U.S. Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage (open access)

U.S. Spent Nuclear Fuel Storage

This report focuses on the current situation with spent nuclear fuel storage in the United States. It does not address all of the issues associated with permanent disposal of SNF, but rather focuses on the SNF storage situation, primarily at current and former reactor facilities for the potentially foreseeable future.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Werner, James D.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy (open access)

Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy

This report covers concerns and issues relating to governance, elections, election fraud/nepotism, human rights, and Afghan culture in Afghanistan. It discusses the pros and cons of U.S.A. intervention in the shaping of these endeavors.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Katzman, Kenneth
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations (open access)

Jordan: Background and U.S. Relations

This report provides an overview of Jordanian politics and current issues in U.S.-Jordanian relations. It provides a brief discussion of Jordan's government and economy and of its cooperation in promoting Arab-Israeli peace and other U.S. policy objectives in the Middle East.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Sharp, Jeremy M.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy (open access)

Afghanistan: Post-Taliban Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy

This report discusses the current political state of Afghanistan, focusing particularly on the influence of the Taliban and other militant groups and on the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This report also discusses the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship, in both the short and long term, and U.S. efforts under the Obama Administration to provide military, reconstructive, and stabilization aid.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Katzman, Kenneth
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Defense Inventory: Actions Underway to Implement Improvement Plan, but Steps Needed to Enhance Efforts (open access)

Defense Inventory: Actions Underway to Implement Improvement Plan, but Steps Needed to Enhance Efforts

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) set two goals—reducing on-order and on-hand excess inventory—with percentage targets for each based on the best available data in fiscal year 2009 as part of its Comprehensive Inventory Management Improvement Plan (Plan). Sustained management oversight led to reductions in on-order and on-hand excess inventory in fiscal year 2010 prior to the Plan’s implementation, and thus DOD may find the current targets are not meaningful in guiding improvement. Specifically, at the end of fiscal year 2010, DOD had reduced its percentage of on-order excess inventory to 5.5 percent, thereby achieving its 2014 target 4 years early. It also revised the definition and calculation of on-hand excess inventory, which resulted in DOD being below the fiscal year 2012 target of 10 percent. It is DOD policy to conduct periodic evaluations of its inventory management, and results-oriented management practices emphasize validating performance measures to ensure they remain appropriate. Without challenging, yet achievable targets, DOD’s Plan will not be effective in guiding further improvement."
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Defense Logistics: Improvements Needed to Enhance DOD's Management Approach and Implementation of Item Unique Identification Technology (open access)

Defense Logistics: Improvements Needed to Enhance DOD's Management Approach and Implementation of Item Unique Identification Technology

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has taken some steps to improve its approach to managing and implementing Item Unique Identification (IUID) technology, but has yet to incorporate some key elements of best management practices into its evolving framework for management of IUID implementation. These include internal controls and analysis of return on investment. DOD has included certain internal controls, such as defining key areas of authority for IUID implementation, and it is revising policy to incorporate IUID. However, DOD does not have performance measures, such as reliable schedules for predicting when its enterprise information systems will be able to manage items using IUID data, or a full estimate of IUID’s cost and benefits. Without a management framework that includes such key practices, DOD has faced challenges in implementing IUID technology and may not be well positioned to achieve potential financial and nonfinancial benefits."
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Federal Land Management: Availability and Potential Reliability of Selected Data Elements at Five Agencies (open access)

Federal Land Management: Availability and Potential Reliability of Selected Data Elements at Five Agencies

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The five agencies varied in the extent to which they collected the over 100 land and resources, revenue, and federal land use designation data elements that GAO asked them about. Specifically, all five agencies collected data on four basic data elements, which related to total surface acres managed, total acres managed within each state, the number of special use permits generated for filming activities on federal land, and the number of cultural and historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In contrast, none of them collected information for 33 other data elements, such as the percent of total acres under oil, gas, or coal leases that have surface disturbance or where the surface disturbance has been reclaimed, or information on the potential quantities of oil, gas, and coal resources on federal land. Agency officials cited various reasons why the agencies did not collect certain information, such as believing another federal agency collected it, it was inconsistent with the agency’s mission, or they lacked the authority or resources to do so."
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Health Benefits for Members of Congress (open access)

Health Benefits for Members of Congress

This report covers health benefits made available to Members of Congress through federal government employment, including FEHBP, dental and vision insurance, flexible spending accounts, long-term care insurance, and Medicare.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Cornell, Ada S.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification (open access)

