Monte Carlo methods for radiation transport typically attempt to solve an integral by directly sampling analog or weighted particles, which are treated as physical entities. Improvements to the methods involve better sampling, probability games or physical intuition about the problem. We show that significant improvements can be achieved by recasting the equations with an analytical transform to solve for new, non-physical entities or fields. This paper looks at one such transform, the difference formulation for thermal photon transport, showing a significant advantage for Monte Carlo solution of the equations for time dependent transport. Other related areas are discussed that may also realize significant benefits from similar analytical transformations.

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.

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) has been around for around 30 years, and in that time computer networks have increased in speed and reliability many times over. TCP has done very well to maintain stability and avoid collapse from congestion in the Internet with this incredible increase in speed. But as the speed of networks continues to increase, some assumptions about the underlying network that influenced the design of TCP may no longer hold valid. Additionally, modern networks often span many different types of links. For example, one end-to-end transmission may traverse both an optical link (high-bandwidth, low-loss) and a wireless network (low-bandwidth, high loss). TCP does not perform well in these situations. This survey will examine some of the reasons for this, focusing on high-bandwidth networks, and offer some solutions that have been proposed to fix these problems. This paper assumes basic knowledge of the TCP protocol.

This paper illustrates the applicability of a sequential fluid mechanics, multi-zone chemical kinetics model to analyze HCCI experimental data for two combustion chamber geometries with different levels of turbulence: a low turbulence disc geometry (flat top piston), and a high turbulence square geometry (piston with a square bowl). The model uses a fluid mechanics code to determine temperature histories in the engine as a function of crank angle. These temperature histories are then fed into a chemical kinetic solver, which determines combustion characteristics for a relatively small number of zones (40). The model makes the assumption that there is no direct linking between turbulence and combustion. The results show that the multi-zone model yields good results for both the disc and the square geometries. The model makes good predictions of pressure traces and heat release rates. The experimental results indicate that the high turbulence square geometry has longer burn duration than the low turbulence disc geometry. This difference can be explained by the sequential multi-zone model, which indicates that the cylinder with the square bowl has a thicker boundary layer that results in a broader temperature distribution. This broader temperature distribution tends to lengthen the combustion, as cold mass within …

This report is a guide to appropriations of Legislative Branch for FY2005.

A report of an archaeological survey of a proposed wastewater treatment plant.

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

This report summarizes major provisions of federal law and offers a chronology of key legislative and judicial actions which govern financial activity of federal election campaigns. The laws are based on two principal statutes: the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971, as amended in 1974, 1976, 1979, and 2002, and the Revenue Act of 1971.

This report discusses a brief accounting of national saving, household saving, business saving and public saving.

Monthly student newspaper from Archer City High School in Archer City, Texas that includes news and information of interest to students along with advertising.

The purpose of this report is to provide background for and summarize current developments in U.S. - People’s Republic of China (PRC) relations, including current and pending congressional actions involving the PRC.

The American Academy of Microbiology convened a colloquium June 4-6, 2004 to confer about the scientific promise of systems microbiology. Participants discussed the power of applying a systems approach to the study of biology and to microbiology in particular, specifics about current research efforts, technical bottlenecks, requirements for data acquisition and maintenance, educational needs, and communication issues surrounding the field. A number of recommendations were made for removing barriers to progress in systems microbiology and for improving opportunities in education and collaboration. Systems biology, as a concept, is not new, but the recent explosion of genomic sequences and related data has revived interest in the field. Systems microbiology, a subset of systems biology, represents a different approach to investigating biological systems. It attempts to examine the emergent properties of microorganisms that arise from the interplay of genes, proteins, other macromolecules, small molecules, organelles, and the environment. It is these interactions, often nonlinear, that lead to the emergent properties of biological systems that are generally not tractable by traditional approaches. As a complement to the long-standing trend toward reductionism, systems microbiology seeks to treat the organism or community as a whole, integrating fundamental biological knowledge with genomics, metabolomics, and other data …

On December 9, the reference case projections from ''Annual Energy Outlook 2005 (AEO 2005)'' were posted on the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) web site. As some of you may be aware, we at LBNL have in the past compared the EIA's reference case long-term natural gas price forecasts from the AEO series to contemporaneous natural gas prices that can be locked in through the forward market, with the goal of better understanding fuel price risk and the role that renewables play in mitigating such risk. As such, we were curious to see how the latest AEO gas price forecast compares to the NYMEX natural gas futures strip. This brief memo presents our findings. As a refresher, our past work in this area has found that over the past four years, forward natural gas contracts (e.g., gas futures, swaps, and physical supply) have traded at a premium relative to contemporaneous long-term reference case gas price forecasts from the EIA. As such, we have concluded that, over the past four years at least, levelized cost comparisons of fixed-price renewable generation with variable price gas-fired generation that have been based on AEO natural gas price forecasts (rather than forward prices) have yielded results …

