This report discusses potential issues regarding gasoline prices for the 110th Congress. As prices continued to surge, the continuing crisis renewed attention on some issues that were dropped or compromised in the debate over P.L. 109-58, as well as to a number of initiatives to reduce the impact of high prices on consumers.

High-level radioactive wastes are stored as liquids in underground storage tanks at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) and Hanford Reservation. These wastes are to be prepared for permanent disposition in a geologic repository by vitrification with glass forming additives (e.g., frit), creating a waste form with long-term durability. Wastes at SRS are being vitrified in the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). Vitrification of the wastes stored at Hanford is planned for the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) when completed. Some of the wastes at SRS, and particularly those at Hanford, contain high concentrations of aluminum, chromium and sulfate. These elements make it more difficult to produce a waste glass with a high waste loading (WL) without crystallization occurring in the glass (either within the melter or upon cooling of the glass), potentially exceeding the solubility limit of critical components, having negative impacts on durability, and/or resulting in the formation of a sulfate salt layer on the molten glass surface. Although the overall scope of the task is focused on all three critical, chemical components, the current work will primarily address the potential for crystallization (e.g., nepheline and/or spinel) in high level waste (HLW) glasses. Recent …

Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 is a model environmental organism that possesses diverse respiratory capacities, including the ability to reduce soluble Cr(VI) to sparingly soluble, less toxic Cr(III). Chromate is a serious anthropogenic pollutant found in subsurface sediment and groundwater environments due to its widespread use in defense and industrial applications. Effective bioremediation of chromate-contaminated sites requires knowledge of the molecular mechanisms and regulation of heavy metal resistance and biotransformation by dissimilatory metal-reducing bacteria. Towards this goal, our ERSP-funded work was focused on the identification and functional analysis of genes/proteins comprising the response pathways for chromate detoxification and/or reduction. Our work utilized temporal transcriptomic profiling and whole-cell proteomic analyses to characterize the dynamic molecular response of MR-1 to an acute chromate shock (up to 90 min) as well as to a 24-h, low-dose exposure. In addition, we have examined the transcriptome of MR-1 cells actively engaged in chromate reduction. These studies implicated the involvement of a functionally undefined DNA-binding response regulator (SO2426) and a putative azoreductase (SO3585) in the chromate stress response of MR-1.

On May 18, 2005, a giant helium balloon carrying the High Energy Focusing Telescope (HEFT) sailed into the spring sky over the deserts of New Mexico. The spindly steel and aluminum gondola that houses the optics, detectors, and other components of the telescope floated for 25 hours after its launch from Fort Sumner, New Mexico. For 21 of those hours, the balloon was nearly 40 kilometers above Earth's surface--almost four times higher than the altitude routinely flown by commercial jet aircraft. In the upper reaches of Earth's atmosphere, HEFT searched the universe for x-ray sources from highly energetic objects such as binary stars, galaxy clusters, and supermassive black holes. Before landing in Arizona, the telescope observed and imaged a dozen scientific targets by capturing photons emitted from these objects in the high-energy (hard) x-ray range (above 10 kiloelectronvolts). Among these targets were the Crab synchrotron nebula, the black hole Cygnus X-1 (one of the brightest x-ray sources in the sky), and the blazar 3C454.3. The scientific data gathered from these targets are among the first focused hard x-ray images returned from high altitudes.

The focus of this work is to determine the resonance parameters for stable hafnium isotopes in the 0.005 - 200 eV region, with special emphasis on the overlapping {sup 176}Hf and {sup 178}Hf resonances near 8 eV. Accurate hafnium cross sections and resonance parameters are needed in order to quantify the effects of hafnium found in zirconium, a metal commonly used in reactors. The accuracy of the cross sections and the corresponding resonance parameters used in current nuclear analysis tools are rapidly becoming the limiting factor in reducing the overall uncertainty on reactor physics calculations. Experiments measuring neutron capture and transmission are routinely performed at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) LINAC using the time-of flight technique. {sup 6}Li glass scintillation detectors were used for transmission experiments at flight path lengths of 15 and 25 m, respectively. Capture experiments were performed using a sixteen section NaI multiplicity detector at a flight path length of 25 m. These experiments utilized several thicknesses of metallic and isotope-enriched liquid Hf samples. The liquid Hf samples were designed to provide information on the {sup 176}Hf and {sup 178}Hf contributions to the 8 eV doublet without saturation. Data analyses were performed using the R-matrix Bayesian code …

