It is now possible to field a compact adaptive optics (AO) system on a surgical microscope for use in retinal diagnostics and surgery. Recent developments in integrated circuit technology and optical photonics have led to the capability of building an AO system that is compact and significantly less expensive than traditional AO systems. It is foreseen that such an AO system can be integrated into a surgical microscope while maintaining a package size of a lunchbox. A prototype device can be developed in a manner that lends itself well to large-scale manufacturing.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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

More than half a million drums of radioactive waste are stored at 30 Department of Energy sites across the nation, with thousands more to come as facilities at weapons complex sites are dismantled. All of these drums must be assayed to determine and verify their contents and levels of radioactivity so they can be transported for permanent storage or disposal. A system that assays containers of radioactive waste safely, accurately, and nonintrusively has garnered a prestigious R and D 100 Award--presented annually by R and D Magazine to ''the 100 most technologically significant new products and processes of the year''--for Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and its commercial partner, Bio-Imaging Research, Inc. (BIR) from Lincolnshire, Illinois. The award-winning Waste Inspection Tomography for Non-Destructive Assay (WIT-NDA) system was developed by a team of engineers and physicists headed by Livermore's Patrick Roberson and Harry Martz. The system combines active and passive computed tomography and nuclear spectroscopy to accurately quantify all detectable gamma rays emitted from waste containers. The WIT-NDA is part of BIR's Waste Inspection Tomography system, which provides nondestructive examination and assay of radioactive waste and has been commercially available since August 1999. ''The WIT-NDA is an excellent example of successful technology …

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Benchmark calculations for radiation transport coupled to a material temperature equation in a 1-D slab and 1-D spherical geometry binary random media are presented. The mixing statistics are taken to be homogeneous Markov statistics in the 1-D slab but only approximately Markov statistics in the 1-D sphere. The material chunk sizes are described by Poisson distribution functions. The material opacities are first taken to be constant and then allowed to vary as a strong function of material temperature. Benchmark values and variances for time evolution of the ensemble average of material temperature energy density and radiation transmission are computed via a Monte Carlo type method. These benchmarks are used as a basis for comparison with three other approximate methods of solution. One of these approximate methods is simple atomic mix. The second approximate model is an adaptation of what is commonly called the Levermore-Pomraning model and which is referred to here as the standard model. It is shown that recasting the temperature coupling as a type of effective scattering can be useful in formulating the third approximate model, an adaptation of a model due to Su and Pomraning which attempts to account for the effects of scattering in a stochastic …

One of the most promising battery types under development for use in both pure electric and hybrid electric vehicles is the lithium-ion battery. These batteries are well on their way to meeting the challenging technical goals that have been set for vehicle batteries. However, they are still far from achieving the current cost goals. The Center for Transportation Research at Argonne National Laboratory undertook a project for the US Department of Energy to estimate the costs of lithium-ion batteries and to project how these costs might change over time, with the aid of research and development. Cost reductions could be expected as the result of material substitution, economies of scale in production, design improvements, and/or development of new material supplies. The most significant contributions to costs are found to be associated with battery materials. For the pure electric vehicle, the battery cost exceeds the cost goal of the US Advanced Battery Consortium by about $3,500, which is certainly enough to significantly affect the marketability of the vehicle. For the hybrid, however, the total cost of the battery is much smaller, exceeding the cost goal of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles by only about $800, perhaps not enough …

The Department of Defense operates six environmental programs: cleanup of past contamination at military facilities, acceleration of cleanup at military bases designated for closure, compliance with environmental laws and regulations that apply to ongoing military operations, pollution prevention, natural resource conservation, and environmental technology. In addition to these activities, the Department of Energy is responsible for managing defense nuclear waste and remediating contaminated sites. This report discusses the federal laws that established these programs, describes their scope and purpose, provides a history of appropriations, indicates the President’s budget request for FY2001, examines authorization and appropriations legislation for FY2001, and discusses other relevant legislation considered in the 106th Congress.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) response to the House Committee on Government Reform regarding whether it delivered high explosive ammunition to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) during the Branch Davidian Incident. The Committee also asked whether GAO would change any of the findings in its April 1999 report based on DOD's response."

