A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "During the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War, health problems prevented the deployment of a significant number of Army reservists. To help correct this problem the Congress passed legislation that required reservists to undergo periodic physical and dental examinations. The National Defense Authorization Act for 2002 directed GAO to review the value and advisability of providing examinations. GAO also examined whether the Army is collecting and maintaining information on reservist health. GAO obtained expert opinion on the value of periodic examinations and visited seven Army reserve units to obtain information on the number of examinations that have been conducted."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Terrorist and criminal watch list systems--sometimes referred to as watchout, lookout, target, or tip-off systems--are important tools in controlling and protecting our nation's borders. The events of September 11, 2001, and other incidents since then, have highlighted the need to share these watch lists. In light of the importance of border security, GAO was asked to identify federal databases and systems that contain watch lists, the agencies that maintain and use them in protecting our nation's borders, the kind of data they contain, whether federal agencies are sharing information from these lists with each other and with state and local governments and private organizations, the structural characteristics of those lists that are automated, and whether opportunities exist to consolidate these watch lists."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Potentially dangerous sealed sources containing greater-than-Class-C radioactive material pose a threat to national security because terrorists could use them to make "dirty bombs." Public Law 99-240 requires the Department of Energy (DOE) provide a facility for disposing of unwanted sources. Because DOE has no disposal facility for these sources, its Off-Site Source Recovery Project is recovering and temporarily storing them at Los Alamos, New Mexico. GAO was asked to determine (1) the number of unwanted sealed sources that DOE plans to recover through 2010 and the estimated cost, (2) the status of recovery efforts and any problems that DOE may face, and (3) the status of DOE's efforts to provide a disposal facility for these sealed sources"

Injection of carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) into saline aquifers has been proposed as a means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (geological carbon sequestration). The injection process can be classified as immiscible displacement of an aqueous phase by a less dense and less viscous gas phase. Under disposal conditions (supercritical CO{sub 2}) the viscosity of carbon dioxide can be less than the viscosity of the aqueous phase by a factor of 15. Because of the lower viscosity, the CO{sub 2} displacement front will have a tendency towards instability so that waves or rounded lobes of saturation may appear and grow into fingers that lead to enhanced dissolution, bypassing, and possibly poor sweep efficiency. This paper presents an analysis, through high-resolution numerical simulations, of the onset of instabilities (viscous fingering) during injection of CO{sub 2} into saline aquifers. We explore the influence of viscosity ratio, relative permeability functions, and capillary pressure on finger growth and spacing. In addition, we address the issues of finger triggering, convergence under grid refinement and boundary condition effects. Simulations were carried out on scalar machines, and on an IBM RS/6000 SP (a distributed-memory parallel computer with 6080 processors) with a parallelized version of TOUGH2.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Relative authority of the State Board of Education and the Commissioner of Education with regard to the adoption of academic excellence evaluators and the evaluation of school districts under chapter 39 of the Education Code (RQ-0607-JC)

While the most familiar consequences of specimen charging in transmission electron microscopy can be eliminated by evaporating a thin conducting film (such as a carbon film) onto an insulating specimen, or by preparing samples directly on such a conducting film to begin with, a more subtle charging effect still remains. We argue here that specimen charging is in this case likely to produce a dipole sheet rather than a layer of positive charge at the surface of the specimen. A simple model of the factors that control the kinetics of specimen charging, and its neutralization, is discussed as a guide for experiments that attempt to minimize the amount of specimen charging. Believable estimates of the electrostatic forces and the electron optical disturbances that are likely to occur suggest that specimen bending and warping may have the biggest impact on degrading the image quality at high resolution. Electron optical effects are likely to be negligible except in the case of a specimen that is tilted to high angle. A model is proposed to explain how both the mechanical and electron-optical effects of forming a dipole layer would have much greater impact on the image resolution in a direction perpendicular to the …

