The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) eighth annual Information Resources Catalog can help keep you up-to-date on the research, development, opportunities, and available technologies in energy efficiency and renewable energy. The catalog includes five main sections with entries grouped according to subject area.

When fractures in otherwise hard rocks are filled with fluids (oil, gas, water, CO{sub 2}), the type and physical state of the fluid (liquid or gas) can make a large difference in the wave speeds and attenuation properties of seismic waves. The present work summarizes methods of deconstructing theses effects of fractures, together with any fluids contained within them, on wave propagation as observed in reflection seismic data. Additional studies of waves in fluid-saturated granular media show that the behavior can be quite different from that for fractured media, since these materials are typically much softer mechanically than are the fractured rocks (i.e., having a very small drained moduli). Important fluid effects in such media are often governed as much by fluid viscosity as by fluid bulk modulus.

Contaminants in soil can impact human health and the environment through a complex web of interactions. Soils exist where the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere converge. Soil is the thin outer zone of the earth's crust that supports rooted plants and is the product of climate and living organisms acting on rock. A true soil is a mixture of air, water, mineral, and organic components. The relative proportions of these components determine the value of the soil for agricultural and for other human uses. These proportions also determine, to a large extent, how a substance added to soil is transported and/or transformed within the soil (Spositio, 2004). In mass-balance models, soil compartments play a major role, functioning both as reservoirs and as the principal media for transport among air, vegetation, surface water, deeper soil, and ground water (Mackay, 2001). Quantifying the mass transport of chemicals within soil and between soil and atmosphere is important for understanding the role soil plays in controlling fate, transport, and exposure to multimedia pollutants. Soils are characteristically heterogeneous. A trench dug into soil typically reveals several horizontal layers having different colors and textures. As illustrated in Figure 1, these multiple layers are often divided into …

The final report of the evaluation of the Compressed Air Challenge (CAC) Training Program. The training program is designed to provide plant personnel and compressed air system vendors with knowledge and tools required to effect improvements to the energy efficiency and overall performance of plant compressed air systems. As of May 2001, 3,029 individuals had attended the CAC Fundamentals of Compressed Air Training Systems and 925 individuals had attended ''Advanced Management of Compressed Air Systems''. These individuals represented 1,400-1,500 separate business establishments. The evaluation is based on three main research tasks: analysis of the CAC registration database, interviews with 100 end-user personnel who attended the CAC training, and interviews with 100 compressed air system vendors and consulting engineers who attended the training sessions.