Advanced Natural Language Processing Tools for Web Information Retrieval, Content Analysis, and Synthesis. The goal of this SBIR was to implement and evaluate several advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools and techniques to enhance the precision and relevance of search results by analyzing and augmenting search queries and by helping to organize the search output obtained from heterogeneous databases and web pages containing textual information of interest to DOE and the scientific-technical user communities in general. The SBIR investigated 1) the incorporation of spelling checkers in search applications, 2) identification of significant phrases and concepts using a combination of linguistic and statistical techniques, and 3) enhancement of the query interface and search retrieval results through the use of semantic resources, such as thesauri. A search program with a flexible query interface was developed to search reference databases with the objective of enhancing search results from web queries or queries of specialized search systems such as DOE's Information Bridge. The DOE ETDE/INIS Joint Thesaurus was processed to create a searchable database. Term frequencies and term co-occurrences were used to enhance the web information retrieval by providing algorithmically-derived objective criteria to organize relevant documents into clusters containing significant terms. A thesaurus provides …

It was determined that a radioactive waste leak in the Hanford S Farm in the vicinity of the S-102 retrieval pump discharge occurred because of over-pressurization and failure of the S-102 dilution water supply hose while operating the retrieval pump in reverse with an obstructed suction cavity and an unobstructed flow path to the dilution water supply hose. This report describes efforts to identify plausible scenarios for the waste leak to occur.

Multiple, stress-level slug tests were performed at selected test/depth intervals within wells 399-2-5, 399-3-22, and 399-4-14 as part of the 300 Area volatile organic compound characterization program at the Hanford Site in Washington State. The temporary test screen lengths were characterized as the boreholes were advanced to their final drill depths and before their completion as monitor-well facilities. Following well completion, slug tests were performed in the final, completed well-screen sections. The objectives of the slug tests were to provide the vertical distribution of hydraulic conductivity with depth at these locations and to support selection of the final well screen-depth interval for each of these monitor-well facilities.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) commitment to assuring the health and safety of its workers includes the conduct of illness and injury surveillance activities that provide an early warning system to detect health problems among workers. The Illness and Injury Surveillance Program monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) commitment to assuring the health and safety of its workers includes the conduct of illness and injury surveillance activities that provide an early warning system to detect health problems among workers. The Illness and Injury Surveillance Program monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

Genetic Analysis of Juvenile Chinook Salmon for inclusion in 'Ecology of Juvenile Salmonids in Shallow Tidal Freshwater Habitats in the Vicinity of the Sandy River Delta, lower Columbia River, 2007. Final report submitted to the Bonneville Power Administration, Contract DE-AC05-76RLO1830.' Genotypic data were collected for 108 Chinook salmon and used in the genetic stock identification analysis. Results of the mixture analysis are presented in Table 1. Percentage estimates for four genetic stock groups (West Cascade Tributary Fall, Willamette River Spring, Deschutes River Fall, and Upper Columbia River Summer/Fall) ranged from 11% to 43%, all with non-zero lower 95% confidence intervals. Small contributions were also estimated for the West Cascade Tributary Spring (3%) and Snake River Fall (6%) stock groups. Results of individual fish probability assignments were summed by collection date (Figure 1) and site (Figure 2). Assignment probabilities for the most likely stock group for each individual ranged from 0.51 to 1.00 with approximately 60% of the assignments greater than 0.90 (data not shown). Nearly all of the low probability assignments were fish with assignments split between the Deschutes River Fall and Upper Columbia River Summer/Fall groups.

In this document we assess the North American industry's current ability to manufacture polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells.

The Constitution of the United States makes no specific allowance for any one of the co-equal branches to have access to information held by the others and contains no provision expressly establishing a procedure for, or a right of, public access to government information. Nonetheless, Congress has legislated various public access laws. These include two records access statutes — the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act — and two meetings access statutes — the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Government in the Sunshine Act. This report provides background on the issue of government transparency and examines relevant litigation.

The purpose of this report is to provide status of the ingest software used to process instrument data for the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility (ACRF). The report is divided into four sections: (1) news about ingests currently under development, (2) current production ingests, (3) future ingest development plans, and (4) information on retired ingests. Please note that datastreams beginning in “xxx” indicate cases where ingests run at multiple ACRF sites, which results in a datastream(s) for each location.

