This report provides information on the Conference Committee Senate Bill No. 1 report.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to recognizing April 12 through 18, 2009, as Texas Fraternal Week.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the exemption of volunteer fire departments from certain motor fuel taxes.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the use of certain court costs in a criminal case for municipal programs enhancing public safety and security.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to a career ladder for interveners who provide services under the deaf-blind with multiple disabilities waiver program.

Experimental results have shown that the high harmonic fast wave (HHFW) at 30 MHz can provide substantial plasma heating and current drive for the NSTX spherical tokamak operation. However, the present antenna strap design rarely achieves the design goal of delivering the full transmitter capability of 6 MW to the plasma. In order to deliver more power to the plasma, a new antenna strap design and the associated coaxial line feeds are being constructed. This new antenna strap design features two feedthroughs to replace the old single feed-through design. In the design process, CST Microwave Studio has been used to simulate the entire new antenna strap structure including the enclosure and the Faraday shield. In this paper, the antenna strap model and the simulation results will be discussed in detail. The test results from the new antenna straps with their associated resonant loops will be presented as well.

In this paper we present results from a time-dependent amplitude analysis of the B{sup 0} {yields} K{sup 0}{sub s}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} decay. In Sec. II we describe the time-dependent DP formalism, and introduce the signal parameters that are extracted in the fit to data. In Sec. III we briefly describe the BABAR detector and the data set. In Sec. IV, we explain the selection requirements used to obtain the signal candidates and suppress backgrounds. In Sec. V we describe the fit method and the approach used to control experimental effects such as resolution. In Sec. VI we present the results of the fit, and extract parameters relevant to the contributing intermediate resonant states. In Sec. VII we discuss systematic uncertainties in the results, and finally we summarize the results in Sec. VIII.

In this paper, we present an 800 MHz crab cavity conceptual design for the LHC upgrade. The cell shape is optimized for lower maximum peak surface fields as well as higher transverse R/Q. A compact coax-to-coax coupler scheme is proposed to damp the LOM/SOM modes. A two-stub antenna with a notch filter is used as the HOM coupler to damp the HOM modes in the horizontal plane and rejects the operating mode at 800MHz. Multipacting (MP) simulations show that there are strong MP particles at the disks. Adding grooves along the short axis without changing the operating mode's RF characteristics can suppress the MP activities. Possible input coupler configurations are discussed.

Animal models provide powerful tools for dissecting dose-response relationships and pathogenic mechanisms and for testing new treatment paradigms. Mechanistic research on beryllium exposure-disease relationships is severely limited by a general inability to develop a sufficient chronic beryllium disease animal model. Discovery of the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) - DPB1Glu69 genetic susceptibility component of chronic beryllium disease permitted the addition of this human beryllium antigen presentation molecule to an animal genome which may permit development of a better animal model for chronic beryllium disease. Using FVB/N inbred mice, Drs. Rubin and Zhu, successfully produced three strains of HLA-DPB1 Glu 69 transgenic mice. Each mouse strain contains a haplotype of the HLA-DPB1 Glu 69 gene that confers a different magnitude of odds ratio (OR) of risk for chronic beryllium disease: HLA-DPB1*0401 (OR = 0.2), HLA-DPB1*0201 (OR = 15), HLA-DPB1*1701 (OR = 240). In addition, Drs. Rubin and Zhu developed transgenic mice with the human CD4 gene to permit better transmission of signals between T cells and antigen presenting cells. This project has maintained the colonies of these transgenic mice and tested the functionality of the human transgenes.

The echo-enabled harmonic generation free electron laser (EEHG FEL) holds great promise in generation of coherent soft x-ray directly from a UV seed laser within one stage. The density modulation in the harmonic generation process is affected by the smearing effect caused by the fluctuations of energy and current along the beam, as well as the field error of the dispersive elements. In this paper we study the tolerance of the EEHG FEL on beam quality and field quality. The diffusion effect from incoherent synchrotron radiation (ISR) in the dispersion sections and the second modulator are also studied.

The US Department of Energy has launched the Zero-Net-Energy (ZNE) Commercial Building Initiative (CBI) in order to develop commercial buildings that produce as much energy as they use. Its objective is to make these buildings marketable by 2025 such that they minimize their energy use through cutting-edge energy-efficient technologies and meet their remaining energy needs through on-site renewable energy generation. We examine how such buildings may be implemented within the context of a cost- or carbon-minimizing microgrid that is able to adopt and operate various technologies, such as photovoltaic (PV) on-site generation, heat exchangers, solar thermal collectors, absorption chillers, and passive / demand-response technologies. We use a mixed-integer linear program (MILP) that has a multi-criteria objective function: the minimization of a weighted average of the building's annual energy costs and carbon / CO2 emissions. The MILP's constraints ensure energy balance and capacity limits. In addition, constraining the building's energy consumed to equal its energy exports enables us to explore how energy sales and demand-response measures may enable compliance with the CBI. Using a nursing home in northern California and New York with existing tariff rates and technology data, we find that a ZNE building requires ample PV capacity installed to …

