The main objective of this research was to develop a new re-melting process for fine or light gauge aluminum scrap products that exhibits dramatic improvements in energy efficiency. Light gauge aluminum scrap in the form of chips, turnings, and borings has historically been underutilized in the aluminum recycling process due to its high surface area to volume ratio resulting in low melt recovery. Laboratory scale consolidation experiments were performed using loose aluminum powder as a modeling material as well as shredded aluminum wire scrap. The processing parameters necessary to create consolidated aluminum material were determined. Additionally, re-melting experiments using consolidated and unconsolidated aluminum powder confirmed the hypothesis that metal recovery using consolidated material will significantly improve by as much as 20%. Based on this research, it is estimated that approximately 495 billion Btu/year can be saved by implementation of this technology in one domestic aluminum rolling plant alone. The energy savings are realized by substituting aluminum scrap for primary aluminum, which requires large amounts of energy to produce. While there will be an initial capital investment, companies will benefit from the reduction of dependence on primary aluminum thus saving considerable costs. Additionally, the technology will allow companies to maintain in-house …

Domain decomposed Monte Carlo codes, like other domain-decomposed codes, are difficult to debug. Domain decomposition is prone to error, and interactions between the domain decomposition code and the rest of the algorithm often produces subtle bugs. These bugs are particularly difficult to find in a Monte Carlo algorithm, in which the results have statistical noise. Variations in the results due to statistical noise can mask errors when comparing the results to other simulations or analytic results. If a code can get the same result on one domain as on many, debugging the whole code is easier. This reproducibility property is also desirable when comparing results done on different numbers of processors and domains. We describe how reproducibility, to machine precision, is obtained on different numbers of domains in an Implicit Monte Carlo photonics code.

This paper describes a joint project by the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), in collaboration with the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), to develop a dielectric-loaded accelerator (DLA) test facility powered by a high-power 11.424-GHz magnicon amplifier. The magnicon can presently produce 25 MW of output power in a 250-ns pulse at 10 Hz, and efforts are in progress to increase this to 50 MW. The facility will include a 5 MeV electron inector being developed by the Accelerator Laboratory of Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. The DLA test structures are being developed by ANL, and some have undergone testing at NRL at gradients up to {approx} 8 MV/m. SLAC is developing a means to combine the two magnicon output arms, and to drive an injector and accelerator with separate control of the power ratio and relative phase. RWBruce Associates, Inc., working with NRl, is developing a means to join short ceramic sections into a continuous accelerator tube by ceramic brazing using an intense millimeter-wave beam. The installation and testing of the first dielectric-loaded test accelerator, including injector, DLA structure, and spectrometer, should take place within the next year. The facility will be used for testing …

This report briefly describes the Agriculture committees' jurisdiction over forestry, with examples of legislation addressed by the committees. It concludes with a discussion of forestry issues likely to be addressed in the upcoming farm bill.

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An area planted in 2004 on Bent Mountain in Pike County was shifted to the Department of Energy project to centralize an area to become a demonstration site. An additional 98.3 acres were planted on Peabody lands in western Kentucky and Bent Mountain to bring the total area under study by this project to 556.5 acres as indicated in Table 2. Major efforts this quarter include the implementation of new plots that will examine the influence of differing geologic material on tree growth and survival, water quality and quantity and carbon sequestration. Normal monitoring and maintenance was conducted and additional instrumentation was installed to monitor the new areas planted.

This report deals with the CDSOA issue in three parts. First, it discusses briefly the background of the law, its implementation and effects, and the WTO dispute settlement proceeding. Second, it addresses the pros and cons of repealing the measure. Third, options for Congress are presented.

A low-mach-number hydrodynamics model has been used to simulate the evolution of a fuel-air mixture and contaminant cloud resulting from the detonation of a cruise missile. The detonation has been assumed to be non-nuclear. The cloud evolution has been carried out to a time of 5.5 seconds. At this time the contaminant has completely permeated the initial fuel-air mixture cloud.

Letter to Chairman Principi from D. Lane Guin, Former Chairman Spokane Area Economic Development Council discussing the economic importance of Fairchild Air Force Base to the Spokane, Washingon area.

Two papers completely describe the objectives and work performed in this laboratory directed research and development (LDRD) project. The first paper published in Review of Scientific Instruments (UCRL-JC-152913) describes the purpose, construction, and operation of a novel instrument to produce and characterize actinide nanostructures by pulsed laser deposition. The second paper submitted to Physical Review B (UCRL-JRNL-209427) describes our work quantifying the oxidation of pulsed laser deposited depleted uranium nanostructures by following the evolution of the electronic structure.

