The principal objective of the project is to develop an acoustic probe for determining the weight fraction of particles in a flowing suspension. The suspension can be solid-liquid (S-L) or solid-gas-liquid (S-G-L). The work will include testing the theory of acoustic wave propagation in suspensions and demonstrating the application of the probe by installing it on a flow loop through which a suspension is flowing and determining the particle weight fraction. The signal from the probe must be processed such that the noise arising from the presence of gas bubbles is removed to yield an accurate estimate of the particle weight fraction. Particular attention will be given to testing suspensions with low particle weight fractions since slurries to be transported in nuclear waste processing will have low particle weight fractions. Originally, the probe was to be developed and tested at Syracuse University (SU) then installed and tested at Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ORNL) for surrogate slurries from the Hanford Nuclear site. However, after discussions between SU and ORNL in June 2002 it was agreed that all tests would be conducted at SU.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government is dramatically changing the way it purchases goods and services by relying more on judgment and initiative versus rigid rules for making purchasing decisions. Congress has enacted a series of reforms to help the government adapt to this environment. GAO was asked to assess strategies agencies are using to ensure that their acquisition workforces are receiving the training needed to operate in a changing business environment. In doing so, GAO looked at the General Services Administration (GSA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Department of Defense (DOD). GAO also looked at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) because it is exempt from federal acquisition laws, giving it greater flexibility and discretion."

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 …

This report describes the evaluation, design, and implementation of a DOE funded CO{sub 2} pilot project in the Lost Hills Field, Kern County, California. The pilot consists of four inverted (injector-centered) 5-spot patterns covering approximately 10 acres, and is located in a portion of the field, which has been under waterflood since early 1992. The target reservoir for the CO{sub 2} pilot is the Belridge Diatomite. The pilot location was selected based on geologic considerations, reservoir quality and reservoir performance during the waterflood. A CO{sub 2} pilot was chosen, rather than full-field implementation, to investigate uncertainties associated with CO{sub 2} utilization rate and premature CO{sub 2} breakthrough, and overall uncertainty in the unproven CO{sub 2} flood process in the San Joaquin Valley. A summary of the design and objectives of the CO{sub 2} pilot are included along with an overview of the Lost Hills geology, discussion of pilot injection and production facilities, and discussion of new wells drilled and remedial work completed prior to commencing injection. Actual CO{sub 2} injection began on August 31, 2000 and a comprehensive pilot monitoring and surveillance program has been implemented. Since the initiation of CO{sub 2} injection, the pilot has been hampered by excessive …

Two CMS production Cathode Strip Chambers were tested for aging effects in the high radiation environment at the Gamma Irradiation Facility at CERN. The chambers were irradiated over a large area: in total, about 2.1 m{sup 2} or 700 m of wire in each chamber. The 40% Ar+50%CO{sub 2}+10%CF{sub 4} gas mixture was provided by an open-loop gas system for one of the chambers and by closed-loop recirculating gas system for the other. After accumulating 0.3-0.4 C per centimeter of a wire, which is equivalent to operation during about 30-50 years at the peak LHC luminosity, no significant changes in gas gain, chamber efficiency, and wire signal noise were observed for either of the two chambers. The only consistent signs of aging were a small increase in dark current from {approx}2 nA to {approx}10 nA per plane of 600 wires and a decrease of strip-to-strip resistance from 1000 G{Omega} to 10-100 G{Omega}. Disassembly of the chambers revealed deposits on the cathode planes, while the anode wires remained fairly clean.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The multibillion dollar Airport and Airway Trust Fund (Trust Fund) provides most of the funding for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The Trust Fund relies on revenue from 10 taxes, including passenger ticket, fuel, and cargo taxes. Concerns about the financial outlook of the Trust Fund have emerged recently given the downturn in passenger air travel, requests from the airlines to suspend some of the Trust Fund taxes, and the need to reauthorize FAA's major programs in 2003. GAO was asked to determine (1) the projected financial outlook of the Trust Fund and (2) how a 1- year suspension of various taxes accruing to the Trust Fund (i.e., a tax holiday), would affect its financial status. We were asked to assess five potential tax holidays that would have begun on April 1, 2003, and ended on April 1, 2004. GAO used a model developed by FAA that made financial projections for the Trust Fund using expenditure assumptions that were based on (1) the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation's May 2, 2003, and the House Subcommittee on Aviation's May 15, 2003, reauthorization proposals authorizing over …

Conventional disposable glass-fiber high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters are used throughout the Department of Energy complex in various process systems. Alternative filter media is being addressed that would have a long life on the HLW tanks.

