This report provides a concise historical account of the dispute, summarizes the subsidy and injury evidence, and discusses the current issues and events regarding lumber imports from Canada.

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Under provisions of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 (EGTRRA, P.L. 107-16, enacted June 7, 2001), the estate tax is scheduled to be repealed in 2010 but reinstated in 2011. All tax cut provisions of EGTRRA are scheduled to sunset on December 31, 2010. This report tracks actions in the 108th Congress to permanently repeal the estate tax or to retain but alter the tax.

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Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entailing information about the E-rate program and controversies in regards to telecommunications discounts for schools and libraries. Topics include, recent developments, scope and funding, program status, etc.

Staff of Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, IBM and the RIKEN BNL Research Center organized a one-day workshop held on February 28, 2003 at Brookhaven to promote the following goals: (1) To explore areas other than QCD applications where the QCDOC and BlueGene/L machines can be applied to good advantage, (2) To identify areas where collaboration among the sponsoring institutions can be fruitful, and (3) To expose scientists to the emerging software architecture. This workshop grew out of an informal visit last fall by BNL staff to the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center that resulted in a continuing dialog among participants on issues common to these two related supercomputers. The workshop was divided into three sessions, addressing the hardware and software status of each system, prospective applications, and future directions.

This paper describes tomographic capabilities for the Nuclear Materials Identification System (NMIS). The tomographic capabilities add weapons component spatial and material properties information that result in a more detailed item signature (template) and provide more information for physical attributes analyses. The Nuclear Materials Identification System (NMIS) is used routinely to confirm the identity of HEU components in sealed containers. It does this through a radiation signature acquired by shining a {sup 252}Cf source through the container and measuring the radiation at four detectors stacked vertically on the other side. This measurement gives a gamma and neutron radiation transmission profile of the weapons component, mixed with the radiation production due to the induced fissions in the fissile materials. This information is sufficient to match an "unknown" weapons component signature to a template signature from a reference item when measuring under controlled conditions. Tomography measures the interior of an item by making transmission measurements from all angles around the item, whereas NMIS makes the measurements from a single angle. Figure 1 is a standard example of tomographic reconstruction, the Shepp-Logan human brain phantom. The measured quantity is attenuation so high values (white) are highly attenuating areas.

OAK-B135 Results obtained during this funding period: (1) Phylogenetic footprinting of AG regulatory sequences Sequences necessary and sufficient for AGAMOUS (AG) expression in the center of Arabidopsis flowers are located in the second intron, which is about 3 kb in size. This intron contains binding sites for two transcription factors, LEAFY (LFY) and WUSCHEL (WUS), which are direct activators of AG. We used the new method of phylogenetic shadowing to identify new regulatory elements. Among 29 Brassicaceae, several other motifs, but not the LFY and WUS binding sites previously identified, are largely invariant. Using reporter gene analyses, we tested six of these motifs and found that they are all functionally important for activity of AG regulatory sequences in A. thaliana. (2) Repression of AG by MADS box genes A candidate for repressing AG in the shoot apical meristem has been the MADS box gene FUL, since it is expressed in the shoot apical meristem and since an activated version (FUL:VP16) leads to ectopic AG expression in the shoot apical meristem. However, there is no ectopic AG expression in full single mutants. We therefore started to generate VP16 fusions of several other MADS box genes expressed in the shoot apical meristem, …

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This report contains a summary of the assistance to firefighters program, also known as the FIRE Act grant program.

The trans-polyproline (PII) oligomers (Figure 1) are unusually rigid peptide structures which have been extensively studied by our group for peptide mediated intramolecular electron transfer (ET) at long distances. We have previously studied ET across a series of metal ion donor (D) acceptor (A) oligoproline peptides with different distances, driving forces and reorganizational energies. The majority of these experiments involve generating the ET intermediate using pulse radiolysis methods, although more recently photochemical methods are also used. Results of these studies showed that ET across peptides can vary by more than twelve orders of magnitude. Using ruthenium bipyridine donors, ET reaction rate constants across several proline residues (n = 4 - 9) occurred in the millisecond (ms) to {micro}s timescale, thus limiting the proline peptide conformational motions to only minor changes (far smaller than the large changes that occur on the ms to sec timescale, such as trans to cis proline isomerization). The present report describes our large data base of experimental results for D-peptide-A complexes in terms of a model where the involvement of both superexchange and hopping (hole and electron) mechanisms account for the long range ET rate constants observed. Our data shows that the change from superexchange to …

The Institute for Scientific Computing Research (ISCR) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is jointly administered by the Computing Applications and Research Department (CAR) and the University Relations Program (URP), and this joint relationship expresses its mission. An extensively externally networked ISCR cost-effectively expands the level and scope of national computational science expertise available to the Laboratory through CAR. The URP, with its infrastructure for managing six institutes and numerous educational programs at LLNL, assumes much of the logistical burden that is unavoidable in bridging the Laboratory's internal computational research environment with that of the academic community. As large-scale simulations on the parallel platforms of DOE's Advanced Simulation and Computing (ASCI) become increasingly important to the overall mission of LLNL, the role of the ISCR expands in importance, accordingly. Relying primarily on non-permanent staffing, the ISCR complements Laboratory research in areas of the computer and information sciences that are needed at the frontier of Laboratory missions. The ISCR strives to be the ''eyes and ears'' of the Laboratory in the computer and information sciences, in keeping the Laboratory aware of and connected to important external advances. It also attempts to be ''feet and hands, in carrying those advances into the Laboratory …