The purpose of this report is to document the status of revegetation projects and natural resources mitigation efforts that have been conducted for remediated waste sites and other activities associated with the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act cleanup of National Priorities List waste sites at Hanford. One of the objectives of restoration is the revegetation of remediated waste sites to stabilize the soil and restore the land to native vegetation. The report documents the results of revegetation and mitigation monitoring conducted in 2006 and includes 11 revegetation/restoration projects, one revegetation/mitigation project, and 2 bat habitat mitigation projects.

High pressure common rail (HPCR) fuel injection performance testing developed a notch-by-notch performance comparison between HPCR and the production fuel system. A multiple injection screening study at notch 8 was completed with the baseline HPCR fuel injector nozzle tip design. Began a study on performance effects of different nozzle tip geometries. The hybrid locomotive battery vendor performed component fabrication tests and began manufacture of a mockup battery to validate the vibration design performance.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Reducing the incidence of sexually transmitted diseases and unintended pregnancies is one objective of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). HHS provides funding to states and organizations that provide abstinence-until-marriage education as one approach to address this objective. GAO was asked to describe the oversight of federally funded abstinence-until-marriage education programs. GAO is reporting on (1) efforts by HHS and states to assess the scientific accuracy of materials used in these programs and (2) efforts by HHS, states, and researchers to assess the effectiveness of these programs. GAO reviewed documents and interviewed HHS officials in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Office of Population Affairs (OPA) that award grants for these programs."

This project produced algorithms for and software implementations of adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) methods for solving practical solid and thermal mechanics problems on multiprocessor parallel computers using unstructured finite element meshes. The overall goal is to provide computational solutions that are accurate to some prescribed tolerance, and adaptivity is the correct path toward this goal. These new tools will enable analysts to conduct more reliable simulations at reduced cost, both in terms of analyst and computer time. Previous academic research in the field of adaptive mesh refinement has produced a voluminous literature focused on error estimators and demonstration problems; relatively little progress has been made on producing efficient implementations suitable for large-scale problem solving on state-of-the-art computer systems. Research issues that were considered include: effective error estimators for nonlinear structural mechanics; local meshing at irregular geometric boundaries; and constructing efficient software for parallel computing environments.

This report details the transition of Afghanistan to a democracy, yet still debates the problem of insurgency. Moreover, the report debates whether stabilization is possible at all due to rising issues of insurgency. The report also offers a summary of how the U.S. intended to deal with the problem, and where the problem was located.

The work presented in this report consists of a compilation of individual activity reports sent to BSC at the conclusion of the FY04 fiscal year. A chapter is dedicated for each individual activity, and describes the accomplishments at the time of writing the original reports, and includes experimental data when appropriate. It is important to note that since work for most of the activities was intended for completion in FY05, no DTN numbers are given in the present report and the results presented here are to be considered preliminary at the time of their writing. Information and results presented in the FY05 Summary Report (UCRL-TR-217339) are more comprehensive and complete and supersede those given in the present report. The five activities addressed in this report are: (1) Preliminary evaluation of burnished and peened samples-metallurgy; (2) Preliminary heat-to-heat variability study-metallurgical; (3) Evaluation of FY00 mockup samples-metallurgy; (4) Weld stability with thick prototypical welds; and (5) Effect of solution annealing onweld metallurgy.

To help inform discussions on the federal role in dam safety, this report provides background information on the nation’s dam safety activities and funding mechanisms.

This report describes the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The report details that the act will make major cuts to agricultural programs.

This report describes the progress made during the Early Career Principal Investigator (ECPI) project on Algorithmic Techniques for Large Data Sets. Research was carried out in the areas of dimension reduction, clustering and finding structure in data, aggregating information from different sources and designing efficient methods for similarity search for high dimensional data. A total of nine different research results were obtained and published in leading conferences and journals.

