This report discusses several issues as the Congress considers legislation to reform the voting process, a number of issues have emerged as part of the debate: the reliability of different types of voting technologies; voting problems and irregularities in the 2000 election; problems for militaryand overseas voters; the electoral college; and early media projections of election results. Both sessions of the 107th Congress considered and debated federal election reform legislation, and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA, P.L. 107-252) was enacted in October 2002.

From a public policy perspective, the goals are to ensure that broadband deployment is timely, that industry competes fairly, and that service is provided to all sectors and geographical locations of American society. The federal government -- through Congress and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) -- is seeking to ensure fair competition among the players so that broadband will be available and affordable in a timely manner to all Americans who want it. While the FCC's position is not to intervene at this time, some assert that legislation is necessary to ensure fair competition and timely broadband deployment. One proposal would ease certain legal restrictions and requirements, imposed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, on incumbent telephone companies who provide high speed data (broadband) access. Another proposal would compel cable companies to provide "open access" to competing Internet service providers.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether individual county commissioners are entitled to access medical insurance coverage information regarding a former commissioner and his wife (RQ-0077-GA)

We present recent results from the D0 experiment on W and Z boson production using {approx} 50 pb{sup -1} of Run II data recorded at the center of mass energy of 1.96 TeV at the Fermilab Tevatron. Initial studies of W/Z + 2 jets production that are relevant to Higgs searches are also discussed.

The b physics experiments of the next generation, BTeV and LHCb, will perform measurements with an unprecedented accuracy. Theory predictions must control hadronic uncertainties with the same precision to extract the desired short-distance information successfully. I argue that this is indeed possible, discuss those theoretical methods in which hadronic uncertainties are under control and list hadronically clean observables.

The spectral image of an astronomical scene is reconstructed from noisy tomographic projections using maximum a posteriori (MAP) and filtered backprojection (FBP) algorithms. Both maximum entropy (ME) and Gibbs prior are used in the MAP reconstructions. The scene, which is a uniform background with a localized emissive source superimposed on it, is reconstructed for a broad range of source counts. The algorithms are compared regarding their ability to detect the source in the background. Detectability is defined in terms of a contrast-to-noise ratio (CNR) which is a Monte Carlo ensemble average of spatially averaged CNRs for the individual reconstructions. Overall, MAP was found to yield improved CNR relative to FBP. Moreover, as a function of the total source counts, the CNR varies distinctly different for source and background regions. This may be important in separating a weak source from the background.

In the search for the nature of dark energy most cosmological probes measure simple functions of the expansion rate. While powerful, these all involve roughly the same dependence on the dark energy equation of state parameters, with anticorrelation between its present value w{sub 0} and time variation w{sub a}. Quantities that have instead positive correlation and so a sensitivity direction largely orthogonal to, e.g., distance probes offer the hope of achieving tight constraints through complementarity. Such quantities are found in strong gravitational lensing observations of image separations and time delays. While degeneracy between cosmological parameters prevents full complementarity, strong lensing measurements to 1 percent accuracy can improve equation of state characterization by 15-50 percent. Next generation surveys should provide data on roughly 105 lens systems, though systematic errors will remain challenging.

We report Raman and time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopic studies of multiwalled BN and B{sub x}C{sub y}N{sub z} nanotubes. The Raman spectroscopy shows that the as-grown B{sub x}C{sub y}N{sub z} charge recombination, respectively. Comparison of the photoluminescence of BN nanotubes to that decay process is characterized by two time constants that are attributed to intra- and inter-BN sheet nanotubes as predicted by theory. nanotubes are radially phase separated into BN shells and carbon shells. The photoluminescence of hexagonal BN is consistent with the existence of a spatially indirect band gap in multi-walled BN.

This report provides background information on the location of nuclear weapons at the time of the demise of the Soviet Union and their subsequent relocation to storage and deployment areas in Russia. It also provides a description of the safety, security, and control issues raised in 1991 and in more recent years. It includes a brief listing of the cooperative programs and assistance the United States has provided to Russia and the other former Soviet states in an effort to address concerns about the safety and security of nuclear weapons and materials.

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The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) inaugurated a program addressing research and development for an Exoskeleton for Human Performance Augmentation in FY!2001. A team consisting of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the prime contractor, AeroVironment, Inc., the Army Research Laboratory, the University of Minnesota, and the Virginia Polytechnic Institute has recently completed an 18-month Phase I effort in support of this DARPA program. The Phase I effort focused on the development and proof-of-concept demonstrations for key enabling technologies, laying the foundation for subsequently building and demonstrating a prototype exoskeleton. The overall approach was driven by the need to optimize energy efficiency while providing a system that augmented the operator in as transparent manner as possible (non-impeding). These needs led to the evolution of two key distinguishing features of this team's approach. The first is the ''no knee contact'' concept. This concept is dependent on a unique Cartesian-based control scheme that uses force sensing at the foot and backpack attachments to allow the exoskeleton to closely follow the operator while avoiding the difficulty of connecting and sensing position at the knee. The second is an emphasis on energy efficiency manifested by an energetic, power, actuation and controls approach designed to enhance …

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Starting with two assumptions: (1) gamma-ray bursts originate from stellar death phenomena or so called ''collapsars'' and (2) that these bursts are quasi-universal, whereby the majority of the observed variation is due to our perspective of the jet, an integrated gamma-ray burst model is proposed. It is found that several of the key correlations in the data can be naturally explained with this simple picture and another possible correlation is predicted.

