With China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001, U.S. agricultural interests were hopeful that longstanding barriers to trade with that vast and growing market would begin to fall. However, critics charge that China is failing to honor commitments to open its markets, affecting U.S. exports of grains, oilseeds, meat and poultry, and other products. U.S. agriculture and trade officials have been working to resolve these differences.

Coherent vector meson production in peripheral nucleus-nucleus collisions is discussed. These interactions may occur for impact parameters much larger than the sum of the nuclear radii. Since the vector meson production is always localized to one of the nuclei, the system acts as a two-source interferometer in the transverse plane. By tagging the outgoing nuclei for Coulomb dissociation it is possible to obtain a measure of the impact parameter and thus the source separation in the interferometer. This is of particular interest since the life-time of the vector mesons are generally much shorter than the impact parameters of the collisions.

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This report presents a side-by-side comparison of Public Law 107-243 and selected alternative legislative proposals considered in 107th Congress related to Authorization of Use of U.S. Armed Forces Against Iraq.

We report new results on v{sub 2}(p{sub T}) for Au+Au collisions at {radical}(S{sub NN}) = 200 GeV for charged hadrons, pions, kaons,(anti)protons, K{sub s}{sup 0}, and Lambda. The analysis is extended to p{sub T} = 12 GeV/c for charged hadrons and p{sub T} = 4 GeV/c for identified particles. A comparison of the azimuthal anisotropy of charged hadrons measured at sqrt {radical}(s{sub NN}) = 130 and 200 GeV is presented. The p{sub T}-dependence of baryon versus meson elliptic flow is discussed.

This report is intended to present a basic description of the data from the two community surveys and to document the text of the questions; the methods used for the survey data collection; and a brief overview of the results. Completed surveys were conducted at local communities near the Rocky Flats, Colorado and the Fernald, Ohio sites; no survey was conducted for the Brookhaven, New York site. Fernald. The Fernald sample was randomly selected from 98% of all potential residential telephones in the townships of Ross, Morgan, and Crosby. The only telephone exchanges not used for the Fernald study had 4%, or fewer, of the holders of the telephone numbers actually living in either of the three target townships. Surveying started on July 24, 2001 and finished on August 30, 2001. A total of 399 completed interviews were obtained resulting in a CASRO response rate of 41.8%. The average length of an interview was 16.5 minutes. Rocky Flats. The sample was randomly selected from all potential residential telephones in Arvada and from 99% of the potential telephones in Westminster. Surveying started on August 10, 2001 and finished on September 25, 2001. A total of 401 completed interviews were obtained with …

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The Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 (PUHCA) and the Federal Power Act (FPA) were enacted to eliminate unfair practices and other abuses by electricity and gas holding companies by requiring federal control and regulation of interstate public utility holding companies. Comprehensive energy legislation has passed the House and Senate. The House passed H.R. 6 on April 11, 2003. On July 31, 2003, the Senate suspended debate on S. 14, inserted the text of H.R. 4 (107th Congress) as a substitute, and passed H.R. 6. A conference agreement was reached November 17, 2003, and passed by the House the next day. H.R. 6 includes an electricity title that would, in part, repeal PUHCA, would prospectively repeal the mandatory purchase requirement under PURPA, and would create an electric reliability organization. On June 15, 2004, H.R. 4503, a comprehensive energy policy bill, passed the House.

This issue brief views reorganization and management as involving the alteration of the program administrative structure and operations of the executive branch for reasons of efficiency, economy, and direction. The underlying issue is who reorganizes or sets management policy—Congress or the President— and by what authority and, also, for what purpose?

This report discusses the background information, analysis and the recent developments in the F-22 Raptor Aircraft Program. The F-22 program raises questions about its cost and the need for this aircraft, the capabilities it would have, and the number of these planes needed to meet military requirements. The F-22 has had strong congressional support, although some have criticized the program on grounds of cost, requirements, and coordination with other tactical aircraft programs. Deletion of procurement funds in the FY2000 defense appropriation bill passed by the House made the future of the program a major issue for House and Senate conferees in 1999.

Fast ignition (FI) has significant potential advantages for inertial fusion energy and it is therefore being studied as an exploratory concept in the US fusion energy program. FI is based on short pulse isochoric heating of pre-compressed DT by intense beams of laser accelerated MeV electrons or protons. Recent experimental progress in the study of these two heating processes is discussed. The goal is to benchmark new models in order to predict accurately the requirements for full-scale fast ignition. An overview is presented of the design and experimental testing of a cone target implosion concept for fast ignition. Future prospects and conceptual designs for larger scale FI experiments using planned high energy petawatt upgrades of major lasers in the US are outlined. A long-term roadmap for FI is defined.

