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Detection of point-source gamma signals from aerial measurements is complicated by widely varying terrestrial gamma backgrounds, since these variations frequently resemble signals from point-sources. Spectral stripping techniques have been very useful in separating man-made and natural radiation contributions which exist on Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) plant sites and other like facilities. However, these facilities are generally situated in desert areas or otherwise flat terrain with few man-made structures to disturb the natural background. It is of great interest to determine if the stripping technique can be successfully applied in populated areas where numerous man-made disturbances (houses, streets, yards, vehicles, etc.) exist.

Several groups of plastic molded CD4011s were electrically tested as part of an Army dormant storage program. These parts had been in storage in missile containers for 4.5 years, and were electrically tested annually. Eight of the parts (out of 1200) failed the electrical tests and were subsequently analyzed to determine the cause of the failures. The root cause was found to be corrosion of the unpassivated Al bondpads. No significant attack of the passivated Al traces was found. Seven of the eight failures occurred in parts stored on a pre-position ship (the Jeb Stuart), suggesting a link between the external environment and observed corrosion.

This paper discusses operational and criticality safety experience associated with the Idaho National Laboratory Fuel Conditioning Facility which uses a pyrometallurgical process to treat spent fast reactor metallic fuel. The process is conducted in an inert atmosphere hot cell. The process starts with chopping metallic fuel elements into a basket. The basket is lowered into molten salt (LiCl-KCl) along with a steel mandrel. Active metal fission products, transuranic metals and sodium metal in the spent fuel undergo chemical oxidation and form chlorides. Voltage is applied between the basket, which serves as an anode, and the mandrel, which serves as a cathode, causing metallic uranium in the spent fuel to undergo electro-chemical oxidation thereby forming uranium chloride. Simultaneously at the cathode, uranium chloride undergoes electro-chemical reduction and deposits uranium metal onto the mandrel. The uranium metal and accompanying entrained salt are placed in a distillation furnace where the uranium melts forming an ingot and the entrained salt boils and subsequently condenses in a separate crucible. The uranium ingots are placed in long term storage. During the ten year operating history, over one hundred criticality safety evaluations were prepared. All criticality safety related limits and controls for the entire process are contained …

This report provides an overview of the FDA's authority to ensure that drugs prescribed to children are safe and effective.

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As one of the founding members of the Open Science Grid Consortium (OSG), Fermilab enables coherent access to its production resources through the Grid infrastructure system called FermiGrid. This system successfully provides for centrally managed grid services, opportunistic resource access, development of OSG Interfaces for Fermilab, and an interface to the Fermilab dCache system. FermiGrid supports virtual organizations (VOs) including high energy physics experiments (USCMS, MINOS, D0, CDF, ILC), astrophysics experiments (SDSS, Auger, DES), biology experiments (GADU, Nanohub) and educational activities.

This Topical Report summarizes progress on Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-04NT42309, 'Field Testing of a Wet FGD Additive'. The objective of the project is to demonstrate the use of a flue gas desulfurization (FGD) additive, Degussa Corporation's TMT-15, to prevent the reemission of elemental mercury (Hg{sup 0}) in flue gas exiting wet FGD systems on coal-fired boilers. Furthermore, the project intends to demonstrate whether the additive can be used to precipitate most of the mercury (Hg) removed in the wet FGD system as a fine TMT salt that can be separated from the FGD liquor and bulk solid byproducts for separate disposal. The project is conducting pilot- and full-scale tests of the TMT-15 additive in wet FGD absorbers. The tests are intended to determine required additive dosages to prevent Hg{sup 0} reemissions and to separate mercury from the normal FGD byproducts for three coal types: Texas lignite/Power River Basin (PRB) coal blend, high-sulfur Eastern bituminous coal, and low-sulfur Eastern bituminous coal. The project team consists of URS Group, Inc., EPRI, TXU Generation Company LP, Southern Company, and Degussa Corporation. TXU Generation has provided the Texas lignite/PRB cofired test site for pilot FGD tests, Monticello Steam Electric Station Unit 3. Southern Company is …