A phoswich radiation detector is comprised of a phosphor sandwich in which several different phosphors are viewed by a common photomultiplier. By selecting the appropriate phosphors, this system can be used to simultaneously measure multiple radiation types (alpha, beta, gamma and/or neutron) with a single detector. Differentiation between the signals from the different phosphors is accomplished using digital pulse shape discrimination techniques. This method has been shown to result in accurate discrimination with highly reliable and versatile digital systems. This system also requires minimal component count (i.e. only the detector and a computer for signal processing). A variety of detectors of this type have been built and tested including: (1) a triple phoswich system for alpha/beta/gamma swipe counting, (2) two well-type detectors for measuring low levels of low energy photons in the presence of a high energy background, (3) a large area detector for measuring beta contamination in the presence of a photon background, (4) another large area detector for measuring low energy photons from radioactive elements such as uranium in the presence of a photon background. An annular geometry, triple phoswich system optimized for measuring alpha/beta/gamma radiation in liquid waste processing streams is currently being designed.

Working within the context of the Southern States Biobased Alliance (SSBA) and with officials in each state, the Southern States Energy Board (SSEB) is identifying bioenergy-related policies and programs within each state to determine their impact on the development, deployment or use of bioenergy. In addition, SSEB will determine which policies have impacted industry's efforts to develop, deploy or use biobased technologies or products. As a result, SSEB will work with the Southern States Biobased Alliance to determine how policy changes might address any negative impacts or enhance positive impacts.

Incomplete or sparse information on types of data such as geologic or formation characteristics introduces a high level of risk for oil exploration and development projects. ''Expert'' systems developed and used in several disciplines and industries have demonstrated beneficial results. A state-of-the-art exploration ''expert'' tool, relying on a computerized database and computer maps generated by neural networks, is being developed through the use of ''fuzzy'' logic, a relatively new mathematical treatment of imprecise or non-explicit parameters and values. Oil prospecting risk can be reduced with the use of a properly developed and validated ''Fuzzy Expert Exploration (FEE) Tool.'' This FEE Tool can be beneficial in many regions of the U.S. by enabling risk reduction in oil and gas prospecting as well as decreased prospecting and development costs. In the 1998-1999 oil industry environment, many smaller exploration companies lacked the resources of a pool of expert exploration personnel. Downsizing, low oil prices, and scarcity of exploration funds have also affected larger companies, and will, with time, affect the end users of oil industry products in the U.S. as reserves are depleted. The pool of experts is much reduced today. The FEE Tool will benefit a diverse group in the U.S., leading …

Coherent radiation in the 0.3 - 3 THz range has been generated from femto second electron bunches at a plasma-vacuum boundary via transition radiation. The bunches produced by a laser-plasma accelerator contained 1.5 nC of charge. The THz energy per pulse within a limited 30 mrad collection angle was 3.5 nJ and scaled quadratically with bunch charge, consistent with coherent emission. Modeling indicates that this broadband source produces about 0.3 muJ per pulse within a 100 mrad angle, and that increasing the transverse plasma size and electron beam energy could provide more than 100 muj/pulse.

Predictions of increasing levels of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) and the specter of global warming have intensified research efforts to identify ways to sequester carbon. A number of novel avenues of research are being considered, including bioprocessing methods to promote and accelerate biosequestration of CO{sub 2} from the environment through the growth of organisms such as coccolithophorids, which are capable of sequestering CO{sub 2} relatively permanently. Calcium and magnesium carbonates are currently the only proven, long-term storage reservoirs for carbon. Whereas organic carbon is readily oxidized and releases CO{sub 2} through microbial decomposition on land and in the sea, carbonates can sequester carbon over geologic time scales. This proposal investigates the use of coccolithophorids--single-celled, marine algae that are the major global producers of calcium carbonate--to sequester CO{sub 2} emissions from power plants. Cultivation of coccolithophorids for calcium carbonate (CaCO{sub 3}) precipitation is environmentally benign and results in a stable product with potential commercial value. Because this method of carbon sequestration does not impact natural ecosystem dynamics, it avoids controversial issues of public acceptability and legality associated with other options such as direct injection of CO{sub 2} into the sea and ocean fertilization. Consequently, cultivation of coccolithophorids could be carried …

