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The overall goal of the project was to test the PureVision biomass fractionation technology for making pulp from loblolly pine. A specific goal was to produce a pulp product that is comparable to pulp produced from the kraft process, while reducing the environmental effects of the kraft process, known to be a highly pollutant process. The overall goal of the project was met by using the biomass fractionation concept for making pulp product. This proof-of-concept study, done with Southern pine pinchips as feedstock, evaluated NaOH concentration and residence time as variables in single-stage cocurrent pulping process. It can be concluded that 1% NaOH is adequate for effective delignification using the PureVision process; this is about ⅓ of that used in the kraft process. Also, the PureVision process does not use sulfur-based chemicals such as N2S and hence, is environmentally more benign.

This Technical Support Document (TSD) describes the process and methodology for the development of the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small Office Buildings (AEDG-SO), a design guidance document intended to provide recommendations for achieving 30% energy savings in small office buildings over levels contained in ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. The AEDG-SO is the first in a series of guides being developed by a partnership of organizations, including the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE), the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA), the New Buildings Institute (NBI), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Each of the guides in the AEDG series will provide recommendations and user-friendly design assistance to designers, developers and owners of small commercial buildings that will encourage steady progress towards net-zero energy buildings. The guides will provide prescriptive recommendation packages that are capable of reaching the energy savings target for each climate zone in order to ease the burden of the design and construction of energy-efficient small commercial buildings The AEDG-SO was developed by an ASHRAE Special Project committee (SP-102) made up of representatives of each of the partner …

KENO is a Monte Carlo criticality code that is maintained by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). KENO is included in the SCALE (Standardized Computer Analysis for Licensing Evaluation) package. KENO is often used because it was specifically designed for criticality calculations. Because KENO has convenient geometry input, including the treatment of lattice arrays of materials, it is frequently used for production calculations. Monte Carlo N-Particle (MCNP) is a Monte Carlo transport code maintained by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). MCNP has a powerful 3D geometry package and an extensive cross section database. It is a general-purpose code and may be used for calculations involving shielding or medical facilities, for example, but can also be used for criticality calculations. MCNP is becoming increasingly more popular for performing production criticality calculations. Both codes have their own specific advantages. After a criticality calculation has been performed with one of the codes, it is often desirable (or may be a safety requirement) to repeat the calculation with the other code to compare the important parameters using a different geometry treatment and cross section database. This manual conversion of input files between the two codes is labor intensive. The industry needs the capability of converting …

The energy grant provided the resources to evaluate the wind, hydro, biomass, geothermal and solar resource potential on all Penobscot Indian Naiton's Tribal lands. The two objectives address potential renewable energy resources available on tribal lands and energy efficiency measures to be taken after comprehensive energy audits of commercial facilities. Also, a Long Term Strategic Energy Plan was developed along with a plan to reduce high energy costs.

ILC designers are exploring new packaging standards for Accelerator Controls and Instrumentation, particularly high-speed serial interconnect systems for intelligent instruments versus the existing parallel backplanes of VME, VXI and CAMAC. The High Availability Advanced Telecom Computing Architecture (ATCA) system is a new industrial open standard designed to withstand single-point hardware or software failures. The standard crate, controller, applications module and sub-modules are being investigated. All modules and sub-modules are hot-swappable. A single crate is designed for a data throughput in communications applications of 2 Tb/s and an Availability of 0.99999, which translates into a downtime of five minutes per year. The ILC is planning to develop HA architectures for controls, beam instrumentation and detector systems.

We present branching fraction measurements of charged and neutral B decays to D{pi}{sup -}, D*{pi}{sup -} and D**{pi}{sup -} with a missing mass method, based on a sample of 231 million {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} pairs collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e{sup +}e{sup -} collider. One of the B mesons is fully reconstructed and the other one decays to a reconstructed charged {pi} and a companion charmed meson identified by its recoil mass, inferred by kinematics. Here D** refers to the sum of all the non-strange charm meson states with masses in the range 2.2-2.8 GeV/c{sup 2}.

The Pedersen analysis [1, 2] of the low-level rf feedback system assumes that all bunches oscillate in phase what corresponds to the lowest coupled bunch mode. This analysis is extended here to take into account all other coupled-bunch modes what might be important for the strongly detuned cavities in large storage rings such as PEP-II.

This work was performed upon request from Dr. Richard Thorpe from NNSA after his review of the LANL report on BSL-3 seismic stability [1]. The authors also reviewed report [1] and concluded, as did Dr. Thorpe, that the stability analysis was inappropriate. There are several reasons for that conclusion: (1) the assumption of a circular failure surface through the combined fill-and-rock foundation does not recognize the geologic structure involved. (2) the assumption of an equivalent static force to an earthquake loading does not represent the multiple cycles of shear loads created by a seismic event that can engender a substantial degradation of shear modulus and shear strength of the soil under the building [2]. (3) there was no credible in-situ strength of the foundation materials (fill and rock mass) available for input into the stability analysis. Following that review, on September 26 the authors made a site visit and held discussions with LANL personnel connected to the BSL-3 building project. No information or evidence was presented to the authors indicating that the static stability of BSL-3 could be an issue. Accordingly, this report focuses on the topic of the BSL-3 site stability under seismic loading.

