This paper provides new regression models for demand reduction of Demand Response programs for the purpose of ex ante evaluation of the programs and screening for recruiting customer enrollment into the programs. The proposed regression models employ load sensitivity to outside air temperature and representative load pattern derived from cluster analysis of customer baseline load as explanatory variables. The proposed models examined their performances from the viewpoint of validity of explanatory variables and fitness of regressions, using actual load profile data of Pacific Gas and Electric Company's commercial and industrial customers who participated in the 2008 Critical Peak Pricing program including Manual and Automated Demand Response.

Ground state structures with side-on nitrosyl ({eta}{sup 2}-NO) and isonitrosyl (ON) ligands have been observed in a variety of transition-metal complexes. In contrast, excited state structures with bent-NO ligands have been proposed for years but never directly observed. Here we use picosecond time-resolved infrared spectroscopy and density functional theory (DFT) modeling to study the photochemistry of Co(CO){sub 3}(NO), a model transition-metal-NO compound. Surprisingly, we have observed no evidence for ON and {eta}{sup 2}-NO structural isomers, but have observed two bent-NO complexes. DFT modeling of the ground and excited state potentials indicates that the bent-NO complexes correspond to triplet excited states. Photolysis of Co(CO){sub 3}(NO) with a 400-nm pump pulse leads to population of a manifold of excited states which decay to form an excited state triplet bent-NO complex within 1 ps. This structure relaxes to the ground triplet state in ca. 350 ps to form a second bent-NO structure.

The purpose of this Strategic Plan Report is to provide an introduction and in-depth analysis of the issues and opportunities, resources, and technologies of energy efficiency and renewable energy that have potential beneficial application for the people of the Jicarilla Apache Nation and surrounding communities. The Report seeks to draw on the best available information that existed at the time of writing, and where necessary, draws on new research to assess this potential. This study provides a strategic assessment of opportunities for maximizing the potential for electrical energy efficiency and renewable energy development by the Jicarilla Apache Nation. The report analyzes electricity use on the Jicarilla Apache Reservation in buildings. The report also assesses particular resources and technologies in detail, including energy efficiency, solar, wind, geothermal, biomass, and small hydropower. The closing sections set out the elements of a multi-year, multi-phase strategy for development of resources to the maximum benefit of the Nation.

This Phase I SBIR project investigated the economic and technical feasibility of advanced amine scrubbing systems for post-combustion CO2 capture at coal-fired power plants. Numerous combinations of advanced solvent formulations and process configurations were screened for energy requirements, and three cases were selected for detailed analysis: a monoethanolamine (MEA) base case and two “advanced” cases: an MEA/Piperazine (PZ) case, and a methyldiethanolamine (MDEA) / PZ case. The MEA/PZ and MDEA/PZ cases employed an advanced “double matrix” stripper configuration. The basis for calculations was a model plant with a gross capacity of 500 MWe. Results indicated that CO2 capture increased the base cost of electricity from 5 cents/kWh to 10.7 c/kWh for the MEA base case, 10.1 c/kWh for the MEA / PZ double matrix, and 9.7 c/kWh for the MDEA / PZ double matrix. The corresponding cost per metric tonne CO2 avoided was 67.20 $/tonne CO2, 60.19 $/tonne CO2, and 55.05 $/tonne CO2, respectively. Derated capacities, including base plant auxiliary load of 29 MWe, were 339 MWe for the base case, 356 MWe for the MEA/PZ double matrix, and 378 MWe for the MDEA / PZ double matrix. When compared to the base case, systems employing advanced solvent formulations and …

The purpose of this biological assessment is to review the proposed Arroyo Mocho Boulder Removal Project in sufficient detail to determine to what extent the proposed action may affect any of the threatened, endangered, proposed, or sensitive species and designated or proposed critical habitats listed below. In addition, the following information is provided to comply with statutory requirements to use the best scientific and commercial information available when assessing the risks posed to listed and/or proposed species and designated and/or proposed critical habitat by proposed federal actions. This biological assessment is prepared in accordance with legal requirements set forth under regulations implementing Section 7 of the Endangered Species Act (50 CFR 402; 16 U.S.C 1536 (c)). It is our desire for the Arroyo Mocho Boulder Removal Project to receive incidental take coverage for listed species and critical habitat within the greater project area by means of amending the previous formal Section 7 consultation (1-1-04-F-0086) conducted a few hundred meters downstream by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in 2002. All conservation measures, terms and conditions, and reporting requirements from the previous Biological Opinion (1-1-04-F-0086) have been adopted for this Biological Assessment and/or amendment.

