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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.

This report provides a reverse chronology of major events involving India and India - U.S relations.

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Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entailing information about the E-rate program and controversies in regards to telecommunications discounts for schools and libraries. Topics include, recent developments, scope and funding, program status, etc.

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Photograph of Congressman Charles Wilson. This photograph was a personal favorite of Barbara and Charlie Wilson. Taken October 7, 2003. Charles Bogel is the photographer.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1986, the United States entered into a Compact of Free Association (Compact) that provided about $2.1 billion in U.S. assistance from 1987 through 2003 to the Pacific Island nations of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). GAO has issued a number of reports raising concerns about the effectiveness of this assistance. GAO was asked to review possible FSM and RMI misuse of Compact funds. We reviewed single audits for 1996 through 2000 and this report summarizes the audit results."

A computational study of resistive drift waves in the edge plasma of a stellarator with an helical magnetic axis is presented. Three coupled field equations, describing the collisional drift wave dynamics in the linear approximation, are solved as an initial-value problem along the magnetic field line. The magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium is obtained from a three-dimensional local equilibrium model. The use of a local magnetohydrodynamic equilibrium model allows for a computationally efficient systematic study of the impact of the magnetic field structure on drift wave stability.

The advanced tokamak is considered as the basis for a fusion power plant. The ARIES-AT design has an aspect ratio of A always equal to R/a = 4.0, an elongation and triangularity of kappa = 2.20, delta = 0.90 (evaluated at the separatrix surface), a toroidal beta of beta = 9.1% (normalized to the vacuum toroidal field at the plasma center), which corresponds to a normalized beta of bN * 100 x b/(I(sub)P(MA)/a(m)B(T)) = 5.4. These beta values are chosen to be 10% below the ideal-MHD stability limit. The bootstrap-current fraction is fBS * I(sub)BS/I(sub)P = 0.91. This leads to a design with total plasma current I(sub)P = 12.8 MA, and toroidal field of 11.1 T (at the coil edge) and 5.8 T (at the plasma center). The major and minor radii are 5.2 and 1.3 m, respectively. The effects of H-mode edge gradients and the stability of this configuration to non-ideal modes is analyzed. The current-drive system consists of ICRF/FW for on-axis current drive and a lower-hybrid system for off-axis. Tran sport projections are presented using the drift-wave based GLF23 model. The approach to power and particle exhaust using both plasma core and scrape-off-layer radiation is presented.

Researchers investigated the neutralization of neptunium solution from H-Canyon Tank 16.4 and the properties of the resulting slurry. This work investigated slurry properties from a single neutralization protocol and limited storage times.

The overall goal of the project is to develop austenitic stainless steel structural materials with enhanced radiation resistance. For this project, the term radiation resistance is being used to describe resistance to dimensional changes caused by void swelling and resistance to material failures caused by irradiation assisted stress corrosion cracking (IASCC). IASCC has been linked to both hardening and changes in grain boundary composition during irradiation. To achieve such enhanced radiation resistance, three experimental paths have been chosen: bulk composition engineering, grain boundary composition engineering, and grain boundary structural engineering. The program involves the use of high-energy proton irradiation as a rapid screening tool to systematically test combinations of alloy composition and thermomechanical treatment conditions to isolate the controlling mechanisms and develop an understanding of how these factors can be engineered to improve material properties.

An apparatus for the measurement, under transverse pressure, of the inter-strand contact resistance in epoxy-impregnated Nb{sub 3}Sn Rutherford cables has been recently assembled at Fermilab. Procedures have been developed to instrument and measure samples extracted from Nb{sub 3}Sn coils. Samples were extracted from coils fabricated with the Wind-and-React and the React-and-Wind technology, both presently under development at Fermilab. A ceramic binder is used to improve the insulation and to simplify the fabrication of coils using the Wind-and-React technology. Synthetic oil is used to prevent sintering during the heat treatment of coils to be wound after reaction. In order to evaluate the effects of the ceramic binder and of the synthetic oil on the inter-strand resistance, measurements of samples extracted from coils were compared with measurements of cable stacks with varying characteristics. In this paper we describe the apparatus, the sample preparation, the measurement procedure, and the results of the first series of tests.

