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The primary purpose of this issue brief is to focus on the current legislative action in the 107th Congress with respect to abortion; however, understanding that legislation requires a review of the U. S. Supreme Court’s leading decisions concerning a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy. For a detailed discussion of the case law, see CRS Report 95-724, Abortion Law Development: A Brief Overview.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The accounting profession maintains a voluntary, self-regulatory system through the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) that includes establishing professional standards, monitoring compliance with professional standards, disciplining members for improper acts and substandard performance, and conducting oversight. The Panel of Audit Effectiveness, set up to examine the AICPA's methods, made recommendations to enhance the accounting profession's self-regulatory system. Implementing actions taken or in process have addressed many of the Panel's recommendations. However, the Panel's recommendations did not fully address the limitations of the self-regulatory system identified in its report. Also, some of the Panel's recommendations were either not accepted or are still under study. Additional experience is needed to evaluate the effectiveness of actions taken or planned. However, the system is fragmented, uncoordinated, and has a disciplinary function that is widely perceived to be ineffective. The self-regulatory system is unable to protect the confidentiality of investigative information about alleged audit failures or other disciplinary matters concerning members of the profession. The lack of such protective powers hinders the timing of investigations and affects the public's perception of the self-regulatory system's effectiveness. The Panel recognized the …

This report summarizes a research and development program that produced a stand-alone active desiccant module (ADM) that can be easily integrated with new or existing packaged cooling equipment. The program also produced a fully integrated hybrid system, combining the active desiccant section with a conventional direct expansion air-conditioning unit, that resulted in a compact, low-cost, energy-efficient end product. Based upon the results of this investigation, both systems were determined to be highly viable products for commercialization. Major challenges--including wheel development, compact packaging, regeneration burner development, control optimization, and low-cost design--were all successfully addressed by the final prototypes produced and tested as part of this program. Extensive laboratory testing was completed in the SEMCO laboratory for each of the two ADM system approaches. This testing confirmed the performance of the ADM systems to be attractive compared with that of alternate approaches currently used to precondition outdoor air, where a return air path is not readily available for passive desiccant recovery or where first cost is the primary design criterion. Photographs, schematics, and performance maps are provided for the ADM systems that were developed; and many of the control advantages are discussed. Based upon the positive results of this research and development …

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.

Once hostilities end in Afghanistan and the Afghan phase of the war on terrorism starts to wind down, reconstruction efforts will begin in earnest. International attention will likely turn to Afghanistan’s short- and medium-term future, raising questions between the United States and its allies about division of labor, burdensharing, and exit strategies. It is anticipated that Congress will examine reconstruction efforts underway, aid priorities, long-term reconstruction proposals, and the implementation role to be played by the United States.

African countries overwhelmingly expressed their support for the U.S.-led efforts on the war against terrorism shortly after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. Some African countries are reportedly sharing intelligence and are coordinating with Washington to fight terrorism in Africa. Administration officials believe that Africa is a potential breeding ground for terrorism. Some African officials are concerned that despite the strong support African governments have provided to the anti-terror campaign, they are not seen as real coalition partners in the fight against terrorism. African officials note that cooperation between the United States and Africa in the fight against terrorism should also include extraditing and apprehending members of African terrorist and extremist groups active in Europe and the United States. They argue that these groups are raising funds and organizing in the west, often unhindered by western governments.

Although U.S. intelligence agencies have not identified any terrorist acts targeting agricultural production (i.e., agroterrorism) in the United States to date, the events of September 11, 2001 have awakened the nation to their possibility. Some experts estimate that a single agroterrorist attack using a highly contagious livestock disease could cost between $10 billion and $30 billion to the U.S. economy. This report examines the potential threats to America’s agriculture from a deliberate biological attack, describes the current defense structure and capabilities available to respond to agroterrorism, and analyzes current congressional proposals to address the threat of biological weapons to U.S. agriculture.