The authors present measurements of the branching fractions for B{sup 0} meson decays to {eta}{prime}K{sup 0} and {omega}K{sup 0}, and of the branching fractions and CP-violation charge asymmetries for B{sup +} meson decays to {eta}{pi}{sup +}, {eta}K{sup +}, {eta}{prime}{pi}{sup +}, {eta}{prime}K{sup +}, {omega}{pi}{sup +}, and {omega}K{sup +}. The data, collected with the BABAR detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, represent 383 million B{bar B} pairs produced in e{sup +}e{sup -} annihilation. The measurements agree with previous results; they find no evidence for direct CP violation.

The continued rise in China’s trade surplus with the United States and the world, and complaints from U.S. manufacturing firms and workers over the competitive challenges posed by Chinese imports have led several Members to call for a more aggressive U.S. stance against certain Chinese trade policies they deem to be unfair. This report examines China's currency policy its implications.

This report analyzes the amendments that H.R. 2033 would make to Chapter 13 of the Copyright Act. It also summarizes arguments both in favor of and against extending copyright protection to fashion designs.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Special Operations Command's (SOCOM) duties have greatly increased since the attacks of September 11, 2001. Today, Special Operations Forces are at work in Afghanistan and Iraq, and SOCOM has been assigned to lead U.S. efforts in the Global War on Terrorism. SOCOM's acquisitions budget has also greatly increased in this period--more than doubling from $788 million in 2001 to approximately $1.91 billion in 2006. In light of SOCOM's expanded duties, Congress requested that GAO review SOCOM's management of its acquisition programs. GAO's evaluation includes an assessment of: the types of acquisition programs SOCOM has undertaken since 2001 and whether the programs are consistent with its mission; the extent to which SOCOM's programs have progressed as planned; and the challenges SOCOM faces in managing its acquisition programs."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To protect workers' retirement security, the requesters asked GAO to assess: 1) What is known about conflicts of interest affecting private sector defined benefit (DB) plans? 2) What procedures does the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) have to identify and recover losses attributable to conflicts? 3) What procedures does Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) have to detect conflicts among service providers and fiduciaries for PBGC-trusteed plans? 4) To what extent do EBSA, PBGC, and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) coordinate their activities to investigate conflicts? GAO interviewed experts, including agency officials, attorneys, financial industry representatives, and academics, and GAO reviewed PBGC documentation and EBSA enforcement materials. GAO analyzed Labor, SEC, PBGC, and private sector data, including data on pensions, pension consultants, and rates of return data, and conducted statistical and econometric analyses."

Recent electron beam driven plasma wakefield accelerator experiments carried out at SLAC showed trapping of plasma electrons. These trapped electrons appeared on an energy spectrometer with smaller transverse size than the beam driving the wake. A connection is made between transverse size and emittance; due to the spectrometer's resolution, this connection allows for placing an upper limit on the trapped electron emittance. The upper limit for the lowest normalized emittance measured in the experiment is 1 mm {center_dot} mrad.

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Combining radio observations with optical and infrared color selection--demonstrated in our pilot study to be an efficient selection algorithm for finding red quasars--we have obtained optical and infrared spectroscopy for 120 objects in a complete sample of 156 candidates from a sky area of 2716 square degrees. Consistent with our initial results, we find our selection criteria--J-K > 1.7,R-K > 4.0--yield a {approx} 50% success rate for discovering quasars substantially redder than those found in optical surveys. Comparison with UVX- and optical color-selected samples shows that {approx}> 10% of the quasars are missed in a magnitude-limited survey. Simultaneous two-frequency radio observations for part of the sample indicate that a synchrotron continuum component is ruled out as a significant contributor to reddening the quasars spectra. We go on to estimate extinctions for our objects assuming their red colors are caused by dust. Continuum fits and Balmer decrements suggest E(B-V) values ranging from near zero to 2.5 magnitudes. Correcting the K-band magnitudes for these extinctions, we find that for K {le} 14.0, red quasars make up between 25% and 60% of the underlying quasar population; owing to the incompleteness of the 2MASS survey at fainter K-band magnitudes, we can only set a …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Forest Service manages over 192 million acres of land, often conducting a variety of vegetation management projects such as thinning trees. Before approving projects that may significantly affect the environment, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) generally requires the Forest Service to prepare an environmental assessment (EA) or an environmental impact statement (EIS). However, the Forest Service can decide not to prepare an EA or EIS if the project involves categories of activities that it previously found to have no significant environmental effect (categorical exclusions). As of 2003, the Forest Service had established one such exclusion affecting vegetation management projects and has since added four new ones. This testimony is based on GAO's report, Forest Service: Use of Categorical Exclusions for Vegetation Management Projects, Calendar Years 2003 through 2005 (GAO-07-99). For vegetation management during these years, GAO determined (1) how many projects the Forest Service approved, including those approved using categorical exclusions; (2) which categorical exclusions it used to approve projects; and (3) if categorical exclusions are not being used in any field offices, why. To answer these questions, GAO surveyed Forest Service officials at all 155 …

