This report discusses the issue of U.S. economic assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the importance of continued assistance in light of U.S. national security and also various U.S.-led efforts to promote reform amongst African citizens themselves. U.S. assistance finds its way to Africa through a variety of channels, including the USAID-administered DA program, food aid programs, and indirect aid provided through international financial institutions and the United Nations.

Since the late 1970s, U.S. policy makers at both the federal and state levels have enacted a variety of incentives, regulations, and programs to encourage the production and use of agriculture-based renewable energy. Motivations cited for these legislative initiatives include energy security concerns, reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, and raising domestic demand for U.S.-produced farm products. This report provides background information on farm-based energy production and how this fits into the national energy-use picture. It briefly reviews the primary agriculture-based renewable energy types and issues of concern associated with their production, particularly their economic and energy efficiencies and long-run supply. Finally, this report examines the major legislation related to farm-based energy production and use.

This report is on Broadband Internet Access and the Digital Divide: Federal Assistance Programs.

This report provides a brief overview of the Clean Water Act and Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) of pollutants.

Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act requires states to identify waters that are impaired by pollution, even after application of pollution controls. For those waters, states must establish a total maximum daily load (TMDL) of pollutants to ensure that water quality standards can be attained. Implementation of this provision has been dormant until recently, when states and EPA were prodded by numerous lawsuits. The TMDL issue has become controversial, in part because of requirements and costs now facing states to implement a 25-year-old provision of the law. Congressional activity to reauthorize the Act, a possibility in the 2nd Session of the 105th Congress, could include TMDL issues, but the direction for any such action is unclear at this time.

“Dear Colleague” letters are official correspondence distributed in bulk to Members in both chambers. Primarily, they are used by one or more Members to persuade others to cosponsor or oppose a bill (generally, prior to introduction). Dear Colleague letters might also inform Members of an event connected with congressional business, of new or modified House procedures, or of some other matter. The use of the phrase “‘Dear Colleague’ letter” to refer to a widely distributed letter among Members dates at least to the start of the 20th century. New technologies and expanded use of the Internet have increased the speed and facilitated the process of preparing Dear Colleague letters.

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The Pennsylvania State University, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory will establish, promote, and manage a national industry-driven Stripper Well Consortium (SWC) that will be focused on improving the production performance of domestic petroleum and/or natural gas stripper wells. The consortium creates a partnership with the U.S. petroleum and natural gas industries and trade associations, state funding agencies, academia, and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This report serves as the seventeenth quarterly technical progress report for the SWC. Key activities for this reporting period include: (1) organizing and hosting the SWC fall technology transfer meetings in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and State College, Pennsylvania, (2) planning of the upcoming SWC spring proposal meeting, (3) release of the SWC Request-for-proposals (RFP), (4) revision of the SWC By-Laws, and (5) the SWC Executive Council nomination and election for 2005-2006 term members.

Free-field recordings of underground nuclear explosions constitute a unique data set within the near-source region of seismic events ranging in magnitude from M3 to M6.5. The term ''free-field'' in this context refers to recordings from instruments emplaced in boreholes or tunnel walls such that the initial portions of the records ({approx}0.1 to 1 second) do not contain effects resulting from reflections at the free surface. In addition to the free-field instruments deployed to record ground motions from selected underground nuclear explosions at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and elsewhere, surface arrays were routinely deployed to record surface accelerations and velocities from underground nuclear tests conducted at NTS.

Code validation, or comparing the output of computer simulations to experiments, is necessary to determine which simulation is a better approximation to an experiment. It can also be used to determine how the input parameters in a simulation can be modified to yield output that is closer to the experiment. In this report, we discuss our experiences in the use of image processing techniques for extracting features from 2-D simulations and experiments. These features can be used in comparing the output of simulations to experiments, or to other simulations. We first describe the problem domain and the data. We next explain the need for cleaning or denoising the experimental data and discuss the performance of different techniques. Finally, we discuss the features of interest and describe how they can be extracted from the data. The focus in this report is on extracting features from experimental and simulation data for the purpose of code validation; the actual interpretation of these features and their use in code validation is left to the domain experts.

Report on the history of the HOPE VI program, and the debate surrounding the future budget of the program.

This report summarizes the extent of the disaster and relief effort.

