The purpose of this project was to provide administrative and technical support for the completion of energy efficiency projects that reduce energy intensity and create or save Wisconsin industrial jobs. All projects have been completed. Details in the attached reports include project management, job development, and energy savings for each project.

This grant supported the exploratory synthesis of new actinide materials with all of the actinides from thorium to californium with the exceptions of protactinium and berkelium. We developed detailed structure-property relationships that allowed for the identification of novel materials with selective ion-exchange, selective oxidation, and long-range magnetic ordering. We found novel bonding motifs and identified periodic trends across the actinide series. We identified structural building units that would lead to desired structural features and novel topologies. We also characterized many different spectroscopic trends across the actinide series. The grant support the preparation of approximately 1200 new compounds all of which were structurally characterized.

Applied mathematics has an important role to play in developing the tools needed for the analysis, simulation, and optimization of complex problems. These efforts require the development of the mathematical foundations for scientific discovery, engineering design, and risk analysis based on a sound integrated approach for the understanding of complex systems. However, maximizing the impact of applied mathematics on these challenges requires a novel perspective on approaching the mathematical enterprise. Previous reports that have surveyed the DOE's research needs in applied mathematics have played a key role in defining research directions with the community. Although these reports have had significant impact, accurately assessing current research needs requires an evaluation of today's challenges against the backdrop of recent advances in applied mathematics and computing. To address these needs, the DOE Applied Mathematics Program sponsored a Workshop for Mathematics for the Analysis, Simulation and Optimization of Complex Systems on September 13-14, 2011. The workshop had approximately 50 participants from both the national labs and academia. The goal of the workshop was to identify new research areas in applied mathematics that will complement and enhance the existing DOE ASCR Applied Mathematics Program efforts that are needed to address problems associated with complex systems. …

This report describes Congressional interest in the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) appeal process due to rumors that it affects the BLM's capacity to handle various resources. Moreover, the report defines what an administrative appeal is, and describes the process required to undertake one. The report also lists the various types of administrative appeals.

Principle Power Inc. and National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) have completed a contract to assess the technical and economic feasibility of integrating wave energy converters into the WindFloat, resulting in a new concept called the WindWaveFloat (WWF). The concentration of several devices on one platform could offer a potential for both economic and operational advantages. Wind and wave energy converters can share the electrical cable and power transfer equipment to transport the electricity to shore. Access to multiple generation devices could be simplified, resulting in cost saving at the operational level. Overall capital costs may also be reduced, provided that the design of the foundation can be adapted to multiple devices with minimum modifications. Finally, the WindWaveFloat confers the ability to increase energy production from individual floating support structures, potentially leading to a reduction in levelized energy costs, an increase in the overall capacity factor, and greater stability of the electrical power delivered to the grid. The research conducted under this grant investigated the integration of several wave energy device types into the WindFloat platform. Several of the resulting system designs demonstrated technical feasibility, but the size and design constraints of the wave energy converters (technical and economic) make the …

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Currently, design of earth-penetrating munitions relies heavily on empirical relationships to estimate behavior, making it difficult to design novel munitions or address novel target situations without expensive and time-consuming full-scale testing with relevant system and target characteristics. Enhancing design through numerical studies and modeling could help reduce the extent and duration of full-scale testing if the models have enough fidelity to capture all of the relevant parameters. This can be separated into three distinct problems: that of the penetrator structural and component response, that of the target response, and that of the coupling between the two. This project focuses on enhancing understanding of the target response, specifically granular geomaterials, where the temporal and spatial multi-scale nature of the material controls its response. As part of the overarching goal of developing computational capabilities to predict the performance of conventional earth-penetrating weapons, this project focuses specifically on developing new models and numerical capabilities for modeling sand response in ALE3D. There is general recognition that granular materials behave in a manner that defies conventional continuum approaches which rely on response locality and which degrade in the presence of strong response nonlinearities, localization, and phase gradients. There are many numerical tools available to address …

Since 1969, over 3,500 people have died as a result of political violence in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the United Kingdom. The British and Irish governments as well as the Northern Ireland political parties participating in the peace talks announced an agreement, the Good Friday Agreement (also known as the Belfast Agreement), which called for devolved government in which unionist and nationalist parties would share power. U.S. administrations and many Members of Congress have actively supported the Northern Ireland peace process. For decades, the United States has provided development aid through the International Fund for Ireland (IFI). In recent years, congressional hearings have focused on the peace process, police reforms, and the status of public inquiries into several murders in Northern Ireland in which collusion between the security forces and paramilitary groups is suspected. Many such issues related to Northern Ireland may continue to be of interest in the 112th Congress.

