None

None

The primary motivation for this set of research activities was to develop a foundation in several aspects of power in order to position Cleveland State University to lead a multiuniversity effort to secure funding for enhanced power system projects and to be able to eventually secure a NASA Space Power Systems Center status through the competitive bidding process. This was accomplished by focusing on these major project areas, (1) the design of the next generation nuclear-electric power generation system, (2) the design of a distributed, fault-tolerant, and modular power system, and (3) the development of the dynamics and control of active magnetic bearings for flywheel energy storage without using conventional sensors.

This study, supported by the US Department of Energy, Wind Powering America Program, Maryland Department of Natural Resources and Chesapeake Bay Foundation, analyzed barriers to wind energy development in the Mid-Atlantic region along with options for overcoming or mitigating them. The Mid-Atlantic States including Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia, have excellent wind energy potential and growing demand for electricity, but only two utility-scale projects have been installed to date. Reasons for this apathetic development of wind resources were analyzed and quantified for four markets. Specific applications are: 1) Appalachian mountain ridgeline sites, 2) on coastal plains and peninsulas, 3) at shallow water sites in Delaware and Chesapeake Bays, Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds, and 4) at deeper water sites off the Atlantic coast. Each market has distinctly different opportunities and barriers. The primary barriers to wind development described in this report can be grouped into four categories; state policy and regulatory issues, wind resource technical uncertainty, economic viability, and public interest in environmental issues. The properties of these typologies are not mutually independent and do interact. The report concluded that there are no insurmountable barriers to land-based wind energy projects and they could be economically viable today. Likewise potential sites …

This report documents the findings of an on-site audit of the U.S. Customs Cargo Inspection Facility (CIF) in Detroit, Michigan. The federal landlord for this building is the General Services Administration (GSA). The focus of the audit was to identify various no-cost or low-cost energy-efficiency opportunities that, once implemented, would reduce electrical and gas consumption and increase the operational efficiency of the building. This audit also provided an opportunity to identify potential capital cost projects that should be considered in the future to acquire additional energy (electric and gas) and water savings to further increase the operational efficiency of the building.

This report documents the findings from an onsite audit of the John W. Bricker Federal building located in Columbus, Ohio. The Federal landlord for this building is the General Services Administration (GSA). The focus of the audit was to identify various no-cost or low-cost energy efficiency opportunities that, once implemented, would either reduce electrical and gas consumption or increase the operational efficiency of the building. This audit also provided an opportunity to identify potential capital cost projects that should be considered in the future to acquire additional energy (electric and gas) and water savings to further increase the operational efficiency of the building.

The stack sampling system at the 325 Building (Radiochemical Processing Laboratory [RPL]) was constructed to comply with the American National Standards Institute’s (ANSI’s) Guide to Sampling Airborne Radioactive Materials in Nuclear Facilities (ANSI N13.1-1969). This standard provided prescriptive criteria for the location of radionuclide air-sampling systems. In 1999, the standard was revised (Sampling and Monitoring Releases of Airborne Radioactive Substances From the Stacks and Ducts of Nuclear Facilities [ANSI/Health Physics Society [HPS] 13.1-1999]) to provide performance-based criteria for the location of sampling systems. Testing was conducted for the 325 Building stack to determine whether the sampling system would meet the updated criteria for uniform air velocity and contaminant concentration in the revised ANSI/HPS 13.1-1999 standard under normal operating conditions (Smith et al. 2010). Measurement results were within criteria for all tests. Additional testing and modeling was performed to determine whether the sampling system would meet criteria under set-back flow conditions. This included measurements taken from a scale model with one-third of the exhaust flow and computer modeling of the system with two-thirds of the exhaust flow. This report documents the results of the set-back flow condition measurements and modeling. Tests performed included flow angularity, uniformity of velocity, gas concentration, and …

None

None

The main objective of this project is to provide training opportunities for two graduate students in order to improve the human capital and skills required for implementing and deploying carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies. The graduate student effort will be geared towards the formulation and implementation of an integrated simulation-optimization framework to provide a rigorous scientific support to the design CCS systems that, for any given site: (a) maximize the amount of carbon storage; (b) minimize the total cost associated with the CCS project; (c) minimize the risk of CO2 upward leakage from injected formations. The framework will stem from a combination of data obtained from geophysical investigations, a multiphase flow model, and a stochastic multi-objective optimization algorithm. The methodology will rely on a geostatistical approach to generate ensembles of scenarios of the parameters that are expected to have large sensitivities and uncertainties on the model response and thus on the risk assessment, in particular the permeability properties of the injected formation and its cap rock. The safety theme will be addressed quantitatively by including the risk of CO2 upward leakage from the injected formations as one the objectives that should be minimized in the optimization problem. The research …

