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2006

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Statistical Models For Right-Turn Related Crashes At High Crash Locations In The Las Vegas Valley, Paul John Villaluz Jan 2006

Statistical Models For Right-Turn Related Crashes At High Crash Locations In The Las Vegas Valley, Paul John Villaluz

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The research objective was to develop a statistical model that related right-turn related crashes (RTRC) to volumetric factors at High Crash Locations (HCL) in the Las Vegas Valley. Information from selected HCL was analyzed with simple bivariate regression analysis and multiple regression analysis; Response variables included the number of RTRC, the ratio of RTRC/Million Entering Vehicles (MEV), and the ratio of RTRC/Total Intersection Crashes. Predictor variables included Right-Turn Volume, Right-Turn-On-Red Volume, Red Time/Cycle Time Percentage, Cross Product (per 1000 Vehicles) of Right-Turn Volumes and Opposing Through Volumes [Cross Product], Frequency of Gaps greater than 6.5 seconds [Gaps > 6.5 s], and …

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The Effects Of Local Muscle Fatigue On Shock Attenuation Characteristics During Running, Kaori Teramoto Jan 2006

The Effects Of Local Muscle Fatigue On Shock Attenuation Characteristics During Running, Kaori Teramoto

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine shock attenuation (SA) characteristics as well as stride characteristics before and after a fatigue protocol of the ankle dorsiflexors while running on a treadmill. Thirteen females (25.4 +/- 3.8 yrs; 63.2 +/- 8.9 kg; 164.3 +/- 3.1 cm) ran at the same (preferred) speed prior to and following bilateral local muscle fatigue of the ankle dorsiflexors. The fatigue protocol consisted of five sets of maximal concentric and eccentric contractions with a 15-second rest between the sets. Accelerometers (1004 Hz) were securely mounted on the distal aspect of the tibia and on the …

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Monitoring Of A Zero Energy House, Sandor Ferenc Rosta Jan 2006

Monitoring Of A Zero Energy House, Sandor Ferenc Rosta

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

A comparative study is conducted to measure the actual performance of a Zero Energy House design. Ideally, a zero energy house produces as much energy as it consumes in a year's time. Two identically-sized houses (1610 ft2), constructed side-by-side in southwest Las Vegas, Nevada, are equipped with a network of sensors that measure many aspects of energy usage in each home. One house serves as a baseline (standard comparison) house and was built using conventional construction techniques. The other house, the Zero Energy House, employs many energy saving features, solar power generation, and supplemental solar water heating. Both houses are …

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Development Of An Integrated Process Simulation System Model For Spent Fuel Treatment Facility (Sftf) Design, Matthew S Hodges Jan 2006

Development Of An Integrated Process Simulation System Model For Spent Fuel Treatment Facility (Sftf) Design, Matthew S Hodges

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Major issues concerning nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain are that of safety and long term disposal. Approximately one percent of the content of spent nuclear fuel is that which is responsible for nearly all the long-term associated health risks. The removal and transmutation of this content will render the toxicity of the remaining waste to that of natural uranium within a few hundred years. The research contained in this thesis details several simulations that are involved in the overall removal process. The first objective was to test the feasibility of the design of a distillation column that will separate …

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Permanent Record, Jonathan Bauch Jan 2006

Permanent Record, Jonathan Bauch

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Permanent Record is a collection of loosely connected short stories, told primarily in the first person (framed by a prologue and epilogue in other points of view), taking place on Staten Island; New York, during the 1980s. Tracing the character's development from his bar mitzvah through college, the stories deal primarily with a young man's attempt to reconcile his feelings of rebellion---against his parents, teachers, tradition, etc.---with his growing awareness of the Judaism instilled in him as a child. As much as the character tries to distance himself from his parents and their religious values, he becomes increasingly aware how …

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Bootstrap Estimation Of Standard Error Of Ridge Estimates, Mira Capur Jan 2006

Bootstrap Estimation Of Standard Error Of Ridge Estimates, Mira Capur

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

In multiple linear regression (MLR) the parameter estimates based on the method of least squares are typically unsatisfactory if the predictors are highly correlated. Ridge regression proposes a remedy to multicollinearity problems by modifying the method of least squares to allow biased estimation of the regression coefficients. This is a procedure that involves adding a small positive constant to the diagonal elements of X'X before numerically inverting it. The ridge regression method typically yields biased estimates with smaller mean square error. This thesis deals with estimating the standard errors of ridge estimates using bootstrap resampling. With code developed in R …

