This report summarizes NOAA's budget request for the 2007 fiscal year.

This data quality objective (DQO) summary report provides the results of the DQO process conducted for waste characterization activities for the 324 and 327 Building hot cells decommission, deactivate, decontaminate, and demolish activities. This DQO summary report addresses the systems and processes related to the hot cells, air locks, vaults, tanks, piping, basins, air plenums, air ducts, filters, an adjacent elements that have high dose rates, high contamination levels, and/or suspect transuranic waste, which will require nonstandard D4 techniques.

We study production of Kaluza-Klein gluons (KKG) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the framework of a warped extra dimension with the Standard Model (SM) fields propagating in the bulk. We show that the detection of KK gluon is challenging since its production is suppressed by small couplings to the proton's constituents. Moreover, the KK gluon decaysmostly to top pairs due to an enhanced coupling and hence is broad. Nevertheless, we demonstrate that for MKKG<~;; 4 TeV, 100 fb-1 of data at the LHC can provide discovery of the KK gluon. We utilize a sizeable left-right polarization asymmetry from the KK gluon resonance to maximize the signal significance, and we explore the novel feature of extremely highly energetic"top-jets." We briefly discuss how the detection of electroweak gauge KK states (Z/W) faces a similar challenge since their leptonic decays ("golden" modes) are suppressed. Our analysis suggests that other frameworks, for example little Higgs, which rely on UV completion via strong dynamics might face similar challenges, namely (1) Suppressed production rates for the new particles (such as Z'), due to their"lightfermion-phobic" nature, and (2) Difficulties in detection since the new particles are broad and decay predominantly to third generation quarks and …

Objective: To determine if exercise reduces body weight andto examine the dose-response relationships between changes in exerciseand changes in total and regional adiposity. Methods and Results:Questionnaires on weekly running distance and adiposity from a largeprospective study of 3,973 men and 1,444 women who quit running(detraining), 270 men and 146 women who started running (training) and420 men and 153 women who remained sedentary during 7.4 years offollow-up. There were significant inverse relationships between change inthe amount of vigorous exercise (km/wk run) and changes in weight and BMIin men (slope+-SE:-0.039+-0.005 kg and -0.012+-0.002 kg/m2 per km/wk,respectively) and older women (-0.060+-0.018 kg and -0.022+-0.007 kg/m2per km/wk) who quit running, and in initially sedentary men(-0.098+-0.017 kg and -0.032+-0.005 kg/m2 per km/wk) and women(-0.062+-0.023 kg and -0.021+-0.008 kg/m2 per km/wk) who started running.Changes in waist circumference were also inversely related to changes inrunning distance in men who quit (-0.026+-0.005 cm per km/wk) or startedrunning (-0.078+-0.017 cm per km/wk). Conclusions. The initiation andcessation of vigorous exercise decrease and increase body weight andintra-abdominal fat, respectively, and these changes are proportional tothe change in exercise dose.

Water injection has been recognized as a powerful techniquefor enhancing energy recovery from vapor-dominated geothermal systemssuch as The Geysers. In addition to increasing reservoir pressures,production well flow rates, and long-term sustainability of steamproduction, injection has also been shown to reduce concentrations ofnon-condensible gases (NCGs) in produced steam. The latter effectimproves energy conversion efficiency and reduces corrosion problems inwellbores and surface lines.This report reviews thermodynamic andhydrogeologic conditions and mechanisms that play an important role inreservoir response to water injection. An existing general-purposereservoir simulator has been enhanced to allow modeling of injectioneffects in heterogeneous fractured reservoirs in three dimensions,including effects of non-condensible gases of different solubility.Illustrative applications demonstrate fluid flow and heat transfermechanisms that are considered crucial for developing approaches to insitu abatement of NCGs.

