September report of the U.S. Congressional Oversight Panel describing their activities and findings regarding the results of the Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program(TARP) in mitigating the effects of the 2007 financial crisis.

November report of the U.S. Congressional Oversight Panel describing their activities and findings regarding mortgage document irregularities, including sections on background information, legal consequences, litigation, and the impact on banks and the housing market.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held September 16, 2010. This hearing includes testimony from two panels of government and academic witnesses on whether the Department of Defense has made adequate plans to improve the federal acquisition workforce.

A series of bimetallic core-shell-alloy type Au-Pt nanomaterials with various morphologies, aspect ratios and compositions, were produced in a heterogenous epitaxial fashion. Gold nanoparticles with well-controlled particle size and shape, e.g. spheres, rods and cubes, were used as 'seeds' for platinum growth in the presence of a mild reducing agent, ascorbic acid and a cationic surfactant cethyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB). The reactions take place in air and water, and are quick, economical and amenable for scaling up. The synthesized nanocatalysts were characterized by electron microscopy techniques and energy dispersive X-ray analysis. Nafion membranes were embedded with the Au-Pt nanomaterials and analyzed by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) for their potential in direct methanol fuel cells applications.

From approximately 1949 until 1970, the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA) operated a grain storage facility on federally owned property approximately 0.25 mi northwest of Savannah, Missouri (Figure 1.1). During this time, commercial grain fumigants containing carbon tetrachloride were commonly used by the CCC/USDA and the private grain storage industry to preserve grain in their facilities. In November 1998, carbon tetrachloride was detected in a private well (Morgan) roughly 50 ft south of the former CCC/USDA facility, as a result of statewide screening of private wells near former CCC/USDA facilities, conducted in Missouri by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA 1999). The 1998 and subsequent investigations by the EPA and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MoDNR) confirmed the presence of carbon tetrachloride in the Morgan well, as well as in a second well (on property currently occupied by the Missouri Department of Transportation [MoDOT]) described as being approximately 400 ft east of the former CCC/USDA facility. The identified concentrations in these two wells were above the EPA maximum contaminant level (MCL) and the Missouri risk-based corrective action default target level (MRBCA DTL) values of 5.0 {micro}g/L for carbon tetrachloride in water used for domestic …

Wolverine Power Supply Cooperative Inc, a member owned cooperative utility based in Cadillac Michigan, proposes to demonstrate the capture, beneficial utilization and storage of CO{sub 2} in the expansion of existing Enhanced Oil Recovery operations. This project is being proposed in response to the US Department of Energy Solicitation DE-FOA-0000015 Section III D, 'Large Scale Industrial CCS projects from Industrial Sources' Technology Area 1. The project will remove 1,000 metric tons per day of CO{sub 2} from the Wolverine Clean Energy Venture 600 MW CFB power plant owned and operated by WPC. CO{sub 2} from the flue gas will be captured using Hitachi's CO{sub 2} capture system and advanced amine technology. The capture system with the advanced amine-based solvent supplied by Hitachi is expected to significantly reduce the cost and energy requirements of CO{sub 2} capture compared to current technologies. The captured CO{sub 2} will be compressed and transported for Enhanced Oil Recovery and CO{sub 2} storage purposes. Enhanced Oil Recovery is a proven concept, widely used to recover otherwise inaccessible petroleum reserves. While post-combustion CO{sub 2} capture technologies have been tested at the pilot scale on coal power plant flue gas, they have not yet been demonstrated at a …

In preparation for operations at the Radiological/Nuclear Countermeasures Test and Evaluation Complex (Rad/NucCTEC), the Department of Homeland Security Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DHS/DNDO) requested that personnel from the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) conduct a survey of the present radiological conditions at the facility. The measurements consist of the exposure rate from a high-pressure ion chamber (HPIC), high-resolution spectra from a high-purity germanium (HPGe) system in an in situ configuration, and low-resolution spectra from a sodium iodide (NaI) detector in a radiation detection backpack. Measurements with these systems were collected at discrete locations within the facility. Measurements were also collected by carrying the VECTOR backpack throughout the complex to generate a map of the entire area. The area was also to be surveyed with the Kiwi (an array of eight-2-inch x 4-inch x 16-inch NaI detectors) from the Aerial Measuring Systems; however, conflicts with test preparation activities at the site prevented this from being accomplished.