The United States Department of Energy’s Advanced Gas Reactor (AGR) Fuel Development and Qualification Program will be irradiating eight separate low enriched uranium (LEU) oxycarbide (UCO) tri-isotropic (TRISO) particle fuel (in compact form) experiments in the Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) located at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). The ATR has a long history of irradiation testing in support of reactor development and the INL has been designated as the new United States Department of Energy’s lead laboratory for nuclear energy development. The ATR is one of the world’s premiere test reactors for performing long term, high flux, and/or large volume irradiation test programs. These irradiations and fuel development are being accomplished to support development of the next generation reactors in the United States. The AGR fuel experiments will be irradiated over the next ten years to demonstrate and qualify new particle fuel for use in high temperature gas reactors. The goals of the irradiation experiments are to provide irradiation performance data to support fuel process development, to qualify fuel for normal operating conditions, to support development and validation of fuel performance and fission product transport models and codes, and to provide irradiated fuel and materials for post irradiation examination (PIE) …

Surface permanent magnet (SPM) synchronous machines using fractional-slot concentrated windings are being investigated as candidates for high-performance traction machines for automotive electric propulsion systems. It has been shown analytically and experimentally that such designs can achieve very wide constant-power speed ratios (CPSR) [1,2]. This work has shown that machines of this type are capable of achieving very low cogging torque amplitudes as well as significantly increasing the machine power density [3-5] compared to SPM machines using conventional distributed windings. High efficiency can be achieved in this class of SPM machine by making special efforts to suppress the eddy-current losses in the magnets [6-8], accompanied by efforts to minimize the iron losses in the rotor and stator cores. Considerable attention has traditionally been devoted to maximizing the full-load efficiency of traction machines at their rated operating points and along their maximum-power vs. speed envelopes for higher speeds [9,10]. For example, on-line control approaches have been presented for maximizing the full-load efficiency of PM synchronous machines, including the use of negative d-axis stator current to reduce the core losses [11,12]. However, another important performance specification for electric traction applications is the machine's efficiency at partial loads. Partial-load efficiency is particularly important if …

Activities at U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) training and testing ranges can be sources of dust in local and regional airsheds governed by air-quality regulations. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory just completed a multi-year project to develop a fully tested and documented atmospheric dispersion modeling system (DUST TRANsport or DUSTRAN) to assist the DoD in addressing particulate air-quality issues at military training and testing ranges.

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This Clean Cities Program fact sheet describes aspects of flexible fuel vehicles such as use of E85, special features, benefits of use, costs, and fueling locations. It discusses performance and lists additional resources.

Honors thesis written by a student in the UNT Honors College discussing the examination of fracture marks in forensic investigations in order to determine if two parts of an object belonged to a whole.

This report is categorized into two categories: (I) Formulation of the Budget Resolution and (II) Content of the Budget Resolution.

This paper presents a software approach to augmenting existing real-time systems with self-adaptation capabilities. In this approach, based on the control loop paradigm commonly used in industrial control, self-adaptation is decomposed into observing system events, inferring necessary changes based on a system's functional model, and activating appropriate adaptation procedures. The solution adopts an architectural decomposition that emphasizes independence and separation of concerns. It encapsulates observation, modeling and correction into separate modules to allow for easier customization of the adaptive behavior and flexibility in selecting implementation technologies.

This paper quantifies the mobile air-conditioning fuel consumption of the typical Indian vehicle, exploring potential fuel savings and emissions reductions these systems for the next generation of vehicles.

