A final report - publication of the results from a workshop held in June 2004 on Horizontal Gene Transfer in the Enviornment

HEATS Project: MIT is developing a thermal energy storage device that captures energy from the sun; this energy can be stored and released at a later time when it is needed most. Within the device, the absorption of sunlight causes the solar thermal fuel’s photoactive molecules to change shape, which allows energy to be stored within their chemical bonds. A trigger is applied to release the stored energy as heat, where it can be converted into electricity or used directly as heat. The molecules would then revert to their original shape, and can be recharged using sunlight to begin the process anew. MIT’s technology would be 100% renewable, rechargeable like a battery, and emissions-free. Devices using these solar thermal fuels—called Hybrisol—can also be used without a grid infrastructure for applications such as de-icing, heating, cooking, and water purification.

This final report details the work done from January 2010 until April 2013 in the area of experimental and theoretical high energy particle physics and cosmology at the University of California, Davis.

A high-chromium refractory material that provides improved resistance to coal slag penetration is presented. The refractory mixture comprises a blend of chromium oxide, aluminum oxide and phosphates. The refractory mixture may be blended with an aggregate and cured. In addition a phosphorous oxide may be blended with chromium oxide and aluminum oxide and additionally an aggregate. The refractory mixture reduces the rate of coal slag penetration into the surface of the cured refractory.

Our overarching goal with this proposal was to develop a deep understanding of the design of Prochlorococcus and Vibrio cells, the variations in their designs, and the constraints that have shaped this variation at the cell-environment interface. That is, we wanted to develop our understanding of the biology of these microbes at all scales of biological organization, from individual cell design to the dynamics of large populations.

SUNDIALS [2], SUite of Nonlinear and DIfferential/ALgebraic equation Solvers, is a family of software tools for integration of ODE and DAE initial value problems and for the solution of nonlinear systems of equations. It consists of CVODE, IDA, and KINSOL, and variants of these with sensitivity analysis capabilities. SUNDIALSTB is a collection of MATLAB functions which provide interfaces to the SUNDIALS solvers. The core of each MATLAB interface in SUNDIALSTB is a single MEX file which interfaces to the various user-callable functions for that solver. However, this MEX file should not be called directly, but rather through the user-callable functions provided for each MATLAB interface. A major design principle for SUNDIALSTB was to provide an interface that is, as much as possible, equally familiar to users of both the SUNDIALS codes and MATLAB. Moreover, we tried to keep the number of user-callable functions to a minimum. For example, the CVODES MATLAB interface contains only 9 such functions, 3 of which interface solely to the adjoint sensitivity module in CVODES. In tune with the MATLAB ODESET function, optional solver inputs in SUNDIALSTB are specified through a single function (CvodeSetOptions for CVODES). However, unlike the ODE solvers in MATLAB, we have kept …

Individual raw datastreams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near real-time. Raw and processed data are then sent approximately daily to the ARM Archive, where they are made available to users. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of processed data records received daily at the Archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual datastream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year (FY) dating back to 1998.