The densities of uranium-6 niobium (U-Nb) alloys have been compiled from a variety of literature sources such as Y-12 and Rocky Flats datasheets. We also took advantage of the 42 well-pedigreed, homogeneous baseline U-Nb alloys produced under the Enhanced Surveillance Program for density measurements. Even though U-Nb alloys undergo two-phase transitions as the Nb content varies from 0 wt. % to 8 wt %, the theoretical and measured densities vary linearly with Nb content. Therefore, the effect of Nb content on the density was modeled with a linear regression. From this linear regression, a homogeneous ingot of U-6 wt.% Nb would have a density of 17.382 {+-} 0.040 g/cc (95% CI). However, ingots produced at Y-12 are not homogeneous with respect to the Nb content. Therefore, using the 95% confidence intervals, the density of a Y-12 produced ingot would vary from 17.310 {+-} 0.043 g/cc at the center to 17.432 {+-} 0.039 g/cc at the edge. Ingots with larger Nb inhomogeneities will also have larger variances in the density.

Roof bolting is the most popular method for underground openings in the mining industry, especially in the bedded deposits such as coal, potash, salt etc. In fact, all U.S. underground coal mine entries are roof-bolted as required by law. However, roof falls still occur frequently in the roof bolted entries. The two possible reasons are: the lack of knowledge of and technology to detect the roof geological conditions in advance of mining, and lack of roof bolting design criteria for modern roof bolting systems. This research is to develop a method for predicting the roof geology and stability condition in real time during roof bolting operation. Based on such information, roof bolting design criteria for modern roof bolting systems will be developed for implementation in real time. More field tests have been performed. A trendline analysis method has been developed. This method would improve the accuracy in detecting the locations of fractures and in determining the rock strength.

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.

The wetting behavior and strength at aluminum/alumina interfaces has been an active subject of research. Al/alumina applications include ceramic-metal composites and several applications for electronic industries. In this paper the interface strength and microstructure of Al/alpha-alumina was investigated. We discovered that in a solid-state joining, the strength of the joint increases with increasing joining temperature. In a liquid-state joining, the strength of the joint gradually decreases due to the formation of unbonded areas. The strength, sigma sub b, is expressed by the following equation as a function of unbonded area, A: sigma sub b = 2.22 A + 143 (70 percent {le} A {le} 100 percent). The highest strength reached 400 MPa when the interface was formed at around the melting temperature of aluminum. An aluminum layer close to the interface became a single crystal when it was bonded to a sapphire. The following crystallographic orientation relationship is established: (1{bar 1}1){sub Al}//(001){sub {alpha}}-Al{sub 2} O{sub 3}, (110){sub Al}//<100>{sub {alpha}}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}. Amorphous alumina islands were formed at the interface. In the amorphous alumina, gamma-alumina nanocrystals grew from the sapphire, with the same orientation relationship to sapphire as above.

One intent of DOE Order 435.1 (USDOE 1999a ), as expressed in the performance assessment/composite analysis guidance (USDOE 1999c), is to ensure that proposed changes in wasteforms, containers, radionuclide inventories, facility design, and operations are reviewed to ensure that the assumptions, results, and conclusions of the DOE approved performance assessment (PA) (WSRC 2000), and composite analysis (CA) (WSRC 1997), as well as any Special analyses (SA) that might have been performed, remain valid (i.e., that the proposed change is bounded by the PA and CA) and the changes are within the bounds of the Disposal Authorization Statement (USDOE 1999b). The goal is to provide flexibility in day-to-day operation and to require those issues with a significant impact on the PA's conclusions, and therefore the projected compliance with performance objectives/measures, to be identified and brought to the proper level of attention. It should be noted that the term performance measure is used t o describe site specific adaptations of the DOE Order 435.1 Performance Objectives and requirements (e.g., performance measures such as applying drinking water standards to the groundwater impacts assessment). The intent of this document is to provide an evaluation of the issues identified within Problem Identification Report (PIR) number …

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.