Clostridium botulinum is a taxonomic designation for many diverse anaerobic spore forming rod-shaped bacteria which have the common property of producing botulinum neurotoxins (BoNTs). The BoNTs are exoneurotoxins that can cause severe paralysis and even death in humans and various other animal species. A collection of 174 C. botulinum strains were examined by amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) analysis and by sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene and BoNT genes to examine genetic diversity within this species. This collection contained representatives of each of the seven different serotypes of botulinum neurotoxins (BoNT A-G). Analysis of the16S rRNA sequences confirmed earlier reports of at least four distinct genomic backgrounds (Groups I-IV) each of which has independently acquired one or more BoNT serotypes through horizontal gene transfer. AFLP analysis provided higher resolution, and can be used to further subdivide the four groups into sub-groups. Sequencing of the BoNT genes from serotypes A, B and E in multiple strains confirmed significant sequence variation within each serotype. Four distinct lineages within each of the BoNT A and B serotypes, and five distinct lineages of serotype E strains were identified. The nucleotide sequences of the seven serotypes of BoNT were compared and show varying degrees …

This account of the beginning of the program on laser fusion at Livermore in 1962, and its subsequent development during the decade ending in 1972, was originally prepared as a contribution to the January 1991 symposium 'Achievements in Physics' honoring Professor Keith Brueckner upon his retirement from the University of San Diego at La Jolla. It is a personal recollection of work at Livermore from my vantage point as its scientific leader, and of events elsewhere that I thought significant. This period was one of rapid growth in which the technology of high-power short-pulse lasers needed to drive the implosion of thermonuclear fuel to the temperature and density needed for ignition was developed, and in which the physics of the interaction of intense light with plasmas was explored both theoretically and experimentally.

The objective of this project is to apply the Argonne National Laboratory's Glass Furnace Model (GFM) to the Longhorn oxy-fuel furnace to improve energy efficiency and to investigate the transport of gases released from the batch/melt into the exhaust. The model will make preliminary estimates of the local concentrations of water, carbon dioxide, elemental oxygen, and other subspecies in the entire combustion space as well as the concentration of these species in the furnace exhaust gas. This information, along with the computed temperature distribution in the combustion space may give indications on possible locations of crown corrosion. An investigation into the optimization of the furnace will be performed by varying several key parameters such as the burner firing pattern, exhaust number/size, and the boost usage (amount and distribution). Results from these parametric studies will be analyzed to determine more efficient methods of operating the furnace that reduce crown corrosion. Finally, computed results from the GFM will be qualitatively correlated to measured values, thus augmenting the validation of the GFM.

The well-known Kapchinskij-Vladimirskij (KV) equations are difficult to solve in general, but the problem is simplified for the matched-beam case with sufficient symmetry. They show that the interdependence of the two KV equations is eliminated, so that only one needs to be solved--a great simplification. They present an iterative method of solution which can potentially yield any desired level of accuracy. The lowest level, the well-known smooth approximation, yields simple, explicit results with good accuracy for weak or moderate focusing fields. The next level improves the accuracy for high fields; they previously showed how to maintain a simple explicit format for the results. That paper used expansion in a small parameter to obtain the second level. The present paper, using straightforward iteration, obtains equations of first, second, and third levels of accuracy. For a periodic lattice with beam matched to lattice, they use the lattice and beam parameters as input and solve for phase advances and envelope waveforms. They find excellent agreement with numerical solutions over a wide range of beam emittances and intensities.

Recent advances in the dust transport modeling in tokamak devices are discussed. Topics include: (1) physical model for dust transport; (2) modeling results on dynamics of dust particles in plasma; (3) conditions necessary for particle growth in plasma; (4) dust spreading over the tokamak; (5) density profiles for dust particles and impurity atoms associated with dust ablation in tokamak plasma; and (6) roles of dust in material/tritium migration.

