Develop and test advanced near vertical to wide-angle seismic methods for structural imaging and material properties estimation of the shallow subsurface for environmental characterization efforts.

The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including Osama bin Laden. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security.

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.

This report discusses how U.S. Airways filed bankruptcy in 2002. This called for a reorganization of the company's assets which are mostly leased including land, planes, and equipment.

This report discusses President Bush's 2002 requests for new funding and additional authority to provide assistance to Colombia and six regional neighbors in a continuation of the Andean Regional Initiative (ARI) launched in 2001.

On December 4, 1991, President George Bush signed into law the Andean Trade Preference Act (ATPA) to counter illicit drug production and trade in Latin America. For ten years, it has provided preferential, mostly duty-free, treatment of selected U.S. imports from Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. The goal of ATPA is to encourage increased exports, thereby promoting development and providing an incentive for Andean farmers and other workers to pursue economic alternatives to the drug trade. This report discusses the ATPA, its background, and issues regarding its potential reauthorization.

This report is on Anticircumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Universal Studios v. Corley.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, consolidated, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Interior Appropriations Subcommittees.

The goal of this study was to select one or more commercially available aqueous sorbents to solidify the zinc bromide solution stored in C-Area, identify the polymer to zinc bromide solution ratio (waste loading) for the selected sorbents, and identify processing issues that require further testing in pilot-scale testing.

K Basin sludge contains metallic uranium and uranium oxides that will corrode and hydrate during storage. The end-state (final) corrosion products will have a lower particle density and a higher void fraction (or volume fraction of sludge occupied by water) than the starting-state sludge at the beginning of storage. As the particle density and void fraction change, the volume occupied by a given mass of sludge will also change. The purpose of this report is to quantify how the various types and sources of K Basin sludge will react and volumetrically expand (or contract) between the time the sludge is first loaded into the storage containers (starting state) and the time all major volume-changing reactions have been completed (end state). The results from this report will be used in design and safety basis calculations for sludge management systems and will be incorporated into the sludge technical basis documents.

Atomic properties of multiply charged ions have been investigated using excitation of energetic heavy ion beams. Spectroscopy of excited atomic transitions has been applied from the visible to the extreme ultraviolet wavelength regions to provide accurate atomic structure and transition rate data in selected highly ionized atoms. High-resolution position-sensitive photon detection has been introduced for measurements in the ultraviolet region. The detailed structures of Rydberg states in highly charged beryllium-like ions have been measured as a test of long-range electron-ion interactions. The measurements are supported by multiconfiguration Dirac-Fock calculations and by many-body perturbation theory. The high-angular-momentum Rydberg transitions may be used to establish reference wavelengths and improve the accuracy of ionization energies in highly charged systems. Precision wavelength measurements in highly charged few-electron ions have been performed to test the most accurate relativistic atomic structure calculations for prominent low-lying excited states. Lifetime measurements for allowed and forbidden transitions in highly charged few-electron ions have been made to test theoretical transition matrix elements for simple atomic systems. Precision lifetime measurements in laser-excited alkali atoms have been initiated to establish the accuracy of relativistic atomic many-body theory in many-electron systems.

One of the least controversial provisions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-163) established corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new passenger cars. This report presents a brief background and analysis regarding the price of crude oil that brought into sharp focus the fuel inefficiency of U.S. automobiles. The report also discusses the previous issues and the most recent developments regarding CAFE.

This report is an Overview of Procedural Developments Budget Enforcement for FY2002.

The Senate “pay-as-you-go,” or PAYGO, rule generally requires that any legislation increasing direct spending or reducing revenues be offset. A motion to waive the rule requires an affirmative vote of three-fifths of the membership (i.e., 60 Senators if no seats are vacant). Beginning in 1993, six points of order under the PAYGO rule have been raised against an entire bill or an amendment. Of these six points of order, four were sustained and two fell upon the adoption of a waiver motion.

This report lists the current federal capital offenses and summarizes the procedures for federal civilian death penalty cases. Several laws are relevant to the topic including: P.L. 103-322, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994; the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996; and P.L. 107-197, the Terrorist Bombings Convention Implementation Act of 2002.

The entry into force, on January 1, 1994, of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) has eliminated the advantage that the beneficiaries of the Caribbean Basin Economic Recovery Act (CBERA) and related provisions of the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI) had enjoyed in trade with the United States relative to Mexico, and gave Mexico an increasingly significant competitive edge over the CBERA countries. The scheduled further implementation of the NAFTA would have resulted in a substantial advantage to Mexico over the CBERA countries and vitiate in part the purpose of the CBERA.

