Annually laminated sediments (varves) offer an effective means of acquiring high-quality paleoenvironmental records. However, the strength of a varve chronology can be compromised by a number of factors, such as missing varves, ambiguous laminations, and human counting error. We assess the quality of a varve chronology for the last three millennia from Steel Lake, Minnesota, through comparisons with nine AMS {sup 14}C dates on terrestrial plant macrofossils from the same core. These comparisons revealed an overall 8.4% discrepancy, primarily because of missing/uncountable varves within two stratigraphic intervals characterized by low carbonate concentrations and obscure laminations. Application of appropriate correction factors to these two intervals results in excellent agreement between the varve and {sup 14}C chronologies. These results, together with other varve studies, demonstrate that an independent age-determination method, such as {sup 14}C dating, is usually necessary to verify, and potentially correct, varve chronologies.

This report summarizes the objectives, technical barrier, approach, and accomplishments for the development of a novel water-gas-shift (WGS) membrane reactor for hydrogen enhancement and CO reduction. We have synthesized novel CO{sub 2}-selective membranes with high CO{sub 2} permeabilities and high CO{sub 2}/H{sub 2} and CO{sub 2}/CO selectivities by incorporating amino groups in polymer networks. We have also developed a one-dimensional non-isothermal model for the countercurrent WGS membrane reactor. The modeling results have shown that H{sub 2} enhancement (>99.6% H{sub 2} for the steam reforming of methane and >54% H{sub 2} for the autothermal reforming of gasoline with air on a dry basis) via CO{sub 2} removal and CO reduction to 10 ppm or lower are achievable for synthesis gases. With this model, we have elucidated the effects of system parameters, including CO{sub 2}/H{sub 2} selectivity, CO{sub 2} permeability, sweep/feed flow rate ratio, feed temperature, sweep temperature, feed pressure, catalyst activity, and feed CO concentration, on the membrane reactor performance. Based on the modeling study using the membrane data obtained, we showed the feasibility of achieving H{sub 2} enhancement via CO{sub 2} removal, CO reduction to {le} 10 ppm, and high H{sub 2} recovery. Using the membrane synthesized, we have obtained …

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Stable stratification associated with nocturnal thermal circulation in areas of complex terrain leads to interesting and important phenomena that govern local meteorology and contaminant dispersion. Given that most urban areas are in complex topography, understanding and prediction of such phenomena are of immediate practical importance. This project dealt with theoretical, laboratory, numerical and field experimental studies aimed at understanding stratified flow and turbulence phenomena in urban areas, with particular emphasis on flow, turbulence and contaminant transport and diffusion in such flows. A myriad of new results were obtained and some of these results were used to improve the predictive capabilities of the models.

Resonant Photoemission, a variant of Photoelectron Spectroscopy, has been demonstrated to have sensitivity to aging of Pu samples. The spectroscopic results are correlated with resistivity measurements and are shown to be the fingerprint of mesoscopic or nanoscale internal damage in the Pu physical structure. This means that a spectroscopic signature of internal damage due to aging in Pu has been established.

The Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) created the Office of National Transportation in 2003 recognizing the need to revitalize and accelerate development of the transportation system. The Department has made a commitment to work through a collaborative planning process before developing specific policies and procedures and making transportation decisions. OCRWM has begun to build the institutional framework to support development of this transportation system. Interactions with stakeholders have been initiated. The authors describe the key stakeholders, identified issues, regional and national planning activities, and mechanisms for interaction.

It's not exactly Russian roulette, but scheduling October events outdoors is not risk-free, even in usually sunny California. An overflow crowd of more than 400 registered users, ALS staff, and vendors enjoyed a full indoor program featuring science highlights and workshops spread over two and a half days from October 18 to October 20. However, a major storm, heralding the onset of the San Francisco Bay Area rainy season, posed a few weather challenges for the events on the ALS patio.

This project supports the development of software using terascale computers to carry out molecular simulations of protein function and macromolecular interactions. We are building on the existing CHARMM and Amber simulation packages, adapting them in novel ways to massively parallel architectures and high-performance CPUs. Three principal avenues being pursued are: (1) Improvements in load-balancing and communication for large-scale particle-mesh Ewald (PME) simulations of solvated biomolecules. (2) Modern techniques for accelerating convergence of sampling of configuration space offer promise for further exploitation of massively parallel architectures. These methods include parallel tempering and ''lambda dynamics'' procedures that connect multiple, synchronized results from PME simulations like those described in part [1]. (3) The implementation of efficient and scalable algorithms that move towards lower-resolution models in ways that can be carefully calibrated against atomic-level solvated simulations.

