A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Rural America has become more diverse: technology and the spread of suburbia have linked rural areas to urban areas, resulting in diminished distinctions between the two. The Rural Housing Service (RHS) applies statutory requirements for eligibility that may not reflect changes in rural areas or best determine which areas qualify for its housing programs. GAO's objectives included assessments of how eligibility is defined for RHS programs and how changes in the current eligibility requirements might impact the RHS mission of meeting rural housing needs."

The use of lightweight and highly formable advanced materials in automobile and truck manufacturing has the potential to save fuel. Advances in tooling technology would promote the use of these materials. This report describes an energy savings analysis performed to approximate the potential fuel savings and consequential carbon-emission reductions that would be possible because of advances in tooling in the manufacturing of, in particular, non-powertrain components of passenger cars and heavy trucks. Separate energy analyses are performed for cars and heavy trucks. Heavy trucks are considered to be Class 7 and 8 trucks (trucks rated over 26,000 lbs gross vehicle weight). A critical input to the analysis is a set of estimates of the percentage reductions in weight and drag that could be achieved by the implementation of advanced materials, as a consequence of improved tooling technology, which were obtained by surveying tooling industry experts who attended a DOE Workshop, Tooling Technology for Low-Volume Vehicle Production, held in Seattle and Detroit in October and November 2003. The analysis is also based on 2001 fuel consumption totals and on energy-audit component proportions of fuel use due to drag, rolling resistance, and braking. The consumption proportions are assumed constant over time, but …

High temporal and spatial resolution measurements in the boundary of the DIII-D tokamak show that edge localized modes (ELMs) are produced in the low field side, are poloidally localized and are composed of fast bursts ({approx}20 to 40 {micro}s long) of hot, dense plasma on a background of less dense, colder plasma ({approx}5 x 10{sup 18} m{sup {+-}3}, 50 eV) possibly created by the bursts themselves. The ELMs travel radially in the scrapeoff layer (SOL), starting at the separatrix at {approx}450 m/s, and slow down to {approx}150 m/s near the wall, convecting particles and energy to the SOL and walls. The temperature and density in the ELM plasma initially correspond to those at the top of the density pedestal but quickly decay with radius in the SOL. The temperature decay length ({approx}1.2 to 1.5 cm) is much shorter than the density decay length ({approx}3 to 8 cm), and the latter decreases with increasing pedestal (and SOL) density. The local particle and energy flux at the midplane wall during the bursts are 10% to 50% ({approx}1 to 2 x 10{sup 21} m{sup {+-}2} s{sup {+-}1}) and 1% to 2 % ({approx}20 to 30 kW/m{sup 2}) respectively of the LCFS average fluxes, …

According to the Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance (SECA) program guidelines, solid oxide fuel cells (SOFC) will be produced in the form of 3-10 kW modules for residential use. In addition to residential use, these modules can also be used in apartment buildings, hospitals, etc., where a higher power rating would be required. For example, a hospital might require a 250 kW power generating capacity. To provide this power using the SECA SOFC modules, 25 of the 10 kW modules would be required. These modules can be aggregated in different architectures to yield the necessary power. This report will show different approaches for aggregating numerous SOFC modules and will evaluate and compare each one with respect to cost, control complexity, ease of modularity, and fault tolerance.

Email from Caro Bosca to WASP members discussing the recent efforts of WASP children, family, and friends to establish their own organization.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

Coupled multi-mechanics simulations (such as thermal-stress and fluidstructure interaction problems) are of substantial interest to engineering analysts. In addition, adaptive mesh refinement techniques present an attractive alternative to current mesh generation procedures and provide quantitative error bounds that can be used for model verification. This paper discusses spatially adaptive multi-mechanics implicit simulations using the Diablo computer code. (U)

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This report tackles the issue of Social Security reform from an economic perspective that focuses not merely on reform that achieves programmatic sustainability (sustainability within the trust fund), but reform that achieves sustainability for the government and economy as a whole. The President has indicated that Social Security reform will be a major issue in the 109th Congress. For some time comprehensive reform has been an issue of debate in Congress, but no major action has occurred.