None

Scientific fields are difficult to define and compare, yet there is a general sense that they undergo similar stages of development. From this point of view it becomes important to determine if these superficial similarities can be translated into a general framework that would quantify the general advent and subsequent dynamics of scientific ideas. Such a framework would have important practical applications of allowing us to compare fields that superficially may appear different, in terms of their subject matter, research techniques, typical collaboration size, etc. Particularh' important in a field's history is the moment at which conceptual and technical unification allows widespread exchange of ideas and collaboration, at which point networks of collaboration show the analog of a percolation phenomenon, developing a giant connected component containing most authors. Here we investigate the generality of this topological transition in the collaboration structure of scientific fields as they grow and become denser. We develop a general theoretical framework in which each scientific field is an instantiation of the same large-scale topological critical phenomenon. We consider whether the evidence from a variety of specific fields is consistent with this picture, and estimate critical exponents associated with the transition. We then discuss the generality …

This report gives an overview of tax reform issues. The President and leading members of Congress have stated that fundamental tax reform is a major policy objective for the 112th Congress. Some Members have said that fundamental tax reform is needed in order to raise a large amount of additional revenue, which is necessary to reduce high forecast budget deficits and the sharply rising national debt. Congressional interest has been expressed in both a major overhaul of the U.S. tax system and the feasibility of levying a consumption tax.

This report provides examples of recent Administration "combating violent extremism" (CVE) activity and examines some of the risks and challenges evident in the Strategic Implementation Plan for Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States' (SIP's) three objectives. The report also diagrams and briefly discusses the "future activities and efforts" outlined in the SIP for each of these three objectives.

In August 2011, the Obama Administration announced its counter-radicalization strategy. It is devised to address the forces that influence some people living in the United States to acquire and hold radical or extremist beliefs that may eventually compel them to commit terrorism. This is the first such strategy for the federal government, which calls this effort “combating violent extremism” (CVE). This report provides examples of recent Administration CVE activity and examines some of the risks and challenges evident in the SIP's three objectives. The report also diagrams and briefly discusses the “future activities and efforts” outlined in the SIP for each of these three objectives. A number of areas may call for oversight from Congress. These include the following: picking partners and establishing "rules of the road," intervention with at-risk individuals, identifying programs to assist grassroots CVE efforts, countering extremist ideas, the lack of a lead agency, and transparency.

The Reference Site (RS) study is part of the research, monitoring, and evaluation (RME) effort developed by the Action Agencies (Bonneville Power Administration [BPA], U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Portland District [USACE], and U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) in response to Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) Biological Opinions (BiOp). While the RS study was initiated in 2007, data have been collected at relatively undisturbed reference wetland sites in the LCRE by PNNL and collaborators since 2005. These data on habitat structural metrics were previously summarized to provide baseline characterization of 51 wetlands throughout the estuarine and tidal freshwater portions of the 235-km LCRE; however, further analysis of these data has been limited. Therefore, in 2011, we conducted additional analyses of existing field data previously collected for the Columbia Estuary Ecosystem Restoration Program (CEERP) - including data collected by PNNL and others - to help inform the multi-agency restoration planning and ecosystem management work underway in the LCRE.

The focus of this research project was atoms with scattering lengths that are large compared to the range of their interactions and which therefore exhibit universal behavior at sufficiently low energies. Recent dramatic advances in cooling atoms and in manipulating their scattering lengths have made this phenomenon of practical importance for controlling ultracold atoms and molecules. This research project was aimed at developing a systematically improvable method for calculating few-body observables for atoms with large scattering lengths starting from the universal results as a first approximation. Significant progress towards this goal was made during the five years of the project.

Electron storage rings are widely used for high luminosity colliders, damping rings in high-energy linear colliders, and synchrotron light sources. They have become essential facilities to study high-energy physics and material and medical sciences. To further increase the luminosity of colliders or the brightness of synchrotron light sources, the beam emittance is being continually pushed downward, recently to the nanometer region. In the next decade, another order of reduction is expected. This requirement of ultra-low emittance presents many design challenges in beam dynamics, including better analysis of maps and improvement of dynamic apertures. To meet these challenges, we have refined transfer maps of common elements in storage rings and developed a new method to compute the resonance driving terms as they are built up along a beamline. The method is successfully applied to a design of PEP-X as a future light source with 100-pm emittance. As a result, we discovered many unexpected cancelations of the fourth-order resonance terms driven by sextupoles within an achromat.

