A discrete-time Markov process can be compactly modeled as a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN)--a graphical model with nodes representing random variables and directed edges indicating causality between variables. Each node has a probability distribution, conditional on the variables represented by the parent nodes. A DBN's graphical structure encodes fixed conditional dependencies between variables. But in real-world systems, conditional dependencies between variables may be unknown a priori or may vary over time. Model errors can result if the DBN fails to capture all possible interactions between variables. Thus, we explore the representational framework of adaptive DBNs, whose structure and parameters can change from one time step to the next: a distribution's parameters and its set of conditional variables are dynamic. This work builds on recent work in nonparametric Bayesian modeling, such as hierarchical Dirichlet processes, infinite-state hidden Markov networks and structured priors for Bayes net learning. In this paper, we will explain the motivation for our interest in adaptive DBNs, show how popular nonparametric methods are combined to formulate the foundations for adaptive DBNs, and present preliminary results.

This report provides a short overview of The Circumstances In Which an Officer May Ask Questions Concerning Alienage.

In order to confirm benefits of a deep sub-micron FD-SOI and to identify possible issues concerning front-end circuits with the FD-SOI, we have submitted a small design to Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. via the multi-chip project service of VDEC, the University of Tokyo. The initial test results and future plans for development are presented.

None

None

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress enacted a program to compensate Department of Energy employees and contractors in the atomic weapons industry who developed work-related illnesses. Department of Labor (Labor) administers the program using estimates of workers' likely radiation exposure to decide claims. The estimates are produced by Health and Human Services' (HHS) National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and reviewed by the Advisory Board on Radiation and Worker Health. NIOSH awarded a contract to Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) to help carry out its work. GAO examined: (1) costs and oversight of NIOSH's contracts, (2) implementation of the conflict of interest policy for NIOSH and its contractors, (3) the extent of Labor's involvement in NIOSH's activities and actions to deny benefits, and (4) challenges to advisory board independence and options to enhance it. GAO reviewed contract files, examined Labor's comments on NIOSH documents, and analyzed data on cases sent to NIOSH for rework."

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of River Protection’s Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) will process and treat radioactive waste that is stored in tanks at the Hanford Site. Piping, pumps, and mixing vessels have been selected to transport, store, and mix the high-level waste slurries in the WTP. This report addresses the analyses performed by the Rheology Working Group (RWG) and Risk Assessment Working Group composed of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Bechtel National Inc. (BNI), CH2M HILL, DOE Office of River Protection (ORP) and Yasuo Onishi Consulting, LLC staff on data obtained from documented Hanford waste analyses to determine a best-estimate of the rheology of the Hanford tank wastes and their settling behavior. The actual testing activities were performed and reported separately in referenced documentation. Because of this, many of the required topics below do not apply and are so noted.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Electricity is vital to our daily lives, powering homes, businesses, and industries. Presently, electricity is generated largely by coal and other fossil fuels and nuclear power, with hydropower, and, to a lesser extent, renewable energy sources, such as wind. Because of electricity's importance to producers, consumers, and businesses, the federal government has undertaken a wide range of programs to develop the electricity sector, which includes fuel suppliers, electric utilities, and others in the electricity industry. These programs have sought to, among other things, develop the nation's electrical infrastructure, influence the types of fuels used to produce electricity, increase the use of renewable energy, and limit the harmful effects of electricity production. These programs are financed through federal subsidies, broadly defined as payments made or benefits provided by the federal government to encourage certain desired activities or behaviors. For example, the federal government has, for many years, funded research and development (R&D) on fossil fuels, nuclear energy, renewable energy, other energy technologies, and related efforts through the Department of Energy (DOE). In addition, the federal government has provided favorable tax treatment, such as tax credits to companies …

This report provides an overview of federal taxation of Indian tribes and individual tribal members. While the income of Indian tribes may be exempt from tax, Indian tribes are generally still subject to withholding and employment tax obligations.