We are conducting a collaborative research program on two tokamaks, HT-7 and EAST (Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, formerly HT-7U), with the Institute of Plasma Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CASIPP) located in Hefei, PRC. The work that we planned for this year included conducting transport experiments on HT-7, completing plans for expansion of the HT-7 diagnostic set, and reaching an agreement on how UT-FRC can best participate in experiments on HT-7U. These goals were accomplished as summarized in the next section. Note that the experimental portion of the work is still underway. The experimental campaign for HT-7 began just a few weeks before this report was compiled.

Superconducting Gamma-ray microcalorimeters operated at temperatures around {approx}0.1 K offer an order of magnitude improvement in energy resolution over conventional high-purity Germanium spectrometers. The calorimeters consist of a {approx}1 mm{sup 3} superconducting or insulating absorber and a sensitive thermistor, which are weakly coupled to a cold bath. Gamma-ray capture increases the absorber temperature in proportion to the Gamma-ray energy, this is measured by the thermistor, and both subsequently cool back down to the base temperature through the weak link. We are developing ultra-high-resolution Gamma-ray spectrometers based on Sn absorbers and superconducting Mo/Cu multilayer thermistors for nuclear non-proliferation applications. They have achieved an energy resolution between 60 and 90 eV for Gamma-rays up to 100 keV. We also build two-stage adiabatic demagnetization refrigerators for user-friendly detector operation at 0.1 K. We present recent results on the performance of single pixel Gamma-ray spectrometers, and discuss the design of a large detector array for increased sensitivity.

A concept being developed for high current electron beams may have application to HEDP and is described here. It involves the use of planar Blumlein stacks placed inside an induction cell. The output end of the Blumlein stack is applied across a high gradient insulator (HGI). These insulators have been used successfully in the presence of kilo Ampere-level electron beam currents for tens of nanoseconds at gradients of 20 MV/meter.

We present the status and initial images of a positrontomograph for prostate imaging that centers a patient between a pair ofexternal curved detector banks (ellipse: 45 cm minor, 70 cm major axis).The distance between detector banks adjusts to allow patient access andto position the detectors as closely as possible for maximum sensitivitywith patients of various sizes. Each bank is composed of two axial rowsof 20 CTI PET Systems HR+ block detectors for a total of 80 modules inthe camera. Compared to an ECAT HR PET system operating in 3D mode, ourcamera uses about one-quarter the number of detectors and hasapproximately the same sensitivity for a central point source, becauseour detectors are close to the patient. The individual detectors areangled in the plane to point towards the prostate to minimize resolutiondegradation in that region. The detectors are read out by modified CTIdata acquisition electronics. We have completed construction of thegantry and electronics, have developed detector calibration and dataacquisition software, and are taking coincidence data. We demonstratethat we can clearly visualize a "prostate" in a simple phantom.Reconstructed images of two phantoms are shown.

Block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) uses a mesh structure built up out of locally-uniform rectangular grids. In the BoxLib parallel framework used by the Raptor code, each processor operates on one or more of these grids at each refinement level. The decomposition of the mesh into grids and the distribution of these grids among processors may change every few timesteps as a calculation proceeds. Finer grids use smaller timesteps than coarser grids, requiring additional work to keep the system synchronized and ensure conservation between different refinement levels. In a paper for NECDC 2002 I presented preliminary results on implementation of parallel transport sweeps on the AMR mesh, conjugate gradient acceleration, accuracy of the AMR solution, and scalar speedup of the AMR algorithm compared to a uniform fully-refined mesh. This paper continues with a more in-depth examination of the parallel scaling properties of the scheme, both in single-level and multi-level calculations. Both sweeping and setup costs are considered. The algorithm scales with acceptable performance to several hundred processors. Trends suggest, however, that this is the limit for efficient calculations with traditional transport sweeps, and that modifications to the sweep algorithm will be increasingly needed as job sizes in the thousands of …