This report collects statistics from a variety of sources on casualties sustained during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which began on October 7, 2001, and is ongoing. OEF actions take place primarily in Afghanistan, but OEF casualties also include American casualties in other countries, listed within this report.

The use of biofuels for internal combustion engines has several well published advantages. The biofuels, made from biological sources such as corn or sugar cane, are renewable resources that reduce the dependence on fossil fuels. Fuels from agricultural sources can therefore reduce a countries energy dependency on other nations. Biofuels also have been shown to reduce CO2 emissions into the atmosphere compared to traditional fossil based fuels. Because of these benefits several countries have set targets for the use of biofuels, especially ethanol, in their transportation fuels. Small percentages of ethanol are common place in gasoline but are typically limited to 5 to 8% by volume. Greater benefits are possible from higher concentrations and some countries such as the US and Sweden have encouraged the production of vehicles capable of operating on E85 (85% denatured ethanol and 15% gasoline). E85 capable vehicles are normally equipped to run the higher levels of ethanol by employing modified fuel delivery systems that can withstand the highly corrosive nature of the alcohol. These vehicles are not however equipped to take full advantage of ethanol's properties during the combustion process. Ethanol has a much higher blend research octane number than gasoline. This allows the use …

This report discusses the Air Force's planned procurement of 350 new Advanced Pilot Training (APT T-X) aircraft and 46 Ground Based Training Systems (GBTS) at a cost valued at roughly $1.5 billion for the Research, Design, Test, and Evaluation phase of the program and estimated at $18 billion in future procurement costs. The APT T-X acquisition strategy poses potential oversight issues for Congress, including the following: Is the number of planned aircraft purchases sufficient? Given the reported pilot shortage, should the procurement be accelerated? What effects do increased F-35A & KC-46 purchases, along with development of the new Long Range Strike Bomber, B-21, have on the USAF budget and the feasibility of an additional Major Defense Acquisition Program? These questions and the Air Force's FY 2017 appropriations requests' for the program are addressed in this report.

This list of about 150 congressional liaison offices is intended to help congressional offices in placing telephone calls and addressing correspondence to government agencies. In each case, the information was supplied by the agency itself and is current as of the date of publication. Entries are arranged alphabetically in four sections: legislative branch; judicial branch; executive branch; and agencies, boards, and commissions.

The helium coolant in high-temperature reactors inevitably contains low levels of impurities during steady-state operation, primarily consisting of small amounts of H{sub 2}, H{sub 2}O, CH{sub 4}, CO, CO{sub 2}, and N{sub 2} from a variety of sources in the reactor circuit. These impurities are problematic because they can cause significant long-term corrosion in the structural alloys used in the heat exchangers at elevated temperatures. Currently, the primary candidate materials for intermediate heat exchangers are Alloy 617, Haynes 230, Alloy 800H, and Hastelloy X. This project will evaluate the role of impurities in helium coolant on the stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation and creep crack growth in candidate alloys at elevated temperatures. The project team will: • Evaluate stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation and creep crack initiation and crack growth in the temperature range of 500-850°C in a prototypical helium environment. • Evaluate the effects of oxygen partial pressure on stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation and creep crack growth in impure helium at 500°C, 700°C, and 850°C respectively. • Characterize the microstructure of candidate alloys after long-term exposure to an impure helium environment in order to understand the correlation between stress-assisted grain boundary oxidation, creep crack growth, material composition, and impurities in the …

Advances in next-generation sequencing technologies have enabled single genomes as well as complex environmental samples (metagenomes) to be comprehensively sequenced on a routine basis. Bioinformatics analysis of the resulting sequencing data reveals a continually expanding catalogue of predicted proteins ( 14 million as of April 2011), 75 percent of which are associated with functional annotation (COG, Pfam, Enzyme, Kegg, etc). These predicted proteins cover the full spectrum of known pathways and functional activities, including many novel biocatalysts that are expected to significantly contribute to the development of clean technologies including biomass degradation, lipid transformation for biodiesel generation, intermediates for polymer production, carbon capture, and bioremediation.