The report focuses on the internal controls on American corporations (including corporate governance, business ethics, managerial structure and compensation, internal counsel, and whistleblowers), as well as external controls (government regulation, external auditors and accountants, and the judicial process). A recurring theme is the limited efficacy of many safeguards and watchdogs in cases of "control fraud," where fraud is directed or abetted by top management, and where unethical or abusive practices may become the organizational norm. Another broad question raised by the report is whether the post-Enron scandals were a one-time event, made possible by the stock market bubble of the 1990s and several other unique historical developments which together constituted a "perfect storm," or whether fraud is a cyclical phenomenon associated with the end of long bull markets.

High-resolution spectroscopy of hot tokamak plasma seeded with argon ions and interacting with an energetic, short-pulse neutral hydrogen beam was used to obtain the first high-resolution K-shell x-ray spectrum formed solely by charge exchange. The observed K-shell emission of Ar{sup 16+} is dominated by the intercombination and forbidden lines, providing clear signatures of charge exchange. Results from an ab initio atomic cascade model provide excellent agreement, validating a semiclassical approach for calculating charge exchange cross sections.

A new version of the Community Climate System Model (CCSM) has been developed and released to the climate community. CCSM3 is a coupled climate model with components representing the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, and land surface connected by a flux coupler. CCSM3 is designed to produce realistic simulations over a wide range of spatial resolutions, enabling inexpensive simulations lasting several millennia or detailed studies of continental-scale climate change. This paper will show results from the configuration used for climate-change simulations with a T85 grid for atmosphere and land and a 1-degree grid for ocean and sea-ice. The new system incorporates several significant improvements in the scientific formulation. The enhancements in the model physics are designed to reduce or eliminate several systematic biases in the mean climate produced by previous editions of CCSM. These include new treatments of cloud processes, aerosol radiative forcing, land-atmosphere fluxes, ocean mixed-layer processes, and sea-ice dynamics. There are significant improvements in the sea-ice thickness, polar radiation budgets, equatorial sea-surface temperatures, ocean currents, cloud radiative effects, and ENSO teleconnections. CCSM3 can produce stable climate simulations of millenial duration without ad hoc adjustments to the fluxes exchanged among the component models. Nonetheless, there are still systematic biases in …

Advanced Technology Systems, Inc. (ATS), with Desert Research Institute (DRI) and Ohio University as subcontractors, was contracted by the NETL in September 1998 to manage the Upper Ohio River Valley Project (UORVP), which included the establishment and operation of four ambient air monitoring sites located in the Upper Ohio River Valley (UORV). Two urban and two rural monitoring sites were included in the UORVP. The four sites selected for the UOVRP were collocated at existing local or state air quality monitoring stations. The goal of the UORVP was to characterize the nature and composition of PM{sub 2.5} and its precursor gases. In the process, the objectives of the UORVP were to examine the ambient air concentrations of PM{sub 2.5} as compared with the promulgated PM{sub 2.5} standards, the geographical, seasonal and temporal variations of ambient air concentrations of PM{sub 2.5}, the primary chemical constituents of PM{sub 2.5}, and the correlations between ambient air concentrations of PM{sub 2.5} and its precursor gases, other gaseous pollutants and meteorological parameters. A variety of meteorological and pollutant measurement devices, including several different PM{sub 2.5} samplers that provided either real-time or integrated concentration data, were deployed at the monitoring sites. The frequency of integrated sampling …

During the second session of the 108th Congress, the House and Senate considered many different budgetary measures. Most of them pertained to FY2005 (referred to as the “budget year”) and beyond. In addition, some made adjustments to the budget for FY2004 (referred to as the “current year”). This report describes House and Senate action on major budgetary legislation within the framework of the congressional budget process and other procedural requirements.

Safe disposal of the nation's nuclear waste in a geological repository involves unique scientific and engineering challenges owing to the very long-lived radioactivity of the waste. The repository must retain a variety of radionuclides that have vastly different chemical characters for several thousand years. Most of the radioactivity that will be housed in the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain will be associated with spent nuclear fuel, much of which is derived from commercial reactors. DOE is custodian of approximately 8000 tons of spent nuclear fuel that is also intended for eventual disposal in a geological repository. Unlike the spent fuel from commercial reactors, the DOE fuel is diverse in composition with more than 250 varieties. Safe disposal of spent fuel requires a detailed knowledge of its long-term behavior under repository conditions, as well as the fate of radionuclides released from the spent fuel as waste containers are breached.