The purpose of this report is to provide a concise but comprehensive overview of Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility instrumentation status. The report is divided into the following four sections: (1) new instrumentation in the process of being acquired and deployed, (2) existing instrumentation and progress on improvements or upgrades, (3) proposed future instrumentation, and (4) Small Business Innovation Research instrument development.

In continuation of the development of composite materials for air separation based on molecular sieving properties and magnetic fields effects, several molecular sieve materials were tested in a flow system, and the effects of temperature, flow conditions, and magnetic fields were investigated. New carbon materials adsorbents, with and without pre-loaded super-paramagnetic nanoparticles of Fe3O4 were synthesized; all materials were packed in chromatographic type columns which were placed between the poles of a high intensity, water-cooled, magnet (1.5 Tesla). In order to verify the existence of magnetodesorption effect, separation tests were conducted by injecting controlled volumes of air in a flow of inert gas, while the magnetic field was switched on and off. Gas composition downstream the column was analyzed by gas chromatography and by mass spectrometry. Under the conditions employed, the tests confirmed that N2 - O2 separation occurred at various degrees, depending on material's intrinsic properties, temperature and flow rate. The effect of magnetic fields, reported previously for static conditions, was not confirmed in the flow system. The best separation was obtained for zeolite 13X at sub-ambient temperatures. Future directions for the project include evaluation of a combined system, comprising carbon and zeolite molecular sieves, and testing the effect …

On March 28-30 and May 1-4, 2007, CONSOL Energy Inc. Research & Development (CONSOL R&D) performed flue gas sampling at AES Greenidge to verify the performance of the multi-pollutant control system recently installed by Babcock Power Environmental Inc. (BPEI) on the 107-MW Unit 4 (Boiler 6). The multi-pollutant control system includes combustion modifications and a hybrid selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR)/in-duct selective catalytic reduction (SCR) system to reduce NO{sub x} emissions, followed by a Turbosorp{reg_sign} circulating fluidized bed dry scrubber system and baghouse to reduce emissions of SO{sub 2}, SO{sub 3}, HCl, HF, and particulate matter. Mercury removal is provided via the co-benefits afforded by the in-duct SCR, dry scrubber, and baghouse and by injection of activated carbon upstream of the scrubber, as required. The testing in March and May demonstrated that the multi-pollutant control system attained its performance targets for NO{sub x} emissions, SO{sub 2} removal efficiency, acid gas (SO{sub 3}, HCl, and HF) removal efficiency, and mercury removal efficiency. However, the ammonia slip measured between the SCR outlet and air heater inlet was consistently greater than the guarantee of 2 ppmvd {at} 3% O{sub 2}. As a result, additional testing was performed on May 30-June 1 and on June …

The DOE's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) currently manages the largest research program in the country for controlling coal-based mercury emissions. NETL has shown through various field test programs that the determination of cost-effective mercury control strategies is complex and highly coal- and plant-specific. However, one particular technology has the potential for widespread application: the injection of activated carbon upstream of either an electrostatic precipitator (ESP) or a fabric filter baghouse. This technology has potential application to the control of mercury emissions on all coal-fired power plants, even those with wet and dry scrubbers. This is a low capital cost technology in which the largest cost element is the cost of sorbents. Therefore, the obvious solutions for reducing the costs of mercury control must focus on either reducing the amount of sorbent needed or decreasing the cost of sorbent production. NETL has researched the economics and performance of novel sorbents and determined that there are alternatives to the commercial standard (NORIT DARCO{reg_sign} Hg) and that this is an area where significant technical improvements can still be made. In addition, a key barrier to the application of sorbent injection technology to the power industry is the availability of activated carbon production. …

The purpose of this report is to give wind turbine engineers information and examples of the design, testing through simulation, field implementation, and field testing of advanced wind turbine controls.

