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The Texas Panhandle is regarded as the 'Cattle Feeding Capital of the World', producing 42% of the fed beef cattle in the United States within a 200-mile radius of Amarillo generating more than 5 million tons of feedlot manure/year. Apart from feedlots, the Bosque River Region in Erath County, just north of Waco, Texas with about 110,000 dairy cattle in over 250 dairies, produces 1.8 million tons of manure biomass (excreted plus bedding) per year. While the feedlot manure has been used extensively for irrigated and dry land crop production, most dairies, as well as other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO's), the dairy farms utilize large lagoon areas to store wet animal biomass. Water runoff from these lagoons has been held responsible for the increased concentration of phosphorus and other contaminates in the Bosque River which drains into Lake Waco - the primary source of potable water for Waco's 108,500 people. The concentrated animal feeding operations may lead to land, water, and air pollution if waste handling systems and storage and treatment structures are not properly managed. Manure-based biomass (MBB) has the potential to be a source of green energy at large coal-fired power plants and on smaller-scale combustion systems …

Since the completion of the sequencing of the human genome, the JGI has rapidly expanded its scientific goals in several DOE mission-relevant areas. At the JGI-HAGSC, we have kept pace with this rapid expansion of projects with our focus on assessing, assembling, improving and finishing eukaryotic whole genome shotgun (WGS) projects for which the shotgun sequence is generated at the Production Genomic Facility (JGI-PGF). We follow this by combining the draft WGS with genomic resources generated at JGI-HAGSC or in collaborator laboratories (including BAC end sequences, genetic maps and FLcDNA sequences) to produce an improved draft sequence. For eukaryotic genomes important to the DOE mission, we then add further information from directed experiments to produce reference genomic sequences that are publicly available for any scientific researcher. Also, we have continued our program for producing BAC-based finished sequence, both for adding information to JGI genome projects and for small BAC-based sequencing projects proposed through any of the JGI sequencing programs. We have now built our computational expertise in WGS assembly and analysis and have moved eukaryotic genome assembly from the JGI-PGF to JGI-HAGSC. We have concentrated our assembly development work on large plant genomes and complex fungal and algal genomes.

The Texas Panhandle is regarded as the 'Cattle Feeding Capital of the World', producing 42% of the fed beef cattle in the United States within a 200-mile radius of Amarillo generating more than 5 million tons of feedlot manure/year. Apart from feedlots, the Bosque River Region in Erath County, just north of Waco, Texas with about 110,000 dairy cattle in over 250 dairies, produces 1.8 million tons of manure biomass (excreted plus bedding) per year. While the feedlot manure has been used extensively for irrigated and dry land crop production, most dairies, as well as other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO's), the dairy farms utilize large lagoon areas to store wet animal biomass. Water runoff from these lagoons has been held responsible for the increased concentration of phosphorus and other contaminates in the Bosque River which drains into Lake Waco - the primary source of potable water for Waco's 108,500 people. The concentrated animal feeding operations may lead to land, water, and air pollution if waste handling systems and storage and treatment structures are not properly managed. Manure-based biomass (MBB) has the potential to be a source of green energy at large coal-fired power plants and on smaller-scale combustion systems …

We have an ongoing research program for characterization of superconductor composite strands, the principal output of which is sensitive measurements of critical current Ic over a broad range of the essential parameters: longitudinal strain ε, temperature T, and magnetic field B. This features a new apparatus for integrated measurement of Ic(ε,T,B) on the same, long-conductor sample without remounting.

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The Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board (DNFSB) has recently questioned the appropriate value for tritium deposition velocity used in the MELCOR Accident Consequence Code System Ver. 2 (Chanin and Young 1998) code when estimating bounding dose (95th percentile) for safety analysis (DNFSB 2011). The purpose of this paper is to provide appropriate, defensible values of the tritium deposition velocity for use in Savannah River Site (SRS) safety analyses. To accomplish this, consideration must be given to the re-emission of tritium after deposition. Approximately 85% of the surface area of the SRS is forested. The majority of the forests are pine plantations, 68%. The remaining forest area is 6% mixed pine and hardwood and 26% swamp hardwood. Most of the path from potential release points to the site boundary is through forested land. A search of published studies indicate daylight, tritiated water (HTO) vapor deposition velocities in forest vegetation can range from 0.07 to 2.8 cm/s. Analysis of the results of studies done on an SRS pine plantation and climatological data from the SRS meteorological network indicate that the average deposition velocity during daylight periods is around 0.42 cm/s. The minimum deposition velocity was determined to be about 0.1 cm/s, which …

Laser welding and post weld laser treatment of modified 9Cr-1MoVNb steels (Grade P91) were performed in this preliminary study to investigate the feasibility of using laser welding process as a potential alternative to arc welding methods for solving the Type IV cracking problem in P91 steel welds. The mechanical and metallurgical testing of the pulsed Nd:YAG laser-welded samples shows the following conclusions: (1) both bead-on-plate and circumferential butt welds made by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser show good welds that are free of microcracks and porosity. The narrow heat affected zone has a homogeneous grain structure without conventional soft hardness zone where the Type IV cracking occurs in conventional arc welds. (2) The laser weld tests also show that the same laser welder has the potential to be used as a multi-function tool for weld surface remelting, glazing or post weld tempering to reduce the weld surface defects and to increase the cracking resistance and toughness of the welds. (3) The Vicker hardness of laser welds in the weld and heat affected zone was 420-500 HV with peak hardness in the HAZ compared to 240 HV of base metal. Post weld laser treatment was able to slightly reduce the peak hardness …