High resolution x-ray spectra were recorded by the High Energy Electronic X-Ray (HENEX) spectrometer from a variety of targets irradiated by the Omega laser at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics. The HENEX spectrometer utilizes four reflection crystals covering the 1 keV to 20 keV energy range and one quartz(10-11) transmission crystal (Lau geometry) covering the 11 keV to 40 keV range. The time-integrated spectral images were recorded on five CMOS x-ray detectors. In the spectra recorded from krypton-filled gasbag and hohlraum targets, the helium-like K-shell transitions n=1-2, 1-3, and 1-4 appeared in the 13 keV to 17 keV energy range. A number of additional spectral features were observed at energies lower than the helium-like n=1-3 and n=1-4 transitions. Based on computational simulations of the spectra using the FLYCHK/FLYSPEC codes, which included opacity effects, these additional features are identified to be inner-shell transitions from the Li-like through N-like krypton charge states. The comparisons of the calculated and observed spectra indicate that these transitions are characteristic of the plasma conditions immediately after the laser pulse when the krypton density is 2x1018 cm-3 and the electron temperature is in the range 2.8 keV to 3.2 keV. These spectral features represent a new diagnostic …

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Describing preliminary concepts for permanent warning monuments or markers on the mountain's surface will be part of the US Department of Energy's license application to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The NRC requires that the monuments or markers accurately identify the location of the repository, be designed to be as permanent as practicable and convey a warning against intrusion into the underground repository, because of risk to public health and safety from radioactive wastes. Current concepts include both monuments and markers, but the designs will not be final for some time because they will not be approved by the NRC until shortly before the repository is to be permanently sealed and closed. Closure of the repository would be at least 50 years, and possibly up to 300 years, after the first waste is emplaced deep underground. Design ideas for the monuments and markers have been drawn from a broad range of sources: Yucca Mountain's natural conditions, worldwide archeological studies, materials science, and verbal and symbolic linguistics. The monumental challenge is to address how warnings can be coherently conveyed for thousands of years into the future when human society and languages could change …

Report which discusses issues related to the North Atlantic Trade Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU) including the level of involvement of the entities in using political and military actions to defend against terrorism and proliferation, the types of military forces necessary, the role of the EU in crisis management, the appropriateness of decision-making procedures to respond to emerging threats, and the role of other international institutions.

New measurements performed with the GEANIE {gamma}-ray detector array at LANSCE, and theoretical calculations performed by T-16 have improved the accuracy with which the energy-dependent cross section for production of the long-lived isomer in 193Ir is known. Comparisons with critical assemblies data show excellent agreement. Evaluation work is nearly complete to enable the use of the new data in applied calculations.

The invention relates to a process for preparing lithium intercalation compounds by plasma reaction comprising the steps of: forming a feed solution by mixing lithium nitrate or lithium hydroxide or lithium oxide and the required metal nitrate or metal hydroxide or metal oxide and between 10-50% alcohol by weight; mixing the feed solution with O2 gas wherein the O2 gas atomizes the feed solution into fine reactant droplets, inserting the atomized feed solution into a plasma reactor to form an intercalation powder; and if desired, heating the resulting powder to form a very pure single phase product.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Integrated Safety Management (ISM) System Description (LLNL 2002) and the Task Plan for the Preparation of Authorization Basis Documentation for the proposed Biosafety Level 3 Laboratory at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (DOE 2002a) require a PABD be prepared for the proposed BSL-3 Facility. NNSA-OAK approval is required prior to its construction. This Preliminary Authorization Basis Documentation (PABD) formalizes and documents the hazard evaluation and its results for the Biosafety level 3 (BSL-3) facility. The PABD for the proposed BSL-3 facility provides the following information: (1) BSL-3 facility's site description; (2) general description of the BSL-3 facility and its operations; (3) identification of facility hazards; (4) generic hazard analysis; (5) identification of controls important to safety; and (6) safety management programs. The PABD characterizes the level of intrinsic potential hazard associated with a facility and provides the basis for its hazard classification. The hazard classification determines the level of safety documentation required and the level of review and approval for the safety analysis. The hazards of primary concern associated with the BSL-3 facility are biological. The hazard classification is determined by comparing facility inventories of biological materials and activities with the BSL-3 threshold established by the …

The equatorial Pacific is a region with strong negative feedbacks. Yet coupled GCMs have exhibited a propensity to develop a significant SST bias in that region, suggesting an unrealistic sensitivity in the coupled models to small energy flux errors that inevitably occur in the individual model components. Could this 'hypersensitivity' exhibited in a coupled model be due to an underestimate of the strength of the negative feedbacks in this region? With this suspicion, the feedbacks in the equatorial Pacific in seven atmospheric GCMs (AGCMs) have been quantified using the interannual variations in that region and compared with the corresponding calculations from the observations. The seven AGCMs are: the NCAR CAM1, the NCAR CAM2,the NCAR CAM3, the NASA/NSIPP Atmospheric Model, the Hadley Center Model, the GFDL AM2p10, and the GFDL AM2p12. All the corresponding coupled runs of these seven AGCMs have an excessive cold-tongue in the equatorial Pacific. The net atmospheric feedback over the equatorial Pacific in the two GFDL models is found to be comparable to the observed value. All other models are found to have a weaker negative net feedback from the atmosphere--a weaker regulating effect on the underlying SST than the real atmosphere. A weaker negative feedback from …

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This report provides a summary of the contents of the Senate's Calendar of Business, which lists bills, resolutions, and other items of legislative business that are eligible for floor consideration.

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