Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the exclusion from an emergency services district of certain territory subject to assessments.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Concerns about difficulties civilian employees of the U.S. government may have in obtaining workers' compensation benefits for medical conditions they developed as a result of their exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam led to GAO being asked to determine (1) what is known about the number of civilians who served in Vietnam, both those employed directly by the U.S. government and those employed by companies that contracted with the government; (2) what is known about the number, processing, and disposition of claims filed by these civilians; and (3) what options are available if Congress chooses to improve access to benefits for civilians exposed to Agent Orange in Vietnam who developed illnesses as a result of their exposure, and what are their cost implications?"

This report discusses legislative initiatives regarding the alternative minimum tax (AMT) for individuals, which was originally enacted to ensure that all taxpayers, especially high-income taxpayers, paid at least a minimum amount of federal taxes.

In recent years there has been a growing sense of urgency to develop and deploy effective missile defenses against a range of long and short range ballistic missile threats. Although many might believe this to be relative new to U.S. national security objectives, such interest been ongoing since the 1960s, and current technologies being investigated date to the early 1980s. This effort has been challenging technically and politically controversial. Some $100 billion has been spent since the mid-1980s. This report provides a brief overview of U.S. efforts to date.

This documents notes the United States trade deficit and money of household saving, business saving, and private sector saving.

Major amendments to the Clean Air Act were among the first items on the agenda of the 109th Congress, with S. 131 (the Clear Skies Act) scheduled for markup by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee March 9. The most prominent air quality issues discussed in this report are; Clear Skies / Multi-Pollutant Legislation, Mercury from Power Plants, New Source Review (NSR), MTBE and Ethanol, Ozone Nonattainment Area Deadlines, and Conformity of Transportation Plans and SIPs.

This report discusses Federal laws and policies related to Greenhouse Gas reductions related to Climate Change.

Cloture is the only means by which the Senate can vote to limit debate on a matter, and thereby overcome a possible filibuster. It would be erroneous, however, to assume that cases in which cloture is sought are the same as those in which a filibuster occurs. Cloture may be sought when no filibuster is taking place, and filibusters may occur without cloture being sought.

EPIcode (version 7.0) and ALOHA (version 5.2.3) are two of the designated toolbox codes identified in the Department of Energy's Implementation Plan for DNFSB Recommendation 2002-1 on Software Quality Assurance issues in the DOE Complex. Both have the capability to estimate evaporation rates from pools formed from chemical spills and to predict subsequent atmospheric transport and dispersion. This paper provides an overview of the algorithms used by EPIcode and ALOHA to calculate evaporation rates and downwind plume concentrations. The technical bases for these algorithms are briefly discussed, and differences in the EPIcode and ALOHA methodologies highlighted. In addition, sample calculations are performed using EPIcode and ALOHA for selected chemicals under various environmental conditions. Side-by-side comparisons of results from sample calculations are analyzed to illustrate the impact that the different methodologies used by EPIcode and ALOHA have on predicted evaporation rates and downwind concentrations.

Sqamate reptiles are traditionally divided into six groups: Iguania, Anguimorpha, Scincomorpha, Gekkota (these four are lizards), Serpentes (snakes), and Amphisbaenia (the so-called worm lizards). Currently there are complete mitochondrial genomes from two representatives of the Iguania (Janke et al., 2001; Kumazawa, 2004), three from the Anguimorpha (Kumazawa, 2004; Kumazawa and Endo, 2004), two from the Scincomorpha (Kumazawa and Nishida, 1999; Kumazawa, 2004), two from Serpentes (Kumazawa et al., 1998; Kumazawa, 2004) and 12 from Amphisbaenia (Macey et al., 2004). The only traditional group of Squamata from which a complete mitochondrial genome has not been sequenced is the Gekkota. Here we report the complete mitochondrial genome of Teratoscincus keyserlingii, a Middle Eastern representative of the Gekkota. The gekkonid lizard genus Teratoscincus is distributed throughout the deserts of central and southwest Asia as shown in figure 1, with five species currently recognized (Macey et al. 1997a, 1999b). Included in this figure are the positions of mountain ranges discussed in the text; see also figure 1 in Macey et al. (1999b). Two species, T. bedriagai and T. microlepis, are restricted to Southwest Asia south of the Kopet Dagh and Hindu Kush in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (Anderson, 1999). Two species are found in …

This report covers the final one-year period of work done by the Principal Investigator (S. T. Pantelides) and his group in collaboration with other team members. The focus of the work was to pursue understanding of core excitation spectra in doped manganites where experimental data obtained at Oak Ridge National Laboratory by S. J. Pennycook showed inequivalent Mn atoms. Calculations found that doping sets up a Peierls-like instability that drives the observed distortion. Further calculations of electron-energy-loss spectra to account for the observed L23 ratios in the Mn L2,3 spectra will be pursued in the future.

