High pressure common rail (HPCR) fuel injection performance testing developed a notch-by-notch performance comparison between HPCR and the production fuel system. A multiple injection screening study at notch 8 was completed with the baseline HPCR fuel injector nozzle tip design. Began a study on performance effects of different nozzle tip geometries. The hybrid locomotive battery vendor performed component fabrication tests and began manufacture of a mockup battery to validate the vibration design performance.

This report details the transition of Afghanistan to a democracy, yet still debates the problem of insurgency. Moreover, the report debates whether stabilization is possible at all due to rising issues of insurgency. The report also offers a summary of how the U.S. intended to deal with the problem, and where the problem was located.

This report provides a basic explanation of how to calculate the federal estate tax liability for a taxable estate of any given size, using the schedule of graduated marginal tax rates and the applicable exclusion amount or the applicable credit amount for the year of death. The “applicable exclusion amount” is the amount of any decedent’s taxable estate that is free from tax. It is known informally as the estate tax “exemption.” The “applicable credit amount” or “unified credit” is the corresponding tax credit. It is equal to the tax that would be due on a taxable estate that is the size of the applicable exclusion amount.

Because of the importance of committee work, Senators consider desirable committee assignments a priority. After general elections are over, one of the first orders of business for Senate leaders is setting the sizes and ratios of committees. This report describes the process of creating Senate committees, including the nomination process and rules and regulations specifically pertaining to said process.

This report describes the process of creating Senate committees, including the nomination process and rules and regulations specifically pertaining to said process.

This report focuses primarily on how Senators are elected to standing committees. It includes information about how standing committee sizes and ratios are set; the classification of committees for assignment purposes, and the chamber limitations on committee service; procedures that each party uses to recommend Senators and how the full chamber approves these recommendations; and the processes used to appoint Senators to non-standing committees.

Halliburton Energy Services and Oak Ridge National Laboratory established a CRADA to conduct applied research to develop a general purpose, High-Temperature, Smart Transducer Interface Node and Telemetry System (HSTINTS) capable of temporally-coherent multiple-channel, high speed, high-resolution data transuction and acquisition while operating in a hostile thermal, chemical, and pressure environment for extended periods of time over a single coaxial cable. This ambitious, high-risk effort required development of custom dielectric isolated integrated circuits, amplified hybrid couplers for telemetry and an audio-frequency based power supply and distribution system using an engineered application of standing waves to compensate voltage drop along a 2 mile long cable. Several goals were achieved but underestimated challenges and a couple of mistakes hampered progress. When it was determined that an additional year of concerted effort would be required to complete the system demonstration, the sponsor withdrew funding and terminated the effort.

The High Average Power Laser (HAPL) program is developing technology for Laser IFE with the goal of producing electricity from the heat generated by the implosion of deuterium-tritium (DT) targets. Alternatively, the Laser IFE device could be coupled to a hydrogen generation system where the heat would be used as input to a water-splitting process to produce hydrogen and oxygen. The production of hydrogen in addition to electricity would allow fusion energy plants to address a much wider segment of energy needs, including transportation. Water-splitting processes involving direct and hybrid thermochemical cycles and high temperature electrolysis are currently being developed as means to produce hydrogen from high temperature nuclear fission reactors and solar central receivers. This paper explores the feasibility of this concept for integration with a Laser IFE plant, and it looks at potential modifications to make this approach more attractive. Of particular interest are: (1) the determination of the advantages of Laser IFE hydrogen production compared to other hydrogen production concepts, and (2) whether a facility of the size of FTF would be suitable for hydrogen production.

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The present research program is centered on the experimental and numerical study of two instabilities that develop at the interface between two different fluids when the interface experiences an impulsive or a constant acceleration. The instabilities, called the Richtmyer-Meshkov and Rayleigh-Taylor instability, respectively, adversely affect target implosion in experiments aimed at the achievement of nuclear fusion by inertial confinement by causing the nuclear fuel contained in a target and the shell material to mix, leading to contamination of the fuel, yield reduction or no ignition at all. The laboratory experiments summarized in this report include shock tube experiments to study a shock-accelerated bubble and a shock-accelerated 2-D sinusoidal interface; and experiments based on the use of magnetorheological fluids for the study of the Rayleigh-Taylor instability. Computational experiments based on the shock tube experimental conditions are also reported.

