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 …

This Report is about the Gordon Research Conference on Radiation Oncology Which was held at Crowne Plazza

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) hosted its third annual Summer Research Institute in Interfacial and Condensed Phase Chemical Physics from May through September 2006. During this period, twenty PNNL scientists hosted twenty-seven scientists from twenty-five different universities. Of the twenty-seven participants, one was a graduating senior; twenty-one were graduate students; one was a postdoctoral fellow; and four were university faculty members.

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 …

Waste containers may contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs), methane, hydrogen and possibly propane. These constituents may occur individually or in mixtures. Determining if a waste container contains a flammable concentration of flammable gases and vapors (from VOCs) is important to the safety of the handling, repackaging and shipping activities. This report provides the basis for determining the flammability of mixtures of flammable gases and vapors. The concentration of a mixture that is at the lowest flammability limit for that mixture is called the action concentration. The action concentration can be determined using total VOC concentrations or actual concentration of each individual VOC. The concentrations of hydrogen and methane are included with the total VOC or individual VOC concentration to determine the action concentration. Concentrations below this point are not flammable. Waste containers with gas/vapor concentrations at or above the action concentration are considered flammable.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Commuter rail is an important part of the transportation system in many cities and regions in our country, providing more than 420 million passenger trips in 2005. Although several of the largest commuter rail agencies hire their own employees, many agencies contract with other companies, including Amtrak, freight railroads, and private rail operators, to provide services that are critical to running the agencies' trains. These contracted services include providing crews to operate trains (train operations); maintenance of equipment (MOE), including maintenance of train cars and locomotives; dispatching train traffic; and maintenance of way (MOW), which involves maintaining the track, signals, and other track infrastructure. Commuter rail agencies can obtain these services by opening contracts to competition or through noncompetitive negotiations with a service provider. Congress asked us to provide information on the service arrangements between commuter rail agencies and other companies. Accordingly, we addressed the following questions: (1) How many currently active commuter rail service contracts were obtained through competitive and noncompetitive processes? (2) What differences, if any, are there between competitively and noncompetitively negotiated contracts?"

This report provides current statistical information, profiles the Afghanistan narcotics trade's participants, explores linkages between narcotics, insecurity, and corruption, and reviews U.S. and international policy responses since late 2001. The report also considers ongoing policy debates regarding the counternarcotics role of coalition military forces, poppy eradication, alternative livelihoods, and funding issues for Congress.

In May 2003, the United States, Canada, and Argentina initiated a formal challenge before the World Trade Organization (WTO) of the European Union’s (EU’s) de facto moratorium on approving new agricultural biotechnology products, in place since 1998. Although the EU effectively lifted the moratorium in May 2004 by approving a genetically engineered (GE) corn variety, the three countries are pursuing the case, in part because a number of EU member states continue to block approved biotech products. Because of delays, the WTO is expected to decide the case by December 2005. The moratorium reportedly cost U.S. corn growers some $300 million in exports to the EU annually. The EU moratorium, U.S. officials contend, threatened other agricultural exports not only to the EU, but also to other parts of the world where the EU approach to regulating agricultural biotechnology is taking hold.

This report discusses the ongoing major USDA disaster programs designed to help crop producers recover from the financial effects of natural disasters — federal crop insurance, noninsured assistance program (NAP) payments, and emergency disaster loans.

This report provides basic information on several agriculture conservation programs, primarily drawn from agency budget presentations and websites, about each program using a consistent format. This information should help respond to basic questions and resolve many common sources of confusion about the purposes of the program, program participation and policy topics.

This report discusses the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which makes federal funds available to metropolitan areas and states to assist in health care costs and support services for individuals and families affected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). This report discusses related legislation and appropriations.

Experiments have been conducted to examine the fate of uranium during the formation of sodium aluminosilicate (NAS) when wastes containing high aluminate concentrations are mixed with wastes of high silicate concentration. Testing was conducted at varying degrees of uranium saturation. Testing examined typical tank conditions, e.g., stagnant, slightly elevated temperature (50 C). The results showed that under sub-saturated conditions uranium is not removed from solution to any large extent in both simulant testing and actual tank waste testing. This aspect was not thoroughly understood prior to this work and was necessary to avoid criticality issues when actual tank wastes were aggregated. There are data supporting a small removal due to sorption of uranium on sites in the NAS. Above the solubility limit the data are clear that a reduction in uranium concentration occurs concomitant with the formation of aluminosilicate. This uranium precipitation is fairly rapid and ceases when uranium reaches its solubility limit. At the solubility limit, it appears that uranium is not affected, but further testing might be warranted.

