A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 2001, the U.S. airline industry has confronted financial losses of previously unseen proportions. From 2001 to 2003, the industry lost $23 billion, and two of the nation's biggest airlines have gone into bankruptcy. To assist airlines, the Congress provided U.S. airlines with $7 billion of direct financial assistance--most recently in the form of $2.4 billion of financial assistance under the 2003 Emergency Wartime Supplemental Appropriations Act. Under the Act and its accompanying conference report, the conferees directed GAO to review measures taken by airlines to reduce costs, improve revenues and profits, and strengthen their balance sheets. The Congress also tasked airlines receiving assistance to report their cost-cutting plans to GAO. GAO was also required to report on the financial condition of the U.S. airline industry by Vision 100--Century of Aviation Reauthorization Act, which became law in January 2004. In consultation with the Congress, GAO agreed to satisfy these directives and report to the Congress on (1) the major challenges to the airline industry since 1998, (2) measures airlines report taking to remain financially viable, (3) the current financial and operating condition of the industry, and …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Diesel engine emissions pose health risks, but one major source--heavy-duty diesel vehicles--is critical for our economy. To reduce risks, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set stringent emissions standards for diesel engines. In 1998, EPA found that some engine makers were violating standards, so they agreed to build engines that meet 2004 standards early, by October 2002. EPA has set even more stringent standards for 2007. GAO was asked to (1) assess the October 2002 deadline's effects on industry and emissions, and (2) obtain stakeholders' views on the readiness of technology for the 2007 standards and EPA's efforts to ensure this. GAO analyzed information from EPA, 10 large trucking companies, the engine makers subject to the early deadline, and other stakeholders."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) relies on space for many critical capabilities, and its continued success in space operations depends on having sufficient space-qualified personnel. Space-qualified personnel are needed to develop technology, doctrine, and concepts and operate complex systems. In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, Congress required DOD to develop a strategy for developing and integrating national security space personnel. DOD completed it in February 2004. Congress also required GAO to assess DOD's space human capital strategy and the military services' efforts to develop their space personnel. In the first of two required reports, GAO assessed (1) whether DOD's space human capital strategy and management approach promote development and integration of the services' space personnel and (2) the extent of the services' initiatives to develop and manage their space personnel."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "A successful terrorist attack on Department of Energy (DOE) sites containing nuclear weapons or the material used in nuclear weapons could have devastating consequences for the site and its surrounding communities. Because of these risks, DOE needs an effective safeguards and security program. A key component of an effective program is the design basis threat (DBT), a classified document that identifies, among other things, the potential size and capabilities of terrorist forces. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, rendered the then-current DBT obsolete, resulting in DOE issuing a new version in May 2003. GAO (1) identified why DOE took almost 2 years to develop a new DBT, (2) analyzed the higher threat in the new DBT, and (3) identified remaining issues that need to be resolved in order for DOE to meet the threat contained in the new DBT."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Money laundering provides the fuel for terrorists, drug dealers, arms traffickers, and other criminals to operate and expand their activities. GAO focused on two issues. The first is whether the nation's annual National Money Laundering Strategy has served as a useful mechanism for guiding federal law enforcement efforts to combat money laundering and terrorist financing. Unless reauthorized by the Congress, the annual requirement ended with the 2003 strategy. The second issue is the implementation status of a May 2003 Memorandum of Agreement, signed by the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, that was designed to enhance the coordination of terrorist financing investigations conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As requested, GAO conducted an investigation to determine whether the federal government has paid for degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited postsecondary schools. Section 4107 of title 5, U. S. Code, only permits the federal government to pay for the cost of academic degree training provided by a college or university that is accredited by a nationally recognized accrediting body. GAO was also asked to determine whether federal employees who hold senior-level positions have degrees from diploma mills and other unaccredited schools. This report summarizes our investigative findings."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has established a program--the United States Visitor and Immigrant Status Indicator Technology (US-VISIT)--to collect, maintain, and share information, including biometric identifiers, on selected foreign nationals who travel to the United States. By congressional mandate, DHS is to develop and submit for approval an expenditure plan for US-VISIT that satisfies certain conditions, including being reviewed by GAO. Among other things, GAO was asked to determine whether the plan satisfied these conditions, and to provide observations on the plan and DHS's program management."

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The cathodic arc plasmas produced by cathode spots usuallyinclude macroparticles, which is undesirable for many applications. Acommon way of removing macroparticles is to use curved solenoid filterswhich guide the plasma from the source to the substrate. In this work, anarc source with relatively small cathode is used, limiting the possiblelocations of plasma production. The relative position of cathodic arcsource and macroparticle filtered was systematically varied and thefiltered plasma current was recorded. It was found that axis-symmetricplasma injection leads to maximum throughput only if an anode aperturewas used, which limited the plasma to near-axis flow by scraping offplasma at larger angles to the axis. When the anode aperture was removed,more plasma could enter the filter. In this case, maximum filtered ioncurrent was achieved when the plasma was injected off-axis, namely offsetin the direction where the filter is curved. Such behavior wasanticipated because the plasma column in the filter is known to beshifted by ExB and centrifugal drift as well as by non-axis-symmetriccomponents of the magnetic field in the filter entrance and exit plane.The data have implications for plasma transport variations caused bydifferent spot locations on cathodes that are not small compared to thefilter cross section.

