Activity coefficient derivatives with respect to molality are presented for the Scatchard Neutral Electrolyte description of a ternary common-ion electrolyte system. These quantities are needed for the calculation of 'diffusion Onsager coefficients' and in turn for tests of the Onsager Reciprocal Relations in diffusion. The usually-omitted b{sub 23} term is included. The direct SNE binary approximations and a further approximation are discussed. Binary evaluation strategies other than constant ionic strength are considered.

This report provides information on U.S. Africa Command or (AFRICOM), including AFRICOM's mission, structure, interagency coordination, and its basing and manpower requirements. The report also gives a broad overview of U.S. strategic interests in Africa and the role of U.S. military efforts on the continent as they pertain to the creation of Africa Command.

We perform an amplitude analysis of B{sup {+-}} {yields} {var_phi}(1020)K*(892){sup {+-}} decay with a sample of about 384 million B{bar B} pairs recorded with the BABAR detector. Overall, twelve parameters are measured, including the fractions of longitudinal f{sub L} and parity-odd transverse f{sub {perpendicular}} amplitudes, branching fraction, strong phases, and six parameters sensitive to CP-violation. We use the dependence on the K{pi} invariant mass of the interference between the J{sup P} = 1{sup -} and 0{sup +} K{pi} components to resolve the discrete ambiguity in the determination of the strong and weak phases. Our measurements of f{sub L} = 0.49 {+-} 0.05 {+-} 0.03, f{sub {perpendicular}} = 0.21 {+-} 0.05 {+-} 0.02, and the strong phases point to the presence of a substantial helicity-plus amplitude from a presently unknown source.

This report is on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed regulations that would revise a 2003 Clean Water Act rule governing waste discharges.

By some accounts, catalysis impacts ≥ 30% of GDP in developed countries [Maxwell, I. E. Nature 394, 325-326 (1998)]. Catalysis is the enabling technology for petroleum production, for control of gaseous emissions from petroleum combustion, and for the production of industrial and consumer chemicals. Future applications of catalysis are potentially even more far reaching. There is an ever-growing need to move the economy from a fossil-fuel energy base to cleaner alternatives. Hydrogen-based combustion systems and fuel cells could play a dominant role, given a plentiful and inexpensive source of hydrogen. Photocatalysis is the most promising clean technology for hydrogen production, relying solely on water and sunlight, but performance enhancements in photocatalysis are needed to make this technology economically competitive. Given the enormously wide spread utilization of catalysts, even incremental performance enhancements would have far-reaching benefits for multiple end-use sectors. In the area of fuel and chemical production, such improvements would translate into vast reductions in energy consumption. At the consumption end, improvements in the catalysts involved would yield tremendous reductions in pollution. In the area of photocatalysis, such efficiency improvements could finally render hydrogen an economically viable fuel. Prerequisite to the non-empirical design and refinement of improved catalysts is the …

Autocatalytic dissociation of water on the Cu(110) metal surface is demonstrated based on X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy studies carried out in-situ under near ambient conditions of water vapor pressure (1 Torr) and temperature (275-520 K). The autocatalytic reaction is explained as the result of the strong hydrogen-bond in the H{sub 2}O-OH complex of the dissociated final state, which lowers the water dissociation barrier according to the Broensted-Evans-Polanyi relations. A simple chemical bonding picture is presented which predicts autocatalytic water dissociation to be a general phenomenon on metal surfaces.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Passenger prescreening--a process that includes matching passengers' identifying information against records extracted from the U.S. government terrorist watch list--is one of several security measures in place to help ensure the safety of commercial flights traveling to or from the United States. DHS has several efforts underway to strengthen international aviation passenger prescreening. This report focuses on certain elements of the passenger prescreening process as well as some of the actions that DHS is taking or has planned to strengthen prescreening procedures. This report is a limited version of the original November 2006 report as various agencies that we reviewed deemed some of the information in the original report to be security sensitive. GAO's work included interviewing officials and assessing relevant documentation from federal agencies, U.S. and foreign air carriers, industry groups, and several foreign countries."

The degradation of petroleum waste by mixed bacterial cultures which produce biosurfactants: Ralstonia pickettii SRS (BP-20), Alcaligenes piechaudii SRS (CZOR L-1B), Bacillus subtilis (1'- 1a), Bacillus sp. (T-1) and Bacillus sp. (T'-1) was investigated. The total petroleum hydrocarbons were degraded substantially (91 %) by the mixed bacterial culture in 30 days (reaching up to 29 % in the first 72 h). Similarly, the toxicity of the biodegraded petroleum waste decreased 3 times after 30 days as compared to raw petroleum waste. Thus, the mixed bacterial strains effectively clean-up the petroleum waste and they can be used in other bioremediation processes.

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This report contains brief summaries of federal animal protection statues, listed alphabetically. It includes statues concerning animals that are not entirely, or not at all, animal protection statues.