This report provides key issues for the 109th Congress regarding Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade. Among the 109th Congress' first orders of business will be dealing with the policy priorities - both domestic and foreign, as well as issues of business including U.S. foreign and security policy, global issues, defense policy, and more.

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This report provides implications for U.S. policy regarding Germany's role in fighting Terrorism.

This report concerns the shortage of flu vaccine in the fall of 2004 renewed discussion of the fragility of the nation's system for providing this potentially life-saving product. Some have expressed concern that this situation bodes ill for national preparedness for an influenza pandemic or a large-scale bioterrorism event. This report will describe the current system of flu vaccine production and delivery, the causes of supply problems, and options for improvement.

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This document describes soil sampling that will be performed by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's Surface Environmental Surveillance Project on two units of the Hanford Reach National Monument: the McGee Ranch-Riverlands Unit (Riverlands Unit) and the North Slope made up of the Saddle Mountain Unit and the Wahluke Slope Unit. This sampling fulfills a U.S. Department of Energy requirement to evaluate the potential for residual radioactive contamination on this land and determine compliance with the requirements of DOE Order 5400.5 prior to radiological release of the property.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides benefits to veterans who meet certain eligibility rules. Benefits to veterans range from disability compensation and pensions to hospital and medical care. VA provides these benefits to veterans through three major operating units: the Veterans Health Administration (VHA), the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the National Cemetery Administration (NCA). VHA is primarily a direct service provider of primary care, specialized care, and related medical and social support services to veterans through an integrated health care system. Veterans are enrolled in priority groups that determine payments for service and nonservice-connected medical conditions. In FY2004, Congress appropriated $28.4 billion for VHA to be spent through an account structure composed of four new accounts: medical services, medical administration, medical facilities, and medical and prosthetic research.

This report discusses the Crime Victims Fund (CVF or "Fund"), which was established in the U.S. Treasury in 19841 by the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA)2 to provide a dedicated source of funds for state victim compensation and assistance programs.

The collapse of the Soviet Union sparked fears throughout the world that rogue nations and terrorist organizations would gain access to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). One specific concern has been 'WMD brain drain.' Russians with knowledge about nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons could now depart to any country of their choice, including rogue nations seeking to produce WMD. Meanwhile, Russian science fell into a protracted crisis, with plummeting salaries, little funding for research, and few new recruits to science. These developments increased both the incentives and the opportunities for scientists to sell their knowledge to governments and terrorist organizations with hostile intentions toward the United States. Recognizing the threat of WMD brain drain from Russia, the United States, and other governments implemented a host of programs designed to reduce the risk. Despite, or perhaps partly because of, massive assistance from the West to prevent scientists with WMD knowledge from emigrating, the threat of Russian WMD brain drain has recently faded from view. Yet we have seen no evidence that these programs are effective and little systematic assessment of the current threat of WMD migration. Our data from an unprecedented survey of 602 Russian physicists, biologists, and chemists suggest that …

The purpose of this cooperative research and development agreement (CRADA) between Sasol North America, Inc., and the oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) was to improve the stability of alumina-based industrial catalysts through the combination of aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) at ORNL and innovative sample preparation techniques at Sasol. Outstanding progress has been made in task 1, 'Atomistic processes of La stabilization'. STEM investigations provided structural information with single-atom precision, showing the lattice location of La dopant atoms, thus enabling first-principles calculations of binding energies, which were performed in collaboration with Vanderbilt University. The stabilization mechanism turns out to be entirely due to a particularly strong binding energy of the La tom to the {gamma}-alumina surface. The large size of the La atom precludes incorporation of La into the bulk alumina and also strains the surface, thus preventing any clustering of La atoms. Thus highly disperse distribution is achieved and confirmed by STEM images. la also affects relative stability of the exposed surfaces of {gamma}-alumina, making the 100 surface more stable for the doped case, unlike the 110 surface for pure {gamma}-alumina. From the first-principles calculations, they can estimate the increase in transition temperature for the 3% loading of …

Although the phylogenetic relationships of many organisms have been convincingly resolved by the comparisons of nucleotide or amino acid sequences, others have remained equivocal despite great effort. Now that large-scale genome sequencing projects are sampling many lineages, it is becoming feasible to compare large data sets of genome-level features and to develop this as a tool for phylogenetic reconstruction that has advantages over conventional sequence comparisons. Although it is unlikely that these will address a large number of evolutionary branch points across the broad tree of life due to the infeasibility of such sampling, they have great potential for convincingly resolving many critical, contested relationships for which no other data seems promising. However, it is important that we recognize potential pitfalls, establish reasonable standards for acceptance, and employ rigorous methodology to guard against a return to earlier days of scenario-driven evolutionary reconstructions.

