Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for addressing the threat of nuclear smuggling. Radiation detection portal monitors are key elements in our national defenses against such threats. DHS has sponsored R&D and testing activities to develop a "next generation" portal monitor, known as the advanced spectroscopic portal monitor. However, each one costs 6 times more than a current portal monitor. In March 2006, we recommended that DHS conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the new portal monitors are worth the additional cost. In June 2006, DHS issued its analysis. In October 2006, we issued our report that assessed the DHS study. GAO's statement, based on our October 2006 report, addresses whether DHS's cost-benefit analysis provides an adequate basis for its decision to purchase and deploy the next generation portal monitors."

The Hanford K Basin Closure Project involves the retrieval, transfer and processing of radioactive contaminated slurries containing partially corroded spent nuclear fuel from the K Basin spent fuel pools. The spent fuel is primarily metallic fuel from the operation of the Hanford reactors. The Sludge Treatment Project is being designed to treat and package this material in preparation for ultimate disposal. The processing of the contaminated slurries includes further corrosion of the remaining uncorroded uranium metal in a large heated vessel to form a more stable metal oxide for packaging and storage.

Lattice mismatch strains are widely known to controlnanoscale pattern formation in heteroepitaxy, but such effects have notbeen exploited in colloidal nanocrystal growth. We demonstrate acolloidal route to synthesizing CdS-Ag2S nanorod superlattices throughpartial cation exchange. Strain induces the spontaneous formation ofperiodic structures. Ab initio calculations of the interfacial energy andmodeling of strain energies show that these forces drive theself-organization. The nanorod superlattices exhibit high stabilityagainst ripening and phase mixing. These materials are tunablenear-infrared emitters with potential applications as nanometer-scaleoptoelectronic devices.

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Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

This report provides information about the Implementation and Issues of Clean Air Permitting. It also describes the statutory background of Title V and the status of implementation, in terms of federal approval and local permitting authorities.

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This report examines issues regarding broadband access in the U.S., more specifically the "digital divide,” which is a term that has been used to characterize a gap between “information haves and have-nots,” or in other words, between those Americans who use or have access to telecommunications technologies (e.g., telephones, computers, the Internet) and those who do not.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Welcome to the annual 2007 Environmental Remediation Sciences Program (ERSP) Principal Investigators (PIs) meeting. The purpose of this meeting is to bring together all of the lead PIs and key Co-PIs in the program to share and review the results of funded research from the past year. This meeting allows program managers from the Environmental Remediation Sciences Division (ERSD) within the Office of Biological and Environmental Research (OBER) to gauge the progress and significance of the funded research, and it is also an important venue to showcase ERSP research to interested parties within DOE and other invited federal agency representatives. Additionally, these meetings should serve as an opportunity for funded PIs to view their research in the context of the entire ERSP portfolio. Past ERSP meetings have been very important venues for detailed discussion of research results among PIs, development of new research ideas, fostering new collaborations and discussion with ERSD program managers on future research efforts and/or initiatives within the program. In short, these meetings are an important resource for both program managers and PIs. There will be only one ERSP PI meeting for 2007. In years past, ERSD has sponsored two PI meetings, one in the spring and …

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The b {yields} d penguin-dominated modes B {yields} K{bar K} have been observed at the B factories. in addition, the BABAR collaboration has reported the first time-dependent CP-violation measurement in B{sup 0} {yields} K{sup 0}{bar K}{sup 0}.

SLAC is in the privileged position of being the site for the world's first 4th generation light source as well as having a premier accelerator research staff and facilities. Operation of the world's first x-ray free electron laser (FEL) facility will require innovations in electron injectors to provide electron beams of unprecedented quality. Upgrades to provide ever shorter wavelength x-ray beams of increasing intensity will require significant advances in the state-of-the-art. The BESAC 20-Year Facilities Roadmap identifies the electron gun as ''the critical enabling technology to advance linac-based light sources'' and recognizes that the sources for next-generation light sources are ''the highest-leveraged technology'', and that ''BES should strongly support and coordinate research and development in this unique and critical technology''.[1] This white paper presents an R&D plan and a description of a facility for developing the knowledge and technology required to successfully achieve these upgrades, and to coordinate efforts on short-pulse source development for linac-based light sources.

