We present the scaling properties of Lambda, Xi, and their anti-particles produced at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at RHIC at psNN = 200 GeV. The yield of multi-strange baryons per participant nucleon increases from peripheral to central collisions more rapidly than the Lambda yield, which appears to correspond to an increasing strange quark density of matter produced. The value of the strange phase space occupancy factor gamma s, obtained from a thermal model fit to the data, approaches unity for the most central collisions. We also show that the nuclear modification factors, RCP, of Lambda and Xi are consistent with each other and with that of protons in the transverse momentum range2.0< pT< 5.0 GeV/c. This scaling behaviour is consistent with a scenario of hadron formation from constituent quark degrees of freedom through quark recombination or coalescence.

Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) performed pilot-scale hydraulic/chemical testing of spherical resorcinol formaldehyde (RF) ion exchange (IX) resin for the River Protection Project-Hanford Tank Waste Treatment & Immobilization Plant (WTP) Project. The RF resin cycle testing was conducted in two pilot-scale IX columns, 1/4 and 1/2 scale. A total of twenty-three hydraulic/chemical cycles were successfully completed on the spherical RF resin. Seven of the cycles were completed in the 12 inch IX Column and sixteen cycles were completed in the 24 inch IX Column. Hydraulic testing showed that the permeability of the RF resin remained essentially constant, with no observed trend in the reduction of the permeability as the number of cycles increased. The permeability during the pilot-scale testing was 2 1/2 times better than the design requirements of the WTP full-scale system. The permeability of the resin bed was uniform with respect to changes in bed depth. Upflow Regeneration and Simulant Introduction in the IX columns revealed another RF resin benefit; negligible radial pressures to the column walls from the swelling of resin beads. In downflow of the Regeneration and Simulant Introduction steps, the resin bed particles pack tightly together and produce higher hydraulic pressures than that found in …

This paper examines several multi-model combination techniques: the Simple Multimodel Average (SMA), the Multi-Model Super Ensemble (MMSE), Modified Multi-Model Super Ensemble (M3SE) and the Weighted Average Method (WAM). These model combination techniques were evaluated using the results from the Distributed Model Intercomparison Project (DMIP), an international project sponsored by the National Weather Service (NWS) Office of Hydrologic Development (OHD). All of the multi-model combination results were obtained using uncalibrated DMIP model outputs and were compared against the best uncalibrated as well as the best calibrated individual model results. The purpose of this study is to understand how different combination techniques affect the skill levels of the multi-model predictions. This study revealed that the multi-model predictions obtained from uncalibrated single model predictions are generally better than any single member model predictions, even the best calibrated single model predictions. Furthermore, more sophisticated multi-model combination techniques that incorporated bias correction steps work better than simple multi-model average predictions or multi-model predictions without bias correction.

This paper is based on the outcome of the activity that has taken place during the recent workshop on ''SuperB in Italy'' held in Frascati on November 11-12, 2005. The workshop was opened by a theoretical introduction of Marco Ciuchini and was structured in two working groups. One focused on the machine and the other on the detector and experimental issues.. The present status on CP is mainly based on the results achieved by BABAR and Belle. Establishment of the indirect CP violation in B sector in 2001 and of the direct CP violation in 2004 thanks to the success of PEP-II and KEKB e{sup +}e{sup -} asymmetric B Factories operating at the center of mass energy corresponding to the mass of the {Upsilon}(4S ). With the two B Factories taking data, the Unitarity Triangle is now beginning to be over constrained by improving the measurements of the sides and now also of the angles {alpha}, and {gamma}. We are also in presence of the very intriguing results about the measurements of sin2{beta} in the time dependent analysis of decay channels via penguin loops, where b {yields} s{bar s}s and b {yields} s{bar d}d. {tau} physics, in particular LFV search, …

The conventional screening machines used in processing plants have had undesirable high noise and vibration levels. They also have had unsatisfactorily low screening efficiency, high energy consumption, high maintenance cost, low productivity, and poor worker safety. These conventional vibrating machines have been used in almost every processing plant. Most of the current material separation technology uses heavy and inefficient electric motors with an unbalanced rotating mass to generate the shaking. In addition to being excessively noisy, inefficient, and high-maintenance, these vibrating machines are often the bottleneck in the entire process. Furthermore, these motors, along with the vibrating machines and supporting structure, shake other machines and structures in the vicinity. The latter increases maintenance costs while reducing worker health and safety. The conventional vibrating fine screens at taconite processing plants have had the same problems as those listed above. This has resulted in lower screening efficiency, higher energy and maintenance cost, and lower productivity and workers safety concerns. The focus of this work is on the design of a high performance screening machine suitable for taconite processing plants. SmartScreens{trademark} technology uses miniaturized motors, based on smart materials, to generate the shaking. The underlying technologies are Energy Flow Control{trademark} and Vibration Control …

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This report provides a history of the creation and evolution of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

The Senate follows a well-established routine on the opening day of a new Congress. The proceedings include swearing in new members, administrative business, and the election of the president pro tempore, the constitutionally mandated officer elected to preside over the chamber in the absence of the Vice President. This report contains information on what is contained in the well-established routine.

