In 1999, Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) designed and installed a series of engineered plantings consisting of a vegetative cover system and approximately 800 hybrid poplars and willows rooting at various predetermined depths. The plants were installed using various methods including Applied Natural Science's TreeWell{reg_sign} system. The goal of the installation was to protect downgradient surface and groundwater by hydraulic control of the contaminated plume by intercepting the contaminated groundwater with the tree roots, removing moisture from the upgradient soil area, reducing water infiltration, preventing soil erosion, degrading and/or transpiring the residual volatile organic compounds (VOCs), and removing tritium from the subsoil and groundwater. This report presents the results of the monitoring activities conducted by Argonne's Energy Systems Division (ES) in the growing season of 2004. Monitoring of the planted trees began soon after the trees were installed in 1999 and has been conducted every summer since then. As the trees grew and consolidated their growth into the contaminated soil and groundwater, their exposure to the contaminants was progressively shown through tissue sampling. Since the inception of the project, significant progress was made in the refinement and testing of the analytical method (for which no official method is available), the determination …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Census Bureau (Bureau) issued significant changes to rules governing the records that communities use to challenge the Bureau's population estimates. Previously, the Bureau routinely accepted all challenges, largely without regard to the data sources cited or provided so long as they supported the calculations and covered the appropriate reporting periods. According to Bureau officials, these changes are based on research that shows that estimates based on some methods and records (e.g., births, deaths, and migration) are substantially more accurate than estimates based on others. Among other changes, the Bureau modified procedures so that challenges by subcounty governments to the Bureau's estimates of people living in housing units will no longer affect countylevel population estimates. Moving forward, any such challenge resulting in an increase in the estimate of a subcounty population will be offset by a downward revision to the population estimate of all other communities in the same county. Also, the Bureau plans to routinely review population challenges in light of each community's population growth trend.Corroborating data will be required for challenges inconsistent with the trend."

This is the acceptance test report for pressure decay tests performed on newly-installed 241-AW Tank Farm primary ventilation system air inlet filter stations.

This report discusses the current debate over "net neutrality." While there is no single accepted definition of "net neutrality," most agree that any such definition should include the general principles that owners of the networks that compose and provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network, and they should not be able to discriminate against content provider access to that network.

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This report explains what a select committee is in the House of Representatives, and how it is used. The report explains that the recent usage of the select committee has been for fragmented or largely overlapping areas of jurisdiction for multiple committees.

The objective of the Advanced High-Temperature Reactor (AHTR) is to provide the very high temperatures necessary to enable low-cost (1) efficient thermochemical production of hydrogen and (2) efficient production of electricity. The proposed AHTR uses coated-particle graphite fuel similar to the fuel used in modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactors (MHTGRs), such as the General Atomics gas turbine-modular helium reactor (GT-MHR). However, unlike the MHTGRs, the AHTR uses a molten salt coolant with a pool configuration, similar to that of the PRISM liquid metal reactor. A multi-reheat helium Brayton (gas-turbine) cycle, with efficiencies >50%, is used to produce electricity. This approach (1) minimizes requirements for new technology development and (2) results in an advanced reactor concept that operates at essentially ambient pressures and at very high temperatures. The low-pressure molten-salt coolant, with its high heat capacity and natural circulation heat transfer capability, creates the potential for (1) exceptionally robust safety (including passive decay-heat removal) and (2) allows scaling to large reactor sizes [{approx}1000 Mw(e)] with passive safety systems to provide the potential for improved economics.

The overall objective of this project is to demonstrate that a development program based on advanced reservoir management methods can significantly improve oil recovery at the Nash Draw Pool (NDP). The plan includes developing a control area using standard reservoir management techniques and comparing its performance to an area developed using advanced reservoir management methods. Specific goals are (1) to demonstrate that an advanced development drilling and pressure maintenance program can significantly improve oil recovery compared to existing technology applications and (2) to transfer these advanced methodologies to oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin and elsewhere throughout the U.S. oil and gas industry.

