This report was prepared by PNNL for DOE's Building America program and is intended as a guide that energy performance contractors can share with homeowners to describe various insulation options for improving the energy performance and comfort of existing homes. The report provides descriptions of many common insulation types, including their advantages and disadvantages, R-values, characteristics, and typical uses. The report also describes potentially hazardous products such as asbestos and formaldehyde and safety issues when conducting energy-efficient upgrades including radon. The guide is available for download at the DOE Building America website, www.buildingamerica.gov.

The Navajo Hopi Land Commission Office (NHLCO), a Navajo Nation executive branch agency has conducted activities to determine capacity-building, institution-building, outreach and management activities to initiate the development of large-scale renewable energy - 100 megawatt (MW) or larger - generating projects on land in Northwestern New Mexico in the first year of a multi-year program. The Navajo Hopi Land Commission Renewable Energy Development Project (NREP) is a one year program that will develop and market a strategic business plan; form multi-agency and public-private project partnerships; compile site-specific solar, wind and infrastructure data; and develop and use project communication and marketing tools to support outreach efforts targeting the public, vendors, investors and government audiences.

In the last decade, domestic terrorists-people who commit crimes within the homeland and draw inspiration from U.S.-based extremist ideologies and movements-have killed American citizens and damaged property across the country. Not all of these criminals have been prosecuted under terrorism statutes. This report discusses domestic terrorism's significance to policymakers per five topics: level of activity, use of nontraditional tactics, exploitation of the internet, decentralized nature of the threat, and prison radicalization. The report also discusses three areas that Congress may consider the federal role of combating such activities: the issue of definitions, adequacy of domestic terrorism intelligence collection efforts, and the value of community outreach driven efforts to quell terrorism related radicalization in the United States.

The research conducted in this work package is aimed at taking advantage of the long term thermodynamic stability of crystalline ceramics to create more durable waste forms (as compared to high level waste glass) in order to reduce the reliance on engineered and natural barrier systems. Durable ceramic waste forms that incorporate a wide range of radionuclides have the potential to broaden the available disposal options and to lower the storage and disposal costs associated with advanced fuel cycles. Assemblages of several titanate phases have been successfully demonstrated to incorporate radioactive waste elements, and the multiphase nature of these materials allows them to accommodate variation in the waste composition. Recent work has shown that they can be successfully produced from a melting and crystallization process. The objective of this report is to explain the design of ceramic host systems culminating in a reference ceramic formulation for use in subsequent studies on process optimization and melt property data assessment in support of FY13 melter demonstration testing. The waste stream used as the basis for the development and testing is a combination of the projected Cs/Sr separated stream, the Trivalent Actinide - Lanthanide Separation by Phosphorous reagent Extraction from Aqueous Komplexes (TALSPEAK) …

Through an inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed monitoring framework.

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

A resolution of inquiry is a simple resolution making a direct request or demand of the President or the head of an executive department to furnish the House with specific factual information in the Administration's possession. Under the rules and precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives, such resolutions, if properly drafted, are given a privileged parliamentary status. This means that, under certain circumstances, a resolution of inquiry can be brought up on the House floor even if the committee to which it was referred has not reported it and the majority party leadership has not scheduled it for consideration. This report discusses the background, purpose, and efficiency of these inquiries.

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

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

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The effects of partial ionization (ni/nn ≤ 1%) on magnetic reconnection in the Hall regime have been studied systematically in the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX). It is shown that, when neutrals are added the Hall quadrupole field pattern and thus electron flow is unchanged while the ion outflow speed is reduced due to ion-neutral drag. However, in constrast to theoretical predictions, the ion diffusion layer width does not change appreciably. Therefore, the total ion outflow flux and the normalized reconnection rate are reduced.

The Langevin equations describing the average collisional dynamics of suprathermal particles in nonstationary plasma remarkably admit an exact analytical solution in the case of recombining plasma. The current density produced by arbitrary particle fluxes is derived including the effect of charge recombination. Since recombination has the effect of lowering the charge density of the plasma, thus reducing the charged particle collisional frequencies, the evolution of the current density can be modified substantially compared to plasma with fixed charge density. The current drive efficiency is derived and optimized for discrete and continuous pulses of current, leading to the discovery of a nonzero "residual" current density that persists indefinitely under certain conditions, a feature not present in stationary plasmas.

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

A weekly student newspaper from the Rice University in Houston, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

This article presents a study in which an in silico genome-scale metabolic model of steroidogenesis is used to investigate the effects of hypoxic stress on steroid hormone productions in fish. This article introduces a powerful model for pathway analysis that can lend insights on the effects of various stressor scenarios on metabolic functions.

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

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

This report discusses the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, P.L. 103-322) that congress passed in 1994. This legislation created new programs within the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services that aimed to both reduce domestic violence and improve response to and recovery from domestic violence incidents.

Recent congressional interest in U.S. energy policy has focused in part on ways through which the United States could secure more economical and reliable crude oil resources both domestically and internationally. Many forecasters identify petroleum refined from Canadian oil sands as one possible solution. This report discusses conclusions revealed from a survey of available literature on the matter, particularly in regards to Greenhouse Gas and Well-to-Tank emissions.

We performed resonant soft X-ray diffraction on known charge density wave (CDW) compounds, rare earth tri-tellurides. Near the M{sub 5} (3d - 4f) absorption edge of rare earth ions, an intense diffraction peak is detected at a wavevector identical to that of CDW state hosted on Te{sub 2} planes, indicating a CDW-induced modulation on the rare earth ions. Surprisingly, the temperature dependence of the diffraction peak intensity demonstrates an exponential increase at low temperatures, vastly different than that of the CDW order parameter. Assuming 4f multiplet splitting due to the CDW states, we present a model to calculate X-ray absorption spectrum and resonant profile of the diffraction peak, agreeing well with experimental observations. Our results demonstrate a situation where the temperature dependence of resonant X-ray diffraction peak intensity is not directly related to the intrinsic behavior of the order parameter associated with the electronic order, but is dominated by the thermal occupancy of the valence states.

The dynamics of an order parameter's amplitude and phase determines the collective behaviour of novel states emerging in complex materials. Time- and momentum-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy, by virtue of measuring material properties at atomic and electronic time scales out of equilibrium, can decouple entangled degrees of freedom by visualizing their corresponding dynamics in the time domain. Here we combine time-resolved femotosecond optical and resonant X-ray diffraction measurements on charge ordered La{sub 1.75}Sr{sub 0.25}NiO{sub 4} to reveal unforeseen photoinduced phase fluctuations of the charge order parameter. Such fluctuations preserve long-range order without creating topological defects, distinct from thermal phase fluctuations near the critical temperature in equilibrium. Importantly, relaxation of the phase fluctuations is found to be an order of magnitude slower than that of the order parameter's amplitude fluctuations, and thus limits charge order recovery. This new aspect of phase fluctuations provides a more holistic view of the phase's importance in ordering phenomena of quantum matter.

This report looks at how the European Union Emission Trading Scheme's coverage of carbon emission from commercial flights affects air carriers from the United States and other countries.

News release about DART's adjusted service schedule in observance of the Memorial Day holiday.

This report discusses relations between the United States and South Korea (known officially as the Republic of Korea, or ROK), which have been arguably at their best state in decades. In the Obama Administration, South Korea had emerged as the United States’ closest ally in East Asia.