The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA) and the Federal Power Act (FPA) were enacted to eliminate unfair practices and other abuses by electricity and gas holding companies by requiring federal control and regulation of interstate public utility holding companies. Comprehensive energy legislation has passed the House and Senate. The House passed H.R. 6 on April 11, 2003. On July 31, 2003, the Senate suspended debate on S. 14, inserted the text of H.R. 4 (107th Congress) as a substitute, and passed H.R. 6. A conference agreement was reached November 17, 2003, and passed by the House the next day. H.R. 6 includes an electricity title that would, in part, repeal PUHCA, would prospectively repeal the mandatory purchase requirement under PURPA, and would create an electric reliability organization. On June 15, 2004, H.R. 4503, a comprehensive energy policy bill, passed the House.

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This semiannual report summarizes the research performed from 17 April through 16 October 2004. Major portions of the research in several of the project's current eight tasks have been completed, and the results obtained are briefly presented. We have successfully developed the meteorological inputs using the best possible modeling configurations, resulting in improved representation of atmospheric processes. Ingestion of satellite-derived sea surface temperatures in conjunction with the use of our new surface data assimilation technique have resulted in largely improved meteorological inputs to drive the MAQSIP-VGR. The development of the variable-grid-resolution emissions model, SMOKE-VGR, is also largely complete. We expect to develop the final configuration of the SMOKE-VGR during the upcoming reporting period. We are in the process of acquiring the newly released emissions database and offshore emissions data sets to update our archives. The development of the MAQSIP-VGR has been completed and a test run was performed to ensure the functionality of this air quality model. During the upcoming reporting period, we expect to perform the first MAQSIP-VGR simulations over the Houston-Galveston region to study the roles of the meteorology, offshore emissions, and chemistry-transport interactions that determine the temporal and spatial evolution of ozone and its precursors.

This research project has two primary objectives: (1) to further develop and refine the Multiscale Air Quality Simulation Platform-Variable Grid Resolution (MAQSIP-VGR) model, an advanced variable-grid-resolution air quality model, to provide detailed, accurate representation of the dynamical and chemical processes governing the fate of anthropogenic emissions in coastal environments; and (2) to improve current understanding of the potential impact of onshore and offshore oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) emissions on O{sub 3} and particulate matter nonattainment in the Gulf of Mexico and surrounding states.

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This report discusses the responsibilities of the AOC, traces the statutory evolution of the office, summarizes the status of current and recent projects, and reviews selected issues before the 110th congress.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), along with Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), and the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), is constructing a Free-Electron Laser (FEL) facility, which will operate in the wavelength range 1.5 nm - 0.15 nm. This FEL, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), utilizes the SLAC linac and will produce sub-picosecond pulses of short wavelength X-rays with very high peak brightness and almost complete transverse coherence. The final one-third of the SLAC linac will be used as the source of electrons for the LCLS. The high energy electrons will be transported across the SLAC Research Yard, into a tunnel which will house a long undulator. In passing through the undulator, the electrons will be bunched by the force of their own synchrotron radiation and produce an intense, monochromatic, spatially coherent beam of X-rays. By varying the electron energy, the FEL X-ray wavelength will be tunable from 1.5 nm to 0.15 nm. The LCLS will include two experimental halls as well as X-ray optics and infrastructure necessary to create a facility that can be developed for research in a variety of disciplines such as atomic physics, materials science, plasma physics and …

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The grant augmented funds from Westinghouse Electric Co. to enhance the Nuclear Engineering program at KSU. The program was designed to provide educational opportunities and to train engineers for careers in the nuclear industry. It provided funding and access to Westinghouse proprietary design codes for graduate and undergraduate studies on topics of current industrial importance. Students had the opportunity to use some of the most advanced nuclear design tools in the industry and to work on actual design problems. The WCOBRA/TRAC code was used to simulate loss of coolant accidents (LOCAs).