A 10 T racetrack magnet (HFDB-03) wound with pre-reacted Nb{sub 3}Sn Rutherford cable has been fabricated and tested at Fermilab. This magnet is the third one in a proof-of-principle series for the use of the React-and-Wind technology in common-coil dipole magnets for future accelerators. It consists of two flat racetrack coils (28 turns each) separated by 5 mm. The maximum field on the coil, at the short sample limit of 16530 A, is 10 tesla. The cable has 41 strands with 0.7 mm diameter and the minimum bend radius in the magnet ends is 90 mm. The predecessor of this magnet (HFDB-02) reached 78% of the short sample limit at 7.7 T. The mechanical design was improved and the fabrication procedure was slightly modified in order to address possible causes of limitation. In this paper we present the mechanical design and analysis of HFDB-03, the modifications to the fabrication procedure and the test results.

Monthly student newspaper from St. Philip's College in San Antonio, Texas that includes campus news along with advertising.

A report of a study conducted for a proposed mile-long concrete hiking trail in Riverside Park.

The authors give a gentle introduction to using various software tools for Automatic Differentiation (AD). Ready-to-use examples are discussed and links to further information are presented. The target audience includes all those who are looking for a straight-forward way to get started using the available AD technology. The document is supposed to be dynamic in the sense that its content will be kept up-to-date as the AD software covered is evolving.

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The paper discusses the present trends in the design of low-noise front-end systems for room temperature semiconductor detectors. The technological advancement provided by submicron CMOS and BiCMOS processes is examined from several points of view. The noise performances are a fundamental issue in most detector applications and suitable attention is devoted to them for the purpose of judging whether or not the present processes supersede the solutions featuring a field-effect transistor as a front-end element. However, other considerations are also important in judging how well a monolithic technology suits the front-end design. Among them, the way a technology lends itself to the realization of additional functions, for instance, the charge reset in a charge-sensitive loop or the time-variant filters featuring the special weighting functions that may be requested in some applications of CdTe or CZT detectors.

Experimental nuclear moments of inertia at high spins along the yrast line have been determined systematically and found to differ from the rigid-body values. The difference is attributed to shell effect and these have been calculated microscopically. The data and quantal calculations are interpreted by means of the semiclassical Periodic Orbit Theory. From this new perspective, features in the moments of inertia as a function of neutron number and spin, as well as their relation to the shell energies can be understood. Gross shell effects persist up to the highest angular momenta observed.

This report includes a side-by-side comparison of the major provisions of those bills.

Weekly newspaper from Emory, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The purpose of this report is to provide an evaluation of the criticality safety aspects of using up to 8-in.-inner-diameter (ID) piping as part of a system to monitor the {sup 235}U enrichment in uranium hexafluoride (UF{sub 6}) gas both before and after an enrichment down-blending operation. The evaluated operation does not include the blending stage but includes only the monitors and the piping directly associated with the monitors, which are in a separate room from the blending operation. There are active controls in place to limit the enrichment of the blended UF{sub 6} to a maximum of 5 weight percent (wt%) {sup 235}U. Under normal operating conditions of temperature and pressure, the UF{sub 6} will stay in the gas phase and criticality will not be credible. The two accidents of concern are solidification of the UF{sub 6} along with some hydrofluoric acid (HF) and water or moisture ingress, which would cause the UF{sub 6} gas to react and form a hydrated uranyl fluoride (UO{sub 2}F{sub 2}) solid or solution. Of these two types of accidents, the addition of water and formation of UO{sub 2}F{sub 2} is the most reactive scenario and thus limits related to UO{sub 2}F{sub 2} will …

The Gunite and Associated Tanks (GAAT) Remediation Project was the first of its kind performed in the United States. Robotics and remotely operated equipment were used to successfully transfer almost 94,000 gal of remote-handled transuranic sludge containing over 81,000 Ci of radioactive contamination from nine large underground storage tanks at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The sludge was transferred with over 439,000 gal of radioactive waste supernatant and {approx}420,500 gal of fresh water that was used in sluicing operations. The GAATs are located in a high-traffic area of ORNL near a main thoroughfare. A phased and integrated approach to waste retrieval operations was used for the GAAT Remediation Project. The project promoted safety by obtaining experience from low-risk operations in the North Tank Farm before moving to higher-risk operations in the South Tank Farm. This approach allowed project personnel to become familiar with the tanks and waste, as well as the equipment, processes, procedures, and operations required to perform successful waste retrieval. By using an integrated approach to tank waste retrieval and tank waste management, the project was completed years ahead of the original baseline schedule, which resulted in avoiding millions of dollars in associated costs. This report is …