Ophir Corporation was awarded a contract by the U. S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory under the Project Title ''Airborne, Optical Remote Sensing of Methane and Ethane for Natural Gas Pipeline Leak Detection'' on October 14, 2002. The third six-month technical report contains a summary of the progress made towards finalizing the design and assembling the airborne, remote methane and ethane sensor. The vendor has been chosen and is on contract to develop the light source with the appropriate linewidth and spectral shape to best utilize the Ophir gas correlation software. Ophir has expanded upon the target reflectance testing begun in the previous performance period by replacing the experimental receiving optics with the proposed airborne large aperture telescope, which is theoretically capable of capturing many times more signal return. The data gathered from these tests has shown the importance of optimizing the fiber optic receiving fiber to the receiving optic and has helped Ophir to optimize the design of the gas cells and narrowband optical filters. Finally, Ophir will discuss remaining project issues that may impact the success of the project.

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

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

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

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

Four new Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) groundwater monitoring wells were installed at the single-shell tank farm Waste Management Area (WMA) C in fiscal year 2003 to fulfill commitments for well installations proposed in the draft Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order milestone M-24-00. Well 299-E27-22, installed upgradient, was drilled through the entire uppermost unconfined aquifer to the basalt and wells 299-E27-4, 299-E27-21 and 299-E27-23 were drilled approximately 40 feet into the uppermost unconfined aquifer and installed downgradient of the WMA. Specific objectives for these wells include monitoring the impact, if any, that potential releases from inside the WMA may have on current groundwater conditions (i.e., improved network coverage) and differentiating upgradient groundwater contamination from contaminants released at the WMA. This report supplies the information obtained during drilling, characterization, and installation of the four new groundwater monitoring wells. This document also provides a compilation of hydrogeologic and well construction information obtained during drilling, well development, aquifer testing, and sample collection/analysis activities.

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

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

This report presents the results of a conceptual design of a solvent extraction process for the selective removal of {sup 137}Cs from high-level radioactive waste currently stored in underground tanks at the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site (SRS). This study establishes the need for and feasibility of deploying a simplified version of the Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) process; cost/benefit ratios ranging from 33 to 55 strongly support the considered deployment. Based on projected compositions, 18 million gallons of dissolved salt cake waste has been identified as having {sup 137}Cs concentrations that are substantially lower than the worst-case design basis for the CSSX system that is to be deployed as part of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) but that does not meet the waste acceptance criteria for immobilization as grout in the Saltstone Manufacturing and Disposal Facility at SRS. Absent deployment of an alternative cesium removal process, this material will require treatment in the SWPF CSSX system, even though the cesium decontamination factor required is far less than that provided by that system. A conceptual design of a CSSX processing system designed for rapid deployment and having reduced cesium decontamination factor capability has been performed. The proposed accelerated-deployment …

Evapotransiration (ET) covers have gained widespread acceptance as a closure feature for waste disposal sites, particularly in the arid and semi-arid regions of the southwestern U.S. But as landforms, ET covers are subject to change over time because of processes such as pedogenesis, hydrologic processes, vegetation establishment and change, and biological processes. To better understand the effects of coupled process changes to ET covers, a series of four primary analog sites in Yucca Flat on the Nevada Test Site, along with measurements and observations from other locations in the Mojave Desert, were selected to evaluate changes in ET covers over time. The analog sites, of varying ages, were selected to address changes in the early post-institutional control period, the 1,000-year compliance period for disposal of low-level and mixed low-level waste, and the 10,000-year compliance period for transuranic waste sites.

This Technical Progress Report describes progress made on the seventeen subprojects awarded in the first year of Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-02NT41607: Crosscutting Technology Development at the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies. This work is summarized in the body of the main report: the individual sub-project Technical Progress Reports are attached as Appendices. Due to the time taken up by the solicitation/selection process, these cover the initial 6-month period of project activity only. The U.S. is the largest producer of mining products in the world. In 1999, U.S. mining operations produced $66.7 billion worth of raw materials that contributed a total of $533 billion to the nation's wealth. Despite these contributions, the mining industry has not been well supported with research and development funds as compared to mining industries in other countries. To overcome this problem, the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies (CAST) was established to develop technologies that can be used by the U.S. mining industry to create new products, reduce production costs, and meet environmental regulations. Originally set up by Virginia Tech and West Virginia University, this endeavor has been expanded into a seven-university consortium--Virginia Tech, West Virginia University, University of Kentucky, University of Utah, Montana Tech, New Mexico Tech …

