Arc and glow discharges are defined based on their cathode processes. Arcs are characterized by collective electron emission, which can be stationary with hot cathodes (thermionic arcs), or non-stationary with cold cathodes (cathodic arcs). A brief review on cathodic arc properties serves as the starting point to better understand arcing phenomena in sputtering. Although arcing occurs in both metal and reactive sputtering, it is more of an issue in the reactive case. Arcing occurs if sufficiently high field strength leads to thermal runaway of an electron emission site. The role of insulating layers and surface potential adjustment through current leakage is highlighted. In the situation of magnetron sputtering with ''racetrack'', the need for a model with two spatial dimensions is shown. In many cases, arcing is initiated by breakdown of dielectric layers and inclusions. It is most efficiently prevented if formation and excessive charge-up of dielectric layers and inclusions can be avoided.

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

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

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

The report describes the reactive distillation experiments for the SI Cycle.

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This report provides the technical basis to conclude that creep induced deformation of Type 304L austenitic stainless steel can lids on inner 3013 containers will be insignificant unless the temperature of storage exceeds 400 C. This conclusion is based on experimental literature data for Types 304 and 316 stainless steel and on a phenomenological evaluation of potential creep processes.

The purpose of this project was to build an extensible cross-platform infrastructure to facilitate the development of accurate and portable performance analysis tools for current and future high performance computing (HPC) architectures. Major accomplishments include tools and techniques for multidimensional performance analysis, as well as improved support for dynamic performance monitoring of multithreaded and multiprocess applications. Previous performance tool development has been limited by the burden of having to re-write a platform-dependent low-level substrate for each architecture/operating system pair in order to obtain the necessary performance data from the system. Manual interpretation of performance data is not scalable for large-scale long-running applications. The infrastructure developed by this project provides a foundation for building portable and scalable performance analysis tools, with the end goal being to provide application developers with the information they need to analyze, understand, and tune the performance of terascale applications on HPC architectures. The backend portion of the infrastructure provides runtime instrumentation capability and access to hardware performance counters, with thread-safety for shared memory environments and a communication substrate to support instrumentation of multiprocess and distributed programs. Front end interfaces provides tool developers with a well-defined, platform-independent set of calls for requesting performance data. End-user tools have …

This report addresses relevant policy questions in current U.S.-China relations, discusses trends and key legislation in the current Congress and provides a chronology of developments and high-level exchanges.

The authors study mix from analytical and numerical points of view. These investigations are linked. The analytical studies (in addition to laboratory experiments) provide bench marks for the direct simulation of mix. However, direct simulation is too detailed to be useful and to expensive to be practical. They also consider averaged equations. Here the major issue is the validation of the closure assumptions. They appeal to the direct simulation methods for this step. They have collaborated with several NNSA teams; moreover, Stony Brook alumni (former students, faculty and research collaborators) presently hold staff positions in NNSA laboratories.

Semiweekly newspaper from Sealy, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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Semi-monthly newspaper from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

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

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Heat-exchangers, particle filters, turbines, and other components in integrated coal gasification combined cycle system must withstand the highly sulfiding conditions of the high-temperature coal gas over an extended period of time. The performance of components degrades significantly with time unless expensive high alloy materials are used. Deposition of a suitable coating on a low-cost alloy may improve its resistance to such sulfidation attack, and decrease capital and operating costs. The alloys used in the gasifier service include austenitic and ferritic stainless steels, nickel-chromium-iron alloys, and expensive nickel-cobalt alloys. During this period, we conducted two 300-hour tests. In the first test, we exposed samples at 900 C under conditions simulating the high-temperature heat recovery unit (HTHRU). The second test was at 370 C, corresponding to the filter units following the HTHRU. The tests were showed the resilience of silicon nitride as a coating component, and the new coating procedures better penetrated the pores in sintered metal filter samples. Finally, we also received samples that were exposed in the Wabash River plant. Unfortunately, all these samples, that were prepared last year, were severely eroded and/or corroded.

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This report discusses farm commodity programs, which represent the heart of U.S. farm policy. The 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171) establishes farm income support and commodity price support programs for the 2002-2007 crop years. The 109th Congress is facing several issues regarding farm commodity programs, including budget reconciliation that could reopen the farm bill, payment limits (S. 385), dairy program extension (H.R. 1260, S. 273, S. 307), international trade, and planting flexibility (S. 194).

This report discusses proposals for international tsunami early warning systems and examines U.S. policy regarding tsunamis.

Transmitted-reference (TR) receivers avoid the stringent synchronization requirements that exist in conventional pulse detection schemes. However, the performance of such receivers is highly sensitive to precise timing acquisition and tracking as well as the length of their integration window. This window in TR receivers defines the limits of the finite integrator prior to the final decision making block. In this paper, we propose a novel technique that allows us to extract the timing information of the integration window very accurately in UWB-TR receivers in the presence of channel noise. The principles of the method are presented and the BER performance of a modified UWB-TR receiver is investigated by computer simulation. Our studies show that the proposed estimation technique adds value to the conventional TR receiver structure with modest increase in complexity.

This report is based on CRS testimony at a March 10, 2005, hearing on Navy force structure and ship acquisition before the Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee. Since February 2003, if not earlier, there has been no current, officially approved, unambiguous plan for the future size and structure of the Navy.

COGEMA Engineering Corporation (COGEMA), under a contract from CH2M Hill Hanford Group (CH2M Hill), has performed an ultrasonic nondestructive examination of selected portions of Double-Shell Tank 241-AP-104. The purpose of this examination was to provide information that could be used to evaluate the integrity of the wall of the primary and secondary tank. The requirements for the ultrasonic examination of Tank 241-AP-104 were to detect, characterize (identify, size, and locate), and record measurements made of any wall thinning that might be present in the wall of the primary tank in the upper knuckle region, and any wall thinning, pitting, or cracks in the wall of the secondary tank in the lower knuckle region. Any measurements that exceed the requirements set forth in the Engineering Task Plan (ETP), RPP-22571 (Jensen 2004) and summarized on page 1 of this document, are reported to CH2M Hill and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for further evaluation. Under the contract with CH2M Hill, all data is to be recorded on disk and paper copies of all measurements are provided to PNNL for third-party evaluation. PNNL is responsible for preparing a report that describes the results of the COGEMA ultrasonic examinations.