Strawberry valley project, N central Utah, developed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for irrigating lands S of Utah Lake; constructed 1906-13. The water of Strawberry River and its tributaries is carried by a tunnel through the Wasatch Range to a tributary of the Spanish Fork and is used for lands in the vicinity of Salem, Spanish Fork, Springville, Payson, and Santaquin. The project is supplemented by the Central Utah project.

Shoshone project, NW Wyo., near the Mont. line and in the Shoshone River basin. Developed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, it irrigates a large portion of land and has four divisions. The project is supplied by diversion dams and canals and by Buffalo Bill Dam (325 ft/99 m high; completed 1910), which has a power plant. The power system is integrated with the Missouri River basin project.

North Platte project, unit of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, in the North Platte River valley, W Nebr. and E Wyo. It supplies hydroelectric power to many towns and industries and provides irrigation for land extending along the valley from Guernsey, Wyo., to below Bridgeport, Nebr. Among the project's many dams and reservoirs are Guernsey Reservoir, formed by Guernsey Dam (completed 1927), and Pathfinder Reservoir, created by Pathfinder Dam (completed 1909). There are also several large dams on the branches of the North Platte. The power system of the project has been integrated with the Missouri River basin project.

Newlands project, on the Carson and Truckee rivers, W Nev.; one of the first projects built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (1903-8). Lahontan Dam was completed in 1915 to produce electricity for the project.

Mohole, Project, program proposed in 1957 to drill a hole down to the boundary between the crust and the mantle, known as the Mohorovičić discontinuity at about 4 to 43 mi (7 to 70 km) below the earth's surface. Initiated by the American Miscellaneous Society, a loose organization of scientists, the main purposes of the project were to determine the nature of this boundary and to attempt to fill gaps in the geologic record from samples of the rocks encountered. The technology of such a project, however, was beyond the state of drilling technology at that time. Groups such as the National Science Foundation and the National Academy of Science eventually backed phase 1, in which five holes were drilled off the coast of Mexico, the most successful entering 601 ft (183 m) into the ocean floor under 2.2 mi (3.5 km) of water. The project was abandoned by 1966, as funding to support the ever-increasing costs of the project failed to gain congressional approval. Nevertheless, ship positioning and design, along with deepwater drilling technology developed for Project Mohole, were employed in the Deep Sea Drilling Project and future drilling projects.

Missouri River basin project, comprehensive plan authorized in 1944 for the coordinated development of water resources of the Missouri River and its tributaries, draining an area of c.513,300 sq mi (1,329,400 sq km) in Nebraska, Montana, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Iowa, and Minnesota. The program provided for the construction of 112 dams with a storage capacity of almost 35 million gal/132 million liters; 4,300,000 acres (1,740,000 hectares) of irrigated land; 2.6 million kilowatts of hydroelectric generating capacity; a 9-ft (2.7-m) navigable channel on the Missouri River from Sioux City to its mouth; control of floods and sedimentation; protection of fish and wildlife; and development of recreational facilities and industrial and municipal water supplies. Seven main-stem dams on the Missouri were completed (Fort Peck, Garrison, Oahe, Big Bend, Fort Randall, Gavins Point, and Canyon Ferry), and 80 other dams were built on tributaries. The program has been modified and expanded over the years and is integrated with other projects for the region, including the Colorado-Big Thompson project, the Shoshone project, and the North Platte project. Although the project created a navigation channel on the lower Missouri, the fish and wildlife there were greatly reduced.

Manhattan Project, the wartime effort to design and build the first nuclear weapons (atomic bombs). With the discovery of fission in 1939, it became clear to scientists that certain radioactive materials could be used to make a bomb of unprecented power. U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt responded by creating the Uranium Committee to investigate this possibility. Progress was slow until Aug., 1942, when the project was placed under U.S. Army control and reorganized. The Manhattan Engineer District (MED) was the official name of the project. The MED's commanding officer, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, was given almost unlimited powers to call upon the military, industrial, and scientific resources of the nation.