Supramolecular chemistry represents a way to mimic enzyme reactivity by using specially designed container molecules. We have shown that a chiral self-assembled M{sub 4}L{sub 6} supramolecular tetrahedron can encapsulate a variety of cationic guests, with varying degrees of stereoselectivity. Reactive iridium guests can be encapsulated and the C-H bond activation of aldehydes occurs, with the host cavity controlling the ability of substrates to interact with the metal center based upon size and shape. In addition, the host container can act as a catalyst by itself. By restricting reaction space and preorganizing the substrates into reactive conformations, it accelerates the sigmatropic rearrangement of enammonium cations.

This report addresses the advancement of the ion beam thin film planarization process for the smoothing of substrate particles.

Solid state nuclear magnetic resonance techniques have been used to investigate aging mechanisms in a vinyl chloride:chlorotrifluoroethylene copolymer, FPC-461, due to exposure to {gamma}-radiation. Solid state {sup 1}H MAS NMR spectra revealed structural changes of the polymer upon irradiation under both air and nitrogen atmospheres. Considerable degradation is seen with {sup 1}H NMR in the vinyl chloride region of the polymer, particularly in the samples irradiated in air. {sup 19}F MAS NMR was used to investigate speciation in the chlorotrifluoroethylene blocks, though negligible changes were seen. {sup 1}H and {sup 19}F NMR at elevated temperature revealed increased segmental mobility and decreased structural heterogeneity within the polymer, yielding significant resolution enhancement over room temperature solid state detection. The effects of multi-site exchange are manifest in both the {sup 1}H and {sup 19}F NMR spectra as a line broadening and change in peak position as a function of temperature.

We have previously described our methodology for quantification of risk and risk reduction, and the use of risk, quantified as a dollar value, in the Value Engineering and decision tradeoff process. In this work we extend our example theme of the safety of reactive materials during accidental impacts. We have begun to place the validation of our impact safety model into a systems engineering context. In that sense, we have made connections between the data and the trends in the data, our models of the impact safety process, and the implications regarding confidence levels and reliability based on given impact safety requirements. We have folded this information into a quantitative risk assessment, and shown the assessed risk reduction value of developing an even better model, with more model work or more experimental data or both. Since there is a cost incurred for either model improvement or testing, we have used a Benefit/Cost Ratio metric to quantify this, where Benefit is our quantification of assessed risk reduction, and cost is the cost of the new test data, code development, and model validation. This has left us with further questions posed for our evolving system engineering representation for impact safety and its …

From a public policy perspective, the goals are to ensure that broadband deployment is timely, that industry competes fairly, and that service is provided to all sectors and geographical locations of American society. The federal government -- through Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) -- is seeking to ensure fair competition among the players so that broadband will be available and affordable in a timely manner to all Americans who want it. While the FCC's position is not to intervene at this time, some assert that legislation is necessary to ensure fair competition and timely broadband deployment. One proposal would ease certain legal restrictions and requirements, imposed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, on incumbent telephone companies who provide high speed data (broadband) access. Another proposal would compel cable companies to provide "open access" to competing Internet service providers.

This report discusses the Superfund program for cleaning up the nation's worst hazardous waste sites, created by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA (P.L. 96-510, as amended). It includes recent development and background issues, superfund issues, revenue issues, comprehensive reauthorization, and legislation regarding superfund program.

As of October 11, 2004, 29 bills have been introduced in the 108th Congress to change the nation’s campaign finance laws (primarily under Titles 2 and 26 of the U.S. Code). These bills — 20 in the House and nine in the Senate — seek to make improvements in the current system, including to tighten perceived loopholes. In the wake of enactment of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (P.L. 107- 155), there has been decidedly less legislative activity in this area than in recent Congresses, which typically saw well over 100 campaign finance-related bills introduced.