Shipping of materials between different locations requires methods for confirming that the correct quantities and materials are shipped and received intact. The quickest method for confirming the correct quantity of material is to weigh the material on a balance. In order for the shipper's and receiver's balances to agree, the balances must use a traceable method of periodic calibration. Once calibrated, the balances must be rechecked periodically with accepted standards to confirm that the balances remain within the allowable tolerances. This letter affirms that the balances used for weighing 3013 containers and 9975 shipping packages are staying within allowable accepted tolerances and that there is no discernable ''drift'' in the weighings that might indicate future trouble with the balance.

Heats of formation of the lowest triplet state of ethylene and the ground triplet state of ethylidene have been predicted by high level electronic structure calculations. Total atomization energies obtained from coupled-cluster CCSD(T) energies extrapolated to the complete basis set limit using correlation consistent basis sets (CBS), plus additional corrections predict the following heats of formation in kcal/mol: Delta H0f(C2H4,3A1) = 80.1 at 0 K and 78.5 at 298 K, and Delta H0f(CH3CH,3A") = 86.8 at 0 K and 85.1 at 298 K, with an error of less than +-1.0 kcal/mol. The vertical and adiabatic singlet-triplet separation energies of ethylene were calculated as Delta ES-T,vert = 104.1 and Delta ES-T,adia = 65.8 kcal/mol. These results are in excellent agreement with recent quantum Monte Carlo (DMC) values of 103.5 +- 0.3 and 66.4 +- 0.3 kcal/mol. Both sets of computational values differ from the experimental estimate of 58 +- 3 kcal/mol for the adiabatic splitting. The computed singlet-triplet gap at 0 K for acetylene is Delta ES-T,adia(C2H2) = 90.5 kcal/mol, which is in notable disagreement with the experimental value of 82.6 kcal/mol. The heat of formation of the triplet is Delta H0f(C2H2,3B2) = 145.3 kcal/mol. There is a systematic underestimation of …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has spent and continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars each year in its U.S. Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT) program to collect, maintain, and share information on selected foreign nationals who enter and exit the United States at over 300 air, sea, and land ports of entry (POEs). The program uses biometric identifiers (digital finger scans and photographs) to screen people against watch lists and to verify that a visitor is the person who was issued a visa or other travel document. GAO's testimony addresses the status of US-VISIT entry and exit capabilities and DHS's management of past and future exit efforts. In developing its testimony, GAO drew from eight prior reports on US-VISIT as well as ongoing work for the committee."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 2003, when the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began operations, it has faced the difficult challenge of bringing together 22 diverse agencies and developing an integrated financial management system to provide reliable, timely, and useful financial information. GAO's 2007 report, Homeland Security: Departmentwide Integrated Financial Management Systems Remain a Challenge, GAO-07-536, emphasized the key issues related to DHS attempting to transform its financial management systems. For today's hearing, this testimony, based on GAO's recent report, (1) summarizes DHS's financial system transformation efforts, (2) points out key financial system transformation challenges at DHS, and (3) highlights the building blocks that DHS should consider to form the foundation for successful financial management system transformation efforts."

A typical diagnostic used to determine the bunch length of ultra-short electron bunches is the auto-correlation of coherent transition radiation. This technique can produce artificially short bunch length results due to the attenuation of low frequency radiation if corrections for the material properties of the Michelson interferometer and detector response are not made. Measurements were taken using FTIR spectroscopy to determine the absorption spectrum of various materials and the response of a Molectron P1-45 pyroelectric detector. The material absorption data will be presented and limitations on the detector calibration discussed.

