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For Phase I of the Job Handling project, Tech-X has built a Grid service for processing analysis requests, as well as a Graphical User Interface (GUI) client that uses the service. The service is designed to generically support High-Energy Physics (HEP) experimental analysis tasks. It has an extensible, flexible, open architecture and language. The service uses the Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC (STAR) experiment as a working example. STAR is an experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at the Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). STAR and other experiments at BNL generate multiple Petabytes of HEP data. The raw data is captured as millions of input files stored in a distributed data catalog. Potentially using thousands of files as input, analysis requests are submitted to a processing environment containing thousands of nodes. The Grid service provides a standard interface to the processing farm. It enables researchers to run large-scale, massively parallel analysis tasks, regardless of the computational resources available in their location.

CRS Report for Congress entailing information about current funding trends within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Topics include, budget requests, federal funding and grants, funding trends, etc..

The European Union (EU) experienced significant changes in 2004 as it enlarged from 15 to 25 members and continued work on a new constitutional treaty to institute internal reforms and further EU political integration. In 2005, the EU is expected to build on these efforts and seek to implement several recent foreign policy and defense initiatives. This report describes the current status of the EU’s “constitution,” EU enlargement, the EU’s evolving foreign and defense policies, and possible implications for U.S.-EU relations.

This report provides answers to key questions related to the European Union (EU). It describes the EU’s evolution, its governing institutions, trade policy, and efforts to forge common foreign and defense policies. The report also addresses the EU-U.S. and EU-NATO relationships.

In June 2004, the European Union (EU) concluded work on a constitutional treaty that contains changes to the EU’s governing institutions and decision-making processes. This new “constitution” grew out of the 2002-2003 Convention on the Future of Europe and previous EU efforts to institute internal reforms ahead of the Union’s expansion from 15 members to 25 in May 2004. The “constitution” aims to enable a larger EU to operate effectively and prevent gridlock, but it must still be ratified by all member states before it enters into force. This report provides background information on the Convention and describes the EU “constitution,” its key provisions, next steps, and possible implications for the U.S.-EU relationship.

This paper presents a case study of the potential market for the dual-service residential integrated water heater/dehumidifier (WHD). Its principal purpose is to evaluate the extent to which this integrated appliance might penetrate the residential market sector, given current market trends, producer and consumer attributes, and technical parameters. The report's secondary purpose is to gather background information leading to a generic framework for conducting market analyses of technologies. This framework can be used to assess market readiness as well as factor preferred product attributes into the design to drive consumer demand for this product. This study also supports analysis for prototype design. A full market analysis for potential commercialization should be conducted after prototype development. The integrated WHD is essentially a heat-pump water heater (HPWH) with components and controls that allow dedicated dehumidification. Adequate residential humidity control is a growing issue for newly constructed residential homes, which are insulated so well that mechanical ventilation may be necessary to meet fresh air requirements. Leveraging its successful experience with the energy-efficient design improvement for the residential HPWH, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL's) Engineering Science and Technology Division's (ESTD's) Building Equipment Group designed a water-heating appliance that combines HPWH efficiency with dedicated …

This paper describes the design and implementation of a general-purpose anomaly detector for streaming data. Based on a survey of similar work from the literature, a basic anomaly detector builds a model on normal data, compares this model to incoming data, and uses a threshold to determine when the incoming data represent an anomaly. Models compactly represent the data but still allow for effective comparison. Comparison methods determine the distance between two models of data or the distance between a model and a point. Threshold selection is a largely neglected problem in the literature, but the current implementation includes two methods to estimate thresholds from normal data. With these components, a user can construct a variety of anomaly detection schemes. The implementation contains several methods from the literature. Three separate experiments tested the performance of the components on two well-known and one completely artificial dataset. The results indicate that the implementation works and can reproduce results from previous experiments.

The agencies that implement the Endangered Species Act (ESA) regard the designation of critical habitat (CH) as providing only very limited benefits beyond those achieved through the listing of species and the avoidance of jeopardy to them. Several courts have now held that the relevant regulation and interpretation that result in this conclusion are erroneous and do not carry out the intent of Congress.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as passed in 1978, provided a statutory framework for the use of electronic surveillance in the context of foreign intelligence gathering. In doing so, Congress sought to strike a balance between national security interests and personal privacy rights. Subsequent legislation expanded federal laws dealing with foreign intelligence gathering to address physical searches, pen registers and trap and trace devices, and access to certain business records.

