Business Continuity Planning Resources for Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses (open access)

Business Continuity Planning Resources for Small- and Medium-Sized Businesses

This document/memo summarizes existing resources and guidance on business continuity planning for small- to medium-sized businesses. DTRA will share this information with large commercial businesses who identified the need to help their suppliers and other key collaborators prepare business continuity plans in order to speed recovery from a wide-area bioterrorism incident.
Date: May 14, 2010
Creator: Judd, Kathleen S. & Lesperance, Ann M.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
California GAMA Special Study: An isotopic and dissolved gas investigation of nitrate source and transport to a public supply well in California's Central Valley (open access)

California GAMA Special Study: An isotopic and dissolved gas investigation of nitrate source and transport to a public supply well in California's Central Valley

This study investigates nitrate contamination of a deep municipal drinking water production well in Ripon, CA to demonstrate the utility of natural groundwater tracers in constraining the sources and transport of nitrate to deep aquifers in the Central Valley. The goal of the study was to investigate the origin (source) of elevated nitrate and the potential for the deep aquifer to attenuate anthropogenic nitrate. The site is ideal for such an investigation. The production well is screened from 165-325 feet below ground surface and a number of nearby shallow and deep monitoring wells were available for sampling. Furthermore, potential sources of nitrate contamination to the well had been identified, including a fertilizer supply plant located approximately 1000 feet to the east and local almond groves. A variety of natural isotopic and dissolved gas tracers including {sup 3}H-{sup 3}He groundwater age and the isotopic composition of nitrate are applied to identify nitrate sources and to characterize nitrate transport. An advanced method for sampling production wells is employed to help identify contaminant contributions from specific screen intervals. Nitrate transport: Groundwater nitrate at this field site is not being actively denitrified. Groundwater parameters indicate oxic conditions, the dissolved gas data shows no evidence …
Date: April 14, 2010
Creator: Singleton, M. J.; Moran, J. E.; Esser, B. K.; Roberts, S. K. & Hillegonds, D. J.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Cellulosic Biofuels: Analysis of Policy Issues for Congress (open access)

Cellulosic Biofuels: Analysis of Policy Issues for Congress

This report is an Analysis of Policy Issues for Congress regarding Cellulosic Biofuels.
Date: October 14, 2010
Creator: Bracmort, Kelsi; Schnepf, Randy; Stubbs, Megan & Yacobucci, Brent D.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Characterization of Second Harmonic Afterburner Radiation at the LCLS (open access)

Characterization of Second Harmonic Afterburner Radiation at the LCLS

During commissioning of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) x-ray Free Electron Laser (FEL) at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory it was shown that saturation lengths much shorter than the installed length of the undulator line can routinely be achieved. This frees undulator segments that can be used to provide enhanced spectral properties and at the same time, test the concept of FEL Afterburners. In December 2009 a project was initiated to convert undulator segments at the down-beam end of the undulator line into Second Harmonic Afterburners (SHAB) to enhance LCLS radiation levels in the 10-20 keV energy range. This is being accomplished by replacement of gap-shims increasing the fixed gaps from 6.8 mm to 9.9 mm, which reduces their K values from 3.50 to 2.25 and makes the segments resonant at the second harmonic of the upstream unmodified undulators. This paper reports experimental results of the commissioning of the SHAB extension to LCLS.
Date: September 14, 2010
Creator: Nuhn, Heinz-Dieter
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Characterization of the role of Fhit in maintenance of genomic integrity following low dose radiation, in vivo and in vitro (open access)

Characterization of the role of Fhit in maintenance of genomic integrity following low dose radiation, in vivo and in vitro

The major goal of this study is to determine the effects of the Fhit pathway on low dose (< 0.1 Gy) ionizing radiation (IR)-induced genetic instability. Reduction of Fhit protein expression is observed in most solid tumors particularly in those tumors resulting from exposure to environmental carcinogens. Therefore, characterization of the role of the Fhit-dependent pathway in preventing low dose IR-induced genetic instability will provide useful parameters for evaluating the low dose IR-induced risk of mutagenesis and carcinogenesis. We pursued 3 specific aims to study our hypothesis that the Fhit-dependent pathways maintain genomic integrity through adjusting checkpoint response and repair genes expression following low dose IR. Aim 1: Determine whether Fhit interaction with RPA is necessary for Fhit to affect the cellular response to low dose IR. We combined the approaches of in vitro (GST pull-down and site-directed mutagenesis) and in vivo (observing the co-localization and immunoprecipitation of Fhit and RPA in Fhit knock out mouse cells transfected with mutant Fhit which has lost ability to interact with RPA in vitro). Aim 2: Determine the role of genes whose expression is affected by Fhit in low dose irradiated cells. We analyzed the distinct signature of gene expression in low dose …
Date: May 14, 2010
Creator: Wang, Ya
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Chemical Dynamics, Molecular Energetics, and Kinetics at the Synchrotron (open access)

