During times of peak demand, a near zero energy home generates more power than it uses and reduces power demand on the utility provider. In a Florida study, a prototype near zero energy home outperforms a conventional model by providing most of its own power needs throughout the year.

This is the articles in this month's issue: (1) Close Collaborations Advance Progress in Genomic Research--Commentary by Elbert Branscomb; (2) Mining Genomes--Livermore computer programs help locate the stretches of DNA in gene deserts that regulate protein-making genes; (3) Shedding Light on Quantum Physics--Laboratory laser research builds from the foundation of Einstein's description of the quantization of light. (4) The Sharper Image for Surveillance--Speckle imaging-an image-processing technique used in astronomy is bringing long-distance surveillance into sharper focus. (5) Keeping Cool Close to the Sun--The specially coated gamma-ray spectrometer aboard the MESSENGER spacecraft will help scientists determine the abundance of elements in Mercury's crust.

This report summarizes an analysis of the inclusion of wind-driven power generation technology into the existing diesel power plants at two U.S. Antarctic research stations, McMurdo and Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. Staff at the U.S. Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted the analysis. Raytheon Polar Services, which currently holds the private sector support contract for the two research stations, was a major contributor to this report. To conduct the analysis, available data were obtained on the wind resources, power plant conditions, load, and component cost. Whenever possible, we validated the information. We then used NREL's Hybrid2 power system modeling software to analyze the potential and cost of using wind turbine generators at the two aforementioned facilities. Unfortunately, the power systems and energy allocations at McMurdo and South Pole Station are being redeveloped, so it is not possible to validate future fuel use. This report is an initial assessment of the potential use of wind energy and should be followed by further, more detailed analysis if this option is to be considered further.

This paper explores how to fit the decay of the luminosity in the Tevatron. The standard assumptions of a fixed-lifetime exponential decay are only appropriate for very short time intervals. A ''1/time'' functional form fits well, and is supported by analytical derivations. A more complex form, assuming a time-varying lifetime-like term, also produces good results. Changes in the luminosity can be factored into two phenomena: The luminosity burn-off rate, and the burn-off rate from non-luminosity effects. This is particularly relevant for the antiprotons in the Tevatron. The luminous and the non-luminous burn rate of the antiprotons are shown for Tevatron stores.

To accurately reconstruct a shower axis from the Fluorescence Detector data it is essential to establish with high precision the absolute pointing of the telescopes. To d that they calculate the absolute pointing of a telescope using sky background data acquired during regular data taking periods. The method is based on the knowledge of bright star's coordinates that provide a reliable and stable coordinate system. it can be used to check the absolute telescope's pointing and its long-term stability during the whole life of the project, estimated in 20 years. They have analyzed background data taken from January to October 2004 to determine the absolute pointing of the 12 telescopes installed both in Los Leones and Coihueco. The method is based on the determination of the mean-time of the variance signal left by a star traversing a PMT's photocathode which is compared with the mean-time obtained by simulating the track of that star on the same pixel.

Chromaticity drift during injection is a well-known phenomenon in superconducting colliders, such as the Tevatron, HERA and RHIC. Imperfect compensation of the drift effects can contribute to beam loss and emittance growth. It is caused by the drift of the sextupole component in the dipole magnets due to current redistribution in its superconducting coils. Recently extensive studies of chromaticity drift were conducted at the Tevatron, aiming at the improvement of the luminosity performance in the ongoing run II. These studies included not only beam experiments, but also extensive off-line magnetic measurements on spare Tevatron dipoles. Less known, until recently, is that chromaticity drift is often accompanied by tune and coupling drift. This was recently discovered in the Tevatron. We believe that these effects are the product of systematic beam offset in conjunction with the sextupole drifts (and their compensation in the chromaticity correctors). These discoveries are most relevant to the upcoming LHC, where the drift effects will have even more dramatic consequences given the high beam current. It is therefore not a surprise that CERN has been the source of major advances in the understanding of dynamic effects during the LHC superconducting magnet development. The following will briefly review the …

In 1998, the United States entered into an agreement with CERN to help build the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with contributions to the accelerator and to the large HEP detectors. To accomplish this, the US LHC Accelerator Project was formed, encompassing expertise from Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). This report is a summary of these contributions including the progress towards project completion, as well as a discussion of future plans for continued US participation in the LHC accelerator.