This report provides background on the Congress-EP relationship and the role of the TLD. It also explores potential future options should an effort to strengthen ties between the two bodies gain momentum.

The objective of this project was to create an internet-based Water Treatment Technology Catalog and Decision Tool that will increase production, decrease costs and enhance environmental protection. This is to be accomplished by pairing an operator's water treatment cost and capacity needs to specific water treatments. This project cataloged existing and emerging produced water treatment technologies and allows operators to identify the most cost-effective approaches for managing their produced water. The tool captures the cost and capabilities of each technology and the disposal and beneficial use options for each region. The tool then takes location, chemical composition, and volumetric data for the operator's water and identifies the most cost effective treatment options for that water. Regulatory requirements or limitations for each location are also addressed. The Produced Water Treatment Catalog and Decision Tool efficiently matches industry decision makers in unconventional natural gas basins with: 1) appropriate and applicable water treatment technologies for their project, 2) relevant information on regulatory and legal issues that may impact the success of their project, and 3) potential beneficial use demands specific to their project area. To ensure the success of this project, it was segmented into seven tasks conducted in three phases over a …

The objective of this project is to develop a modeling system to allow operators and regulators to plan all aspects of water management activities associated with shale gas development in the target project area of New York, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia (“target area”), including water supply, transport, storage, use, recycling, and disposal and which can be used for planning, managing, forecasting, permit tracking, and compliance monitoring. The proposed project is a breakthrough approach to represent the entire shale gas water lifecycle in one comprehensive system with the capability to analyze impacts and options for operational efficiency and regulatory tracking and compliance, and to plan for future water use and disposition. It will address all of the major water-related issues of concern associated with shale gas development in the target area, including water withdrawal, transport, storage, use, treatment, recycling, and disposal. It will analyze the costs, water use, and wastes associated with the available options, and incorporate constraints presented by permit requirements, agreements, local and state regulations, equipment and material availability, etc. By using the system to examine the water lifecycle from withdrawals through disposal, users will be able to perform scenario analysis to answer "what if" questions for various situations. …

Federal spending is divided into three broad categories: discretionary spending, mandatory spending, and net interest. Federal spending has outrun federal revenues for the last 10 fiscal years. In the long term, projections suggest that if current policies remain unchanged, the United States faces a major fiscal imbalance, largely due to rising health care costs and impending Baby Boomer retirements. Because discretionary spending is a smaller proportion of total federal outlays compared to mandatory spending, some budget experts contend that any significant reductions in federal spending must include cuts in entitlement spending. Other budget and social policy experts contend that cuts in entitlement spending could compromise their goals: the economic security of the elderly and the poor.

Detailed safety analyses have been performed for the 20 MW D{sub 2}O moderated research reactor (NBSR) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The time-dependent analysis of the primary system is determined with a RELAP5 transient analysis model that includes the reactor vessel, the pump, heat exchanger, fuel element geometry, and flow channels for both the six inner and twenty-four outer fuel elements. A post-processing of the simulation results has been conducted to evaluate minimum critical heat flux ratio (CHFR) using the Sudo-Kaminaga correlation. Evaluations are performed for the following accidents: (1) the control rod withdrawal startup accident and (2) the maximum reactivity insertion accident. In both cases the RELAP5 results indicate that there is adequate margin to CHF and no damage to the fuel will occur because of sufficient coolant flow through the fuel channels and the negative scram reactivity insertion.

We argue that dark matter particles which have strong interactions with the Standard Model particles are not excluded by current astrophysical constraints. These dark matter particles have unique signatures at colliders; instead of missing energy, the dark matter particles produce jets. We propose a new search strategy for such strongly interacting particles by looking for a signal of two trackless jets. We show that suitable cuts can plausibly allow us to find these signals at the LHC even in early data.