The energy use in America's commercial and residential building sectors is large and growing. Over 38 quadrillion Btus (Quads) of primary energy were consumed in 2002, representing 39% of total U.S. energy consumption. While the energy use in buildings is expected to grow to 52 Quads by 2025, a large number of energy-related technologies exist that could curtail this increase. In recent years, improvements in such items as high efficiency refrigerators, compact fluorescent lights, high-SEER air conditioners, and improved building shells have all contributed to reducing energy use. Hundreds of other technology improvements have and will continue to improve the energy use in buildings. While many technologies are well understood and are gradually penetrating the market, more advanced technologies will be introduced in the future. The pace and extent of these advances can be improved through state and federal R&D. This report focuses on the long-term potential for energy-efficiency improvement in buildings. Five promising technologies have been selected for description to give an idea of the wide range of possibilities. They address the major areas of energy use in buildings: space conditioning (33% of building use), water heating (9%), and lighting (16%). Besides describing energy-using technologies (solid-state lighting and geothermal …

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether, under Code of Criminal Procedure article 45-041(b)(1)(C), a justice of the peace may order a convicted defendant to pay a fine before court costs (RQ-0093-GA)

A power lead tower containing the multi-tube power leads is designed and under fabrication for the superconducting IR quadrupole magnets in the Beijing Electron Position Collider Upgrade (BEPCII). The lead tower consists of six pairs of gas-cooled leads for seven superconducting coils at various operating currents. The power lead is designed in a modular fashion, which can be easily applied to suit different operating current. The end copper block of the tube lead has a large cold mass that provide a large time constant in case of cooling flow interruption. A novel cryogenic electrical isolator is used for the leads.

We present results from 14 nights of observations of Titan in 1996-1998 using near-infrared (centered at 2.1 microns) speckle imaging at the 10-meter W.M. Keck Telescope. The observations have a spatial resolution of 0.06 arcseconds. We detect bright clouds on three days in October 1998, with a brightness about 0.5% of the brightness of Titan. Using a 16-stream radiative transfer model (DISORT) to model the central equatorial longitude of each image, we construct a suite of surface albedo models parameterized by the optical depth of Titan's hydrocarbon haze layer. From this we conclude that Titan's equatorial surface albedo has plausible values in the range of 0-0.20. Titan's minimum haze optical depth cannot be constrained from this modeling, but an upper limit of 0.3 at this wavelength range is found. More accurate determination of Titan's surface albedo and haze optical depth, especially at higher latitudes, will require a model that fully considers the 3-dimensional nature of Titan's atmosphere.

Two points in our recent article on Edward Teller's scientific life (Physics Today, August 2004, page 45) require correction. In our description of Teller's students, we incorrectly stated that Arthur Kantrowitz's thesis was on the generation of hypersonic molecular beams. Actually, his thesis was on heat capacity lags in gas dynamics. Kantrowitz's invention of high intensity sources for molecular beams came later in his career. Maurice Goldhaber has emphasized that the situation with respect to possible nuclear resonances in ({gamma},n) or ({gamma},fission) reactions was quite unclear at the time of George C. Baldwin and G. Stanley Klaiber's papers on these reactions. This was because the rapid rise of their yield to a prominent peak with increasing energy, followed by a slower fall off was then thought to have been due to the competition between the rapidly rising density of nuclear states and the eventual domination of other reaction channels at higher energies. Goldhaber realized, however, that there could be an analogy between a possible collective nuclear resonance and the restrahl resonance (essentially the transverse optical phonon mode) in polar crystals. Goldhaber sought out Teller because of his paper with Russell Lyddane and Robert Sachs, relating the restrahl frequency to the …

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A pair of superconducting interaction region quadrupole magnets for BEPCII was designed and fabricated at Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA. The cryogenic system for the IR magnets was designed at Harbin Institute of Technology, China. This paper provides the results of thermal fluid modeling for the magnet cryostat. The numerical analyses were carried out for two types of cooling methods, the subcooled liquid helium and the supercritical helium flow. The pressure and temperature changes in the cooling circuits are given.

This report opens with an overview of visa issuances, with sections on procedures for aliens coming to live in the United States permanently and on procedures for aliens admitted for temporary stays. It includes a discussion of visa screening policies, including inadmissibility, databases, an analysis of visa refusals, biometric visas and other major visa policy procedures. Summaries of key laws revising visa policy enacted in the 107th Congress follows. The final section analyzes selected issues in the 108th Congress, notably visa revocation and removal, new technologies, potential impact on business, and other security concerns.