This report describes research performed under Laboratory Research and Development Project 05-ERD-019, entitled ''A New Capability for Regional High-Frequency Seismic Wave Simulation in Realistic Three-Dimensional Earth Models to Improve Nuclear Explosion Monitoring''. A more appropriate title for this project is ''A Model-Based Signal Processing Approach to Nuclear Explosion Monitoring''. This project supported research for a radically new approach to nuclear explosion monitoring as well as allowed the development new capabilities in computational seismology that can contribute to NNSA/NA-22 Programs.

Air pollution arising from the emission of nitrogen oxides as a result of combustion taking place in boilers, furnaces and engines, has increasingly been recognized as a problem. New methods to remove NOx emissions significantly and economically must be developed. The current technology for post-combustion removal of NO is the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO by ammonia or possibly by a hydrocarbon such as methane. The catalytic decomposition of NO to give N2 will be preferable to the SCR process because it will eliminate the costs and operating problems associated with the use of an external reducing species. The most promising decomposition catalysts are transition metal (especially copper)-exchanged zeolites, perovskites, and noble metals supported on metal oxides such as alumina, silica, and ceria. The main shortcoming of the noble metal reducible oxide (NMRO) catalysts is that they are prone to deactivation by oxygen. It has been reported that catalysts containing tin oxide show oxygen adsorption behavior that may involve hydroxyl groups attached to the tin oxide. This is different than that observed with other noble metal-metal oxide combinations, which have the oxygen adsorbing on the noble metal and subsequently spilling over to the metal oxide. This observation leads one …

Often in criticality safety problems, the analyst is concerned about two conditions: Loss of Mass Control and Loss of Moderation Control. Determining and modeling the maximum amount of fuel that can fit in a given container is usually trivial. Determining and modeling the maximum amount of water (or other potential moderator) is usually more difficult. Optimization of the pitch has been shown to provide an increase in system reactivity. Both MOX and LEU systems have been shown to be sensitive to moderator intrusion in varying pitched configurations. The analysis will have to determine the effect of optimizing the pitch for each array.

The energy frontier of particle physics is several trillion electron volts, but colliders capable of reaching this regime (such as the Large Hadron Collider and the International Linear Collider) are costly and time-consuming to build; it is therefore important to explore new methods of accelerating particles to high energies. Plasma-based accelerators are particularly attractive because they are capable of producing accelerating fields that are orders of magnitude larger than those used in conventional colliders. In these accelerators, a drive beam (either laser or particle) produces a plasma wave (wakefield) that accelerates charged particles. The ultimate utility of plasma accelerators will depend on sustaining ultrahigh accelerating fields over a substantial length to achieve a significant energy gain. Here we show that an energy gain of more than 42 GeV is achieved in a plasma wakefield accelerator of 85 cm length, driven by a 42 GeV electron beam at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). The results are in excellent agreement with the predictions of three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Most of the beam electrons lose energy to the plasma wave, but some electrons in the back of the same beam pulse are accelerated with a field of {approx} 52GV m{sup -1}. This effectively …

The symplectic symmetry of eigenstates for the 0{sub gs}{sup +} in {sup 16}O and the 0{sub gs}{sup +} and lowest 2{sup +} and 4{sup +} configurations of {sup 12}C that are well-converged within the framework of the no-core shell model with the JISP16 realistic interaction is examined. These states are found to project at the 85-90% level onto very few symplectic representations including the most deformed configuration, which confirms the importance of a symplectic no-core shell model and reaffirms the relevance of the Elliott SU(3) model upon which the symplectic scheme is built.

The authors discuss the first NNLL prediction of the B {yields} X{sub s}{gamma} branching ratio, including important additional subtleties due to non-perturbative corrections and logarithmically-enhanced cut effects.

We have developed a Monte Carlo model of the Earth's atmosphere and implemented it in three different codes (GEANT4, MCNPX, and FLUKA). Primary protons in the energy range of 1 GeV-100 TeV are injected at the top of the atmosphere. The codes follow the tracks of all relevant secondary particles (neutrons, muons, gammas, electrons, and pions) and tally their fluxes at selectable altitudes. Comparisons with cosmic ray data at sea level show good agreement.