The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program offers extended unemployment benefits and job training to workers left jobless by the impact of foreign trade. A similar program was begun with the adoption of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). This Transitional Adjustment Assistance Program (NAFTA-TAAP) not only aids trade-affected workers but also helps those who lose jobs because their firms have relocated production to Canada or Mexico.

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

We have clearly shown that the film morphology dictates the anti-stiction properties of FDTS coatings. Release stiction is not observed when ideal monolayer films are present but can be extensive when thicker aggregate structures are present. This finding is significant because it indicates that agglomerate formation during processing is a major source of irreproducible behavior when FDTS coatings are used to release micromachined parts. The results could also help explain why coatings that are aged at high. humidity start to stick to each other. (AFM results show that humid environments promote the formation of aggregates from monolayer films.) The reason why aggregate structures promote stiction is currently unknown. However, it appears that aggregates interfere with the ability of FDTS to form dense, well-ordered coatings under microstructures, leading to surfaces that are sufficiently hydrophilic to allow for release stiction via an attractive Laplace force during drying.

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For the last ten years, the Japanese High-Level Nuclear Waste (HLW) repository program has focused on assessing the feasibility of a basic repository concept, which resulted in the recently published H12 Report. As Japan enters the implementation phase, a new organization must identify, screen and choose potential repository sites. Thus, a rapid mechanism for determining the likelihood of site suitability is critical. The threshold approach, described here, is a simple mechanism for defining the likelihood that a site is suitable given estimates of several critical parameters. We rely on the results of a companion paper, which described a probabilistic performance assessment simulation of the HLW reference case in the H12 report. The most critical two or three input parameters are plotted against each other and treated as spatial variables. Geostatistics is used to interpret the spatial correlation, which in turn is used to simulate multiple realizations of the parameter value maps. By combining an array of realizations, we can look at the probability that a given site, as represented by estimates of this combination of parameters, would be good host for a repository site.

Photovoltaic (PV) power systems, like other electrical systems, may be subject to unexpected ground faults. Installed PV systems always have invisible elements other than those indicated by their electrical schematics. Stray inductance, capacitance and resistance are distributed throughout the system. Leakage currents associated with the PV modules, the interconnected array, wires, surge protection devices and conduit add up and can become large enough to look like a ground-fault. PV systems are frequently connected to other sources of power or energy storage such as batteries, standby generators, and the utility grid. This complex arrangement of distributed power and energy sources, distributed impedance and proximity to other sources of power requires sensing of ground faults and proper reaction by the ground-fault protection devices. The different dc grounding requirements (country to country) often add more confusion to the situation. This paper discusses the ground-fault issues associated with both the dc and ac side of PV systems and presents test results and operational impacts of backfeeding commercially available ac ground-fault protection devices under various modes of operation. Further, the measured effects of backfeeding the tripped ground-fault devices for periods of time comparable to anti-islanding allowances for utility interconnection of PV inverters in the United …

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Inertial fusion energy research has enjoyed increased interest and funding. This has allowed expanded programs in target design, target fabrication, fusion chamber research, target injection and tracking, and accelerator research. The target design effort examines ways to minimize the beam power and energy and increase the allowable focal spot size while preserving target gain. Chamber research for heavy ion fusion emphasizes the use of thick liquid walls to serve as the coolant, breed tritium, and protect the structural wall from neutrons, photons, and other target products. Several small facilities are now operating to model fluid chamber dynamics. A facility to study target injection and tracking has been built and a second facility is being designed. Improved economics is an important goal of the accelerator research. The accelerator research is also directed toward the design of an Integrated Research Experiment (IRE). The IRE is being designed to accelerate ions to >100 MeV, enabling experiments in beam dynamics, focusing, and target physics. Activities leading to the IRE include ion source development and a High Current Experiment (HCX) designed to transport and accelerate a single beam of ions with a beam current of approximately 1 A, the initial current required for each beam …