This report provides details about the Industry,its workforce and the labor standards of the Funeral Services.It examines both the professional and categorical approaches and their policy implications.

None

Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) was tasked to find and characterize the impact of rheological modifiers to a clay (Kaolin-Bentonite) slurry having 23.1 total wt percent solids, 1.165 g/ml, and Bingham Plastic yield stress of 13 Pa and plastic viscosity of 24 mPa-sec. The primary objective was to find rheological modifiers when blended with this clay slurry that would provide a vane yield stress of 300 Pa when the slurry was undisturbed for 24 hours. A secondary objective was to find a modifier that after shearing would produce a Bingham Plastic yield stress of 30 Pa and plastic viscosity of 30 mPa-sec. Two parallel paths were chosen with one examining a variety of organic/inorganic modifiers and another using just the inorganic modifier Laponite (R). The addition of organic modifiers hydroxyethylcellulose, hydroxypropylmethylcellulose, and hydroxypropylcellulose at a target 0.50 wt percent dramatically increased the vane yield stress over the range 311 - 724 Pa, and also increased the Bingham plastic yield stress and plastic viscosities over the range 33-112 Pa and 27-166 mPa-sec, respectively. The organic modifiers also showed elastic behavior, yielding a very unpredictable up flow curve. The 0.50 wt percent addition of inorganic modifiers magnesium aluminum silicate and hydrate magnesium …

The goals of the Photovoltaic Manufacturing Technology project (PVMaT) are to help the US PV industry improve photovoltaic manufacturing processes and equipment; accelerate manufacturing cost reductions for PV modules, balance-of-systems components, and integrated systems; increase commercial product performance and reliability; and enhance the investment opportunities for substantial scale-ups of US-based PV manufacturing plant capacities. PVMaT is in its ninth year of implementation, and subcontracts have been completed from four solicitations for R and D on manufacturing process problems. They are in the second year of subcontracts for a fifth PVMaT solicitation. Based on the latest (1998) data from ten PVMaT industrial participants, the average direct manufacturing cost for these producers has been reduced by 29%--from $4.08 to $2.91 per peak watt since 1992--and there has also been a more than five-fold increase in manufacturing capacity-from 13.1 to 73.3 megawatts. The authors believe that continuing R and D on manufacturing processes contributes significantly to expeditious reductions in PV manufacturing costs, and they identify areas for future R and D.

This report provides information about the Future of the Balkans and U.S. Policy Concerns where the Unites states,its allies, and local leaders have achieved substantial success in the Balkans in the mid-1990's.

This paper evaluates the accuracy of two methods to forecast natural gas prices: using the Energy Information Administration's ''Annual Energy Outlook'' forecasted price (AEO) and the ''Henry Hub'' compared to U.S. Wellhead futures price. A statistical analysis is performed to determine the relative accuracy of the two measures in the recent past. A statistical analysis suggests that the Henry Hub futures price provides a more accurate average forecast of natural gas prices than the AEO. For example, the Henry Hub futures price underestimated the natural gas price by 35 cents per thousand cubic feet (11.5 percent) between 1996 and 2003 and the AEO underestimated by 71 cents per thousand cubic feet (23.4 percent). Upon closer inspection, a liner regression analysis reveals that two distinct time periods exist, the period between 1996 to 1999 and the period between 2000 to 2003. For the time period between 1996 to 1999, AEO showed a weak negative correlation (R-square = 0.19) between forecast price by actual U.S. Wellhead natural gas price versus the Henry Hub with a weak positive correlation (R-square = 0.20) between forecasted price and U.S. Wellhead natural gas price. During the time period between 2000 to 2003, AEO shows a moderate …

This report provides information about the Background and Issues for Congress on Conventional Warheads for Long-Range Ballistic Missiles.

This report provides an overview of U.S. international drug control policy. It describes major international counternarcotics initiatives and evaluates the broad array of U.S. drug control policy tools currently in use. The report also considers alternative counterdrug policy approaches to current initiatives and raises several counterdrug policy issues and considerations for policy makers.

Recent studies suggest that mineral dissolution/precipitation and clay swelling effects could have a major impact on the performance of hot dry rock (HDR) and hot fractured rock (HFR) reservoirs. A major concern is achieving and maintaining adequate injectivity, while avoiding the development of preferential short-circuiting flow paths. A Pitzer ionic interaction model has been introduced into the publicly available TOUGHREACT code for solving non-isothermal multi-phase reactive geochemical transport problems under conditions of high ionic strength, expected in typical HDR and HFR systems. To explore chemically-induced effects of fluid circulation in these systems, we examine ways in which the chemical composition of reinjected waters can be modified to improve reservoir performance. We performed a number of coupled thermo-hydrologic-chemical simulations in which the fractured medium was represented by a one-dimensional MINC model (multiple interacting continua). Results obtained with the Pitzer activity coefficient model were compared with those using an extended Debye-Hueckel equation. Our simulations show that non-ideal activity effects can be significant even at modest ionic strength, and can have major impacts on permeability evolution in injection-production systems. Alteration of injection water chemistry, for example by dilution with fresh water, can greatly alter precipitation and dissolution effects, and can offer a powerful …

This report discusses soil and water conservation topics, which will be prominent in the 110th Congress, especially as it considers policy options for the next farm bill.

Protein arrays are emerging as a practical format in which to study proteins in high-throughput using many of the same techniques as that of the DNA microarray. The key advantage to array-based methods for protein study is the potential for parallel analysis of thousands of samples in an automated, high-throughput fashion. Building protein arrays capable of this analysis capacity requires a robust expression and purification system capable of generating hundreds to thousands of purified recombinant proteins. We have developed a method to utilize LLNL-I.M.A.G.E. cDNAs to generate recombinant protein libraries using a baculovirus-insect cell expression system. We have used this strategy to produce proteins for analysis of protein/DNA and protein/protein interactions using protein microarrays in order to understand the complex interactions of proteins involved in homologous recombination and DNA repair. Using protein array techniques, a novel interaction between the DNA repair protein, Rad51B, and histones has been identified.

An overview of new experimental results on high-pT particleproduction and jets in heavy ion collisions from the Quark Matter 2006conference is presented.

None

None

None

None

None

None

None

None