Background: Body weight increases with aging. Short-term,longitudinal exercise training studies suggest that increasing exerciseproduces acute weight loss, but it is not clear if the maintenance oflong-term, vigorous exercise attenuates age-related weight gain inproportion to the exercise dose. Methods: Prospective study of 6,119 maleand 2,221 female runners whose running distance changed less than 5 km/wkbetween their baseline and follow-up survey 7 years later. Results: Onaverage, men who ran modest (0-24 km/wk), intermediate (24-48 km/wk) orprolonged distances (>_48 km/wk) all gained weight throughage 64,however, those who ran ?48 km/wk had one-half the average annual weightgain of those who ran<24 km/wk. Age-related weight gain, and itsreduction by running, were both greater in younger than older men. Incontrast, men s gain in waist circumference with age, and its reductionby running, were the same in older and younger men. Women increased theirbody weight and waist and hip circumferences over time, regardless ofage, which was also reduced in proportion to running distance. In bothsexes, running did not attenuate weight gain uniformly, but ratherdisproportionately prevented more extreme increases. Conclusion: Men andwomen who remain vigorously active gain less weight as they age and thereduction is in proportion to the exercise dose.

Individual raw data streams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Climate Research Facility (ACRF) fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near real time. Raw and processed data are then sent daily to the ACRF Archive, where they are made available to users. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of data records received daily at the Archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual data stream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year dating back to 1998. The U.S. Department of Energy requires national user facilities to report time-based operating data. The requirements concern the actual hours of operation (ACTUAL); the estimated maximum operation or uptime goal (OPSMAX), which accounts for planned downtime; and the VARIANCE [1-(ACTUAL/OPSMAX)], which accounts for unplanned downtime. The OPSMAX time for the third quarter for the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site is 2,074.80 hours (0.95 x 2,184 hours this quarter). The OPSMAX for the North Slope Alaska (NSA) locale is 1,965.60 hours (0.90 x 2,184), and that for …

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Although cross-sectional studies show active individuals areleaner than their sedentary counterparts, it remains to be determined towhat extent this is due to initially leaner men and women choosing toexercise longer and more intensely (self-selection bias). In this reportwalking volume (weekly distance) and intensity (speed) were compared tocurrent BMI (BMIcurrent) and BMI at the start of walking (BMIstarting) in20,353 women and 5,174 men who had walked regularly for exercise for 7.2and 10.6 years,respectively. The relationships of BMIcurrent andBMIstarting with distance and intensity were nonlinear (convex). Onaverage, BMIstarting explained>70 percent of the association betweenBMIcurrent and intensity, and 40 percent and 17 percent of theassociation between BMIcurrent and distance in women and men,respectively. Although the declines in BMIcurrent with distance andintensity were greater among fatter than leaner individuals, the portionsattributable to BMIstarting remained relatively constant regardless offatness. Thus self-selection bias accounts for most of the decline in BMIwith walking intensity and smaller albeit significant proportions of thedecline with distance. This demonstration of self-selection is germane toother cross-sectional comparisons in epidemiological research, givenself-selection is unlikely to be limited to weight or peculiar tophysical activity.

We develop a nodal dislocation dynamics (DD) model to simulate plastic processes in fcc crystals. The model explicitly accounts for all slip systems and Burgers vectors observed in fcc systems, including stacking faults and partial dislocations. We derive simple conservation rules that describe all partial dislocation interactions rigorously and allow us to model and quantify cross-slip processes, the structure and strength of dislocation junctions and the formation of fcc-specific structures such as stacking fault tetrahedra. The DD framework is built upon isotropic non-singular linear elasticity, and supports itself on information transmitted from the atomistic scale. In this fashion, connection between the meso and micro scales is attained self-consistently with core parameters fitted to atomistic data. We perform a series of targeted simulations to demonstrate the capabilities of the model, including dislocation reactions and dissociations and dislocation junction strength. Additionally we map the four-dimensional stress space relevant for cross-slip and relate our findings to the plastic behavior of monocrystalline fcc metals.

On December 5, 2006, the reference case projections from 'Annual Energy Outlook 2007' (AEO 2007) were posted on the Energy Information Administration's (EIA) web site. We at LBNL have, in the past, compared the EIA's reference case long-term natural gas price forecasts from the AEO series to contemporaneous natural gas prices that can be locked in through the forward market, with the goal of better understanding fuel price risk and the role that renewables play in mitigating such risk (see, for example, http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/EMS/reports/53587.pdf or http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/ems/reports/54751.pdf). As such, we were curious to see how the latest AEO gas price forecast compares to the NYMEX natural gas futures strip. This brief memo presents our findings. As a refresher, our past work in this area has found that over the past six years, forward natural gas contracts (with prices that can be locked in--e.g., gas futures, swaps, and physical supply) have traded at a premium relative to contemporaneous long-term reference case gas price forecasts from the EIA. As such, we have concluded that, over the past six years at least, levelized cost comparisons of fixed-price renewable generation with variable-price gas-fired generation that have been based on AEO natural gas price forecasts (rather than …

