This report provides background and analysis on the TEC process, the role of the Congress, and the TLD.

Within the scope of the project, a LXe detector and associated gas handling and purification system were set up to study the response of various photodetectors to the VUV Xe light. In particular we tested an Advanced Photonix Large Area Avalanche Photodiode (APD), Silicon Photomultipliers (SiPMs) from two different sources and an Hamamtsu Photonics APD. As part of the XENON Dark Matter project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, we have accumulated independent knowledge of the response of compact metal channel photomultipliers. At this stage, we conclude that the last are far superior in terms of reliability and performance in a LXe detector environment. More studies are needed with APDs and SiPMs in LXe, taking advantage of the improved performance of these sensors with time. We could not test a hybrid PMT (HPD) since the only available unit on loan from one manufacturer lacked the mechanical stability and was packaged in a form not compatible with LXe purity requirements. Meanwhile, within the XENON collaboration, we are developing with Hamamatsu a hybrid PMT which is named QUPID (Quartz Photon Intensifying Detector) which promises to solve the problems of radioactivity and purity encountered with previous HPDs. We attach to this report two …

This report provides a brief overview of the European Union (EU), an economic and political partnership between 27 sovereign member states. The report describes the formation of the EU, the three main institutions of the EU, and the EU's relationship with the United States.

This report focuses on current conflicts in Africa in which sexual violence is reported to be widespread or systematic. It describes the context in which such violence takes place, selected cases where it is currently occurring, and U.S. policy responses. It concludes with a discussion of potential policy considerations for Congress.

This report analyzes Africa's vulnerability to the global crisis and potential implications for economic growth, poverty alleviation, fiscal balances, and political stability. The report describes channels through which the crisis is affecting Africa, and provides information on international efforts to address the impact, including U.S. policies and those of multilateral institutions in which the United States plays a major role.

By November of 1997, Fluor Hanford (Fluor) had been the site manager of the Hanford nuclear reservation for a year. The Hanford site had been established as part of the Manhattan Project in the 1940s that gave birth to the atomic bomb. Hanford produced two thirds of U.S. plutonium during the Cold War period. The Hanford site was half the size of Rhode Island and occupied 586 square miles in southeastern Washington State. The production of plutonium for more than 40 years left a huge legacy of chemical and radiological contamination: 80 square miles of contaminated groundwater; 2,300 tons of spent nuclear fuel stored in underwater basins; 20 tons of plutonium-laced contaminated materials; and 500 contaminated facilities. The cleanup involved a challenging combination of radioactive material handling within an infrastructure constructed in the 1940s and 1950s. The cleanup that began in 1988 was expected to take 30 years or more. Improving safety at Hanford had already proven to be a significant challenge. As the new site manager at Hanford, Fluor Hanford inherited lower- and mid-level managers and thousands of unionized employees, many of whom were second or third generation Hanford employees. These employees had seen many contractors come and go …

This report examines changes to the Federal Budget for Fiscal Years 2008-2010. The report considers the factors that have an effect on various budgetary functions and decisions. The report specifically focuses on the effect of the 2007-2008 financial recession on the budget, but also considers more long-term fiscal issues such as health care for retiring Baby-Boomers.

Box integrals - expectations <|{rvec r}|{sup s}> or <|{rvec r}-{rvec q}|{sup s}> over the unit n-cube (or n-box) - have over three decades been occasionally given closed forms for isolated n,s. By employing experimental mathematics together with a new, global analytic strategy, we prove that for n {le} 4 dimensions the box integrals are for any integer s hypergeometrically closed in a sense we clarify herein. For n = 5 dimensions, we show that a single unresolved integral we call K{sub 5} stands in the way of such hyperclosure proofs. We supply a compendium of exemplary closed forms that naturally arise algorithmically from this theory.

The self-assembly of nanocrystals enables new classes of materials whose properties are controlled by the periodicities of the assembly, as well as by the size, shape and composition of the nanocrystals. While self-assembly of spherical nanoparticles has advanced significantly in the last decade, assembly of rod-shaped nanocrystals has seen limited progress due to the requirement of orientational order. Here, the parameters critically relevant to self-assembly are systematically quantified using a combination of diffraction and theoretical modeling; these highlight the importance of kinetics on orientational order. Through drying-mediated self-assembly we achieve unprecedented control over orientational order (up to 96percent vertically oriented rods on 1cm2 areas) on a wide range of substrates (ITO, PEDOT:PSS, Si3N4). This opens new avenues for nanocrystal-based devices competitive with thin film devices, as problems of granularity can be tackled through crystallographic orientational control over macroscopic areas.

