Pallavi Pharkya thinks a lot about the future. Pharkya, a Ph.D. candidate in materials science and engineering, works in the area of corrosion science, predicting how materials will perform over extended periods of time. Her particular focus is a nickel-chromium-molybdenum alloy called C-22, a highly corrosion-resistant metal. Pharkya's aim is to help determine whether containers made from C-22 can be used to store high-energy nuclear waste--for 10,000 years and longer. Pharkya's work is part of a plan by the U.S. Department of Energy to consolidate the country's nuclear waste in a single proposed repository. The proposed repository is in Yucca Mountain located in a remote Nevada desert. Currently about 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are divided between approximately 100 sites around the country. The undertaking, Pharkya emphasizes, is massive. To study just the corrosion aspects of the packaging, Case is collaborating with eight other universities, five national labs and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Even with so many players, the study will likely take several years to complete. Heading the entire group is Joe Payer, a professor of materials science and engineering at Case and Pharkya's mentor. ''I came here to have the opportunity …

Pharkya, a Ph.D. candidate in materials science and engineering, works in the area of corrosion science, predicting how materials will perform over extended periods of time. Her particular focus is a nickel-chromium-molybdenum alloy called C-22, a highly corrosion-resistant metal. Pharkya's aim is to help determine whether containers made from C-22 can be used to store high-energy nuclear waste--for 10,000 years and longer. Pharkya's work is part of a plan by the U.S. Department of Energy to consolidate the country's nuclear waste in a single proposed repository. The proposed repository is in Yucca Mountain located in a remote Nevada desert. Currently about 70,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste are divided between approximately 100 sites around the country. The undertaking, Pharkya emphasizes, is massive. To study just the corrosion aspects of the packaging, Case is collaborating with eight other universities, five national labs and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited. Even with so many players, the study will likely take several years to complete. Heading the entire group is Joe Payer, a professor of materials science and engineering at Case and Pharkya's mentor. ''I came here to have the opportunity to work with Dr. Payer, an expert in …

Newspaper from Rose State College in Midwest City, Oklahoma that includes national, local, and campus news along with advertising.

The Explosive Component Water Gap Test (ECWGT) has been validated to assess the shock sensitivity of lead and booster components having a diameter larger than 5 mm. Several countries have investigated by experiments and numerical simulations the effect of confinement on the go/no go threshold for Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) pellets having a height and diameter of 3 mm, confined by a steel annulus of wall thickness 1-3.5 mm. Confinement of the PETN by a steel annulus of the same height of the pellet with 1-mm wall thickness makes the component more sensitive (larger gap). As the wall thickness is increased to 2-mm, the gap increases a lesser amount, but when the wall thickness is increased to 3.5-mm a decrease in sensitivity is observed (smaller gap). This decrease of the water gap has been reproduced experimentally. Recent numerical simulations using Ignition and Growth model [1] for the PETN Pellet have reproduced the experimental results for the steel confinement up to 2 mm thick [2]. The presence of a stronger re-shock following the first input shock from the water and focusing on the axis have been identified in the pellet due to the steel confinement. The double shock configuration is well-known to …

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

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The West Refrigeration Plant Expansion (WRPE) project is the centerpiece of an effort to expand the capacity of the Capitol Power Plant (CPP) to meet the U.S. Capitol's growing heating and cooling needs and to update plant equipment, some of which dates to the 1950s. CPP generates steam and chilled water to provide heating and cooling for the Capitol and 23 surrounding facilities that, together, encompass about 16 million square feet of space. CPP will also serve the 580,000-square-foot Capitol Visitor Center (CVC), which is under construction. When completed, the WRPE project will increase CPP's chilled water production capacity by about 23 percent and enable central operation of CPP's chillers. The WRPE construction contract was awarded in March 2003, work is ongoing, and the project is now scheduled for completion in March 2006. Future contract changes may, however, extend this date to June 2006. The budget for the WRPE project and associated administrative expenses is $81.7 million. Several modifications have been made to the WRPE contract to incorporate other capital improvements at CPP. The budget for these modifications is $19.2 million, bringing the total budget for the base …

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

It is an important issue to study the beam-beam interaction in the design and performance of such a high luminosity collider as BEPCII, the upgrade of Beijing Electron Positron Collider. The weak-strong simulation is generally used during the design of a collider. For performance a large scale tune scan, the weak-strong simulation studies on beam-beam interaction were done, and the geometry effects were taken into account. The strong-strong simulation studies were done for investigating the luminosity goal and the dependence of the luminosity on the beam parameters.