Hydrogen is seen as the future automobile energy storage media due to its inherent cleanliness upon oxidation and its ready utilization in fuel cell applications. Its physical storage in light weight, low volume systems is a key technical requirement. In searching for ever higher gravimetric and volumetric density hydrogen storage materials and systems, it is inevitable that higher energy density materials will be studied and used. To make safe and commercially acceptable systems, it is important to understand quantitatively, the risks involved in using and handling these materials and to develop appropriate risk mitigation strategies to handle unforeseen accidental events. To evaluate these materials and systems, an IPHE sanctioned program was initiated in 2006 partnering laboratories from Europe, North America and Japan. The objective of this international program is to understanding the physical risks involved in synthesis, handling and utilization of solid state hydrogen storage materials and to develop methods to mitigate these risks. This understanding will support ultimate acceptance of commercially high density hydrogen storage system designs. An overview of the approaches to be taken to achieve this objective will be given. Initial experimental results will be presented on environmental exposure of NaAlH{sub 4}, a candidate high density hydrogen …

The dynamics of air conditioning are of particular interestto energy analysts, both because of the high energy consumption of thisproduct, but also its disproportionate impact on peak load. This paperaddresses the special role of this end use as a driver of residentialelectricity consumption in rapidly developing economies. Recent historyhas shown that air conditioner ownership can grow grows more rapidly thaneconomic growth in warm-climate countries. In 1990, less than a percentof urban Chinese households owned an air conditioner; by 2003 this numberrose to 62 percent. The evidence suggests a similar explosion of airconditioner use in many other countries is not far behind. Room airconditioner purchases in India are currently growing at 20 percent peryear, with about half of these purchases attributed to the residentialsector. This paper draws on two distinct methodological elements toassess future residential air conditioner 'business as usual' electricityconsumption by country/region and to consider specific alternative 'highefficiency' scenarios. The first component is an econometric ownershipand use model based on household income, climate and demographicparameters. The second combines ownership forecasts and stock accountingwith geographically specific efficiency scenarios within a uniqueanalysis framework (BUENAS) developed by LBNL. The efficiency scenariomodule considers current efficiency baselines, available technologies,and achievable timelines for development of market …

Recent fermentation studies have identified actinomycetes ofthe marine-dwelling genus Salinispora as prolific natural productproducers. To further evaluate their biosynthetic potential, we analyzedall identifiable secondary natural product gene clusters from therecently sequenced 5,184,724 bp S. tropica CNB-440 circular genome. Ouranalysis shows that biosynthetic potential meets or exceeds that shown byprevious Streptomyces genome sequences as well as other naturalproduct-producing actinomycetes. The S. tropica genome features ninepolyketide synthase systems of every known formally classified family,non-ribosomal peptide synthetases and several hybrid clusters. While afew clusters appear to encode molecules previously identified inStreptomyces species,the majority of the 15 biosynthetic loci are novel.Specific chemical information about putative and observed natural productmolecules is presented and discussed. In addition, our bioinformaticanalysis was critical for the structure elucidation of the novelpolyenemacrolactam salinilactam A. This study demonstrates the potentialfor genomic analysis to complement and strengthen traditional naturalproduct isolation studies and firmly establishes the genus Salinispora asa rich source of novel drug-like molecules.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Waterborne pathogens can contaminate water and sand at beaches and threaten human health. Under the Beaches Environmental Assessment and Coastal Health (BEACH) Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) developed limits on pathogens that states use to assess beach water quality. EPA can also provide grants to states to develop water quality monitoring and public notification programs. GAO was asked to assess (1) the extent to which EPA implemented the BEACH Act including how it allocated grants to the states, (2) the monitoring and notification programs developed by Great Lakes states, and (3) the effect of the BEACH Act on water quality monitoring and contamination at Great Lakes beaches."

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Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

This plan describes the groundwater sampling and water level monitoring that will be conducted to evaluate contaminations in the Snake River Plain Aquifer entering and leaving the Idaho National Laboratory. The sampling and monitoring locations were selected to meet the data quality objectives detailed in this plan. Data for the Snake River Plain Aquifer obtained under this plan will be evaluated in the Operable Unit 10-08 Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study report and will be used to support the Operable Unit 10-08 Sitewide groundwater model.