The overall purpose of this project is to evaluate the biological and economic feasibility of restoring high-quality forests on mined land, and to measure carbon sequestration and wood production benefits that would be achieved from forest restoration procedures. We are currently estimating the acreage of lands in VA, WV, KY, OH, and PA mined under SMCRA and reclaimed to non-forested post-mining land uses that are not currently under active management, and therefore can be considered as available for carbon sequestration. To determine actual sequestration under different forest management scenarios, a field study was installed as a 3 x 3 factorial in a random complete block design with three replications at each of three locations, Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia. The treatments included three forest types (white pine, hybrid poplar, mixed hardwood) and three silvicultural regimes (competition control, competition control plus tillage, competition control plus tillage plus fertilization). Each individual treatment plot is 0.5 acres. Each block of nine plots requires 4.5 acres, and the complete installation at each site requires 13.5 acres. The plots at all three locations have been installed and the plot corners marked with PVC stakes. GPS coordinates of each plot have been collected. Tree survival, height …

Since 1996, excess CO{sub 2} from the Sleipner natural gas field has been sequestered and injected underground into a porous saline aquifer 1000 m below the seafloor. In 2002, we carried out a high precision micro-gravity survey on the seafloor in order to monitor the injected CO{sub 2}. A repeatability of 5 {micro}Gal in the station averages was observed. This is considerably better than pre-survey expectations. These data will serve as the baseline for time-lapse gravity monitoring of the Sleipner CO{sub 2} injection site. A repeat survey has been scheduled for the summer of 2005. This report covers 3/18/04 to 9/19/04. During this time, we participated in several CO{sub 2} sequestration-related meetings and conferences. On March 29, 2004, we participated in the 2004 Carbon Sequestration Project Review Meeting for the Department of Energy in Pittsburgh, PA. During the week of May 2, 2004, we attended and presented at the Third Annual Conference on Carbon Capture and Sequestration in Alexandria, VA. Finally, during the week of August 8, 2004, we took part in the U.S.-Norway, CO{sub 2} Summer School in Santa Fe, NM. Additional modeling was also completed, examining the seismic velocity pushdown estimates from the gravity models and the expected …

Siloxanes have a wide variety of applications throughout the aerospace industry which take advantage of their exceptional insulating and adhesive properties and general resilience. They also offer a wide range of tailorable engineering properties with changes in composition and filler content. They are, however, subject to degradation in radiatively and thermally harsh environments. We are using solid state nuclear magnetic resonance techniques to investigate changes in network and interfacial structure in siloxane elastomers and their correlations to changes in engineering performance in a series of degraded materials. NMR parameters such as transverse ( T{sub 2}) relaxation times, cross relaxation rates, and residual dipolar coupling constants provide excellent probes of changes crosslink density and motional dynamics of the polymers caused by multi-mechanism degradation. The results of NMR studies on aged siloxanes are being used in conjunction with other mechanical tests to provide insight into component failure and degradation kinetics necessary for preliminary lifetime assessments of these materials as well as into the structure-property relationships of the polymers. NMR and MRI results obtained both from high resolution NMR spectrometers as well as low resolution benchtop NMR screening tools will be presented.

During periods of drought when surface water supplies are severely limited, wildland forest fires tend to become more frequent and often can grow into major fires that threaten valuable timber, real estate, and even human lives. Fire-fighting crews are critically dependent upon accurate and timely weather data to help ensure that individuals are not inadvertently exposed to dangerous conditions and to enhance normal fire-fighting activities. To that end, the use of an eye-safe, portable lidar for remote wildland fire and smoke detection is described.

Electrochemical noise (EN) probes were deployed in two continuous kraft digesters at a variety of locations representative of corrosion throughout the vessels. Current and potential noise, the temperature at each probe location, and the value of up to 60 process parameters (flow rates, liquor chemistry, etc.) were monitored continuously during each experiment. The results indicate that changes in furnish composition and process upsets were invariably associated with concurrent substantial changes in EN activity throughout the vessels. Post-test evaluation of the mild steel electrode materials in both vessels confirmed general corrosion of a magnitude consistent with historical trends in the respective vessels as well as values qualitatively (and semi-quantitatively) related to EN current sums for each electrode pair. Stainless steel electrodes representing 309LSi and 312 overlay repairs exhibited zero wastage corrosion--as did the actual overlays--but the EN data indicated periodic redox activity on the stainless steel that varied with time and position within the vessel. Little or no correlation between EN probe activity and other operational variables was observed in either vessel. Additional details for each digester experiment are summarized.

