Digital Commons Network^™

University Of Nevada, Las Vegas Transmutation Research Program Annual Report 2001, Anthony Hechanova, Elizabeth Johnson, Gary Cerefice

Transmutation Research Program Reports (TRP)

The UNLV Transmutation Research Program was established in March 2001 as part of the national Advanced Accelerator Applications program to develop the technologies necessary for the ecological and economical treatment of spent nuclear fuel.

The primary role of the UNLV program in the national effort is the training of graduate and undergraduate students in nuclear engineering and other related fields to support the augmentation of the U.S. human infrastructure for transmutation technologies.

To accomplish this role, UNLV has developed the TRP with the primary focus of supporting student research into transmutation and supporting technologies. This focus is realized through the …

Neutron Multiplicity Measurements Of Target/Blanket Materials, Carter D. Hull, William H. Johnson

Transmutation Sciences Physics (TRP)

To begin developing the database necessary for the validation and benchmarking of the LAHET component of the MCNPX code suite, the UNLV research program has set forth the following objectives. First, the current MCNPX suite will be used to develop models of multi-element neutron detector systems. These models of the detector systems will be incorporated into the design of detailed models for the entire detector-target system. These models will first be used to help design the irradiation experiments, and then will be used to model the behavior of the system. Irradiation experiments corresponding to the detector-target system models will be …

A Dynamic Simulation Model Of Beach Sand Replenishment: A Case Study Of Santa Barbara, California, David Turbow, Steve Norwick, Sajjad Ahmad

Civil and Environmental Engineering and Construction Faculty Research

Sediment deprivation from dam installments contributes to beach erosion yet the underlying physical and economic factors linking them together have traditionally been isolated during regional planning. In order to gain a better understanding of the behavior of a managed beach system, a dynamic simulation model was developed incorporating physical and monetary factors influencing the amount of available beach sand. The Santa Barbara littoral cell was chosen as a case study to evaluate the feasibility of beach preservation goals under scenarios in which annual sand replenishment funding, sand prices, or sediment recovery from behind dams were limiting factors to available beach …

Effective Integration Of Human Factors Into Hse Management Systems, Denise B. Mccafferty, Clifford C. Baker, Kevin P. Mcsweeney, Rodger Holdsworth

United States Department of Transportation: Publications

It is common that offshore operating and drilling companies have policies, procedures, and practices that address Health, Safety, and Environmental (HSE) issues. It is less likely that such organizations will explicitly address (through written requirements) human factors (HF) concerns. Regardless, both HSE and HF are concerned with the same objectives: protecting people, property, and the natural environment from damage. The methods of each examine the job performed by the human, and compare work requirements to the design of hardware, software, and paper systems to allow safe and efficient performance. The perspectives of both disciplines are generally “user-centered” and act as …

Development Of Trip Generation Models Of Hurricane Evacuation, Bing Mei

LSU Master's Theses

In this study, alternative trip generation models for hurricane evacuation movement were developed using logistic regression and neural networks. The southwest Louisiana post-Andrew survey data were used for model estimation, validation, and comparison. The performance of the alternative models was compared with each other as well as against that of an existing evacuation model, the PBS&J model, developed for the same area. The results showed that the models developed in this study displayed similar performance. It was also found that the models developed in this study performed better than the existing PBS&J model in predicting household evacuation trip generation for …

University Of Nevada, Las Vegas Advanced Accelerator Applications University Participation Program: Quarterly Report, Third Quarter (September To November 2001), Anthony Hechanova

Transmutation Research Program Reports (TRP)

This Quarterly Report is a primary deliverable from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) University Participation Program (UPP) Director to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as described in the UNLV AAA proposal and Statement of Work for the Third Quarter.

The UNLV AAA UPP Director implements the program’s administration using staff from the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies (HRC) to ensure that work conducted under the UNLV AAA UPP meets program objectives. The UNLV AAA UPP consists of three components: Program Support, Research Infrastructure Augmentation, and Student Research.

Radiation Transport Modeling Of Beam-Target Experiments For The Aaa Project: Quaterly Report, William Culbreth

Reactor Campaign (TRP)

The national development of technology to transmute nuclear waste depends upon the generation of high energy neutrons produced by proton spallation. Proton accelerators, such as LANSCE at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, are capable of producing 800 MeV protons. By bombarding a lead/bismuth target, each proton may generate 500 or more neutrons that can activate fission products or induce the fission of transuranic isotopes.