Chemical Dynamics, Molecular Energetics, and Kinetics at the Synchrotron

Scientists at the Chemical Dynamics Beamline of the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley are continuously reinventing synchrotron investigations of physical chemistry and chemical physics with vacuum ultraviolet light. One of the unique aspects of a synchrotron for chemical physics research is the widely tunable vacuum ultraviolet light that permits threshold ionization of large molecules with minimal fragmentation. This provides novel opportunities to assess molecular energetics and reaction mechanisms, even beyond simple gas phase molecules. In this perspective, significant new directions utilizing the capabilities at the Chemical Dynamics Beamline are presented, along with an outlook for future synchrotron and free electron laser science in chemical dynamics. Among the established and emerging fields of investigations are cluster and biological molecule spectroscopy and structure, combustion flame chemistry mechanisms, radical kinetics and product isomer dynamics, aerosol heterogeneous chemistry, planetary and interstellar chemistry, and secondary neutral ion-beam desorption imaging of biological matter and materials chemistry.
Date: March 14, 2010
Creator: Leone, Stephen R.; Ahmed, Musahid & Wilson, Kevin R.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
China and the United States--A Comparison of Green Energy Programs and Policies (open access)

China and the United States--A Comparison of Green Energy Programs and Policies

This report will look at the laws, programs, and policies encouraging development of wind, solar, and biomass power in China and the United States as the major renewable energy technologies common to both countries. While hydropower is the most developed source of renewable energy in both China and the United States, additional development of conventional hydropower is not a major focus of U.S. or China's renewable energy policy and will not be featured in this discussion.
Date: June 14, 2010
Creator: Campbell, Richard J.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Clean Air Issues in the 111th Congress (open access)

Clean Air Issues in the 111th Congress

This report provides an overview of clean air legislative and regulatory issues. The contents include EPA'S greenhouse gas regulations, legislation on climate change, emissions from power plant information, and Air quality standards.
Date: June 14, 2010
Creator: McCarthy, James E.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Closures for Course-Grid Simulation of Fluidized Gas-Particle Flows (open access)

Closures for Course-Grid Simulation of Fluidized Gas-Particle Flows

Gas-particle flows in fluidized beds and riser reactors are inherently unstable, and they manifest fluctuations over a wide range of length and time scales. Two-fluid models for such flows reveal unstable modes whose length scale is as small as ten particle diameters. Yet, because of limited computational resources, gas-particle flows in large fluidized beds are invariably simulated by solving discretized versions of the two-fluid model equations over a coarse spatial grid. Such coarse-grid simulations do not resolve the small-scale spatial structures which are known to affect the macroscale flow structures both qualitatively and quantitatively. Thus there is a need to develop filtered two-fluid models which are suitable for coarse-grid simulations and capturing the effect of the small-scale structures through closures in terms of the filtered variables. The overall objective of the project is to develop validated closures for filtered two-fluid models for gas-particle flows, with the transport gasifier as a primary, motivating example. In this project, highly resolved three-dimensional simulations of a kinetic theory based two-fluid model for gas-particle flows have been performed and the statistical information on structures in the 100-1000 particle diameters length scale has been extracted. Based on these results, closures for filtered two-fluid models have been …
Date: February 14, 2010
Creator: Sundaresan, Sankaran
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
CO-PRODUCT ENHANCEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT FOR THE MASADA OXYNOL PROCESS PROCESS (open access)