In this paper, a linac simulation code written in Fortran90 is presented and several simulation examples are given. This code is optimized to implement linac alignment and steering algorithms, and evaluate the accelerator errors such as RF phase and acceleration gradient, quadrupole and BPM misalignment. It can track a single particle or a bunch of particles through normal linear accelerator elements such as quadrupole, RF cavity, dipole corrector and drift space. One-to-one steering algorithm and a global alignment (steering) algorithm are implemented in this code.

This is the final report from SDSC and UC Davis on DE-FC02-01ER25486, Scientific Data Management Integrated Software Infrastructure Center (SDM/ISIC): Scientific Process Automation (SPA).

The objective of this study is to quantify the graphite particle phase in nodular ductile iron (NDI). This study provides the basis for initializing microstructure in direct numerical simulations, as part of developing microstructure-fracture response models. The work presented here is a subset of a PhD dissertation on spall fracture in NDI. NDI is an ideal material for studying the influence of microstructure on ductile fracture because it contains a readily identifiable second-phase particle population, embedded in a ductile metallic matrix, which serves as primary void nucleation sites. Nucleated voids grow and coalesce under continued tensile loading, as part of the micromechanisms of ductile fracture, and lead to macroscopic failure. For this study, we used 2D optical microscopy and quantitative metallography relationships to characterize the volume fraction, size distribution, nearest-neighbor distance, and other higher-order metrics of the graphite particle phase. We found that the volume fraction was {Phi} = 0.115, the average particle diameter was d{sub avg} = 25.9 {mu}m, the Weibull shape and scaling parameters were {beta} = 1.8 and {eta} = 29.1 {mu}m, respectively, the (first) nearest neighbor distance was L{sub nn} = 32.4 {mu}m, the exponential coefficients for volume fraction fluctuations was A{sub {Phi}} = 1.89 and …

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Starch is a desirable plant product for both food and biofuel. Leaf starch is ideal for use in biofuels because it does not compete with grain starch, which is used for food. Starch is accumulated in plant leaves during the day and broken down at night. If we can manipulate leaf starch breakdown it may be possible to design a plant that provides both grain starch for food and leaf starch for biofuel. The pathway of leaf starch breakdown was not known when this work started. Preliminary evidence had shown that maltose was the primary product of leaf starch breakdown (Weise, Weber & Sharkey, 2004) and that it was metabolized by a disproportionating enzyme called amylomaltase but given the initials DPE2 (Lu & Sharkey, 2004). In this work we showed that only one form of maltose was metabolically active (Weise et al., 2005a) and that maltose was located in two different places when the amylomaltase was knocked out but only inside the chloroplast when the maltose transporter was knocked out (Lu et al., 2006a). This allowed us to estimate the energetics of maltose export and to show that maltose export is more efficient than glucose export (Weise et al., 2005b). …

This report describes the work completed by NexTech Materials, Ltd. during a three-year project to validate an electrolyte-supported planar solid oxide fuel cell design, termed the FlexCell, for coal-based, megawatt-scale power generation systems. This project was focused on the fabrication and testing of electrolyte-supported FlexCells with yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) as the electrolyte material. YSZ based FlexCells were made with sizes ranging from 100 to 500 cm2. Single-cell testing was performed to confirm high electrochemical performance, both with diluted hydrogen and simulated coal gas as fuels. Finite element analysis modeling was performed at The Ohio State University was performed to establish FlexCell architectures with optimum mechanical robustness. A manufacturing cost analysis was completed, which confirmed that manufacturing costs of less than $50/kW are achievable at high volumes (500 MW/year).

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High-level waste (HLW) tanks 18-F and 19-F have been isolated from FTF facilities. To complete operational closure the tanks will be filled with grout for the purpose of: (1) physically stabilizing the tanks, (2) limiting/eliminating vertical pathways to residual waste, (3) entombing waste removal equipment, (4) discouraging future intrusion, and (5) providing an alkaline, chemical reducing environment within the closure boundary to control speciation and solubility of select radionuclides. This report documents the results of a four cubic yard bulk fill scale up test on the grout formulation recommended for filling Tanks 18-F and 19-F. Details of the scale up test are provided in a Test Plan. The work was authorized under a Technical Task Request (TTR), HLE-TTR-2011-008, and was performed according to Task Technical and Quality Assurance Plan (TTQAP), SRNL-RP-2011-00587. The bulk fill scale up test described in this report was intended to demonstrate proportioning, mixing, and transportation, of material produced in a full scale ready mix concrete batch plant. In addition, the material produced for the scale up test was characterized with respect to fresh properties, thermal properties, and compressive strength as a function of curing time.

