This report examines a number of issues as Congress considers codification of an NCTC. One issue is whether the centralization remedy the commission has recommended fits the problems associated specifically with the 9/11 intelligence failure, and perhaps more broadly, the systematic maladies affecting the Intelligence Community. There are at least four options for congressional consideration: (1) NCTC with intelligence and operational planning duties, (2) NCTC restricted to an intelligence role, (3) NCTC restricted to an operational planning role, and (4) status quo plus-viewing the newly forming collected entity as a pilot potential NCTC. As one of its 41 recommendations, the 9/11 Commission recommended the creation of a National Counterterroism Center (NCTC).

After a series of devastating hurricanes struck Florida and other states in the summer of 2004, the 108th Congress passed two emergency supplemental appropriations statutes that provide a total of $16.475 billion to areas stricken by the hurricanes and other natural disasters. The House and Senate quickly approved legislation (H.R. 5005) the day after President Bush submitted a request on September 6 for $2 billion in FY2004 funding, largely in response to the devastation caused by Hurricanes Charley and Frances in Florida. The other issue that was a matter of public debate focused on a proposed amendment in the House to fully offset the cost of the FY2005 supplemental through a proportional reduction in discretionary funds; the House rejected the amendment.

This report highlights the reasons why chemical plants are susceptible to security breaches due to the ineffectiveness of proposed congressional mandates.

This report mainly provides information about the Civilian Nuclear Waste Disposal.Federal policy is based on the premise that nuclear waste can be disposed of safety.

The conference report on the energy bill (H.R. 6), which came to the House and Senate floor for action the week of November 17, 2003, contained several Clean Air Act provisions. Most of these are also contained in S. 2095, a revised version of the bill introduced February 12, 2004, and in H.R. 4503, which passed the House June 15, 2004. Most of the air provisions concern the gasoline additives MTBE and ethanol, used to meet Clean Air Act requirements that reformulated gasoline (RFG) sold in the nation’s worst ozone nonattainment areas contain at least 2% oxygen, to improve combustion.

The observation and modeling of coherent transition radiation from femtosecond laser accelerated electron bunches is discussed. The coherent transition radiation, scaling quadratically with bunch charge, is generated as the electrons transit the plasma-vacuum boundary. Due to the limited transverse radius of the plasma boundary, diffraction effects will strongly modify the angular distribution and the total energy radiated is reduced compared to an infinite transverse boundary. The multi-nC electron bunches, concentrated in a length of a few plasma periods (several tens of microns), experience partial charge neutralization while propagating inside the plasma towards the boundary. This reduces the space-charge blowout of the beam, allowing for coherent radiation at relatively high frequencies (several THz). The charge distribution of the electron bunch at the plasma-vacuum boundary can be derived from Fourier analysis of the coherent part of the transition radiation spectrum. A Michelson interferometer was used to measure the coherent spectrum, and electron bunches with duration on the order of 50 fs (rms) were observed.

This report provides information about the Stages of Action on Measures on Committee of the Whole.

We have conducted studies to fully characterize the mass spectral signature of individual Bacillus atrophaeus, previously known as Bacillus subtilis var niger or Bacillus globigii, spores obtained in matrix-free bioaerosol mass spectrometry (BAMS). Mass spectra of spores grown in unlabeled, {sup 13}C-labeled and {sup 15}N-labeled growth media are used to determine the number of carbon and nitrogen atoms associated with each mass peak. To determine the parent ion structure associated with fragment ions present in the spore spectra, the mass-to-charge (m/z) fragmentation pattern of several chemical standards was obtained. Our results agree with prior assignments of dipicolinic acid, amino acids and calcium complex ions made in the spore mass spectra. Identity of several previously unidentified mass peaks, key to recognition of Bacillus spore by matrix-free BAMS, is revealed. Specifically, a set of fragment peaks in the negative polarity is shown to be consistent with the fragmentation pattern of purine nucleobase containing compounds. The identity of m/z=+74, a marker peak that helps discriminate Bacillus atrophaeus from Bacillus thuringiensis spores grown in rich medium, is surprisingly a non-description, viz. [N{sub 1}C{sub 4}H{sub 12}]{sup +}. A probable precursor molecule for the [N{sub 1}C{sub 4}H{sub 12}]{sup +} ion observed in spore spectra is trimethyl …