A heavy Standard Model Higgs boson is not only disfavored by electroweak precision observables but is also excluded by direct searches at the 7 TeV LHC for a wide range of masses. Here, we examine scenarios where a heavy Higgs boson can be made consistent with both the indirect constraints and the direct null searches by adding only one new particle beyond the Standard Model. This new particle should be a weak multiplet in order to have additional contributions to the oblique parameters. If it is a color singlet, we find that a heavy Higgs with an intermediate mass of 200-300 GeV can decay into the new states, suppressing the branching ratios for the standard model modes, and thus hiding a heavy Higgs at the LHC. If the new particle is also charged under QCD, the Higgs production cross section from gluon fusion can be reduced significantly due to the new colored particle one-loop contribution. Current collider constraints on the new particles allow for viable parameter space to exist in order to hide a heavy Higgs boson. We categorize the general signatures of these new particles, identify favored regions of their parameter space and point out that discovering or excluding …

Green marketing--a marketing strategy highlighting the environmental attributes of a product, often through the use of labels or logos--dates back to the 1970s. It did not proliferate until the 1990s, however, when extensive market research identified a rapidly growing group of consumers with a heightened concern for the environment. This group expressed not only a preference for green products but also a willingness to pay a premium for such products. The response was a surge in green marketing that lasted through the early 1990s. This report discusses the experience of companies that communicate to consumers that their products are 'made with renewable energy.' For this report, representatives from 20 companies were interviewed and asked to discuss their experiences marketing products produced using renewable energy. The first half of this report provides an overview of the type of companies that have labeled products or advertised them as being made with renewable energy. It also highlights the avenues companies use to describe their use of renewable energy. The second half of the report focuses on the motivations for making on-product claims about the use of renewable energy and the challenges in doing so.

We have investigated collective effects in an ultimate storage ring, i.e. one with diffraction limited emittances in both planes, using PEP-X as an example. In an ultimate ring intra-beam scattering (IBS) sets the limit of current that can be stored. In PEP-X, a 4.5 GeV ring running round beams at 200 mA in 3300 bunches, IBS doubles the emittances to 11.5 pm at the design current. The Touschek lifetime is 11 hours. Impedance driven collective effects tend not to be important since the beam current is relatively low. We have investigated collective effects in PEP-X, an ultimate storage ring, i.e. one with diffraction limited emittances (at one angstrom wavelength) in both planes. In an ultimate ring intra-beam scattering (IBS) sets the limit of current that can be stored. In PEP-X, IBS doubles the emittances to 11.5 pm at the design current of 200 mA, assuming round beams. The Touschek lifetime is quite large in PEP-X, 11.6 hours, and - near the operating point - increases with decreasing emittance. It is, however, a very sensitive function of momentum acceptance. In an ultimate ring like PEP-X impedance driven collective effects tend not to be important since the beam current is relatively low. …

A sample of Sludge Batch 7b (SB7b) was taken from Tank 40 in order to obtain radionuclide inventory analyses necessary for compliance with the Waste Acceptance Product Specifications (WAPS). The SB7b WAPS sample was also analyzed for chemical composition including noble metals and fissile constituents, and these results are reported here. These analyses along with the WAPS radionuclide analyses will help define the composition of the sludge in Tank 40 that is currently being fed to the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) as SB7b. At the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) the 3-L Tank 40 SB7b sample was transferred from the shipping container into a 4-L high density polyethylene bottle and solids were allowed to settle over the weekend. Supernate was then siphoned off and circulated through the shipping container to complete the transfer of the sample. Following thorough mixing of the 3-L sample, a 558 g sub-sample was removed. This sub-sample was then utilized for all subsequent analytical samples. Eight separate aliquots of the slurry were digested, four with HNO{sub 3}/HCl (aqua regia) in sealed Teflon{reg_sign} vessels and four with NaOH/Na{sub 2}O{sub 2} (alkali or peroxide fusion) using Zr crucibles. Two Analytical Reference Glass - 1 (ARG-1) standards were …

We report the results from a study of the full sample of {approx}6.031 x 10{sup 7} K{sup {+-}} {yields} {pi}{sup {+-}}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0} decays recorded by the NA48/2 experiment at the CERN SPS. As first observed in this experiment, the {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0} invariant mass (M{sub 00}) distribution shows a cusp-like anomaly in the region around M{sub 00} = 2m{sub +}, where m{sub +} is the charged pion mass. This anomaly has been interpreted as an effect due mainly to the final state charge exchange scattering process {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} {yields} {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0} in K{sup {+-}} {yields} {pi}{sup {+-}}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} decay. Fits to the M{sub 00} distribution using two different theoretical formulations provide the presently most precise determination of a{sub 0} - a{sub 2}, the difference between the {pi}{pi} S-wave scattering lengths in the isospin I = 0 and I = 2 states. Higher-order {pi}{pi} rescattering terms, included in the two formulations, allow also an independent, though less precise, determination of a{sub 2}.