This report presents data and information that supports the groundwater module. The conceptual model of groundwater flow and transport at the Hanford Site is described and specific information applied in the numerical implementation module is provided.

The second axis of the DARHT flash X-ray facility at Los Alamos National Laboratory (''DARHT-II'') is a multiple-pulse, 18.4 MeV, 2 kA induction electron linear accelerator [1]. A train of short ({approx}50 ns) pulses are converted via bremsstrahlung to X-rays, which are then used to make radiographic images at various times (nominally four) during a ''hydrotest'' experiment. The train of pulses is created by carving them out of a two microsecond long macropulse, using a fast switching element called a kicker [2]. The unused portion of the macropulse is absorbed in a beam dump. Thus, upstream of the kicker, two microseconds of beam are transported through a vacuum system roughly sixty meters long. These conditions involve length and, specifically, time scales which are new to the transport of high-current beams. A concern under such conditions are the macroscopic interactions between the electron beam and positive ions created by impact ionization of the residual gas in the vacuum system. Over two microseconds, the ion density can develop to a hundredth or even a tenth of a percent of the beam density--small, to be sure, but large enough to have cumulative effects over such a long transport distance. Two such effects will …

The radiocarbon calibration curve, IntCal04, extends back to 26 cal kBP. While several high resolution records exist beyond this limit, these data sets exhibit discrepancies one to another of up to several millennia. As a result, no calibration curve for the time range 26-50 cal kBP can be recommended as yet, but in this paper the IntCal04 working group compares the available data sets and offers a discussion of the information that they hold.

We have used velocimetry for many years at LLNL to measure velocity-time histories of surfaces in dynamic experiments. We have developed and now use special instrumentation to make continuous shock-velocity measurements inside of materials. The goal is to extend the field of velocimetry into a new area of application in shock physics. At the last Congress we reported the successful use of our new filter system for selectively eliminating most of the non- Doppler-shifted light. We showed one record of a fiber embedded inside an explosive making a continuous detonation velocity-time history. At that time it was difficult to obtain complete records. We have now carried out over 65 inexpensive experiments usually using small cylinders or rectangular blocks of explosives or metals. Most were started by detonating a 25 mm diam by 25 mm long cylinder of Comp B explosive to drive a shock into an adjacent material of similar dimensions, using our embedded fiber probes. In contrast to surface velocimetry, embedded measurements involve detailed hydrodynamic considerations in order to result in a successful record. Calculations have guided us in understanding of various failed and successful experiments. The homogeneity of the explosive, poor contact, the materials used in the cladding …

We demonstrate single-shot x-ray laser induced time-of-flight photoelectron spectroscopy on semiconductor and metal surfaces with picosecond time resolution. The LLNL COMET compact tabletop x-ray laser source provides the necessary high photon flux (>10{sup 12}/pulse), monochromaticity, picosecond pulse duration, and coherence for probing ultrafast changes in the city, chemical and electronic structure of these materials. Static valence band and shallow core-level photoemission spectra are presented for ambient temperature Ge(100) and polycrystalline Cu foils. Surface contamination was removed by UV ozone cleaning prior to analysis. In addition, the ultrafast nature of this technique lends itself to true single-state measurements of shocked and heated materials. Time-resolved electron time-of-flight photoemission results for ultra-thin Cu will be presented.

Several peptide libraries containing up to 2 million unique peptide ligands have been synthesized. The peptides are attached onto a 80 micron resin and the length of these peptide ligands ranges from 5 to 9 amino acid residues. Using a novel calorimetric assay, the libraries were screened for binding to the ganglioside-binding domain of Clostridium Tetanus Toxin, a structural similar analog of the Clostridium Botulinum toxin. Several binding peptide sequences were identified, in which the detailed binding kinetics are currently underway using the Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) technique.

This collaborative project was designed to test and compare methods for achieving full ocean basin propagation of hydroacoustic signals in the 5-100 Hz frequency band. Plans for a systematic calibration of the International Monitoring System (IMS) for nuclear testing were under consideration in 2000/2001. The results from this project provide information to guide such planning for future ocean basin calibration work. Several acoustic source types were tested during two sea-going experiments and most were successful at generating signals that propagated hundreds to thousands of km to be recorded at the Indian Ocean IMS hydrophone stations. Development and numerical modeling of imploding glass sphere sources was one component of this testing. The intent was to design a relatively simple-to-use source that is not subject to restrictions that can limit use of explosive charges, but whose signal is large enough to propagate 100-1000's km range. Analysis of IMS hydrophone data recording during the experiments was used to illustrate the extent of energy loss during signal propagation and to assess the accuracy with which the small acoustic sources could be located using methods typically employed for nuclear monitoring.