This report provides results from an ongoing project to monitor the migration behavior and survival of wild juvenile spring/summer Chinook salmon in the Snake River Basin. Data reported is from detections of PIT tagged fish during late summer 2007 through mid-2008. Fish were tagged in summer 2007 by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in Idaho and by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW) in Oregon. Our analyses include migration behavior and estimated survival of fish at instream PIT-tag monitors and arrival timing and estimated survival to Lower Granite Dam. Principal results from tagging and interrogation during 2007-2008 are listed below: (1) In July and August 2007, we PIT tagged and released 7,390 wild Chinook salmon parr in 12 Idaho streams or sample areas. (2) Overall observed mortality from collection, handling, tagging, and after a 24-hour holding period was 1.4%. (3) Of the 2,524 Chinook salmon parr PIT tagged and released in Valley Creek in summer 2007, 218 (8.6%) were detected at two instream PIT-tag monitoring systems in lower Valley Creek from late summer 2007 to the following spring 2008. Of these, 71.6% were detected in late summer/fall, 11.9% in winter, and 16.5% in spring. Estimated parr-to-smolt survival …

The synthesis of magnetic nanoparticles has long been an area of active research. Magnetic nanoparticles can be used in a wide variety of applications such as magnetic inks, magnetic memory devices, drug delivery, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents, and pathogen detection in foods. In applications such as MRI, particle uniformity is particularly crucial, as is the magnetic response of the particles. Uniform magnetic particles with good magnetic properties are therefore required. One particularly effective technique for synthesizing nanoparticles involves biomineralization, which is a naturally occurring process that can produce highly complex nanostructures. Also, the technique involves mild conditions (ambient temperature and close to neutral pH) that make this approach suitable for a wide variety of materials. The term 'bioinspired' is important because biomineralization research is inspired by the naturally occurring process, which occurs in certain microorganisms called 'magnetotactic bacteria'. Magnetotactic bacteria use biomineralization proteins to produce magnetite crystals having very good uniformity in size and morphology. The bacteria use these magnetic particles to navigate according to external magnetic fields. Because these bacteria synthesize high quality crystals, research has focused on imitating aspects of this biomineralization in vitro. In particular, a biomineralization iron-binding protein found in a certain species of …

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is studying an option of building a high brightness synchrotron light source machine, PEP-X, in the existing PEP-II tunnel [1, 2]. By replacing 6 arcs of FODO cells of PEPII High Energy Ring (HER) with two arcs of DBA and four arcs of TME and installation of 89.3 m long damping wiggler an ultra low beam emittance of 0.14 nm-rad (including intra-beam scattering) at 4.5 GeV is achieved. In this paper we study the possibility to further reduce the beam emittance by releasing the constraint of the dispersion free in the DBA straight. The QBA (Quadruple Bend Achromat) cell is used to replace the DBA. The ratio of outer and inner bending angle is optimized. The dispersion function in the non-dispersion straight is controlled to compromise with lower emittance and beam size at the dispersion straight. An undulator of period length 23 mm, maximum magnetic field of 1.053 T, and total periods of 150 is used to put in the 30 straights to simulate the effects of these IDs on the beam emittance and energy spread. The brightness including all the ID effects is calculated and compared to the original PEP-X design.

We present recent developments on the single transverse spin physics, in particular, the Collins mechanism contributions in various hadronic reactions, such as semi-inclusive hadron production in DIS process, azimuthal distribution of hadron in high energy jet in pp collisions. We will demonstrate that the transverse momentum dependent and collinear factorization approaches are consistent with each other in the description of the Collins effects in the semi-inclusive hadron production in DIS process.

Microbunching instability is one of the most challenging threats to FEL performances. The most effective ways to cure the microbunching instability include suppression of the density modulation sources and suppression of the amplification process. In this paper we study the microbunching instability in velocity bunching. Our simulations show that the initial current and energy modulations are suppressed in velocity bunching process, which may be attributed to the strong plasma oscillation and Landau damping from the relatively low beam energy and large relative slice energy spread. A heating effect that may be present in a long solenoid is also preliminarily analyzed.

Two strategies for improving the surface finish of niobium sheet used in superconducting radio frequency cavities were examined, using slices of single (or large-grain) material from an ingot, and equal channel angle extrusion (ECAE) preprocessing of ingot material to achieve a uniform and small grain size prior to subsequent rolling. The effect of these two processing paths on final microstructure, texture, and surface finish are discussed.