The Monte Carlo radiation transport code MCNPX developed at LANL is an important tool in the design of transmuter technology. It must be validated, however, for the neutron energy that will be employed. Experiments are being …

Nuclear Criticality Analyses Of Separations Processes For The Transmutation Fuel Cycle: Quaterly Report, William Culbreth, Pang Tao

Separations Campaign (TRP)

During the first quarter of the work, the tasks included training students in the use of Monte Carlo codes used in radiation transport studies and the assessment of neutron multiplication factors for specific problems outlined by ANL-East through Drs. Laidler and Vandegrift.

The proposal also included objectives for the first year of work on this project, as listed below. The work conducted in the first quarter of the project was in partial completion of these objectives.

• Train UNLV students in the use of SCALE and/or MCNP for the assessment of nuclear criticality.

• Assess neutron multiplication factor, k_{eff …}

Ua3/9/5 Partnerships For Progress: Linking Higher Education & Economic Development, Wku President's Office, Gary A. Ransdell

WKU Administration Documents

Speech delivered by WKU president Gary Ransdell at the National Governor's Association Center for Best Practices. In response to Governor Patton's challenges to create Programs of Distinction and enhance the state's capacity for economic development, we, at Western, have created a series of applied science centers. These centers are directing faculty talent toward creating a relevant curriculum in the sciences, toward solving environmental and material problems which limit economic development, and toward creating practice-based experiences for students. A by-product of these centers is a strengthened core curriculum which brings the applied sciences into focus for all WKU students.

University Of Nevada, Las Vegas Advanced Accelerator Applications University Participation Program: Quarterly Report, Second Quarter (June To August 2001), Anthony Hechanova

Transmutation Research Program Reports (TRP)

This Quarterly Report is a primary deliverable from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) University Participation Program (UPP) Director to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as described in the UNLV AAA proposal.

The UNLV AAA UPP Director implements the program’s administration using staff from the Harry Reid Center for Environmental Studies (HRC) to ensure that work conducted under the UNLV AAA UPP meets program objectives. The UNLV AAA UPP consists of three components: Program Administration, Research Infrastructure Augmentation, and Student Research.

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 43 Number 2, Fall 2001, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

4 - A GRAND WEEKEND By Adam Breen. At the Grand Anniversary Weekend in June, thousands of alumni, family, and friends gathered to celebrate 150 years of Santa Clara University.

12 - MUSICAL CHAIRS By Jacqueline Tasch. Peter Minowitz loves an audience, whether it is the students in his political science classes or the jazz lovers in local clubs.

14 - ASK THE EXPERTS By Elizabeth Kelley Gillogly '93. Santa Clara University ambassadors help recruit future Broncos.

16 - LESSONS FROM EL SALVADOR By Douglas Sweet. Faculty and students reflect on a spring break "immersion" trip, which for some was …

Integration Of E-Business Strategy For Multi-Lifecycle Production Systems, Yanchun Luo

Dissertations

Internet use has grown exponentially on the last few years becoming a global communication and business resource. Internet-based business, or e-Business will truly affect every sector of the economy in ways that today we can only imagine. The manufacturing sector will be at the forefront of this change. This doctoral dissertation provides a scientific framework and a set of novel decision support tools for evaluating, modeling, and optimizing the overall performance of e-Business integrated multi-lifecycle production systems. The characteristics of this framework include environmental lifecycle study, environmental performance metrics, hyper-network model of integrated e-supply chain networks, fuzzy multi-objective optimization method, …

Radiation Transport Modeling Of Beam-Target Experiments For The Aaa Project, William Culbreth

Reactor Campaign (TRP)

The AAA program will rely on the use of an accelerator-based transmuter to expose spent nuclear fuel to high-energy neutrons. The neutron flux will be sufficient to activate or fission the long-lived isotopes of Tc, I, Pu, Am, Cm, and Np that present a significant safety hazard in commercial spent fuel. Transmuter fuel will be subcritical and a high-energy proton accelerator is needed to maintain the necessary neutron flux through the use of a neutron spallation target. The maximum neutron energy produced by spallation (~ 600 MeV) is significantly higher than that produced by a commercial light water reactor (~ …

Nuclear Criticality Analyses Of Separations Processes For The Transmutation Fuel Cycle, William Culbreth, Pang Tao

Separations Campaign (TRP)

To mitigate the waste created by conventional fission reactors, spent nuclear fuel must be mechanically separated from its cladding. For the development of fuel processing technology to support the Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) Program, aqueous and pyrochemical processes will be used to further separate technetium and iodine, uranium and the higher actinides (see Figure 1 for an example of the process layout)1. The higher actinides, including plutonium, americium, curium, and neptunium will be separated from the waste to facilitate their fabrication into new fuel for placement in a transmuter. High-energy neutrons generated by spallation in the transmuter break down these …

University Of Nevada, Las Vegas Advanced Accelerator Applications University Participation Program: Quarterly Report First Quarter (March-May 2001), Anthony Hechanova

Transmutation Research Program Reports (TRP)

This Quarterly Report is a primary deliverable from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) University Participation Program (UPP) director to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology (DOE-NE) as defined in the UNLV AAA Proposal.

