H.R. 1417, 108th Congress, first session, was introduced on March 25, 2003 and passed by the House on March 3, 2004. If enacted, this bill would make extensive changed to the procedural framework for adjudicating royalty rates for compulsory licenses under the Copyright Act. This report details the background and legislative action on the Copyright Royalty and Distribution Reform Act of 2004.

On December 19, 2003, Libya announced it would dismantle its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and ballistic missile programs. Since then, U.S., British, and international officials have inspected and removed or destroyed key components of those programs, and Libya has provided valuable information, particularly about foreign suppliers. Libya’s WMD disarmament is a critical step towards reintegration into the world community, and a necessary but probably not sufficient prerequisite for lifting U.S. sanctions.

Weekly student newspaper from Tarleton State University in Stephenville, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Rio Grande City, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

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

Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

Weekly newspaper from Albany, Texas that includes local, county, and state news along with extensive advertising.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO exists to support the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. In the years ahead, its support to the Congress will likely prove even more critical because of the pressures created by the nation's large and growing long-term fiscal imbalance, which is driven primarily by known demographic and rising health care trends. These pressures will require the Congress to make tough choices regarding what the government does, how it does business, and who will do the government's business in the future. GAO's work covers virtually every area in which the federal government is or may become involved, anywhere in the world. Perhaps just as importantly, GAO's work sometimes leads it to sound the alarm over problems looming just beyond the horizon--such as the nation's enormous long-term fiscal challenges--and help policymakers address these challenges in a timely and informed manner. The Comptroller General presented testimony that focused on GAO's progress during his first five years in office. He highlighted GAO's (1) fiscal year 2003 performance and results; (2) …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To ensure that essential government services are available in emergencies--such as terrorist attacks, severe weather, or building-level emergencies--federal agencies are required to develop continuity of operations (COOP) plans. Responsibility for formulating guidance on these plans and for assessing executive branch COOP capabilities lies with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), under the Department of Homeland Security. FEMA guidance, Federal Preparedness Circular (FPC) 65 (July 1999), identifies elements of a viable COOP capability, including the requirement that agencies identify their essential functions. This statement summarizes the findings of a February 2004, GAO report, for which GAO was asked to determine the extent to which (1) major civilian executive branch agencies have identified their essential functions and (2) these agencies' COOP plans follow FEMA guidance."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, resulted in fundamental changes in the way the United States screens airport passengers and their property. One of the most significant changes was the shift from using private screeners to using federal screeners at all but five commercial airports in the United States. These five airports are part of a pilot program, where private screeners perform screening functions. The mission of the Private Screening Pilot Program, as defined by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), is to test the effectiveness of increased operational flexibility at the airport level that contractors may provide. GAO was asked to describe (1) the challenges and limitations of the private screening pilot program, (2) the operational flexibilities TSA has provided to the private screening companies, and (3) the performance of private and federal screeners in detecting threat objects. This testimony is based on our prior and ongoing work on TSA airport passenger and baggage screeners."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Antibiotic resistance is a growing public health concern; antibiotics used in animals raised for human consumption contributes to this problem. Three federal agencies address this issue--the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Department of Agriculture (USDA). GAO examined (1) scientific evidence on the transference of antibiotic resistance from animals to humans and extent of potential harm to human health, (2) agencies' efforts to assess and address these risks, (3) the types of data needed to support research on these risks and extent to which the agencies collect these data, (4) use of antibiotics in animals in the United States compared with its key agricultural trading partners and competitors, and (5) information on how use has affected trade."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This letter responds to a request that we provide information on selected personnel practices at the Justice Department. On March 1, 2004, we briefed Congress on the results of our review. This letter transmits information provided during that briefing. Specifically, the slides enclosed in this letter describe (1) Justice's hiring processes for entry-level and lateral (i.e., experienced) career attorneys, (2) the types of monetary awards Justice grants to political appointees and the number of awards granted from 1993 through 2002, and (3) Justice's selection process for the position of the Assistant Attorney General for Administration."

Weekly newspaper published in Duncanville, Texas that includes local Cedar Hill, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas that includes campus news along with advertising.

Since the late 1950s, leaks from 67 single-shell tanks at the Hanford Site have released about 1 million curies to the underlying sediments. The radioactive material was contained in water-based solutions generally characterized as having high pH values (basic solutions), high nitrate and nitrite concentrations, and high aluminum concentrations. The solutions were also hot, in some cases at or near boiling, as well as complex and highly variable in composition reflecting solutions obtained from multiple methods of reprocessing spent nuclear fuel. In order to understand the observed and probable distribution of radionuclides in the ground at Hanford, major reactions that likely occurred between the leaked fluids and the sediment minerals were investigated in laboratory experiments simulating environmental conditions. Reactions involving the dissolution of quartz and biotite and the simultaneous formation of new minerals were quantified at controlled pH values and temperature. Result s show that the dissolution of quartz and formation of new zeolite-like minerals could have altered the flow path of ground water and contaminant plumes and provided an uptake mechanism for positively-charged soluble radionuclides, such as cesium. The dissolution of biotite, a layered-iron-aluminum-silicate mineral, provided iron in a reduced form that could have reacted with negatively-charged soluble chromium, …