We evaluated several concepts for a new survey for small objects in the Solar System. We designed a highly novel survey for comets in the outer region of the Solar System, which exploits the occultations of relatively bright stars to infer the presence of otherwise extremely faint objects. The populations and distributions of these objects are not known; the uncertainties span orders of magnitude! These objects are important scientifically as probes of the primordial solar system, and programmatically now that major investments may be made in the possible mitigation of the hazard of asteroid or comet collisions with the Earth.

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Burnup credit is an ongoing issue in designing and licensing transportation and storage casks for spent nuclear fuel (SNF). To address this issue, in July 1999, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), Spent Fuel Project Office, issued Interim Staff Guidance-8 (ISG-8), Revision 1 allowing limited burnup credit for pressurized water reactor (PWR) spent nuclear fuel (SNF) to be used in transport and storage casks. However, one of the key limitations for a licensing basis analysis as stipulated in ISG-8, Revision 1 is that ''burnup credit is restricted to intact fuel assemblies that have not used burnable absorbers''. Because many PWR fuel designs have incorporated burnable-absorber rods for more than twenty years, this restriction places an unnecessary burden on the commercial nuclear power industry. This paper summarizes the effects of in-reactor irradiation on the isotopic inventory of PWR fuels containing different types of integral burnable absorbers (BAs). The work presented is illustrative and intended to represent typical magnitudes of the reactivity effects from depleting PWR fuel with different types of burnable absorbers.

Electron beam test welds were made joining flat plates of commercially pure niobium to a uranium-6wt%Nb (binary) alloy. The welding parameters and joint design were specifically developed to minimize mixing of the niobium with the U-6%Nb alloy. A Modified Faraday Cup (MFC) technique using computer-assisted tomography was employed to determine the precise power distribution of the electron beam so that the welding parameters could be directly transferred to other welding machines and/or to other facilities.

For a particle beam propagating in an alternating gradient focusing system, envelope equations are often employed to describe the evolution of the beam radii in the two directions transverse to the direction of propagation, and aligned with the principle axes of the alternating gradient system. When the beams have zero net angular momentum and when the alternating gradient focusing is approximated by a continuous focusing system, there are two normal modes to the envelope equations: the 'breathing' mode and a 'quadrupole' mode. In the former, the two radii oscillate in phase, and in the latter the radii oscillate 180 degrees out of phase. In this paper, we extend the analysis to include beams that have a finite angular momentum. We perturb the moment equations of ref. [1], wherein it was assumed that space charge is a distributed in a uniform density ellipse. Two additional modes are obtained. The breathing mode remains, but the quadrupole mode is split into two modes, and a new low frequency mode appears. We calculate the frequencies and eigenmodes of these four modes as a function of tune depression and a dimensionless net angular momentum. These modes can be excited by rotational errors of the quadrupoles …

Atomic force microscopy was used to study changes in the surface step structure of GaInAsSb layers with varying degrees of phase separation. The layers were grown by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy on (001) GaSb substrates with 2{sup o} miscut angles toward (-1-11)A, (1-11)B, and (101). Alloy decomposition was observed by contrast modulations in plan-view transmission electron microscopy, and broadening in x-ray diffraction and photoluminescence peaks. GaInAsSb layers with a minimal degree of phase separation exhibit a step-bunched step structure. A gradual degradation in the periodicity of the step structure is observed as the alloy decomposes into GaAs- and InSb-rich regions. The surface eventually develops trenches to accommodate the local strain associated with composition variations, which are on the order of a few percent. The surface composition is affected by substrate miscut angle, and although phase separation cannot be eliminated, its extent can be reduced by growing on substrates miscut toward (1-11)B.

