Members of Congress often get requests from constituents for information and help in obtaining funds for projects. Many state and local governments, nonprofit social service and community action organizations, private research groups, small businesses, and individuals approach congressional offices to find out about funding, both from the federal government and from the private sector. The success rate in obtaining federal assistance is not high, given the competition for federal funds. A grants staff’s effectiveness often depends on both an understanding of the grants process and on the relations it establishes with agency and other contacts. The following report does not constitute a blueprint for every office involved in grants and projects activity, nor does it present in-depth information about all aspects of staff activity in this area. The discussion is aimed at describing some basics about the grants process and some of the approaches and techniques used by congressional offices in dealing with this type of constituent service.

Weekly student newspaper from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Constitutionality of statute authorizing the Texas Commission of Human Rights to review the personnel policies and procedures of Texas state appellate courts for compliance with the Texas Human Rights Act (RQ-0538-JC)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a city council may determine than its members are not eligible to serve as members of a volunteer fire department, and related questions (RQ-0539-JC)

Laboratory facilities present a unique challenge for energy efficient and sustainable design, with their inherent complexity of systems, health and safety requirements, long-term flexibility and adaptability needs, energy use intensity, and environmental impacts. The typical laboratory is about three to five times as energy intensive as a typical office building and costs about three times as much per unit area. In order to help laboratory stakeholders assess the environmental performance of their laboratories, the Labs21 program, sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency and the US Department of Energy, is developing the Environmental Performance Criteria (EPC), a point-based rating system that builds on the LEED(TM) rating system. Currently, LEED(TM) is the primary tool used to rate the sustainability of commercial buildings. However, it lacks some attributes essential to encouraging the application of sustainable design principles to laboratory buildings. Accordingly, the EPC has additions and modifications to the prerequisites and credits in each of the six sections of LEED(TM). It is being developed in a consensus-based approach by a diverse group of architects, engineers, consulting experts, health & safety personnel and facilities personnel. This report describes the EPC version 2.0, highlighting the underlying technical issues, and describes implications for the development …

The Pennsylvania State University, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory is performing a feasibility analysis on installing a state-of-the-art circulating fluidized bed boiler and ceramic filter emission control device at Penn State's University Park campus for cofiring multiple biofuels and other wastes with coal, and developing a test program to evaluate cofiring multiple biofuels and coal-based feedstocks. The objective of the project is being accomplished using a team that includes personnel from Penn State's Energy Institute, Office of Physical Plant, and College of Agricultural Sciences; Foster Wheeler Energy Services, Inc.; Parsons Energy and Chemicals Group, Inc.; and Cofiring Alternatives. During this reporting period, the final technical design and cost estimate were submitted to Penn State by Foster Wheeler. In addition, Penn State initiated the internal site selection process to finalize the site for the boiler plant.

This document proposes a multi-site strategy for creating a new class of computing capability for the U.S. by undertaking the research and development necessary to build supercomputers optimized for science in partnership with the American computer industry.

Recent developments in plasma synthesis of hard materials using energetic ions are described. Metal Plasma Immersion Ion Implantation and Deposition (MePIIID) has been used to prepare several hard films: from diamondlike carbon (DLC) to carbides, from nitrides to oxides. The energy of the depositing species is controlled to maximize adhesion as well as to change the physical and chemical properties of the films. Adhesion is promoted by the creation of a graded interface between the film and the substrate. The energy of the depositing ions is also used to modify and control the intrinsic stresses and the microstructure of the films. The deposition is carried out at room temperature, which is important for temperature sensitive substrates. A correlation between intrinsic stresses and the energetics of the deposition is presented for the case of DLC films, and means to reduce stress levels are discussed.