The Naval Reactors Program led work on the development of a reactor plant system for the Prometheus space reactor program. The work centered on a 200 kWe electric reactor plant with a 15-20 year mission applicable to nuclear electric propulsion (NEP). After a review of all reactor and energy conversion alternatives, a direct gas Brayton reactor plant was selected for further development. The work performed subsequent to this selection included preliminary nuclear reactor and reactor plant design, development of instrumentation and control techniques, modeling reactor plant operational features, development and testing of core and plant material options, and development of an overall project plan. Prior to restructuring of the program, substantial progress had been made on defining reference plant operating conditions, defining reactor mechanical, thermal and nuclear performance, understanding the capabilities and uncertainties provided by material alternatives, and planning non-nuclear and nuclear system testing. The mission requirements for the envisioned NEP missions cannot be accommodated with existing reactor technologies. Therefore concurrent design, development and testing would be needed to deliver a functional reactor system. Fuel and material performance beyond the current state of the art is needed. There is very little national infrastructure available for fast reactor nuclear testing and …

Aircraft hazards were determined to be potentially applicable to a repository at Yucca Mountain in ''Monitored Geological Repository External Events Hazards Screening Analysis'' (BSC 2005 [DIRS 174235], Section 6.4.1). That determination was conservatively based upon limited knowledge of flight data in the area of concern and upon crash data for aircraft of the type flying near Yucca Mountain. The purpose of this report is to identify specific aircraft hazards that may be applicable to a monitored geologic repository (MGR) at Yucca Mountain, using NUREG-0800, ''Standard Review Plan for the Review of Safety Analysis Reports for Nuclear Power Plants'' (NRC 1987 [DIRS 103124], Section 3.5.1.6), as guidance for the inclusion or exclusion of identified aircraft hazards. The intended use of this report is to provide inputs for further screening and analysis of identified aircraft hazards based upon the criteria that apply to Category 1 and Category 2 event sequence analyses as defined in 10 CFR 63.2 [DIRS 176544] (Section 4). The scope of this report includes the evaluation of military, private, and commercial use of airspace in the 100-mile regional setting of the repository at Yucca Mountain with the potential for reducing the regional setting to a more manageable size after …

We study the processes e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} 3({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}){gamma}, 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}){gamma} and K{sup +}K{sup -} 2({pi}{sup +} {sup -}){gamma}, with the photon radiated from the initial state. About 20,000, 33,000 and 4,000 fully reconstructed events, respectively, have been selected from 232 fb{sup -1} of BABAR data. The invariant mass of the hadronic final state defines the effective e{sup +}e{sup -} center-of-mass energy, so that these data can be compared with the corresponding direct e{sup +}e{sup -} measurements. From the 3({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}), 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}) and K{sup +}K{sup -} 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}) mass spectra, the cross sections for the processes e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} 3({pi}{sup +}{sup -}), e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}) and e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} K{sup +}K{sup -} 2({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}) are measured for center-of-mass energies from production threshold to 4.5 GeV. The uncertainty in the cross section measurement is typically 6-15%. We observe the J/{psi} in all these final states and measure the corresponding branching fractions.

This report discusses the National Security Agency’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” a program in which international communications of persons within the United States have been the subject of electronic surveillance without a warrant or a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court order.

This report examines more than 90,000 U.S. horses which were slaughtered for human food in 2005, mainly for European and Asian consumers. Congress voted to limit the use of FY2006 appropriated funds for such slaughter, but the practice continues, funded by industry user fees. Debate continues on the acceptability of horse slaughter, and how to care for and/or humanely dispose of horses if they no longer went for human food. On September 7, 2006, the full House approved a bill (H.R. 503) to ban horse slaughter.

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We review the recently developed bootstrap method for the computation of high-multiplicity QCD amplitudes at one loop. We illustrate the general algorithm step by step with a six-point example. The method combines (generalized) unitarity with on-shell recursion relations to determine the not cut-constructible, rational terms of these amplitudes. Our bootstrap approach works for arbitrary configurations of gluon helicities and arbitrary numbers of external legs.