The Office of Space and Defense Power Systems of the Department of Energy (DOE) provides Radioisotope Power Systems (RPS) for applications where conventional power systems are not feasible. For example, radioisotope thermoelectric generators were supplied by the DOE to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for deep space missions including the Cassini Mission launched in October of 1997 to study the planet Saturn. For the Cassini Mission, ORNL produced carbon-bonded carbon fiber (CBCF) insulator sets, iridium alloy blanks and foil, and clad vent sets (CVS) used in the generators. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has been involved in developing materials and technology and producing components for the DOE for more than three decades. This report reflects program guidance from the Office of Space and Defense Power Systems for fiscal year (FY) 2005. Production activities for prime quality (prime) CBCF insulator sets, iridium alloy blanks and foil, and CVS are summarized in this report. Technology activities are also reported that were conducted to improve the manufacturing processes, characterize materials, or to develop information for new radioisotope power systems.

Efforts during this second year focused on four areas: (1) continued searching and summarizing of published Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) mechanistic and kinetic studies of FTS reactions on iron catalysts; (2) investigation of CO adsorption/desorption and temperature programmed hydrogenation (TPH) of carbonaceous species after FTS on unsupported iron and alumina-supported iron catalysts; (3) activity tests of alumina-supported iron catalysts in a fixed bed reactor; (4) sequential design of experiments, for the collection of rate data in a Berty CSTR reactor, and nonlinear-regression analysis to obtain kinetic parameters. Literature sources describing mechanistic and kinetic studies of Fischer-Tropsch synthesis on iron catalysts were compiled in a review. Temperature-programmed desorption/reaction methods (the latter using mass-spectrometry detection and also thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA)) were utilized to study CO adsorption/-desorption on supported and unsupported iron catalysts. Molecular and dissociative adsorptions of CO occur on iron catalysts at 25-150 C. The amounts adsorbed and bond strengths of adsorption are influenced by supports and promoters. That CO adsorbs dissociatively on polycrystalline Fe at temperatures well below those of FT reaction indicates that CO dissociation is facile and unlikely to be the rate-limiting step during FTS. Carbonaceous species formed after FT reaction for only 5 minutes at 200 C were …

A comprehensive study performed by the State Auditor's Office of all aspects of lottery security, specifically investigating concerns regarding the Commission's business resumption/disaster recovery site and determining the effect of the Commission's reorganization on its Security Division.

The material in this report summarizes the Diversa technical effort in development of a biocatalyst for the biodesulfurization of Petro Star diesel as well as an economic report of standalone and combined desulfurization options, prepared by Pelorus and Anvil, to support and inform the development of a commercially viable process. We will discuss goals of the projected as originally stated and their modification as guided by parallel efforts to evaluate commercialization economics and process parameters. We describe efforts to identify novel genes and hosts for the generation of an optimal biocatalyst, analysis of diesel fuels (untreated, chemically oxidized and hydrotreated) for organosulfur compound composition and directed evolution of enzymes central to the biodesulfurization pathway to optimize properties important for their use in a biocatalyst. Finally we will summarize the challenges and issues that are central to successful development of a viable biodesulfurization process.

The goal of the Biomolecular Simulation of Base Excision Repair and Protein Signaling project is to enhance our understanding of the mechanism of human polymerase-, one of the key enzymes in base excision repair (BER) and the cell-signaling enzymes cyclic-AMP-dependent protein kinase. This work used molecular modeling and simulation studies to specifically focus on the • dynamics of DNA and damaged DNA • dynamics and energetics of base flipping in DNA • mechanism and fidelity of nucleotide insertion by BER enzyme human polymerase-β • mechanism and inhibitor design for cyclic-AMP-dependent protein kinase. Molecular dynamics simulations and electronic structure calculations have been performed using the computer resources at the Molecular Science Computing Facility at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory.

Bosnia is in a transitional state to Euro-Atlantic integration since the war ended. A pledge was made to strengthen Bosnia's central state institutions, but the reform package failed to pass the legislature. The report provides an overview of prominent current issues concerning Bosnia.

As the largest and one of the most influential countries in Latin America, Brazil has emerged as a leading voice for developing countries in setting regional and multilateral trade agendas. Brazil is critical of U.S. trade policies such as the Byrd Amendment (repealed, but program in effect until October 1, 2007), which directs duties from trade remedy cases to affected industries, the administration of trade remedy rules, and what it considers to be discriminatory treatment in the U.S. expansion of free trade agreements in Latin America. Despite the differences, both countries recognize the potential for important gains to be had from mutually acceptable trade liberalization at all levels.