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Venoco Inc, intends to re-develop the Monterey Formation, a Class III basin reservoir, at South Ellwood Field, Offshore Santa Barbara, California. Well productivity in this field varies significantly. Cumulative Monterey production for individual wells has ranged from 260 STB to 8,700,000 STB. Productivity is primarily affected by how well the well path connects with the local fracture system and the degree of aquifer support. Cumulative oil recovery to date is a small percentage of the original oil in place. To embark upon successful re-development and to optimize reservoir management, Venoco intends to investigate, map and characterize field fracture patterns and the reservoir conduit system. State of the art borehole imaging technologies including FMI, dipole sonic and cross-well seismic, interference tests and production logs will be employed to characterize fractures and micro faults. These data along with the existing database will be used for construction of a novel geologic model of the fracture network. Development of an innovative fracture network reservoir simulator is proposed to monitor and manage the aquifer's role in pressure maintenance and water production. The new fracture simulation model will be used for both planning optimal paths for new wells and improving ultimate recovery. In the second phase …

The aging of a commercial filled siloxane polymeric composite in states of high stress and Co-60 {gamma}-radiation exposure has been studied. DC-745 is a commercially available silicone elastomer consisting of dimethyl, methyl-phenyl, and vinyl-methyl siloxane monomers crosslinked with a peroxide vinyl specific curing agent. It is filled with {approx}30 wt.% mixture of high and low surface area silicas. This filled material is shown to be subject to permanent set if exposed to radiation while under tensile stress. Tensile modulus measurements show that the material gets marginally softer with combined radiation exposure and tensile strain as compared to material exposed to radiation without tensile strain. In addition, the segmental dynamics as measured by both uniaxial NMR relaxometry and Multiple Quantum NMR methods indicate that the material is undergoes radiatively-induced crosslinking in the absence of tensile strain and a combination of crosslinking and strain dependent increase in dynamic order parameter for the network chains. The MQ-NMR also suggests a small change in the number of polymer chains associated with the silica filler surface. Comparison of the prediction of the relative change in crosslink density from the NMR data as well as solvent swelling data and from that predicted from the Tobolsky model …

SYNERGETICS, INC., has designed, developed, and tested an air handling duct system that integrates the air duct with the cornice trim of interior spaces. The device has the advantage that the normal thermal losses from ducts into unconditioned attics and crawl spaces can be totally eliminated by bringing the ducts internal to the conditioned space. The following report details work conducted in the second budget period to develop the Cornice Duct System into a viable product for use in a variety of residential or small commercial building settings. A full-scale prototype has been fabricated and tested in a laboratory test building at the Daylighting Facility at North Carolina State University., Based on the results of that testing, the prototype design as been refined, fabricated, installed, and extensively tested in a residential laboratory house. The testing indicates that the device gives substantially superior performance to a standard air distribution system in terms of energy performance and thermal comfort. Patent Number US 6,511,373 B2 has been granted on the version of the device installed and tested in the laboratory house. (A copy of that patent is attached.) Refinements to the device have been carried through two additional design iterations, with a particular …

This project develops a new and unique obstacle detection sensor for horizontal directional drilling (HDD) equipment. The development of this new technology will greatly improve the reliability and safety of natural gas HDD construction practices. This sensor utilizes a differential soil impedance measurement technique that will be sensitive to the presence of plastic and ceramic, as well as metallic obstacles. The use of HDD equipment has risen significantly in the gas industry because HDD provides a much more cost-effective and less disruptive method for gas pipe installation than older, trenching methods. However, there have been isolated strikes of underground utilities by HDD equipment, which may have been avoided if methods were available to detect other underground obstacles when using HDD systems. GTI advisors from the gas industry have ranked the value of solving the obstacle detection problem as the most important research and development project for GTI to pursue using Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) funds available through its industry partner, GRI. GTI proposes to develop a prototype down-hole sensor system that is simple and compact. The sensor utilizes an impedance measurement technique that is sensitive to the presence of metallic or non-metallic objects in the proximity of the HDD …

The objective of this program is to develop a system to both monitor the vibration of a bottomhole assembly, and to adjust the properties of an active damper in response to these measured vibrations. Phase I of this program, which entailed modeling and design of the necessary subsystems and design, manufacture and test of a full laboratory prototype, was completed on May 31, 2004. Phase II began on June 1, and the first month's effort were reported in the seventh quarterly report on the project.1 The principal objectives of Phase II are: more extensive laboratory testing, including the evaluation of different feedback algorithms for control of the damper; design and manufacture of a field prototype system; and, testing of the field prototype in drilling laboratories and test wells. The redesign and upgrade of the laboratory prototype was completed on schedule during this period, and assembly was complete at the end of this period. Testing will begin during the first week of October. This aspect of the project is thus approximately six weeks behind schedule. Design of the field prototype is progressing per schedule.