Air pollution arising from the emission of nitrogen oxides as a result of combustion taking place in boilers, furnaces and engines, has increasingly been recognized as a problem. New methods to remove NO{sub x} emissions significantly and economically must be developed. The current technology for post-combustion removal of NO is the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) of NO by ammonia or possibly by a hydrocarbon such as methane. The catalytic decomposition of NO to give N{sub 2} will be preferable to the SCR process because it will eliminate the costs and operating problems associated with the use of an external reducing species. The most promising decomposition catalysts are transition metal (especially copper)-exchanged zeolites, perovskites, and noble metals supported on metal oxides such as alumina, silica, and ceria. The main shortcoming of the noble metal reducible oxide (NMRO) catalysts is that they are prone to deactivation by oxygen. It has been reported that catalysts containing tin oxide show oxygen adsorption behavior that may involve hydroxyl groups attached to the tin oxide. This is different than that observed with other noble metal-metal oxide combinations, which have the oxygen adsorbing on the noble metal and subsequently spilling over to the metal oxide. This observation …

This report discusses Farm Credit Services of America's (FCSA) attempt at leaving the Farm Credit System (FCS) — a government-sponsored enterprise — to be bought by a private company. The option to leave the System is allowed by statute under the Farm Credit Act of 1971, as amended, but has been exercised only once, and did not involve an outside purchaser.

The direct gap of the In{sub 1-x}Ga{sub x}N alloy system extends continuously from InN (0.7 eV, in the near IR) to GaN (3.4 eV, in the mid-ultraviolet). This opens the intriguing possibility of using this single ternary alloy system in single or multi-junction (MJ) solar cells of the type used for space-based surveillance satellites. To evaluate the suitability of In{sub 1-x}Ga{sub x}N as a material for space applications, high quality thin films were grown with molecular beam epitaxy and extensive damage testing with electron, proton, and alpha particle radiation was performed. Using the room temperature photoluminescence intensity as a indirect measure of minority carrier lifetime, it is shown that In{sub 1-x}Ga{sub x}N retains its optoelectronic properties at radiation damage doses at least 2 orders of magnitude higher than the damage thresholds of the materials (GaAs and GaInP) currently used in high efficiency MJ cells. This indicates that the In{sub 1-x}Ga{sub x}N is well-suited for the future development of ultra radiation-hard optoelectronics. Critical issues affecting development of solar cells using this material system were addressed. The presence of an electron-rich surface layer in InN and In{sub 1-x}Ga{sub x}N (0 < x < 0.63) was investigated; it was shown that this is …

This report describes protecting Airliners from Terrorist Missiles related to Homeland Security.

This report provides an overview of how special rules regulate calling up measures for consideration in the House.

Operation Iraqi Freedom accomplished a long-standing U.S. objective, the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, but replacing his regime with a stable, moderate, democratic political structure has run into significant difficulty. That outcome would contribute to preventing Iraq from becoming a sanctuary for terrorists, a key recommendation of the September 11 Commission report (Chapter 12, Section 2). During the 1990s, U.S. efforts to change the regime covertly failed because of limited U.S. commitment, disorganization of the Iraqi opposition, and the vigilance of Iraq’s several overlapping security services. Previous U.S. Administrations had ruled out a U.S. military invasion to change the regime, believing such action would be risky and that Iraq did not necessarily pose a level of threat that would justify doing so. President George W. Bush characterized Iraq as a grave potential threat to the United States because of its refusal to abandon its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs and its potential to transfer WMD to terrorist groups. After a November 2002-March 2003 round of U.N. WMD inspections in which Iraq’s cooperation was mixed, on March 19, 2003, the United States launched Operation Iraqi Freedom to disarm Iraq and change its regime. The regime fell on April 9, 2003.

An injection scheme for a laser wakefield accelerator that employs a counter propagating laser (colliding with the drive laser pulse, used to generate a plasma wake) is discussed. The threshold laser intensity for electron injection into the wakefield was analyzed using a heuristic model based on phase-space island overlap. Analysis shows that the injection can be performed using modest counter propagating laser intensity a{sub 1} < 0.5 for a drive laser intensity of a{sub 0} = 1.0. Preliminary experiments were preformed using a drive beam and colliding beam. Charge enhancement by the colliding pulse was observed. Increasing the signal-to-noise ratio by means of a preformed plasma channel is discussed.