This report compares current United States and European Union (EU) efforts in the area of green payments. Green payments refer to "payments made to agricultural producers as compensation for environmental benefits that accrue at levels beyond what producers might otherwise achieve under existing market and regulatory conditions" (summary). The report gives an overview of policies, programs, financing, and various other aspects of comparison related to the topic.

The Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab or LBNL) is a multi-program national research facility operated by the University of California for the Department of Energy (DOE). As an integral element of DOE's National Laboratory System, Berkeley Lab supports DOE's missions in fundamental science, energy resources, and environmental quality. Berkeley Lab programs advance four distinct goals for DOE and the nation: (1) To perform leading multidisciplinary research in the computing sciences, physical sciences, energy sciences, biosciences, and general sciences in a manner that ensures employee and public safety and protection of the environment. (2) To develop and operate unique national experimental facilities for qualified investigators. (3) To educate and train future generations of scientists and engineers to promote national science and education goals. (4) To transfer knowledge and technological innovations and to foster productive relationships among Berkeley Lab's research programs, universities, and industry in order to promote national economic competitiveness. Berkeley Lab's research and the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program support DOE's Strategic Goals that are codified in DOE's September 2003 Strategic Plan, with a primary focus on Advancing Scientific Understanding. For that goal, the Fiscal Year (FY) 2004 LDRD projects support every one of the …

A method for determining the quality of an examined weld joint comprising the steps of providing acoustical data from the examined weld joint, and performing a neural network operation on the acoustical data determine the quality of the examined weld joint produced by a friction weld process. The neural network may be trained by the steps of providing acoustical data and observable data from at least one test weld joint, and training the neural network based on the acoustical data and observable data to form a trained neural network so that the trained neural network is capable of determining the quality of a examined weld joint based on acoustical data from the examined weld joint. In addition, an apparatus having a housing, acoustical sensors mounted therein, and means for mounting the housing on a friction weld device so that the acoustical sensors do not contact the weld joint. The apparatus may sample the acoustical data necessary for the neural network to determine the quality of a weld joint.

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The gross federal debt consists of the debt held by the public plus the debt held by government accounts. Almost all of the gross federal debt is subject to a public debt limit, as set forth in statute (31 U.S.C. 3101).This report considers legislation needed to change the public debt limit.

In recent years there has been a growing sense of urgency to develop and deploy effective missile defenses against a range of long and short range ballistic missile threats. Although many might believe this to be relative new to U.S. national security objectives, such interest been ongoing since the 1960s, and current technologies being investigated date to the early 1980s. This effort has been challenging technically and politically controversial. Some $100 billion has been spent since the mid-1980s. This report provides a brief overview of U.S. efforts to date.

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High-level nuclear waste produced from fuel reprocessing operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) requires pretreatment to remove {sup 137}Cs, {sup 90}Sr and alpha-emitting radionuclides (i.e., actinides) prior to disposal onsite as low level waste. Separation processes planned at SRS include caustic side solvent extraction, for {sup 137}Cs removal, and sorption of {sup 90}Sr and alpha-emitting radionuclides onto monosodium titanate (MST). The predominant alpha-emitting radionuclides in the highly alkaline waste solutions include plutonium isotopes {sup 238}Pu, {sup 239}Pu and {sup 240}Pu. This paper describes recent results to produce an improved sodium titanate material that exhibits increased removal kinetics and capacity for {sup 90}Sr and alpha-emitting radionuclides compared to the baseline MST material.

By scanning gated cameras and gated tune monitors across the bunch pattern during normal colliding-bunch operation of PEP-II, the tunes and beam sizes of individual bunches were measured simultaneously in the high and low energy storage rings of PEP-II. The measurements were made with 1561 colliding bunches in PEP-II, arranged in trains of 66 bunches, with each bunch in the train separated by 4.2 ns. The tune and beam size measurements were correlated with the current, luminosity, and specific luminosity of the bunch. The results show a vertical tune shift at the start and end of the mini-trains, a luminosity droop along the mini-train, and specific luminosity drop in the first and last bunches of the train, since they experience a different parasitic crossing on either side of the interaction point (IP).