CO-PRODUCT ENHANCEMENT AND DEVELOPMENT FOR THE MASADA OXYNOL PROCESS PROCESS

The focus of this project was an overall process improvement through the enhancement of the co-product streams. The enhancement of the process operations and co-products will increase both ethanol production and the value of other process outputs and reduces the amount of waste byproducts. This leads to a more economical and environmentally sound alternative to landfill disposal of municipal solid waste (MSW). These enhancements can greatly increase the commercial potential for the production of ethanol from MSW by the Masada CES OxyNol process. Both technological and economical issues were considered for steps throughout the conversion process. The research efforts of this project are varied but synergistic. The project investigated many of the operations involved in the Masada process with the overall goal of process improvements. The general goal of the testing was to improve co-product quality, improve conversions efficiencies, minimize process losses, increase energy efficiency, and mitigate process and commercialization risks. The project was divided into 16 subtasks as described in general terms below. All these tasks are interrelated but not necessarily interdependent.
Date: June 14, 2010
Creator: Watkins, Donald V.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
CO2-driven Enhanced Oil Recovery as a Stepping Stone to What? (open access)

CO2-driven Enhanced Oil Recovery as a Stepping Stone to What?

This paper draws heavily on the authors’ previously published research to explore the extent to which near term carbon dioxide-driven enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) can be “a stepping stone to a long term sequestration program of a scale to be material in climate change risk mitigation.” The paper examines the historical evolution of CO2-EOR in the United States and concludes that estimates of the cost of CO2-EOR production or the extent of CO2 pipeline networks based upon this energy security-driven promotion of CO2-EOR do not provide a robust platform for spurring the commercial deployment of carbon dioxide capture and storage technologies (CCS) as a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The paper notes that the evolving regulatory framework for CCS makes a clear distinction between CO2-EOR and CCS and the authors examine arguments in the technical literature about the ability for CO2-EOR to generate offsetting revenue to accelerate the commercial deployment of CCS systems in the electric power and industrial sectors of the economy. The authors conclude that the past 35 years of CO2-EOR in the U.S. have been important for boosting domestic oil production and delivering proven system components for future CCS systems. However, though there is no reason …
Date: July 14, 2010
Creator: Dooley, James J.; Dahowski, Robert T. & Davidson, Casie L.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
CO2 Removal using a Synthetic Analogue of Carbonic Anhydrase (open access)

CO2 Removal using a Synthetic Analogue of Carbonic Anhydrase

Project attempts to develop a synthetic analogue for carbonic anhydrase and incorporate it in a membrane for separation of CO2 from coal power plant flue gas. Conference poster presents result of first 9 months of project progress including concept, basic system architecture and membrane properties target, results of molecular modeling for analogue - CO2 interaction, and next steps of testing analogue resistance to flue gas contaminants.
Date: September 14, 2010
Creator: Cordatos, Harry
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
COG - Special Features of Interest to Criticality Safety Practitioners (open access)

COG - Special Features of Interest to Criticality Safety Practitioners

COG is a modern, general-purpose, high fidelity, multi-particle transport code developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory specifically for use in deep penetration (shielding) and criticality safety calculations. This paper describes some features in COG of special interest to criticality safety practitioners.
Date: January 14, 2010
Creator: Buck, R M; Heinrichs, D P; Krass, A W & Lent, E M
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Coherent Radiation Effects in the LCLS Undulator (open access)

Coherent Radiation Effects in the LCLS Undulator

For X-ray Free-Electron Lasers such as LCLS and TESLA FEL, a change in the electron energy while amplifying the FEL radiation can shift the resonance condition out of the bandwidth of the FEL. The largest sources of energy loss is the emission of incoherent undulator radiation. Because the loss per electron depends only on the undulator parameters and the beam energy, which are fixed for a given resonant wavelength, the average energy loss can be compensated for by a fixed taper of the undulator. Coherent radiation has a strong enhancement proportional to the number of electrons in the bunch for frequencies comparable to or longer than the bunch dimension. If the emitted coherent energy becomes comparable to that of the incoherent emission, it has to be included in the taper as well. However, the coherent loss depends on the bunch charge and the applied compression scheme and a change of these parameters would require a change of the taper. This imposes a limitation on the practical operation of Free-Electron Lasers, where the taper can only be adjusted manually. In this presentation we analyze the coherent emission of undulator radiation and transition undulator radiation for LCLS, and estimate whether the resulting …
Date: December 14, 2010
Creator: Reiche, S.; /UCLA & Huang, Z.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Commercial Aviation: Better Information about Airline-Imposed Fees and the Refundability of Government-Imposed Taxes and Fees Could Benefit Consumers (open access)