We study the two-point correlation function of a uniformly selected sample of 4,428 optically selected luminous quasars with redshift 2.9 {le} z {le} 5.4 selected over 4041 deg{sup 2} from the Fifth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We fit a power-law to the projected correlation function w{sub p}(r{sub p}) to marginalize over redshift space distortions and redshift errors. For a real-space correlation function of the form {zeta}(r) = (r/r{sub 0}){sup -{gamma}}, the fitted parameters in comoving coordinates are r{sub 0} = 15.2 {+-} 2.7 h{sup -1} Mpc and {gamma} = 2.0 {+-} 0.3, over a scale range 4 {le} r{sub p} {le} 150 h{sup -1} Mpc. Thus high-redshift quasars are appreciably more strongly clustered than their z {approx} 1.5 counterparts, which have a comoving clustering length r{sub 0} {approx} 6.5 h{sup -1} Mpc. Dividing our sample into two redshift bins: 2.9 {le} z {le} 3.5 and z {ge} 3.5, and assuming a power-law index {gamma} = 2.0, we find a correlation length of r{sub 0} = 16.9 {+-} 1.7 h{sup -1} Mpc for the former, and r{sub 0} = 24.3 {+-} 2.4 h{sup -1} Mpc for the latter. Strong clustering at high redshift indicates that quasars are …

The Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians was awarded a grant under the U.S. Department of Energy’s (“DOE”) Tribal Energy Program to develop a comprehensive Tribal energy plan. The grant, awarded under DOE’s First Steps program, supported the development of a strategic energy plan that integrates with the Tribe’s overall planning and economic development goals, and aligns with Tribal cultural, social, political, and spiritual values. The Tribe set out to incorporate its energy plan into (i) a broader economic development strategy developed by investigators at the University of California at Riverside, and (ii) the overarching goals for job-creation and wealth-creation that are held by both the Tribe and the surrounding Coachella Valley. With these wide-ranging objectives in mind, the Tribe and its consultant, Red Mountain Energy Partners, engaged in a phased approach to creating the strategic energy plan. As illustrated in Figure 1 below, the proposed approach involved both “serial” and “parallel” activities. The capacity-building component of this approach occurred throughout the duration of the project period.

The authors report measurements of the decays B{sup +} {yields} {phi}{phi}K{sup +} and B{sup 0} {yields} {phi}{phi}K{sup 0} using a sample of 231 million B{bar B} pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. The branching fractions are measured to be {Beta}(B{sup +} {yields} {phi}{phi}K{sup +}) = (7.5 {+-} 1.0(stat) {+-} 0.7(syst)) x 10{sup -6} and {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {phi}{phi}K{sup 0}) = (4.1{sub -1.4}{sup +1.7}(stat) {+-} 0.4(syst)) x 10{sup -6} for a {phi}{phi} invariant mass below 2.85 GeV/c{sup 2}.

Pulsed power machines capable of producing tremendous energy face various diagnostic and characterizing challenges. Such devices, which may produce 10 - 100MAs, have traditionally relied on Faraday rotation and Rogowski coil technology for time-varying current measurements. Faraday rotation requires a host of costly optical components, including fibers, polarizers, retarders, lasers, and detectors, as well as setup, alignment, and time-consuming post-processing to unwrap the time-dependent current signal. Rogowski coils face potential problems such as physical distortion to the sensor itself due to the tremendous strain caused by magnetically induced pressures, which is proportional to the magnetic field squared (B2). Electrical breakdown in the intense field region is also a major concern. Other related challenges include, but are not limited to, bandwidth and inductance limitations and susceptibility issues related to electrical magnetic interference (EMI).

The Fourier transform of the deeply virtual Compton scattering amplitude (DVCS) with respect to the skewness parameter {zeta} = Q{sup 2}/2p {center_dot} q can be used to provide an image of the target hadron in the boost-invariant variable {sigma}, the coordinate conjugate to light-front time {tau} = t + z/c. As an illustration, we construct a consistent covariant model of the DVCS amplitude and its associated generalized parton distributions using the quantum fluctuations of a fermion state at one loop in QED, thus providing a representation of the light-front wave functions of a lepton in {sigma} space. A consistent model for hadronic amplitudes can then be obtained by differentiating the light-front wave functions with respect to the bound-state mass. The resulting DVCS helicity amplitudes are evaluated as a function of {sigma} and the impact parameter {rvec b}{sub {perpendicular}}, thus providing a light-front image of the target hadron in a frame-independent three-dimensional light-front coordinate space. Models for the LFWFs of hadrons in (3 + 1) dimensions displaying confinement at large distances and conformal symmetry at short distances have been obtained using the AdS/CFT method. We also compute the LFWFs in this model in invariant three dimensional coordinate space. We find that …

The research performed by the University of Florida (UF) is directed to the development of technologies that can be utilized at a micro-scale in varied environments. Work is focused on micro-scale energy systems, visualization, and mechanical devices. This work will impact the NNSA need related to micro-assembly operations. The URPR activities are executed in a University environment, yet many applications of the resulting technologies may be classified or highly restrictive in nature. The NNSA robotics technologists apply an NNSA needs focus to the URPR research, and actively work to transition relevant research into the deployment projects in which they are involved. This provides a “Research to Development to Application” structure within which innovative research has maximum opportunity for impact without requiring URPR researchers to be involved in specific NNSA projects. URPR researchers need to be aware of the NNSA applications in order to ensure the research being conducted has relevance, the URPR shall rely upon the NNSA sites for direction.

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