A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Office for Domestic Preparedness (ODP)--originally established in 1998 within the Department of Justice to help state and local first responders acquire specialized training and equipment needed to respond to terrorist incidents--was transferred to the Department of Homeland Security upon its creation in March 2003. After September 11, 2001, the scope and size of ODP's grant programs expanded. For example, from fiscal year 2001 through fiscal year 2003, ODP grants awarded to states and some urban areas grew from about $91 million to about $2.7 billion. This growth raised questions about the ability of ODP and states to ensure that the domestic preparedness grant programs--including statewide and urban area grants--are managed effectively and efficiently. GAO addressed (1) how statewide and urban area grants were administered in fiscal years 2002 and 2003 so that ODP could ensure that grant funds were spent in accordance with grant guidance and state preparedness planning and (2) what time frames Congress and ODP established for awarding and distributing grants, and how time frames affected the grant cycle."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Responsibility for ensuring the safety and reliability of the nuclear weapons stockpile rests upon a cadre of workers at eight contractor-operated National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) weapons facilities. Many of these workers--including scientists, engineers, and technicians--have "critical" skills needed to maintain the stockpile. About 37 percent of these workers are at or near retirement age, raising concern about whether these specialists will have time to pass on their knowledge and expertise to new recruits. In this context, Congress asked us to (1) describe the approaches that NNSA, its contractors, and organizations with similar workforces are using to recruit and retain critically skilled workers; (2) assess the extent to which these approaches have been effective; and (3) describe any remaining challenges, strategies to mitigate these challenges, and the similarity of these challenges and strategies to those of organizations with comparable workforces."

This report compares the provisions of these legislative proposals. It serves as an historical record of legislative activity in the 108th Congress.

This report provides an overview of the "digital divide", which is a term used to describe a perceived gap between those Americans who use or have access to telecommunications and information technologies and those who do not.

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As part of the Department of Energy's (DOE) initiative on developing new technologies for storage of carbon dioxide in geologic reservoirs, Battelle has been awarded a project to investigate the feasibility of CO{sub 2} sequestration in the deep saline reservoirs in the Ohio River Valley region. This project is the Phase III of Battelle's work under the Novel Concepts in Greenhouse Gas Management grant. In addition to the DOE, the project is being sponsored by American Electric Power (AEP), BP, The Ohio Coal Development Office (OCDO) of the Ohio Department of Development, and Schlumberger. The main objective of the project is to evaluate the geology of deep formations in the Ohio River Valley region in general and in the vicinity of AEP's Mountaineer Power Plant in particular, in order to determine their potential use for conducting a long-term test of CO{sub 2} disposal in deep saline formations and potentially in nearby deep coal seams. This work supports the overall project objective of demonstrating that CO{sub 2} sequestration in deep formations is feasible from engineering and economic perspectives, as well as being an inherently safe practice and one that will be acceptable to the public. The current technical progress report summarizes …

The Standard Model predictions for W{gamma} and Z{gamma} production are tested using an integrated luminosity of 200 pb{sup -1} of p{bar p} collision data collected at the Collider Detector at Fermilab. The cross sections are measured by selecting leptonic decays of the W and Z bosons, and photons with transverse energy E{sub T} > 7 GeV that are well separated from leptons. The production cross sections and kinematic distributions for the W{gamma} and Z{gamma} data are compared to SM predictions.

The power industry in the U.S. is faced with meeting new regulations to reduce the emissions of mercury compounds from coal-fired plants. These regulations are directed at the existing fleet of nearly 1,100 boilers. These plants are relatively old with an average age of over 40 years. Although most of these units are capable of operating for many additional years, there is a desire to minimize large capital expenditures because of the reduced (and unknown) remaining life of the plant to amortize the project. Injecting a sorbent such as powdered activated carbon into the flue gas represents one of the simplest and most mature approaches to controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired boilers. The overall objective of the test program described in this quarterly report is to evaluate the capabilities of activated carbon injection at five plants with configurations that together represent 78% of the existing coal-fired generation plants. This technology was successfully evaluated in NETL's Phase I tests at scales up to 150 MW, on plants burning subbituminous and bituminous coals and with ESPs and fabric filters. The tests also identified issues that still need to be addressed, such as evaluating performance on other configurations, optimizing sorbent usage (costs), and …