The research focus of this previous EMSP grant was assessment of the role that carbonate minerals play in the uptake and sequestration of metal and radionuclide contaminants in soils and the vadose zone for conditions relevant to the Hanford Site and other sites in the DOE Complex. The project was a collaboration among researchers at SUNY-Stony Brook and EMSL/PNNL. Carbonates, particularly calcite, are present in the Hanford subsurface as grain coatings, disseminated particles, and dense caliche layers. Calcite is also predicted to be forming beneath leaking tanks. A range of metal and radionuclide species that pose risks at Hanford and othe DOE istes were considered, including u(VI), Cr(CV), Cs, Pb(II), and selected lanthanides (as models for trivalent actinides). Batch sorption and co-precipitation experiments of these metals with pre-equilibrated calcite and selected uptake experiments on natural caliche formed the basis to determine the mechanisms of metal/radionuclide binding and to assess the effect on the stability of the sorbed species and the potential for remobilization. Our results provide ne information that can benefit DOE clean-up methodology and potentially provide new approaches for uptake of selected heavy metals

This report mainly discusses about the Scheduling and Notification on House Committee Hearings.Each house committee has the authority to hold hearings whether the white house is in the session has recessed or adjourned.

Conceptual models have been identified as one of the sources of uncertainty in the interpretation and prediction of contaminant migration through the vadose zone at Hanford. Current conceptual models are limited partly because they often do not account for the random heterogeneity that occurs under the extremes of very nonlinear flow behavior typical of the Hanford vadose zone. Over the last two years significant progress has been made in characterizing physical heterogeneity and in the development of techniques for incorporating this heterogeneity into predictive and inverse models for field-scale subsurface flow. One of the remaining pieces of the puzzle is the impact of heterogeneity on the distribution of reactive contaminants. Reactive transport occurs over a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. However, the manner in which the various subsurface physical and chemical processes interact to influence transport is not very well understood. Hydrogeologic characterization and model analysis, however, have traditionally focused on measurement of physical properties and predicting the effects of variability in these properties on flow and transport. As a result, the role of geochemical heterogeneity on solute transport has remained largely unexplored. This project will use a combination of geophysical and soil physics techniques to investigate the …

This report provides information about the History, Selection Criteria, and Revenue Potential of Commemorative Postage Stamps. The Commemorative stamp program contributed an estimated $174 million in retained revenues for the USPS in the fiscal year 2002.

Two new RCRA groundwater monitoring wells were installed at the single-shell tank farm at Waste Management Area TX-TY in October and November 2002. This document provides the information on drilling and construction of these wells. Two new Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) groundwater monitoring wells were installed at the single-shell tank farm Waste Management Area (WMA) TX-TY in October and November 2002 in fulfillment of Tri-Party Agreement (Ecology et al. 1998) Milestone M-24-00N. The well names are 299-W14-19 and 299-W15-44; the corresponding well numbers are C3957 and C3956, respectively. Well 299-W14-19 is located east of the central part of the TX Tank Farm and is a downgradient well filling a gap in the monitoring network between wells 299-W14-14 and 299-W14-6. Well 299-W15-44 is located at the southwest corner of the TX Tank Farm in an area where groundwater flow has been artificially altered toward the southwest by the 200-ZP-1 Operable Unit pump-and-treat system. The well is in the cone of depression of the 200-ZP-1 extraction wells and is downgradient of WMA TX-TY. The locations of all wells in the WMA TX-TY monitoring network are shown on Figure 1. The original assessment monitoring plan for WMA TX-TY was issued in …

DARPA is exploring a number of advanced materials for military applications, including amorphous metals and titanium-based alloys. Equipment made from these materials can undergo degradation due to thermal aging, uniform corrosion, pitting, crevice corrosion, denting, stress corrosion cracking, corrosion fatigue, hydrogen induced cracking and microbial influenced corrosion. Amorphous alloys have exceptional resistance to corrosion, due in part to the absence of grain boundaries, but can undergo crystallization and other phase instabilities during heating and welding. Titanium alloys are extremely corrosion resistant due to the formation of a tenacious passive film of titanium oxide, but is prone to hydrogen absorption in crevices, and hydrogen induced cracking after hydrogen absorption. Accurate predictions of equipment reliability, necessary for strategic planning, requires integrated models that account for all relevant modes of attack, and that can make probabilistic predictions. Once developed, model parameters must be determined experimentally, and the validity of models must be established through careful laboratory and field tests. Such validation testing requires state-of-the-art surface analytical techniques, as well as electrochemical and fracture mechanics tests. The interaction between those processes that perturb the local environment on a surface and those that alter metallurgical condition must be integrated in predictive models. The material and …

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