This report provides information about the Status of U.N. Negotiations and Related Issues on Cyprus.Cyprus has been divided since 1974.since the 1970s,the U.N with U.S support has promoted negotiations aimed at reuniting the island.

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The field of x-ray optics struggles to develop optical systems with the versatility and sophistication of their visible light counterparts. The advent of fourth-generation light sources will make the struggle even more difficult. Fourth-generation light sources include laser/plasma sources, x-ray Free Electron Lasers (FEL), inverse Compton scattering sources, and the National Ignition Facility. LCLS, (Linac Coherent Light Source), and its European cousin, will be the first of the x-ray FELs. The LCLS, to be built at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), takes advantage of the existing SLAC linear accelerator to send intense, low emittance electron bunches through a 100 m long undulator structure. Through a process called SASE (Self Amplification of Spontaneous Emission) the electrons interact with the radiation fields they produce while in the undulator causing them to collect into micro bunches that emit coherent light. In the case of the LCLS the coherent radiation will have a wavelength in the x-ray regime, and will be tunable from 1.5 to 15 {angstrom}. The LCLS will deliver x-rays in individual coherent packages lasting < 300 fs, making the LCLS a very important source for studying short time phenomenon and for performing high-resolution x-ray structural analysis of molecular sized systems. …

This report includes information regarding Lebanon. United States relations, Lebanon's political profile, and foreign presence in Lebanon are among topics discussed in this report.

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This report focuses on a conflict between the European Union (EU) and the United States, Canada, and Argentina. The United States suggests that the European Union's moratorium costs the U.S. 300 million dollars in exports to the EU annually. Moreover, the report highlights other concerns the U.S. has with the EU's biotechnology policies.

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This article talks about the Assistance to Firefighters Program (FIRE) act and how the program assists local fire deparments by issuing federal grants for equipment, training and other firefighter related needs. It also mentions other firefighter related acts.

The question of whether to permanently repeal the federal estate tax or to reform it remains a topic of congressional interest.This report presents a variety of data measuring the payment of estate and gift taxes to help inform the debate.

This report discusses the information related to U.S trade with China, and major U.S - China Trade issues.

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This report provides an overview of industry and federal activities related to LNG security. The report describes U.S. LNG infrastructure, the industry's safety record and security risks, and the industry's security initiatives since September 11, 2001. It summarizes recent changes in federal LNG and maritime security law and related changes in the security roles of federal agencies. The report discusses several policy concerns related to federal LNG security efforts: 1) public costs of marine security, 2) uncertainty regarding LNG terrorism risks, and 3) security implications of promoting U.S.-flagged LNG tankers and U.S. crews.

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This research project investigated yield improvement and defect reduction techniques in steel casting. Research and technology development was performed in the following three specific areas: (1) Feeding rules for high alloy steel castings; (2) Unconventional yield improvement and defect reduction techniques--(a) Riser pressurization; and (b) Filling with a tilting mold; and (3) Modeling of reoxidation inclusions during filling of steel castings. During the preparation of the proposal for this project, these areas were identified by the High Alloy Committee and Carbon and Low Alloy Committee of the Steel Founders' Society of America (SFSA) as having the highest research priority to the steel foundry industry. The research in each of the areas involved a combination of foundry experiments, modeling and simulation. Numerous SFSA member steel foundries participated in the project through casting trials and meetings. The technology resulting from this project will result in decreased scrap and rework, casting yield improvement, and higher quality steel castings produced with less iteration. This will result in considerable business benefits to steel foundries, primarily due to reduced energy and labor costs, increased capacity and productivity, reduced lead-time, and wider use and application of steel castings. As estimated using energy data provided by the DOE, …

Using a 3-D finite difference method with a rotated-staggered-grid (RSG) scheme we generated synthetic seismograms for a reservoir model consisting of three horizontal layers with the middle layer containing parallel, equally spaced fractures. By separating and analyzing the backscattered signals in the FK domain, we can obtain an estimate of the fracture spacing. The fracture spacing is estimated by taking one-half of the reciprocal of the dominant wavenumber of the backscattered energy in data acquired normal to the fractures. FK analysis for fracture spacing estimation was successfully applied to these model results, with particular focus on PS converted waves. The method was then tested on data from the Emilio Field. The estimated fracture spacing from the dominant wavenumber values in time windows at and below the reservoir level is 25-40m. A second approach for fracture spacing estimation is based on the observation that interference of forward and backscattered energy from fractures introduces notches in the frequency spectra of the scattered wavefield for data acquired normal to the fracture strike. The frequency of these notches is related to the spacing of the fractures. This Spectral Notch Method was also applied to the Emilio data, with the resulting range of fracture spacing …

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The Nopal I uranium deposit located in the Sierra Pena Blanca, Mexico. The deposit was mined in the early 1980s, and ore was stockpiled close by. This stockpile area was cleared and is now referred to as the Prior High Grade Stockpile (PHGS). Some of the high-grade boulders from the site rolled downhill when it was cleared in the 1990s. For this study soil samples were collected from the alluvium surrounding and underlying one of these boulders. A bulk sample of the boulder was also collected. Because the Prior High Grade Stockpile had no ore prior to the 1980s a maximum residence time for the boulder is about 25 years, this also means that the soil was at background as well. The purpose of this study is to characterize the transport of uranium series radionuclides from ore to the soil. Transport is characterized by determining the activities of individual radionuclides and daughter to parent ratios. Isotopes of the uranium series decay chain detected include {sup 210}Pb, {sup 234}U, {sup 230}Th, {sup 226}Ra, {sup 214}Pb, and {sup 214}Bi. Peak areas for each isotope are determined using gamma-ray spectroscopy with a Canberra Ge (Li) detector and GENIE 2000 software. The boulder sample …

This report discusses the budget of the fiscal year of 2006 and the requests of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Updated March 16, 2005.