The objective of this project is to develop dense ceramic membranes that, without using an external power supply or circuitry, can produce hydrogen via coal/coal gas-assisted water dissociation. This project grew from an effort to develop a dense ceramic membrane for separating hydrogen from gas mixtures such as those generated during coal gasification, methane partial oxidation, and water-gas shift reactions. That effort led to the development of various cermet (i.e., ceramic/metal composite) membranes that enable hydrogen production by two methods. In one method, a hydrogen transport membrane (HTM) selectively removes hydrogen from a gas mixture by transporting it through either a mixed protonic/electronic conductor or a hydrogen transport metal. In the other method, an oxygen transport membrane (OTM) generates hydrogen mixed with steam by removing oxygen that is generated through water splitting. This project focuses on the development of OTMs that efficiently produce hydrogen via the dissociation of water. Supercritical boilers offer very high-pressure steam that can be decomposed to provide pure hydrogen by means of OTMs. Oxygen resulting from the dissociation of steam can be used for coal gasification, enriched combustion, or synthesis gas production. Hydrogen and sequestration-ready CO{sub 2} can be produced from coal and steam by using …

The surrogate reaction 238U(3He,tf) is used to determine the 237Np(n,f) cross section indirectly over an equivalent neutron energy range from 10 to 20 MeV. A self-supporting ~;;761 mu g/cm2 metallic 238U foil was bombarded with a 42 MeV 3He2+ beam from the 88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Outgoing charged particles and fission fragments were identified using the Silicon Telescope Array for Reaction Studies (STARS), consists of two 140 mu m and one 1000 mu m Micron S2 type silicon detectors. The 237Np(n,f) cross sections, determined indirectly, were compared with the 237Np(n,f) cross section data from direct measurements, the Evaluated Nuclear Data File (ENDF/B-VII.0), and the Japanese Evaluated Nuclear Data Library (JENDL 3.3) and found to closely follow those datasets. Use of the (3He,tf) reaction as a surrogate to extract (n,f) cross section in the 10 to 20 MeV equivalent neutron energy is found to be suitable.

Fast magnetization dynamics in the micro- and nanometer regime are an interesting field of research. On these length scales magnetic structures can be designed to contain a single vortex or a single domain wall. Both size and speed of these patterns are of great interest in todays research for prospective non-volatile data storage devices. Especially the possibility to move domain-walls by spin-polarized current gained a lot of interest. Magnetic configurations can be imaged by soft X-ray magnetic microscopy with a spatial resolution down to 15 nm. By a stroboscopic pump and probe measurement scheme a temporal resolution below 100 ps is achieved. This provides the opportunity to directly image changes in magnetic domains and domain-wall motion. We image oscillations of a single domain wall in a confining potential in time steps of 200 ps by time resolved X-ray microscopy at the full-field soft X-ray transmission microscope at the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley (beamline 6.1.2). Domain walls are prepared in permalloy nanostructures with a restoring potential. The oscillation of a 180{sup o} domain wall is triggered by nanosecond current pulses. The spin-polarized current and the accompanying Oersted field can contribute to the motion of the wall. By analysis of the …

Both Te inclusions and point defects can trap the charge carriers generated by ionizing particles in CdZnTe (CZT) detectors. The amount of charge trapped by point defects is proportional to the carriers’ drift time and can be corrected electronically. In the case of Te inclusions, the charge loss depends upon their random locations with respect to the electron cloud. Consequently, inclusions introduce fluctuations in the charge signals, which cannot be easily corrected. In this paper, we describe direct measurements of the cumulative effect of Te inclusions and its influence on the response of CZT detectors of different thicknesses and different sizes and concentrations of Te inclusions. We also discuss a means of partially correcting their adverse effects.

