I am pleased to present the fiscal year 2007 Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) annual report. This represents the first year that SRNL has been eligible for LDRD participation and our results to date demonstrate we are off to an excellent start. SRNL became a National Laboratory in 2004, and was designated the 'Corporate Laboratory' for the DOE Office of Environmental Management (EM) in 2006. As you will see, we have made great progress since these designations. The LDRD program is one of the tools SRNL is using to enable achievement of our strategic goals for the DOE. The LDRD program allows the laboratory to blend a strong basic science component into our applied technical portfolio. This blending of science with applied technology provides opportunities for our scientists to strengthen our capabilities and delivery. The LDRD program is vital to help SRNL attract and retain leading scientists and engineers who will help build SRNL's future and achieve DOE mission objectives. This program has stimulated our research staff creativity, while realizing benefits from their participation. This investment will yield long term dividends to the DOE in its Environmental Management, Energy, and National Security missions.

The goals of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) are to expand the use of nuclear energy to meet increasing global energy demand, to address nuclear waste management concerns and to promote non-proliferation. Implementation of the GNEP requires development and demonstration of three major technologies: (1) Light water reactor (LWR) spent fuel separations technologies that will recover transuranics to be recycled for fuel but not separate plutonium from other transuranics, thereby providing proliferation-resistance; (2) Advanced Burner Reactors (ABRs) based on a fast spectrum that transmute the recycled transuranics to produce energy while also reducing the long term radiotoxicity and decay heat loading in the repository; and (3) Fast reactor fuel recycling technologies to recover and refabricate the transuranics for repeated recycling in the fast reactor system. The primary mission of the ABR Program is to demonstrate the transmutation of transuranics recovered from the LWR spent fuel, and hence the benefits of the fuel cycle closure to nuclear waste management. The transmutation, or burning of the transuranics is accomplished by fissioning and this is most effectively done in a fast spectrum. In the thermal spectrum of commercial LWRs, some transuranics capture neutrons and become even heavier transuranics rather than being fissioned. …

This report discusses the impact airplane gas emissions has on climate change and CO2 levels.

In this thesis we examine the method of counting B{bar B} events produced in the BABAR experiment. The original method was proposed in 2000, but improvements to track reconstruction and our understanding of the detector since that date make it appropriate to revisit the B Counting method. We propose a new set of cuts designed to minimize the sensitivity to time-varying backgrounds. We find the new method counts B{bar B} events with an associated systematic uncertainty of {+-} 0.6%.

The report discusses the Child Support Enforcement. It is categorized into three categories: (I) Background, (II) New Annual CSE User Fee and (III) Implementation of CSE User Fee.

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This report provides a brief overview of these laws, including examples of prohibited conduct and penalties for violation.

One and two dimensional time-resolved vibrational spectroscopy has been used to investigate the elementary reactions of several prototypical organometallic complexes in room temperature solution. The electron transfer and ligand substitution reactions of photogenerated 17-electron organometallic radicals CpW(CO){sub 3} and CpFe(CO){sub 2} have been examined with one dimensional spectroscopy on the picosecond through microsecond time-scales, revealing the importance of caging effects and odd-electron intermediates in these reactions. Similarly, an investigation of the photophysics of the simple Fischer carbene complex Cr(CO){sub 5}[CMe(OMe)] showed that this class of molecule undergoes an unusual molecular rearrangement on the picosecond time-scale, briefly forming a metal-ketene complex. Although time-resolved spectroscopy has long been used for these types of photoinitiated reactions, the advent of two dimensional vibrational spectroscopy (2D-IR) opens the possibility to examine the ultrafast dynamics of molecules under thermal equilibrium conditions. Using this method, the picosecond fluxional rearrangements of the model metal carbonyl Fe(CO){sub 5} have been examined, revealing the mechanism, time-scale, and transition state of the fluxional reaction. The success of this experiment demonstrates that 2D-IR is a powerful technique to examine the thermally-driven, ultrafast rearrangements of organometallic molecules in solution.

