Electrical resistivity may contribute to progress inunderstanding geothermal systems by imaging the geometry, bounds andcontrolling structures in existing production, and thereby perhapssuggesting new areas for field expansion. To these ends, a dense grid ofmagnetotelluric (MT) stations plus a single line of contiguous bipolearray profiling has been acquired over the east flank of the Cosogeothermal system. Acquiring good quality MT data in producing geothermalsystems is a challenge due to production related electromagnetic (EM)noise and, in the case of Coso, due to proximity of a regional DCintertie power transmission line. To achieve good results, a remotereference completely outside the influence of the dominant source of EMnoise must be established. Experimental results so far indicate thatemplacing a reference site in Amargosa Valley, NV, 65 miles from the DCintertie, isstill insufficient for noise cancellation much of the time.Even though the DC line EM fields are planar at this distance, theyremain coherent with the nonplanar fields in the Coso area hence remotereferencing produces incorrect responses. We have successfully unwrappedand applied MT times series from the permanent observatory at Parkfield,CA, and these appear adequate to suppress the interference of thecultural EM noise. The efficacy of this observatory is confirmed bycomparison to stations taken using an ultra-distant …

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the authority of the Department of Information Resources to accept gifts and grants.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the membership of the governing board of the Department of Information Resources.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the ability of public school employees to communicate with members of a school district board of trustees.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the duration of judgment liens in favor of the state.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to enforcement of certain vehicle weight and safety requirements by a noncommissioned employee of the Department of Public Safety of the State of Texas.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the responsibility of an employer in relation to a person who drives a commercial motor vehicle; providing a criminal penalty.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives proclaiming April 15 through 22, 2007, Days of Remembrance in memory of the victims of the Holocaust.

The Constitution of the United States makes no specific allowance for any one of the co-equal branches to have access to information held by the others and contains no provision expressly establishing a procedure for, or a right of, public access to government information. Nonetheless, Congress has legislated various public access laws. These include two records access statutes — the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act — and two meetings access statutes — the Federal Advisory Committee Act and the Government in the Sunshine Act. This report provides background on the issue of government transparency and examines relevant litigation.

Previous U.S. DOE sponsored research at the University of Hawaii resulted in the development of methods of doping of sodium aluminum hydride, NaAlH4 with titanium, zirconium and other catalysts such that: dehydriding occurs at temperatures as low as 100°C; rehydriding requires less than 1 h; and >4 weight percent hydrogen can be repeatedly cycled through dehydriding/rehydriding. These materials appeared to be on the threshold of practical viability as hydrogen carriers for onboard fuel cells. However, it was apparent that further kinetic enhancement was required to achieve commercial viability. Thus, one of the primary goals of this project was to develop the requisite improved catalysts. Over the course of this project, a variety of titanium and zirconium dopant precursors were investigated. Moreover, the approach was to conduct guided search for improved catalysts by obtaining a fundamental understanding of the chemical nature of the titanium dopants and their mechanism of action. Therefore, the projected also aimed to determined the chemical nature of the titanium species that are formed upon mechanical milling of NaAlH4 with the dopant precursors through synchrotron X-ray and neutron diffraction as well as transmission electron microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy. In addition to kinetic …

This report mainly focuses on China-U.S. Trade Issues. China-U.S. ties have expanded substantially over the past several years. China overtook Japan to become the third-largest U.S.Export market and overtook Canada to become the Largest source of U.S imports.

This report is in China’s Anti-Satellite Weapon Test.

This report provides a summary and analysis of legislative proposals that would provide voting representation in Congress to residents of the District of Columbia.

For this Aluminum Industry of the Future (IOF) project, the effect of impurities on the processing of aluminum alloys was systematically investigated. The work was carried out as a collaborative effort between the Pennsylvania State University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Industrial support was provided by ALCOA and ThermoCalc, Inc. The achievements described below were made. A method that combines first-principles calculation and calculation of phase diagrams (CALPHAD) was used to develop the multicomponent database Al-Ca-K-Li-Mg-Na. This method was extensively used in this project for the development of a thermodynamic database. The first-principles approach provided some thermodynamic property data that are not available in the open literature. These calculated results were used in the thermodynamic modeling as experimental data. Some of the thermodynamic property data are difficult, if not impossible, to measure. The method developed and used in this project allows the estimation of these data for thermodynamic database development. The multicomponent database Al-Ca-K-Li-Mg-Na was developed. Elements such as Ca, Li, Na, and K are impurities that strongly affect the formability and corrosion behavior of aluminum alloys. However, these impurity elements are not included in the commercial aluminum alloy database. The process of thermodynamic modeling began from Al-Na, Ca-Li, Li-Na, …