The foundation of the UNLV AAA University Participation Program started as a grassroots effort in the late 1990s among community members and local, state, and federal representatives to encourage research and development of technical alternatives to direct disposal of used nuclear fuel which had been targeted since the early 1980s for Yucca Mountain, Nevada. A …

Automatic Referencing Of Satellite And Radar Images, Sreenath Srikrishnan, Roberto Araiza, Hongjie Xie, Scott A. Starks, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In order to adequately process satellite and radar information, it is necessary to find the exact correspondence between different types of images and between these images and the existing maps. In other words, we need to reference these images. In this paper, we propose new methods for automatic referencing of satellite and radar images.

2-D Analogues Of Allen Interval Algebra For Image Analysis: Towards Justification, Scott A. Starks, Dima Iourinski, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In reasoning about time and duration, researchers often use Allen's Interval Algebra. This algebra describes possible relations between 1-D intervals. An interval can precede the other one, follow the other one, start the other one, etc. This algebra describes the relationship between different intervals in terms of words from natural language. To give a natural language description of 2D images, it is desirable to develop a similar approach for describing the relationship between 2-D objects in a picture. In their recent papers, Jim Keller and his collaborators proposed a new approach based on a simulation of a ``force" between these …

Interval Methods In Remote Sensing: Reliable Sub-Division Of Geological Areas, David D. Coblentz, George R. Keller, Vladik Kreinovich, Jan Beck, Scott A. Starks

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

No abstract provided.

Towards Automatic Detection Of Erroneous Measurement Results In A Gravity Database, Qian Wen, Ann Q. Gates, Jan Beck, Vladik Kreinovich, George R. Keller

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Geospatial databases often contain erroneous measurements. For some such databases such as gravity databases, the known methods of detecting erroneous measurements -- based on regression analysis -- do not work well. As a result, to clean such databases, experts use manual methods which are very time-consuming. In this paper, we propose a (natural) "localized" version of regression analysis as a technique for automatic cleaning. We illustrate the efficiency of this technique on the example of the gravity database.

Towards More Realistic (E.G., Non-Associative) And- And Or-Operations In Fuzzy Logic, Jesus Martinez, Leopoldo Macias, Ammar Esper, Jesus Chaparro, Vick Alvarado, Scott A. Starks, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

How is fuzzy logic usually formalized? There are many seemingly reasonable requirements that a logic should satisfy: e.g., since A&B and B&A are the same, the corresponding and-operation should be commutative. Similarly, since A&A means the same as A, we should expect that the and-operation should also satisfy this property, etc. It turns out to be impossible to satisfy all these seemingly natural requirements, so usually, some requirements are picked as absolutely true (like commutativity or associativity), and others are ignored if they contradict to the picked ones. This idea leads to a neat mathematical theory, but the analysis of …

Simulation Modeling For Integrated E-Supply Chain Management, Pornsarun Wirojanagud

Theses

E-supply chain management is an emerging area of interest as companies begin to explore the Internet's potential to restructure supply chain relationships. The environmental impact of e-supply chain management is a critical issue towards sustainability. This thesis discusses and models an integrated e-supply chain network accounting for material and information flows throughout the supply chain in order to analyze the environmental implications and tradeoffis with other system characteristics. The network structure has complex interactions between various entities. In order to understand and analyze dynamic performance, a discrete-event simulation approach is utilized. An integrated tool was developed using the Arena simulation …

Computational Complexity Of Planning With Temporal Goals, Chitta Baral, Vladik Kreinovich, Raul A. Trejo

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the last decade, there has been several studies on the computational complexity of planning. These studies normally assume that the goal of planning is to make a certain fluent true after the sequence of actions. In many real-life planning problems, the goal is represented in a much more complicated temporal form: e.g., in addition to having a desired fluent true at the end, we may want to keep certain fluents true at all times. In this paper, we study the complexity of planning for such temporal goals. We show that for goals expressible in Linear Temporal Logic, planning has …