Commercial Aviation: Better Information about Airline-Imposed Fees and the Refundability of Government-Imposed Taxes and Fees Could Benefit Consumers

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses various issues affecting airline passengers, including airline-imposed fees, mishandled baggage, and the refundability of various government-imposed taxes and fees to passengers. The U.S. passenger airline industry has been under tremendous financial pressure over the last decade, first from security threats that inhibited air travel, then from volatile fuel costs, and more recently from falling demand due to an economic recession. Only recently has air traffic begun to recover. In response to these pressures, passenger airlines have adapted their business models. In 2008, for example, many airlines introduced fees for a variety of passenger services, most notably for a first or second checked bag, for which separate charges did not previously exist. Fees represent an important source of revenues to U.S. passenger airlines, which collectively posted operating losses of $4.4 billion during calendar years 2008 and 2009. During that same period, airlines reported approximately $7.9 billion in revenues from baggage fees and reservation change and cancellation fees--the two largest sources of fee revenues. The revenues from baggage and many other fees are not subject to the 7.5 percent excise tax on amounts paid for domestic air …
Date: July 14, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Commercial Aviation: Consumers Could Benefit from Better Information about Airline-Imposed Fees and Refundability of Government-Imposed Taxes and Fees (open access)

Commercial Aviation: Consumers Could Benefit from Better Information about Airline-Imposed Fees and Refundability of Government-Imposed Taxes and Fees

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To supplement fare revenues, airlines are increasingly charging fees for optional passenger services, notably for checked baggage, for which separate charges did not previously exist. While air fares are subject to a 7.5 percent excise tax that funds the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, which helps fund the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), many new optional fees are not. As requested, this report addresses (1) the nature, relationship to cost, and disclosure of airline fees, (2) the potential impact of such fees on the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, (3) checked and mishandled baggage issues; and (4) the process, if any, for refunding government-imposed taxes and fees when passengers do not use nonrefundable tickets. To perform this work, GAO analyzed financial data; reviewed applicable laws and regulations; and interviewed airline and government officials."
Date: July 14, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Comparison of Demand Response Performance with an EnergyPlus Model in a Low Energy Campus Building (open access)

Comparison of Demand Response Performance with an EnergyPlus Model in a Low Energy Campus Building

We have studied a low energy building on a campus of the University of California. It has efficient heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, consisting of a dual-fan/dual-duct variable air volume (VAV) system. As a major building on the campus, it was included in two demand response (DR) events in the summers of 2008 and 2009. With chilled water supplied by thermal energy storage in the central plant, cooling fans played a critical role during DR events. In this paper, an EnergyPlus model of the building was developed and calibrated. We compared both whole-building and HVAC fan energy consumption with model predictions to understand why demand savings in 2009 were much lower than in 2008. We also used model simulations of the study building to assess pre-cooling, a strategy that has been shown to improve demand saving and thermal comfort in many types of building. This study indicates a properly calibrated EnergyPlus model can reasonably predict demand savings from DR events and can be useful for designing or optimizing DR strategies.
Date: May 14, 2010
Creator: Dudley, Junqiao Han; Black, Doug; Apte, Mike; Piette, Mary Ann & Berkeley, Pam
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Comparison of the Current World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program and the World Trade Center Health Program Proposed by Title I of H.R. 847 (open access)

Comparison of the Current World Trade Center Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program and the World Trade Center Health Program Proposed by Title I of H.R. 847

This report compares the current federally supported medical screening and treatment program offered to various persons affected by the terrorist attack on New York City on September 11, 2001, with the federal program proposed to be established by Title I of H.R. 847, the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010, as amended and passed by the House of Representatives.
Date: December 14, 2010
Creator: Szymendera, Scott & Lister, Sarah A.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Concept for a Low Pressure Noble Gas Fill Intervention in the IFE Fusion Test Facility (FTF) Target Chamber (open access)

A Concept for a Low Pressure Noble Gas Fill Intervention in the IFE Fusion Test Facility (FTF) Target Chamber