Accretion formation and the associated clogging of SENs is a major problem for the steel industry leading to decreased strand speed, premature changing of SENs or strand termination and the associated reductions in productivity, consistency, and steel quality. A program to evaluate potentially clog resistance materials was initiated at the University of Missouri-Rolla. The main objective of the research effort was to identify combinations of steelmaking and refractory practices that would yield improved accretion resistance for tundish nozzles and submerged entry nozzles. A number of tasks were identified during the initial kick-off meeting and each was completed with two exceptions, the thermal shock validation and the industrial trials. Not completing these two tasks related to not having access to industrial scale production facilities. Though much of the results and information generated in the project is of proprietary nature.

Transition-free lattices are favored as possible realization of proton drivers. Several variants have been proposed, some of which have considerably different behavior. One of the main quantities used to characterize this behavior is the short term dynamic aperture (DA). In this note we study three different variants of such lattices, and show that the differences in DA among the lattices essentially disappear as soon as magnet multipole errors are included in the simulation. The tracking results can be understood in terms of the normal form based amplitude dependent tune shift and resonance strength coefficients.

Superconducting accelerator magnets must provide a uniform field during operation. However, the field quality significantly deteriorates due to persistent currents induced in superconducting filaments. This effect is especially large for the Nb{sub 3}Sn conductor being implemented in the next generation of accelerator magnets. A simple and inexpensive method of passive correction of the persistent current effect was developed and experimentally verified. This paper describes numerical simulations of the passive correctors and reports the test results.

Tevatron Experiments: CDF and 6 D0 collected during October 1992 and February 1996 (Run I) a data sample of roughly 120 pb{sup -1} p {bar p} collisions at a center of mass energy {radical}s = 1.8 TeV. A large variety of physical studies have been performed using these data. Current paper reviews last results obtained searching for physics beyond the Standard Model. Direct Supersymmetry (SUSY) searches are not part of this review.

The Wabash River Integrated Methanol and Power Production from Clean Coal Technologies (IMPPCCT) project is evaluating integrated electrical power generation and methanol production through clean coal technologies. The project is conducted by a multi-industry team lead by Gasification Engineering Corporation (GEC), and supported by Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., Dow Chemical Company, Dow Corning Corporation, Methanex Corporation, and Siemens Westinghouse Power Corporation. Three project phases are planned for execution over a three year period, including: (1) Feasibility study and conceptual design for an integrated demonstration facility, and for fence-line commercial plants operated at Dow Chemical or Dow Corning chemical plant locations; (2) Research, development, and testing to define any technology gaps or critical design and integration issues; and (3) Engineering design and financing plan to install an integrated commercial demonstration facility at the existing Wabash River Energy Limited (WREL) plant in West Terre Haute, Indiana. This report describes management planning, work breakdown structure development, and feasibility study activities by the IMPPCCT consortium in support of the first project phase. Project planning activities have been completed, and a project timeline and task list has been generated. Requirements for an economic model to evaluate the West Terre Haute implementation and for other …

High impact publication on innovative work to understand magnetic coupling in magnetic insulators and how to evaluate accurately the magnetic coupling constants.

This report does not constitute a blueprint for every office involved in grants and projects activity, nor does it present in-depth information about all aspects of staff activity in this area.

The question of the anisotropy of the electron scattering in high temperature superconductors is investigated using high resolution angle-resolved photoemission data from Pb-doped Bi2Sr2CaCu2O8(Bi2212) with suppressed superstructure. The scattering rate of low energy electrons along two bilayer split pieces of the Fermi surface is measured (via the quasiparticle peak width), and no increase of scattering towards the antinode (Pi,0) region is observed, contradicting the expectation from Q=(Pi, Pi) scattering. The results put a limit on the effects of Q=(Pi, Pi) scattering on the electronic structure of this overdoped superconductor with still very high Tc.

