On July 22, 2004, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, known as the 9/11 Commission, issued its final report, detailing the events up to and including the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks upon the United States. The 9/11 Commission recommended that the Senate adopt rules requiring hearings and votes to confirm or reject national security nominees within 30 days of their submission at the start of each new presidential administration. Implementing the commission's proposal would involve imposing new restrictions on both the power of committee chairs to control the agenda of their committees and the rights of Senators to delay or block nominations through holds and extended debate. This report discusses in detail this proposal, how it could be implemented, and the potential effects of its implementation.

Condor County Consulting on behalf of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has performed wet season surveys for listed branchiopods at Site 300, located in eastern Alameda County and western San Joaquin County. LLNL is collecting information for the preparation of an EIS covering ongoing explosives testing and related activities on Site 300. Related activities include maintenance of fire roads and annual control burns of approximately 607 hectares (1500 acres). Control burns typically take place on the northern portion of the site. Because natural branchiopod habitat is sparse on Site 300, it is not surprising that listed branchiopods were not observed during this 2001-2002 wet season survey. Although the site is large, a majority of it has topography and geology that precludes the formation of static seasonal pools. Even the relatively gentle topography of the northern half of the site contains few areas where water pools for more than two weeks. The rock outcrops found on the site did not provide suitable habitat for listed branchiopods. Most of the habitat available to branchiopods on the site is puddles that form in roadbeds and dry quickly. The one persistent pool on the site, the larger of the two modified vernal pools and …

Condor Country Consulting conducted surveys for listed branchiopods in the 2002-2003 wet season to complete requirements of the Guidelines (USFWS 1996) used to determine the distribution of federally-listed branchiopods within the study area. The first survey was performed during the previous wet season (2001-2002). The 2002-2003 wet season survey, combined with the previous season's survey, is intended to provide LLNL with information that will assist them in determining the effects of the proposed action on federally listed branchiopods and provide information useful in the preparation of the associated environmental documentation. It is also expected to satisfy the survey requirements of the USFWS. For the purpose of this report, the term branchiopod refers specifically to phyllopodous branchiopods and not cladocerans. Fairy shrimp, tadpole shrimp, and clam shrimp are all categorized as phyllopodous branchiopods and are currently the only members of the Class Branchiopoda that contain species that are listed under the federal Endangered Species Act. Although cladocerans are branchiopods and were found on the site, they are only referred to by the Order in this report because they are not the target species of this study.

To assist the University of California in obtaining biological assessment information for the ''2004 Environmental Impact Statement for Continued Operation of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL)'', Jones & Stokes conducted an inventory of small mammals in six major vegetation communities at Site 300. These communities were annual grassland, native grassland, oak savanna, riparian corridor, coastal scrub, and seep/spring wetlands. The principal objective of this study was to assess the diversity and abundance of small mammal species in these communities, as well as the current status of any special-status small mammal species found in these communities. Surveys in the native grassland community were conducted before and after a controlled fire management burn of the grasslands to qualitatively evaluate any potential effects of fire on small mammals in the area.

ENERGY STAR(R) is a voluntary labeling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products, buildings and practices. Operated jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), ENERGY STAR labels exist for more than thirty products, spanning office equipment, residential heating and cooling equipment, commercial and residential lighting, home electronics, and major appliances. This report presents savings estimates for a subset of ENERGY STAR program activities, focused primarily on labeled products. We present estimates of the energy, dollar and carbon savings achieved by the program in the year 2002, what we expect in 2003, and provide savings forecasts for two market penetration scenarios for the period 2003 to 2020. The target market penetration forecast represents our best estimate of future ENERGY STAR savings. It is based on realistic market penetration goals for each of the products. We also provide a forecast under the assumption of 100 percent market penetration; that is, we assume that all purchasers buy ENERGY STAR-compliant products instead of standard efficiency products throughout the analysis period.

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I was assigned to Frank Schneider, who works within the Accelerator Division Water Group. Frank would educate me with issues pertaining to water flow cooling at the P-Bar facility. Also during the shutdown period, water issues in the Pre-Vault Stub Room would be addressed.

From Summary: This report briefly summarizes the events that occurred and the issues, they raised in regards to violations of state laws, against Marsh & McClennan Companies and Marsh, Inc, which the Attorney General of the Sate of New York filling a civil law suit.

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Annual report of fuel cell projects sponsored by Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory.

The primary focus of this issue brief is legislative action with respect to abortion. However, discussion of those legislative proposals necessarily involves a brief discussion of the leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy. For a more detailed discussion of the relevant case law, see CRS Report 95-724, Abortion Law Development: A Brief Overview.

A new object-oriented Minimization package is available for distribution in the same manner as CLHEP. This package, designed for use in HEP applications, has all the capabilities of Minuit, but is a re-write from scratch, adhering to modern C++ design principles. A primary goal of this package is extensibility in several directions, so that its capabilities can be kept fresh with as little maintenance effort as possible. This package is distinguished by the priority that was assigned to C++ design issues, and the focus on producing an extensible system that will resist becoming obsolete.