This report, commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), provides a comprehensive set of cost data supporting a cost analysis for the relative economic comparison of options for use in the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) Program. The report describes the AFCI cost basis development process, reference information on AFCI cost modules, a procedure for estimating fuel cycle costs, economic evaluation guidelines, and a discussion on the integration of cost data into economic computer models. This report contains reference cost data for 25 cost modules—23 fuel cycle cost modules and 2 reactor modules. The cost modules were developed in the areas of natural uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, depleted uranium disposition, fuel fabrication, interim spent fuel storage, reprocessing, waste conditioning, spent nuclear fuel (SNF) packaging, long-term monitored retrievable storage, near surface disposal of low-level waste (LLW), geologic repository and other disposal concepts, and transportation processes for nuclear fuel, LLW, SNF, transuranic, and high-level waste.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory Office of Coal and Environmental Systems has as its mission to develop advanced gasification-based technologies for affordable, efficient, zero-emission power generation. These advanced power systems, which are expected to produce near-zero pollutants, are an integral part of DOE's Vision 21 Program. DOE has also been developing advanced gasification systems that lower the capital and operating costs of producing syngas for chemical production. A transport reactor has shown potential to be a low-cost syngas producer compared to other gasification systems since its high-throughput-per-unit cross-sectional area reduces capital costs. This work directly supports the Power Systems Development Facility utilizing the KBR transport reactor located at the Southern Company Services Wilsonville, Alabama, site. Over 2800 hours of operation on 11 different coals ranging from bituminous to lignite along with a petroleum coke has been completed to date in the pilot-scale transport reactor development unit (TRDU) at the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC). The EERC has established an extensive database on the operation of these various fuels in both air-blown and oxygen-blown modes utilizing a pilot-scale transport reactor gasifier. This database has been useful in determining the effectiveness of design changes on an …

This report summarizes power electronic interfaces for DE applications and the topologies needed for advanced power electronic interfaces. It focuses on photovoltaic, wind, microturbine, fuel cell, internal combustion engine, battery storage, and flywheel storage systems.

Weyerhaeuser operates the world's only commercial high-temperature black liquor gasifier at its pulp mill in New Bern, NC. The unit was started-up in December 1996 and currently processes about 15% of the mill's black liquor. Weyerhaeuser, Chemrec AB (the gasifier technology developer), and the U.S. Department of Energy recognized that the long-term, continuous operation of the New Bern gasifier offered a unique opportunity to advance the state of high temperature black liquor gasification toward the commercial-scale pressurized O2-blown gasification technology needed as a foundation for the Forest Products Bio-Refinery of the future. Weyerhaeuser along with its subcontracting partners submitted a proposal in response to the 2004 joint USDOE and USDA solicitation - 'Biomass Research and Development Initiative'. The Weyerhaeuser project 'Advancement of High Temperature Black Liquor Gasification' was awarded USDOE Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-04NT42259 in November 2004. The overall goal of the DOE sponsored project was to utilize the Chemrec{trademark} black liquor gasification facility at New Bern as a test bed for advancing the development status of molten phase black liquor gasification. In particular, project tasks were directed at improvements to process performance and reliability. The effort featured the development and validation of advanced CFD modeling tools and the application of …

This report provides a broad overview of U.S. strategic interests in Africa and the role of U.S. military efforts on the continent as they pertain to the creation of AFRICOM. Although the command is still in the early stages of its development, a discussion of AFRICOM’s mission, its coordination with other government agencies, and its basing and manpower requirements is included.

This report discusses the African Development Bank (AfDB) Group, which is a regional development bank (RDB) "dedicated to combating poverty and improving the lives of people of the continent." It comprises three lending facilities: the market rate facility, the AfDB; a concessional lending facility, the African Development Fund; and a trust fund established by Nigeria to lend to low-income African countries. The Bank has 53 African members, as well as 24 non-regional members, including the United States.

To help inform discussions on the federal role in dam safety, this report provides background information on the nation’s dam safety activities and funding mechanisms.

This report discusses the U.S. Air Force in-flight aerial refueling aircraft program. The KC-135, which makes up the preponderance of the Air Force's tanker force, is among the Air Force's oldest aircraft.

This report describes how the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) is ineffective under the tax reductions of 2004-2007.

This report is about the America COMPETES act and the budget for the fiscal year 2009.