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An update to the FY 2005 assessment of the state of technical research progress toward biochemical process goals. This assessment contains research results from 2006 and 2007.

This report discusses the U.S. commercial ties with France, which are extensive, mutually profitable, and growing. With over $1.2 billion in commercial transactions taking place between the two countries every day of the year, each country has an increasingly large stake in the health and openness of the other's economy

In light water reactors, components made of nickel-base alloys are susceptible to environmentally assisted cracking. This report summarizes the crack growth rate results and related metallography for field and laboratory-procured Alloy 600 and its weld alloys tested in pressurized water reactor (PWR) environments. The report also presents crack growth rate (CGR) results for a shielded-metal-arc weld of Alloy 182 in a simulated PWR environment as a function of temperature between 290 C and 350 C. These data were used to determine the activation energy for crack growth in Alloy 182 welds. The tests were performed by measuring the changes in the stress corrosion CGR as the temperatures were varied during the test. The difference in electrochemical potential between the specimen and the Ni/NiO line was maintained constant at each temperature by adjusting the hydrogen overpressure on the water supply tank. The CGR data as a function of temperature yielded activation energies of 252 kJ/mol for a double-J weld and 189 kJ/mol for a deep-groove weld. These values are in good agreement with the data reported in the literature. The data reported here and those in the literature suggest that the average activation energy for Alloy 182 welds is on the …

This report summarizes the progress made during the August 1, 2006 - May 31, 2008 award period under Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-05NT42614 for the U. S. Department of Energy/National Energy Technology Laboratory (USDOE/NETL) entitled 'SECA Coal Based Systems'. The initial overall objective of this program was to design, develop, and demonstrate multi-MW integrated gasification fuel cell (IGFC) power plants with >50% overall efficiency from coal (HHV) to AC power. The focus of the program was to develop low-cost, high performance, modular solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology to support coal gas IGFC power systems. After a detailed GE internal review of the SOFC technology, the program was de-scoped at GE's request. The primary objective of this program was then focused on developing a performance degradation mitigation path for high performing, cost-effective solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). There were two initial major objectives in this program. These were: (1) Develop and optimize a design of a >100 MWe integrated gasification fuel cell (IGFC) power plant; (2) Resolve identified barrier issues concerning the long-term economic performance of SOFC. The program focused on designing and cost estimating the IGFC system and resolving technical and economic barrier issues relating to SOFC. In doing so, manufacturing …

The average tenure of Members of the Senate and House of Representatives at the beginning of each Congress has varied substantially since 1789. The purpose of this report is to provide a Congress-by-Congress summary of the average years of service for Senators and Representatives for the First through the 110th Congresses.

This report provides information about the Production, Distribution, and Accessibility of Congressional Record. The Congressional Record is the most widely published account of the debates and activities in congress.

This report is one of a series on the legislative process. It contains a guide to individuals seated on the Senate Dais.

This report identifies the names, committee assignments, dates of service, and (for Representatives) districts of the 245 women who have served in Congress.

ABETI/IWESS is a project carried out by Carnegie Mellon's Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics, the CBPD, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy/EERE, to design, procure, install, operate, and evaluate an energy supply system, an ESS, that will provide power, cooling, heating and ventilation for CBPD's Intelligent Workplace, the IW. The energy sources for this system, the IWESS, are solar radiation and bioDiesel fuel. The components of this overall system are: (1) a solar driven cooling and heating system for the IW comprising solar receivers, an absorption chiller, heat recovery exchanger, and circulation pump; (2) a bioDiesel fueled engine generator with heat recovery exchangers, one on the exhaust to provide steam and the other on the engine coolant to provide heated water; (3) a ventilation system including an enthalpy recovery wheel, an air based heat pump, an active desiccant wheel, and an air circulation fan; and (4) various convective and radiant cooling/heating units and ventilation air diffusers distributed throughout the IW. The goal of the ABETI/IWESS project is to demonstrate an energy supply system for a building space that will provide a healthy, comfortable environment for the occupants and that will reduce the quantity of energy consumed in the …

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This report discusses how the total debt of the federal government can increase, a historical overview of debt limits, and how the current economic slowdown has led to higher deficits and thereby a series of debt limit increases, as well as legislation related to these increases.

This report examines logistical support contracts for troop support services in Iraq primarily administered through the U.S. Army's Logistics Civil Augmentation Program(LOGCAP).

The objectives of the confirmatory survey activities were to provide independent contractor field data reviews and to generate independent radiological data for use by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in evaluating the adequacy and accuracy of the licensee’s procedures and final status survey (FSS) results.

