A high contrast 12.6 keV Kr K{alpha} source has been demonstrated on the petawatt-class Titan laser facility. The contrast ratio (K{alpha} to continuum) is 65, with a competitive ultra short pulse laser to x-ray conversion efficiency of 10{sup -5}. Filtered shadowgraphy indicates that the Kr K{alpha} and K{beta} x-rays are emitted from a roughly 1 x 2 mm emission volume, making this source suitable for area backlighting and scattering. Spectral calculations indicate a typical bulk electron temperature of 50-70 eV (i.e. mean ionization state 13-16), based on the observed ratio of K{alpha} to K{beta}. Kr gas jets provide a debris-free high energy K{alpha} source for time-resolved diagnosis of dense matter.

This report describes the groundwater monitoring and corrective-action program at the M-Area Hazardous Waste Management Facility (HWMF) and the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) HWMF at the Savannah River Site (SRS) during the third and fourth quarters of 2001. The report also provides a summary of the corrective-action program for the entire year. This program is required by South Carolina Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) Hazardous Waste Permit SC1 890 008 989 and Section 264.100(g) of the South Carolina Hazardous Waste Management Regulations.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to providing that each house grant the other permission to adjourn for more than three days during the period beginning on Wednesday, April 16, 2003, and ending on Tuesday, April 22, 2003.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the exclusion from an emergency services district of certain territory subject to assessments.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Concerns about difficulties civilian employees of the U.S. government may have in obtaining workers' compensation benefits for medical conditions they developed as a result of their exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam led to GAO being asked to determine (1) what is known about the number of civilians who served in Vietnam, both those employed directly by the U.S. government and those employed by companies that contracted with the government; (2) what is known about the number, processing, and disposition of claims filed by these civilians; and (3) what options are available if Congress chooses to improve access to benefits for civilians exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam who developed illnesses as a result of their exposure, and what are their cost implications?"

International Network of Nuclear Structure and Decay Data (NSDD) Evaluators consists of a number of evaluation groups and data service centers in several countries that appreciate the merits of working together to maintain and ensure the quality and comprehensive content of the ENSDF database (Evaluated Nuclear Structure Data File). Biennial meetings of the network are held under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to assign evaluation responsibilities, monitor progress, discuss improvements and emerging difficulties, and agree on actions to be undertaken by individual members. The evaluated data and bibliographic details are made available to users via various media, such as the journals ''Nuclear Physics A'' and ''Nuclear Data Sheets'', the World Wide Web, on CD-ROM, wall charts of the nuclides and ''Nuclear Wallet Cards''. While the ENSDF master database is maintained by the US National Nuclear Data Center at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, these data are also available from other nuclear data centers including the IAEA Nuclear Data Section. The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Trieste, Italy, in cooperation with the IAEA, organizes workshops on NSDD at regular intervals. The primary aims of these particular workshops are to provide hands-on training in the data …

This report discusses legislative initiatives regarding the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for individuals, which was originally enacted to ensure that all taxpayers, especially high-income taxpayers, paid at least a minimum amount of federal taxes.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health concern; antibiotics used in animals raised for human consumption contributes to this problem. Three federal agencies address this issue--the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). GAO examined (1) scientific evidence on the transference of antibiotic resistance from animals to humans and extent of potential harm to human health, (2) agencies' efforts to assess and address these risks, (3) the types of data needed to support research on these risks and extent to which the agencies collect these data, (4) use of antibiotics in animals in the United States compared with its key agricultural trading partners and competitors, and (5) information on how use has affected trade."

The world-wide network of nuclear reaction data centers (NRDC) has, for about 40 years, provided data services to the scientific community. This network covers all types of nuclear reaction data, including neutron-induced, charged-particle-induced, and photonuclear data, used in a wide range of applications, such as fission reactors, accelerator driven systems, fusion facilities, nuclear medicine, materials analysis, environmental monitoring, and basic research. The now 13 nuclear data centers included in the NRDC are dividing the efforts of compilation and distribution for particular types of reactions and/or geographic regions all over the world. A central activity of the network is the collection and compilation of experimental nuclear reaction data and the related bibliographic information in the EXFOR and CINDA databases. Many of the individual data centers also distribute other types of nuclear data information, including evaluated data libraries, nuclear structure and decay data, and nuclear data reports. The network today ensures the world-wide transfer of information and coordinated evolution of an important source of nuclear data for current and future nuclear applications.

