This law was passed by the Republic of China (Taiwan) to control air pollution and protect the environment and human health.

The document reports on the state of the environment of Japan in FY 2005. It consists of an overview on population decline and the environment of Japan. It also describes the origins of Japan's environmental problems, citing the example of Minamata disease. In the second part of the report, it summarizes the environmental issues and government environmental conservation measures in Japan, FY 2005.

Contains the BRAC Commission Legislative Proposals - Feb 2006 PDF Version

BRAC Commission Material – BRAC Crystal City Office 2005 Visitor Log

BRAC Commission Material – BRAC Crystal City Office Library Patron Log containing the names, organizations, signatures, dates, login & logout times, and visitor badge numbers

BRAC Commission Material – General Counsel Commission FOIA Request Response – Concerning Rock Island Arsenal (IL)

BRAC Commission Material Photo Staff Directory

A statement of record issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. Customs and Border Protection's (CBP) Automated Targeting System (ATS)--a computerized model that CBP officers use as a decision support tool to help them target oceangoing cargo containers for inspection--is part of CBP's layered approach to securing oceangoing cargo. GAO reported in February 2004 on challenges CBP faced in targeting oceangoing cargo containers for inspection and testified before Congress in March 2004 about the findings in that report. The report and testimony outlined recommendations aimed at (1) better incorporating recognized modeling practices into CBP's targeting strategy, (2) periodically adjusting the targeting strategy to respond to findings that occur during the course of its operation, and (3) improving implementation of the targeting strategy. This statement for the record discusses preliminary observations from GAO's ongoing work related to ATS and GAO's 2004 recommendations addressing the following questions: (1) What controls does CBP have in place to provide reasonable assurance that ATS is effective at targeting oceangoing cargo containers with the highest risk of smuggled weapons of mass destruction? (2) How does CBP systematically analyze security inspection results and incorporate them into ATS? and (3) What steps has …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "During recent congressional hearings and in public speeches, statements made by the National Credit Union Administration's (NCUA) Chairman and another board member raised congressional interest in the ability of NCUA to collect and objectively analyze data on credit union membership and executive compensation. More generally, these statements also raised issues about the agency's overall vigilance as a regulator and the independence and objectivity of NCUA's board and senior staff from the industry being regulated. As a result, Congress asked us to expand upon our current work looking at the tax-exempt status of credit unions to include a review of governance policies and procedures for NCUA's board of directors and senior staff and more specifically how the policies and procedures address independence and objectivity issues. This correspondence (1) compares controls and related procedures applicable to NCUA that help ensure the independence and objectivity of its board members with those of other federal financial regulatory agencies and relevant recommended management practices identified in academic and industry literature and (2) describes NCUA's use of Schedule C staff compared with that of other federal financial regulatory agencies."

Software for automated test equipment can be tedious and monotonous making it just as error-prone as other software. Active defect prevention and detection are also important for test applications. Incomplete or unclear requirements, a cryptic syntax used for some test applications—especially script-based test sets, variability in syntax or structure, and changing requirements are among the problems encountered in one tester. Such problems are common to all software but can be particularly problematic in test equipment software intended to test another product. Each of these issues increases the probability of error injection during test application development. This report describes a test application development tool designed to address these issues and others for a particular piece of test equipment. By addressing these problems in the development environment, the tool has powerful built-in defect prevention and detection capabilities. Regular expressions are widely used in the development tool as a means of formally defining test equipment requirements for the test application and verifying conformance to those requirements. A novel means of using regular expressions to perform range checking was developed. A reduction in rework and increased productivity are the results. These capabilities are described along with lessons learned and their applicability to other test …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy's long-range shipbuilding plan spells out its approach to meeting the Navy's future needs. This plan shows the Navy is embarking on an ambitious, expensive undertaking to develop, design, and construct a number of new ship classes. The Navy expects these vessels to successfully execute missions in a variety of environments through use of advanced technologies, while utilizing reduced crews and greater automation to lower costs. The Navy also expects these vessels to be constructed in quantities that sustain the industrial base and expand the overall size of the Navy. The plan calls for the number of ships to increase by about 10 percent to an average of about 309 ships through 2036. This effort will cost billions of dollars. At the request of Projection Forces Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, GAO examined the Navy's shipbuilding plan and is providing this discussion of 1) the multiple objectives the plan proposes to meet; 2) the challenges that must be met to execute the plan; and 3) ways the Navy can reduce the tension between the demand for and supply of shipbuilding funds."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States is engaged in an unconventional war, not a war against military forces of one country, but an irregular war against terrorist cells with global networks. Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom are sustained military operations, which are taking a toll on the condition and readiness of military equipment that, in some cases, is more than 20 years old. The Army and Marine Corps will likely incur large expenditures in the future to reset (repair or replace) a significant amount of equipment when hostilities cease. The Army has requested about $13 billion in its fiscal year 2006 supplemental budget request for equipment reset. Today's testimony addresses (1) the environment, pace of operations, and operational requirements in Southwest Asia, and their affects on the Army's and Marine Corps's equipping and maintenance strategies; (2) equipment maintenance consequences created by these equipping and maintenance strategies; and (3) challenges affecting the timing and cost of Army and Marine Corps equipment reset. GAO's observations are based on equipment-related GAO reports issued in fiscal years 2004 through 2006, as well as ongoing related work."