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

We measure the deflagration behavior of energetic materials at extreme conditions (up to 520K and 1 GPa) in the LLNL High Pressure Strand Burner, thereby obtaining reaction rate data for prediction of violence of thermal explosions. The apparatus provides both temporal pressure history and flame time-of-arrival information during deflagration, allowing direct calculation of deflagration rate as a function of pressure. Samples may be heated before testing. Here we report the deflagration behavior of several HMX-based explosives at pressures of 10-600 MPa and temperatures of 300-460 K. We find that formulation details are very important to overall deflagration behavior. Formulations with high binder content (>15 wt%) deflagrate smoothly over the entire pressure range regardless of particle size, with a larger particle size distribution leading to a slower reaction. The deflagration follows a power law function with the pressure exponent being unity. Formulations with lower binder content ({le} 10% or less by weight) show physical deconsolidation at pressures over 100-200 MPA, with transition to a rapid erratic deflagration 10-100 times faster. High temperatures have a relatively minor effect on the deflagration rate until the HMX {beta} {yields} {delta} phase transition occurs, after which the deflagration rate increases by more than a factor …

We present here the design and construction of an all niobium superconducting RF injector to generate high average current, high brightness electron beam. A 1/2 cell superconducting cavity has been designed, built, and tested. A cryostat has been built to cool the cavity to {approx}2 K. The RF system can deliver up to 500 W at 1.3 GHz to the cavity. A mode-locked Nd:YVO{sub 4} laser, operating at 266 nm with 0.15 W average power, phase locked to the RF, will irradiate a laser cleaned Nb surface at the back wall of the cavity. Description of critical components and their status are presented in the paper. Based on DC measurements, QE of up to 10{sup 4} can be expected from such cavity.

Due to the accelerated cleanup at the Savannah River Site (SRS), efforts are underway to increase the glass melt rate and hence the high level waste processing throughput at the SRS Defense Waste Processing Plant Facility (DWPF). One of the proposed process/equipment improvements is a glass air-lift pump. The use of a glass air-lift pump to increase melt rate in the DWPF Melter has been investigated via several techniques including lab scale testing on various melters. The final test before implementation in DWPF was a long-term life cycle test (several months in duration) on a full size pump. The air-lift pump was successfully tested and no major problems were found. Based on this test a unit was designed and fabricated for DWPF and was installed in the DWPF Melter in February 2004.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The technology used to cast and count votes is one aspect of the multifaceted U.S. election process. GAO examined voting technology, among other things, in a series of reports that it issued in 2001 following the problems encountered in the 2000 election. In October 2002, the Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act, which, among other things, established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to assist in the administration of federal elections. The act also established a program to provide funds to states to replace older punch card and lever machine voting equipment. As this older voting equipment has been replaced with newer electronic voting systems over the last 2 years, concerns have been raised about the vulnerabilities associated with certain electronic voting systems. Among other things, GAO's testimony focuses on attributes on which electronic voting systems can be assessed, as well as design and implementation factors affecting their performance. GAO also describes the immediate and longer term challenges confronting local jurisdictions in using any type of voting equipment, particularly electronic voting systems."

A predictive framework for supersymmetry at the TeV scale is presented, which incorporates the Ciafaloni-Pomarol mechanism for the dynamical determination of the \mu parameter of the MSSM. It is replaced by (\lambda S), where S is a singlet field, and the axion becomes a heavy pseudoscalar, G, by adding a mass, m_G, by hand. The explicit breaking of Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is assumed to be sufficiently weak at the TeV scale that the only observable consequence is the mass m_G. Three models for the explicit PQ breaking are given; but the utility of this framework is that the predictions for all physics at the electroweak scale are independent of the particular model for PQ breaking. Our framework leads to a theory similar to the MSSM, except that \mu is predicted by the Ciafaloni-Pomarol relation, and there are light, weakly-coupled states in the spectrum. The production and cascade decay of superpartners at colliders occurs as in the MSSM, except that there is one extra stage of the cascade chain, with the next-to-LSP decaying to its"superpartner" and \tilde{s}, dramatically altering the collider signatures for supersymmetry. The framework is compatible with terrestrial experiments and astrophysical observations for a wide range of m_G and<s>. …

