{sub x}, that can reduce emissions of both mercury (Hg) and oxides of nitrogen (NO{sub x}) from coal-fired power plants. The evaluation takes place in Green Station Unit 2 operated by Western Kentucky Energy. Reduction of Hg and NO{sub x} emissions in Unit 2 is achieved using coal reburning. Activities during first project year (January 23, 2003--January 22, 2004) included measurements of baseline Hg emissions in Unit 2 and pilot-scale testing. Baseline testing of Hg emissions in Green Unit 2 has been completed. Two fuels were tested with OFA system operating at minimum air flow. Mercury emissions were measured at ESP inlet and outlet, and at the stack using Ontario Hydro revised method. Testing demonstrated that baseline Hg reductions at ESP outlet and stack were 30-45% and 70-80%, respectively. Pilot-scale testing demonstrated good agreement with baseline measurements in Unit 2. Testing showed that fuel composition had an effect on the efficiency of Hg absorption on fly ash. Maximum achieved Hg removal in reburning was close to 90%. Maximum achieved Hg reduction at air staging conditions was 60%. Testing …

The proposed high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, would be constructed in the high-silica rhyolite (Tptp) member of the Miocene-age Topopah Spring Tuff, a mostly welded ash-flow tuff in the {approx}500-m-thick unsaturated zone. Strontium isotope compositions have been measured in pore water centrifuged from preserved core samples and in leachates of pore-water salts from dried core samples, both from boreholes in the Tptp. Strontium isotope ratios ({sup 87}Sr/{sup 86}Sr) vary systematically with depth in the surface-based boreholes. Ratios in pore water near the surface (0.7114 to 0.7124) reflect the range of ratios in soil carbonate (0.7112 to 0.7125) collected near the boreholes, but ratios in the Tptp (0.7122 to 0.7127) at depths of 150 to 370 m have a narrower range and are more radiogenic due to interaction with the volcanic rocks (primarily non-welded tuffs) above the Tptp. An advection-reaction model relates the rate of strontium dissolution from the rocks with flow velocity. The model results agree with the low transport velocity ({approx}2 cm per year) calculated from carbon-14 data by I.C. Yang (2002, App. Geochem., v. 17, no. 6, p. 807-817). Strontium isotope ratios in pore water from Tptp samples from horizontal boreholes collared in tunnels at …

In support of a small column ion exchange (SCIX) process for the Savannah River Site waste processing program, a transient two-dimensional heat transfer model that includes the conduction process neglecting the convection cooling mechanism inside the crystalline silicotitanate (CST) column has been constructed and heat transfer calculations made for the present design configurations. For this situation, a no process flow condition through the column was assumed as one of the reference conditions for the simulation of a loss-of-flow accident. A series of the modeling calculations has been performed using a computational heat transfer approach. Results for the baseline model indicate that transit times to reach 130 degrees Celsius maximum temperature of the CST-salt solution column are about 96 hours when the 20-in CST column with 300 Ci/liter heat generation source and 25 degrees Celsius initial column temperature is cooled by natural convection of external air as a primary heat transfer mechanism. The modeling results for the 28-in column equipped with water jacket systems on the external wall surface of the column and water coolant pipe at the center of the CST column demonstrate that the column loaded with 300 Ci/liter heat source can be maintained non-boiling indefinitely. Sensitivity calculations for …