Weekly newspaper from Alvin, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Possibilities to accumulate antiprotons in the Recycler are considered for three different cases: with current stochastic cooling, with upgraded stochastic cooling and with electron cooling. With stochastic cooling only, even upgraded, Recycler looks hardly useful. However, with electron cooling at its goal parameters and reasonably good vacuum in the Recycler, this machine would be efficient.

The National Nuclear Security Administration is developing methods for nonproliferation assessments to support the development and implementation of U.S. nonproliferation policy. This paper summarizes the key results of that effort. Proliferation resistance is the degree of difficulty that a nuclear material, facility, process, or activity poses to the acquisition of one or more nuclear weapons. A top-level measure of proliferation resistance for a fuel cycle system is developed here from a hierarchy of metrics. At the lowest level, intrinsic and extrinsic barriers to proliferation are defined. These barriers are recommended as a means to characterize the proliferation characteristics of a fuel cycle. Because of the complexity of nonproliferation assessments, the problem is decomposed into: metrics to be computed, barriers to proliferation, and a finite set of threats. The spectrum of potential threats of nuclear proliferation is complex and ranges from small terrorist cells to industrialized countries with advanced nuclear fuel cycles. Two general categories of methods have historically been used for nonproliferation assessments: attribute analysis and scenario analysis. In the former, attributes of the systems being evaluated (often fuel cycle systems) are identified that affect their proliferation potential. For a particular system under consideration, the attributes are weighted subjectively. In …

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Construction of large water resource projects, such as those of the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), can be controversial because they involve trade-offs among various river uses, and between current and future generations. Pursuant to federal water project planning guidelines, the Corps weighs these trade-offs using benefit-cost analysis. If its analysis shows that a project’s national economic development (NED) benefits exceed its NED costs, the Corps seeks project authorization from Congress. Congress authorizes the Corps to construct some of these large water projects through (usually) biennial Water Resource Development Acts. Since the Corps rarely recommends a project that does not have a benefit-cost ratio greater than 1.0, this report describes the decisions that influence this ratio, with a focus on the role of the discount rate.

The CDF experiment's Silicon Vertex Trigger is a system of 150 custom 9U VME boards that reconstructs axial tracks in the CDF silicon strip detector in a 15 {mu}sec pipeline. SVT's 35 {mu}m impact parameter resolution enables CDF's Level 2 trigger to distinguish primary and secondary particles, and hence to collect large samples of hadronic bottom and charm decays. We review some of SVT's key design features. Speed is achieved with custom VLSI pattern recognition, linearized track fitting, pipelining, and parallel processing. Testing and reliability are aided by built-in logic state analysis and test-data sourcing at each board's input and output, a common inter-board data link, and a universal ''Merger'' board for data fan-in/fan-out. Speed and adaptability are enhanced by use of modern FPGAs.

The purpose of this report is to present a number of generally less broad legislative proposals related to child welfare financing have been introduced in the 108th Congress. Additional child welfare-related proposals designed to improve services, promote timely placement of children across state lines, and for other purposes, are described in this report.

The report discusses the consumer class action bill of rights in each proposal contains safeguards which provide for judicial scrutiny of coupon and other non-cash settlements, protection against a proposed settlement that would result in a net loss to a class member, protection against discrimination based upon geographic location, and prohibition on a class representative receiving a greater share of the award.

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Cloud parameterizations in large-scale models often try to predict the amount of sub-grid scale variability in cloud properties to address the significant non-linear effects of radiation and precipitation. Statistical cloud schemes provide an attractive framework to self-consistently predict the variability in radiation and microphysics but require accurate predictions of the width and asymmetry of the distribution of cloud properties. Data from the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program are used to assess the variability in boundary layer cloud properties for a well- mixed stratocumulus observed at the Oklahoma ARM site during the March 2000 Intensive Observing Period. Cloud boundaries, liquid water content, and liquid water path are retrieved from the millimeter wavelength cloud radar and the microwave radiometer. Balloon soundings, aircraft data, and satellite observations provide complementary views on the horizontal cloud inhomogeneity. It is shown that the width of the liquid water path probability distribution function is consistent with a model in which horizontal fluctuations in liquid water content are vertically coherent throughout the depth of the cloud. Variability in cloud base is overestimated by this model, however; perhaps because an additional assumption that the variance of total water is constant with altitude throughout the depth of the boundary layer …

A series of dissolution and characterization studies has been performed to determine if FB-Line residues stored in desicooler containers will dissolve using a modified H-Canyon processing flowsheet. Samples of desicooler materials were used to evaluate dissolving characteristics in the low-molar nitric acid solutions used in H-Canyon dissolvers. The selection for the H-Canyon dissolution of desicooler residues was based on their high-enriched uranium content and trace levels of plutonium. Test results showed that almost all of the enriched uranium will dissolve from the desicooler materials after extended boiling in one molar nitric acid solutions. The residue that contained uranium after completion of the extended boiling cycle consisted of brown solids that had agglomerated into large pieces and were floating on top of the dissolver solution. Addition of tenth molar fluoride to a three molar nitric acid solution containing boron did not dissolve remaining uranium from the brown solids. Only after boiling in an eight molar nitric acid-tenth molar fluoride solution without boron did remaining uranium and aluminum dissolve from the brown solids. The amount of uranium associated with brown solids would be approximately 1.4 percent of the total uranium content of the desicooler materials. The brown solids that remain in the …