This report discusses actions the 110th Congress is considering that affect the various uses and management of federal lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service. These actions include legislation, administrative or regulatory proposals, and litigation and judicial decisions. Issues areas include access to energy resources on federal lands, especially implementation of the Energy Policy Act of 2005; development of hardrock minerals; roadless area management and protection; management, protection, and disposal of wild horses and burros; wilderness designation and management; and wildfire management and protection. Many of these issues have been of interest to Congress and the nation for decades.

The Georgia Institute of Technology’s Industrial Assessment Center (GT IAC) has a long history working on the IAC program with over 30 years of experience in meeting the IAC program’s goals in a very effective manner since beginning participation in the IAC program’s predecessor, the EADC, in 1977. During the last four year contract period, October 1, 2002 through September 31, 2006, the GT IAC continued this work with the assessments of eighty nine (89) industrial facilities. These assessments resulted in the reported implemented savings of forty eight thousand (48,000,000) kWh of electricity and seven hundred and fifty thousand (750,000) MMBtu of natural gas. The total calculated cost savings from the recommendations implemented was five and a half million dollars ($5,500,000). These savings reoccur annually. However, this cost savings is the total of various recommendations that were calculated during 2002 to 2006. During this time period, energy prices were almost always lower than current energy prices. If you adjust the cost savings number to account for current energy prices, the cost savings would exceed nine million dollars ($9,000,000) reoccurring annually. Beyond the reduction of industrial energy consumption and the cost savings benefit, education has also been an important element of …

Executive Summary The document contains Final Technical Report on the Industrial Assessment Center Program at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, covering the contract period of 9/1/2002 to 11/30/2006, under the contract DE-FC36-02GO 12073. The Report describes six required program tasks, as follows: TASK 1 is a summary of the assessments performed over the life of the award: 77 assessments were performed, 595 AR were recommended, covering a very broad range of manufacturing plants. TASK 2 is a description of the efforts to promote and increase the adoption of assessment recommendations and employ innovative methods to assist in accomplishing these goals. The LMU IAC has been very successful in accomplishing the program goals, including implemented savings of $5,141,895 in energy, $10,045,411 in productivity and $30,719 in waste, for a total of $15,218,025. This represents 44% of the recommended savings of $34,896,392. TASK 3 is a description of the efforts promoting the IAC Program and enhancing recruitment efforts for new clients and expanded geographic coverage. LMU IAC has been very successful recruiting new clients covering Southern California. Every year, the intended number of clients was recruited. TASK 4 describes the educational opportunities, training, and other related activities for IAC students. A …

The Kotzebue Wind Power Project is a joint undertaking of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE); Kotzebue Electric Association (KEA); and the Alaska Energy Authority (AEA). The goal of the project is to develop, construct, and operate a wind power plant interconnected to a small isolated utility grid in an arctic climate in Northwest Alaska. The primary objective of KEA’s wind energy program is to bring more affordable electricity and jobs to remote Alaskan communities. DOE funding has allowed KEA to develop a multi-faceted approach to meet these objectives that includes wind project planning and development, technology transfer, and community outreach. The first wind turbines were installed in the summer of 1997 and the newest turbines were installed in the spring of 2007. The total installed capacity of the KEA wind power project is 1.16 MW with a total of 17 turbines rated between 65 kW and 100 kW. The operation of the wind power plant has resulted in a wind penetration on the utility system in excess of 35% during periods of low loads. This document and referenced attachments are presented as the final technical report for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) grant agreement DE-FG36-97GO10199. Interim deliverables previously …

This project’s mission was to achieve significant advances in the practical application of bulk high-temperature superconductor (HTS) materials to energy-storage systems. The ultimate product was planned as an operational prototype of a flywheel system on an HTS suspension. While the final prototype flywheel did not complete the final offsite demonstration phase of the program, invaluable lessons learned were captured on the laboratory demonstration units that will lead to the successful deployment of a future HTS-stabilized, composite-flywheel energy-storage system (FESS).

