A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress passed the D.C. Family Court Act of 2001 to reform court practices and establish procedures to improve interactions between the District of Columbia's Family Court, of D.C. Superior Court, and social service agencies in the District. The act directed the Mayor to prepare a plan to integrate the computer systems of District agencies with those of the Court. The fiscal year 2002 D.C. Appropriations Act authorized $200,000 for integrating the computer systems and $500,000 for social workers to implement family court reform. The act also required the Mayor to prepare a plan for these funds and mandated that the plan be issued on July 8, 2002. The Mayor's plan provides such useful information as (1) an outline of the District's current health and human services information technology environment and its information needs and limitations regarding the Family Court, (2) planned and possible short- and long-term initiatives to integrate the District's computer systems with those of the Family Court, (3) five technological integration priorities, and (4) how the $200,000 in appropriated funds will be spent. However, the District has not yet completed essential analyses, such as …

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a parent has an unrestricted right of access to the school counseling records of his or her minor child (RQ-0506-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a slaughterhouse in Texas that slaughters, processes, possesses, sells, or transports horse-meat to foreign countries to be consumed by humans there violates section 149.002 or 149.003 of the Agriculture Code, and related questions (RQ-0512-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a bank may use information contained in the magnetic stripe of a driver's license (RQ-0514-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a sheriff in a county that does not have a bail bond board has the authority to post in the county jail a list of preapproved bondsmen (RQ-0517-JC)

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This grant was a continuation of research conducted at the University of Florida under Grant No. DE-FG05-91ER45462 in which we investigated the energy bandgap shifts produced in semiconductor quantum dots of sizes between 1.5 and 40 nm. The investigated semiconductors consisted of a series of Column 2-6 compounds (CdS, CdSe, CdTe) and pure Column IV elements (Si and Ge). It is well-known of course that the 2-6 semiconductors possess a direct-gap electronic structure, while the Column IV elements possess an indirect-gap structure. The investigation showed a major difference in quantum confinement behavior between the two sets of semiconductors. This difference is essentially associated with the change in bandgap energy resulting from size confinement. In the direct-gap semiconductors, the change in energy (blue shift) saturates when the crystals approach 2-3 nm in diameter. This limits the observed shift in energy to less than 1 eV above the bulk value. In the indirect-gap semiconductors, the energy shift does not show any sign of saturation and in fact, we produced Si and Ge nanocrystals with absorption edges in the UV. The reason for this difference has not been determined and will require additional experimental and theoretical studies. In our work, we suggest, but …

These tests conducted this past quarter have indicated that the bacterium Pseudomonas fluorescens strain CL0145A is effective at killing zebra mussels at water temperatures ranging from 7 to 23 C. Percent kill will likely be somewhat lower at very low temperatures, e.g., 7 C, but even at such low temperatures high mussel kill can still be achieved (>70% kill). This is significant because the development of a zebra mussel control method that is efficacious in such a wide range of temperatures broadens its usefulness as a potential commercial product.

This paper proposes an alternative approach to qualifying gas generating radioactive payloads for shipment within Type B packaging through application of hydrogen recombiner/getter technology.

This note summarizes some of the work done on Vlasov simulation methods during the two-week visit of E. Sonnendrucker to LBNL in July-August, 2002. It describes a variety of algorithms which might be employed in solving the coupled Vlasov-Poisson system on a grid in phase space. In particular, it emphasizes a class of methods which do not employ the sort of operator splitting commonly used in Vlasov methods, whereby the distribution function information is alternately updated along planes of constant x and constant v. Instead, the distribution function information on the phase space nodes is given by either (a) multi-dimensional interpolation of the gridded f at an earlier time onto a set of phase space locations which are obtained by tracking the nodes back to that earlier time (''backward semi-Lagrangian''), or (b) weighted deposition or averaging of f values from orbits onto nodes (''forward semi-Lagrangian'' or ''fully Lagrangian'').

This report describes the caustic leaching test conducted on Hanford Tank T-110 sludge during FY 2002 at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The data presented here can be used to develop the baseline and alternative flowsheets for pretreating Hanford tank sludge. The U.S. Department of Energy funded the work through the Efficient Separations and Processing Crosscutting Program (ESP; EM-50).

We report here results from power balance measurements for ohmically-heated plasmas in the Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment (SSPX). The plasma is formed inside a close-fitting tungsten-coated copper shell; wall conditioning by baking, glow discharge cleaning (GDC), Ti gettering, and helium shot conditioning produces clean plasmas (Z{sub eff} < 2.5) and reduces impurity radiation to a small fraction of the input energy, except when the molybdenum divertor plate has been overheated. We find that most of the input energy is lost by conduction to the walls (the divertor plate and the inner electrode in the coaxial source region). Recently, carborane was added during GDC to boronize the plasma-facing surfaces, but little benefit was obtained.

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New Nanoscale Catalysts Based on Molybdenum and Tungsten Carbides and Oxycarbides.

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Legislation establishing a Department of Homeland Security includes provisions for an information analysis element within the new department. This report examines the information analysis function and the sharing of information among federal agencies but does not address provisions in the proposed legislation governing the sharing of intelligence with state and local officials.

Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entailing information about current legislation in regards to school choice. Topics include, tax subsidies, block grants, choice over existing programs, etc..

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China’s economy continues to be a concern to U.S. policymakers. On the one hand, China’s economic growth presents huge opportunities for U.S. exporters. On the other hand, the surge in Chinese exports to the United States has put competitive pressures on many U.S. industries. Many U.S. policymakers have argued that greater efforts should be made to pressure China to fully implement its WTO commitments and to change various economic policies deemed harmful to U.S. economic interests, such as its currency peg and its use of subsidies to support its SOEs. In addition, recent bids by Chinese state-owned firms to purchase various U.S. firms have raised concerns among Members over the impact such acquisitions could have on U.S. national and economic security.

Report discussing the most recent political developments in Iran, including who the country offers support to and opposes. The report also makes note of U.S. policy regarding these developments, as well as the measures put in place to ensure continued peaceful relations between the two countries.