This report provides an overview of Lebanese politics, recent events in Lebanon, and current issues in U.S. - Lebanon relations.

This work presents simultaneous branching fraction measurements of the decay modes {tau}{sup -} {yields} K{sup -} n{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}} with n = 0,1,2,3 and {tau}{sup -} {yields} {pi}{sup -} n{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}} with n = 3,4. The analysis is based on a data sample of 427 x 10{sup 6} {tau}{sup +}{tau}{sup -} pairs recorded with the BABAR detector, which corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 464.4 fb{sup -1}. The measured values are {Beta}({tau}{sup -} {yields} K{sup -}{nu}{sub {tau}}) = (6.57 {+-} 0.03 {+-} 0.11) x 10{sup -3}, {Beta}({tau}{sup -} {yields} K{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}}) = (4.61 {+-} 0.03 {+-} 0.11) x 10{sup -3}, {Beta}({tau}{sup -} {yields} K{sup -} {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}}) = (5.05 {+-} 0.17 {+-} 0.44) x 10{sup -4}, {Beta}({tau}{sup -} {yields} K{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}}) = (1.31 {+-} 0.43 {+-} 0.40) x 10{sup -4}, {Beta}({tau}{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}}) = (1.263 {+-} 0.008 {+-} 0.078) x 10{sup -2} and {Beta}({tau}{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}{nu}{sub {tau}}) = (9.6 {+-} 0.5 {+-} 1.2) x 10{sup -4}, where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively. All measurements are compatible with the current world averages whereas the uncertainties are significantly smaller …

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The New York City Energy-Water Integrated Planning Pilot Study is one of several projects funded by Sandia National Laboratories under the U.S. Department of Energy Energy-Water Nexus Program. These projects are intended to clarify some key issues and research needs identified during the Energy-Water Nexus Roadmapping activities. The objectives of the New York City Pilot Project are twofold: to identify energy-water nexus issues in an established urban area in conjunction with a group of key stakeholders and to define and apply an integrated energy and water decision support tool, as proof-of-concept, to one or more of these issues. During the course of this study, the Brookhaven National Laboratory project team worked very closely with members of a Pilot Project Steering Committee. The Steering Committee members brought a breadth of experience across the energy, water and climate disciplines, and all are well versed in the particular issues faced by an urban environment, and by New York City in particular. The first task was to identify energy-water issues of importance to New York City. This exercise was followed by discussion of the qualities and capabilities that an ideal decision support tool should display to address these issues. The decision was made to …

This report aims to help frame the emerging debates for the 111th Congress by taking note of the leading advocates for change, highlighting identified shortcomings in key elements of the current system, and describing categories of emerging proposals for change.

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When self-sputtering is driven far above the runaway threshold voltage, energetic electrons are made available to produce"excess plasma" far from the magnetron target. Ionization balance considerations show that the secondary electrons deliver the necessary energy to the"remote" zone. Thereby, such a system can be an extraordinarily prolific generator of useable metal ions. Contrary to other known sources, the ion current to a substrate can exceed the discharge current. For gasless self-sputtering of copper, the useable ion current scales exponentially with the discharge voltage.

A novel short-pulse concept (SLIM) suited to a new generation of a high gradient induction particle accelerators is described herein. It applies advanced solid state semiconductor technology and modern microfabrication techniques to a coreless induction method of charged particle acceleration first proven on a macro scale in the 1960's. Because this approach avoids use of magnetic materials there is the prospect of such an accelerator working efficiently with accelerating pulses in the nanosecond range and, potentially, at megahertz pulse rates. The principal accelerator section is envisioned as a stack of coreless induction cells, the only active element within each being a single, extremely fast (subnanosecond) solid state opening switch: a Drift Step Recovery Diode (DSRD). Each coreless induction cell incorporates an electromagnetic pulse compressor in which inductive energy developed within a transmission-line feed structure over a period of tens of nanoseconds is diverted to the acceleration of the passing charge packet for a few nanoseconds by the abrupt opening of the DSRD switch. The duration of this accelerating output pulse--typically two-to-four nanoseconds--is precisely determined by a microfabricated pulse forming line connected to the cell. Because the accelerating pulse is only nanoseconds in duration, longitudinal accelerating gradients approaching 100 MeV per …