Argonne National Laboratory founded the Laboratory Computing Resource Center (LCRC) in the spring of 2002 to help meet pressing program needs for computational modeling, simulation, and analysis. The guiding mission is to provide critical computing resources that accelerate the development of high-performance computing expertise, applications, and computations to meet the Laboratory's challenging science and engineering missions. In September 2002 the LCRC deployed a 350-node computing cluster from Linux NetworX to address Laboratory needs for mid-range supercomputing. This cluster, named 'Jazz', achieved over a teraflop of computing power (1012 floating-point calculations per second) on standard tests, making it the Laboratory's first terascale computing system and one of the 50 fastest computers in the world at the time. Jazz was made available to early users in November 2002 while the system was undergoing development and configuration. In April 2003, Jazz was officially made available for production operation. Since then, the Jazz user community has grown steadily. By the end of fiscal year 2007, there were over 60 active projects representing a wide cross-section of Laboratory expertise, including work in biosciences, chemistry, climate, computer science, engineering applications, environmental science, geoscience, information science, materials science, mathematics, nanoscience, nuclear engineering, and physics. Most important, many …

In this research and development project, LLNL will leverage the process for fabrication of the membranes developed by our internally funded effort (LLNL Laboratory Directed Research and Development). LLNL will then employ chemical manipulations to modify charge at the ends of the nanotubes and make the membranes more selective to either positive or negative ions through a combination of size and charge selectivity. LLNL's goal is to demonstrate ion exclusion while preserving high permeabilities and low energy use. Success of this research and development project may warrant further developments in the fabrication of membranes.

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This is a more comprehensive report of the accelerator physics in the white paper 'PEP-X Light Source at SLAC'. A new light source called 'PEP-X' would reside in the 2.2-km PEP-II tunnel. It has a hybrid lattice where two of its six arcs contain DBA cells that provide a total of 30 straight sections for insertion device beam lines and the remaining arcs contain TME cells for an extremely low emittance. Using 90 meter damping wigglers the horizontal emittance at 4.5 GeV is further reduced to 0.1 nm-rad. Many collective effects including intra-beam scattering, Touschek lifetime, and fast ion instability are studied. We expect that PEP-X will produce photon beams having brightnesses near 10{sup 22} (ph/s/mm{sup 2}/mrad{sup 2}/0.1% BW) at 10 keV and 10{sup 21} at 35 keV.

The Waste Acceptance Product Specifications (WAPS)1 1.2 require that 'The Producer shall report the inventory of radionuclides (in Curies) that have half-lives longer than 10 years and that are, or will be, present in concentrations greater than 0.05 percent of the total inventory for each waste type indexed to the years 2015 and 3115'. As part of the strategy to meet WAPS 1.2, the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) will report for each waste type, all radionuclides (with half-lives greater than 10 years) that have concentrations greater than 0.01 percent of the total inventory from time of production through the 1100 year period from 2015 through 3115. The initial listing of radionuclides to be included is based on the design-basis glass as identified in the Waste Form Compliance Plan (WCP)2 and Waste Form Qualification Report (WQR)3. However, it is required that this list be expanded if other radionuclides with half-lives greater than 10 years are identified that may meet the greater than 0.01% criterion for Curie content. Specification 1.6 of the WAPS, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Safeguards Reporting for High Level Waste (HLW), requires that the ratio by weights of the following uranium and plutonium isotopes be reported: U-233, …

The purpose of this course is to provide a comprehensive introduction to the physics of beams with intense space charge. This course is suitable for graduate students and researchers interested in accelerator systems that require sufficient high intensity where mutual particle interactions in the beam can no longer be neglected. This course is intended to give the student a broad overview of the dynamics of beams with strong space charge. The emphasis is on theoretical and analytical methods of describing the acceleration and transport of beams. Some aspects of numerical and experimental methods will also be covered. Students will become familiar with standard methods employed to understand the transverse and longitudinal evolution of beams with strong space charge. The material covered will provide a foundation to design practical architectures. In this course, we will introduce you to the physics of intense charged particle beams, focusing on the role of space charge. The topics include: particle equations of motion, the paraxial ray equation, and the Vlasov equation; 4-D and 2-D equilibrium distribution functions (such as the Kapchinskij-Vladimirskij, thermal equilibrium, and Neuffer distributions), reduced moment and envelope equation formulations of beam evolution; transport limits and focusing methods; the concept of emittance and …

The benchmark, ab initio quantum mechanical methods for molecular structure and spectra are now recognized to be coupled-cluster theory. To benefit from the transiiton to tera- and petascale computers, such coupled-cluster methods must be created to run in a scalable fashion. This Workshop, held as a aprt of the 48th annual Sanibel meeting, at St. Simns, Island, GA, addressed that issue. Representatives of all the principal scientific groups who are addressing this topic were in attendance, to exchange information about the problem and to identify what needs to be done in the future. This report summarized the conclusions of the workshop.

Whether broader expansions from federal environmental laws are needed to preserve military readiness has been an issue. Questions have been raised as to whether environmental requirements have limited military training activities to the point that readiness would be compromised. The potential impacts of broader exemptions on environmental quality have raised additional questions. Although certain exemptions the Department of Defense (DOD) first requested in FY2003 have been enacted into law, Congress has opposed others. From FY2003 to FY2008, DOD requested exemptions from the Clean Air Act, Solid Waste Disposal Act, and Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act. To date, Congress has not enacted these three latter exceptions. The Administration's FY2009 defense authorization bill does not include these exemptions.

The 2002 farm bill required retailers to provide country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for fresh produce, red meats, peanuts, and seafood by September 30, 2004. Congress twice postponed implementation for all bu seafood; COOL now must be implemented by September 30, 2008. This report describes the current status of the COOL issue, as well as the ongoing discussion of additional COOL requirements for other foods and food ingredients as part of the proposed Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act overhaul.