Recording of the eleventh public hearing held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States on May 18, 2004 at New School University in New York City. The two-day hearing examined the response of local and federal emergency response departments on September 11, 2001, and considered how to improve these critical functions in the event of future terrorist attacks. Two staff statements were presented during the course of the hearing. This section includes testimony from former Mayor of New York City, Rudolph W. Giuliani.

Recording of the eleventh public hearing held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States on May 18, 2004 at New School University in New York City. The two-day hearing examined the response of local and federal emergency response departments on September 11, 2001, and considered how to improve these critical functions in the event of future terrorist attacks. Two staff statements were presented during the course of the hearing. This section includes the fourth panel on the state of emergency preparedness across the nation, with testimony from Dennis Smith, Jerome M. Hauer, and Edward P. Plaugher.

Recording of the eleventh public hearing held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States on May 18, 2004 at New School University in New York City. The two-day hearing examined the response of local and federal emergency response departments on September 11, 2001, and considered how to improve these critical functions in the event of future terrorist attacks. Two staff statements were presented during the course of the hearing. This section includes the fourth panel on emergency preparedness throughout the nation and includes testimony from Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York.

Recording of the eleventh public hearing held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States on May 18, 2004 at New School University in New York City. The two-day hearing examined the response of local and federal emergency response departments on September 11, 2001, and considered how to improve these critical functions in the event of future terrorist attacks. Two staff statements were presented during the course of the hearing. This section includes the fourth panel on emergency preparedness throughout the nation with testimony from Secretary of Homeland Security, Thomas J. Ridge.

From Summary: "This report provides background information on, and analysis of, the changes proposed by the 9/11 Commission, and it will be updated as events warrant."

From Summary: "This report provides an outline of the structure and history of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and raises a number of issues that might be considered by policymakers as they weigh the suitability of the JCAE as a possible model when crafting congressional oversight mechanisms."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Census Bureau (Bureau) has typically counted overseas members of the military, federal civilian employees, and their dependents. However, it usually excluded private citizens residing abroad. In July 2004, the Bureau completed a test of the practicality of counting all overseas Americans. GAO was asked to assess (1) whether the Bureau implemented the test consistent with its design, and (2) the lessons learned from the test results."

The primary focus of this issue brief is legislative action in the 108th Congress with respect to abortion. However, discussion of those legislative proposals necessarily involves a brief discussion of the leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning a woman's right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy. For a more detailed discussion of the relevant case law, see CRS Report 95-724, Abortion Law Development: A Brief Overview.

For a number of technologies small substrate contaminants are undesirable, and for one technology in particular, extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), they can be a very serious issue. We have demonstrated that the Ion Beam Thin Film Planarization Process, a coating process designed to planarize substrate asperities, can be extended to smooth {approx}70 nm and {approx}80 nm diameter particles on EUVL reticle substrates to a height of {approx}0.5 nm, which will render them noncritical in an EUVL printing process. We demonstrate this smoothing process using controlled nanoscale substrate particles and lines fabricated with an e-beam lithography process. The above smoothing process was also modified to yield an excellent reflectance/wavelength uniformity and a good EUV reflectivity for the multilayer, which is required for EUVL reticles. Cross-sectional TEM on a smoothed substrate line defect shows excellent agreement with results obtained from our multilayer growth model.

We have observed spectra from highly charged zinc ions in a variety of laser-produced plasmas. Spectral features that are Na- and Mg-like satellites to high-n Rydberg transitions in the Ne-like ZnXXI spectrum are analyzed and modeled. Identifications and analysis are made by comparison with highly accurate atomic structure calculations and steady state collisional-radiative models. Each observed ZnXX and ZnXIX feature comprises up to {approx} 2 dozen individual transitions, these transitions are excited principally by dielectronic recombination through autoionizing levels in Na- and Mg-like Zn{sup 19+} Zn{sup 18+}. We find these satellites to be ubiquitous in laser-produced plasmas formed by lasers with pulse lengths that span four orders of magnitude, from 1 ps to {approx} 10 ns. The diagnostic potential of these Rydberg satellite lines is demonstrated.

From Summary: This report is a section by section explanation of the effects of S. 1709, the SAFE Act, on current law.

We present analytic, high-beta ({beta} {approx} O(1)), helical equilibrium solutions for a class of helical axis configurations having large helical aspect ratio, with the helix assumed to be tightly wound. The solutions develop a narrow boundary layer of strongly compressed flux, similar to that previously found in high beta tokamak equilibrium solutions. The boundary layer is associated with a strong localized current which prevents the equilibrium from having zero net current.

The anomalous skin effect in a plasma with a highly anisotropic electron velocity distribution function (EVDF) is very different from skin effect in a plasma with the isotropic EVDF. An analytical solution was derived for the electric field penetrated into plasma with the EVDF described as a Maxwellian with two temperatures Tx >> Tz, where x is the direction along the plasma boundary and z is the direction perpendicular to the plasma boundary. The skin layer was found to consist of two distinctive regions of width of order nTx/w and nTz/w, where nTx,z/w = (Tx,z/m)1/2 is the thermal electron velocity and w is the incident wave frequency.