Report on nonfinancial data of the Texas State Office of Risk Management for fiscal year 2008, including information about fees, spaces, progress on the HUB (historically underutilized business) plan, environmentally sensitive purchases, and indirect costs.

Fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) is a sensitive and rapid procedure to detect gene rearrangements in tumor cells using non-isotopically labeled DNA probes. Large insert recombinant DNA clones such as bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) or P1/PAC clones have established themselves in recent years as preferred starting material for probe preparations due to their low rates of chimerism and ease of use. However, when developing probes for the quantitative analysis of rearrangements involving genomic intervals of less than 100kb, careful probe selection and characterization are of paramount importance. We describe a sensitive approach to quality control probe clones suspected of carrying deletions or for measuring clone overlap with near kilobase resolution. The method takes advantage of the fact that P1/PAC/BAC's can be isolated as circular DNA molecules, stretched out on glass slides and fine-mapped by multicolor hybridization with smaller probe molecules. Two examples demonstrate the application of this technique: mapping of a gene-specific {approx}6kb plasmid onto an unusually small, {approx}55kb circular P1 molecule and the determination of the extent of overlap between P1 molecules homologous to the human NF-?B2 locus. The relatively simple method presented here does not require specialized equipment and may thus find widespread applications in DNA probe preparation …

Breast cancer is one of the most clear-cut examples of a solid tumor in which systemic cues play a decisive part in its development. The breast tissue is constantly subjected to changes in hormone levels and modifications in the microenvironment. This scenario is even more striking during tumor development because of the dramatic loss or aberration of basement membrane (BM) and myoepithelial cells and the gain of peritumoral myofibroblasts. We suggest that the microenvironment, defined here as all components of the mammary gland other than luminal and/or tumor epithelial cells, might be instrumental in maintaining organ integrity and in promoting, and at times even initiating, breast cancer development. As such, the tumor microenvironment and its constituents, alone or in combination, might serve as promising targets for therapy.

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.

This report is divided into two segments. The first segment provides the most recent developments on, and selected provisions of, the Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2009. The second segment focuses on the (1) history and recent trends, including the nature, scope, and duration of continuing resoutions (CRs) during the past 35 years; (2) CR types by duration; (3) major substantive legislative provisions included in some CRs; and (4) funding gaps.

Cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) are based on the rate of inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). All CSRS retirees and survivors receive COLAs. Under FERS, however, non-disabled retirees under age 62 do not receive COLAs. This report discusses cost-of-living adjustments for government retirees, as well as related legislation.

The poloidal field (PF) coil system on ITER, which provides both feedforward and feedback control of plasma position, shape, and current, is a critical element for achieving mission performance. Analysis of PF capabilities has focused on the 15 MA Q = 10 scenario with a 300-500 s flattop burn phase. The operating space available for the 15 MA ELMy H-mode plasma discharges in ITER and upgrades to the PF coils or associated systems to establish confidence that ITER mission objectives can be reached have been identified. Time dependent self-consistent free-boundary calculations were performed to examine the impact of plasma variability, discharge programming, and plasma disturbances. Based on these calculations a new reference scenario was developed based upon a large bore initial plasma, early divertor transition, low level heating in L-mode, and a late H-mode onset. Equilibrium analyses for this scenario indicate that the original PF coil limitations do not allow low li (<0.8) operation or lower flux states, and the flattop burn durations were predicted to be less than the desired 400 s. This finding motivates the expansion of the operating space, considering several upgrade options to the PF coils. Analysis was also carried out to examine the feedback current …

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