This is a final report on DE-FG03-00ER45843 entitled ''Coulomb Glasses''. The work is continuing under grant DE-FG02-04ER46107 under the DOE Chicago Operations office. During the award period from August 15, 2000 to December 31, 2003, they studied the following: (1) 1/f Noise in Coulomb Glasses; (2) Coulomb glass phase transitions as a function of positional disorder; (3) a new structural probe of the structural glass transition; and (4) frequency dependence and equilibration of the specific heat of glass forming liquids.

This project investigated the effects of an aerobic Pseudomonas mendocina bacterium on the dissolution of Fe(III)(hydr)oxides. The research is important because metals and radionuclides that adsorb to Fe(III)(hydr)oxides could potentially be remobilized by dissolving bacteria. We showed that P. mendocina is capable of dissolving Fe-bearing minerals by a variety of mechanisms, including production of siderophores, pH changes, and formation of reductants. The production of siderophores by P. mendocina was quantified under a variety of growth conditions. Finally, we demonstrated that microbial siderophores may adsorb to and enhance dissolution of clay minerals.

This report discusses in the first section different philosophies about how the tax burden should be distributed, and what those philosophies imply for the shape of the tax system. In particular, it addresses the question of the justifications for a progressive tax system (one where the share of income collected as a tax rises as income rises). This section is presented for the interested reader, but is not a necessary preliminary to examining the analysis in the second section, which presents estimates of the distribution of the federal and total U.S. tax burden. The third section of the report discusses the measures that can be used to characterize the distributional effects of tax changes.

We present a study, based on simulations with SERDYCA, a spatially-explicit individual-based model of rodent dynamics, on the relation between population persistence and the presence of numerous isolated disturbances in the habitat. We are specifically interested in the effect of disturbances that do not fragment the environment on population persistence. Our results suggest that the presence of disturbances in the absence of fragmentation can actually increase the average time to extinction of the modeled population. The presence of disturbances decreases population density but can increase the chance for mating in monogamous species and consequently, the ratio of juveniles in the population. It thus provides a better chance for the population to restore itself after a severe period with critically low population density. We call this the ''disturbance-forced localization effect''.

This project, ''Energetics of Nanomaterials'', represents a three-year collaboration among Alexandra Navrotsky (University of California at Davis), Brian Woodfield and Juliana Boerio-Goates (Brigham Young University) and Frances Hellman (University of California at San Diego). Its purpose has been to explore the differences between bulk materials, nanoparticles, and thin films in terms of their thermodynamic properties, with an emphasis on heat capacities and entropies, as well as enthalpies. We used our combined experimental techniques to address the following questions: How does energy and entropy depend on particle size and crystal structure? Do entropic differences have their origins in changes in vibrational densities of states or configurational (including surface configuration) effects? Do material preparation and sample geometry, i.e., nanoparticles versus thin films, change these quantities? How do the thermodynamics of magnetic and structural transitions change in nanoparticles and thin films? Are different crystal structures stabilized for a given composition at the nanoscale, and are the responsible factors energetic, entropic, or both? How do adsorption energies (for water and other gases) depend on particle size and crystal structure in the nanoregime? What are the energetics of formation and strain energies in artificially layered thin films? Do the differing structures of grain boundaries in …

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At present the ETA beam energy as measured by the ETA energy analyzer and the DARHT spectrometer differ by {approx}12%. This discrepancy is due to two sources, an overestimate of the effective length of the ETA energy analyzer bending-field, and data reduction methods that are not valid. The discrepancy can be eliminated if we return to the original process of measuring the angular deflection of the beam and use a value of 43.2cm for the effective length of the axial field profile.

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

This report discusses federal law that has authorized farm income and commodity price support programs for over 70 years.The 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171) authorizes the current programs for the 2002-2007 crop years. The payment framework combines direct payments of the 1996 farm bill (P.L. 104-127) with counter-cyclical payments of prior laws. Subsidies continue for wheat, feed grains, upland cotton, and rice, and soybeans and peanuts are added to the list of major crops. Dry peas, lentils, and chickpeas were added to the loan program, and wool, mohair, and honey were reinstated. This report covers grains, cotton, oilseeds, and peanuts. These commodities have similar rules, and generally account for about two-thirds of CCC outlays.

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