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

Light trucks' share of the US light vehicle market rose from 20% in 1980 to 41% in 1996. By 1996, annual energy consumption for light trucks was 6.0 x 10{sup 15} Btu (quadrillion Btu, or quad), compared with 7.9 quad for cars. Gasoline engines, used in almost 99% of light trucks, do not meet the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. These engines have poor fuel economy, many getting only 10--12 miles per gallon. Diesel engines, despite their much better fuel economy, had not been preferred by US light truck manufacturers because of problems with high NO{sub x} and particulate emissions. The US Department of Energy, Office of Heavy Vehicle Technologies, has funded research projects at several leading engine makers to develop a new low-emission, high-efficiency advanced diesel engine, first for large trucks, then for light trucks. Recent advances in diesel engine technology may overcome the NO{sub x} and particulate problems. Two plausible alternative clean diesel (CD) engine market penetration trajectories were developed, representing an optimistic case (High Case) and an industry response to meet the CAFE standards (CAFE Case). However, leadership in the technology to produce a successful small, advanced diesel engine for light trucks is an open issue …

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the experience of six nations--Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom--with budget surpluses, focusing on: (1) how they achieved budget surpluses and what their fiscal policies were during periods of surplus; (2) how they addressed long-term budgetary pressures; (3) how they adapted their budget process during a period of surplus; and (4) the lessons these nations learned from their experiences with budget surpluses that might be applicable to the United States."

Newspaper clipping, "Cultural month seeks to end myths about heritage of Native Americans," by Catherine Atkinson for the North Texas Daily, published Tuesday, November 2, 1999. The article is in regards the term Native American, and how they are perceived. Corina Robles Ramos wants to promote awareness of the cultures through Native American History Month.

Produced water management can be a significant expense for oil and gas operators. This paper summarizes a study of the technical, economic, and regulatory feasibility of a relatively new technology, downhole oil/water separators (DOWS), to reduce the volume of water pumped to the surface. The study was funded by the US Department of Energy and conducted by Argonne National Laboratory, CH2M Hill, and the Nebraska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission. DOWS are devices that separate oil and gas from produced water at the bottom of the well and reinject some of the produced water into another formation or another horizon within the same formation, while the oil and gas are pumped to the surface. Since much of the produced water is not pumped to the surface, treated, and pumped from the surface back into a deep formation, the cost of handling produced water is greatly reduced. The oil production rate has increased for more than half of the DOWS installations to date.

The authors investigated the behavior of speckle contrast and size under various experimental conditions using 1.82 keV x-rays. In this paper, they report the comparison of two different setups for x-ray speckle experiments: one employing a focusing zone plate and one in which a pinhole selects the size of the coherent x-ray beam. They found a strong dependence of the speckle contrast and size on the type of setup. In general, the pinhole setup results in higher contrast but smaller speckle size. On the other hand the zone plate setup allows one to target much smaller areas of interest in the sample, down to submicron dimensions, and also to adjust the speckle size. The authors anticipate that these results will be useful in future time-correlation spectroscopy experiments.

This semi-annual technical progress report describes work performed under DOE Grant No. DE-FG22-96PC96224 during the period March 24, 1999 to September 23, 1999 which covers the last (sixth) six months of the project. During this reporting period, extraction of devolatilization time-scales and temperature data at these time-scales analyzing the high-speed films taken during the experiments was complete. Also a new thermodynamic model was developed to predict the heat transfer behavior for coal particles subjected to a range of heating rates using one approach based on the analogy of polymers. Sensitivity analyses of this model suggest that bituminous coal particles behave like polymers during rapid heating on the order of 10{sup 4}-10{sup 7} K/s. At these heating rates during the early stages within the first few milliseconds of heating time, the vibrational part of the heat capacity of the coal molecules appears to be still frozen but during the transition from heat-up to devolatization, the heat capacity appears to attain a sudden jump in its value as in the case of polymers. There are few data available in the coal literature for 10{sup 2}-10{sup 3} K/s obtained by UTRC in their previous studies. These data were obtained for a longer heating …

Beamline-control and data-acquisition software based on EPICS (a tool kit for building distributed control systems) has been running on many Advanced Photon Source beamlines for several years. EPICS itself, the collaborative software-development effort surrounding it, and EPICS-based beamline software have been described previously in general terms. This talk will review and update that material, focusing on the role EPICS core software plays in beamline applications and on the effects of a few defining characteristics of EPICS on the beamline software we have developed with it.