Electronic Employment Eligibility Verification

This report is categorized into Five Categories: (I) Background, (II) E-Verify, (III) Recent Proposals on Electronic Employment Verification, (IV) Policy Considerations and (V) Conclusion.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Bruno, Andorra
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Reconciliation Directives: Components and Enforcement (open access)

Reconciliation Directives: Components and Enforcement

None
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: unknown
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Cybersecurity: Selected Legal Issues (open access)

Cybersecurity: Selected Legal Issues

This report discusses selected legal issues that frequently arise in the context of recent legislation to address vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure to cyber threats, efforts to protect government networks from cyber threats, and proposals to facilitate and encourage sharing of cyber threat information among private sector and government entities.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Liu, Edward C.; Stevens, Gina; Ruane, Kathleen A.; Dolan, Alissa M. & Thompson, Richard M., II
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
INFLUENCE OF FILM STRUCTURE AND LIGHT ON CHARGE TRAPPING AND DISSIPATION DYNAMICS IN SPUN-CAST ORGANIC THIN-FILM TRANSISTORS MEASURED BY SCANNING KELVIN PROBE MICROSCOPY (open access)

INFLUENCE OF FILM STRUCTURE AND LIGHT ON CHARGE TRAPPING AND DISSIPATION DYNAMICS IN SPUN-CAST ORGANIC THIN-FILM TRANSISTORS MEASURED BY SCANNING KELVIN PROBE MICROSCOPY

Herein, time-dependent scanning Kelvin probe microscopy of solution processed organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) reveals a correlation between film microstructure and OTFT device performance with the location of trapped charge within the device channel. The accumulation of the observed trapped charge is concurrent with the decrease in I{sub SD} during operation (V{sub G}=-40 V, V{sub SD}= -10 V). We discuss the charge trapping and dissipation dynamics as they relate to the film structure and show that application of light quickly dissipates the observed trapped charge.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Teague, L.; Moth, M. & Anthony, J.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
A User Perspective of High-Performance Computing on the Cloud (open access)

A User Perspective of High-Performance Computing on the Cloud

None
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Marathe, A.; Lowenthal, D.; Rountree, B.; Yuan, X.; Schulz, M. & de Supinski, B.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability Using Biomass From Dairy and Beef Animal Production: Final Report, Volume 1 (open access)

Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability Using Biomass From Dairy and Beef Animal Production: Final Report, Volume 1

The Texas Panhandle is regarded as the 'Cattle Feeding Capital of the World', producing 42% of the fed beef cattle in the United States within a 200-mile radius of Amarillo generating more than 5 million tons of feedlot manure/year. Apart from feedlots, the Bosque River Region in Erath County, just north of Waco, Texas with about 110,000 dairy cattle in over 250 dairies, produces 1.8 million tons of manure biomass (excreted plus bedding) per year. While the feedlot manure has been used extensively for irrigated and dry land crop production, most dairies, as well as other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO's), the dairy farms utilize large lagoon areas to store wet animal biomass. Water runoff from these lagoons has been held responsible for the increased concentration of phosphorus and other contaminates in the Bosque River which drains into Lake Waco - the primary source of potable water for Waco's 108,500 people. The concentrated animal feeding operations may lead to land, water, and air pollution if waste handling systems and storage and treatment structures are not properly managed. Manure-based biomass (MBB) has the potential to be a source of green energy at large coal-fired power plants and on smaller-scale combustion systems …
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Annamalai, Kalyan; Sweeten, John M.; Auvermann, Brent W.; Muhtar, Saqib; Caperada, Sergio; Engler, Cady R. et al.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability Using Biomass From Dairy and Beef Animal Production: Volume 2. Cattle Biomass Feedstocks: Properties, Preparation, Logistics and Economics (open access)

Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability Using Biomass From Dairy and Beef Animal Production: Volume 2. Cattle Biomass Feedstocks: Properties, Preparation, Logistics and Economics