The authors discuss some of the results on the measurements of heavy flavor production at the Tevatron. Heavy flavor production can be used to test QCD over a wide range of quark masses (m{sub b} {approx} 4.5 GeV/c{sup 2} to m{sub t} = 174.3 {+-} 5.1 GeV/c{sup 2}). In addition, it is a background that has to be understood to perform physics measurements in the top sector and Higgs searches. The results reported here are performed using the Run1 data collected at Tevatron ({approx} 100 pb{sup -1}).

This report includes information regarding Iranian current developments and U.S. policy. Iran's strategic buildup, Iranian foreign policy and terrorism involvement, and human rights concerns are among topics discussed in this report.

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This report provides a snapshot of U.S.-Japan relations, current economic and security challenges facing Japan, and policies being adopted or considered to deal with them.

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The grant augmented funds from Westinghouse Electric Co. to enhance the Nuclear Engineering program at KSU. The program was designed to provide educational opportunities and to train engineers for careers in the nuclear industry. It provided funding and access to Westinghouse proprietary design codes for graduate and undergraduate studies on topics of current industrial importance. Students had the opportunity to use some of the most advanced nuclear design tools in the industry and to work on actual design problems. The WCOBRA/TRAC code was used to simulate loss of coolant accidents (LOCAs).

Surface modification by preoxidation and/or by coatings and alternative materials are being examined at ANL to alleviate the metal dusting problem. Oxide coatings have the advantage that they can minimize carbon-producing reactions (by reducing the availability of catalytic surface) and can also act as a barrier to minimize carbon ingress and pitting of the substrate alloy. We have selected in-situ development of oxide scales, pack diffusion of Al or Cr/Si, and thermal spray of FeAl as avenues for further study. Preliminary tests showed virtually no carbon in pre-oxidized layers of Al-, Cr-, and Si-enriched layers that were subjected to metal dusting environments.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), currently under construction at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is a stadium-sized facility containing a 192-beam, 1.8-Megajoule, 500-Terawatt, 351-nm laser system and a 10-meter diameter target chamber with room for nearly 100 experimental diagnostics. NIF is being built by the National Nuclear Security Administration and when completed will be the world's largest laser experimental system, providing a national center to study inertial confinement fusion and the physics of matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. NIF will provide 192 energetic laser beams that will compress small fusion targets to conditions where they will ignite and burn, liberating more energy than is required to initiate the fusion reactions. NIF experiments will allow the study of physical processes at temperatures approaching 100 million K and 100 billion times atmospheric pressure. These conditions exist naturally only in the interior of stars and in nuclear weapons explosions. In the course of designing the world's most energetic laser system, a number of significant technology breakthroughs have been achieved. Research is also underway to develop a shorter pulse capability on NIF for very high power and extreme electromagnetic field research and applications. We discuss here the technology challenges …

We report on the performance of an S-band RF photocathode electron gun and accelerator for operation with the PLEIADES Thomson x-ray source at LLNL. To produce picosecond, high brightness x-ray pulses, picosecond timing, terahertz bandwidth diagnostics, and RF phase control are required. Planned optical, RF, x-ray and electron beam measurements to characterize the dependence of electron beam parameters and synchronization on RF phase stability are presented.

Accurate and consistent time tracking is essential for evaluating the efficiency of survey observing operations and identifying areas that need improvement. Off the shelf time tracking software, which requires users to enter activities by hand, proved tedious to use and insufficiently exible. In this paper, we present an alternate time tracking system developed specifically for Sloan Digital Sky Survey observing. This system uses an existing logging system, murmur, to log the beginning and ending times of tracked circumstances, including activities, weather, and problems which effect observing. Operations software automatically generates most entries for routine observing activities; in a night of routine observing, time tracking requires little or no attention from the observing staff. A graphical user interface allows observers to make entries marking time lost to weather and equipment, and to correct inaccurate entries made by the observing software. The last is necessary when the change in activity is not marked by a change in the state of the software or instruments, or when the time is used for engineering or other observing not part of routine survey data collection. A second utility generates reports of time usage from these logs. These reports include totals for the time spent for …

The photometric telescope (PT) provides observations necessary for the photometric calibration of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). Because the attention of the observing staff is occupied by the operation of the 2.5 meter telescope which takes the survey data proper, the PT must reliably take data with little supervision. In this paper we describe the PT's observing program, MOP, which automates most tasks necessary for observing. MOP's automated target selection is closely modeled on the actions a human observer might take, and is built upon a user interface that can be (and has been) used for manual operation. This results in an interface that makes it easy for an observer to track the activities of the automating procedures and intervene with minimum disturbance when necessary. MOP selects targets from the same list of standard star and calibration fields presented to the user, and chooses standard star fields covering ranges of airmass, color, and time necessary to monitor atmospheric extinction and produce a photometric solution. The software determines when additional standard star fields are unnecessary, and selects survey calibration fields according to availability and priority. Other automated features of MOP, such as maintaining the focus and keeping a night log, …