We present a hybrid fluid-particle algorithm to simulate flow and transport of DNA-laden fluids in microdevices. Relevant length scales in microfluidic systems range from characteristic channel sizes of millimeters to micron scale geometric variation (e.g., post arrays) to 10 nanometers for the length of a single rod in a bead-rod polymer representation of a biological material such as DNA. The method is based on a previous fluid-particle algorithm in which long molecules are represented as a chain of connected rods, but in which the physically unrealistic behavior of rod crossing occurred. We have extended this algorithm to include screened Coulombic forces between particles by implementing a Debye-Hueckel potential acting between rods. In the method an unsteady incompressible Newtonian fluid is discretized with a second-order finite difference method in the interior of the Cartesian grid domain; an embedded boundary volume-of-fluid formulation is used near boundaries. The bead-rod polymer model is fully coupled to the solvent through body forces representing hydrodynamic drag and stochastic thermal fluctuations. While intrapolymer interactions are modeled by a soft potential, polymer-structure interactions are treated as perfectly elastic collisions. We demonstrate this method on flow and transport of a polymer through a post array microchannel in 2D where …

In preparation for the upcoming Pu Workshop in Livermore, CA, USA, during July 14 and 15, 2006, we have begun to give some thought as to how the meeting will be structured and what will be discussed. Below, you will find our first proposal as to the agenda and contents of the meeting. From you, we need your feedback and suggestions concerning the desirability of each aspect of our proposal. Hopefully, we will be able to converge to a format that is acceptable to all parties. First, it now appears that we will be limited to three main sessions, Friday morning (July 14), Friday afternoon (July 14) and Saturday morning (July 15). The Pu Futures Meeting will conclude on Thursday, July 13. Following a social excursion, the Russian participants will be transported from Monterey Bay to their hotel in Livermore. We anticipate that the hotel will be the Residence Inn at 1000 Airway Blvd in Livermore. However, the hotel arrangements still need to be confirmed. We expect that many of our participants will begin their travels homeward in the afternoon of Saturday, July 15 and the morning of Sunday, July 16. Associated with the three main sessions, we propose that …

In the U.S., the increasing financial support for customer-sited photovoltaic (PV) systems provided through publicly-funded incentive programs has heightened concerns about the long-term performance of these systems. Given the barriers that customers face to ensuring that their PV systems perform well, and the responsibility that PV incentive programs bear to ensure that public funds are prudently spent, these programs should, and often do, play a critical role in addressing PV system performance. To provide a point of reference for assessing the current state of the art, and to inform program design efforts going forward, we examine the approaches to encouraging PV system performance used by 32 prominent PV incentive programs in the U.S. We identify eight general strategies or groups of related strategies that these programs have used to address factors that affect performance, and describe key implementation details. Based on this review, we then offer recommendations for how PV incentive programs can be effectively designed to mitigate potential performance issues.

A double-windowed vacuum-tight experimental chamber was developed, and calibrated on the spectroscopic ellipsometer over the energy range from .7 to 4.5 eV using a silicon wafer with approximately 25 nm oxide thickness to remove the multiple-window effects from measurements. The ellipsometric measurements were done such that incident and exit beam were at 65 degree from surface normal. The plutonium sample (3 mm diameter, .1 mm thick) was electro-polished and mounted into the sample chamber in a glove box having a nitrogen atmosphere with less than 100ppm moisture and oxygen content. The index of refraction n and the extinction coefficient k decrease from 3.7 to 1 and 5.5 to 1.1 respectively as the photon energy increases from .7 to 4.3 eV.