Several approaches to ASP performance can be contemplated. Perhaps the ideal would be a full cost/benefit analysis (which is probably utterly infeasible). Another approach would be a test-based figure-of-merit (FOM), this approach has the virtue of being quantitative and the challenge that each customer and application would be characterized by a different FOM. The alternative proposed here is an approach that uses information about the limits of detection of real instruments to support informed judgments.

The Advanced Telecommunications Computing Architecture is a new industry open standard for electronics instrument modules and shelves being evaluated for the International Linear Collider (ILC). It is the first industrial standard designed for High Availability (HA). ILC availability simulations have shown clearly that the capabilities of ATCA are needed in order to achieve acceptable integrated luminosity. The ATCA architecture looks attractive for beam instruments and detector applications as well. This paper provides an overview of ongoing R&D including application of HA principles to power electronics 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.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Air ambulance transport is widely regarded as improving the chances of survival for trauma victims and other critical patients. However, recent increases in the number of air ambulance accidents have led to greater industry scrutiny by government agencies, the public, the media, and the industry itself. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and others have called on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which provides safety oversight, to issue more stringent safety requirements for the industry. This testimony discusses (1) recent trends in the air ambulance industry with regard to its size, composition, and safety record; (2) recent industry and government efforts to improve air ambulance safety; and (3) potential strategies for improving air ambulance safety. This testimony is based primarily on GAO's February 2007 study on air ambulance safety (GAO-07-353). To update and supplement this 2007 report, GAO analyzed the latest safety information from NTSB and FAA, reviewed published literature on the state of the air ambulance industry, and interviewed FAA officials and industry representatives. GAO provided a copy of the draft testimony statement to FAA. FAA provided technical comments, which GAO incorporated as appropriate."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in fundamental changes in the way the United States screens airport passengers and their property. One of the most significant changes was the shift from using private screeners to using federal screeners at all but five commercial airports in the United States. These five airports are part of a pilot program, where private screeners perform screening functions. The mission of the Private Screening Pilot Program, as defined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), is to test the effectiveness of increased operational flexibility at the airport level that contractors may provide. GAO was asked to describe (1) the challenges and limitations of the private screening pilot program, (2) the operational flexibilities TSA has provided to the private screening companies, and (3) the performance of private and federal screeners in detecting threat objects. This testimony is based on our prior and ongoing work on TSA airport passenger and baggage screeners."

In recent years there has been a growing sense of urgency to develop and deploy effective missile defenses against a range of long and short range ballistic missile threats. Although many might believe this to be relative new to U.S. national security objectives, such interest been ongoing since the 1960s, and current technologies being investigated date to the early 1980s. This effort has been challenging technically and politically controversial. Some $100 billion has been spent since the mid-1980s. This report provides a brief overview of U.S. efforts to date.

We use data from a unique 40-year record of 150 urban and rural stations in the ''Black Smoke and SO2 Network'' in Great Britain to infer information about sources of atmospheric black carbon (BC). The data show a rapid decline of ambient atmospheric BC between 1962 and the early 1990s that exceeds the decline in official estimates of BC emissions based only on amount of fuel use and mostly fixed emission factors. This provides empirical confirmation of the existence and large impact of a time-dependent ''technology factor'' that must multiply the rate of fossil fuel use. Current ambient BC amounts in Great Britain comparable to those in western and central Europe, with diesel engines being the principal present source. From comparison of BC and SO2 data we infer that current BC emission inventories understate true emissions in the U.K. by about a factor of two. The results imply that there is the potential for improved technology to achieve large reduction of global ambient BC. There is a need for comparable monitoring of BC in other countries.