This paper presents the summary of design features and test results of two Type B Shipping Package prototype configurations comprising different insulating materials developed by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) for the Department of Energy. The materials evaluated, a closed-cell polyurethane foam and a vacuformed ceramic fiber material, were selected to provide adequate structural protection to the package containment vessel during Normal Conditions of Transport (NCT) and Hypothetical Accident Condition (HAC) events and to provide thermal protection during the HAC fire. Polyurethane foam has been used in shipping package designs for many years because of the stiffness it provides to the structure and because of the thermal protection it provides during fire scenarios. This comparison describes how ceramic fiber material offers an alternative to the polyurethane foam in a specific overpack design. Because of the high operating temperature ({approx}2,300 F) of the ceramic material, it allows for contents with higher heat loads to be shipped than is possible with polyurethane foam. Methods of manufacturing and design considerations using the two materials will be addressed.

The EXAFS spectra of Cu and Pd foil from many different beamlines and synchrotrons are compared to address the dependence of the amplitude reduction factor (S{sub 0}{sup 2}) on beamline specific parameters. Even though S{sub 0}{sup 2} is the same parameter as the EXAFS coordination number, the value for S{sub 0}{sup 2} is given little attention, and is often unreported. The S{sub 0}{sup 2} often differs for the same material due to beamline and sample attributes, such that no importance is given to S{sub 0}{sup 2}-values within a general range of 0.7 to 1.1. EXAFS beamlines have evolved such that it should now be feasible to use standard S{sub 0}{sup 2} values for all EXAFS measurements of a specific elemental environment. This would allow for the determination of the imaginary energy (Ei) to account for broadening of the EXAFS signal rather than folding these errors into an effective S{sub 0}{sup 2}-value. To test this concept, we model 11 Cu-foil and 6 Pd-foil EXAFS spectra from around the world to compare the difference in S{sub 0}{sup 2}- and Ei-values.

A collaboration, including all DOE synchrotron labs, industrial vendors of x-ray optics, and with active participation of the HBZ-BESSY-II optics group has been established to work together on a new slope measuring profiler -- the optical slope measuring system (OSMS). The slope measurement accuracy of the instrument is expected to be<50 nrad for the current and future metrology of x-ray optics for the next generation of light sources. The goals were to solidify a design that meets the needs of mirror specifications and also be affordable; and to create a common specification for fabrication of a multi-functional translation/scanning (MFTS) system for the OSMS. This was accomplished by two collaborative meetings at the ALS (March 26, 2010) and at the APS (May 6, 2010).

Numerical electromagnetic simulation of some systems containing charged particles with highly relativistic directed motion can by speeded up by orders of magnitude by choice of the proper Lorentz-boosted frame. A particularly good application for calculation in a boosted frame isthat of short wavelength free-electron lasers (FELs) where a high energy electron beam with small fractional energy spread interacts with a static magnetic undulator. In the optimal boost frame (i.e., the ponderomotive rest frame), the red-shifted FEL radiation and blue-shifted undulator field have identical wavelengths and the number of required longitudinal grid cells and time-steps for fully electromagnetic simulation (relative to the laboratory frame) decrease by factors of gamma^2 each. In theory, boosted frame EM codes permit direct study of FEL problems for which the eikonal approximation for propagation of the radiation field and wiggler-period-averaging for the particle-field interaction may be suspect. We have adapted the WARP code to apply this method to several electromagnetic FEL problems including spontaneous emission, strong exponential gain in a seeded, single pass amplifier configuration, and emission from e-beams in undulators with multiple harmonic components. WARP has a standard relativistic macroparticle mover and a fully 3-D electromagnetic field solver. We discuss our boosted frame results and …