Recent published work has shown that the phase change of shock compressed iron along the [001] direction does transform to the {epsilon} (HCP) phase similar to the case for static measurements. This article provides an indepth analysis of the experiment and NEMD simulations, using x-ray diffraction in both cases to study the crystal structure upon transition. Both simulation and experiment are consistent with a compression and shuffle mechanism responsible for the phase change from BCC to HCP. Also both show a polycrystalline structure upon the phase transition, due to the four degenerate directions the phase change can occur on, with grain sizes measured of 4nm in the NEMD simulations and {approx} 2nm in the experiment. And looking at the time scale of the transition the NEMD shows the transition from the compressed BCC to HCP is less then 1.2 ps where the experimental data places an upper limit on the transition of 80 ps.

This report is on The Animal Welfare Act: Background and Selected Legislation.

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 …

None

This report discusses the so-called “Article 98 agreements”. The article contains a provision that the Bush Administration has sought bilateral agreements worldwide to exempt U.S. citizens from ICC prosecution. In 2002, Congress passed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act or ASPA (P.L. 107-206, title II), which prohibits military assistance to countries that are party to the ICC and that do not have Article 98 agreements. Some Members of Congress and Bush Administration officials have expressed concerns about the unintended effects of these sanctions on U.S. relations with Latin America. Policymakers are considering some options to mitigate these effects without undermining ASPA or diplomatic efforts to secure Article 98 agreements.

This final report summarizes work carried out under agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy, related to geothermal energy policy issues. This project has involved a combination of outreach and publications on geothermal energy—Contract Number DE-FG03-01SF22367—with a specific focus on educating state-level policymakers. Education of state policymakers is vitally important because state policy (in the form of incentives or regulation) is a crucial part of the success of geothermal energy. State policymakers wield a significant influence over all of these policies. They are also in need of high quality, non-biased educational resources which this project provided. This project provided outreach to legislatures, in the form of responses to information requests on geothermal energy and publications. The publications addressed: geothermal leasing, geothermal policy, constitutional and statutory authority for the development of geothermal district energy systems, and state regulation of geothermal district energy systems. These publications were distributed to legislative energy committee members, and chairs, legislative staff, legislative libraries, and other related state officials. The effect of this effort has been to provide an extensive resource of information about geothermal energy for state policymakers in a form that is useful to them. This non-partisan information has been used as state policymakers attempt …

Cytogenetic analysis of blood lymphocytes is a well established method to assess the absorbed dose in persons exposed to ionizing radiation. Because mature lymphocytes circulate throughout the body, the dose to these cells is believed to represent the average whole body exposure. Cytogenetic methods measure the incidence of structural aberrations in chromosomes as a means to quantify DNA damage which occurs when ionizing radiation interacts with human tissue. Methods to quantify DNA damage at the chromosomal level vary in complexity and tend to be laborious and time consuming. In a mass casualty scenario involving radiological/nuclear materials, the ability to rapidly triage individuals according to radiation dose is critically important. For high-throughput screening for dicentric chromosomes, many of the data collection steps can be optimized with motorized microscopes coupled to automated slide scanning platforms.

Since the fall of 2003, a strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) has spread throughout Asia, infecting mostly poultry but also a limited number of humans. The virus reached Europe in 2005, and the Middle East and Africa in 2006. Avian flu is highly contagious in domestic poultry. Strict biosecurity measures are practiced by commercial poultry farms and encouraged by governments. The economic effects of avian flu outbreaks can be significant, especially given international trade restrictions. Controlling avian flu in poultry is seen as the best way to prevent a human pandemic from developing, by reducing the number of animal hosts in which the virus may evolve. This report mainly covers avian flu in poultry, and will be updated.

Since the fall of 2003, a strain of highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) has spread throughout Asia, infecting mostly poultry but also a limited number of humans. The virus reached Europe in 2005, and the Middle East and Africa in 2006. Avian flu is highly contagious in domestic poultry. Strict biosecurity measures are practiced by commercial poultry farms and encouraged by governments. The economic effects of avian flu outbreaks can be significant, especially given international trade restrictions. Controlling avian flu in poultry is seen as the best way to prevent a human pandemic from developing, by reducing the number of animal hosts in which the virus may evolve. This report mainly covers avian flu in poultry, and will be updated.

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.

This report discusses the Belarus: Background and U.S. Policy Concerns.