CKM mixing between third family quarks and a possible fourth family is constrained by global fits to the precision electroweak data. The dominant constraint is from nondecoupling oblique corrections rather than the vertex correction to Z {yields} {bar b}b used in previous analyses. The possibility of large mixing suggested by some recent analyses of FCNC processes is excluded, but 3-4 mixing of the same order as the Cabbibo mixing of the first two families is allowed.

When initiated by the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) and the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Rebuild America Program (RBA), this project--Strengthening the Partnerships Between the State and Territory Energy Offices and the U.S. Department of Energy--was geared toward addressing some project development and communications barriers between the State Energy Offices and the RBA program. While successful in some states, RBA officials were having difficulty assisting states in forming partnerships with communities and taking advantage of the programs technical assistance and other resources. NASEO's efforts under the project were, in large part, aimed at educating state energy offices about RBA's resources and delivering timely information to help move the program forward by emphasizing the successes of key states and identifying concerns and problems in states beginning to implement RBA activities. This report defines these outreach needs and challenges, the tasks designed to address these issues, and results during the first year of the project. As contemplated in NASEO's workplan, the approach during the first year of the agreement focuses on working through NASEO's State Energy Committee structure. Support provided under the agreement for tasks one and two during year one was intended to address partnerships in the buildings …

This documents notes the United States trade deficit and money of household saving, business saving, and private sector saving.

Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) is used as a thermal barrier coating (TBC) to protect super-alloy blades such as Mar-M247 or Rene-N5 during engine operation. The current method for YSZ fabrication for TBC applications is by air-plasma spraying (APS) or electron beam physical vapor deposition (EB-PVD) (Haynes 1997). APS gives reasonable deposition rates, but has a limited life and aging effects due to its porous and lamellar structure. The EB-PVD coatings are more stable and can accommodate thermomechanical stresses due to their characteristic strain-tolerant, columnar microstructure. EB-PVD, however, is primarily line-of-sight, which often leaves ''hidden areas'' uncoated, has low throughput, and has high capital cost. The process of metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is investigated here as an economical alternative to EB-PVD and APS, with the potential for better overall coverage as well as the ability to produce thick (100-250 {micro}m), strain-tolerant, columnar coatings. MOCVD of YSZ involves the use of zirconium and yttrium organometallic precursors reacting with an oxygen source. Previous researchers have used diketonate or chloride precursors and oxygen (Wahl et al. 2001a, Wahl et al. 2001b, Yamane and Harai 1989). These precursors have low transport rates due to their low carrier solvent solubility (Varanasi et al. 2003). Solvated zirconium …

About a dozen federally supported child nutrition programs and related activities – including school meal programs and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (the WIC program) – reach over 37 million children and almost 2 million lower-income pregnant and postpartum women. Total FY2002 spending on these efforts was $15.1 billion. FY2003 spending is projected at an estimated $15.9 billion under the Agriculture Department appropriations portion (Division A) of the FY2003 Consolidated Appropriations Resolution (P.L. 108-7; H.Rept. 108-10; enacted February 20,2003). And the Administration anticipates spending $16.3 billion under its FY2004 budget.

Major amendments to the Clean Air Act were among the first items on the agenda of the 109th Congress, with S. 131 (the Clear Skies Act) scheduled for markup by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee March 9. The most prominent air quality issues discussed in this report are; Clear Skies / Multi-Pollutant Legislation, Mercury from Power Plants, New Source Review (NSR), MTBE and Ethanol, Ozone Nonattainment Area Deadlines, and Conformity of Transportation Plans and SIPs.

This report discusses Federal laws and policies related to Greenhouse Gas reductions related to Climate Change.

Cloture is the only means by which the Senate can vote to limit debate on a matter, and thereby overcome a possible filibuster. It would be erroneous, however, to assume that cases in which cloture is sought are the same as those in which a filibuster occurs. Cloture may be sought when no filibuster is taking place, and filibusters may occur without cloture being sought.