Aircraft crashes are an element of external events required to be analyzed and documented in facility Safety Analysis Reports (SARs) and Nuclear Explosive Safety Studies (NESSs). This paper discusses the localized effects of an aircraft crash impact into the Device Assembly Facility (DAF) located at the Nevada Test Site (NTS), given that the aircraft hits the facility. This was done to gain insight into the robustness of the DAF and to account for the special features of the DAF that enhance its ability to absorb the effects of an aircraft crash. For the purpose of this paper, localized effects are considered to be only perforation or scabbing of the facility. This paper presents an extension to the aircraft crash risk methodology of Department of Energy (DOE) Standard 3014. This extension applies to facilities that may find it necessary or desirable to estimate the localized effects of an aircraft crash hit on a facility of nonuniform construction or one that is shielded in certain directions by surrounding terrain or buildings. This extension is not proposed as a replacement to the aircraft crash risk methodology of DOE Standard 3014 but rather as an alternate method to cover situations that were not considered.

The U.S. Congress has held numerous hearings to evaluate the causes and ongoing repercussions of Argentina’s financial crisis. This report analyzes Argentina’s debt situation in support of this interest and will be updated periodically.

An Integrated Circuit (IC) readout chip with four channels arranged so as to receive input charge from the corners of the chip was designed for use with 5- to 7-mm pixel detectors. This Application Specific IC (ASIC) can be used for cold neutron imaging, for study of structural order in materials using cold neutron scattering or for particle physics experiments. The ASIC is fabricated in a 0.5-{micro}m n-well AMI process. The design of the ASIC and the test measurements made is reported. Noise measurements are also reported.

The interaction of water with Si- and C- terminated {beta}-SiC(001) surfaces was investigated by means of ab initio molecular dynamics simulations. Irrespective of coverage, varied from 1/4 to 1 monolayer, we found that water dissociates on the Si-terminated surface, substantially modifying the clean surface reconstruction, while the C-terminated surface is nonreactive and hydrophobic. Based on our results, we propose that STM images and photoemission experiments may detect specific changes induced by water on both the structural and electronic properties of SiC(001) surfaces.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "One of the primary functions of any security system is the control of people moving into or out of protected areas, such as physical buildings, information systems, and our national border. Technologies called biometrics can automate the identification of people by one or more of their distinct physical or behavioral characteristics. The term biometrics covers a wide range of technologies that can be used to verify identity by measuring and analyzing human characteristics--relying on attributes of the individual instead of things the individual may have or know. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, laws have been passed that require a more extensive use of biometric technologies in the federal government. In 2002, GAO conducted a technology assessment on the use of biometrics for border security. GAO was asked to testify about the issues that it raised in the report, the current state of the technology, and the application of biometrics to aviation security."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Beginning on November 19, 2004, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is required by law to begin allowing commercial airports to apply to use private contractors to screen passengers and checked baggage. A federal workforce has performed this work since November 2002, in response to a congressional mandate that the federal government take over screening services after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A 2-year pilot program at five airports testing the effectiveness of private sector screening in a post-September 11 environment concluded on November 18, 2004. This report contains GAO's preliminary observations related to TSA's progress in developing a private-sector screening program that allows airports to apply to opt out of using federal screeners. GAO assessed: (1) the status of TSA's efforts to develop policies and procedures for the opt-out program, including operational plans and guidelines for selecting airports and contractors that may participate; (2) guidance about the opt-out program that TSA has provided to airport operators and other stakeholders, or plans to develop, and how the information is communicated; and (3) TSA's efforts to develop performance measures for evaluating the opt-out program and contractor …

In keeping with the Open Source tradition, we want our Babel 1.0 release to indicate a certain level of capability, maturity, and stability. From our first release (version 0.5.0) in July of 2001 to our current (18th) release (version 0.9.6) we have continued to add capabilities in response to customer feedback, our observations in the field, and a consistent vision for interoperability. The key to our maturity is without a doubt the ever-increasing demands of our growing user base... both in terms of sheer size and sophistication with the underlying technology. Stability is a special challenge for any research project. With our 1.0 release, we will branch and maintain a stable Babel 1.0 code line for at least a full year. This means no new features and no backward incompatible changes, only bug fixes. All continuing R&D will be performed on a separate development tree. Currently, Babel has a quarterly release cycle with no guarantee for backward compatibility from one release to the next (though we certainly try to make migration as painless as possible). Now is the time where we can see a good point for a Babel 1.0 release. But, seeing that point is different from being there. …

The original HPL algorithm makes the assumption that all data can be fit entirely in the main memory. This assumption will obviously give a good performance due to the absence of disk I/O. However, not all applications can fit their entire data in memory. These applications which require a fair amount of I/O to move data to and from main memory and secondary storage, are more indicative of usage of an Massively Parallel Processor (MPP) System. Given this scenario a well designed I/O architecture will play a significant part in the performance of the MPP System on regular jobs. And, this is not represented in the current Benchmark. The modified HPL algorithm is hoped to be a step in filling this void. The most important factor in the performance of out-of-core algorithms is the actual I/O operations performed and their efficiency in transferring data to/from main memory and disk, Various methods were introduced in the report for performing I/O operations. The I/O method to use depends on the design of the out-of-core algorithm. Conversely, the performance of the out-of-core algorithm is affected by the choice of I/O operations. This implies, good performance is achieved when I/O efficiency is closely tied …

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This report discusses the case of San people of Botswana against the government of Botswana.

The Superfund program for cleaning up the nation’s worst hazardous waste sites was created by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA (P.L. 96-510, as amended). This report discusses recent development and background issues, superfund issues, revenue issues, comprehensive reauthorization, and legislation regarding superfund program.