A series of laser welds were performed using a high-power diode-pumped continuous-wave Nd:YAG laser welder. In a previous study, the experimental results of those welds were examined, and the effects that changes in incident power and various welding parameters had on weld geometry were investigated. In this report, the fusion zones of the laser welds are compared with those predicted from a laser keyhole weld simulation model for stainless steels (304L and 21-6-9), vanadium, and tantalum. The calculated keyhole depths for the vanadium and 304L stainless steel samples fit the experimental data to within acceptable error, demonstrating the predictive power of numerical simulation for welds in these two materials. Calculations for the tantalum and 21-6-9 stainless steel were a poorer match to the experimental values. Accuracy in materials properties proved extremely important in predicting weld behavior, as minor changes in certain properties had a significant effect on calculated keyhole depth. For each of the materials tested, the correlation between simulated and experimental keyhole depths deviated as the laser power was increased. Using the model as a simulation tool, we conclude that the optical absorptivity of the material is the most influential factor in determining the keyhole depth. Future work will …

Traditionally, the 'Apterygota' has been thought to consist of five orders of wingless hexapods (Protura, Collembola, Diplura, Microcoryphia and Zygentoma) believed to be collectively basal to insects (i.e., the Pterygota). However, some studies have questioned this affinity with insects (Dallai, Abele, Spears, Nardi). Further, within these groups are hotly debated issues, including the monophyly of Entognata (Koch, 1997; Kukalova Peck, 1987), the monophyly of Diplura (Bilinski, 1993; Stys and Bilinski, 1990), the affinity between Collembola and Protura (Dallai, 1994; Kristensen, 1981) and the position of Lepidotrichidae (below). In fact, these relationships constitute one of the most debated issues in hexapod phylogeny. The family Lepidotrichidae was first described by (Silvestri, 1912) (1912: 'Lepidothricinae') from a Baltic Amber fossil (Lepidothrix pilifera Menge). The only living representative of this family is Tricholepidion gertschi Wygodzinski. Since this species was first described (Wygodzinsky, 1961) its phylogenetic position has been difficult to establish, due to an 'array of unique characters' that are difficult to interpret in a phylogenetic framework. Tricholepidion (and therefore the whole family Lepidotrichidae) has been considered either as belonging to the order Zygentoma (Kristensen, 1997; Wygodzinsky, 1961), or basal to the rest of the Zygentoma plus the Pterygota (Beutel, 2001; Bitsch and Bitsch, …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies spent $136 billion dollars in 2001 acquiring services ranging from clerical support and consulting services to information technology services, such as network support, and management and operations of government facilities, such as national laboratories. To achieve greater cost savings and better outcomes with this spending, Congress and the administration have encouraged greater use of performance-based contracting. Under this approach, the contracting agency specifies the outcome or result it desires and leaves it to the contractor to decide how best to achieve the desired outcome. Most of the 25 contracts GAO reviewed exhibited at least one or more performance-based attributes, but there was a range in the degree to which they exhibited these attributes."

This report outlines the amended FY2002 defense budget request from the Bush administration, delivered to the Hill in June 2001.

Congress supports the research and development efforts of the Department of Defense (DOD) with a Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) appropriation. The appropriation primarily supports the development of the nation’s future military hardware and software and the technology base upon which those products rely. It is the federal government’s single largest research and development account. Besides supporting the nation’s military needs, some of the technology developed with RDT&E funds spills over into the commercial sector. For these reasons, RDT&E funding draws a considerable amount of attention within Congress each year.

The Nuclear Materials Management Division (NMMD) has proposed that certain Pu solutions stored in H-Canyon be disposed to H-Tank Farm. These solutions contain significant inventories of plutonium. The Pu/Gd mixture (along with the sludge slurry from Tank 7 and Am/Cm solution) will be processed as a part of Sludge Batch 3. Sludge Batch 3 is the next sludge batch of feed for the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). In order to prepare the feed for DWPF, the sludge slurry will be washed to approximately 0.55 M Na in the supernate. This report addresses the glove box work with a Sludge Batch 3 simulant and a Pu/Gd mixture precipitated from H-Canyon Tank 18.3. The main objective of this experimental work was to determine the behavior of the Pu and Gd during the Tank Farm washing process and the SRAT process.

Here, we report a maximum ATP synthesis rate of 193 nmol/min/mg for thermophilic F{sub 1}F{sub 0}. This rate is somewhat lower than the previously observed maximum rate of 500-700 nmol/min/mg (Pitard et al., 1996). However, ATP synthesis rates vary considerably with experimental conditions, and our observed rates compare favorably with the wide range of rates (40-700 nmol/min/mg) observed by these authors. Future research will focus on maximizing the ATP synthesis rate by adjusting environmental conditions, including the lipid and cholesterol composition of the proteoliposomes.