As accurate modeling of atmospheric flows in urban environments requires sophisticated representation of complex urban geometries, much work has been devoted to treatment of the urban surface. However, the importance of the larger-scale flow impinging upon the urban complex to the flow, transport and dispersion within it and downwind has received less attention. Building-resolving computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models are commonly employed to investigate interactions between the flow and three-dimensional structures comprising the urban environment, however such models are typically forced with simplified boundary conditions that fail to include important regional-scale phenomena that can strongly influence the flow within the urban complex and downwind. This paper investigates the interaction of an important and frequently occurring regional-scale phenomenon, the nocturnal low-level jet (LLJ), with urban-scale turbulence and dispersion in Oklahoma City using data from the Joint URBAN 2003 (JU2003) field experiment. Two simulations of nocturnal tracer release experiments from JU2003 using Lawrence Livermore National laboratory's FEM3MP CFD model yield differing levels of agreement with the observations in wind speed, turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) and concentration profiles in the urban wake, approximately 750m downwind of the central business district. Profiles of several observed turbulence parameters at this location indicate characteristics of both …

Background: Public health policies for preventing obesityneed guidelines for active individuals who are at risk due to exerciserecidivism. Methods: Changes in adiposity were compared to the runningdistances at baseline and follow-up in men and women whose reportedexercise increased (N=4,632 and 1,953, respectively) or decreased (17,280and 5,970, respectively) during 7.7 years of follow-up. Results: PerDelta km/wk, decreases in running distance caused over four-fold greaterweight gain between 0-8 km/wk (slope+-SE, males: -0.068+ -0.005 kg/m2,females: -0.080+-0.01 kg/m2) than between 32-48 km/wk (-0.017+-0.002 and-0.010+-0.005 kg/m2, respectively). In contrast, increases in runningdistance produced the smallest weight losses between 0-8 km/wk andstatistically significant weight loss only above 16 km/wk in males and 32km/wk in females. Above 32 km/wk (30 kcal/kg) in men and 16 km/wk (15kcal/kg) in women, weight loss from increasing exercise was equal to orgreater than weight gained with decreasing exercise, otherwise weightgain exceeded weight loss. Substantial weight gain occurred in runnerswho quit running, which would be mostly retained with resumed activity.Conclusion: Public health recommendations should warn against the risksof irreversible weight gain with exercise cessation. Weight gained due toreductions in exercise below 30 kcal/kg in men and 15 kcal/kg in womenmay not be reversed by resuming prior activity. Current IOM guidelines(i.e., maintain total …

Large-Mach-number parallel plasma flows in the single-null SOL of different tokamaks are simulated with multi-fluid transport code UEDGE. The key role of poloidal asymmetry of cross-field plasma transport as the driving mechanism for such flows is discussed. The impact of ballooning-like diffusive and convective transport and plasma flows on divertor detachment, material migration, impurity flows, and erosion/deposition profiles is studied. The results on well-balanced double null plasma modeling that are indicative of strong asymmetry of cross-field transport are presented.

Genomic comparisons between human and distant, non-primatemammals are commonly used to identify cis-regulatory elements based onconstrained sequence evolution. However, these methods fail to detect"cryptic" functional elements, which are too weakly conserved amongmammals to distinguish from nonfunctional DNA. To address this problem,we explored the potential of deep intra-primate sequence comparisons. Wesequenced the orthologs of 558 kb of human genomic sequence, coveringmultiple loci involved in cholesterol homeostasis, in 6 nonhumanprimates. Our analysis identified 6 noncoding DNA elements displayingsignificant conservation among primates, but undetectable in more distantcomparisons. In vitro and in vivo tests revealed that at least three ofthese 6 elements have regulatory function. Notably, the mouse orthologsof these three functional human sequences had regulatory activity despitetheir lack of significant sequence conservation, indicating that they arecryptic ancestral cis-regulatory elements. These regulatory elementscould still be detected in a smaller set of three primate speciesincluding human, rhesus and marmoset. Since the human and rhesus genomesequences are already available, and the marmoset genome is activelybeing sequenced, the primate-specific conservation analysis describedhere can be applied in the near future on a whole-genome scale, tocomplement the annotation provided by more distant speciescomparisons.