The electrical resistivity of rock cores under conditions representative of geothermal reservoirs is strongly influenced by the state and phase (liquid/vapor) of the pore fluid. In fractured samples, phase change (vaporization/condensation) can result in resistivity changes that are more than an order of magnitude greater than those measured in intact samples. These results suggest that electrical resistivity monitoring of geothermal reservoirs may provide a useful tool for remotely detecting the movement of water and steam within fractures, the development and evolution of fracture systems and the formation of steam caps. We measured the electrical resistivity of cores of welded tuff containing fractures of various geometries to investigate the resistivity contrast caused by active boiling and to determine the effects of variable fracture dimensions and surface area on water extraction from the matrix. We then used the Nonisothermal Unsaturated Flow and Transport model (NUFT) (Nitao, 1998) to simulate the propagation of boiling fronts through the samples. The simulated saturation profiles combined with previously reported measurements of resistivity-saturation curves allow us to estimate the evolution of the sample resistivity as the boiling front propagates into the rock matrix. These simulations provide qualitative agreement with experimental measurements suggesting that our modeling approach may …

The aim of the proposed research is to use electroactive ion exchange materials to remove anionic contaminants from HLW wastes and process streams. An ion exchange process using electroactive materials sorbs contaminants selectively and then expels (elutes) them electrochemically by changing the charge balance through redox reactions in the sorbent as opposed to requiring the addition of a chemical eluant. Such processes can theoretically remove anions (e.g., pertechnetate, chromate, and perchorate) and concentrate them in a separate product stream while adding no process chemicals. A practical implementation in HLW process facilities would be a breakthrough in the ability of DOE to economically minimize waste and prevent pollution throughout the complex. To enable this, our work focuses on manipulating specific properties of redox polymers to control the hydrophobicity and ion-pair properties pertinent to the reversibility, selectivity, stability, intercalation/de-intercalation rates, and capacity of the polymers. Of primary focus in the immediate future is to prepare materials with greater pH stability and selectivity as our previous studies with polyvinylferrocene (PVF) polymers don't meet the material requirements for the intended application.

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Energy supplies and prices are a major economic factor in the United States, and energy markets are volatile and unpredictable. For both these reasons, energy policy is of frequent interest to the Congress. This report presents a statistical view of the supply and consumption of various forms of energy. After an introductory overview of aggregate energy consumption, the report presents detailed analysis of trends and statistics regarding specific energy sources: oil, electricity, natural gas, and coal. A section on trends in energy efficiency is also presented.

News release promoting the use of DART for travel to Dallas-area malls.

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

On November 5, 1990, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-508) was signed into law. P.L. 101-508 added Title V to the Congressional Budget Act. Title V, also called the Federal Credit Reform Act of 1990 (the FCRA), changed how the unified budget reports the cost of federal credit activities (i.e., federal direct loans and loan guarantees). Before the fiscal year 1992 (FY1992), for a given fiscal year, the budgetary cost of a new direct loan or loan guarantee was the net cash flow for that fiscal year.

In this final technical report, a summary of work is provided. Concepts were developed for a new statistical cloud parameterization suitable for inclusion into global climate models. These concepts were evaluated by comparison to ARM data and data from cloud resolving models driven by ARM data. The purpose of this grant was to develop a new cloud parameterization for the global climate model of the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Note that uncertainties in cloud parameterizations are a key reason why prediction of climate change from climate models remain unacceptably uncertain. To develop the parameterizations, the observations and models provided by the Department of Energy's Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) program were analyzed and used.

This report provides the information related to the fishery, aquaculture, and marine mammal issues in the 108th Congress

This report describes the Proposed Legislative Changes Affecting Pharmaceutical Patents on Hatch-Waxman Act. The Hatch-Waxman Act provides the FDA with certain authorities to offer periods of marketing for a pharmaceutical independent of the rights conferred by patents.

Legislation establishing a Department of Homeland Security includes provisions for an information analysis element within the new department. This report examines the information analysis function and the sharing of information among federal agencies but does not address provisions in the proposed legislation governing the sharing of intelligence with state and local officials.

To protect the CDF detector components in an event of an abort kicker prefire (AKP) in the Tevatron, a new collimator is to be installed at the A48 location during the summer 2003 shutdown. Detailed calculations have shown that this 0.5-m long ''single L-shape'' steel collimator will intercept a bunch of protons when such an incident occurs, providing reliable protection of the CDF main detector at an AKP. It will also mitigate the backgrounds induced by elastic beam-gas interactions upstream of B0. Although the Roman Pot detectors downstream of the A48 collimator will see an increased background, the amount of radiation they will receive either resulting from beam halo interactions in the collimator or during an AKP will not damage their sensitive parts. Secondaries resulting from beam halo interactions with the A48 collimator do not noticeably affect the downstream dipoles. The case of an AKP is quite different. As opposed to halo hits in the ''single-L shape'' unit (around 10{sup 5} p/s), a bunch lost on A48 during an AKP represents more than 2 x 10{sup 11} protons ''instantaneously'' interacting with the collimator material. Although the collimator protects the downstream superconducting (SC) dipoles against a damage in such an event, …

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