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Unlike homogeneous catalysts, heterogeneous catalysts that have been optimized through decades are typically so complex and hard to characterize that the nature of the catalytically active site is not known. This is one of the main stumbling blocks in developing rational catalyst design strategies in heterogeneous catalysis. We show here how to identify the crucial atomic structure motif for the industrial Cu/ZnO/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} methanol synthesis catalyst. Using a combination of experimental evidence from bulk-, surface-sensitive and imaging methods collected on real high-performance catalytic systems in combination with DFT calculations. We show that the active site consists of Cu steps peppered with Zn atoms, all stabilized by a series of well defined bulk defects and surface species that need jointly to be present for the system to work.

The absolute branching fractions for the decays D{sub s}{sup -} {yields} {ell}{sup -}{bar {nu}}{sub {ell}} ({ell} = e, {mu}, or {tau}) are measured using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 521 fb{sup -1} collected at center of mass energies near 10.58 GeV with the BABAR detector at the PEPII e{sup +}e{sup -} collider at SLAC. The number of D{sub s}{sup -} mesons is determined by reconstructing the recoiling system DKX{gamma} in events of the type e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} DKXD*{sub s}{sup -}, where D*{sub s}{sup -} {yields} D{sub s}{sup -} {gamma} and X represents additional pions from fragmentation. The D{sub s}{sup -} {yields} {ell}{sup -}{nu}{sub {ell}} events are detected by full or partial reconstruction of the recoiling system DKX{gamma}{ell}. The following results are obtained: {Beta}(D{sub s}{sup -} {yields} {mu}{sup -}{nu}) = (6.02 {+-} 0.38 {+-} 0.34) x 10{sup -3}, {Beta}(D{sub s}{sup -} {yields} {tau}{sup -}{nu}) = (5.00 {+-} 0.35 {+-} 0.49) x 10{sup -2}, and B(D{sub s}{sup -} {yields} e{sup -}{nu}) < 2.8 x 10{sup -4} at 90% C.L., where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is systematic. The branching fraction measurements are combined to determine the D{sub s}{sup -} decay constant f{sub D{sub s}} …

An equivalent parallel resistor-inductor-capacitor (RLC) circuit with beam loading for a polarized TM110 dipole-mode cavity is developed and minimum radio-frequency (rf) generator requirements are calculated for the Advanced Photon Source (APS) short-pulse x-ray (SPX) superconducting rf (SRF) crab cavities. A beam-loaded circuit model for polarized TM110 mode crab cavities was derived. The single-cavity minimum steady-state required generator power has been determined for the APS SPX crab cavities for a storage ring current of 200mA DC current as a function of external Q for various vertical offsets including beam tilt and uncontrollable detuning. Calculations to aid machine protection considerations were given.

While the well-known Voigt and Reuss (VR) bounds, and the Voigt-Reuss-Hill (VRH) elastic constant estimators for random polycrystals are all straightforwardly calculated once the elastic constants of anisotropic crystals are known, the Hashin-Shtrikman (HS) bounds and related self-consistent (SC) estimators for the same constants are, by comparison, more difficult to compute. Recent work has shown how to simplify (to some extent) these harder to compute HS bounds and SC estimators. An overview and analysis of a subsampling of these results is presented here with the main point being to show whether or not this extra work (i.e., in calculating both the HS bounds and the SC estimates) does provide added value since, in particular, the VRH estimators often do not fall within the HS bounds, while the SC estimators (for good reasons) have always been found to do so. The quantitative differences between the SC and the VRH estimators in the eight cases considered are often quite small however, being on the order of ±1%. These quantitative results hold true even though these polycrystal Voigt-Reuss-Hill estimators more typically (but not always) fall outside the Hashin-Shtrikman bounds, while the self-consistent estimators always fall inside (or on the boundaries of) these same …