We report the design and current status of a monoenergetic laser-based Compton scattering 0.5-2.5 MeV {gamma}-ray source. Previous nuclear resonance fluorescence results and future linac and laser developments for the source are presented. At MeV photon energies relevant for nuclear processes, Compton scattering light sources are attractive because of their relative compactness and improved brightness above 100 keV, compared to typical 4th generation synchrotrons. Recent progress in accelerator physics and laser technology have enabled the development of a new class of tunable Mono-Energetic Gamma-Ray (MEGa-Ray) light sources based on Compton scattering between a high-brightness, relativistic electron beam and a high intensity laser pulse produced via chirped-pulse amplification (CPA). A new precision, tunable gamma-ray source driven by a compact, high-gradient X-band linac is currently under development and construction at LLNL. High-brightness, relativistic electron bunches produced by an X-band linac designed in collaboration with SLAC will interact with a Joule-class, 10 ps, diode-pumped CPA laser pulse to generate tunable {gamma}-rays in the 0.5-2.5 MeV photon energy range via Compton scattering. Based on the success of the previous Thomson-Radiated Extreme X-rays (T-REX) Compton scattering source at LLNL, the source will be used to excite nuclear resonance fluorescence lines in various isotopes; applications include …

Radiation portal monitors used for interdiction of illicit materials at borders include highly sensitive neutron detection systems. There is a declining supply of 3He in the world, and thus, methods to reduce the use of this gas in RPMs with minimal changes to the current system designs and sensitivity to cargo-borne neutrons are being investigated. Four technologies have been identified as being currently commercially available, potential alternative neutron detectors to replace the use of 3He in RPMs. In addition, a few other companies have detector technologies that might be competitive in the near term as an alternative technology. Reported here are the results of tests of 6Li/ZnS(Ag)-coated scintillator paddles. This testing measured the required performance for neutron detection efficiency and gamma ray rejection capabilities of a system manufactured by Symetrica.

The arrival of the Cassini-Huygens probe at Saturn's moon Titan - the only Solar System body besides Earth and Venus with a solid surface and a thick atmosphere with a pressure of 1.4 atm at surface level - in 2004 opened up a new chapter in the history of Solar System exploration. The mission revealed Titan as a world with striking Earth-like landscapes involving hydrocarbon lakes and seas as well as sand dunes and lava-like features interspersed with craters and icy mountains of hitherto unknown chemical composition. The discovery of a dynamic atmosphere and active weather system illustrates further the similarities between Titan and Earth. The aerosol-based haze layers, which give Titan its orange-brownish color, are not only Titan's most prominent optically visible features, but also play a crucial role in determining Titan's thermal structure and chemistry. These smog-like haze layers are thought to be very similar to those that were present in Earth's atmosphere before life developed more than 3.8 billion years ago, absorbing the destructive ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, thus acting as 'prebiotic ozone' to preserve astrobiologically important molecules on Titan. Compared to Earth, Titan's low surface temperature of 94 K and the absence of liquid water …

Epitaxial Py/Cu/Co/Cu(001) trilayers were patterned into micron sized disks and imaged using element-specific photoemission electron microscopy. By varying the Cu spacer layer thickness, we study how the coupling between the two magnetic layers influences the formation of magnetic vortex states. We find that while the Py and Co disks form magnetic vortex domains when the interlayer coupling is ferromagnetic, the magnetic vortex domains of the Py and Co disks break into anti-parallel aligned multidomains when the interlayer coupling is antiferromagnetic. We explain this result in terms of magnetic flux closure between the Py and Co layers for the antiferromagnetic coupling case.

From September 1949 until September 1966, the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA) leased property at the southeastern end of Montgomery City, Missouri, for the operation of a grain storage facility. During this time, commercial grain fumigants containing carbon tetrachloride were commonly used by the CCC/USDA and the private grain storage industry to preserve grain in their facilities. In January 2000, carbon tetrachloride was detected in a soil sample (220 {micro}g/kg) and two soil gas samples (58 {micro}g/m{sup 3} and 550 {micro}g/m{sup 3}) collected at the former CCC/USDA facility, as a result of a pre-CERCLIS site screening investigation (SSI) performed by TN & Associates, Inc., on behalf of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Region VII (MoDNR 2001). In June 2001, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MoDNR) conducted further sampling of the soils and groundwater at the former CCC/USDA facility as part of a preliminary assessment/site inspection (PA/SI). The MoDNR confirmed the presence of carbon tetrachloride (at a maximum identified concentration of 2,810 {micro}g/kg) and chloroform (maximum 82 {micro}g/kg) in the soils and also detected carbon tetrachloride and chloroform (42.2 {micro}g/L and 58.4 {micro}g/L, respectively) in a groundwater sample collected at the former facility (MoDNR …

