The purpose of this study was to determine whether the presence of a dog would have an impact on object recognition memory performance of preschool children. This work represents an extension of previous research which found that preschoolers require fewer instructional prompts to complete this type of memory task when in the presence of a dog. If children require fewer instructional prompts it is possible that they are better able to focus on the task itself and as a result, improved memory performance is likely. Because the earlier experiment utilized a very simple version of the task that was readily completed by the preschool children, the overall performance data were at ceiling. The current study, involving 20 preschool children, included a manipulation of task difficulty through varying the number of distracters (one versus four) present at test. Increasing the number of distractors in a simple recognition task is known to make that task more challenging, and thus performance was expected to be slower and less accurate in the four distracter conditions relative to the one-distracter conditions. The collaborators in the study were either a therapy dog or a human. A two-way repeated measures design was used such that each child served as his/her own control and was tested in each of four separate conditions: dog present (one and four distracters) and human present (one and four distracters). The results showed that the preschool children performed the object recognition task faster and more accurately in the presence of the therapy dog relative to a human and also in the one-distracter versus four-distracter condition. The authors conclude that these effects result from increased focus and/or motivation resulting from the presence of the dog. 289Anthrozoös

Thanks to the personnel in the laboratories that supported these tests including Whitney Riley, Kandice Miles, and Kim Wyszynski in the Process Science Analytical Laboratory and Tom White in SRNL's Analytical Development. Thanks to Bill Holtzscheiter, Grace Chen, Stephanie Harrington, and Christie Sudduth for their support in planning these experiments. Jack Zamecnik thanks Dan Lambert and Matt Siegfried for completing this report upon his retirement from SRNL.

No abstract

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) is evaluating the use of glycolic acid as a mercury reductant instead of formic acid during the processing of radioactive waste in the chemical processing cell (CPC). Glycolic acid has been shown to possess improved handling and processing properties when compared to formic acid. An improved method of analysis for glycolic acid by ion chromatography (IC) was developed in support of the alternative reductant flowsheet and applied to simulated Slurry Reciept and Adjustment Tank (SRAT) product and Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) product. The method, termed caustic quench (CQ), involves adjusting the pH of 10 g slurry samples with 2 g of 50% NaOH, diluting by with water to within the calibration curve, and analyzing the dilution by IC. The method was verified by comparing to an IC method where the samples were not pH adjusted, comparing to total organic carbon (TOC) analyses, and comparing to bench-scale chemical processing cell (CPC) off-gas data. A further comparison was made to a supernate method where supernate is analyzed by IC and calculated to a slurry basis. The glycolate method was confirmed at a second laboratory.

In this report, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) provides chemical analyses and Product Consistency Test (PCT) results for a series of simulated Low-Activity Waste (LAW) glass compositions. A procedure developed at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for producing sulfur saturated melts (SSMs) was carried out at both SRNL and PNNL to fabricate the glasses characterized in this report. This method includes triplicate melting steps with excess sodium sulfate, followed by grinding and washing to remove unincorporated sulfur salts. The wash solutions were also analyzed as part of this study. These data will be used in the development of improved property/composition models for LAW glass.Chemical analyses were performed on a representative sample of each of the baseline and sulfur saturated glasses to allow for comparisons with the targeted compositions. An additional dissolution technique, sodium peroxide fusion with the addition of sulfuric acid, was used to obtain improved measurements of the P and Zr concentrations of the study glasses. Minor differences between the targeted and measured concentrations of some of the baseline (quenched) glass components were noted. The measured concentrations of several components of the SSM glasses were low as compared to those of the quenched versions. The measured SO3 concentrations were higher for SSM versions of the study glasses, as expected.The PCT Method-A was performed in triplicate on each of the quenched and canister centerline cooled (CCC) versions of the baseline glasses to assess chemical durability. It was noted that some of the leachates had a yellow color after the PCT. For some of the study glasses, the CCC heat treatment resulted in increased normalized release values as compared to those of the quenched versions. Several of the study glasses have normalized concentration (NCi) values that are higher than those of the Hanford Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) contract limit of 2.0 g/m 2 (~4 g/L) for B, Na, and Si.Chemical analyses were also performed on a representative sample of each of the wash solutions resulting from the preparation of the SSM versions of the study glasses. The measured concentrations of B, Ca, Cr, K, and V in the wash solutions may be related to the lower measured values for these components noted in the SSM versions of the study glasses. The measured concentrations of S were in the range of about 325-1775 mg/L. Glass LP2-OL-13 stood out as generating the highest concentrations of several species in its wash solution, although there didn't appear to be any obvious link to composition or PCT performance. It is recommended that PNNL examine this result further as part of its broader review of these data. Revision vii Revision 0 Table 2-1. Identifier and Lab Responsible for Preparing Each Sulfur Saturated Melt (SSM)