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Dose Comparison Of Multi-Slice Computed Tomography Scanners, James J Kelley Jan 2006

Dose Comparison Of Multi-Slice Computed Tomography Scanners, James J Kelley

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The rapid technological advances in CT over the past 30 years have resulted in a steady increase in the number of CT scans being performed annually, making it the major source of exposure to the population via diagnostic x-rays. With this increased utilization, the concerns over patient radiation doses from CT have also grown. Although CT studies only amount to about 5% of all X-ray examinations, it contributes approximately 40% of the collective dose from diagnostic radiology to the population. This fact has made CT dosimetry an important topic in diagnostic radiology today. The introduction of multislice scanners has focused …

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An Arima-Model-Based Approach With Hazard Area For The Probability Of Volcanic Disruption Of The Proposed High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositiory At Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Usa, Xiaojuan Liu Jan 2006

An Arima-Model-Based Approach With Hazard Area For The Probability Of Volcanic Disruption Of The Proposed High-Level Radioactive Waste Repositiory At Yucca Mountain, Nevada, Usa, Xiaojuan Liu

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

An interesting extension of advanced time-series analysis techniques is introduced into the domain of volcanological data exploration. A new and innovative use of the well-known ARIMA method for modeling the recurrence rate of volcanism ranging from simple Poissonian volcanoes to those showing cyclic trends is presented. Specifically, we propose a new tool to fingerprint the eruptive behavior of a volcano, which also links some modeling tools of two of the most developed areas in the literature of statistics: stochastic processes and time series. Valuable modeling and computing insights are discussed using a data set from the volcanic database at Yucca …

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Adaptive Design Of Delta Sigma Modulators, Gregory Kenneth Lull Jan 2006

Adaptive Design Of Delta Sigma Modulators, Gregory Kenneth Lull

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, a genetic algorithm based on differential evolution (DE) is used to generate delta sigma modulator (DSM) noise transfer functions (NTFs). These NTFs outperform those generated by an iterative approach described by Schreier and implemented in the delsig Matlab toolbox. Several lowpass and bandpass DSMs, as well as DSM's designed specifically for and very low intermediate frequency (VLIF) receivers are designed using the algorithm developed in this thesis and compared to designs made using the delsig toolbox. The NTFs designed using the DE algorithm always have a higher dynamic range and signal to noise ratio than those designed …

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Tensile Properties, Fracture Toughness And Crack Growth Study Of Alloy C-276, Joydeep Pal Jan 2006

Tensile Properties, Fracture Toughness And Crack Growth Study Of Alloy C-276, Joydeep Pal

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The results of tensile testing involving austenitic Alloy C-276 indicated that this material is capable of maintaining adequate structural strength at temperatures relevant to the H2SO4 decomposition process related to the nuclear hydrogen generation. This alloy exhibited a unique phenomenon known as dynamic strain aging, which has been studied as a function of both temperature and strain rate. An average value of 55 KJ/mole has been determined to be the activation energy for plastic deformation under tensile loading at different temperatures. Increased crack extension was observed in wedge-loaded double-cantilever-beam specimens exposed to an acidic solution and subjected to higher initial …

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Robust Speaker Identification Using Artificial Neural Networks, Madhavan Sivathanu Pillai Jan 2006

Robust Speaker Identification Using Artificial Neural Networks, Madhavan Sivathanu Pillai

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This research mainly focuses on recognizing the speakers through their speech samples. Numerous "Text-Dependent" or "Text-Independent" algorithms have been developed by people so far, to recognize the speaker from his/her speech. In this thesis, we concentrate on the recognition of the speaker from the fixed text i.e. "Text-Dependent". Possibility of extending this method to variable text i.e. "Text-Independent" is also analyzed. Different feature extraction algorithms are employed and their performance with Artificial Neural Networks as a Data Classifier on a fixed training set is analyzed. We find a way to combine all these individual feature extraction algorithms by incorporating their …

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Statistical Modeling Via Empirical Recurrence Rate, Hui Wang Jan 2006

Statistical Modeling Via Empirical Recurrence Rate, Hui Wang

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

A key parameter, most sought after by the modelers of reliability, is the failure rate of a targeted repairable system. Popular modeling techniques based on a point process such as the Power-law process often are handicapped by the requirement of a monotonic failure rate. In this thesis, we show the potential of building a linking bridge between the traditional homogeneous and nonhomogeneous Poisson processes and the classical time series via a sequence of the empirical recurrence rates, calculated at equally spaced intervals of time. The distinctive signature, marking the unique failure pattern of a repairable system, is displayed with an …