Four nearly identical Nb{sub 3}Sn dipole models of the same design were built and tested at Fermilab. It provided a unique opportunity of systematic study the field quality effects in Nb{sub 3}Sn accelerator magnets. The results of these studies are reported in the paper.

We present the design and parameters of an energy recovery linac (ERL) facility, which is under construction in the Collider-Accelerator Department at BNL. This R&D facility has the goal of demonstrating CW operation of an ERL with an average beam current in the range of 0.1-1 ampere and with very high efficiency of energy recovery. The possibility of a future upgrade to a two-pass ERL is also being considered. The heart of the facility is a 5-cell 703.75 MHz super-conducting RF linac with strong Higher Order Mode (HOM) damping. The flexible lattice of the ERL provides a test-bed for exploring issues of transverse and longitudinal instabilities and diagnostics of intense CW electron beams. This ERL is also perfectly suited for a far-IR FEL. We present the status and plans for construction and commissioning of this facility.

Next generation ERL light-sources, high-energy electron coolers, high-power Free-Electron Lasers, powerful Compton X-ray sources and many other accelerators were made possible by the emerging technology of high-power, high-brightness electron beams. In order to get the anticipated performance level of ampere-class currents, many technological barriers are yet to be broken. BNL's Collider-Accelerator Department is pursuing some of these technologies for its electron cooling of RHIC application, as well as a possible future electron-hadron collider. We will describe work on CW, high-current and high-brightness electron beams. This will include a description of a superconducting, laser-photocathode RF gun and an accelerator cavity capable of producing low emittance (about 1 micron rms normalized) one nano-Coulomb bunches at currents of the order of one ampere average.

Work is underway at LLNL to design and build a high-brightness mono-energetic source for fast neutron imaging. The approach being pursued will use a 7-MeV deuterium linac for producing high-energy neutrons via a D(d,n){sup 3}He reaction. To achieve a high-brightness neutron source, a windowless rotating aperture gas cell approach is being employed. Using a series of close-tolerance rotor and stator plates, a differential pumping assembly was designed and built that contains up to 3 atmospheres of deuterium gas in a 40-mm-long gas cell. Rarefaction of the gas due to beam-induced heating will be addressed by rapidly moving the gas across the beam channel in a cross flow tube. The design and fabrication process was guided by extensive 3D modeling of the hydrodynamic gas flow and structural dynamics of the assembly. Summaries of the modeling results, the fabrication of the rotating aperture system, and initial measurements of gas leakage are presented.

Monthly electronic newsletter features success stories, coalition news, upcoming events, a coordinator profile and an article on technical assistance.

A new polarized hydrogen jet target was used to provide improved beam polarization measurements during the second polarized proton m in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The luminescence produced by beam-hydrogen excitations was also used to test the feasibility of a new beam profile monitor for RFPIC based on the detection of the emitted light. Lenses, a view-port and a sensitive CCD camera were added to the system to record the optical signals from the interaction chamber. The first very promising results are reported here. The same system with an additional optical spectrometer or optical filter system may be used in the future to detect impurities in the jet, such as oxygen molecules, which affect the accuracy of the polarization measurements.

Using dielectric wall accelerator technology, we are developing a compact induction accelerator system primarily intended for pulsed radiography. The accelerator would provide a 2-kA beam with an energy of 8 MeV, for a 20-30 ns flat-top. The design goal is to generate a 2-mm diameter, 10-rad x-ray source. We have a physics design of the system from injector to the x-ray converter. We present the results of injector modeling and PIC simulations of beam transport. We also discuss the predicted spot size and the on-axis x-ray dose.

Presentation for the 2005 U.S. Department of Energy Hydrogen Program review analyzes the hydrogen infrastructure needed to accommodate a transitional hydrogen fuel cell vehicle demand.