The Texas Panhandle is regarded as the 'Cattle Feeding Capital of the World', producing 42% of the fed beef cattle in the United States within a 200-mile radius of Amarillo generating more than 5 million tons of feedlot manure/year. Apart from feedlots, the Bosque River Region in Erath County, just north of Waco, Texas with about 110,000 dairy cattle in over 250 dairies, produces 1.8 million tons of manure biomass (excreted plus bedding) per year. While the feedlot manure has been used extensively for irrigated and dry land crop production, most dairies, as well as other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO's), the dairy farms utilize large lagoon areas to store wet animal biomass. Water runoff from these lagoons has been held responsible for the increased concentration of phosphorus and other contaminates in the Bosque River which drains into Lake Waco - the primary source of potable water for Waco's 108,500 people. The concentrated animal feeding operations may lead to land, water, and air pollution if waste handling systems and storage and treatment structures are not properly managed. Manure-based biomass (MBB) has the potential to be a source of green energy at large coal-fired power plants and on smaller-scale combustion systems …
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Sweeten, John M.; Annamalai, Kalyan; Auvermann, Brent; Mukhtar, Saqib; Capareda, Sergio, C.; Engler, Cady et al.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Characterization of Nb3Sn Strand for ITER (open access)

Characterization of Nb3Sn Strand for ITER

We have an ongoing research program for characterization of superconductor composite strands, the principal output of which is sensitive measurements of critical current Ic over a broad range of the essential parameters: longitudinal strain ε, temperature T, and magnetic field B. This features a new apparatus for integrated measurement of Ic(ε,T,B) on the same, long-conductor sample without remounting.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Cheggour, Najib & Goodrich, Loren F.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Linac Simulation Code for Macro-Particles Tracking and Steering Algorithm Implementation (open access)

A Linac Simulation Code for Macro-Particles Tracking and Steering Algorithm Implementation

In this paper, a linac simulation code written in Fortran90 is presented and several simulation examples are given. This code is optimized to implement linac alignment and steering algorithms, and evaluate the accelerator errors such as RF phase and acceleration gradient, quadrupole and BPM misalignment. It can track a single particle or a bunch of particles through normal linear accelerator elements such as quadrupole, RF cavity, dipole corrector and drift space. One-to-one steering algorithm and a global alignment (steering) algorithm are implemented in this code.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: sun, yipeng
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Maltose Biochemistry and Transport in Plant Leaves (open access)

Maltose Biochemistry and Transport in Plant Leaves

Starch is a desirable plant product for both food and biofuel. Leaf starch is ideal for use in biofuels because it does not compete with grain starch, which is used for food. Starch is accumulated in plant leaves during the day and broken down at night. If we can manipulate leaf starch breakdown it may be possible to design a plant that provides both grain starch for food and leaf starch for biofuel. The pathway of leaf starch breakdown was not known when this work started. Preliminary evidence had shown that maltose was the primary product of leaf starch breakdown (Weise, Weber & Sharkey, 2004) and that it was metabolized by a disproportionating enzyme called amylomaltase but given the initials DPE2 (Lu & Sharkey, 2004). In this work we showed that only one form of maltose was metabolically active (Weise et al., 2005a) and that maltose was located in two different places when the amylomaltase was knocked out but only inside the chloroplast when the maltose transporter was knocked out (Lu et al., 2006a). This allowed us to estimate the energetics of maltose export and to show that maltose export is more efficient than glucose export (Weise et al., 2005b). …
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Sharkey, Thomas D
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Nanorods of Silicon and Germanium with Well-Defined Shapes and Sizes (open access)

Nanorods of Silicon and Germanium with Well-Defined Shapes and Sizes

We have made number of important discoveries along the major goals of the project, namely i) electrodeposition of germanium thin films from clusters, ii) synthesis of cluster-based surfactants with long hydrocarbon chains and micelles made of them, iii) grafting of Ge{sub 9}-clusters onto self assembled films of siloxanes attached to glass substrates, iv) doping of Ge{sub 9}-clusters, and v) expanding the clusters to ten-atom cages of Ge{sub 10}{sup 2-}.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Sevov, Slavi C.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability Using Biomass From Dairy and Beef Animal Production: Final Report, Volume III (open access)

Renewable Energy and Environmental Sustainability Using Biomass From Dairy and Beef Animal Production: Final Report, Volume III

ABSTRACT The Texas Panhandle is regarded as the “Cattle Feeding Capital of the World”, producing 42% of the fed beef cattle in the United States within a 200-mile radius of Amarillo generating more than 5 million tons of feedlot manure /year. Apart from feedlots, the Bosque River Region in Erath County, just north of Waco, Texas with about 110,000 dairy cattle in over 250 dairies, produces 1.8 million tons of manure biomass (excreted plus bedding) per year. While the feedlot manure has been used extensively for irrigated and dry land crop production, most dairies, as well as other concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFO’s), the dairy farms utilize large lagoon areas to store wet animal biomass. Water runoff from these lagoons has been held responsible for the increased concentration of phosphorus and other contaminates in the Bosque River which drains into Lake Waco—the primary source of potable water for Waco’s 108,500 people. The concentrated animal feeding operations may lead to land, water, and air pollution if waste handling systems and storage and treatment structures are not properly managed. Manure-based biomass (MBB) has the potential to be a source of green energy at large coal-fired power plants and on smaller-scale combustion systems …
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Sweeten, John M.; Annamalai, Kalyan; Auvermann, Brent; Mukhtar, Saqib; Capareda, Sergio C.; Engler, Cady et al.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Exotic Effects at the Charm Threshold and Other Novel Physics Topics at JLab-12 GeV (open access)

