Aqueous solutions (mixed waste) generated from various LLNL operations, such as debris washing, sample preparation and analysis, and equipment maintenance and cleanout, were combined for storage in the B695 tank farm. Prior to combination the individual waste streams had different codes depending on the particular generating process and waste characteristics. The largest streams were CWC 132, 791, 134, 792. Several smaller waste streams were also included. This combined waste stream was treated at LLNL's waste treatment facility using a vacuum filtration and cool vapor evaporation process in preparation for discharge to sanitary sewer. Prior to discharge, the treated waste stream was sampled and the results were reviewed by LLNL's water monitoring specialists. The treated solution was discharged following confirmation that it met the discharge criteria. A major source, accounting for 50% for this waste stream, is metal machining, cutting and grinding operations in the engineering machine shops in B321/B131. An additional 7% was from similar operations in B131 and B132S. This waste stream primarily contains metal cuttings from machined parts, machining coolant and water, with small amounts of tramp oil from the machining and grinding equipment. Several waste reduction measures for the B321 machine shop have been taken, including the …

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

None

Residual fallout contamination from the nuclear test program in the Marshall Islands is a concern to Marshall Islanders because of the potential health risks associated with exposure to residual fallout contamination in the environment. Scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have been monitoring the amount of fallout radiation delivered to Utrok Atoll residents over the past 4 years. This briefing document gives an outline of our findings from the whole body counting and plutonium bioassay monitoring programs. Additional information can be found on the Marshall Islands web site (http://eed.lnl.gov/mi/). Cesium-137 is an important radioactive isotope produced in nuclear detonations and can be taken up from coral soils into locally grown food crop products that form an important part of the Marshallese diet. The Marshall Islands whole body counting program has clearly demonstrated that the majority of Utrok Atoll residents acquire a very small but measurable quantity of cesium-137 in their bodies (Hamilton et al., 2006; Hamilton et. al., 2007a; 2007b;). During 2006, a typical resident of Utrok Atoll received about 3 mrem of radiation from internally deposited cesium-137 (Hamilton et al., 2007a). The population-average dose contribution from cesium-137 is around 2% of the total radiation dose that people normally …

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This report addresses relevant policy questions in current U.S.-China relations, discusses trends and key legislation in the current Congress and provides a chronology of developments and high-level exchanges.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From 1987 through 2003, the United States provided more than $2 billion in economic assistance to the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the RMI under a Compact of Free Association; approximately $579 million of this economic assistance went to the RMI. In 2003, the U.S. government approved an amended compact with the RMI that provides an additional 20 years of assistance, totaling about $1.5 billion from 2004 through 2023. The Department of the Interior's Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) is responsible for administering and monitoring this U.S. assistance. The amended compact with the RMI identifies the additional 20 years of grant assistance as intended to assist the RMI government in its efforts to promote the economic advancement and budgetary self-reliance of its people. The assistance is provided in the form of annually decreasing grants that prioritize health and education, paired with annually increasing contributions to trust funds intended as a source of revenue for the country after the grants end in 2023. The amended compact also contains several new funding and accountability provisions that strengthen reporting and bilateral interaction. These provisions include requiring the establishment of a …

This report examines the source of the contempt power, reviews the historical development of the early case law, outlines the statutory and common law basis for Congress's contempt power, and analyzes the procedures associated with each of the three different types of contempt proceedings. In addition, the report discusses limitations both unconstitutional and constitutionally based on the power.

This report provides information about the Country-of-Origin Labeling for Foods. Federal law requires most imports, including many food items to bear labels informing the "ultimate purchaser" of their country of origin.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy is beset with long-standing problems that affect its ability to accomplish ambitious goals for its shipbuilding portfolio. Significant cost growth and long schedule delays are persistent problems. Making headway on these problems is essential in light of the serious budget pressures facing the nation. This testimony focuses on (1) cost growth in shipbuilding, (2) acquisition approaches in the LPD 17, Littoral Combat Ship, DDG 1000 and CVN 78 programs and (3) steps the Navy can take to improve its acquisition decision-making, particularly the adoption of a knowledge-based framework."

Bacteria of the genus Deinococcus are extremely resistant to ionizing radiation (IR), ultraviolet light (UV) and desiccation. The mesophile Deinococcus radiodurans was the first member of this group whose genome was completely sequenced. Analysis of the genome sequence of D. radiodurans, however, failed to identify unique DNA repair systems. To further delineate the genes underlying the resistance phenotypes, we report the whole-genome sequence of a second Deinococcus species, the thermophile Deinococcus geothermalis, which at itsoptimal growth temperature is as resistant to IR, UV and desiccation as D. radiodurans, and a comparative analysis of the two Deinococcus genomes. Many D. radiodurans genes previously implicated in resistance, but for which no sensitive phenotype was observed upon disruption, are absent in D. geothermalis. In contrast, most D. radiodurans genes whose mutants displayed a radiation-sensitive phenotype in D. radiodurans are conserved in D. geothermalis. Supporting the existence of a Deinococcus radiation response regulon, a common palindromic DNA motif was identified in a conserved set of genes associated with resistance, and a dedicated transcriptional regulator was predicted. We present the case that these two species evolved essentially the same diverse set of gene families, and that the extreme stress-resistance phenotypes of the Deinococcus lineage emerged …