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Answers The Dog Whispered, Allison Marie Wilkins Jan 2006

Answers The Dog Whispered, Allison Marie Wilkins

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

A woman writing must learn to fuse all of her identities in order to be true to herself and her writing. She must think about the issues that affect all women, and then she must decide how to handle them herself. These issues are what make up the body of poetry in "Answers the Dog Whispered". The poems are about answering the questions that life asks of a woman; The poems range in topic from motherhood to grief, erotic love to family, relationships to writing. Their common unifying theme is a strong woman's voice that pushes the boundaries between the …

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Literature Based Discovery: Techniques And Tools, Ramalakshmi Sundar Jan 2006

Literature Based Discovery: Techniques And Tools, Ramalakshmi Sundar

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Literature Based Discovery (LBD) was initially proposed by Don R. Swanson in 1980 as a method to establish relationships between disease and remedy from disjoint science literature. Consequently, he established a link between magnesium and migraines. Since then literature based discovery has been a subject of research and development for discovery in online medical publications. It has further been investigated in both chemistry and mathematics; In this thesis, we give an overview of LBD and the software tools necessary to automate this technique. We further provide an implementation of this technique that is intended to be used for computer science …

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Application Of Computational Fluid Dynamics For High Energy Efficiency Design With Human Comfort Of Cad-Vav And Ufad Systems, Bhanu Rekha Bandhakavi Jan 2006

Application Of Computational Fluid Dynamics For High Energy Efficiency Design With Human Comfort Of Cad-Vav And Ufad Systems, Bhanu Rekha Bandhakavi

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This thesis deals with the numerical simulation of the ceiling air distribution (CAD) system and the Under Floor Air Distribution (UFAD) system based on the dimensions of BTLab at UNLV. Ceiling Air Distribution (CAD) with variable air volume (VAV) and Under Floor Air Distribution (UFAD) systems have been widely used in different countries. CAD-VAV and UFAD systems designs have been influenced by increasing emphasis on indoor air quality (IAQ), energy conservation, environmental effects, safety, and economics. So, 3-D Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis technique was applied to design high energy efficiency and human comfort CAD-VAV and UFAD systems. The goal …

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Arima Models For Forecasting Poisson Process Observations: Application To The Volcanoes Worldwide, Heng-Wei Cheng Jan 2006

Arima Models For Forecasting Poisson Process Observations: Application To The Volcanoes Worldwide, Heng-Wei Cheng

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

A nonhomogeneous Poisson process (NHPP) is often appropriate for the modeling of a series of events that occur over time in a nonstationary fashion. A major difficulty with the NHPP is that it has infinitely many forms for the intensity function. In this thesis, we propose a linking bridge between a point process and the classical time series via a sequence of the empirical recurrence rates (ERR), calculated sequentially at equidistant time intervals. The distinctive technique is demonstrated with an ERR-plot, designed to fingerprint the temporal pattern of a point process. Moreover, Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) models are presented …

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Analysis And Evaluation Of Field Retroreflectivity Performance Of Pavement Marking Materials At Various Test Deck Locations In The Us, Siddharth David Jan 2006

Analysis And Evaluation Of Field Retroreflectivity Performance Of Pavement Marking Materials At Various Test Deck Locations In The Us, Siddharth David

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Pavement markings are one of the most important elements of traffic control on roadways. They are lines used on a roadway to warn and direct drivers and to control traffic operations on highways and streets. Pavement markings are typically white and yellow in color depending on usage. Different types of materials are used in the manufacture of pavement markings, including paint, tape, epoxy, thermoplastic, and preformed thermoplastics. Performance measures used to evaluate pavement markings include retroreflectivity, color, and durability; In the US, the National Transportation Product Evaluation Program (NTPEP), administered by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials …

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Environmental Factors Affecting Retention And Graduation In Mlt /Clt Programs, Patricia R Castro Jan 2006

Environmental Factors Affecting Retention And Graduation In Mlt /Clt Programs, Patricia R Castro

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The quality of education delivered to medical laboratory technician/clinical laboratory technician (MLT/CLT) students has been an evolving concern for the clinical laboratory sciences profession. This situation prompted consideration of various factors in MLT/CLT education to determine if student/program characteristics affected student performance; Principles extracted from Alexander Astin's Input-Environment-Output (I-E-O) model were used as a foundation for considering the factors that affect MLT/CLT program student outcomes. Input, environmental, and outcome variables related to MLT/CLT programs were identified for study; A literature review was conducted to gather information relevant to the development of clinical laboratory science practice and education, curriculum development and …