This document describes an extension to the Chombo package [CGL+00] for solving elliptic equations using adaptive mesh refinement on multiple levels with node-centered data on non-rectangular domains. See the AMRNodeElliptic design document [McC02] for a description of the algorithms used. Chapter 2 describes the subroutines that the user must supply to describe the geometry and the operator. Chapter 3 describes the class NodeFArrayBox and functions that use this class to manipulate node-centered data. Interfaces for elliptic equation solvers are described in chapter 4. Some internal classes of the solvers are described in chapter 5. User interfaces for physical boundary conditions are described in chapter 6. The AMRNodeElliptic package requires that Chombo library be installed. See chapter 1 of the Chombo design document [CGL+00] for requirements and installation of Chombo.

This document describes an extension to the Chombo package [CGL+00] for solving elliptic equations using adaptive mesh refinement on multiple levels with node-centered data. See the AMRNodeElliptic design document [McC02] for a description of the algorithms used. Chapter 2 describes the class NodeFArrayBox and functions that use this class to manipulate node-centered data. Interfaces for elliptic equation solvers are described in chapter 3. Some internal classes of the solvers are described in chapter 4. User interfaces for physical boundary conditions are described in chapter 5. The AMRNodeElliptic package requires that Chombo library be installed. See chapter 1 of the Chombo design document [CGL+00] for requirements and installation of Chombo.

HB-Line's mission included dissolution of uranium-aluminum scrap left over from a U3O8 scrap recovery program begun in 1972 with material returned from Rocky Flats and Oak Ridge. This material has been stored in desicooler containers, and is commonly referred to as the Desicoolers. The Scrap Recovery process includes the dissolution of scrap material and transfer of the resulting solution to H-Canyon for further disposition. During the first charge of this material into the HB-Line dissolvers, the solution heated to boiling without external heat being added. Yellow-colored fumes, which dissipated rapidly, were noted in the glovebox by operators, and a small amount of liquid was noted in the glovebox by operations after dissolver cooldown. This technical report documents analysis of the data from the event with respect to potential Safety Basis violation and the Integrated Safety Management System process. Based on the analysis presented, the safety basis has shown its ability to protect the worker, the facility and the public.

SN 2001el is the first normal Type Ia supernova to show a strong, intrinsic polarization signal. In addition, during the epochs prior to maximum light, the CaII IR triplet absorption is seen distinctly and separately at both normal photospheric velocities and at very high velocities. The unusual, high-velocity triplet absorption is highly polarized, with a different polarization angle than the rest of the spectrum. The unique observation allows us to construct a relatively detailed picture of the layered geometrical structure of the supernova ejecta: in our interpretation, the ejecta layers near the photosphere (v approximately 10,000 km/s) obey a near axial symmetry, while a detached, high-velocity structure (v approximately 18,000-25,000 $ km/s) of CaII line opacity deviates from the photospheric axisymmetry. By partially obscuring the underlying photosphere, the high-velocity structure causes a more incomplete cancellation of the polarization of the photospheric light, and so gives rise to the polarization peak of the high-velocity IR triplet feature. In an effort to constrain the ejecta geometry, we develop a technique for calculating 3-D synthetic polarization spectra and use it to generate polarization profiles for several parameterized configurations. In particular, we examine the case where the inner ejecta layers are ellipsoidal and the …

Various issues important to animal agriculture have generated interest among lawmakers in the first session of the 108th Congress. For example, under the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171) many food stores in 2004 must provide country-of-origin labeling (COOL) on ground and fresh cuts of beef, beef, pork, and lamb. The House-passed USDA appropriation for FY2004 (H.R. 2673) would block funding to implemented COOL for meats. The Senate Committee version (S. 1427) lacks the ban.

This report describes the revised environmental rules of the Clean Water Act, the background of previous Clean Water Act rules and the Clinton Administration proposal for revising these rules, and perspectives of key interest groups on the proposal and final regulations. It also identifies several issues likely to be of congressional interest as implementation of the revised rules proceeds.

Improved models of contaminant migration in heterogeneous, variably saturated porous media are required to better define the long-term stewardship requirements for U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) lands and to assist in the design of effective vadose-zone barriers to contaminant migrations. The objective of our three-year project is to meet the DOE need by developing new experimental approaches to describe adsorption and transport of contaminants in heterogeneous, variably saturated media (i.e., the vadose zone). The research specifically addresses the behavior of strontium, a high priority DOE contaminant. However, the key benefit of this research is improved conceptual models of how all contaminants migrate through heterogeneous, variably-saturated, porous media. Research activities are driven by the hypothesis that the reactivity of variably saturated porous media is dependent on the moisture content of the medium and can be represented by a relatively simple function applicable over a range of scales, contaminants, and media. A key and novel aspect of our research is the use of the 2-meter radius geocentrifuge capabilities at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) to conduct unsaturated reactive transport experiments (Figure 1). The experimental approach using the geocentrifuge provides data in a much shorter time period than conventional methods allowing us to …