None

The magnetic reconnection process is studied in a wide range of operating conditions in the well-controlled Magnetic Reconnection Experiment. The reconnection rate is observed to be a function of both global (i.e., system size) and local (collisionality) plasma parameters. When only local collisionality is lowered, the current sheet is shortened while effective resistivity is enhanced, both accelerating reconnection rates. At a fixed collisionality, the current sheet length increases with system size, resulting in the reduction of the reconnection rate. These results quantitatively agree with a generalized Sweet-Parker analysis.

This report discusses the designation of spending as emergency, which has had significance in both procedural and budgetary terms.

We construct the microstates of near-extremal black holes in AdS_5 x S5 as gases of defects distributed in heavy BPS operators in the dual SU(N) Yang-Mills theory. These defects describe open strings on spherical D3-branes in the S5, and we show that they dominate the entropy by directly enumerating them and comparing the results with a partition sum calculation. We display new decoupling limits in which the field theory of the lightest open strings on the D-branes becomes dual to a near-horizon region of the black hole geometry. In the single-charge black hole we find evidence for an infrared duality between SU(N) Yang-Mills theories that exchanges the rank of the gauge group with an R-charge. In the two-charge case (where pairs of branes intersect on a line), the decoupled geometry includes an AdS_3 factor with a two-dimensional CFT dual. The degeneracy in this CFT accounts for the black hole entropy. In the three-charge case (where triples of branes intersect at a point), the decoupled geometry contains an AdS_2 factor. Below a certain critical mass, the two-charge system displays solutions with naked timelike singularities even though they do not violate a BPS bound. We suggest a string theoretic resolution of these …

None

None

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

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Farmers receive about $20 billion annually in federal farm program payments, which go to individuals and "entities," including corporations, partnerships, and estates. Under certain conditions, estates may receive payments for the first 2 years after an individual's death. For later years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) must determine that the estate is not being kept open primarily to receive farm program payments. This testimony is based on GAO's report, Federal Farm Programs: USDA Needs to Strengthen Controls to Prevent Improper Payments to Estates and Deceased Individuals (GAO-07-818, July 9, 2007). GAO discusses the extent to which USDA (1) follows its regulations that are intended to provide reasonable assurance that farm program payments go only to eligible estates and (2) makes improper payments to deceased individuals."

This report provides a limited discussion of DRA's effect on former TANF families. The report address only the direct effects of adopting the DRA child support pass-through and disregard.

Tritium clean-up systems typically deploy gas processing technologies between stages of palladium-silver (Pd/Ag) diffusers/permeators. The number of diffusers positioned before and after a gas clean-up process to obtain optimal system performance will vary with feed gas inert composition. A simple method to analyze optimal diffuser configuration is presented. The method assumes equilibrium across the Pd/Ag tubes and system flows are limited by diffuser vacuum pump speeds preceding or following the clean-up process. A plot of system feed as a function of inert feed gas composition for various diffuser configuration allows selection of a diffuser configuration for maximum throughput based on feed gas composition.

Along with methane, methanol and methylated amines represent important biogenic atmospheric constituents; thus, not only methanotrophs but also nonmethanotrophic methylotrophs play a significant role in global carbon cycling. The complete genome of a model obligate methanol and methylamine utilizer, Methylobacillus flagellatus (strain KT) was sequenced. The genome is represented by a single circular chromosome of approximately 3 Mbp, potentially encoding a total of 2,766 proteins. Based on genome analysis as well as the results from previous genetic and mutational analyses, methylotrophy is enabled by methanol and methylamine dehydrogenases and their specific electron transport chain components, the tetrahydromethanopterin-linked formaldehyde oxidation pathway and the assimilatory and dissimilatory ribulose monophosphate cycles, and by a formate dehydrogenase. Some of the methylotrophy genes are present in more than one (identical or nonidentical) copy. The obligate dependence on single-carbon compounds appears to be due to the incomplete tricarboxylic acid cycle, as no genes potentially encoding alpha-ketoglutarate, malate, or succinate dehydrogenases are identifiable. The genome of M. flagellatus was compared in terms of methylotrophy functions to the previously sequenced genomes of three methylotrophs, Methylobacterium extorquens (an alphaproteobacterium, 7 Mbp), Methylibium petroleiphilum (a betaproteobacterium, 4 Mbp), and Methylococcus capsulatus (a gammaproteobacterium, 3.3 Mbp). Strikingly, metabolically and/or phylogenetically, the …

None