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Voices From Two Sides Of The Atlantic: A Multiple Case Study Of Women's Leadership, Eva Anneli Adams Jan 2006

Voices From Two Sides Of The Atlantic: A Multiple Case Study Of Women's Leadership, Eva Anneli Adams

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

People learn and adopt cultural values through socialization. "Voices from Two Sides of the Atlantic" is a multiple-case study about the influence of national socialization on women's leadership experiences. The main research question of the study was: Does national enculturation impact how women lead, and if so, how is it reflected in participants' responses?;This study examined leadership experiences of three Finnish and three American women. It investigated how the participants associate their values with their leadership experience and how they perceive the social context in which they grew up influences leadership. The theoretical framework of the study was based on …

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Exploring The Relationship Between Teachers' Beliefs In Mathematics And Their Instructional Practice, Michelle Vander Veldt Jan 2006

Exploring The Relationship Between Teachers' Beliefs In Mathematics And Their Instructional Practice, Michelle Vander Veldt

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study explored the relationship between teachers' beliefs about mathematics and their instructional practices. The personal epistemology of the case study elementary mathematics teachers was documented and analyzed to provide evidence of the connection between teachers' beliefs and practice in an elementary school setting; This study was grounded in a theoretical framework of epistemological world views, particularly the comparison of belief across three epistemological world views: (1) the realist, (2) the contextualist, and (3) the relativist. Three areas of beliefs are addressed in this study: (1) beliefs about curriculum, (2) beliefs about pedagogy, and (3) beliefs about assessment. Through analysis …

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The Effects Of Perceived Teacher Empowerment On Student Achievement, Florence Barker Aitken Jan 2006

The Effects Of Perceived Teacher Empowerment On Student Achievement, Florence Barker Aitken

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceived levels of teacher empowerment in schools showing an increase of student outcomes as well as a decrease of student outcomes on standardized proficiency tests in reading/language arts and mathematics over a three-year period. The relationship between the levels of teachers' perceived empowerment to student achievement was studied as well as specific dimensions of teacher empowerment connected to student outcomes. The instrumentation used in this study was the School Participant Empowerment Scale (SPES) that was developed by researchers Short and Rinehart (1992) and contained six theoretical dimensions of teacher empowerment: (a) …

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An Analysis Of Fiscal Allocations In Elementary Schools Meeting And Not Meeting Ayp, William Roy Michael Barton Jan 2006

An Analysis Of Fiscal Allocations In Elementary Schools Meeting And Not Meeting Ayp, William Roy Michael Barton

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

This study used a sequential explanatory, mixed-methods design to explore the relationship between fiscal decision making and the school improvement planning process at school sites in a large, southwestern school district and the impact those decisions and decision-making processes may have had on student achievement outcomes in elementary schools; The methodology for the study is comprised of two research phases. Phase I included a quantitative analysis of elementary school expenditure patterns across those categories delineated in the Cooper's and Lybrand's Finance Analysis Model databank for a large urban district in the southwest. Comparisons were made across three sub-groups of elementary …

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Social Skills Of Students With Emotional Disabilities: A Technology -Based Intervention, Therese M Cumming Jan 2006

Social Skills Of Students With Emotional Disabilities: A Technology -Based Intervention, Therese M Cumming

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Students with emotional and behavioral disabilities can be some of the most difficult students to keep in the regular school setting, let alone include in general education classes (Desbians & Royer, 2005). Often, higher percentages of students with emotional disabilities are placed in the most restrictive settings (e.g., homebound, hospitals, and residential settings) than students with any other disability (Nelson, Jordan, & Rodrigues-Walling, 2002). One of the keys to success for these students is consistent and systematic instruction in the areas of behavior and social skills (Williams & Reisberg, 2003); The use of multimedia, student-generated social skills lessons coupled with …

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The Principal's Role In Promoting Standards-Based Professional Development, Barbara Jill Presler Jan 2006

The Principal's Role In Promoting Standards-Based Professional Development, Barbara Jill Presler

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to describe principals' and teachers' knowledge of recommended professional development practice as defined by The National Staff Development Council (2001). In addition, the study described teachers' and principals' perceptions of professional development practices in their schools; This study was guided by three research questions: (1) how do principals perceive their own behaviors and activities relative to professional development; (2) how do teachers perceive administrator's behavior and actions relative to professional development; and (3) to what extent did principals base the professional development activities and practices within their schools on the National Staff Development Standards?;This …