This model report documents the abstraction of drift seepage, conducted to provide seepage-relevant parameters and their probability distributions for use in Total System Performance Assessment for License Application (TSPA-LA). Drift seepage refers to the flow of liquid water into waste emplacement drifts. Water that seeps into drifts may contact waste packages and potentially mobilize radionuclides, and may result in advective transport of radionuclides through breached waste packages [''Risk Information to Support Prioritization of Performance Assessment Models'' (BSC 2003 [DIRS 168796], Section 3.3.2)]. The unsaturated rock layers overlying and hosting the repository form a natural barrier that reduces the amount of water entering emplacement drifts by natural subsurface processes. For example, drift seepage is limited by the capillary barrier forming at the drift crown, which decreases or even eliminates water flow from the unsaturated fractured rock into the drift. During the first few hundred years after waste emplacement, when above-boiling rock temperatures will develop as a result of heat generated by the decay of the radioactive waste, vaporization of percolation water is an additional factor limiting seepage. Estimating the effectiveness of these natural barrier capabilities and predicting the amount of seepage into drifts is an important aspect of assessing the performance …

This report summarizes the critiques the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Supervision (OFHEO) made of accounting practices at Fannie Mae. The OFHEO's two main issues are under the domains of: amortization of discounts, premiums, fees involved in the purchase of home mortgages, and the other being accounting for financial derivatives contracts. The report emphasizes that these discrepancies created a false image of the company's earnings and in one case was the cause of the company's executives to receive bonuses.

The combination of phase diversity and adaptive optics offers great flexibility. Phase diverse images can be used to diagnose aberrations and then provide feedback control to the optics to correct the aberrations. Alternatively, phase diversity can be used to partially compensate for aberrations during post-detection image processing. The adaptive optic can produce simple defocus or more complex types of phase diversity. This report presents an analysis, based on numerical simulations, of the efficiency of different modes of phase diversity with respect to compensating for specific aberrations during post-processing. It also comments on the efficiency of post-processing versus direct aberration correction. The construction of a bench top optical system that uses a membrane mirror as an active optic is described. The results of characterization tests performed on the bench top optical system are presented. The work described in this report was conducted to explore the use of adaptive optics and phase diversity imaging for responsive space applications.

This report summarizes the work carried out during the period of September 29, 2000 to January 15, 2004 under DOE Research Contract No. DE-FC26-00BC15308. High temperatures and reactive fluids in sedimentary basins dictate that interplay and feedback between mechanical and geochemical processes significantly influence evolving rock and fracture properties. Not only does diagenetic mineralization fill in once open fractures either partially or completely, it modifies the rock mechanics properties that can control the mechanical aperture of natural fractures. In this study, we have evolved an integrated methodology of fractured reservoir characterization and we have demonstrated how it can be incorporated into fluid flow simulation. The research encompassed a wide range of work from geological characterization methods to rock mechanics analysis to reservoir simulation. With regard to the characterization of mineral infilling of natural fractures, the strong interplay between diagenetic and mechanical processes is documented and shown to be of vital importance to the behavior of many types of fractured reservoirs. Although most recent literature emphasizes Earth stress orientation, cementation in fractures is likely a critically important control on porosity, fluid flow attributes, and even sensitivity to effective stress changes. The diagenetic processes of dissolution and partial cementation are key controls …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), working with state and local partners, provides landowners with technical assistance for multiple programs to plan and implement conservation measures that protect soil, water, and wildlife. For years, the Congress has been seeking detailed cost information on this assistance as it examined USDA budget requests. In part, because NRCS's financial system was not designed for estimating future budgets, in 1998 NRCS began developing additional cost data and a computer model for estimating future technical assistance costs. GAO was asked to (1) review NRCS's technical assistance cost estimates and (2) identify causes of any differences between the estimates and actual costs ultimately reported by NRCS."

This report discusses federal credit assistance for farmers and recent issues in Congress related to the programs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offers several permanently authorized programs to help farmers recover financially from a natural disaster, including federal crop insurance, the non-insured assistance program and emergency disaster loans. In recent years, Congress frequently has made supplemental financial assistance available to farmers and ranchers on an ad-hoc basis, most notably in the form of direct crop disaster payments and emergency livestock assistance. Congress provided an estimated $3.1 billion of such assistance in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-7) for 2001 and 2002 crop and livestock losses. Some farm groups would like to see similar assistance provided for 2003 losses, particularly in regions of the Midwest and West that have experienced prolonged drought conditions. To date, no ad-hoc assistance has been made available for 2003 losses.

This report discusses the issue of children that have been left as orphans due to AIDS taking their parents lives. Moreover, the report details that between 2001 and 2003 the number of children orphaned from AIDS increased by 3.5 million. The rate of orphaned children is only expected to increase in the future if massive spending is not issued to curb the problem.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) process for ensuring that air traffic control (ATC) systems will operate safely in the national airspace system is an integral part of the agency's multibillion-dollar ATC modernization and safety effort. GAO was asked to review (1) FAA's process for approving ATC systems for safe use in the national airspace system; (2) challenges FAA has faced approving ATC systems and how these challenges affected the cost, schedule, and performance estimates of the systems; and (3) actions FAA has taken to improve its process for approving ATC systems."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) multibillion-dollar effort to modernize the nation's air traffic control (ATC) system has resulted in cost, schedule, and performance shortfalls for over two decades and has been on GAO's list of high-risk federal programs since 1995. According to FAA, performance shortfalls were due, in part, to restrictions imposed by federal acquisition and personnel regulations. In response, Congress granted FAA exemptions in 1995 and directed it to develop a new acquisition management system. In this report, GAO compared FAA's AMS with (1) the FAR and (2) commercial best practices for major acquisitions, and (3) examined FAA's implementation of AMS and its progress in resolving problems with major acquisitions."

The results and procedure of the alignment of the MINOS Far Detector are presented. The far detector has independent alignments of SM1 and SM2. The misalignments have an estimated uncertainty of {approx}850 {micro}m for SM1 and {approx}750 {micro}m for SM2. The alignment has as inputs the average rotations of U and V as determined by optical survey and strip positions within modules measured from the module mapper. The output of this is a module-module correction for transverse mis-alignments. These results were verified by examining an independent set of data. These alignment constants on average contribute much less then 1% to the total uncertainty in the transverse strip position.

This report consists of the alternative minimum tax for individuals.,