Developed from the Wind Deployment Systems (WinDS) model, the Hydrogen Deployment Systems (HyDS) model is a computer model of U.S. market expansion of hydrogen production from wind and other sources over the next 50 years. The WinDS model was developed in 2003 to model the expansion of generation and transmission capacity in the U.S. electric sector spanning the next 50 years. It minimizes system-wide costs of meeting loads, reserve requirements, and emission constraints by building and operating new generators and transmission in 26 two-year periods from 2000 to 2050. While it includes all major types of conventional generators, the WinDS model focuses on addressing the market issues of greatest significance to wind-specifically issues of electricity transmission and intermittency.

High-energy ion colliders (hadron colliders operating with ions other than protons) are premier research tools for nuclear physics. The collision energy and high luminosity are important design and operations considerations. The experiments also expect flexibility with frequent changes in the collision energy, detector fields, and ion species, including asymmetric collisions. For the creation, acceleration, and storage of bright intense ion beams limits are set by space charge, charge exchange, and intrabeam scattering effects. The latter leads to luminosity lifetimes of only a few hours for intense heavy ions beams. Currently, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL is the only operating high-energy ion collider. Later this decade the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), under construction at CERN, will also run with heavy ions.

To study collisions between polarized electrons and heavy ions or polarized protons at high energy, adding a 10 GeV electron storage ring to the existing RHIC facility is currently under consideration. To achieve high luminosities of several 10{sup 33} cm{sup -2} sec{sup -1} range, a vertical beam-beam tuneshift parameter of {zeta}{sub y} = 0.08 is required for the electron beam. Simulation studies are being performed to study the feasibility of this high tuneshift parameter and explore the potential for even higher tuneshifts. Recent results of these studies are presented.

The requirement for low beam loss is very important both to protect the beam component, and to make the hands-on maintenance possible. In this report, the design considerations to achieving high intensity and low loss will be presented. We start by specifying the beam loss limit at every physical process followed by the proper design and parameters for realizing the required goals. The process considered in this paper include the emittance growth in the linac, the H{sup -} injection, the transition crossing, the coherent instabilities and the extraction losses.

During the 20 years since it was first commissioned, the Fermilab Tevatron has developed strong coupling between the two transverse degrees of freedom. A circuit of skew quadrupole magnets is used to correct for coupling and, though capable, its required strength has increased since 1983 by more than an order of magnitude. In more recent years changes to the Tevatron for colliding beams operation have altered the skew quadrupole corrector distribution and strong local coupling become evident, often encumbering routine operation during the present physics run. Detailed magnet measurements were performed on each individual magnet during construction, and in early 2003 it was realized that measurements could be performed on the magnets in situ which could determine coil movements within the iron yoke since the early 1980's. It was discovered that the superconducting coils had become vertically displaced relative to their yokes since their construction. The ensuing systematic skew quadrupole field introduced by this displacement accounts for the required corrector settings and observed beam behavior. An historical account of the events leading to this discovery and progress toward its remedy are presented.

Measurements of wind characteristics over a wide range of heights up to and above 100 m are useful to: (1) characterize the local and regional wind climate; (2) validate wind resource estimates derived from numerical models; and (3) evaluate changes in wind characteristics and wind shear over the area swept by the blades. Developing wind climatology at advanced turbine hub heights for the United States benefits wind energy development. Tall tower data from Kansas, Indiana, and Minnesota (which have the greatest number of tall towers with measurement data) will be the focus of this paper. Analyses of data from the tall towers will start the process of developing a comprehensive climatology.

One approach for heating a target to ''Warm Dense Matter'' conditions (similar, for example, to the interiors of giant planets or certain stages in Inertial Confinement Fusion targets), is to use intense ion beams as the heating source (see refs.[6] and [7] and references therein for motivation and accelerator concepts). By consideration of ion beam phase space constraints, both at the injector, and at the final focus, and consideration of simple equations of state and relations for ion stopping, approximate conditions at a target foil may be calculated. Thus target temperature and pressure may be calculated as a function of ion mass, ion energy, pulse duration, velocity tilt, and other accelerator parameters. We connect some of these basic parameters to help search the extensive parameter space (including ion mass, ion energy, total charge in beam pulse, beam emittance, target thickness and density).

A PowerPoint presentation given as part of the 2005 Hydrogen Program Review, May 24, 2005, in Washington, D.C.

This two-sided fact sheet succinctly outlines and counters the top misconceptions about wind energy. It is well suited for general audiences.