Silicone polymers are frequently used as cushions and inserts between load bearing parts. In this capacity, they must act to position their associated parts and distribute mechanical force as appropriate. One type of failure is specific to silicones that are filled with high surface area particulates for purposes of tailoring the polymer compressive properties. Additives such as fumed silicon oxide are presumed to have a high degree of surface interaction with the polymer matrix, thus causing the polymer to stiffen and to display greater dimensional stability as a function of temperature. However, it has been observed that the compressive behavior of these materials is not always invariant over long times. There is evidence that suggests changes in humidity and temperature can irreversibly alter the silicone-filler interaction, thereby changing the overall characteristics of parts made from such materials. As before, changes in compressive or shear stability can have serious effects on the ability of these materials to effectively position precision parts or distribute high mechanical loads. We approach the analysis of the filled systems by creating controlled layers of silicone polymers attached to silicon oxide substrates. Straight chain vinyl-silicone polymers identical to those used in the formulation of pads for stockpile …

None

We propose a novel high peak power ultrashort laser pulse re-circulation technique suitable for gamma-ray generation in Compton-backscattering sources. The two primary obstacles to higher average brightness and conversion efficiency of laser pulse energy to gamma-rays are the relatively small Compton scattering cross-section and the typically low repetition rates of Joule-class interaction lasers (10 Hz). Only a very small fraction (10{sup -10}) of the available laser photons is converted to gamma-rays, while the bulk is discarded. To significantly reduce the average power requirements of the laser and increase the overall system efficiency, we can re-circulate laser light for repeated interactions.

Report on the practice of horse slaughter for meat consumption, and whether the practice should be banned in future bills.

In Bousso-Polchinski models with hundreds of fluxes, we compute the effects of cosmological dynamics on the probability distribution of landscape vacua. Starting from generic initial conditions, we find that most fluxes are dynamically driven into a different and much narrower range of values than expected from landscape statistics alone. Hence, cosmological evolution will access only a tiny fraction of the vacua with small cosmological constant. This leads to a host of sharp predictions. Unlike other approaches to eternal inflation, the holographic measure employed here does not lead to staggering, an excessive spread of probabilities that would doom the string landscape as a solution to the cosmological constant problem.

Multi-zone CFD simulations with detailed kinetics were used to model engine experiments performed on a diesel engine that was converted for single cylinder, HCCI operation, here using iso-octane as the fuel. The modeling goals were to validate the method (multi-zone combustion modeling) and the reaction mechanism (LLNL 857 species iso-octane), both of which performed very well. The purpose of this paper is to document the validation findings and to set the ground work for further analysis of the results by first looking at CO emissions characteristics with varying equivalence ratio.

This report discusses the proposed listing of polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA; 16 U.S.C. §§1531 et seq.), which highlights the intersection of two significant issues currently before Congress — climate change and species protection.

None

None

Production of a sterile species is studied within an effective model of active-sterile neutrino mixing in a medium in thermal equilibrium. The quantum kinetic equations for the distribution functions and coherences are obtained from two independent methods: the effective action and the quantum master equation. The decoherence time scale for active-sterile oscillations is tau(dec)=2/Gamma(aa), but the evolution of the distribution functions is determined by the two different time scales associated with the damping rates of the quasiparticle modes in the medium: Gamma(1)=Gamma(aa)cos^2theta(m); Gamma(2)=Gamma(aa)sin^2theta(m) where Gamma(aa) is the interaction rate of the active species in the absence of mixing and theta(m) the mixing angle in the medium. These two time scales are widely different away from Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein resonances and preclude the kinetic description of active-sterile production in terms of a simple rate equation. We give the complete set of quantum kinetic equations for the active and sterile populations and coherences and discuss in detail the various approximations. A generalization of the active-sterile transition probability in a medium is provided via the quantum master equation. We derive explicitly the usual quantum kinetic equations in terms of the"polarization vector" and show their equivalence to those obtained from the quantum master equation and effective …