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Programs at LLNL that involve large laser systems--ranging from the National Ignition Facility to new tactical laser weapons--depend on the maintenance of laser beam quality through precise control of the optical wavefront. This can be accomplished using adaptive optics, which compensate for time-varying aberrations that are often caused by heating in a high-power laser system. Over the past two decades, LLNL has developed a broad capability in adaptive optics technology for both laser beam control and high-resolution imaging. This adaptive optics capability has been based on thin deformable glass mirrors with individual ceramic actuators bonded to the back. In the case of high-power lasers, these adaptive optics systems have successfully improved beam quality. However, as we continue to extend our applications requirements, the existing technology base for wavefront control cannot satisfy them. To address this issue, this project studied improved modeling tools to increase our detailed understanding of the performance of these systems, and evaluated novel approaches to low-order wavefront control that offer the possibility of reduced cost and complexity. We also investigated improved beam control technology for high-resolution wavefront control. Many high-power laser systems suffer from high-spatial-frequency aberrations that require control of hundreds or thousands of phase points to …

The project ''Creating an Educational Consortium to Support the Recruitment and Retention of Expertise for the Nuclear Weapons Complex'' was also known as the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) University Fellowship Program. Since its inception, the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative program and its predecessor, the Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) program, have engaged university researchers and students in the sciences necessary to answer technical questions related to reducing high-level waste volumes, optimizing the economics and performance of Yucca Mountain, reducing the technical need for a second repository, reducing the long-term inventories of plutonium in spent fuel, and enabling the proliferation-resistant recovery of the energy contained in spent fuel. The Advanced Fuel Cycle University Fellowship Program is intended to support top students across the nation in a variety of disciplines that will be required to support transmutation research and technology development in the coming decades.

Affidavit of directors report for Harris-Fort Bend Telephone Company.

The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including Osama bin Laden. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security.

Uranium-(VI) phases are the primary alteration products of the UO{sub 2} in spent nuclear fuel and the UO{sub 2+x}, in natural uranium deposits. The U(VI)-phases generally form sheet structures of edge-sharing UO{sub 2}{sup 2+} polyhedra. The complexity of these structures offers numerous possibilities for coupled-substitutions of trace metals and radionuclides. The incorporation of radionuclides into U(VI)-structures provides a potential barrier to their release and transport in a geologic repository that experiences oxidizing conditions. In this study, we have used natural samples of UO{sub 2+x}, to study the U(VI)-phases that form during alteration and to determine the fate of the associated trace elements.

Monosodium titanate (MST) for use in the Actinide Removal Process (ARP) must be qualified and verified in advance. A single qualification sample for each batch of material is sent to SRNL for analysis, as well as a statistical sampling of verification samples. The Harrell Industries Lot No.120111 qualification and the first 12 verification samples met all the requirements in the specification indicating the material is acceptable for use in the process. Analyses of Pail 125 verification sample fails the criteria for solids content and has measurably lower pH, density, and total bottle weight. The verification sample for Pail 125 was retested for weight percent solids after checking that all of the solids had been suspended. The sample again failed to meet acceptance criteria. SRNL recommends accepting Pails 1 through 120. Pails 121 through 125 should be rejected and returned to the vendor.

This is a Power Point slide presentation.

On December 4, 1991, President George Bush signed into law the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) to counter illicit drug production and trade in Latin America. For ten years, it has provided preferential, mostly duty-free, treatment of selected U.S. imports from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The goal of ATPA is to encourage increased exports, thereby promoting development and providing an incentive for Andean farmers and other workers to pursue economic alternatives to the drug trade. This report discusses the ATPA, its background, and issues regarding its potential reauthorization.

Nineteen ninety-one was a busy and productive year for the Science and Engineering Alliance (SEA). This report covers the major programs and activities of the SEA during the fiscal year 1991 (the year ending September 30, 1991), which was the first year of operation. Where warranted, the report highlights some of the events from the last quarter of the calendar year. The SEA is a non-profit consortium of four Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The SEA members are Alabama A&M University (Normal, Alabama); Jackson State University (Jackson, Mississippi); Prairie View A&M University (Prairie View, Texas); and Southern University and A&M College (Baton Rouge, Louisiana). The SEA`s mission is to help increase the number of well-qualified minority scientists for the next century and beyond, and to provide input into the research and development needs of the nation. The SEA collaborates on research projects with government agencies, national laboratories, private foundations, industry and other universities in a broad range of technical areas.