Exotic Effects at the Charm Threshold and Other Novel Physics Topics at JLab-12 GeV

I briefly survey a number of novel hadron physics topics which can be investigated with the 12 GeV upgrade at J-Lab. The topics include new the formation of exotic heavy quark resonances accessible above the charm threshold, intrinsic charm and strangeness phenomena, the exclusive Sivers effect, hidden-color Fock states of nuclei, local two-photon interactions in deeply virtual Compton scattering, and non-universal antishadowing.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Brodsky, Stanley J.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Simultaneous High-Resolution 2-Dimensional Spatial and 1-Dimensional Picosecond Streaked X-ray Pinhole Imaging (open access)

Simultaneous High-Resolution 2-Dimensional Spatial and 1-Dimensional Picosecond Streaked X-ray Pinhole Imaging

A Kentech x-ray streak camera was run at the LLNL Compact Multipulse Terawatt (COMET) laser to record simultaneous space- and time-resolved measurements of picosecond laser-produced plasmas. Four different x-ray energy channels were monitored using broad-band filters to record the time history of Cu targets heated at irradiances of 10{sup 16} - 10{sup 19} W/cm{sup 2}. Through the Cu filter channel, a time-resolution below 3ps was obtained. Additionally, an array of 10 {micro}m diameter pinholes was placed in front of the camera to produce multiple time-resolved x-ray images on the photocathode and time-integrated images on the phosphor with 10 and 15 times magnification, respectively, with spatial resolution of <13 {micro}m.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Steel, A. B.; Nagel, S. R.; Dunn, J. & Baldis, H. A.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Design and Development of New Carbon-Based Sorbent Systems for an Effective Containment of Hydrogen (open access)

Design and Development of New Carbon-Based Sorbent Systems for an Effective Containment of Hydrogen

This is a summary for work performed under cooperative agreement DE FC36 04GO14006 (Design and Development of New Carbon-based Sorbent Systems for an Effective Containment of Hydrogen). The project was directed to discover new solid and liquid materials that use reversible catalytic hydrogenation as the mechanism for hydrogen capture and storage. After a short period of investigation of solid materials, the inherent advantages of storing and transporting hydrogen using liquid-phase materials focused our attention exclusively on organic liquid hydrogen carriers (liquid carriers). While liquid carriers such as decalin and methylcyclohexane were known in the literature, these carriers suffer from practical disadvantages such as the need for very high temperatures to release hydrogen from the carriers and difficult separation of the carriers from the hydrogen. In this project, we were successful in using the prediction of reaction thermodynamics to discover liquid carriers that operate at temperatures up to 150 C lower than the previously known carriers. The means for modifying the thermodynamics of liquid carriers involved the use of certain molecular structures and incorporation of elements other than carbon into the carrier structure. The temperature decrease due to the more favorable reaction thermodynamics results in less energy input to release hydrogen …
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Cooper, Alan C.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Tennessee Valley and Eastern Kentucky Wind Working Group (open access)

Tennessee Valley and Eastern Kentucky Wind Working Group

In December 2009, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), through a partnership with the Appalachian Regional Commission, EKPC, Kentucky's Department for Energy Development and Independence, SACE, Tennessee's Department of Environment and Conservation, and TVA, and through a contract with the Department of Energy, established the Tennessee Valley and Eastern Kentucky Wind Working Group (TVEKWWG). TVEKWWG consists of a strong network of people and organizations. Working together, they provide information to various organizations and stakeholders regarding the responsible development of wind power in the state. Members include representatives from utility interests, state and federal agencies, economic development organizations, non-government organizations, local decision makers, educational institutions, and wind industry representatives. The working group is facilitated by the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. TVEKWWG supports the Department of Energy by helping educate and inform key stakeholders about wind energy in the state of Tennessee.
Date: May 3, 2012
Creator: Stokes, Katie
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library