A $2-billion effort was required to obtain sufficient amounts of the two necessary isotopes, uranium-235 and plutonium-239. At Oak Ridge, Tenn., the desired uranium-235 was separated from the much more abundant uranium-238 by a laborious process called gaseous diffusion. At the Hanford installation (Wash.), huge nuclear reactors were built to transmute nonfissionable uranium-238 into plutonium-239. This method was based on the principle of the self-sustaining nuclear reaction (nuclear pile) that had first been achieved under the leadership of Enrico Fermi at the metallurgical laboratory of the Univ. of Chicago. At the radiation laboratory of the Univ. of California at Berkeley costly efforts were made to separate the two uranium isotopes using cyclotrons, but only about a gram of pure uranium-235 was obtained. The actual design and building of the plutonium and uranium bombs took place at Los Alamos, N.Mex., under the leadership of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Gathered at this desert laboratory was an extraordinary group of American and European-refugee scientists.

The only nuclear test explosion, code-named Trinity, was of a plutonium device; it took place on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, N.Mex. The first uranium bomb ("Little Boy") was delivered untested to the army and was dropped on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, killing at least 70,000 inhabitants. On Aug. 9, 1945, a plutonium bomb virtually identical to the Trinity device was dropped on Nagasaki, killing at least 35,000 inhabitants.

James Bay Project, a colossal hydroelectric development of the rivers emptying into the E James Bay, central Quebec, Canada. La Grande Phase I, finished in 1985, created the world's largest underground powerhouse, a tiered spillway on La Grande River three times the height of Niagara Falls, and five reservoirs that total half the volume of Lake Ontario. La Grande Phase II, involving the redirection of flow from the Eastmain, Laforge, and Caniapiscau rivers into La Grande, was largely completed when further work was suspended in 1994. For much of its history up to that point the project had evoked a tremendous response from environmentalists and the Cree, who claimed that the project was destroying the region and disrupting the lives of the native population as rivers were diverted, forests incinerated, and wilderness areas inundated. The Great Whale Project, involving the diversion of the Little Whale and Nastapoca rivers into the Great Whale River, and the NBR Project, involving the diversion of the Rupert and Nottaway rivers into the Broadback River basin, were also suspended; no construction on either had begun. In 2002 an agreement with the Cree cleared the way for completion of La Grande Phase II and the diversion of the upper Rupert River into the La Grande (via the Eastmain and other diverted rivers). The NBR Project was canceled.

Human Genome Project, international scientific effort to map all of the genes on the 23 pairs of human chromosomes and, to sequence the 3.1 billion DNA base pairs that make up the chromosomes (see nucleic acid). Begun in 1990 with the goal of enabling scientists to understand the basis of genetic diseases and to gain insight into human evolution, the project was largely completed in 2000 when 85% of the human genome was decoded, and ended in 2003 with 99% decoded; detailed analyses of all the pairs were published by 2006. In the process, scientists identified genes for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, Huntington's disease, and an inherited form of breast cancer. In addition, the project decoded the genome of the bacterium E. coli, a fruit fly, and a nematode worm (see phylum Nematoda), in order to study genetic similarities among species, and a mouse genome was also decoded.

The Human Genome Project involved laboratories in the United States, France, Great Britain, Germany, and Japan. It was financed in the United States by the National Institutes of Health and by the Department of Energy and in Great Britain by the Wellcome Trust of London. A comparable project using new DNA (genetic material) sequencing machines was begun as a private industry venture in the United States in 1998, with a stated goal of completing the mapping of the genome in three years.

