In the House of Representatives, the term “calendar” has two related meanings. This fact sheet, one of a series of fact sheets on legislative process, explains calendars and their use in the House of Representatives.

This report presents a brief description of the five methods used to bring proposed legislation to the House floor for consideration.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as passed in 1978, provided a statutory framework for the use of electronic surveillance in the context of foreign intelligence gathering. In doing so, Congress sought to strike a balance between national security interests and personal privacy rights. Subsequent legislation expanded federal laws dealing with foreign intelligence gathering to address physical searches, pen registers and trap and trace devices, and access to certain business records.

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Political organizations have the primary purpose of influencing federal, state, or local elections and conducting similar activities. Those that qualify under section 527 of the Internal Revenue Code are taxed only on a certain income. Under the Code, 527 organizations are subject to reporting requirements that involve registration, the periodic disclosure of contributions and expenditures, and the annual filing of tax returns. Section 527 organizations must also comply with applicable campaign finance laws. This report will briefly describe these organizations and the reporting requirements they face under the Code. The report will be updated as events warrant.

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In January 2003, Lucio Gutierrez of the Patriotic Society Party (PSP), a former army Colonel who was part of the junta that toppled the government of Jamil Mahuad in January 2000, became the country’s sixth president in seven years. Early in his presidency, President Gutierrez abandoned his populist rhetoric and adopted some market-friendly economic reforms in order to secure support from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His power was severely limited, however, by opposition parties that dominated the Congress, indigenous protests, and allegations of corruption.

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This report discusses the General Mining Law of 1872, which is the law that grants free access to individuals and corporations to prospect for minerals in public domain lands, and allows them, upon making a discovery, to stake (or “locate”) a claim on that deposit.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Effect of amended article VII, section 5(b) of the Texas Constitution on the State Board of Education's management of the permenent school fund (RQ-0249-GA)

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In developing countries, only about 7 percent of people with HIV/AIDS receive treatment. In 2003, the Congress authorized the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a 5-year, $15 billion initiative under the Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator. The Emergency Plan focuses on 15 developing countries, with a goal of supporting treatment for 2 million people. Treatment regimens use multiple antiretroviral medications (ARV), which can be original or generic. Fixed-dose combinations (FDC) combine two or three ARVs into one pill. Questions have been raised about whether the plan is providing ARVs preferred by the focus countries at reasonable prices. GAO compared the selection of ARVs provided under the plan with that provided under other major treatment initiatives, compared the prices of those selections, and determined what the Coordinator's Office is doing to expand the plan's selection of quality-assured lower-priced ARVs."

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Photograph of the Plumeyer Bakery Building, in New Braunfels, Texas.

Photograph of the Plumeyer Bakery Building, in New Braunfels, Texas.

Photograph of the Plumeyer Bakery Building, in New Braunfels, Texas.

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New scientific frontiers, recent advances in theory, and rapid increases in computational capabilities have created compelling opportunities for theory and computation to advance the scientific mission of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES). The prospects for success in the experimental programs of BES will be enhanced by pursuing these opportunities. This report makes the case for an expanded research program in theory and computation in BES. The Subcommittee on Theory and Computation of the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee was charged with identifying current and emerging challenges and opportunities for theoretical research within the scientific mission of BES, paying particular attention to how computing will be employed to enable that research. A primary purpose of the Subcommittee was to identify those investments that are necessary to ensure that theoretical research will have maximum impact in the areas of importance to BES, and to assure that BES researchers will be able to exploit the entire spectrum of computational tools, including leadership class computing facilities. The Subcommittee s Findings and Recommendations are presented in Section VII of this report.

Upper tropospheric humidity (UTH) measurements from the 6.7 micron channel on GOES (8, 9, 12) and GMS-5 satellites were employed to develop a near real-time UTH product that is now available from the ARM External Data Center (XDC). The UTH product is available in either gridded format (2.0 x 2.0 lat-lon resolution), full-disk pixel resolution, or individual pixel resolution for both the SGP and TWP sites. This product provides the basis for the instrument intercomparison and validation activities (Section 0.2), diurnal analysis and model evaluation (0.3), and cloud lifecycle studies (0.5); and is also an important component of the research proposed here. Full details regarding the retrieval algorithm for the ARM sites can be found in Soden et al. (2004a) and references therein.