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This report discusses the investigation and aftermath of Columbia after the space shuttle broke apart upon its return to Earth. Updated October 22, 2004.

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The sensitivity of the continental seasonal climate to initial conditions is estimated from an ensemble of decadal simulations of an atmospheric general circulation model with the same specifications of radiative forcings and monthly ocean boundary conditions, but with different initial states of atmosphere and land. As measures of the ''reproducibility'' of continental climate for different initial conditions, spatio-temporal correlations are computed across paired realizations of eleven model land-surface variables in which the seasonal cycle is either included or excluded--the former case being pertinent to climate simulation, and the latter to seasonal anomaly prediction. It is found that the land-surface variables which include the seasonal cycle are impacted only marginally by changes in initial conditions; moreover, their seasonal climatologies exhibit high spatial reproducibility. In contrast, the reproducibility of a seasonal land-surface anomaly is generally low, although it is substantially higher in the Tropics; its spatial reproducibility also markedly fluctuates in tandem with warm and cold phases of the El Nino/Southern Oscillation. However, the overall degree of reproducibility depends strongly on the particular land-surface anomaly considered. It is also shown that the predictability of a land-surface anomaly implied by its reproducibility statistics is consistent with what is inferred from more conventional predictability …

Accurate oxidation rate constants of mercury gas are needed for determining its dispersion and lifetime in the atmosphere. They would also help in developing a technology for the control of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. However, it is difficult to establish the accurate rate constants primarily due to the fact that mercury easily adsorbs on solid surface and its reactions can be catalyzed by the surface. We have demonstrated a procedure that allows the determination of gas phase, surface-induced, and photo-induced contributions in the kinetic study of the oxidation of mercury by chlorine gas. The kinetics was studied using reactors with various surface to volume ratios. The effect of the surface and the photo irradiation on the reaction was taken into consideration. The pressure dependent study revealed that the gas phase oxidation was a three-body collision process. The third order rate constant was determined to be 7.5({+-}0.2) x 10{sup -39} mL{sup 2} molecules{sup -2}s{sup -1} with N{sub 2} as the third body at 297 {+-} 1 K. The surface induced reaction on quartz window was second order and the rate constant was 2.7 x 10{sup -17} mL{sup 2} molecules{sup -1} cm{sup -2} sec. Meanwhile, the 253.7 nm photon employed …

This thirteenth quarterly technical report describes data collection at the Stillwater Mine and an additional improvement to the lighting system. The data collection system was returned to the Stillwater Mine during this reporting period and a large amount of data was collected. The data will be analyzed and correlated with fire assays in the next reporting period. The majority of work done this quarter has been devoted to collecting data from cores scanned in the Stillwater Mining Company core room. This work is somewhat tedious and tiresome, but essential to: (1) obtain enough data to reliably determine the correlation between assay results and spectral imaging results; (2) find bugs and glitches in the system that arise only periodically or after long periods of use; and (3) obtain data on the natural (and man-made) variations in the Stillwater ore that may confuse the machine vision algorithms.

The highest priority of the Solar and Atmospheric Neutrino Experiment Working Group is the development of a real-time, precision experiment that measures the pp solar neutrino flux. A measurement of the pp solar neutrino flux, in comparison with the existing precision measurements of the high energy {sup 8}B neutrino flux, will demonstrate the transition between vacuum and matter-dominated oscillations, thereby quantitatively testing a fundamental prediction of the standard scenario of neutrino flavor transformation. The initial solar neutrino beam is pure {nu}{sub e}, which also permits sensitive tests for sterile neutrinos. The pp experiment will also permit a significantly improved determination of {theta}{sub 12} and, together with other solar neutrino measurements, either a measurement of {theta}{sub 13} or a constraint a factor of two lower than existing bounds. In combination with the essential pre-requisite experiments that will measure the {sup 7}Be solar neutrino flux with a precision of 5%, a measurement of the pp solar neutrino flux will constitute a sensitive test for non-standard energy generation mechanisms within the Sun. The Standard Solar Model predicts that the pp and {sup 7}Be neutrinos together constitute more than 98% of the solar neutrino flux. The comparison of the solar luminosity measured via neutrinos …

This report briefly describes Senate rules and statutes that specify information that must be included as part of the written report about the purposes and provisions of a proposed measure. Senate committees also may include additional items in their reports.