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

Faculty recital performed at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

A hard x-ray scanning microprobe based on zone plate optics and undulator radiation, in the energy region from 6 to 20 keV, has reached a focal spot size (FWHM) of 0.15 {micro}m (v) x 0.6 {micro}m (h), and a photon flux of 4 x 10{sup 9} photons/sec/0.01%BW. Using a slit 44 meters upstream to create a virtual source, a circular beam spot of 0.15 {micro}m in diameter can be obtained with a photon flux of one order of magnitude less. During fluorescence mapping of trace elements in a single human ovarian cell, the microprobe exhibited an imaging sensitivity for Pt (L{sub a} line) of 80 attograms/{micro}m{sup 2} for a count rate of 10 counts per second. The x-ray microprobe has been used to map crystallographic strain and multiquantum well thickness in micro-optoelectronic devices produced with the selective area growth technique.

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

Exciting new applications of high-resolution x-ray imaging have emerged recently due to major advances in high-brilliance synchrotrons sources and high-performance zone plate optics. Imaging with submicron resolution is now routine with hard x-rays: the authors have demonstrated 150 run in the 6--10 keV range with x-ray microscopes at the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a third-generation synchrotrons radiation facility. This has fueled interest in using x-ray imaging in applications ranging from the biomedical, environmental, and materials science fields to the microelectronics industry. One important application they have pursued at the APS is a study of the microbiology of bacteria and their associated extracellular material (biofilms) using fluorescence microanalysis. No microscopy techniques were previously available with sufficient resolution to study live bacteria ({approx}1 {micro}m x 4 {micro}m in size) and biofilms in their natural hydrated state with better than part-per-million elemental sensitivity and the capability of determining g chemical speciation. In vivo x-ray imaging minimizes artifacts due to sample fixation, drying, and staining. This provides key insights into the transport of metal contaminants by bacteria in the environment and potential new designs for remediation and sequestration strategies.

The radiation level at High Energy Particle Accelerators (HEPA) is relatively high. Any active component which should be close to the accelerator has to be radiation hard. Since High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) have a great potential to be used in HEPAs (e.g., in superconducting magnets, current leads, RF cavities), it is important to understand the radiation hardness of these materials. A radiation test of HTS wire (Bi-2223) was performed at Fermilab. The HTS sample was irradiated with 8 GeV protons and the relative I{sub c} was measured during the irradiation. The total radiation dose was 10 Mrad, and no I{sub c} degradation was observed.

Hydrogen can be absorbed in large quantities by 100 {angstrom} thin Nb layers embedded in epitaxial W/Nb and polycrystalline Fe/Nb multilayers. The solubility and the hydrogen-induced structural changes of the host lattice are explored in-situ by small-angle neutron/X-ray reflectometry and high-angle diffraction. These measurements reveal for both systems that the relative out-of-plane expansion of the Nb layers is considerably larger than the relative increase of the Nb interplanar spacing indicating two distinctly different mechanisms of hydrogen absorption. In Fe/Nb multilayers, hydrogen expands the Nb interplanar spacing in a continuous way as function of the external pressure. In contrast, the Nb lattice expansion is discontinuous in epitaxial W/Nb multilayers: A jump in the Nb(002) Bragg reflection position occurs at a critical hydrogen pressure of 1 mbar. In-situ EXAFS spectroscopy also exhibits an irreversible expansion of the Nb lattice in the film plane for p{sub H{sub 2}}> 1 mbar. This can be regarded as a structural phase transition from an exclusively out-of-plane to a three-dimensionally expanded state at low and high hydrogen pressures, respectively.