This final report details results from the past three years of the three-year UC Berkeley NEER investigation of mixing phenomena in large-scale passive reactor containments. We have completed all of our three-year deliverables specified in our proposal, as summarized for each deliverable in the body of this report, except for the experiments of steam condensation in the presence of noncondensable gas. We have particularly exiting results from the experiments studying the mixing in large insulated containment with a vertical cooling plate. These experiments now have shown why augmentation has been observed in wall-condensation experiments due to the momentum of the steam break-flow entering large volumes. More importantly, we also have shown that the forced-jet augmentation can be predicted using relatively simple correlations, and that it is independent of the break diameter and depends only on the break flow orientation, location, and momentum. This suggests that we will now be able to take credit for this augmentation in reactor safety analysis, improving safety margins for containment structures. We have finished the version 1 of 1-D Lagrangian flow and heat transfer code BMIX++. This version has ability to solve many complex stratified problems, such as multi-components problems, multi-enclosures problems (two enclosures connected …

A variety of animal agriculture issues, including prices, the impact of consolidation in the meat production/packing industry, trade, and the environmental impacts of large feedlots, continue to generate interest in Congress. This issue brief discusses these issues, as well as the 2002 farm bill, which contains several provisions affecting animal agriculture, including protections for contract growers, disaster assistance, country-of-origin labeling, and increased funding for conservation purposes.

A variety of animal agriculture issues, including prices, the impact of consolidation in the meat production/packing industry, trade, and the environmental impacts of large feedlots, continue to generate interest in Congress. This issue brief discusses these issues, as well as the 2002 farm bill, which contains several provisions affecting animal agriculture, including protections for contract growers, disaster assistance, country-of-origin labeling, and increased funding for conservation purposes.

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 considers 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, 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 Subcommittees on Transportation of the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations.

On October 26-27, 2002, the Tenth APEC Leaders’ Meeting (summit) was hosted by Mexico in Las Cabos, Mexico. The official theme for APEC 2002 is to expand the benefits of cooperation for economic growth and development and enable the APEC vision to be implemented. For the United States, APEC raises fundamental questions that are of special interest to Congress. One is whether consensus can be achieved on the APEC vision of free trade and investment in the Asia Pacific or whether future trade liberalization will be confined primarily to bilateral free-trade agreements or multilateral trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization.

The Berkeley Lab Cosmic Ray Detector consists of 3 main components that must be prepared separately before they can be assembled. These components are the scintillator, circuit board, and casing. They are described in the main sections of this report, which may be completed in any order. Preparing the scintillator paddles involves several steps--cutting the scintillator material to the appropriate size and shape, preparing and attaching Lucite cookies (optional), polishing the edges, gluing the end to the photomultiplier tube (optional), and wrapping the scintillator. Since the detector has 2 paddles, each of the sections needs to be repeated for the other paddle.

This report presents studies to assess reactivity margins and loading curves for pressurized water reactor (PWR) burnup-credit criticality safety evaluations. The studies are based on a generic high-density 32-assembly cask and systematically vary individual calculational (depletion and criticality) assumptions to demonstrate the impact on the predicted effective neutron multiplication factor, k{sub eff}, and burnup-credit loading curves. The purpose of this report is to provide a greater understanding of the importance of input parameter variations and quantify the impact of calculational assumptions on the outcome of a burnup-credit evaluation. This study should provide guidance to regulators and industry on the technical areas where improved information will most enhance the estimation of accurate subcritical margins. Based on these studies, areas where future work may provide the most benefit are identified. The report also includes an evaluation of the degree of burnup credit needed for high-density casks to transport the current spent nuclear fuel inventory. By comparing PWR discharge data to actinide-only based loading curves and determining the number of assemblies that meet the loading criteria, this evaluation finds that additional negative reactivity (through either increased credit for fuel burnup or cask design/utilization modifications) is necessary to accommodate the majority of current spent …

This report compares the major provisions of three auditor and accounting reform proposals: two versions of H.R. 3763 (as passed by the House on April 24, 2002, and by the Senate on July 15, 2002), and proposed rules that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) published on June 26th under its existing authority. H.R. 3763, in its House and Senate versions, and the SEC proposal seek to restore confidence in corporate reporting by enhancing the oversight of financial accounting. All three proposals would create a new oversight body to regulate independent auditors (whose certification the law requires to be affixed to the annual reports of all publicly traded corporations).