Assessing The Economic Impact Of Aircraft Noise On Communities, Ithan B. Zimmer

Dissertations

The impact of aircraft noise on communities is complex and multi-dimensional. This matter cannot be resolved without careful analysis of a complex array of related problems and issues including the environment, the economy, and quality-of-life concerns of people living in proximity to airports or aircraft routes. The effects of community noise are widespread and varied. Impacts can include sleep and speech interference, activity interference, general annoyance, and property value decrease. In order to improve public policy and provide a foundation for additional research, it is imperative to establish the extent of a problem. Dollars are often the least common denominator …

Aerospace Applications Of Soft Computing And Interval Computations (With An Emphasis On Simulation And Modeling), Scott A. Starks, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

This paper presents a brief overview of our research in applications of soft computing and interval computations to aerospace problems, with a special emphasis on simulation and modeling.

Towards Reliable Sub-Division Of Geological Areas: Interval Approach, David D. Coblentz, Vladik Kreinovich, Brian S. Penn, Scott A. Starks

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

An appropriate subdivision of a geophysical area into segments enables us to extrapolate the results obtained in some locations within the segment (where extensive research was done) to other locations within the same segment, and thus, get a good understanding of the locations which weren't thoroughly analyzed.

Often, different evidence and different experts' intuition support different subdivisions schemes. For example, in our area - Rio Grande rift zone - there is some geochemical evidence that this zone is divided into three segments, but, in the viewpoint of many researchers, this evidence is not yet sufficiently convincing.

We show that if …

Final Environmental Impact Statement - Iron Point Exploraton License - Iron Point Coal Lease Tract - Elk Creek Coal Lease Tract, Volume 2, United States Department Of Agriculture -- Forest Service, United States Department Of The Interior -- Bureau Of Land Management

Environmental Assessments (CO)

This appendix documents BLM and Forest Service activities to involve and consult with other government agencies and the public in the preparation of the Final EIS for the potential leasing of the Iron Point and Elk Creek Coal lease tracts, as well as the issuance of a coal exploration license for an area within and surrounding the Iron Point Coal lease Tract.

New Treatment Combinations For Vegetation Management Along Indiana Roadsides, D. James Morré

JTRP Technical Reports

This report represents results from a project for research to develop and implement new treatment mixtures for control of problem brush, trees and other woody species and herbicide-resistant weeds along Indiana roadsides. An environmentally safe mixture of trichlopyr (Galon Herbicide) and ammonium nitrate for one application control of deciduous roadside vegetation was developed. Also discovered and developed was a new, environmentally safe and effective TR series of additives that enhance the action of the auxin herbicides (trichlopyr, 2,4-D, picloram) for inclusion in both the brush control mixtures and control of milkweed, Canada thistle, bindweed, ground cherry and other perennial, herbicide-resistant …

Aerospace Applications Of Soft Computing And Interval Computations (With An Emphasis On Multi-Spectral Satellite Imaging), Scott A. Starks, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

This paper presents a brief overview of our research in applications of soft computing and interval computations to aerospace problems, with a special emphasis on multi-spectralsatellite imaging.

Geombinatoric Aspects Of Processing Large Images And Large Spatial Databases, Jan Beck, Vladik Kreinovich, Brian Penn

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Computer processing can drastically improve the quality of an image and the reliability and accuracy of a spatial database. A large image (database) does not easily fit into the computer memory, so we process it by downloading pieces of the image. Each downloading takes a lot of time, so, to speed up the entire processing, we must use as few pieces as possible.

Many algorithms for processing images and spatial databases consist of comparing the value at a certain spatial location with values at nearby locations. For such algorithms, we must select (possibly overlapping) sub-images in such a way that …

An Optimal Fft-Based Algorithm For Mosaicking Images, With Applications To Satellite Imaging And Web Search, Stephen Gibson, Olga Kosheleva, Luc Longpre, Brian Penn, Scott A. Starks

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Digital data storage is becoming ever more abundant and cheap. This, along with other technological advances, has brought about an age of mass storage of information, much of it in the form of images. In order to be able to process these stockpiles of image data, new and faster computer algorithms are needed.

One area of interest is that of image mosaicking, i.e., comparing two overlapping images and finding the proper scaling, angle of rotation, and translation needed to fit one with the other. Early methods for mosaicking images included visual inspection or exhaustive, pixel by pixel, search for the …