The objective of this three-year research program is to study the development of turbulence in Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) and Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instabilities. Incompressible RT and RM instabilities are studied in an apparatus in which a box containing two unequal density liquids is accelerated on a linear rail system either impulsively (by bouncing it off of a spring) to produce RM instability, or at a constant downward rate (using a weight and pulley system) to produce RT instability. These experiments are distinguished from others in the field in that they are initialized with well defined, measurable initial perturbations and are well visualized utilizing planar laser induced fluorescence imaging. New experiments are proposed aimed at generating fully turbulent RM and RT instabilities and quantifying the turbulent development once fully turbulent flows are achieved. The proposed experiments focus on the development and the subsequent application of techniques to accelerate the production of fully turbulent instabilities and the quantification of the turbulent instabilities once they are achieved. The proposed tasks include: the development of RM and RT experiments utilizing fluid combinations having larger density ratios than those previously used; the development of RM experiments with larger acceleration impulse than that previously used; and the investigation …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Congressional Review Act (CRA). Congressional oversight of rulemaking using the CRA can be an important and useful tool for monitoring the regulatory process and balancing and accommodating the concerns of American citizens and businesses with the effects of federal agencies' rules. This statement provides an overview of the purpose and provisions of CRA; GAO's role and activities in fulfilling its responsibilities under the Act; and trends on CRA within the broader context of developments in presidential and congressional oversight of federal agencies' rulemaking."

High performance computational science and engineering simulations have become an increasingly important part of the scientist's problem solving toolset. A key reason is the development of widely used codes and libraries that support these applications, for example, Netlib, a collection of numerical libraries [33]. The term community codes refers to those libraries or applications that have achieved some critical level of acceptance by a user community. Many of these applications are on the high-end in terms of required resources: computation, storage, and communication. Recently, there has been considerable interest in putting such applications on-line and packaging them as network services to make them available to a wider user base. Applications such as data mining [22], theorem proving and logic [14], parallel numerical computation [8][32] are example services that are all going on-line. Transforming applications into services has been made possible by advances in packaging and interface technologies including component systems [2][6][13][28][37], proposed communication standards [34], and newer Web technologies such as Web Services [38]. Network services allow the user to focus on their application and obtain remote service when needed by simply invoking the service across the network. The user can be assured that the most recent version of the …

Keynote address for the 2006 University Scholars Day delivered by Dr. Emile Sahliyeh. This keynote speaker discusses major reasons and issues relating to the lack of democratization in the Middle East to date.

The Illinois State Geological Survey and the Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium are conducting CO{sub 2} sequestration and enhanced oil recovery testing at six different sites in the Illinois Basin. The capital and operating costs for equipment to capture and liquefy CO{sub 2} from ethanol plants in the Illinois area were evaluated so that ethanol plants could be considered as an alternate source for CO{sub 2} in the event that successful enhanced oil recovery tests create the need for additional sources of CO{sub 2} in the area. Estimated equipment and operating costs needed to capture and liquefy 68 metric tonnes/day (75 tons/day) and 272 tonnes/day (300 tons/day) of CO{sub 2} for truck delivery from an ethanol plant are provided. Estimated costs are provided for food/beverage grade CO{sub 2} and also for less purified CO{sub 2} suitable for enhanced oil recovery or sequestration. The report includes preliminary plant and equipment designs and estimates major capital and operating costs for each of the recovery options. Availability of used equipment was assessed.