Within this project, Eaton undertook the task of bringing about significant impact with respect to sustainability. One of the major goals for the Department of Energy is to achieve energy savings with a corresponding reduction in carbon foot print. The use of a coupled induction heat treatment with high magnetic field heat treatment makes possible not only improved performance alloys, but with faster processing times and lower processing energy, as well. With this technology, substitution of lower cost alloys for more exotic alloys became a possibility; microstructure could be tailored for improved magnetic properties or wear resistance or mechanical performance, as needed. A prototype commercial unit has been developed to conduct processing of materials. Testing of this equipment has been conducted and results demonstrate the feasibility for industrial commercialization.

We have made number of important discoveries along the major goals of the project, namely i) electrodeposition of germanium thin films from clusters, ii) synthesis of cluster-based surfactants with long hydrocarbon chains and micelles made of them, iii) grafting of Ge{sub 9}-clusters onto self assembled films of siloxanes attached to glass substrates, iv) doping of Ge{sub 9}-clusters, and v) expanding the clusters to ten-atom cages of Ge{sub 10}{sup 2-}.

Since the completion of the sequencing of the human genome, the JGI has rapidly expanded its scientific goals in several DOE mission-relevant areas. At the JGI-HAGSC, we have kept pace with this rapid expansion of projects with our focus on assessing, assembling, improving and finishing eukaryotic whole genome shotgun (WGS) projects for which the shotgun sequence is generated at the Production Genomic Facility (JGI-PGF). We follow this by combining the draft WGS with genomic resources generated at JGI-HAGSC or in collaborator laboratories (including BAC end sequences, genetic maps and FLcDNA sequences) to produce an improved draft sequence. For eukaryotic genomes important to the DOE mission, we then add further information from directed experiments to produce reference genomic sequences that are publicly available for any scientific researcher. Also, we have continued our program for producing BAC-based finished sequence, both for adding information to JGI genome projects and for small BAC-based sequencing projects proposed through any of the JGI sequencing programs. We have now built our computational expertise in WGS assembly and analysis and have moved eukaryotic genome assembly from the JGI-PGF to JGI-HAGSC. We have concentrated our assembly development work on large plant genomes and complex fungal and algal genomes.

This report discusses the following highlights of the project: (1) grid-based Hartree-Fock equation solver; (2) explicitly correlated coupled-cluster and perturbation methods; (3) anharmonic vibrational frequencies and vibrationally averaged NMR and structural parameters of FHF; (4) anharmonic vibrational frequencies and vibrationally averaged structures of hydrocarbon combustion species; (5) anharmonic vibrational analysis of the guanine-cytosine base pair; (6) the nature of the Born-Oppenheimer approximation; (7) Polymers and solids Brillouin-zone downsampling - the modulo MP2 method; (8) explicitly correlated MP2 for extended systems; (9) fast correlated method for molecular crystals - solid formic acid; and (10) fast correlated method for molecular crystals - solid hydrogen fluoride.

The objective of this study is to characterize the strength and fracture response of nodular ductile iron (NDI) and its underlying ferritic matrix phase. Quasistatic and split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) compression tests were performed on NDI and a model material for the NDI matrix phase (Fe-Si alloy). Smooth and notch round bar (NRB) samples were loaded in tension until fracture to determine strain-at-failure with varying stress triaxiality. Multiple tests were performed on each small and large smooth bar samples to obtain fracture statistics with sample size. Fracture statistics are important for initializing simulations of fragmentation events. Johnson-Cook strength models were developed for the NDI and the Fe-Si alloy. NDI strength model parameters are: A = 525 MPa, B = 650 MPa, n = 0.6, and C = 0.0205. The average SHPB experimental strain-rate of 2312/s was used for the reference strain-rate in this model. Fe-Si alloy strength model parameters are: A=560 MPa, B = 625 MPa, n = 0.5, and C = 0.02. The average SHPB experimental strain-rate of 2850/s was used for the reference strain-rate in this model. A Johnson-Cook failure model was developed for NDI with model parameters: D{sub 1} = 0.029, D{sub 2} = 0.44, D{sub …

This section deals with multiphysics radiation hydrodynamics codes used to design and simulate targets in the ignition campaign. These topics encompass all the physical processes they model, and include consideration of any approximations necessary due to finite computer resources. The section focuses on what developments would have the highest impact on reducing uncertainties in modeling most relevant to experimental observations. It considers how the ICF codes should be employed in the ignition campaign. This includes a consideration of how the experiments can be best structured to test the physical models the codes employ.

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The 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) yields positive benefits for Pennsylvania homeowners. Moving to the 2012 IECC from Chapter 11 of the 2009 International Residential Code (IRC) is cost-effective over a 30-year life cycle. On average, Pennsylvania homeowners will save $8,632 with the 2012 IECC. Each year, the reduction to energy bills will significantly exceed increased mortgage costs. After accounting for up-front costs and additional costs financed in the mortgage, homeowners should see net positive cash flows (i.e., cumulative savings exceeding cumulative cash outlays) in 1 year for the 2012 IECC. Average annual energy savings are $515 for the 2012 IECC.