The evaluation of purity and thermal conductivity at liquid Helium temperatures of the Niobium to be used in the fabrication of superconducting RF cavities is normally done by measuring the Residual Resistivity Ratio (RRR) of a sample of the material. The relationship between the thermal and the electrical conductivity (Wiedemann-Franz Law) simplifies the task by leading to the measurement of electrical instead of thermal resistance. The RRR is the ratio between the resistances of the sample at room temperature and at the operating temperature of the cavity. A more precise definition is discussed later. The conductivity at low temperatures depends on lattice defects and impurities. Impurities are also important for cavities in a direct way as affecting the RF properties of its surface when exposed by chemical etching. The following describes the experimental apparatus for RRR measurements developed at Fermilab's Beams Division. Part 2 contains a description of the sample-holder and measurement hardware. Part 3 contains a discussion on definition, measurements and errors. Part 4 gives a step-by-step description of the measurement procedure. Finally, Part 5 gives an example of results obtained recently on a Niobium sample for CKM cavities.

The operators of electrical grids, sometimes referred to as Balancing Authorities (BA), typically make critical decisions on how to most reliably and economically balance electrical load and generation in time frames ranging from a few minutes to six hours ahead. At higher levels of wind power generation, there is an increasing need to improve the accuracy of 0- to 6-hour ahead wind power forecasts. Forecasts on this time scale have typically been strongly dependent on short-term trends indicated by the time series of power production and meteorological data from a wind farm. Additional input information is often available from the output of Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models and occasionally from off-site meteorological towers in the region surrounding the wind generation facility. A widely proposed approach to improve short-term forecasts is the deployment of off-site meteorological towers at locations upstream from the wind generation facility in order to sense approaching wind perturbations. While conceptually appealing, it turns out that, in practice, it is often very difficult to derive significant benefit in forecast performance from this approach. The difficulty is rooted in the fact that the type, scale, and amplitude of the processes controlling wind variability at a site change from day …

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A report of an archaeological survey conducted in order to locate cultural resources for the proposed construction of a marina and associated facilities along the shoreline of Lake Lewisville.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Architect of the Capitol (AOC) is responsible for the maintenance, renovation, and new construction of the Capitol Hill complex, which comprises more than three dozen facilities and consists of nine jurisdictions, such as the U.S. Capitol and the Senate and House Office Buildings. In 2003, at the request of Congress, GAO issued a management review of AOC that contained recommendations in seven areas to help AOC become more strategic and accountable. GAO reported on AOC's progress in implementing those recommendations in January and August 2004. In 2005 and 2006, GAO briefed Congress on AOC's recent progress in implementing GAO's recommendations and on issues related to AOC's project and facilities management. This report summarizes GAO's (1) assessment of AOC's progress in implementing previous GAO recommendations and in improving project and facilities management and (2) delineation of remaining management challenges."

The goal of assembly sequencing is to plan a feasible series of operations to construct a product from its individual parts. Previous research has thoroughly investigated assembly sequencing under the assumption that parts have nominal geometry. This paper considers the case where parts have toleranced geometry. Its main contribution is an efficient procedure that decides if a product admits an assembly sequence with infinite translations that is feasible for all possible instances of the components within the specified tolerances. If the product admits one such sequence, the procedure can also generate it. For the cases where there exists no such assembly sequence, another procedure is proposed which generates assembly sequences that are feasible only for some values of the toleranced dimensions. If this procedure produces no such sequence, then no instance of the product is assemblable. Finally, this paper analyzes the relation between assembly and disassembly sequences in the presence of toleranced parts. This work assumes a simple, but non-trivial tolerance language that falls short of capturing all imperfections of a manufacturing process. Hence, it is only one step toward assembly sequencing with toleranced parts.