The objective of our work is to develop novel computational tools to analyze the Deinococcus radiodurans DNA repair pathways and the influence of the metabolic flux distribution on DNA repair. These tools will be applied to provide insights for metabolic engineering of strains capable of growing under nutrient poor conditions similar to those found in mixed contaminant sites of interest to the DOE. Over the entire grant period we accomplished all our specific aims and were also able to pursue new directions of research. Below, I will list the major accomplishments over the previous 3 years. (1) Performed Monte Carlo Simulations of RecA Mediated Pairing of Homologous DNA Molecules. (2) Developed a statistical approach to study the gene expression data from D. radiodurans. We have been studying the data from John Batista's. (3) Developed an expression profiling technology to generate very accurate and precise expression data. We followed up on results from John Batista's group using this approach. (4) Developed and put online a database for metabolic reconstructions. (5) We have developed and applied new Monte Carlo algorithms that are optimized for studying biological systems. (6) We developed a flux balance model for the D. radiodurans metabolic network

Efficient coupling of thermal electron Bernstein waves (EBW) to ordinary mode (Omode) electromagnetic radiation has been measured in plasmas heated by energetic neutral beams and high harmonic fast waves in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) [M. Ono, S. Kaye, M. Peng, et al., Proceedings 17th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference (IAEA, Vienna, Austria, 1999), Vol.3, p. 1135]. The EBW to electromagnetic mode coupling efficiency was measured to be 0.8 {+-} 0.2, compared to a numerical EBW modeling prediction of 0.65. The observation of efficient EBW coupling to O-mode, in relatively good agreement with numerical modeling, is a necessary prerequisite for implementing a proposed high power EBW current drive system on NSTX.

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This document serves as the final report for LDRD project number 04-LW-031, in which we created subpicosecond length, kilo-amp peak current electron beams with the 100 MeV electron/positron linac, using a novel technique designed to produce ultra-short bunch lengths while maintaining the high brightness produced by the S-band photoinjector. In addition, a diagnostic to measure the temporal distribution of the beam was investigated, as conventional pulse length measurement techniques do not apply to extremely short pulses. The creation and diagnosis of beams with both femtosecond length and high transverse brightness is of major concern to next generation acceleration and radiation production experiments. This work leveraged the previous investment in the PLEIADES facility and it's ability to produce high brightness electron beams. In addition, the ultra-short electron pulses generated by this work have been used in conjunction with the PLEIADES X-ray source to produce sub-picosecond, high-brightness X-ray pulses.

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This report discusses the revived rule, focusing on how it would change which material and types of activities are regulated under Section 404 and the significance of these issues, especially for the mining industry.

This report discusses the recess clause and takes a look at the history of recess appointments. Under Article II of the Constitution, the President is empowered "to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session." Presidents have used the recess appointment power on more than 300 occasions to place judges on the district, appellate, and U.S. Supreme Court level. This practice slowed after the 1950s, but recent recess appointments to federal appellate courts (the Fourth, Fifth, and Eleventh Circuits) have revived a number of constitutional issues.

Current driven by electron Bernstein waves (EBW) and by the electron bootstrap effect are calculated separately and concurrently with a kinetic code, to determine the degree of synergy between them. A target {beta} = 40% NSTX plasma is examined. A simple bootstrap model in the CQL3D Fokker-Planck code is used in these studies: the transiting electron distributions are connected in velocity-space at the trapped-passing boundary to trapped-electron distributions which are displaced radially by a half-banana width outwards/inwards for the co-/counter-passing regions. This model agrees well with standard bootstrap current calculations, over the outer 60% of the plasma radius. Relatively small synergy net bootstrap current is obtained for EBW power up to 4 MW. Locally, bootstrap current density increases in proportion to increased plasma pressure, and this effect can significantly affect the radial profile of driven current.

The Yucca Mountain repository requires the use of a waste package (WP) transporter to transport a WP from a process facility on the surface to the subsurface for underground emplacement. The transporter is a part of the waste emplacement transport systems, which includes a primary locomotive at the front end and a secondary locomotive at the rear end. The overall system with a WP on board weights over 350 metric tons (MT). With the shielding mass constituting approximately one-third of the total system weight, shielding optimization for minimal weight will benefit the overall transport system with reduced axle requirements and improved maneuverability. With a high contact dose rate on the WP external surface and minimal personnel shielding afforded by the WP, the transporter provides radiation shielding to workers during waste emplacement and retrieval operations. This paper presents the design approach and optimization method used in achieving a shielding configuration with minimal weight.

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This report discusses federal research and development (R&D) funding for FY2005. The Bush Administration requested $131.9 billion in R&D funding for FY2005. This was $5.9 billion above the estimated $126 billion that was appropriated for federal R&D in FY2004.

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This report describes relevant current law relating to immigration and document-security matters, how H.R. 418 would alter current law if enacted, and the degree to which the bill duplicates existing law.