Building transmission to reach renewable energy (RE) goals requires coordination among renewable developers, utilities and transmission owners, resource and transmission planners, state and federal regulators, and environmental organizations. The Western Renewable Energy Zone (WREZ) initiative brings together a diverse set of voices to develop data, tools, and a unique forum for coordinating transmission expansion in the Western Interconnection. In this report we use a new tool developed in the WREZ initiative to evaluate possible renewable resource selection and transmission expansion decisions. We evaluate these decisions under a number of alternative future scenarios centered on meeting 33% of the annual load in the Western Interconnection with new renewable resources located within WREZ-identified resource hubs. Of the renewable resources in WREZ resource hubs, and under the assumptions described in this report, our analysis finds that wind energy is the largest source of renewable energy procured to meet the 33% RE target across nearly all scenarios analyzed (38-65%). Solar energy is almost always the second largest source (14-41%). Solar exceeds wind by a small margin only when solar thermal energy is assumed to experience cost reductions relative to all other technologies. Biomass, geothermal, and hydropower are found to represent a smaller portion of …

A new isotope of Hs was produced in the reaction 208Pb(56Fe, n)263Hs at the 88-Inch Cyclotron of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Six genetically correlated nuclear decay chains have been observed and assigned to the new isotope 263Hs. The measured cross section was 21+13-8.4 pb at 276.4 MeV lab-frame center-of-target beam energy. 263Hs decays with a half-life of 0.74 ms by alpha-decay and the measured alpha-particle energies are 10.57 +- 0.06, 10.72 +- 0.06, and 10.89 +- 0.06 MeV. The experimental cross section is compared to a theoretical prediction based on the Fusion by Diffusion model [W. J. Swiatecki et al., Phys. Rev. C 71, 014602 (2005)].

The reaction of the ground state methylidyne radical CH (X2Pi) with pyrrole (C4H5N) has been studied in a slow flow tube reactor using Multiplexed Photoionization Mass Spectrometry coupled to quasi-continuous tunable VUV synchrotron radiation at room temperature (295 K) and 90 oC (363 K), at 4 Torr (533 Pa). Laser photolysis of bromoform (CHBr3) at 248 nm (KrF excimer laser) is used to produce CH radicals that are free to react with pyrrole molecules in the gaseous mixture. A signal at m/z = 79 (C5H5N) is identified as the product of the reaction and resolved from 79Br atoms, and the result is consistent with CH addition to pyrrole followed by Helimination. The Photoionization Efficiency curve unambiguously identifies m/z = 79 as pyridine. With deuterated methylidyne radicals (CD), the product mass peak is shifted by +1 mass unit, consistent with the formation of C5H4DN and identified as deuterated pyridine (dpyridine). Within detection limits, there is no evidence that the addition intermediate complex undergoes hydrogen scrambling. The results are consistent with a reaction mechanism that proceeds via the direct CH (CD) cycloaddition or insertion into the five-member pyrrole ring, giving rise to ring expansion, followed by H atom elimination from the nitrogen …

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory performed several tests in the exhaust air discharge from the new 3420 Building Filtered Exhaust Stack to determine whether the air sampling probe for emissions monitoring for radionuclides is acceptable. The method followed involved adopting the results of a previously performed test series from a system with a similar configuration, followed by several tests on the actual system to verify the applicability of the previously performed tests. The qualification criteria for these types of stacks include metrics concerning 1) uniformity of air velocity, 2) sufficiently small flow angle with respect to the axis of the duct, 3) uniformity of tracer gas concentration, and 4) uniformity tracer particle concentration.