The primary objective of this project is to enhance domestic petroleum production by field demonstration and technology transfer of an advanced- oil-recovery technology in the Paradox basin, southeastern Utah. If this project can demonstrate technical and economic feasibility, the technique can be applied to approximately 100 additional small fields in the Paradox basin alone, and result in increased recovery of 150 to 200 million barrels (23,850,000-31,800,000 m3) of oil. This project is designed to characterize five shallow-shelf carbonate reservoirs in the Pennsylvanian (Desmoinesian) Paradox Formation and choose the best candidate for a pilot demonstration project for either a waterflood or carbon-dioxide-(CO2-) miscible flood project. The field demonstration, monitoring of field performance, and associated validation activities will take place within the Navajo Nation, San Juan County, Utah.

The reaction between H{sub 2} and O{sub 2} has been studied in a reflected shock tube apparatus between 1662--2097 K. O-atom atomic resonance absorption spectrometry (ARAS) was used to observe absolute [O]{sub t} under conditions of low [H{sub 2}]{sub 0} so that most secondary reactions were negligible. Hence, the observed [O]{sub t}, was the direct result of the rate controlling reaction between H{sub 2} and O{sub 2}. Three different reactions were considered, but experimental and ab initio theoretical results both indicated that the process, H{sub 2} + O{sub 2} {yields} H + HO{sub 2}, is the only possible reaction. After rapid HO{sub 2} dissociation, O-atoms are then instantaneously produced by H + O{sub 2} {yields} O + OH. Using the ab initio result, conventional transition state theoretical calculations (CTST) with tunneling corrections give the expression: k = 1.228 x 10{sup {minus}18} T{sup 2.4328} exp({minus}26926 K/T) cm{sup 3} molecule{sup {minus}1} s{sup {minus}1}, applicable between 400 and 2,300 K. This theoretical result agrees with the present experimental determinations and those at lower temperature, derived from earlier work on the reverse reaction.

The leading environmental problem facing coastal Louisiana regions is the loss of wetlands. Oil and gas exploration and production activities have contributed to wetland damage through erosion at numerous sites where canals have been cut through the marsh to access drilling sites. An independent oil and gas producer, working with Southeastern Louisiana University and two oil field service companies, developed a process to stabilize drill cuttings so that they could be used as a substrate to grow wetlands vegetation. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded a project under which the process would be validated through laboratory studies and field demonstrations. The laboratory studies demonstrated that treated drill cuttings support the growth of wetlands vegetation. However, neither the Army Corps of Engineers (COE) nor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would grant regulatory approval for afield trial of the process. Argonne National Laboratory was asked to join the project team to try to find alternative mechanisms for gaining regulatory approval. Argonne worked with EPA's Office of Reinvention and learned that EPA's Project XL would be the only regulatory program under which the proposed field trial could be done. One of the main criteria for an acceptable Project XL proposal is …

This document provides a summary of the systematic process used by the SNF Project to characterize K-Basin spent fuel, and to develop and apply the appropriate conservative safety margins to the resulting parameters for technical designs and safety analyses.

The Materials Research Institute (MRI) is the newest of the University/LLNL Institutes and began operating in March 1997. The MRI is one of five Institutes reporting to the LLNL University Relations Program (URP), all of which have as their primary goal to facilitate university interactions at LLNL. This report covers the period from the opening of the MRI through the end of FY98 (September 30, 1998). The purpose of this report is to emphasize both the science that has been accomplished, as well as the LLNL and university people who were involved. The MRI is concentrating on projects, which highlight and utilize the Laboratory's unique facilities and expertise. Our goal is to enable the best university research to enhance Laboratory programs in the area of cutting-edge materials science. The MRI is focusing on three primary areas of materials research: Biomaterials (organic/inorganic interfaces, biomemetic processes, materials with improved biological response, DNA materials science); Electro/Optical Materials (laser materials and nonlinear optical materials, semiconductor devices, nanostructured materials); and Metals/Organics (equation of state of metals, synthesis of unique materials, high explosives/polymers). In particular we are supporting projects that will enable the MRI to begin to make a distinctive name for itself within the scientific …

Video footage from the NBC 5 television station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story. This story aired at 6 P.M.

Student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state, national, and campus news along with advertising. Formerly The Campus Chat.