The United States Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) at their Nevada Site Office (NSO) are addressing ground-water contamination resulting from historical underground nuclear testing through the Environmental Management (EM) program and, in particular, the Underground Test Area (UGTA) project. From 1951 to 1992, 828 underground nuclear tests were conducted at the Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas. Most of these tests were conducted hundreds of feet above the ground-water table; however, more than 200 of the tests were near or within the water table. This underground testing was limited to specific areas of the Nevada Test Site, including Pahute Mesa, Rainier Mesa/Shoshone Mountain, Frenchman Flat, and Yucca Flat. One issue of concern is the nature of the somewhat poorly constrained pre-Tertiary geology, and its effects on ground-water flow. Ground-water modelers would like to know more about the hydrostratigraphy and geologic structure to support a hydrostratigraphic framework model that is under development for the Rainier Mesa/Shoshone Mountain Corrective Action Unit (Bechtel Nevada, 2006). During 2005, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the DOE and NNSA-NSO, collected and processed data from twenty-six magnetotelluric (MT) and audio-magnetotelluric (AMT) sites at the Nevada Test Site. …

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The purpose of this report is to document the status of revegetation projects and natural resources mitigation efforts that have been conducted for remediated waste sites and other activities associated with the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act cleanup of National Priorities List waste sites at Hanford. One of the objectives of restoration is the revegetation of remediated waste sites to stabilize the soil and restore the land to native vegetation. The report documents the results of revegetation and mitigation monitoring conducted in 2006 and includes 11 revegetation/restoration projects, one revegetation/mitigation project, and 2 bat habitat mitigation projects.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies is one objective of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS provides funding to states and organizations that provide abstinence-until-marriage education as one approach to address this objective. GAO was asked to describe the oversight of federally funded abstinence-until-marriage education programs. GAO is reporting on (1) efforts by HHS and states to assess the scientific accuracy of materials used in these programs and (2) efforts by HHS, states, and researchers to assess the effectiveness of these programs. GAO reviewed documents and interviewed HHS officials in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) that award grants for these programs."

This report details the security concerns related to chemical facilities such as risk f terrorism at chemical facilities.

The Plus Operator thus provides a mechanism to group modules of similar output so that the output can be combined and supplied to downstream modules. This document provides requirements, the design, data-file specifications, the test plan, and the quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) protocol for the Plus Operator.

This document describes concepts associated with transferring temporal and spatial boundary conditions between modules in FRAMES and how FRAMES might consider dynamic feedback.

Data mining has become one of the key features of many homeland security initiatives. Often used as a means for detecting fraud, assessing risk, and product retailing, data mining involves the use of data analysis tools to discover previously unknown, valid patterns and relationships in large data sets. In the context of homeland security, data mining can be a potential means to identify terrorist activities, such as money transfers and communications, and to identify and track individual terrorists themselves, such as through travel and immigration records. This report explores the issue of data mining in detail and in the context of homeland security, as well as relevant initiatives and pieces of legislation.

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This annual report is a deliverable for fiscal year 2006 (FY06) for Project 2002-077-00, Facilitation of the Estuary/Ocean Subgroup (EOS). The EOS is part of the research, monitoring, and evaluation (RME) effort the Action Agencies (Bonneville Power Administration, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) developed in response to the 2000 and 2004 Biological Opinions on operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System. The goal of the EOS project is to facilitate activities of the estuary/ocean RME subgroup as it coordinates implementation of the Estuary RME Plan. In FY06, EOS project accomplishments included: 1) subgroup meetings; 2) participation in the estuary work group of the Pacific Northwest Aquatic Monitoring Partnership; 3) project management via the project tracking system, PISCES; 4) quarterly project status reports; and 5) a major revision to the Estuary RME Plan (new version May 2006) based on comments by EOS members, the Independent Scientific Review Panel, and other reviewers. In the context of uncertainty about the direction of the federal RME due to litigation on the FCRPS Biological Opinion, FY06 activities for the EOS project resulted in expanded substantive coordination with other regional RME forums, project tracking infrastructure, and a new version of the …

The study shall assess the feasibility of a commercial wind facility on lands selected and owned by the Salish and Kootenai Tribes and shall examine the potential for the development of solar and biomass resources located on Tribal Lands.

This Contractor Performance Plan is a detailed execution plan covering fiscal years 2007 and 2008 that implements the Integration Project Baseline in a more aggressive cost and schedule approach.

This report is a brief discussion of the ethical, legal, and economic issues of gene patenting. The courts have upheld gene patents that meet the criteria of patentability defined by the Patent Act. However, the practice of awarding patents on genes has come under intense scrutiny by some scientists, legal scholars, politicians, and other experts.