This report outlines U.S. military operations in Bosnia and discusses issues such as U.S. and Allied Participation in Bosnia Peacekeeping (IFOR/SFOR), duration, cost, arms control and military assistance. This report also includes most recent development, background analysis, and legislation.

This is a select chronology of, and a finding guide for information on, congressional and presidential actions and documents related to major budget events in calendar year 2001, covering the FY2002 budget. Brief information is provided for the President’s budget, congressional budget resolutions, appropriations measures (regular, continuing, supplementals, and rescissions), budget reconciliation, House and Senate votes, line-item vetoes, publications, testimony, charts, and tables.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed efforts by the Interagency Security Committee (ISC) to protect critical federal infrastructure since the committee was created in 1995. ISC is chaired by the General Services Administration (GSA) and comprises 14 department-level agencies and other executive agencies and officials. ISC's primary responsibilities are to (1) establish policies for security in and protection of federal facilities; (2) develop and evaluate security standards for federal facilities, develop a strategy for ensuring compliance with such standards, and oversee the implementation of appropriate security measures in federal facilities; and (3) take the steps necessary to enhance the quality and effectiveness of security and protection of federal facilities. ISC has carried out some of its responsibilities, but it has made little progress on others. During the past 7 years, ISC has developed and issued security design criteria and minimum standards for building access procedures; disseminated information to member agencies, for their consideration and implementation, on entry security technology for buildings needing the highest security levels; and through its meetings and 13 working groups, provided a forum for federal agencies to discuss security issues and share information and ideas. ISC …

The purpose of this work was to provide chemical- and physical-property data addressing the technical risks of the Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) process as applied specifically to the removal of cesium from alkaline high-level salt waste stored at the US Department of Energy Savannah River Site. As part of the overall Salt Processing Project, this effort supported decision-making in regards to selecting a preferred technology among three alternatives: (1) CSSX, (2) nonelutable ion-exchange with an inorganic silicotitanate material and (3) precipitation with tetraphenylborate. High risks, innate to CSSX, that needed specific attention included: (1) chemical stability of the solvent matrix, (2) radiolytic stability of the solvent matrix, (3) proof-of-concept performance of the proposed process flowsheet with simulated waste, and (4) performance of the CSSX flowsheet with actual SRS high-level waste. This body of work directly addressed the chemical-stability risk and additionally provided supporting information that served to plan, carry out, and evaluate experiments conducted by other CSSX investigators addressing the other high risks. Information on cesium distribution in extraction, scrubbing, and stripping served as input for flowsheet design, provided a baseline for evaluating solvent performance under numerous stresses, and contributed to a broad understanding of the effects of expected process …

This procedure provides instructions for assembling the following contact-handled (CH) packaging payloads: - Drum payload assembly - Standard Waste Box (SWB) assembly - Ten-Drum Overpack (TDOP) In addition, this procedure provides operating instructions for the TRUPACT-II CH waste packaging. This document also provides instructions for performing ICV and OCV preshipment leakage rate tests on the following packaging seals, using a nondestructive helium (He) leak test: - ICV upper main O-ring seal - ICV outer vent port plug O-ring seal - OCV upper main O-ring seal - OCV vent port plug O-ring seal.

When shocks impinge on a surface separating fluids of two different densities, one observes the development and growth of various vortical structures. The flow induced by this Richtmyer-Meshkov (RM) instability depends on a variety of factors such as the shock strength, the density ratio of the fluids and the exact form of the surface perturbation. The most common way to model the form of the surface perturbation is through Fourier analysis which is suitable for large-scale sinusoidal structures and is straightforward mathematically. In surfaces of practical interest, however, to a wide range of application, there may also be a broad spectrum of high frequency modes in addition to the lower frequency modes described by Fourier methods. We propose here that these high frequency modes can be efficiently quantified in terms of wavelet analysis. From a numerical point of view, the scale that the roughness occurs at is far to small to numerically resolve and thus we propose that our new methodology can be used to model the subgrid scale generation of vorticity. Thus the combination of wavelet analysis and Fourier analysis will be used to model the generation of vorticity for the RM instability.

This report provides a side-by-side comparison of two versions of the Charitable Choice Act of 2001 with three existing charitable choice laws.