Setting performance goals is part of the business plan for almost every company. The same is true in the world of supercomputers. Ten years ago, the Department of Energy (DOE) launched the Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) to help ensure the safety and reliability of the nation's nuclear weapons stockpile without nuclear testing. ASCI, which is now called the Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASC) Program and is managed by DOE's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), set an initial 10-year goal to obtain computers that could process up to 100 trillion floating-point operations per second (teraflops). Many computer experts thought the goal was overly ambitious, but the program's results have proved them wrong. Last November, a Livermore-IBM team received the 2005 Gordon Bell Prize for achieving more than 100 teraflops while modeling the pressure-induced solidification of molten metal. The prestigious prize, which is named for a founding father of supercomputing, is awarded each year at the Supercomputing Conference to innovators who advance high-performance computing. Recipients for the 2005 prize included six Livermore scientists--physicists Fred Streitz, James Glosli, and Mehul Patel and computer scientists Bor Chan, Robert Yates, and Bronis de Supinski--as well as IBM researchers James Sexton and John Gunnels. This …

Each year, Indian summer monsoon season begins in June and ends in September. Surface winds blow from the southwest during this season. The Indian summer monsoon typically covers large areas of India with western and central India receiving more than 90% of their total annual precipitation during this period, and southern and northwestern India receiving 50%-75% of their total annual rainfall. Overall, monthly totals average 200-300 mm over the country as a whole, with the largest values observed during the heart of the monsoon season in July and August. In all total, India receives about 870 mm of rainfall in a normal summer monsoon season. This summary discusses the effects of climate change on the frequency, mean rainfall, duration and the variability of the Indian Monsoon. East Asian Monsoon in the southeastern part of Asia is not discussed in this summary. Changes in monsoon characteristics are mainly inferred from climate model simulations submitted to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). It should be cautioned that there is a large range in the results from these models. For instance, the range of mean monsoon precipitation as simulated by the AR4 models over India is from 500 …

This report discusses President's budget request to Congress for Medicare, for the following federal fiscal year, along with projections for the five-year budget window. The President’s 2008 budget includes Medicare legislative proposals with estimated savings of $4.3 billion in 2008 and $65.6 billion over the five-year budget window.

This report gives an overview of Global climate change and its effects on wildlife.

Sometimes in science, a small measurement can have big ramifications. For a team of Livermore scientists, such was the case when they measured a small shift in the spectrum of extremely ionized atoms of uranium. The measurement involves the Lamb shift, a subtle change in the energy of an electron orbiting an atom's nucleus. The precision of the Livermore result was 10 times greater than that of existing measurements, making it the best measurement to date of a complicated correction to the simplest quantum description of how atoms behave. The measurement introduces a new realm in the search for deviations between the theory of quantum electrodynamics (QED), which is an extension of quantum mechanics, and the real world. Such deviations, if discovered, would have far-reaching consequences, indicating that QED is not a fundamental theory of nature.

Approximately 5 billion lbs of carpet will be removed from buildings in the US each year for the foreseeable future. This carpet is potentially a valuable resource because it contains plastic in the face of the carpet that can be re-used. However, there are many different types of carpet, and at least four major different plastics used to make the face. The face is woven through a backing fabric and held in place by a “glue” that is in most cases a latex cross-linked polymer which is heavily loaded with chalk (calcium carbonate). This backing has almost no value as a recycled material. In addition, carpet is a bulky material that is difficult to handle and ship and must be kept dry. It would be of significant benefit to the public if this stream of material could be kept out of landfills and some of its potential value unlocked by having high volume alternatives for recycled carpet use. The research question that this project investigated was whether carpet could be used as a fuel in a cement kiln. If this could be done successfully, there is significant capacity in the US cement industry to absorb carpet and use it as …

This report provides information about the Broadband Loan and Grant Programs in the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service. Broadband access enables a number of beneficial applications to the individual user and communities.

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