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States is pursuing two paths to fusion energy--magnetic and inertial. On November 21, 2006, the United States signed an agreement with five countries and the European Union to build and operate the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) in Cadarache, France, to demonstrate the feasibility of magnetic fusion energy. The United States also built and operates facilities to pursue inertial fusion energy research. This report discusses (1) U.S. contributions to ITER and the challenges, if any, in managing this international fusion program and (2) the Department of Energy's (DOE) management of alternative fusion research activities, including National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) initiatives. In performing this work, GAO analyzed budget documents, briefings, and reports that focused on research and funding priorities for the fusion program. GAO also met with officials from DOE, NNSA, and the ITER Organization in France."

We demonstrate propagation and small backscatter losses of a frequency-doubled (2{omega}) laser beam interacting with inertial confinement fusion hohlraum plasmas. The electron temperature of 3.3 keV, approximately a factor of two higher than achieved in previous experiments with open geometry targets, approaches plasma conditions of high-fusion yield hohlraums. In this new temperature regime, we measure 2{omega} laser beam transmission approaching 80% with simultaneous backscattering losses of less than 10%. These findings suggests that good laser coupling into fusion hohlraums using 2{omega} light is possible.

The in-orbit performance and calibration of the Hard X-ray Detector (HXD) on board the X-ray astronomy satellite Suzaku are described. Its basic performances, including a wide energy bandpass of 10-600 keV, energy resolutions of {approx}4 keV (FWHM) at 40 keV and {approx}11% at 511 keV, and a high background rejection efficiency, have been confirmed by extensive in-orbit calibrations. The long-term gains of PIN-Si diodes have been stable within 1% for half a year, and those of scintillators have decreased by 5-20%. The residual non-X-ray background of the HXD is the lowest among past non-imaging hard X-ray instruments in energy ranges of 15-70 and 150-500 keV. We provide accurate calibrations of energy responses, angular responses, timing accuracy of the HXD, and relative normalizations to the X-ray CCD cameras using multiple observations of the Crab Nebula.

We report on a search for the lepton-flavor-violating processes e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{tau}{sup -} and e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} e{sup +}{tau}{sup -}. The data sample corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 211 fb{sup -1} recorded by the BABAR experiment at the SLAC PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at a center-of-mass energy of {radical}s = 10:58 GeV. We find no evidence for a signal and set the 95% confidence level upper limits on the cross sections to be {sigma}{sub {mu}{tau}} < 4:6 fb and {sigma}{sub e{tau}} < 10:1 fb. The ratios of the cross sections with respect to the dimuon cross section are measured to be {sigma}{sub {mu}{tau}} ={sigma}{sub {mu}{mu}} < 4:0x10{sup -6} and {sigma}{sub e{tau}}/{sigma}{sub {mu}{mu}} < 8.9 x 10{sup -6}.

We reported previously that the homologous recombinational repair (HRR)-deficient Chinese hamster mutant cell line irs3 (deficient in the Rad51 paralog Rad51C) showed only a 50% spontaneous frequency of sister chromatid exchange (SCE) as compared to parental wild-type V79 cells. Furthermore, when irradiated with very low doses of alpha particles, SCEs were not induced in irs3 cells, as compared to a prominent bystander effect observed in V79 cells (Nagasawa et al., Radiat. Res. 164, 141-147, 2005). In the present study, we examined additional Chinese hamster cell lines deficient in the Rad51 paralogs Rad51C, Rad51D, Xrcc2, and Xrcc3 as well as another essential HRR protein, Brca2. Spontaneous SCE frequencies in non-irradiated wild-type cell lines CHO, AA8 and V79 were 0.33 SCE/chromosome, whereas two Rad51C-deficient cell lines showed only 0.16 SCE/chromosome. Spontaneous SCE frequencies in cell lines defective in Rad51D, Xrcc2, Xrcc3, and Brca2 ranged from 0.23-0.33 SCE/chromosome, 0-30% lower than wild-type cells. SCEs were induced significantly 20-50% above spontaneous levels in wild-type cells exposed to a mean dose of 1.3 mGy of alpha particles (<1% of nuclei traversed by an alpha particle). However, induction of SCEs above spontaneous levels was minimal or absent after {alpha}-particle irradiation in all of the HRR-deficient cell …