An engineering evaluation has been initiated to investigate conceptual engineering methods for implementing a viable gas shield strategy in the Fusion Test Facility (FTF) target chamber. The employment of a low pressure noble gas in the target chamber to thermalize energetic helium ions prior to interaction with the wall could dramatically increase the useful life of the first wall in the FTF reactor1. For the purpose of providing flexibility, two target chamber configurations are addressed: a five meter radius sphere and a ten meter radius sphere. Experimental studies at Nike have indicated that a low pressure, ambient gas resident in the target chamber during laser pulsing does not appear to impair the ability of laser light from illuminating targets2. In addition, current investigations into delivering, maintaining, and processing low pressure gas appear to be viable with slight modification to current pumping and plasma exhaust processing technologies3,4. Employment of a gas fill solution for protecting the dry wall target chamber in the FTF may reduce, or possibly eliminate the need for other attenuating technologies designed for keeping He ions from implanting in first wall structures and components. The gas fill concept appears to provide an effective means of extending the life …
Date: January 14, 2010
Creator: C.A. Gentile, W.R. Blanchard, T.A. Kozub, M. Aristova, C. McGahan, S. Natta, K. Pagdon, J. Zelenty
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Constructing a resilience index for the enhanced critical in Frastructure Protection Program. (open access)

Constructing a resilience index for the enhanced critical in Frastructure Protection Program.

Following recommendations made in Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7, which established a national policy for the identification and increased protection of critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) by Federal departments and agencies, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2006 developed the Enhanced Critical Infrastructure Protection (ECIP) program. The ECIP program aimed to provide a closer partnership with state, regional, territorial, local, and tribal authorities in fulfilling the national objective to improve CIKR protection. The program was specifically designed to identify protective measures currently in place in CIKR and to inform facility owners/operators of the benefits of new protective measures. The ECIP program also sought to enhance existing relationships between DHS and owners/operators of CIKR and to build relationships where none existed (DHS 2008; DHS 2009). In 2009, DHS and its protective security advisors (PSAs) began assessing CIKR assets using the ECIP program and ultimately produced individual protective measure and vulnerability values through the protective measure and vulnerability indices (PMI/VI). The PMI/VI assess the protective measures posture of individual facilities at their 'weakest link,' allowing for a detailed analysis of the most vulnerable aspects of the facilities (Schneier 2003), while maintaining the ability to produce an overall protective measures …
Date: October 14, 2010
Creator: Fisher, R. E.; Bassett, G. W.; Buehring, W. A.; Collins, M. J.; Dickinson, D. C.; Eaton, L. K. et al.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
CRS Issue Statement on Civil Rights and Discrimination (open access)

CRS Issue Statement on Civil Rights and Discrimination

This report discusses about civil right statues as well as several constitutional provisions. It also points out about different types of discrimination.
Date: January 14, 2010
Creator: Feder, Jody
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
CRS Issue Statement on Health Care Reform (open access)

CRS Issue Statement on Health Care Reform

Interests in health care reform are driven by growing concern about several widely discussed problems, most especially health insurance coverage, health care costs, and patients' access to quality care.
Date: January 14, 2010
Creator: Peterson, Chris L.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
CRS Issue Statement on Housing for LowIncome Individuals and Families (open access)

CRS Issue Statement on Housing for LowIncome Individuals and Families

This report contains a Congressional Service Report (CRS) Issue statements on housing for low income individuals and families.
Date: January 14, 2010
Creator: McCarty, Maggie; Perl, Libby; Foote, Bruce E.; Jones, Katie; Carpenter, David H.; Garvey, Todd et al.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Defense Acquisitions: Missile Defense Program Instability Affects Reliability of Earned Value Management Data (open access)

Defense Acquisitions: Missile Defense Program Instability Affects Reliability of Earned Value Management Data

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "By law, GAO is directed to assess the annual progress the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) made in developing and fielding the Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). GAO issued its latest assessment of MDA's progress covering fiscal year 2009 in February 2010. This report supplements that assessment to provide further insight into MDA's prime contractor performance for fiscal year 2009. Prime contractors track earned value management (EVM) by making comparisons that inform the program as to whether the contractor is completing work at the cost budgeted and whether the work scheduled is being completed on time. Our analysis of contractor EVM data included examining contract performance reports for 14 BMDS contracts, reviewing the latest integrated baseline reviews, performing extensive analysis of data anomalies, and conducting interviews with Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) officials--the independent reviewers of MDA contractor EVM systems."
Date: July 14, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library