This report provides an overview of Iraq's political transition from the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein to a plural polity that encompasses varying sects and ideological and political factions. This report also addresses ongoing governmental instabilities and their causes, as well as U.S. concerns about possible Iranian influence in Iraq as U.S. forces depart the country.

This paper investigates the questions of what statistical information about a memory request sequence is useful to have in making page replacement decisions: Our starting point is the Markov Request Model for page request sequences. Although the utility of modeling page request sequences by the Markov model has been recently put into doubt, we find that two previously suggested algorithms (Maximum Hitting Time and Dominating Distribution) which are based on the Markov model work well on the trace data used in this study. Interestingly, both of these algorithms perform equally well despite the fact that the theoretical results for these two algorithms differ dramatically. We then develop succinct characteristics of memory access patterns in an attempt to approximate the simpler of the two algorithms. Finally, we investigate how to collect these characteristics in an online manner in order to have a purely online algorithm.

Ion Beam Induced Luminescence (IBIL) and Ion Beam Induced Charge Collection (IBICC) have been applied in the study of the luminescence emission efficiency and investigation of the homogeneity of the luminescence emission in phosphors. The IBIL imaging was performed by using sharply focused ion beams or broad/partially-focused ion beams. The luminescence emission homogeneity in samples was examined to reveal possible distributed crystal-defects that may lead to the inhomogeneity of the luminescence emission in samples.The purpose of the study is to search for suitable luminescent thin films that have high homogeneity of luminescence emission, large IBIL efficiency under heavy ion excitation, and can be placed as a thin layer on the top of microelectronic devices to be analyzed with Ion Photon Emission Microscopy (IPEM). The emission yield was found to be low for organic materials, due to saturation of the light output dependence on the energy deposition of heavy ions. The emission yield of a typical Bicron plastic scintillator is about 70 photons/ion/micron. Inorganic materials may have higher IBIL yield under high-energy and heavy-ion excitation, but the challenging problem is the inhomogeneity of the IBIL emission. The IBIL image techniques are applied in the investigation of the homogeneity of a GaN …

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Between 1965 and 1979 there were five documented and one or more inferred attempts to stimulate the production from hydrocarbon reservoirs by detonating nuclear devices in reservoir strata. Of the five documented tests, three were carried out by the US in low-permeability, natural-gas bearing, sandstone-shale formations, and two were done in the USSR within oil-bearing carbonates. The objectives of the US stimulation efforts were to increase porosity and permeability in a reservoir around a specific well by creating a chimney of rock rubble with fractures extending beyond it, and to connect superimposed reservoir layers. In the USSR, the intent was to extensively fracture an existing reservoir in the more general vicinity of producing wells, again increasing overall permeability and porosity. In both countries, the ultimate goals were to increase production rates and ultimate recovery from the reservoirs. Subsurface explosive devices ranging from 2.3 to about 100 kilotons were used at depths ranging from 1208 m (3963 ft) to 2568 m (8427 ft). Post-shot problems were encountered, including smaller-than-calculated fracture zones, formation damage, radioactivity of the product, and dilution of the BTU value of tie natural gas with inflammable gases created by the explosion. Reports also suggest that production-enhancement factors from …

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

This report talks about Assessment Of Contaminant Distribution and Stability In Sediment Of The A-01 Constructed Wetland 2005

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On April 28, 2005, Congress approved an FY2006 budget resolution (H.Con.Res. 95) with reconciliation instructions calling for three bills: a bill containing spending cuts ($1.5 billion in FY2006 and $34.7 billion over five years); a bill increasing the public debt limit by $781 billion (to $8,965 billion); and a bill containing tax cuts.

This report discusses issues debated in the 107th Congress while is considering various proposals to amend the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). Major issues in recent years have included changing the role of science in decision-making, changing the role of critical habitat, reducing conflicts with Department of Defense activities, incorporating further protection for property owners, and increasing protection of listed species, among others. In addition, many have advocated including significant changes to ESA regulations made during the Clinton Administration in the law itself.

The appearance of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy or “mad cow disease”) in North America has raised public health concerns and disrupted trade for cattle and beef producers. A major issue for Congress has been how to rebuild foreign confidence in the safety of U.S. beef and regain lost markets like Japan. Among other issues are whether additional measures are needed to further protect the public and cattle herd, and concerns over the relative costs and benefits of such measures for consumers, taxpayers and industry.

Report on tax issues facing Congress in late 2005, including state of the economy, federal budget, Hurricane Katrina, and more.

Proposed budget for the Texas State Office of Risk Management outlining projected income and expenditures, with supporting documentation.

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This report consists of the Bayh-Dole act on the selected issues in patent policy and commercialization of technology.

Advanced thin film processing and packaging technologies are employed in the fabrication of new planar thin-film multifunction thermal converters. The processing, packaging, and design features build on experience gained from prior NIST demonstrations of thin-film converters and are optimized for improved sensitivity, bandwidth, manufacturability, and reliability.

The ability of Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough to reduce, and therefore contain, toxic and radioactive metal waste has made all factors that affect the physiology of this organism of great interest. Increased salinity is an important and frequent fluctuation faced by D. vulgaris in its natural habitat. In liquid culture, exposure to excess salt resulted in striking elongation of D. vulgaris cells. Using data from transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolite assays, phospholipid fatty acid profiling, and electron microscopy, we used a systems approach to explore the effects of excess NaCl on D. vulgaris. In this study we demonstrated that import of osmoprotectants, such as glycine betaine and ectoine, is the primary mechanism used by D. vulgaris to counter hyperionic stress. Several efflux systems were also highly up-regulated, as was the ATP synthesis pathway. Increases in the levels of both RNA and DNA helicases suggested that salt stress affected the stability of nucleic acid base pairing. An overall increase in the level of branched fatty acids indicated that there were changes in cell wall fluidity. The immediate response to salt stress included up-regulation of chemotaxis genes, although flagellar biosynthesis was down-regulated. Other down-regulated systems included lactate uptake permeases and ABC transport systems. The results …

We report the experimental confirmation of the production of element110. In the bombardment of a 208Pb target with a 309~MeV 64Ni beam, we have observed two chains of time- and position-correlated events. Each chain consisted of the implantation of an evaporation residue followed by the emission of alpha-particles. We attribute these two chains to the decay of 271-110 produced with a cross section of 8.3 (+11/-5.3)pb.

Neither LLNL nor any other organization has the capability to perform deterministic fabrication of mm-sized objects with arbitrary, {micro}m-sized, 3-D features and with 100-nm-scale accuracy and smoothness. This is particularly true for materials such as high explosives and low-density aerogels, as well as materials such as diamond and vanadium. The motivation for this project was to investigate the physics and chemistry that control the interactions of solid surfaces with laser beams and ion beams, with a view towards their applicability to the desired deterministic fabrication processes. As part of this LDRD project, one of our goals was to advance the state of the art for experimental work, but, in order to create ultimately a deterministic capability for such precision micromachining, another goal was to form a new modeling/simulation capability that could also extend the state of the art in this field. We have achieved both goals. In this project, we have, for the first time, combined a 1-D hydrocode (''HYADES'') with a 3-D molecular dynamics simulator (''MDCASK'') in our modeling studies. In FY02 and FY03, we investigated the ablation/surface-modification processes that occur on copper, gold, and nickel substrates with the use of sub-ps laser pulses. In FY04, we investigated laser …