Letter from the Board of Directors Nominations Committee to the Publisher-Representatives of Member Papers on November 9, 2006 with the subject Election of Members to the Board of Directors for 2007. The letter is in regard to the nominations committee submitting the following nominations for the places on the associations board of directors.

Executive Summary: Initially the funds were sufficient funds were awarded to support one graduate student and one post-doc. Lange, though other funds, also supported a graduate intern from ETH Zurich, Switzerland for a period of 6 months. The initial direction was to study the chemical solution deposition method to understand the microstructural and mechanical phenomena that currently limit the production of thick film, reliable superconductor wires. The study was focused on producing thicker buffer layer(s) on Ni-alloy substrates produced by the RABiTS method. It focused on the development of the microstructure during epitaxy, and the mechanical phenomena that produce cracks during dip-coating, pyrolysis (decomposition of precursors during heating), crystallization and epitaxy. The initial direction of producing thicker layers of a know buffer layer material was redirected by co-workers at ORNL, in an attempt to epitaxially synthesize a potential buffer layer material, LaMnO3, via the solution route. After a more than a period of 6 months that showed that the LaMnO3 reacted with the Ni-W substrate at temperatures that could produce epitaxy, reviewers at the annual program review strongly recommended that the research was not yielding positive results. The only positive result presented at the meeting was that much thicker films …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As a part of Congress's continuing efforts to oversee the activities of the nonprofit sector, it asked us to review executive compensation issues at selected private, nonprofit hospital systems to gain an understanding of the policies and practices related to the salaries, benefits, travel, gifts, and entertainment expenses paid by these hospital systems. Our study's key questions were as follows: (1) What corporate governance structure do selected hospital systems report as having in place over executive compensation? (2) What is the basis for the compensation and benefits earned by, awarded to, or paid to the executives as reported by selected hospital systems? (3) What internal controls do selected hospital systems report as having in place over the approval, payment, and monitoring of executive travel and entertainment expenses, gifts, and other perquisites? On June 5, 2006, we briefed Congressional staff on the results of our work. This report transmits the briefing provided to Congressional staff, as amended to reflect some additional observations."

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Darl Good. Good volunteered for service in the Army, enlisting in January, 1941. Good trained at Fort Knox, Kentucky. He also attended a clerical school and worked in the headquarters at Fort Knox making sure the armored divisions had spare parts for their vehicles. After a few years there and promotion to warrant officer, Good transferred to the 918th Heavy Automotive Maintenance Company where he learned to drive a variety of vehicles (tanks, jeeps, trucks, etc.). They shipped over to England in 1944 and eventually set up an auto parts warehouse in Brussels. Good returned to the US and was discharged in November, 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Kenneth O. Good. Good joined the Army Air Forces in December of 1942. He completed Radio Operator and Mechanics Technical School at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois and the Aviation Cadet Pilot Training Program in Texas. Good received his wings in August of 1944. He served with the 528th Fighter Squadron, 311th Fighter Group, 14th Air Force as a P-51 fighter pilot, under the director of General Claire Chenault. In May of 1945, Good was deployed overseas and completed missions over China and Burma, escorting bombers, flying interception missions, striking enemy communications, and supporting ground operations. He served in combat until the end of the war. Good returned to the US and received his discharge in January, 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Nellis Verhey. Verhey joined the Army in April of 1943. He served with G Company, 3rd Battalion, 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division. In 1944 they traveled to England. Verhey parachuted into Normandy on D-Day in June and into Belgium during Operation Market Garden in September. Verhey was discharged in December of 1945. After the war ended, he served on Honor Guard duty for both Eisenhower and Truman.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Robert Benzinger. Benzinger joined the Navy in June of 1944. He completed Radio School. He was stationed as a Radio Technician at the Navy Pier in Chicago and worked with all Navy communications equipment. He graduated from Navy Pier just as the war ended and continued on with his service. He worked in a receiving station on Leyte Gulf in the Philippine from September of 1945 through May of 1946. He was discharged in June of 1946.