Reclamation with Recovery of Radionuclides and Toxic Metals from Contaminated Materials, Soils, and Wastes

A process has been developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) for the removal of metals and radionuclides from contaminated materials, soils, and waste sites. In this process, citric acid, a naturally occurring organic complexing agent, is used to extract metals such as Ba, Cd, Cr, Ni, Zn, and radionuclides Co, Sr, Th, and U from solid wastes by formation of water soluble, metal-citrate complexes. Citric acid forms different types of complexes with the transition metals and actinides, and may involve formation of a bidentate, tridentate, binuclear, or polynuclear complex species. The extract containing radionuclide/metal complex is then subjected to microbiological degradation followed by photochemical degradation under aerobic conditions. Several metal citrate complexes are biodegraded, and the metals are recovered in a concentrated form with the bacterial biomass. Uranium forms binuclear complex with citric acid and is not biodegraded. The supernatant containing uranium citrate complex is separated and upon exposure to light, undergoes rapid degradation resulting in the formation of an insoluble, stable polymeric form of uranium. Uranium is recovered as a precipitate (polyuranate) in a concentrated form for recycling or for appropriate disposal. This treatment process, unlike others which use caustic reagents, does not create additional hazardous wastes for disposal and causes little damage to soil which can then be returned to normal use

Explaining how to play real-time strategy games

Real-time strategy games share many aspects with real situations in domains such as battle planning, air traffic control, and emergency response team management which makes them appealing test-beds for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning. End-user annotations could help to provide supplemental information for learning algorithms, especially when training data is sparse. This paper presents a formative study to uncover how experienced users explain game play in real-time strategy games. We report the results of our analysis of explanations and discuss their characteristics that could support the design of systems for use by experienced real-time strategy game users in specifying or annotating strategy-oriented behavior

The Effect of Plant Cover on Soil Temperature

Soil temperature measurements made at Iowa State College in connection with studies in the germination of tree seeds, indicated that soil temperature at various depths under maple-linden cover was lower throughout the winter than it was under shrub cover (Meginnis). As this was at variance with measurements taken in the more mesophytic regions of eastern United States and Europe, a more careful study of the effect of different types of plant cover on soil temperature was considered advisable

Nucleosynthesis: Stellar and Solar Abundances and Atomic Data

Abundance observations indicate the presence of often surprisingly large amounts of neutron capture (i.e., s- and r-process) elements in old Galactic halo and globular cluster stars. These observations provide insight into the nature of the earliest generations of stars in the Galaxy -- the progenitors of the halo stars -- responsible for neutron-capture synthesis. Comparisons of abundance trends can be used to understand the chemical evolution of the Galaxy and the nature of heavy element nucleosynthesis. In addition age determinations, based upon long-lived radioactive nuclei abundances, can now be obtained. These stellar abundance determinations depend critically upon atomic data. Improved laboratory transition probabilities have been recently obtained for a number of elements. These new gf values have been used to greatly refine the abundances of neutron-capture elemental abundances in the solar photosphere and in very metal-poor Galactic halo stars. The newly determined stellar abundances are surprisingly consistent with a (relative) Solar System r-process pattern, and are also consistent with abundance predictions expected from such neutron-capture nucleosynthesis.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. To appear in the Proceedings of the NASA Laboratory Astrophysics Workshop in Las Vegas, NV (February 2006

Puzzling It Out: The Current State of Scientific Knowledge on Pre-Kindergarten Effects - A Consensus Statement

Scientific research has established that if all children are to achieve their developmental potential, it is important to lay the foundation during the earliest years for lifelong health, learning, and positive behavior. A central question is how well our public pre-kindergarten (pre-K) programs are doing to build this foundation.Forty-two states and the District of Columbia, through 57 pre-K programs, have introduced substantial innovations in their early education systems by developing the infrastructure, program sites, and workforce required to accommodate pre-K education. These programs now serve nearly 30 percent of the nation's 4-year-olds and 5 percent of 3-year-olds

BNL Citric Acid Technology: Pilot Scale Demonstration

The objective of this project is to remove toxic metals such as lead and cadmium from incinerator ash using the Citric Acid Process developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory. In this process toxic metals in bottom ash from the incineration of municipal solid waste were first extracted with citric acid followed by biodegradation of the citric acid-metal extract by the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens for metals recovery. The ash contained the following metals: Al, As, Ba, Ca, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Ni, Pb, Se, Sr, Ti, and Zn. Optimization of the Citric Acid Process parameters which included citric acid molarity, contact time, the impact of mixing aggressiveness during extraction and pretreatment showed lead and cadmium removal from incinerator ash of >90%. Seeding the treated ash with P. fluorescens resulted in the removal of residual citric acid and biostabilization of any leachable lead, thus allowing it to pass EPA?s Toxicity Characteristic Leaching Procedure. Biodegradation of the citric acid extract removed >99% of the lead from the extract as well as other metals such as Al, Ca, Cu, Fe, Mg, Mn, Ti, and Zn. Speciation of the bioprecipitated lead by Extended X-ray Absorption Fine Structure at the National Synchrotron Light Source showed that the lead is predominantly associated with the phosphate and carboxyl functional groups in a stable form. Citric acid was completely recovered (>99%) from the extract by sulfide precipitation technique and the extraction efficiency of recovered citric acid is similar to that of the fresh citric acid. Recycling of the citric acid should result in considerable savings in the overall treatment cost. We have shown the potential application of this technology to remove and recover the metal contaminants from incinerator ash as well as from other heavy metal bearing wastes (i.e., electric arc furnace dust from steel industry) or soils. Information developed from this project is being applied to demonstrate the remediation of lead paint contaminated soils on Long Island