Early in 2001 scientists from both teams jointly announced the "completion" of the mapping of the human genome, indicating that they had identified an estimated 30,000 genes (instead of the expected 100,000), constituting just 1% of the total human DNA. Subsequent comparison of the two teams' data has indicated that, because of differences in the genes identified by the teams, there may in fact be as many as 40,000 human genes. A subsequent, more refined estimate (2004) based on additional work on the genome was that there are between 20,000 and 25,000 genes. Work continues on further refining the sequencing of the genes on the chromosomes, eliminating the remaining gaps in the genome map, and identifying the extent of variation in the human genome. In 2007 the first sequences of human individuals (James D. Watson and J. Craig Venter, who led the public and private human genome sequencing efforts, respectively) were released. The NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information maintains GenBank, a database of publicly available genetic sequences from the genomes of plants and animals, including some extinct species.

Federal Writers' Project: see Work Projects Administration.

Federal Art Project: see Work Projects Administration.

Deep Sea Drilling Project, U.S. program designed to investigate the evolution of ocean basins by core drilling of ocean sediments and underlying oceanic crust. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the project was directed by the Joint Oceanographic Institution for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES), a consortium of leading U.S. oceanographic institutions. Begun in 1964, a test drilling program was completed successfully in 1965; by 1968, the Glomar Challenger, displacing 10,500 tons and capable of drilling 2,500 ft (760 m) of sediment in 20,000 ft (6,100 m) of water, was leased to JOIDES. The scientific operations carried out on board consisted of continuous seismic and magnetic surveys while underway, in-hole measurements, and laboratory analysis of the cores recovered. The project verified that the present ocean basins are relatively young and confirmed aspects of seafloor spreading and plate tectonics. It also discovered thick bedded salt layers from cores taken out of the Mediterranean Sea, indicating that the sea completely dried up between 5 and 12 million years ago; that Antarctica has been covered with ice for the last 20 million years; and that the northern polar ice cap was much more extensive 5 million years ago. The Deep Sea Drilling Project drilled about 600 holes into the ocean floors over the world, about one hole per 308,880 square mi (800,000 square km). The Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), begun in 1984 and supported by a U.S.-led international consortium of 21 nations, is the successor of the Deep Sea Drilling Project. The program employs the drillship JOIDES Resolution and is managed by Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI). It is drilling in poorly sampled areas, including continental margins and ocean trenches. In addition, the ODP contributes to other programs, such as drilling holes in which to lower seismic instruments necessary for a global seismic network project.

Columbia basin project, central Wash., a multipurpose development of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation providing irrigation, hydroelectric power, and flood control. Its key unit, the Grand Coulee Dam, provides the project with power and pumps the waters of the Columbia River into an irrigation system comprising a series of lakes, reservoirs, and numerous canals. Irrigation was begun in 1948. In 1969 the project had an installed hydroelectric power generation capacity of 2,333,000 kW. O'Sullivan Dam (200 ft/61 m high; 19,000 ft/5,791 m long; completed 1949) on Crab Creek, the project's southernmost dam, is one of the largest earthfill dams in the United States and impounds Potholes Reservoir.

Colorado-Big Thompson project, constructed by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to divert water from the headstreams of the Colorado River to irrigate c.720,000 acres (291,400 hectares) of land in NE Colorado and to supply power; built 1938-56. Water is diverted by several dams, notably Granby Dam on the Colorado and Green Mt. Dam on the Blue River. Water is stored in Granby Reservoir, Shadow Mt. Lake, and Grand Lake before it is pumped through the Alva B. Adams Tunnel (13 mi/21 km long), to fall down the eastern slope of the Continental Divide into the Big Thompson River, a tributary of the South Platte. Dams near Fort Collins and Estes Park divert the water for use. Flatiron, Estes, Pole Hill, and Green Mt. dams generate hydroelectric power.