The objective of this project was to develop an effective chemical filtering system for significantly reducing the content of inclusion particles in the steel melts exiting the tundish for continuous casting. This project combined a multi-process approach that aimed to make significant progress towards an "inclusion free" steel by incorporating several interdependent concepts to reduce the content of inclusions in the molten steel exiting the tundish for the caster. The goal is to produce "cleaner" steel.

The objective of this project was to develop an effective chemical filtering system for significantly reducing the content of inclusion particles in the steel melts exiting the tundish for continuous casting. This project combined a multi-process approach that aimed to make significant progress towards an "inclusion free" steel by incorporating several interdependent concepts to reduce the content of inclusions in the molten steel exiting the tundish for the caster. The goal is to produce "cleaner" steel.

This report discusses U.S. policy toward global climate change, which evolved from a "study only" to a more "study and action" orientation in 1992 with ratification of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The heats of vaporization of the room temperature ionic liquids (RTILs) N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bistrifluorosulfonylimide, N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide, and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide are determined using a heated effusive vapor source in conjunction with single photon ionization by a tunable vacuum ultraviolet synchrotron source. The relative gas phase ionic liquid vapor densities in the effusive beam are monitored by clearly distinguished dissociative photoionization processes via a time-of-flight mass spectrometer at a tunable vacuum ultraviolet beamline 9.0.2.3 (Chemical Dynamics Beamline) at the Advanced Light Source synchrotron facility. Resulting in relatively few assumptions, through the analysis of both parent cations and fragment cations, the heat of vaporization of N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium bistrifluorosulfonylimide is determined to be Delta Hvap(298.15 K) = 195+-19 kJ mol-1. The observed heats of vaporization of 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium dicyanamide (Delta Hvap(298.15 K) = 174+-12 kJ mol-1) and N-butyl-N-methylpyrrolidinium dicyanamide (Delta Hvap(298.15 K) = 171+-12 kJ mol-1) are consistent with reported experimental values using electron impact ionization. The tunable vacuum ultraviolet source has enabled accurate measurement of photoion appearance energies. These appearance energies are in good agreement with MP2 calculations for dissociative photoionization of the ion pair. These experimental heats of vaporization, photoion appearance energies, and ab initio calculations corroborate vaporization of these RTILs as intact cation-anion ion …

This report discusses the relationship between the United States and Japan, including Japanese efforts to support the U.S. in the wake of the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks and the two countries' economic ties, especially with regards to the recent economic downturn. This report also discusses the general political atmosphere of Japan, including the recent and ongoing political turmoil in Tokyo.

The light curves produced by all-sky monitors, such as the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer All-Sky Monitor and the Swift Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), generally have non-uniform error bars. In searching for periodic modulation in this type of data using power spectra it can be important to use appropriate weighting of data points to achieve the best sensitivity. It was recently demonstrated that for Swift BAT data a simple weighting scheme can actually sometimes reduce the sensitivity of the power spectrum depending on source brightness. Instead, a modified weighting scheme, based on the Cochran semi-weighted mean, gives improved results independent of source brightness. We investigate the benefits of weighting power spectra in period searches using simulated GLAST LAT observations of {gamma}-ray binaries.

This report provides a review of traumatic brain injury (TBI) as an illness, its prevalence among veterans, current activity to address the issue in the Department of Veterans Affairs, and current policy issues.

We present particle-in-cell simulations, using the VORPAL framework, of 10 GeV laser plasma wakefield accelerator stages. Scaling of the physical parameters with the plasma density allows us to perform these simulations at reasonable cost and to design high performance stages. In particular we show that, by choosing to operate in the quasi-linear regime, we can use higher order laser modes to tailor the focusing forces. This makes it possible to increase the matched electron beam radius and hence the total charge in the bunch while preserving the low bunch emittance required for applications.

This report reviews the history of Gang of Four notification process and compares this procedure with that of the "Gang of Eight" notification procedure.

This report analyzes two consolidations of separate counterintelligence (CI) office -- the first authorized by Congress at the Department of Energy's (DOE) request; the second initiated by DOE -- and examines the impact of each on the effectiveness of the Department's CI program.

This report describes the statutory provision authorizing Gang of Eight notifications, reviews the legislative history of the provision, and examines the impact of such notifications on congressional oversight.