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The upcoming 2005 round of military base closings has stimulated interest among potentially affected communities in how the bases to be selected for closure might be economically redeveloped to replace lost jobs. Environmental contamination can present a challenge to economic redevelopment if funding or technological constraints would limit the cleanup of the land to a degree that would be safe for its intended use. Most of the lands on bases closed under the previous four rounds have been cleaned up for their intended reuse, and have been transferred for redevelopment. However, some bases have yet to be cleaned up to an extent that would be adequate for the planned land use, presenting an obstacle to replacing lost jobs. Bases closed under the 2005 round could face similar delays in redevelopment, if a community’s preferred land use would necessitate a costly and time-consuming degree of cleanup. This report will be updated as events warrant.

This report discusses legislation and proposals regarding prices of gasoline. Policy options, ANWR, and price gouging are among topics covered in this report.

The 9/11 Commission made a number of recommendations to improve the quality of intelligence analysis. A key recommendation was the establishment of a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position to manage the national intelligence effort and serve as the principal intelligence adviser to the President — along with a separate director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Subsequently, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, P.L. 108-458, made the DNI the principal adviser to the President on intelligence and made the DNI responsible for coordinating communitywide intelligence estimates. Some observers note that separating the DNI from the analytical offices may complicate the overall analytical effort.

In passing the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 (P.L. 108-458) in late 2004, Congress approved the most comprehensive reform of the U.S. Intelligence Community since its establishment over 50 years ago. Principal among enacted changes was the establishment of a new position of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to manage the Intelligence Community. Some observers have questioned whether the new statute provides the DNI the necessary authorities to effectively manage the Community.

The authors consider the dynamics of interacting elastic disks in the plane. This is an experimentally realizable two-dimensional model of dry granular flow where the stresses can be visualized using the photoelastic effect. As the elastic disks move in a vacuum, they interact through collisions with each other and with the surrounding geometry. Because of the finite propagation speed of deformations inside each grain it can be difficult to capture computationally even simple experiments involving just a few interacting grains. The goal of this project is to improve our ability to simulate dense granular flow in complex geometry. They begin this process by reviewing some past work, how they can improve upon previous work. the focus of this project is on capturing the elastic dynamics of each grain in an approximate, computationally tractable, model that can be coupled to a molecular dynamics scheme.

The September 11th attacks drew attention to U.S. air defense, and the 9/11 Commission Report recommended that Congress regularly assess the ability of Northern Command to defend the United States against military threats. Protecting U.S. airspace may require improvements in detecting aircraft and cruise missiles, making quick operational decisions, and intercepting them. A number of options exist in each of these areas. A variety of issues must be weighed including expediency, cost, and minimizing conflicts with civilian aviation.

The September 11th attacks drew attention to U.S. air defense, and the 9/11 Commission Report recommended that Congress regularly assess the ability of Northern Command to defend the United States against military threats. Protecting U.S. airspace may require improvements in detecting aircraft and cruise missiles, making quick operational decisions, and intercepting them. This report discusses a number of options that exist in each of these areas. A variety of issues must be weighed including expediency, cost, and minimizing conflicts with civilian aviation.

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Decisions on the composition of the Air Force aerial refueling fleet were made decades ago, when the primary mission was to refuel long-range strategic bombers. Modifications have been made to many of these tanker aircraft (KC-135s and KC-10s) to make them more effective in refueling fighter aircraft. This report, which will be updated, examines the balance between two different refueling methods in today’s refueling fleet — “flying boom” and “hose-and-drogue.”

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The River Protection Project-Waste Treatment Plant (RPP-WTP) requested Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) to conduct small-scale foaming and antifoam testing using a Hanford waste simulant subjected to air sparging during oxidative leaching. The foaminess of Hanford tank waste solutions was previously demonstrated by SRNL during WTP evaporator foaming studies and in small scale air sparger studies. The commercial antifoam, Dow Corning Q2-3183A was recommended to mitigate the foam in the evaporators and in vessel equipped with pulse jet mixers and air spargers. Currently, WTP is planning to use air spargers in the HLW Lag Storage Vessels (HLP-VSL-00027A/B), the Ultrafiltration Vessels (UFP-VSL-00002A&B), and the HLW Feed Blend Vessel (HLPVSL-00028) to assist the performance of the Pulse Jet Mixers (PJM). The previous air sparger antifoam studies conducted by SRNL researchers did not evaluate the hydrogen generation rate expected from antifoam additions or the effectiveness of the antifoam during caustic leaching or oxidative leaching. The fate of the various antifoam components and breakdown products in the WTP process under prototypic process conditions (temperature & radiation) was also not investigated. The effectiveness of the antifoam during caustic leaching, expected hydrogen generation rate associated with antifoam addition, and the fate of various antifoam components are …

Described is a manual,portable non-destructive technique to determine the through wall height of cracks present in dissimilar metal welds used in the primary coolling systems of pressure water and boiler light water reactors. Current manual methods found in industry have proven not to exhibit the sizing accuracy required by ASME inspection requirement. The technique described demonstrated an accuracy approximately three times that required to ASME Section XI, Appendix 8 qualification.