Radionuclide and metal contaminants such as 90Sr are present beneath U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) lands in both the groundwater (e.g., 100-N area at Hanford, WA) and vadose zone (e.g., Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory). In situ containment and stabilization of these contaminants is a cost-effective treatment strategy. However, implementing in situ containment and stabilization approaches requires definition of the mechanisms that control contaminant sequestration. We are investigating the in situ immobilization of radionuclides or contaminant metals (e.g., 90Sr) by their facilitated co-precipitation with calcium carbonate in groundwater and vadose zone systems. Our facilitated approach, shown schematically in Figure 1, relies upon the hydrolysis of introduced urea to cause the acceleration of calcium carbonate precipitation (and trace metal co-precipitation) by increasing pH and alkalinity. Subsurface urea hydrolysis is catalyzed by the urease enzyme, which may be either introduced with the urea or produced in situ by ubiquitous subsurface urea hydrolyzing microorganisms. Because the precipitation process tends to be irreversible and many western aquifers are saturated with respect to calcite, the coprecipitated metals and radionuclides will be effectively removed from the aqueous phase over the long-term. Another advantage of the ureolysis approach …

The Class 2 Project at West Welch was designed to demonstrate the use of advanced technologies to enhance the economics of improved oil recovery (IOR) projects in lower quality Shallow Shelf Carbonate (SSC) reservoirs, resulting in recovery of additional oil that would otherwise be left in the reservoir at project abandonment. Accurate reservoir description is critical to the effective evaluation and efficient design of IOR projects in the heterogeneous SSC reservoirs. Therefore, the majority of Budget Period 1 was devoted to reservoir characterization. Technologies being demonstrated include: (1) Advanced petrophysics; (2) Three-dimensional (3-D) seismic; (3) Crosswell bore tomography; (4) Advanced reservoir simulation; (5) Carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) stimulation treatments; (6) Hydraulic fracturing design and monitoring; (7) Mobility control agents.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, consolidated, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittees.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittees.

This is a report from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge about background and issues.

This report discusses the ongoing debate about whether or not to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for energy development. The report discusses arguments for and against such development and related pieces of legislation. It does not analyze specific proposals to develop or protect the Refuge. Rather, it provides basic material for analyzing possibilities and implications of the major issues that have been the focus of the legislative debate over its fate.

Projected impacts on disposal limits of various studies have been estimated. Interim measures to compensate for the impacts are needed for the Engineered Trench and the Intermediate Level Vault. Interim measures are due to projected decreases in the radionuclide disposal limits derived from the groundwater pathway as a result of the Aquifer Source Node study and consideration of potential artificial dilution caused by the large size of the grid elements in the Intermediate Level Vault groundwater model. Recently, it became evident that, in the development of the groundwater model for the Slit Trenches, the selection of aquifer source nodes (i.e., the spatial elements of the saturated zone model into which the flux of radionuclides from the unsaturated zone model is introduced) was not optimum6. Optimizing the source nodes would likely result in increases in the resulting groundwater concentrations, which would suggest that the radionuclide disposal limits should be reduced. However, other studies may result in increases in disposal limits 7. Therefore, a decision was made to develop and implement an annual summary of the potential impact of technical studies and other information on radionuclide disposal limits and whether mitigating measures should be imposed pending completion and implementation of the studies. …

Results on soft and hard diffraction obtained by the CDF Collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron {bar p}p Collider are reviewed with emphasis on aspects of the data that point to the underlying QCD mechanism for diffraction. The results are interpreted in terms of a phenomenological approach in which diffraction is due to an exchange of low-x partons subject to color constraints.

The production of a Higgs boson in association with a pair of e quarks will play a very important role at both hadron and lepton colliders. We review the status of theoretical predictions and their relevance to Higgs boson studies, with particular emphasis on the recently calculated NLO QCD corrections to the inclusive cross section for p{bar p}, pp {yields} t{bar t}h. We conclude by briefly discussing the case of exclusive b{bar b}h production and the potential of this process in revealing signals of new physics beyond the Standard Model.

The ASTRAL compendium provides several databases and tools to aid in the analysis of protein structures, particularly through the use of their sequences. Partially derived from the SCOP database of protein structure domains, it includes sequences for each domain and other resources useful for studying these sequences and domain structures. The current release of ASTRAL contains 54,745 domains, more than three times as many as the initial release four years ago. ASTRAL has undergone major transformations in the past two years. In addition to several complete updates each year, ASTRAL is now updated on a weekly basis with preliminary classifications of domains from newly released PDB structures. These classifications are available as a stand-alone database, as well as available integrated into other ASTRAL databases such as representative subsets. To enhance the utility of ASTRAL to structural biologists, all SCOP domains are now made available as PDB-style coordinate files as well as sequences. In addition to sequences and representative subsets based on SCOP domains, sequences and subsets based on PDB chains are newly included in ASTRAL. Several search tools have been added to ASTRAL to facilitate retrieval of data by individual users and automated methods. ASTRAL may be accessed at http://astral.stanford.edu/.