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Effects Of Test -Taking Strategy Instruction On High -Functioning Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dal Hee Songlee Jan 2006

Effects Of Test -Taking Strategy Instruction On High -Functioning Adolescents With Autism Spectrum Disorder, Dal Hee Songlee

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are expected to take various forms of tests in general education classrooms, therefore test-taking skills are very important and a necessary tool for students with ASD as they strive for academic success. The Test-Taking Strategy (Hughes, Schumaker, Deshler, & Mercer, 2002) has been found to be useful for students with learning disabilities and emotional behavioral disorders (EBD), but not yet with students with ASD; The purpose of this multiple-probe design study was to investigate the effects of test-taking strategy instruction on high-functioning adolescents with ASD. Specifically, the Test-Taking Strategy (Hughes et al.) was taught …

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Influencing Factors On Plankton Populations In A Desert Man -Made Lake, Steven Weber Jan 2006

Influencing Factors On Plankton Populations In A Desert Man -Made Lake, Steven Weber

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

The purpose of this study was to examine and identify the factors that have influenced changes in phytoplankton and zooplankton assemblages during the initial thirteen years of ecological development of Lake Las Vegas, Clark County, Nevada. Univariate and multivariate statistical methods were used to determine the level of influence lake water chemistry, lake physical characteristics and planktonic groups will have on overall plankton community dynamics. Water quality and plankton population data have been collected since 1991 when the lake began filling through the period of study ending December, 2003; Results indicate the zooplankton biomass was most influenced by conductance, total …

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The Development Of Domain-Specific And Domain-General Metacognitive Monitoring, Brett Douglas Campbell Jan 2006

The Development Of Domain-Specific And Domain-General Metacognitive Monitoring, Brett Douglas Campbell

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Metacognitive monitoring may be a critical element in self-regulated learning. Two types of metacognitive monitoring have been identified: domain-specific and domain-general. Domain-specific metacognitive monitoring occurs when an individual is monitoring content-specific knowledge. Domain-general metacognitive monitoring occurs in situations when content-specific knowledge is not available. Currently no research is available that examines the developmental differences between domain-specific and domain-general metacognitive monitoring in children. This study attempted to address this issue by asking children in first, fourth, and seventh grade to make item-by-item confidence judgments while providing answers in two domain-specific tasks and two domain-general tasks. Two working memory spans tasks were …

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Assessing The Effect Of Group Model Building On Stakeholder Teams Developing Urban Growth Strategies, Michael Francis Dwyer Jan 2006

Assessing The Effect Of Group Model Building On Stakeholder Teams Developing Urban Growth Strategies, Michael Francis Dwyer

UNLV Retrospective Theses & Dissertations

Government in growing cities has a difficult time responding to problems that come with growth. The combination of the complexity of the problem, fragmentation in jurisdictions and responsibilities, and regional consequences produce diverse views of exactly what the problem is, what causes it, and how it is best addressed. The organizational structure of municipal government is not conducive to collaboration. Accordingly, governments have turned increasingly to stakeholder groups to develop growth management strategies. However, these stakeholder groups are not particularly successful. They struggle to achieve consensus even when facilitated and their recommendations often go unimplemented. The question I investigate in …

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Field Trip Survey Results, Public Lands Institute Jan 2006

Field Trip Survey Results, Public Lands Institute

Presentations (PLI Education)

Field Trip Survey Results

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Bomb-Pulse Chlorine-36 At The Proposed Yucca Mountain Repository Horizon: An Investigation Of Previous Conflicting Results And Collection Of New Data, James Cizdziel, Amy J. Smiecinski Jan 2006

Bomb-Pulse Chlorine-36 At The Proposed Yucca Mountain Repository Horizon: An Investigation Of Previous Conflicting Results And Collection Of New Data, James Cizdziel, Amy J. Smiecinski

Publications (YM)

Previous studies by scientists at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) found elevated ratios of chlorine-36 to total chloride (36C1/C1) in samples of rock collected from the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF) and the Enhanced Characterization of the Repository Block (ECRB) at Yucca Mountain as the tunnels were excavated. The data were interpreted as an indication that fluids containing "bomb-pulse" 36C1 reached the repository horizon in the -50 years since the peak period of above-ground nuclear testing. Moreover, the data support the concept that so-called fast pathways for infiltration not only exist but are active, possibly through a combination of porous media, …

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