Spent fuel tests in support of Yucca Mountain have been performed for many years. Most of these tests have been either single-pass flowthrough (SPFT) or unsaturated drip tests that have been used to elucidate waste form degradation rates. In general, the tests have been considered accelerated tests per the definition found in ASTM Standard C1174 in that either the temperature or flow rate has been increased in order to increase the rate of alteration. However, as the design and models for the proposed repository have solidified, it is clear that much of what was originally considered an accelerated test is, in reality, either a service condition test or a test that determines bounding conditions that grossly overestimate radionuclide degradation and release rates under repository relevant conditions. This presentation will examine the factors that need to be considered for future waste form, including waste package internals, degradation tests.

The National Academies' Board on Mathematical Sciences and their Applications (BMSA) is a primary interface between the research enterprise and federal agencies that rely on the mathematical sciences. The Board provides objective and authoritative advice on how best to apply the tools of mathematics, statistics, operations research, financial engineering, computational modeling, computational science, information analysis, and decision analysis to practical problems of national importance. In so doing, the Board strengthens the policy-making process and increases the visibility of, and appreciation for, the mathematical sciences while also identifying growth areas for the discipline. The Board consists of 18 pro bono experts from a broad range of quantitative fields, with experience in academia, industry, and national laboratories.

A major challenge to understanding the fate of contaminants in environment is the direct identification of trace concentrations (ppm to ppb) at the sub-micron scale. In order to efficiently characterize the trace metals in various environmental and geological samples, we have utilized high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM) combined with conventional TEM techniques. In general, the image contrast observed in the HAADF-STEM is correlated to the atomic mass: heavier elements contribute to a brighter contrast. Additionally, the contrast in HAADF-STEM is characteristically independent of focus, because the image is formed by incoherent scattering. Remarkable results obtained using the advanced TEM technique are shown as an example. (1) Fine- and ultra-fine particles with heavy metals in urban aerosols from various locations were examined to investigate metal concentrations and speciation. The trace element speciation: Pb, As, Sb, La, Ce, Sr, Zn, Cr, Se, Sn, Y, Zr, Au, Ag and U have been characterized. We have identified nanocrystals of uraninite encapsulated in carbonaceous matter ({approx} 50 nm). The ''carbon-caged'' nanocrystals of uraninite are protected from the immediate oxidation that would lead to increased mobility of uranium in the environment. Still, the presence of uranium in the very fine-fraction (PM{sub 2.5}) of …

Fluid flow in geothermal production and injection wells can be strongly affected by heat transfer effects with the formations surrounding the wellbore. Various techniques and approximations to model wellbore heat transmission have been presented in the literature. The objective of the present work is to develop a treatment of conductive heat transfer in the formations surrounding a wellbore that is simple, yet provides good accuracy for transient effects at early time. This is accomplished by adapting the well known semi-analytical heat transfer method of Vinsome and Westerveld (1980) to the problem of heat transfer to and from a flowing well. The Vinsome-Westerveld method treats heat exchange between a reservoir and adjacent cap and base rocks by means of a hybrid numerical-analytical method, in which temperature distributions in the conductive domain are approximated by simple trial functions, whose parameters are obtained concurrently with the numerical solution for the flow domain. This method can give a very accurate representation of conductive heat transfer even for non-monotonic temperature variations over a broad range of time scales. The only enhancement needed for applying the method to wellbore heat transmission is taking account of the cylindrical geometry around a flowing well, as opposed to the …

In contrast to substitution on the Co or Ce site, Sn substitution has a remarkably strong effect on superconductivity in CeCoIn{sub 5-x}Sn{sub x}, with T{sub c} {yields} 0 beyond only {approx}3.6% Sn. Instead of being randomly distributed on in-plane and out-of-plane In sites, extended x-ray absorption fine structure measurements show the Sn atoms preferentially substitute within the Ce-In plane. This result highlights the importance of the In(1) site to impurity scattering and clearly demonstrates the two-dimensional nature of superconductivity in CeCoIn{sub 5}.