High-Level Radioactive Waste (HLW) is the priority problem for the U.S. Dept. of Energy's Environmental Management Program. Current HLW treatment processes at the Savannah River Site (Aiken, SC) include the use of monosodium titanate (MST, similar to NaTi{sub 2}O{sub 5}xH{sub 2}O) to concentrate radioactive strontium (Sr) and actinides. Mechanistic information about radionuclide uptake will provide us with insight about the reliability of MST treatments. We characterized the morphology of MST and the chemistry of sorbed Sr{sup 2+} and uranium [U(VI)] on MST with x-ray based spectroscopic and electron microscopic techniques. Sorbed Sr{sup 2+} exhibited specific adsorption as partially-hydrated species, whereas sorbed U exhibited site-specific adsorption as monomeric and dimeric U(VI)-carbonate complexes. These differences in site specificity and mechanism may account for the difficulties associated with predicting MST loading and removal kinetics.

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

Heavy-ion induction linacs for inertial fusion energy and high-energy density physics have an economic incentive to minimize the clearance between the beam edge and the aperture wall. This increases the risk from electron clouds and gas desorbed from walls. We have measured electron and gas emission from 1 MeV K{sup +} incident on surfaces near grazing incidence on the High-Current Experiment (HCX) at LBNL. Electron emission coefficients reach values >100, whereas gas desorption coefficients are near 10{sup 4}. Mitigation techniques are being studied: A bead-blasted rough surface reduces electron emission by a factor of 10 and gas desorption by a factor of 2. We also discuss the results of beam transport (of 0.03-0.18 A K{sup +}) through four pulsed room-temperature magnetic quadrupoles in the HCX at LBNL. Diagnostics are installed on HCX, between and within quadrupole magnets, to measure the beam halo loss, net charge and expelled ions, from which we infer gas density, electron trapping, and the effects of mitigation techniques. A coordinated theory and computational effort has made significant progress towards a self-consistent model of positive-ion beam and electron dynamics. We are beginning to compare experimental and theoretical results.

This report discusses the first year of operation of a fuel cell power plant located at the Sheraton Edison Hotel, Edison, New Jersey. PPL EnergyPlus, LLC installed the plant under a contract with the Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. A DFC{reg_sign}300 fuel cell, manufactured by FuelCell Energy, Inc. of Danbury, CT was selected for the project. The fuel cell successfully operated from June 2003 to May 2004. This report discusses the performance of the plant during this period.

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

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

This report describes the findings and recommendations resulting from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Incident Management Simulation Workshop held by the DHS Advanced Scientific Computing Program in May 2004. This workshop brought senior representatives of the emergency response and incident-management communities together with modeling and simulation technologists from Department of Energy laboratories. The workshop provided an opportunity for incident responders to describe the nature and substance of the primary personnel roles in an incident response, to identify current and anticipated roles of modeling and simulation in support of incident response, and to begin a dialog between the incident response and simulation technology communities that will guide and inform planned modeling and simulation development for incident response. This report provides a summary of the discussions at the workshop as well as a summary of simulation capabilities that are relevant to incident-management training, and recommendations for the use of simulation in both incident management and in incident management training, based on the discussions at the workshop. In addition, the report discusses areas where further research and development will be required to support future needs in this area.

For some divertor aspects, such as detached plasmas or the private flux zone, it is not clear that the controlling physics has been fully identified. This is a particular concern when the details of the plasma are likely to be important in modeling the problem--for example, modeling co-deposition in detached inner divertors. An empirical method of ''reconstructing'' the plasma based on direct experimental measurements may be useful in such situations. It is shown that a detached plasma in the outer divertor leg of DIII-D can be reconstructed reasonably well using spectroscopic and probe data as input to a simple onion-skin model and the Monte Carlo hydrogenic code, EIRENE. The calculated 2D distributions of n{sub e} and T{sub e} in the detached divertor were compared with direct measurements from the divertor Thomson scattering system, a diagnostic capability unique to DIII-D.