This report provides a basic explanation of how to calculate the federal estate tax liability for a taxable estate of any given size, using the schedule of graduated marginal tax rates and the applicable exclusion amount or the applicable credit amount for the year of death. The “applicable exclusion amount” is the amount of any decedent’s taxable estate that is free from tax. It is known informally as the estate tax “exemption.” The “applicable credit amount” or “unified credit” is the corresponding tax credit. It is equal to the tax that would be due on a taxable estate that is the size of the applicable exclusion amount.

Critical experiments were conducted at the Oak Ridge Critical Experiment Facility (ORCEF) to determine the critical concentration for an unreflected 69.2-cm-diameter sphere of UO{sub 2}F{sub 2}, at an enrichment of {approx}37 percent U{sup 235}, by weight. These experiments were a continuation of previous efforts to determine critical dimensions for fissile materials in simple geometry. Some of the earlier experiments in this vessel have been published as part of the OECD handbook. The reports concerning these experiments have only recently become available. Until August 2005, Refs. 2 and 3 were still classified. These documents, along with experimental logbooks and unclassified papers available on the experimental campaign and facility are being used to generate a computer model for this critical experiment.

This report provides brief summaries of the issues in the 2005 reauthorization legislation, including (1) the market in security futures, or futures contracts based on single stocks, which were authorized by the CFMA, but trade in much lower volumes than their proponents had hoped, (2) regulation of energy derivatives markets, where some see excessive price volatility and a lack of effective regulation, and (3) the legality of futures-like contracts based on foreign currency prices offered to retail investors.

We present a survey of serendipitous extended X-ray sources and optical cluster candidates from the Chandra Multi-wavelength Project (ChaMP). Our main goal is to make an unbiased comparison of X-ray and optical cluster detection methods. In 130 archival Chandra pointings covering 13 square degrees, we use a wavelet decomposition technique to detect 55 extended sources, of which 6 are nearby single galaxies. Our X-ray cluster catalog reaches a typical flux limit of about {approx} 10{sup -14} erg s{sup -1} cm{sup -2}, with a median cluster core radius of 21''. For 56 of the 130 X-ray fields, we use the ChaMP's deep NOAO/4m MOSAIC g', r', and i' imaging to independently detect cluster candidates using a Voronoi tessellation and percolation (VTP) method. Red-sequence filtering decreases the galaxy fore/background contamination and provides photometric redshifts to z {approx} 0.7. From the overlapping 6.1 square degree X-ray/optical imaging, we find 115 optical clusters (of which 11% are in the X-ray catalog) and 28 X-ray clusters (of which 46% are in the optical VTP catalog). The median redshift of the 13 X-ray/optical clusters is 0.41, and their median X-ray luminosity (0.5-2 keV) is L{sub X} = (2.65 {+-} 0.19) x 10{sup 43} ergs s{sup -1}. …

This report details the security concerns related to chemical facilities such as risk f terrorism at chemical facilities.

This report provides early Judicial interpretations of Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.

The courts and the executive branch face major decisions on clean air issues in 2006, with Congress more likely playing an oversight role. One focus is EPA's Jan. 17 2006 proposal to strengthen air quality standards for fine particles, which are estimated to cause tens of thousands of premature deaths annually. Whether the proposal is supported by the available science and what impact its implementation would have likely issues of concern. Other issues of continuing interest are EPA's 2005 decisions limiting interstate transport of air pollution and establishing cap-and-trade systems for emissions from coal-fired power plants, and the agency's proposed changes to New Source Review.

Major amendments to the Clean Air Act were among the first items on the agenda of the 109th Congress, with S. 131 (the Clear Skies Act) scheduled for markup by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee March 9. The most prominent air quality issues discussed in this report are; Clear Skies / Multi-Pollutant Legislation, Mercury from Power Plants, New Source Review (NSR), MTBE and Ethanol, Ozone Nonattainment Area Deadlines, Conformity of Transportation Plans and SIPs, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.