We have developed a new directional fast-neutron detector based on double proton recoil in two separated planes of plastic scintillators with position-sensitive readout. This method allows the energy spectrum of the neutrons to be measured by a combination of peak amplitude in the first plane and time of flight to the second plane. The planes are made up of 1-m long, 10-cm high paddles with photomultipliers at both ends, so that the location of an event along the paddle can be estimated from the time delay between the optical pulses detected at the two ends. The direction of the scattered neutron can be estimated from the locations of two time-correlated events in the two planes, and the energy lost in the first scattering event can be estimated from the pulse amplitude in the first plane. The direction of the incident neutron can then be determined to lie on a cone whose angle is determined by the kinematic equations. The superposition of many such cones generates an image that indicates the presence of a localized source. Setting upper and lower limits on the time of flight allows discrimination between gamma rays, muons and neutrons. Monte Carlo simulations were performed to determine …

The Very High Temperature gas cooled reactor (VHTR) is one of the GEN IV reactor concepts that have been proposed for thermochemical hydrogen production and other process-heat applications like coal gasification. The USDOE has selected the VHTR for further research and development, aiming to demonstrate emissions-free electricity and hydrogen production at a future time. One of the major safety advantages of the VHTR is the potential for passive decay heat removal by natural circulation of air in a Reactor Cavity Cooling System (RCCS). The air-side of the RCCS is very similar to the Reactor Vessel Auxiliary Cooling System (RVACS) that has been proposed for the PRISM reactor design. The design and safety analysis of the RVACS have been based on extensive analytical and experimental work performed at ANL. The Natural Convective Shutdown Heat Removal Test Facility (NSTF) at ANL that simulates at full scale the air-side of the RVACS was built to provide experimental support for the design and analysis of the PRISM RVACS system. The objective of this work is to demonstrate that the NSTF facility can be used to generate RCCS experimental data: to validate CFD and systems codes for the analysis of the RCCS; and to support …

A scanning transmission X-ray microscope at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is used to measure organic functional group abundance and morphology of atmospheric aerosols. We present a summary of spectra, sizes, and shapes observed in 595 particles that were collected and analyzed between 2000 and 2006. These particles ranged between 0.1 and 12 mm and represent aerosols found in a large range of geographical areas, altitudes, and times. They include samples from seven different field campaigns: PELTI, ACE-ASIA, DYCOMS II, Princeton, MILAGRO (urban), MILAGRO (C-130), and INTEX-B. At least 14 different classes of organic particles show different types of spectroscopic signatures. Different particle types are found within the same region while the same particle types are also found in different geographical domains. Particles chemically resembling black carbon, humic-like aerosols, pine ultisol, and secondary or processed aerosol have been identified from functional group abundance and comparison of spectra with those published in the literature.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Transportation's (DOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is responsible for protecting consumers involved in interstate household goods moves by issuing regulations and conducting oversight and enforcement actions. The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act--A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), enacted in 2005, included provisions to enhance consumer protections for household goods moves and mandated that GAO study (1) the protections federal laws and regulations provide to consumers of interstate household goods moves and the effectiveness of federal enforcement efforts, (2) the protections states provide to consumers of intrastate household goods moves and how they have affected consumers and movers, and (3) the potential effects on both consumers and interstate movers if movers were subject to state consumer protection laws. To address these issues, GAO analyzed federal and state legislation, federal complaint and enforcement data, and interviewed federal and state officials."

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Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) holds about 5 percent of the real property owned by the federal government in terms of building floor area, including such facilities as hospitals and office buildings. VA's responsibility for managing its real property includes the construction of its facilities and cemeteries. Because these construction projects can span several years, VA is authorized to carry forward fund balances from year to year in its construction accounts. VA is responsible for keeping track of and managing these balances to ensure that any unexpended balances that remain after construction projects are completed are redirected to other construction project needs within the agency. VA's budgets for new construction exist in two accounts--Major Construction and Minor Construction--which are funded as separate line items within the appropriation. For purposes of this report, we refer to the Major and Minor Construction accounts as VA's construction accounts. Construction projects undertaken to replace existing facility components are funded through the Non-Recurring Maintenance (NRM) portion of the Medical Facilities budget account. For purposes of this report, we refer to the NRM as VA's facility account. Under the Comptroller General's authority to …

The quest for the development of rechargeable lithium-metal batteries has attracted vigorous worldwide research efforts because this system offers the highest theoretical specific energy [1]. For this to be achieved, the repetitive deposition and stripping of lithium must be close to fully reversible. Thus, alternative electrolytes have been investigated, such as the room-temperature ionic liquid (RTILs). Lithium can be cycled with a high degree of reversibility with efficiencies exceeding 99% using systems based on N-methyl N-alkyl pyrrolidinium (P{sub 1X}{sup +}) combined with the TFSI anion [2]. More recent efforts have been directed towards systems based on P{sub 1X}{sup +} cations with the FSI anion and appear to be even more promising [3,4]. In this work, we discuss to what extent RTILs based on P{sub 1X}{sup +} cations with TFSI or FSI anions can be used as electrolytes for rechargeable Li batteries. In particular, their physical and chemical properties are thoroughly discussed so as to explain the difference observed in their electrochemical behavior. Although these two systems seem to be stable against lithium, their compatibilities with cathode materials require full assessment as well. Thus, various manganese oxide cathodes are investigated in this study. Strategies to minimize cathode dissolution are also debated, …