Microorganisms may enhance corrosion of components of planned engineered barriers within the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain (YM). Corrosion could occur either directly, through processes collectively known as Microbiologically Influenced Corrosion (MIC), or indirectly, by adversely affecting the composition of water or brines that come into direct contact with engineered barrier surfaces. Microorganisms of potential concern (bacteria, archea, and fungi) include both those indigenous to Yucca Mountain and those that infiltrate during repository construction and after waste emplacement. Specific aims of the experimental program to evaluate the potential of microorganisms to affect damage to engineered barrier materials include the following: Indirect Effects--(1) Determine the limiting factors to microbial growth and activity presently in the YM environment. (2) Assess these limiting factors to aid in determining the conditions and time during repository evolution when MIC might become operant. (3) Evaluate present bacterial densities, the composition of the YM microbial community, and determining bacterial densities if limiting factors are overcome. During a major portion of the regulatory period, environmental conditions that are presently extant become reestablished. Therefore, these studies ascertain whether biomass is sufficient to cause MIC during this period and provide a baseline for determining the types of bacterial …

The production of comprehensive cDNA clone collections is an important goal of the human and model organism genome projects. cDNA sequences are used to determine the structures of transcripts, including splice junctions, polyadenylation sites, and 5' and 3' untranslated regions (UTRs). cDNA collections are also valuable resources for functional studies of genes and proteins. Expressed Sequence Tag (EST)sequencing is the method of choice for recovering cDNAs representing a majority of the transcripts encoded in a eukaryotic genome. However, EST sequencing samples a library at random, so it realizes diminishing returns as the project progresses. To drive cDNA collections toward completion new methods are needed to recover cDNAs representing specific genes and alternative transcripts, including transcripts with low expression levels. We describe a simple and effective inverse-PCR-based method for screening plasmid libraries to recover intact cDNAs for specific transcripts. We tested the method by screening libraries used in our Drosophila EST projects for 153 transcription factor genes that were not yet represented by full-length cDNAs. We recovered target-specific clones for 104 of the genes: 46 exactly match, 30 improve and 28partially match current gene annotations. Successful application of the screening method depends on cDNA library complexity and quality of the gene …

Shock-induced twinning and martensitic transformation in BCC-based polycrystalline metals (Ta and U-6wt%Nb) have been observed and studied using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The length-scale of domain thickness for both twin lamella and martensite phase is found to be smaller than 100 nm. While deformation twinning of {l_brace}112{r_brace}<111>-type is found in Ta when shock-deformed at 15 GPa, both twinning and martensitic transformation are found in Ta when shock-deformed at 45 GPa. Similar phenomena of nanoscale twinning and martensitic transformation are also found in U6Nb shock-deformed at 30 GPa. Since both deformation twinning and martensitic transformation occurred along the {l_brace}211{r_brace}{sub b} planes associated with high resolved shear stresses, it is suggested that both can be regarded as alternative paths for shear transformations to occur in shock-deformed BCC metals. Heterogeneous nucleation mechanisms for shock-induced twinning and martensitic transformation are proposed and discussed.

Several resource issues that are designed to generate revenue for the federal Treasury have been proposed for the FY2006 budget reconciliation bill. The most controversial of these provisions recommended by the House Resources Committee and Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee would open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas development. The House panel also approved a provision that would allow coastal states to “opt out” of the current offshore oil and gas development moratoria, increase fees for hardrock mining and patents, dispose of certain federal lands, and begin an oil shale and tar sands leasing program.

As a result of collaboration between the Berkeley Seismographic Station, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Caltrans, instrument packages have been placed in bedrock in six boreholes and two surface sites along the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge. Since 1996 over 200 local earthquakes have been recorded. Prior to this study few seismic recording instruments existed in bed-rock in San Francisco Bay. We utilized the data to perform analysis of ground motion variability, wave passage, site response, and up-and down-hole wave propagation along the Bay Bridge. We also synthesized strong ground motion at nine locations along the Bay Bridge. Key to these studies is LLNL's effort to exploit the information available in weak ground motions (generally from earthquakes < M=4.0) to enhance predictions of seismic hazards. We found that Yerba Island has no apparent site response at the surface relative to a borehole site. The horizontal to vertical spectral ratio method best revealed no site response, while the complex signal spectral ratio method had the lowest variance for spectral ratios and best predicted surface recordings when the borehole recording was used as input. Both methods identified resonances at about the same frequencies. Regional attenuation results in a significant loss of high frequencies …