A model study on fractured systems was performed using aconcept that treats isotropic cracked systems as ensembles of crackedgrains by analogy to isotropic polycrystalline elastic media. Theapproach has two advantages: (a) Averaging performed is ensembleaveraging, thus avoiding the criticism legitimately leveled at mosteffective medium theories of quasistatic elastic behavior for crackedmedia based on volume concentrations of inclusions. Since crack effectsare largely independent of the volume they occupy in the composite, sucha non-volume-based method offers an appealingly simple modelingalternative. (b) The second advantage is that both polycrystals andfractured media are stiffer than might otherwise be expected, due tonatural bridging effects of the strong components. These same effectshave also often been interpreted as crack-crack screening inhigh-crack-density fractured media, but there is no inherent conflictbetween these two interpretations of this phenomenon. Results of thestudy are somewhat mixed. The spread in elastic constants observed in aset of numerical experiments is found to be very comparable to the spreadin values contained between the Reuss and Voigt bounds for thepolycrystal model. However, computed Hashin-Shtrikman bounds are much tootight to be in agreement with the numerical data, showing thatpolycrystals of cracked grains tend to violate some implicit assumptionsof the Hashin-Shtrikman bounding approach. However, the self-consistentestimates obtained for …

Report on the military health services system, including recent developments, background context, purpose and structure of the MHSS, beneficiaries, and more.

This report provides background information regarding the bill and joint resolution, which must be passed by both houses in identical form, then presented to the President for his approval or disapproval.

This report provides information about the Stages of Action on Measures on Committee of the Whole.

The House of Representatives uses two kinds of votes in which the names and positions of individual Members are recorded: (1) the recorded vote, used chiefly in Committee of the Whole, though also in order in the House, and (2) the yea and nay vote, in order only in the House proper. Both kinds together are referred to as record votes or, more informally, as “roll call votes,” and both are normally taken by electronic device. This report illustrates forms commonly used for obtaining each kind of vote.

A joint assessment meeting was conducted at the Egyptian Atomic Energy Agency (EAEA) followed by a tour of Egyptian Second Research Reactor (ETRR-2) on March 22 and 23, 2006. The purpose of the visit was to evaluate the capabilities of the new research reactor and its operations under Action Sheet 4 between the U.S. DOE and the EAEA, ''Research Reactor Operation'', and Action Sheet 6, ''Technical assistance in The Production of Radioisotopes''. Preliminary Recommendations of the joint assessment are as follows: (1) ETRR-2 utilization should be increased by encouraging frequent and sustained operations. This can be accomplished in part by (a) Improving the supply-chain management for fresh reactor fuel and alleviating the perception that the existing fuel inventory should be conserved due to unreliable fuel supply; and (b) Promulgating a policy for sample irradiation priority that encourages the use of the reactor and does not leave the decision of when to operate entirely at the discretion of reactor operations staff. (2) Each experimental facility in operation or built for a single purpose should be reevaluated to focus on those that most meet the goals of the EAEA strategic business plan. Temporary or long-term elimination of some experimental programs might be …

This report describes and documents the erosion that has occurred along the northeast side of Locke Island over the last 10 to 20 years. The principal cause of this erosion is the massive Locke Island landslide complex opposite the Columbia River along the White Bluffs, which constricts the flow of the river and deflects the river's thalweg southward against the island.

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Crevice corrosion is currently mostly studied using either one of two techniques depending on the information desired. The first method involves two multicrevice formers or washers fastened on both sides of a sample plate. This technique provides exposure information regarding the severity of crevice corrosion (depth, position, frequency of attack) but delivers little or no electrochemical information. The second method involves the potentiodynamic or potentiostatic study of an uncreviced sample in a model crevice solution or under a crevice former in aggressive solution where crevice corrosion may initiate and propagate and global current is recorded. However, crevice corrosion initiation and propagation behavior is highly dependent on exact position in the crevice over time. The distance from the crevice mouth will affect the solution composition, the pH, the ohmic potential drop and the true potential in the crevice. Coupled multi-electrode arrays (MEA) were used to study crevice corrosion in order to take in account spatial and temporal evolution of electrochemistry simultaneously. Scaling laws were used to rescale the crevice geometry while keeping the corrosion electrochemical properties equivalent to that of a natural crevice at a smaller length scale. one of the advantages was to be able to use commercial alloys available …