Ultra-peripheral collisions of relativistic heavy ions involve long-ranged electromagnetic interactions at impact parameters too large for hadronic interactions to occur. The nuclear charges are large; with the coherent enhancement, the cross sections are also large. Many types of photonuclear and purely electromagnetic interactions are possible. We present here an introduction to ultra-peripheral collisions, and present four of the most compelling physics topics.

With China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001, U.S. agricultural interests were hopeful that longstanding barriers to trade with that vast and growing market would begin to fall. However, critics charge that China is failing to honor commitments to open its markets, affecting U.S. exports of grains, oilseeds, meat and poultry, and other products. U.S. agriculture and trade officials have been working to resolve these differences.

Shape-memory alloys (SMA) have the potential to be used in a variety of interesting applications due to their unique properties of pseudoelasticity and the shape-memory effect. However, in order to design SMA devices efficiently, a physics-based constitutive model is required to accurately simulate the behavior of shape-memory alloys. The scope of this work is to extend the numerical capabilities of the SMA constitutive model developed by Jannetti et. al. (2003), to handle large-scale polycrystalline simulations. The constitutive model is implemented within the finite-element software ABAQUS/Standard using a user defined material subroutine, or UMAT. To improve the efficiency of the numerical simulations, so that polycrystalline specimens of shape-memory alloys can be modeled, a fully implicit algorithm has been implemented to integrate the constitutive equations. Using an implicit integration scheme increases the efficiency of the UMAT over the previously implemented explicit integration method by a factor of more than 100 for single crystal simulations.

Using the data samples collected with the CDF Run II detector during the year 2002 and early 2003, new measurements of the production cross-sections and the masses, lifetimes and branching fractions of beauty and charm hadrons are presented. New measurements of the {Lambda}{sub b} mass, lifetime, and branching fractions have greatly improved the current knowledge of bottom baryon properties and decay dynamics. the large charm signals made available by the silicon vertex track trigger have enabled the establishment of key measurements using rare charm decays that are sensitive to new physics beyond the Standard Model. The decay signals B{sub s} {yields} D{sub s}{pi} and the two body charmless decays of B{sup 0} and B{sub s} have been established. These decay channels are important milestones towards the measurement of B{sub s} mixing and direct CP violation in the B system.

This document serves as a preliminary review to examine potential bounding hazard consequences associated with the receipt of U-233 material from ORNL to the SRS F- Area Tank Farm.

The authors present the first measurements of {sigma}(p{bar p} {yields} W {yields} {ell}{nu}) and {sigma}(p{bar p} {yields} Z {yields} {ell}{ell}) at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV, along with new measurements of W angular-decay distributions in p{bar p} collisions at {radical}s = 1.8 TeV.

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This document summarizes the analysis of 3 basic criteria for the sampling systems that will provide waste validation samples of tank waste feeds prior to delivery to the waste treatment and immobilization plant where the wastes will be converted to glass forms. The assessed criteria includes sampling through a 4-inch riser, sampling while a mixer pump is operating, and the deployment of an at-tank analysis system. The assessment, based on the Phase I, 3S6 waste feed scenario, indicated that for high level waste, sampling through a 4-inch riser is not required but sampling while mixer pumps are operating will be required. For low activity waste, sampling through a 4-inch riser will be required but sampling while mixer pumps are operating is not required. The assessment indicated that an at-tank analysis system to provide tank mixing/settling (homogeneity) status is not needed since the number of tanks providing LAW feed was expanded and the payment basis in the original privatization contract has been modified.

This report discusses the background information, analysis and the recent developments in the F-22 Raptor Aircraft Program. The F-22 program raises questions about its cost and the need for this aircraft, the capabilities it would have, and the number of these planes needed to meet military requirements. The F-22 has had strong congressional support, although some have criticized the program on grounds of cost, requirements, and coordination with other tactical aircraft programs. Deletion of procurement funds in the FY2000 defense appropriation bill passed by the House made the future of the program a major issue for House and Senate conferees in 1999.