A wide spectrum of laboratory owners, ranging from universities to federal agencies, have explicit goals for energy efficiency in their facilities. For example, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPACT 2005) requires all new federal buildings to exceed ASHRAE 90.1-2004 1 by at least 30 percent. The University of California Regents Policy requires all new construction to exceed California Title 24 2 by at least 20 percent. A new laboratory is much more likely to meet energy efficiency goals if quantitative metrics and targets are explicitly specified in programming documents and tracked during the course of the delivery process. If efficiency targets are not explicitly and properly defined, any additional capital costs or design time associated with attaining higher efficiencies can be difficult to justify. The purpose of this guide is to provide guidance on how to specify and compute energy efficiency metrics and benchmarks for laboratories, at the whole building as well as the system level. The information in this guide can be used to incorporate quantitative metrics and targets into the programming of new laboratory facilities. Many of these metrics can also be applied to evaluate existing facilities. For information on strategies and technologies to achieve energy efficiency, …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As a result of the 2005 base realignment and closure (BRAC) round, the military services are required to transfer to the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) all of their supply, storage, and distribution functions at specified depot maintenance locations that are collocated with a DLA distribution depot. These transfer actions are part of a larger BRAC recommendation, commonly referred to as the Supply, Storage, and Distribution (SS&D) recommendation, that is intended to reduce both the number of supply distribution depots and related excess capacity, while providing the Department of Defense (DOD) with a logistics base that saves money and enhances the effectiveness of logistics support to operational forces. There has been disagreement among the services and DLA about whether certain personnel positions that include functions inherently involving both supply and maintenance operations at the services' industrial depots should transfer to DLA as part of this recommendation. The Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps reached agreement with DLA about these positions in January, February, and April 2007, respectively. After repeated opposition to the transfer of certain positions, in July 2007 the Army agreed to comply with direction from the Office …

This alignment technique was developed while performing heterodyne velocimetry measurements at LLNL. There are a few minor items needed, such as a white card with aperture in center, visible alignment laser, IR back reflection meter, and a microscope to view the bridge surface. The work was performed on KCP flyers that were 6 and 8 mils wide. The probes used were Oz Optics manufactured with focal distances of 42mm and 26mm. Both probes provide a spot size of approximately 80?m at 1550nm. The 42mm probes were specified to provide an internal back reflection of -35 to -40dB, and the probe back reflections were measured to be -37dB and -33dB. The 26mm probes were specified as -30dB and both measured -30.5dB. The probe is initially aligned normal to the flyer/bridge surface. This provides a very high return signal, up to -2dB, due to the bridge reflectivity. A white card with a hole in the center as an aperture can be used to check the reflected beam position relative to the probe and launch beam, and the alignment laser spot centered on the bridge, see Figure 1 and Figure 2. The IR back reflection meter is used to measure the dB return …

None

The Petascale Simulation Initiative began as an LDRD project in the middle of Fiscal Year 2004. The goal of the project was to develop techniques to allow large-scale scientific simulation applications to better exploit the massive parallelism that will come with computers running at petaflops per second. One of the major products of this work was the design and prototype implementation of a programming model and a runtime system that lets applications extend data-parallel applications to use task parallelism. By adopting task parallelism, applications can use processing resources more flexibly, exploit multiple forms of parallelism, and support more sophisticated multiscale and multiphysics models. Our programming model was originally called the Symponents Architecture but is now known as Cooperative Parallelism, and the runtime software that supports it is called Coop. (However, we sometimes refer to the programming model as Coop for brevity.) We have documented the programming model and runtime system in a submitted conference paper [1]. This report focuses on the specific accomplishments of the Cooperative Parallelism project (as we now call it) under Tech Base funding in FY2007. Development and implementation of the model under LDRD funding alone proceeded to the point of demonstrating a large-scale materials modeling application …