Deming quality methodologies applied to safety are recognized with the National Safety Council's annual Robert W. Campbell Award. Over the last ten years, the implementation of Statistical Process Control and quality methodologies at the U.S. Department of Energy's Hanford Site have contributed to improved safety. Improvements attributed to Statistical Process Control are evidenced in Occupational Safety and Health records and documented through several articles in Quality Progress and the American Society of Safety Engineers publication, Professional Safety. Statistical trending of safety, quality, and occurrence data continues to playa key role in improving safety and quality at what has been called the world's largest environmental cleanup project. DOE's Hanford Site played a pivotal role in the nation's defense beginning in the 1940s, when it was established as part of the Manhattan Project. After more than 50 years of producing material for nuclear weapons, Hanford, which covers 586 square miles in southeastern Washington state, is now focused on three outcomes: (1) Restoring the Columbia River corridor for multiple uses; (2) Transitioning the central plateau to support long-term waste management; and (3) Putting DOE assets to work for the future. The current environmental cleanup mission faces challenges of overlapping technical, political, regulatory, environmental, …

Nonlinear-elastic fracture mechanics methods are used to assess the fracture toughness of bulk metallic glass (BMG) composites; results are compared with similar measurements for other monolithic and composite BMG alloys. Mechanistically, plastic shielding gives rise to characteristic resistance?curve behavior where the fracture resistance increases with crack extension. Specifically, confinement of damage by second?phase dendrites is shown to result in enhancement of the toughness by nearly an order of magnitude relative to unreinforced glass.

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The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is an x-ray Free-electron Laser (FEL) being commissioned at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). Recent beam measurements have shown that, using the LCLS injector-linac-compressors, the beam emittance is very small at 20 pC. In this paper we perform start-to-end simulations of the entire accelerator including the FEL undulator and study the FEL performance versus the bunch charge. At 20 pC charge, these calculations associated with the measured beam parameters suggest the possibility of generating a longitudinally coherent single x-ray spike with 2-femtosecond (fs) duration at a wavelength of 1.5 nm. At 100 pC charge level, our simulations show an x-ray pulse with 10 femtosecond duration and up to 10{sup 12} photons at a wavelength of 1.5 {angstrom}. These results open exciting possibilities for ultrafast science and single shot molecular imaging.

Libby Reservoir was created under an International Columbia River Treaty between the United States and Canada for cooperative water development of the Columbia River Basin (Columbia River Treaty 1964). Libby Reservoir inundated 109 stream miles of the mainstem Kootenai River in the United States and Canada, and 40 miles of tributary streams in the U.S. that provided habitat for spawning, juvenile rearing, and migratory passage (Figure 1). The authorized purpose of the dam is to provide power (91.5%), flood control (8.3%), and navigation and other benefits (0.2%; Storm et al. 1982). The Pacific Northwest Power Act of 1980 recognized possible conflicts stemming from hydroelectric projects in the northwest and directed Bonneville Power Administration to 'protect, mitigate, and enhance fish and wildlife to the extent affected by the development and operation of any hydroelectric project of the Columbia River and its tributaries' (4(h)(10)(A)). Under the Act, the Northwest Power Planning Council was created and recommendations for a comprehensive fish and wildlife program were solicited from the region's federal, state, and tribal fish and wildlife agencies. Among Montana's recommendations was the proposal that research be initiated to quantify acceptable seasonal minimum pool elevations to maintain or enhance the existing fisheries (Graham et …

Recently a scheme entitled echo-enabled harmonic generation (EEHG) was proposed for producing short wavelength FEL radiation that allows far higher harmonic numbers to be accessed as compared with the normal limit arising from incoherent energy spread. In this paper we study the feasibility of a single EEHG stage to generate coherent radiation in the 'water window' (2--4 nm wavelength) directly from a UV seed laser at 190-nm wavelength. We present time-dependent simulation results which demonstrate that the single-stage EEHG FEL can generate high power soft x-ray radiation in the water window with narrow bandwidth close to Fourier transform limit directly from a UV seed laser. The schemes to generate short x-ray pulse from femtosecond to attosecond using EEHG FEL are also discussed.

Installation of new Shortwave Spectrometer for permanent operation at SGP - In May 2006 the new ShortWave Spectrometer (SWS) was installed in the Optical Trailer at the Southern Great Plains Central Facility SGP on 27 April 2006. The SWS began full operation 28 April 2006 and has run continuously to the present. Over 25 GB of spectra has been collected, calibrated and archived. 3-D radiative transfer simulations - Retrieved fields of cloud optical thickness and effective radius to from the MODIS Airborne Simulator were used to reproduce 3D cloud fields that were used a input to 3D radiative transfer simulations and then compared with simultaneous Solar Spectral Flux Radiometer (SSFR) spectral irradiance measurements. The influence of both horizontal and vertical cloud structure, using accurate versus approximated optical properties in the radiative transfer model on the modeled irradiance was examined, as was the influence of using the full phase function versus using approximations of single scattering properties. In a related study, cloud microphysical and radiation data from two field experiments were compared measured irradiances with the modeled counterpart, using various 3D cloud models as input for two 3D radiative transfer models. Two papers were published. Direct measurement of aerosol radiative forcing …