As part of a study of carbon-tritium co-deposition, we carried out an experiment on DIII-D involving a toroidally symmetric injection of {sup 13}CH{sub 4} at the top of a LSN discharge. A Monte Carlo code, DIVIMP-HC, which includes molecular breakup of hydrocarbons, was used to model the region near the puff. The interpretive analysis indicates a parallel flow in the SOL of M{sub l} {approx} 0.4 directed toward the inner divertor. The CH{sub 4} is ionized in the periphery of the SOL and so the particle confinement time, {tau}{sub c}, is not high, only {approx}5 ms, and about 4X lower than if the CH{sub 4} were ionized at the separatrix. For such a wall injection location, however, most of the CH{sub 4} gets ionized to C{sup +}, C{sup ++}, etc., and is efficiently transported along the SOL to the inner divertor, trapping hydrogen by co-deposition there.

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A scaled risk and technology based disposition path was developed to characterize and certify Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) legacy waste (LW) for disposal at Envirocare of Utah and the Nevada Test Site (NTS). A combination of LLNL and commercially provided non-destructive assay (NDA) techniques were utilized to characterize waste and facilitate the safe, efficient and cost-effective characterization and disposition of 490 cubic meters of LW in Fiscal Year (FY) 2004. The approach and technologies described in this paper are adaptable to most waste characterization programs and will be utilized to meet future project milestones.

Recent experiments on DIII-D point to the importance of two factors in determining the rate at which deuterium particles can be pumped at the divertor target(s): (1) the divertor magnetic balance, i.e., the degree to which the divertor topology is single-null (SN) or double-null (DN), and (2) the direction of the of B x {del}B ion drift with respect to the X-point(s). Changes in divertor magnetic balance near the DN shape have a much stronger effect on the pumping rate at the inner divertor target(s) than on the pumping rate at the outer divertor target(s). The behavior in the particle pumping observed at the inner and outer divertor target(s) in the DN and near-DN shapes suggests a redistribution of particles that would be expected in the presence of B x {del}B and E x B ion particle drifts in the scrapeoff layer (SOL) and divertor(s).

Far scrape-off layer (SOL) plasma parameters in DIII-D depend strongly on the discharge density and confinement regime. In L-mode, cross-field transport increases with the average discharge density and elevates the far SOL density, thus increasing plasma-wall contact. Far SOL density near the low field side (LFS) of the main chamber wall also increases with decreasing plasma current and with decreasing outer wall gap. In H-mode, between edge localized modes (ELMs), plasma-wall contact is weaker than in L-mode. During ELMs plasma fluxes to the LFS wall increase to, or above the L-mode levels. A large fraction of the net cross-field fluxes is convected through the SOL by large amplitude intermittent transport events. In high density L-mode and during ELMs in H-mode, intermittent events propagate all the way to the LFS wall and may cause sputtering.

The quiescent H (QH) mode, an edge localized mode (ELM)-free, high-confinement mode, combines well with an internal transport barrier to form quiescent double barrier (QDB) stationary state, high performance plasmas. The QH-mode edge pedestal pressure is similar to that seen in ELMing phases of the same discharge, with similar global energy confinement. The pedestal density in early ELMing phases of strongly pumped counter injection discharges drops and a transition to QH-mode occurs, leading to lower calculated edge bootstrap current. Plasmas current ramp experiment and ELITE code modeling of edge stability suggest that QH-modes lie near an edge current stability boundary. At high triangularity, QH-mode discharges operate at higher pedestal density and pressure, and have achieved ITER level values of {beta}{sub PED} and {nu}*. The QDB achieves performance of {alpha}{sub N}H{sub 89} {approx} 7 in quasi-stationary conditions for a duration of 10 tE, limited by hardware. Recently we demonstrated stationary state QDB discharges with little change in kinetic and q profiles (q{sub 0} > 1) for 2 s, comparable to ELMing ''hybrid scenarios'', yet without the debilitating effects of ELMs. Plasma profile control tools, including electron cyclotron heating and current drive and neutral beam heating, have been demonstrated to control simultaneously …