The characteristics of the particle emitting source are deduced from low p{sub T} identified hadron spectra ((m{sub T}-m0) < 1 GeV) and HBT radii using a hydrodynamic interpretation. From the most peripheral to the most central data, the single particle spectra are fit simultaneously for all {pi}{sup {+-}}, K{sup {+-}}, and {bar p}/p using the parameterization in [1] and assuming a linear transverse flow profile. Within the systematic uncertainties, the expansion parameters T{sub fo} and {beta}{sub T}, respectively decrease and increase with the number of participants, saturating for both at mid-centrality. The expansion using analytic calculations of the k{sub T} dependence of HBT radii in [2] is fit to the data but no {chi}{sup 2} minimum is found.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is currently involved in a long term study using time-lapse multiple frequency electromagnetic (EM) imaging at a carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) enhanced oil recovery (EOR) site in the San Joaquin Valley, California. The impetus for this proposed research project is to develop the ability to image subsurface CO{sub 2} during EOR processes while simultaneously discriminating between background heavy petroleum and water deposits. Using field equipment developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in prior imaging studies of EOR water and steam injection, this research uses multiple field deployments to acquire subsurface image snapshots of the CO{sub 2} injection and displacement. Laboratory research, including electrical and transport properties of fluid and CO{sub 2} in saturated materials, uses core samples from drilling, as well as samples of injection and formation fluid provided by industrial partners on-site. Our two-fold approach to combine laboratory and field methods in imaging a pilot CO{sub 2} sequestration EOR site using the cross-borehole EM technique is to (1) improve the inversion process in CO{sub 2} studies by coupling field results with petrophysical laboratory measurements and (2) focus on new gas interpretation techniques of the field data using multiple frequencies and low noise data processing techniques. …

The addition of oxygenates to diesel fuel can reduce particulate emissions, but the underlying chemical pathways for the reductions are not well understood. While measurements of particulate matter (PM), unburned hydrocarbons (HC), and carbon monoxide (CO) are routine, determining the contribution of carbon atoms in the original fuel molecules to the formation of these undesired exhaust emissions has proven difficult. Renewable bio-derived fuels (ethanol or bio-diesel) containing a universal distribution of contemporary carbon are easily traced by accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). These measurements provide general information about the emissions of bio-derived fuels. Another approach exploits synthetic organic chemistry to place {sup 14}C atoms in a specific bond position in a specific fuel molecule. The highly labeled fuel molecule is then diluted in {sup 14}C-free petroleum-derived stock to make a contemporary petroleum fuel suitable for tracing. The specific {sup 14}C atoms are then traced through the combustion event to determine whether they reside in PM, HC, CO, CO{sub 2}, or other emission products. This knowledge of how specific molecular structures produce certain emissions can be used to refine chemical-kinetic combustion models and to optimize fuel composition to reduce undesired emissions. Due to the high sensitivity of the technique and the lack …

We report on the performance of an S-band RF photocathode electron gun and accelerator for operation with the PLEIADES Thomson x-ray source at LLNL. Simulations of beam production, transport, and focus are presented. It is shown that a 1 ps, 500 pC electron bunch with a normalized emittance of less than 5 {pi}mm-mrad can be delivered to the interaction point. Initial electron measurements are presented. Calculations of expected x-ray flux are also performed, demonstrating an expected peak spectral brightness of 10{sup 20} photons/s/mm{sup 2}/mrad{sup 2}/0.1% bandwidth. Effects of RF phase jitter are also presented, and planned phase measurements and control methods are discussed.

Beams for heavy-ion fusion (HIF) are expected to require substantial neutralization in a target chamber. Present targets call for higher beam currents and smaller focal spots than most earlier designs, leading to high space-charge fields. Collisional stripping by the background gas expected in the chamber further increases the beam charge. Simulations with no electron sources other than beam stripping and background-gas ionization show an acceptable focal spot only for high ion energies or for currents far below the values assumed in recent HIF power-plant scenarios. Much recent research has, therefore, focused on beam neutralization by electron sources that were neglected in earlier simulations, including emission from walls and the target, photoionization by radiation from the target, and pre-neutralization by a plasma generated along the beam path. The simulations summarized here indicate that these effects can significantly reduce the beam focal-spot size.

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

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Student newspaper of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma that includes national, local, and campus news along with advertising.