Taking advantage of the neutron source of the LANCSE, it has been possible to obtain a measure of the velocity distribution and the number of prompt-neutrons emitted in the neutron-induced fission of {sup 238}U and {sup 237}Np over a broad incident neutron energy range. The mean kinetic energy was extracted and is shown as the function of the incident-neutron energy. We confirm here the observation, for both reactions, of a dip around the second chance fission which is explained by the lower kinetic energy of the pre-fission neutrons. Such a observation is reproduced by Los Alamos model as implemented at Bruyeres le Chatel and by the Maslov model. As far as the neutron multiplicity is concerned, a similar dip is observed. However, such a behavior is not present in data measured by other groups.

The authors present an inclusive measurement of {Delta}{alpha}{sub had}{sup (5)}(m{sub Z}{sup 2}) at BABAR using the Initial State Radiation (ISR) technique in e{sup +}e{sup -} interactions to simultaneously explore the whole low energy range at reduced center-of-mass energies below 7 GeV, where the current knowledge of e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} hadrons production limits the precision of the prediction of the running of {alpha}. The BABAR ISR data sample is considerably larger than existing e{sup +}e{sup -} R scan measurement data over most of the low energy range, and there are also many systematic advantages with the ISR technique to allow significantly improved precision on the integral for {Delta}{alpha}{sub had}{sup (5)}(m{sub Z}{sup 2}). This thesis reports on a measurement of {Delta}{alpha}{sub had}{sup (5)}(m{sub Z}{sup 2}) at the 3% precision level, improving on the current knowledge of this quantity.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) included a provision that requires states to obtain documentary evidence of U.S. citizenship or nationality when determining eligibility of Medicaid applicants and current beneficiaries; self-attestation of citizenship and nationality is no longer acceptable. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued regulations states must follow in obtaining this documentation. Interested parties have raised concerns that efforts to comply with the requirement will cause eligible citizens to lose access to Medicaid coverage and will be costly for states to implement. GAO was asked to examine how the requirement has affected individuals' access to Medicaid benefits and assess the administrative and fiscal effects of implementing the requirement. To do this work, GAO surveyed state Medicaid offices in the 50 states and the District of Columbia about their perspectives on access issues and the administrative and fiscal effects of the requirement. GAO obtained complete responses from 44 states representing 71 percent of national Medicaid enrollment in fiscal year 2004. GAO also reviewed federal laws, regulations, and CMS guidance."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Medicare spending on imaging services, among which are ultrasound procedures that use sound waves to facilitate diagnosis, nearly doubled from 1999 to 2004. The Congress required GAO to examine Medicare's payment methods for ultrasound procedures and whether the technicians that conduct them--called sonographers--should be subject to qualification standards, such as having to undergo a certification process called credentialing. This report addresses (1) the ultrasound procedures commonly used to diagnose medical conditions of Medicare beneficiaries, particularly for beneficiaries in a skilled nursing facility (SNF), (2) the financial impact of changing how Medicare pays for ultrasound exams and associated equipment and ambulance transportation for beneficiaries in a SNF, and (3) the factors for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to consider in determining whether to establish credentialing or other requirements for sonographers. For this review, GAO analyzed Medicare claims data and conducted interviews and literature reviews."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to the Air Force, the Kaiserslautern Military Community Center (KMCC), an over 800,000 square-foot facility, is currently the Department of Defense's largest single-facility project under construction. It is intended to provide lodging, dining, shopping, and entertainment for thousands of U.S. military and civilian personnel and their families in the Kaiserslautern, Germany, area. Initial costs for the KMCC were estimated at about $150 million, with funding coming from a variety of appropriated and nonappropriated fund sources. The construction for the project, which began in late 2003, was originally scheduled to be completed in early 2006. This testimony discusses GAO findings to date related to the KMCC. The testimony describes (1) current problems facing the KMCC, (2) causes for identified problems, and (3) the effect of problems identified and their implications for future projects in Germany. To address our objectives, we interviewed officials from the U.S. Air Force, Army and Air Force Exchange Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and German government. We also conducted a site visit and reviewed relevant KMCC documents. We plan to continue our work and make recommendations to the Air Force as appropriate."