As a result of collaboration between the Berkeley Seismographic Station, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Caltrans, instrument packages have been placed in bedrock in six boreholes and two surface sites along the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge. Since 1996 over 200 local earthquakes have been recorded. Prior to this study few seismic recording instruments existed in bed-rock in San Francisco Bay. We utilized the data to perform analysis of ground motion variability, wave passage, site response, and up-and down-hole wave propagation along the Bay Bridge. We also synthesized strong ground motion at nine locations along the Bay Bridge. Key to these studies is LLNL's effort to exploit the information available in weak ground motions (generally from earthquakes < M=4.0) to enhance predictions of seismic hazards. We found that Yerba Island has no apparent site response at the surface relative to a borehole site. The horizontal to vertical spectral ratio method best revealed no site response, while the complex signal spectral ratio method had the lowest variance for spectral ratios and best predicted surface recordings when the borehole recording was used as input. Both methods identified resonances at about the same frequencies. Regional attenuation results in a significant loss of high frequencies …

This report provides information on congressional practices with respect to the duration of continuing resolutions, including the use of full-year measures, and focuses particularly on the period covering FY1997-FY2005

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The House passed H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, on April 21, 2005 (249-183). The legislation includes a “safe harbor” provision to protect methyl tertiary-butyl ether (MTBE) refiners from product liability suits, which was retained after a close vote on an amendment to drop the language (213-219). In the 108th Congress, there was opposition to this provision in the Senate. It is unclear how its inclusion may affect Senate passage of an energy bill in the 109th Congress. House Republicans have indicated that a compromise will be sought to satisfy the other body. Language in the House-passed bill would also authorize opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to exploration and development. An amendment to delete the ANWR provisions from H.R. 6 was defeated (200-231).

This report discusses the history, current posture, and outlook for federal energy tax policy. It also discusses recent energy tax proposals, focusing on the major energy tax provisions that were debated as part of omnibus energy legislation in the 108th Congress (e.g., H.R. 6), which may be reintroduced in the 109th Congress.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) provided, among other things, funding by transfer to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to carry out specific purposes of the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program. Congress expressed concern about a shift in FBI resources from health care fraud investigations to counterterrorism activities after September 11, 2001. Congress asked GAO to review FBI's accountability for the funds transferred under HIPAA for fiscal years 2000 through 2003. GAO determined (1) whether FBI had an adequate approach for ensuring the proper use of the HIPAA transfers and (2) the extent to which FBI had expended these transferred funds on health care fraud investigations in fiscal years 2000 through 2003."

This report provides the information related to the fishery, aquaculture, and marine mammal issues in the 109th Congress

Geothermal energy, defined as heat from the Earth, is a statute-recognized renewable resource. The first U.S. geothermal power plant, opened at The Geysers in California in 1960, continues to operate successfully. The United States, as the world's largest producer of geothermal electricity, generates an average of 15 billion kilowatt hours of power per year, comparable to burning close to 25 million barrels of oil or 6 million short tons of coal per year. Geothermal has a higher capacity factor (a measure of the amount of real time during which a facility is used) than many other power sources. Unlike wind and solar resources, which are more dependent upon weather fluctuations and climate changes, geothermal resources are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. While the carrier medium for geothermal electricity (water) must be properly managed, the source of geothermal energy, the Earth's heat, will be available indefinitely. A geothermal resource assessment shows that nine western states together have the potential to provide over 20 percent of national electricity needs. Although geothermal power plants, concentrated in the West, provide the third largest domestic source of renewable electricity after hydropower and biomass, they currently produce less than one percent of …

This paper describes a scheme for rapidly computing numerical values of definite integrals to very high accuracy, ranging from ordinary machine precision to hundreds or thousands of digits, even for functions with singularities or infinite derivatives at endpoints. Such a scheme is of interest not only in computational physics and computational chemistry, but also in experimental mathematics, where high-precision numerical values of definite integrals can be used to numerically discover new identities. This paper discusses techniques for a parallel implementation of this scheme, then presents performance results for 1-D and 2-D test suites. Results are also given for a certain problem from mathematical physics, which features a difficult singularity, confirming a conjecture to 20,000 digit accuracy. The performance rate for this latter calculation on 1024 CPUs is 690 Gflop/s. We believe that this and one other 20,000-digit integral evaluation that we report are the highest-precision non-trivial numerical integrations performed to date.

The analysis of interactions between lineages at varying levels of genetic divergence can provide insights into the process of speciation through the accumulation of incompatible mutations. Ring species, and especially the Ensatina eschscholtzii system exemplify this approach. The plethodontid salamanders Ensatina eschscholtzii xanthoptica and Ensatina eschscholtzii platensis hybridize in the Central Sierran foothills of California. We compared the genetic structure across two transects (southern and northern Calaveras Co.), one of which was re-sampled over 20 years, and examined diagnostic molecular markers (eight allozyme loci and mitochondrial DNA) and a diagnostic quantitative trait (color pattern). Key results across all studies were: (i) cline centers for all markers were coincident and the zones were narrow, with width estimates of 730m to 2000m; (ii) cline centers at the northern Calaveras transect were coincident between 1981 and 2001, demonstrating repeatability over 5 generations; (iii) there are very few if any putative F1's, but a relatively high number of backcrossed individuals (57-86 percent) in the central portion of transects; (iv) we found substantial linkage disequilibrium in all three studies and strong heterozygote deficit both in northern Calaveras, in 2001, and southern Calaveras. Both linkage disequilibrium and heterozygote deficit show maximum values near the center of …

This report discusses the context of India- U.S. relations, and its bilateral issues.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government increasingly relies on information technology (IT) systems to provide essential services affecting the health, economy, and defense of the nation. To assist in providing these important services, the federal government relies extensively on contractors to provide IT services and systems. In addition to contractors that provide systems and services to the federal government, other organizations possess or use federal information or have access to federal information systems. These other organizations with privileged access to federal data and systems can include grantees, state and local governments, and research and educational institutions. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) cited contractor security as a governmentwide challenge in a 2001 information security report to Congress. Recognizing the need for agencies to have effective information security programs, Congress passed the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002 (FISMA), which provides the overall framework for ensuring the effectiveness of information security controls that support federal operations and assets. FISMA requirements apply to all federal contractors and organizations or sources that possess or use federal information or that operate, use, or have access to federal information systems on behalf …