The geologically unique region of southeastern California and southwestern Nevada has both very high peaks and the lowest point, Death Valley, in the U.S. These features have significant effects on research in nuclear waste disposal, climate change, and evaluation of the potential for underground science in that region. These areas of scientific research can be further coordinated and expanded: (1) For nuclear waste, the studies of the Yucca Mountain site northeast of Death Valley contribute to the understanding of unsaturated and saturated flow and transport in an arid environment, with sensitivity to infiltration, under present-day and future climate conditions. (2) For climate research, water resources in hydrographic basins are being evaluated, in light of the prediction that there will be large decreases in snow accumulations (by 50%) in the 21st century. Further coupling of general circulation models with subsurface processes can increase understanding of hydrological responses to climate changes, with findings potentially applicable to other climate-stressed regions. (3) The combination of earth science testing and physics experimentation in underground laboratories signifies a promising research opportunity for the Death Valley region. Telescope Peak (along the western border of Death Valley), Boundary Peak (along the California-Nevada border), Mount Charleston (outside Las Vegas), …

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

This report presents the tax thresholds for various families for tax year 2004.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In connection with fulfilling our requirement to audit the financial statements of the U.S. government, we audited and reported on the Schedules of Federal Debt Managed by the Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD) for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2003 and 2002. As part of these audits, we performed a review of the general and application computer controls over key financial systems maintained and operated by the Federal Reserve Banks (FRB) on behalf of the Department of the Treasury's BPD. Many of the FRBs perform fiscal agent services on behalf of the U.S. government, including BPD. The debt-related services primarily consist of issuing, servicing, and redeeming Treasury securities and processing secondary market securities transfers. In fiscal year 2003, the FRBs issued about $4.1 trillion in federal debt securities to the public, redeemed about $3.8 trillion of debt held by the public, and processed about $125 billion in interest payments on debt held by the public. FRBs maintain and operate key financial applications on behalf of BPD and an array of financial and information systems to process and reconcile monies disbursed and collected on behalf of BPD."

Using the PARMILA code running under PC-WINDOWS, the present performance of the Fermilab Drift Tube Linac has been analyzed in the light of new demands on the Linac/Booster complex (the Proton Source). The Fermilab Drift Tube Linac (DTL) was designed in the sixties as a proton linac with a final energy of 200 MeV and a peak current of 100mA. In the seventies, in order to enable multi-turn charge exchange injection into the Booster, the ion source was replaced by an H- source with a peak beam current of 25mA. Since then the peak beam current was steadily increased up to 55mA. In the early nineties, part of the drift tube structure was replaced with a side-coupled cavity structure in order to increase the final energy to 400 MeV. The original and still primary purpose of the linac is to serve as the injector for the Booster. As an added benefit, the Neutron Therapy Facility (NTF) was built in the middle seventies. It uses 66MeV protons from the Linac to produce neutrons for medical purposes. The Linac/Booster complex was designed to run at a fundamental cycling rate of 15Hz, but beam is accelerated on every cycle only when NTF is …

The objectives of this test were: determine the optimum filter operating parameters to maximize filter flux; determine whether the mean filter flux across the dewatering cycle matches or exceeds the plant design throughput; dewater the feed sample to 20 wt percentage insoluble solids; wash the sample to determine which species are removed during the washing process; provide filtrate to the ion exchange test program; the project flowsheet for the separation of LAW entrained solids assumes the entrained solids slurry from ultrafiltration contains 20 wt percentage insoluble solids by weight. These tests must therefore confirm that the slurry rheology is compatible with this requirement. No solids must pass into the ultrafiltration permeate; and after the filtration stage is complete, the rig will be chemically cleaned to determine if the clean water flux can be returned to pre-operation (clean) levels.

Funeral program for Mr. Charles Hartfield, born November 4, 1935 and died May 5, 2004. The funeral was held May 12, 2004 at St. Stephens Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. E. L. Hayes. Funeral arrangements were made through the Carter-Taylor-Williams Mortuary and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.