Plasma dynamics in the divertor region is strongly affected by a variety of phenomena associated with the magnetic field geometry and the shape of the divertor plates. One of the most universal effects is the squeezing of a normal cross-section of a thin magnetic flux-tube on its way from the divertor plate to the main SOL. It leads to decoupling of the most unstable perturbations in the divertor legs from those in the main SOL. For perturbations on either side of the X-point, this effect can be cast as a boundary condition at some 'control surface' situated near the X-point. We discuss several boundary conditions proposed thus far and assess the influence of the magnetic field geometry on them. Another set of geometrical effects is related to the transformation of a flux-tube that occurs when it is displaced in such a way that its central magnetic field line coincides with some other field line, and the magnetic field is not perturbed. These flute-like displacements are of a particular interest for the low-beta edge plasmas. It turns out that this transformation may also lead to a considerable deformation of a flux-tube cross-section; in addition, the distance between plasma particles occupying the …

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Large-scale controlled source electromagnetic (CSEM)three-dimensional (3D) geophysical imaging is now receiving considerableattention for electrical conductivity mapping of potential offshore oiland gas reservoirs. To cope with the typically large computationalrequirements of the 3D CSEM imaging problem, our strategies exploitcomputational parallelism and optimized finite-difference meshing. Wereport on an imaging experiment, utilizing 32,768 tasks/processors on theIBM Watson Research Blue Gene/L (BG/L) supercomputer. Over a 24-hourperiod, we were able to image a large scale marine CSEM field data setthat previously required over four months of computing time ondistributed clusters utilizing 1024 tasks on an Infiniband fabric. Thetotal initial data misfit could be decreased by 67 percent within 72completed inversion iterations, indicating an electrically resistiveregion in the southern survey area below a depth of 1500 m below theseafloor. The major part of the residual misfit stems from transmitterparallel receiver components that have an offset from the transmittersail line (broadside configuration). Modeling confirms that improvedbroadside data fits can be achieved by considering anisotropic electricalconductivities. While delivering a satisfactory gross scale image for thedepths of interest, the experiment provides important evidence for thenecessity of discriminating between horizontal and verticalconductivities for maximally consistent 3D CSEM inversions.

We report on the measurement of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa angle {gamma} through a Dalitz analysis of neutral D decays to K-short {pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup +} in the processes B{sup {minus_plus}} {yields} D(*)K{sup {minus_plus}} and B{sup {minus_plus}} {yields} DK*{sup {minus_plus}}, D* {yields} D{pi}{sup 0}, D{gamma}, with the BaBar detector at the SLAC PEP-II e{sup +}e{sup -} asymmetric-energy collider.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) recommendations affected 62 percent of the flying units in the Air National Guard (ANG) with 14 units losing their flying mission, and others converting from one type of aircraft to another, or increasing or decreasing assigned aircraft. To implement the recommendations, ANG must relocate hundreds of aircraft and retrain or recruit about 15,000 personnel by 2011. In this report, GAO addresses the status of efforts to implement the ANG BRAC actions. GAO's objectives were to determine (1) the process to provide replacement missions to units losing flying missions, (2) the progress and challenges in implementing the BRAC actions, and (3) changes to the cost and savings estimates. This report, prepared under the Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations on his own initiative, is one in a series of reports related to 2005 BRAC recommendations. GAO conducted its work at the Air Force, ANG headquarters, and in 11 states affected by BRAC 2005"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, the Department of Labor's Office of the Solicitor, the states, and the mining industry share responsibility for ensuring mine safety. GAO examined the challenges underground coal mines face in preparing for emergencies, how well MSHA oversees mine operators' training efforts, how well MSHA and NIOSH coordinate to enhance the development and approval of mine safety technology, and how civil penalties are assessed. To address these issues, GAO surveyed a representative sample of active underground coal mines, analyzed agency data, conducted site visits, and talked with agency officials and other experts. The survey results are estimated at the 95 percent confidence level."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, the Department of Labor's Office of the Solicitor, the states, and the mining industry share responsibility for ensuring mine safety. In two reports released today, GAO examined the challenges underground coal mines face in preparing for emergencies, how well MSHA oversees mine operators' training efforts, how well MSHA and NIOSH coordinate to enhance the development and approval of mine safety technology, MSHA's coal mine inspector recruiting efforts, and how civil penalties are assessed."