Recovery and comparison of toolmarks, footprint impressions, and fractured surfaces connected to a crime scene are of great importance in forensic science. The purpose of this project is to provide statistical tools for the validation of the proposition that particular manufacturing processes produce marks on the work-product (or tool) that are substantially different from tool to tool. The approach to validation involves the collection of digital images of toolmarks produced by various tool manufacturing methods on produced work-products and the development of statistical methods for data reduction and analysis of the images. The developed statistical methods provide a means to objectively calculate a ''degree of association'' between matches of similarly produced toolmarks. The basis for statistical method development relies on ''discriminating criteria'' that examiners use to identify features and spatial relationships in their analysis of forensic samples. The developed data reduction algorithms utilize the same rules used by examiners for classification and association of toolmarks.

Significant differences (approximately 30 percent) have been observed in the sulfur measurements in high-level waste sludge by the Analytical Development Section (ADS) using the inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES) method compared with the ADS ion chromatography (IC) method. Since the measured concentrations of sulfur in the sludge approached the maximum concentration that can be processed in the DWPF, experiments were performed to determine the source of the differences and assess the true accuracy of sulfur measurements.

Bioenergy crops, which displace fossil fuels when used to produce ethanol, biobased products, and/or electricity, have the potential to further reduce atmospheric carbon levels by building up soil carbon levels, especially when planted on lands where these levels have been reduced by intensive tillage. The purpose of this study is to improve the characterization of the soil carbon (C) sequestration for bioenergy crops (switchgrass, poplars, and willows) in the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Transportation (GREET) model (Wang 1999) by using the latest results reported in the literature and by Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Because soil carbon sequestration for bioenergy crops can play a significant role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for cellulosic ethanol, it is important to periodically update the estimates of soil carbon sequestration from bioenergy crops as new and better data become available. We used the three-step process described below to conduct our study.

Research has shown that Active Pixel CMOS sensors can detect charged particles. We have been studying whether this process can be used in a collider environment. In particular, we studied the effect of radiation with 55 MeV protons. These results show that a fluence of about 2 x 10{sup 12} protons/cm{sup 2} reduces the signal by a factor of two while the noise increases by 25%. A measurement 6 months after exposure shows that the silicon lattice naturally repairs itself. Heating the silicon to 100 C reduced the shot noise and increased the collected charge. CMOS sensors have a reduced signal to noise ratio per pixel because charge diffuses to neighboring pixels. We have constructed a photogate to see if this structure can collect more charge per pixel. Results show that a photogate does collect charge in fewer pixels, but it takes about 15 ms to collect all of the electrons produced by a pulse of light.

A dosage analysis of gene expression was conducted using aneuploids of maize. The findings of this project led to the concept that regulatory genes in higher eukaryotes has mostly dosage dependent and are the underlying basis of quantitative traits and aneuploid syndromes.

This work has followed two themes: (1) Developing and using the adjoint of the MIT ocean biogeochemistry model to examine the efficiency of carbon sequestration in a global configuration. We have demonstrated the power of the adjoint method for systematic ocean model sensitivity studies. We have shown that the relative efficiency of carbon sequestration in the Atlantic and Pacific basins changes with the period of interest. For decadal to centennial scales, the Pacific is more efficient. On longer timescales the Atlantic is more efficient . (2) We have developed and applied a high-resolution, North Atlantic circulation and tracer model to investigate the role of the mesoscale in controlling sequestration efficiency. We show that the mesoscale eddy field, and its explicit representation, significantly affects the estimated sequestration efficiency for local sources on the Eastern US seaboard.

We use data from a unique 40-year record of 150 urban and rural stations in the ''Black Smoke and SO2 Network'' in Great Britain to infer information about sources of atmospheric black carbon (BC). The data show a rapid decline of ambient atmospheric BC between 1962 and the early 1990s that exceeds the decline in official estimates of BC emissions based only on amount of fuel use and mostly fixed emission factors. This provides empirical confirmation of the existence and large impact of a time-dependent ''technology factor'' that must multiply the rate of fossil fuel use. Current ambient BC amounts in Great Britain comparable to those in western and central Europe, with diesel engines being the principal present source. From comparison of BC and SO2 data we infer that current BC emission inventories understate true emissions in the U.K. by about a factor of two. The results imply that there is the potential for improved technology to achieve large reduction of global ambient BC. There is a need for comparable monitoring of BC in other countries.

Weekly newspaper from Port Aransas, Texas on Mustang Island that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.