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This report provides detailed information on the SCALE criticality safety cross-section libraries. Areas covered include the origins of the libraries, the data on which they are based, how they were generated, past experience and validations, and performance comparisons with measured critical experiments and numerical benchmarks. The performance of the SCALE criticality safety cross-section libraries on various types of fissile systems are examined in detail. Most of the performance areas are demonstrated by examining the performance of the libraries vs critical experiments to show general trends and weaknesses. In areas where directly applicable critical experiments do not exist, performance is examined based on the general knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the cross sections. In this case, the experience in the use of the cross sections and comparisons with the results of other libraries on the same systems are relied on for establishing acceptability of application of a particular SCALE library to a particular fissile system. This report should aid in establishing when a SCALE cross-section library would be expected to perform acceptably and where there are known or suspected deficiencies that would cause the calculations to be less reliable. To determine the acceptability of a library for a particular …

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

There has been considerable work accomplished internationally examining the effects of drill and blast excavation on rock masses surrounding emplacement openings of proposed nuclear waste repositories. However, there has been limited discussion tying the previous work to performance confirmation models such as those proposed for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. This paper addresses a possible approach to joining the available information on drill and blast excavation and performance confirmation. The method for coupling rock damage data from drill and blast models to performance assessment models for fracture flow requires a correlation representing the functional relationship between the peak particle velocity (PPV) vibration levels and the potential properties that govern water flow rates in the host rock. Fracture aperture and frequency are the rock properties which may be most influenced by drill and blast induced vibration. If it can be shown (using an appropriate blasting model simulation) that the effect of blasting is far removed from the waste package in an emplacement drift, then disturbance to the host rock induced in the process of drill and blast excavation may be reasonably ignored in performance assessment calculations. This paper proposes that the CANMET (Canada Center for Mineral and Energy Technology) Criterion, based on properties …

The use of specular reflectance to monitor GaSb substrate oxide desorption in-situ is reported. Substrates were loaded into the organometallic vapor phase epitaxy reactor either as-received (epi-ready) or after receiving a solvent degrease, acid etch and rinse. A variety of surface preparations and anneal conditions were investigated. HCL was used as the etchant, and in certain cases was followed by an additional etch in Br{sub 2}-HCl-HNO{sub 3}-CH{sub 3}COOH for comparison. Rinse comparisons included 2-propanol, methanol, and deionized water. Substrates were heated to either 525, 550, or 575 C. Features observed in the in-situ reflectance associated with the oxide desorption process were interpreted based on the starting oxide chemistry and thickness. Based on in-situ reflectance and ex-situ atomic force microscopy data, a recommendation on a reproducible GaSb substrate preparation technique suitable for high-quality epitaxial growth is suggested.

The authors report on the status of the new short bunch, high intensity electron gun at the Argonne Wakefield Accelerator. The 1-1/2 cell L-band photocathode RF gun is expected to produce 10--100 nC bunches with 2--5 ps rms pulse length and normalized emittance less than 100 mm mrad. The beam energy at the exit of the gun cavity will be in the range 7.5--10 MeV. A standing-wave linac structure operating at the same frequency (1.3 GHz) will increase the beam energy to about 15 MeV. This beam will be used in wakefield acceleration experiments with dielectric loaded structures. These travelling-wave dielectric loaded structures, operating at 7.8 and 15.6 GHz, will be excited by the propagation of single bunches or by trains of up to 32 electron bunches.

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The purpose of this Cooperative Research and Development Agreement was to perform an extensive design review and design a new microcontroller-based motor controller to operate the telescoping light. The new design tasked Federal Manufacturing and Technologies (FM and T) to utilize off-the-shelf components instead of military-specified components with higher reliability. The improved motor controller design looked at significantly reducing the overall component cost. FM and T brought specific strengths and capabilities to this project including custom circuit design, special testing, and troubleshooting expertise. In addition, Innovative Lighting Corporation (ILC) redesigned the housing and evaluated options to lower other component costs. ILC recognized the need for a redesign to eliminate other inefficiencies in the product's design. However, significant added costs to improve the product's reliability would make it difficult to attract the interest of boat manufacturers. The final objective was for FM and T to provide ILC with a tester to functionally test their PowerLight controller circuits before they were assembled onto the light and shipped to their customers. This would further reduce the incidence of customers receiving defective product from ILC.