We evaluate two dominant nuclear reaction rates and their uncertainties that affect {sup 44}Ti production in explosive nucleosynthesis. Experimentally we develop thick-target yields for the {sup 40}Ca({alpha},{gamma}){sup 44}Ti reaction at E{sub {alpha}} = 4.13, 4.54, and 5.36 MeV using {gamma}-ray spectroscopy. At the highest beam energy, we also performed an activation measurement which agrees with the thick target result. From the measured yields a stellar reaction rate was developed that is smaller than current statistical-model calculations and recent experimental results, which would suggest lower {sup 44}Ti production in scenarios for the {alpha}-rich freeze out. Special attention has been paid to assessing realistic uncertainties of stellar reaction rates produced from a combination of experimental and theoretical cross sections. With such methods, we also develop a re-evaluation of the {sup 44}Ti({alpha},p){sup 47}V reaction rate. Using these two rates we carry out a sensitivity survey of {sup 44}Ti synthesis in eight expansions representing peak temperature and density conditions drawn from a suite of recent supernova explosion models. Our results suggest that the current uncertainty in these two reaction rates could lead to as large an uncertainty in {sup 44}Ti synthesis as that produced by different treatments of stellar physics.

Flashlight usage is widespread across much of sub-Saharan Africa.1 In Kenya in particular, over half of all households report owning a flashlight (Kamfor, 2002). Aside from household use, flashlights are also widely used to perform income-earning jobs in Kenya. Lumina Research Note No.4, the first report in this series documenting flashlight use in Kenya, highlights flashlight use patterns of night watchmen and bicycle taxi drivers. Both of these are occupations that rely on the use of flashlights on a nightly basis (Tracy et al., 2009). Also highlighted by Research Note No.4, flashlight users in Kenya have reported being highly dissatisfied with the quality of the low-cost LED flashlights that are available, and they identify several reoccurring problems they have faced as flashlight end-users (Tracy et al., 2009). The fact that there exists a substantial dependency upon flashlights in Kenya and that users are disgruntled with the available products suggests reasons for concern about flashlight quality. This concern is present despite two recent technological transitions in the flashlight market. First, LED technology has quickly emerged as the dominant source of portable lighting in Kenya, outpacing incandescent flashlights (Johnstone et al., 2009). LED technology has the potential to provide efficiency and performance …

The Savannah River National Laboratory has developed a 'hybrid' approach to Performance Assessment modeling which has been used for a number of Performance Assessments. This hybrid approach uses a multi-dimensional modeling platform (PorFlow) to develop deterministic flow fields and perform contaminant transport. The GoldSim modeling platform is used to develop the Sensitivity and Uncertainty analyses. Because these codes are performing complementary tasks, it is incumbent upon them that for the deterministic cases they produce very similar results. This paper discusses two very different waste forms, one with no engineered barriers and one with engineered barriers, each of which present different challenges to the abstraction of data. The hybrid approach to Performance Assessment modeling used at the SRNL uses a 2-D unsaturated zone (UZ) and a 3-D saturated zone (SZ) model in the PorFlow modeling platform. The UZ model consists of the waste zone and the unsaturated zoned between the waste zone and the water table. The SZ model consists of source cells beneath the waste form to the points of interest. Both models contain 'buffer' cells so that modeling domain boundaries do not adversely affect the calculation. The information pipeline between the two models is the contaminant flux. The domain …

Many scientific applications and experiments, such as high energy and nuclear physics, astrophysics, climate observation and modeling, combustion, nano-scale material sciences, and computational biology, generate extreme volumes of data with a large number of files. These data sources are distributed among national and international data repositories, and are shared by large numbers of geographically distributed scientists. A large portion of data is frequently accessed, and a large volume of data is moved from one place to another for analysis and storage. One challenging issue in such efforts is the limited network capacity for moving large datasets to explore and manage. The Bulk Data Mover (BDM), a data transfer management tool in the Earth System Grid (ESG) community, has been managing the massive dataset transfers efficiently with the pre-configured transfer properties in the environment where the network bandwidth is limited. Dynamic transfer adjustment was studied to enhance the BDM to handle significant end-to-end performance changes in the dynamic network environment as well as to control the data transfers for the desired transfer performance. We describe the results from the BDM transfer management for the climate datasets. We also describe the transfer estimation model and results from the dynamic transfer adjustment.