The Large Area Telescope (LAT) is one of two instruments on board the Gamma-ray Large Area Telescope (GLAST), the next generation high energy gamma-ray space telescope. The LAT contains sixteen identical towers in a four-by-four grid. Each tower contains a silicon-strip tracker and a CsI calorimeter that together will give the incident direction and energy of the pair-converting photon in the energy range 20 MeV - 300 GeV. In addition, the instrument is covered by a finely segmented Anti-Coincidence Detector (ACD) to reject charged particle background. Altogether, the LAT contains more than 864k channels in the trackers, 1536 CsI crystals and 97 ACD plastic scintillator tiles and ribbons. Here we detail some of the strategies and methods for how we are planning to monitor the instrument performance on orbit. It builds on the extensive experience gained from Integration & Test and Commissioning of the instrument on ground.

We explore the validity of the generalized Bekenstein bound, S<= pi M a. We define the entropy S as the logarithm of the number of states which have energy eigenvalue below M and are localized to a flat space region of width alpha. If boundary conditions that localize field modes are imposed by fiat, then the bound encounters well-known difficulties with negative Casimir energy and large species number, as well as novel problems arising only in the generalized form. In realistic systems, however, finite-size effects contribute additional energy. We study two different models for estimating such contributions. Our analysis suggests that the bound is both valid and nontrivial if interactions are properly included, so that the entropy S counts the bound states of interacting fields.

In 2000, PNNL conducted a two-year study for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to investigate energy use and swimming performance of adult spring chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawystcha) migrating upstream through a large hydropower dam on the Columbia River. The investigation involved one year of laboratory study and one year of field study at Bonneville Dam. The objectives of the laboratory study were to 1) measure active rates of oxygen consumption of adult spring chinook salmon at three water temperatures over a range of swimming speeds; 2) estimate the upper critical swimming speed (Ucrit) of adult spring chinook salmon; and 3) monitor electromyograms (EMGs) of red and white muscle in the salmon over a range of swimming speeds. Laboratory results showed rate of oxygen consumption and red and white muscle activity in adult spring chinook salmon were strongly correlated with swimming speed over a range of fish sizes and at three different temperatures. In the field studies at Bonneville Dam, EMG radiotelemetry was used to examine the amount of energy spring chinook salmon expend while migrating upstream past the dam?s tailraces, fishways, and forebays. Aerobic and anaerobic energy use rates were determined. Energy use was estimated for different specific sections …

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Clay-poor lahars of late Holocene age from Mount Rainier change down the White River drainage into lahar-derived fluvial and deltaic deposits that filled an arm of Puget Sound between the sites of Auburn and Seattle, 110-150 km downvalley from the volcano's summit. Lahars in the debris-flow phase left cobbly and bouldery deposits on the walls of valleys within 70 km of the summit. At distances of 80-110 km, transitional (hyperconcentrated) flows deposited pebbles and sand that coat terraces in a gorge incised into glacial drift and the mid-Holocene Osceola Mudflow. On the broad, level floor of the Kent valley at 110-130 km, lahars in the runout or streamflow phase deposited mostly sand-size particles that locally include the trunks of trees probably entrained by the flows. Beyond 130 km, in the Duwamish valley of Tukwila and Seattle, laminated andesitic sand derived from Mount Rainier built a delta northward across the Seattle fault. This distal facies, warped during an earthquake in A.D. 900-930, rests on estuarine mud at depths as great as 20 m. The deltaic filling occurred in episodes that appear to overlap in time with the lahars. As judged from radiocarbon ages of twigs and logs, at least three episodes …

We report on the performance of an S-band RF photocathode electron gun and accelerator for operation with the PLEIADES Thomson x-ray source at LLNL. To produce picosecond, high brightness x-ray pulses, picosecond timing, terahertz bandwidth diagnostics, and RF phase control are required. Planned optical, RF, x-ray and electron beam measurements to characterize the dependence of electron beam parameters and synchronization on RF phase stability are presented.