Colorado River storage project, a multipurpose plan, undertaken by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1956, to control the flow of the upper Colorado and its tributaries and to aid in the development of the rugged, remote upper Colorado River basin; includes parts of Wyo., Utah, Colo., Ariz., and N.Mex. The Colorado River Compact of 1922 established the division between the upper and lower basins and stipulated that the upper basin's water consumption be contingent on the delivery of a set amount of water to the lower basin. Since the flow of the Colorado is erratic, a storage project was needed to maintain an even flow of water to the lower basin in dry years (the estimate of the average flow of the river, however, was based on what historically was a relatively wet period, and was 10% to 25% more than long-term estimates now indicate). A series of dams regulates stream flow, provides storage reservoirs, creates hydroelectric power, and irrigates both new and previously developed acreage. The four major units of the project are Glen Canyon Dam, on the Colorado River in Arizona; Flaming Gorge Dam, on the Green River in Utah; Navajo Dam, on the San Juan River in New Mexico; and the Curecanti dams on the Gunnison River in Colorado. The three reservoirs of the Curecanti unit are included in the Curecanti National Recreation Area (see National Parks and Monuments, table). There are 11 authorized participating projects, including the Central Utah project.

Central Valley project, central Calif., long-term general scheme for the utilization of the water of the Sacramento River basin in the north for the benefit of the farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley in the south, undertaken by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 1935. The program's concerns are flood control; improvement of navigation; the development of hydroelectric power, irrigation, and municipal and industrial water supply; protection of the Sacramento delta from seawater encroachment; and the propagation and preservation of fish and wildlife. Shasta and Keswick dams on the Sacramento River, and Friant Dam, on the San Joaquin River, were among the first units built. Canals, such as the Friant-Kern, the Madera, the Delta Cross Channel (which uses Sacramento water to fight soil salinity in the delta), and the Delta-Mendota, are used to transport water throughout the valley. Among the hydroelectric dams are San Luis, Spring Creek, Judge Francis Carr, and Auburn. Folsom Dam is one of the several units constructed in the valley by the U.S. Corps of Engineers.

Central Utah project, N central Utah; begun 1959 near Vernal, Utah, by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in conjunction with the Colorado River storage project. Water, collected from streams in the Uinta Mts., is carried across the Wasatch Range to the densely populated Salt Lake City region by a system of dams, reservoirs, tunnels, aqueducts, and canals. Strawberry Dam and Reservoir, in which the water is stored, provides water for domestic and industrial use, irrigation, hydroelectricity, fish and wildlife preservation, and flood control.

Boise project, in the Boise, Payette, and Snake river valleys, SW Idaho and E Oregon; developed in 1905 by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for irrigation, hydroelectricity, flood control, and recreation. The project has turned the area into major U.S. seed-producing and dairying regions. Anderson Ranch, Arrowrock, and Boise dams are the principal facilities of the project's Arrowrock division, located between the Snake and Boise rivers. The Payette division, between the Payette and Boise rivers, includes Black Canyon, Cascade, and Deadwood dams.

(1942–45) U.S. government research project that produced the first atomic bomb. In 1939 U.S. scientists urged Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt to establish a program to study the potential military use of fission, and $6,000 was appropriated. By 1942 the project was code-named Manhattan, after the site of Columbia University, where much of the early research was done. Research also was carried out at the University of California and the University of Chicago. In 1943 a laboratory to construct the bomb was established at Los Alamos, N.M., and staffed by scientists headed by J. Robert Oppenheimer. Production also was carried out at Oak Ridge, Tenn., and Hanford, Wash. The first bomb was exploded in a test at Alamogordo air base in southern New Mexico. By its end the project had cost some $2 billion and had involved 125,000 people.

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U.S. research effort initiated in 1990 by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health to analyze the DNA of human beings. The project, intended to be completed in 15 years, proposed to identify the chromosomal location of every human gene, to determine each gene's precise chemical structure in order to show its function in health and disease, and to determine the precise sequence of nucleotides of the entire set of genes (the genome). Another project was to address the ethical, legal, and social implications of the information obtained. The information gathered will be the basic reference for research in human biology and will provide fundamental insights into the genetic basis of human disease. The new technologies developed in the course of the project will be applicable in numerous biomedical fields. In 2000 the government and the private corporation Celera Genomics jointly announced that the project had been virtually completed, five years ahead of schedule.

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