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

The report talks about federal animal protection statutes and statutes enacted to implement treaties. It mentions statutes which allow the disabled to use service animals and statutes aimed at acts of animal rights advocates.

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 courts and the executive branch face major decisions on clean air issues in 2006, with Congress more likely playing an oversight role. One focus is EPA's Jan. 17 2006 proposal to strengthen air quality standards for fine particles, which are estimated to cause tens of thousands of premature deaths annually. Whether the proposal is supported by the available science and what impact its implementation would have have likely issues of concern. Other issues of continuing interest are EPA's 2005 decisions limiting interstate transport of air pollution and establishing cap-and-trade systems for emissions from coal-fired power plants, and the agency's proposed changes to New Source Review.

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

Using the energetic material Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) as a specific example of molecular crystal, we describe the development of a simple coarse-graining procedure by grouping several atoms or whole functional groups into single charge-neutral beads. As compared to fully atomistic calculations the coarse-grained model speeds up simulations by more than two orders of magnitude. Yet, by adjusting only two parameters in the coarse-grained interaction, the model accurately predicts the lattice constants, sublimation energy, pressure-volume curve up to P=10 GPa, and energetically the most stable facets. Computed surface and desorption energies, bulk modulus, and equilibrium morphology are reported as well.

This report provides historical information on the Congressional budget resolution.It also provides a list of the budget resolutions adopted and rejected by Congress since implementation of the Budget Act, including the U.S. Statutes-at-Large citations and committee report numbers, and describes their formulation and content.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

The ability to safely machine small pieces of HE with the femtosecond laser [1][2][3] allows diameter effect experiments to be performed in initiating explosives in order to study the failure diameter, the reduction of the detonation velocity and curvature versus the diameter. The reduced diameter configuration needs to be optimized, so that the detonation products of the first cylinder will not affect the measurement of the detonation velocity of the second cylinder with a streak camera. Different 2D axi-symmetrical configurations have been calculated to identify the best solution using the Ignition and Growth reactive flow model for LX16 Pellet [4] with Ls-Dyna.

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This report provides information about the Regional Issues on DR-CAFTA. On August 5th The United States signed the DR-CAFTA agreement with Costa rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua etc.

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This report provides an overview of aspects of ESEA Title I-A that were substantially amended by the NCLBA.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For the last several decades, the Department of Energy and its predecessor agencies and contractors have employed thousands of individuals in secret and dangerous work in the atomic weapons industry. In 2000, Congress enacted the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act to compensate those individuals who have developed cancer or other specified diseases related to on-the-job exposure to radiation and other hazards at these work sites. Under Subtitle B, determining the eligibility of claimants for compensation is a complex process, involving several federal agencies and a reconstruction of the historical evidence available. The Department of Labor must consider a claimant's case based on records of his or her employment and work activities, which are provided by the Department of Energy. Labor considers the compensability of certain claims by relying on estimates of the likely radiation levels to which particular workers were exposed. These "dose reconstructions" are developed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIOSH also compiles information in "site profiles" about the radiation protection practices and hazardous materials used at various plants …

Quantum mechanical calculations were performed to study the differences between the important radiopharmaceutical metals yttrium (Y) and indium (In) bound by DOTA and modified DOTA molecules. Energies were calculated at the MP2/6-31+G(d)//HF/6-31G(d) levels, using effective core potentials on the Y and In ions. Although the minimum energy structures obtained are similar for both metal ion-DOTA complexes, changes in coordination and local environment significantly affect the geometries and energies of these complexes. Coordination by a single water molecule causes a change in the coordination number and a change in the position of the metal ion in In-DOTA; but, Y-DOTA is hardly affected by water coordination. When one of the DOTA carboxylates is replaced by an amide, the coordination energy for the amide arm shows a large variation between the Y and In ions. Optimizations including water and guandinium moieties to approximate the effects of antibody binding indicate a large energy cost for the DOTA-chelated In to adopt the ideal conformation for antibody binding.

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