The performance of classification algorithms in machine learning is affected by the features used to describe the labeled examples presented to the inducers. Therefore, the problem of feature subset selection has received considerable attention. Genetic approaches to this problem usually follow the wrapper approach: treat the inducer as a black box that is used to evaluate candidate feature subsets. The evaluations might take a considerable time and the traditional approach might be unpractical for large data sets. This paper describes a hybrid of a simple genetic algorithm and a method based on class separability applied to the selection of feature subsets for classification problems. The proposed hybrid was compared against each of its components and two other feature selection wrappers that are used widely. The objective of this paper is to determine if the proposed hybrid presents advantages over the other methods in terms of accuracy or speed in this problem. The experiments used a Naive Bayes classifier and public-domain and artificial data sets. The experiments suggest that the hybrid usually finds compact feature subsets that give the most accurate results, while beating the execution time of the other wrappers.

The proposed luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), now under construction, will bring a large increase in the number of secondary particles from p-p collisions at the interaction point (IP). Energy deposition will be so large that the lifetime and quench performance of interaction region (IR) magnets may be significantly reduced if conventional designs are used. Moreover, the cryogenic capacity of the LHC will have to be significantly increased as the energy deposition load on the interaction region (IR) magnets by itself will exhaust the present capacity. We propose an alternate open midplane dipole design concept for the dipole-first optics that mitigates these issues. The proposed design takes advantage of the fact that most of the energy is deposited in the midplane region. The coil midplane region is kept free of superconductor, support structure and other material. Initial energy deposition calculations show that the increase in temperature remains within the quench tolerance of the superconducting coils. In addition, most of the energy is deposited in a relatively warm region where the heat removal is economical. We present the basic concept and preliminary design that includes several innovations.

The use of permanent magnets has been investigated as an option for electron cooling ring for the proposed luminosity upgrade of RHIC. Several methods have been developed that allow a large variation in field strength. These design concepts were verified with computer simulations using finite element codes. It will be shown that the field uniformity is maintained while the field strength is mechanically adjusted.

This focus of this project was the investigation of the planets Uranus and Neptune and Saturn's moon Titan using adaptive optics imaging and spectroscopy at the 10-meter W.M. Keck Telescopes. These bodies share a common type of atmosphere, one that is rich in methane and has a hydrocarbon haze layer produced by methane photolysis. Neptune and Uranus have atmospheric features which change on short timescales; we have investigated their altitude, composition, and connection to events occurring deeper in the planets' tropospheres. Titan has a solid surface located under its atmosphere, the composition of which is still quite uncertain. With spectra that sample the vertical structure of the atmosphere and narrowband observations that selectively probe Titan's surface we have determined the surface reflectivity of Titan at near-infrared wavelengths.

This paper describes an investigation into the uses of first-order, local sensitivity analysis in a Lagrangian dispersion code. The goal of the project is to gain knowledge not only about the sensitivity of the dispersion code predictions to the specific input parameters of interest, but also to better understand the uses and limitations of sensitivity analysis within such a context. The dispersion code of interest here is LODI, which is used for modeling emergency release scenarios at the Department of Energy's National Atmospheric Release Advisory Center (NARAC) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The NARAC system provides both real-time operational predictions and detailed assessments for atmospheric releases of hazardous materials. LODI is driven by a meteorological data assimilation model and an in-house version of COAMPS, the Naval Research Laboratory's mesoscale weather forecast model.

The line of inquiry which the ASU lidar group has been investigating, with collaboration and support from LLNL, is to create approaches and algorithms for better utilizing the rich information available through modern remote sensors in dispersion modeling systems. In particular, our goal is to create a lidar-data-driven dispersion model mode in ADAPT/LODI. This report describes progress towards this goal during the 2002/2003 academic year. Because of the nature of lidar data and the necessity to utilize additional information, both numerical and measured, this is essentially a data retrieval and data fusion project. With the current generation of commercially available lidar, the scope of the domain in which we are interested is initially 4 to 14 kilometers in radius, where the potentially scanned domain is roughly hemispherical. Figure 1, for example, taken from a recent lidar deployment in Oklahoma City, shows visually the most typical range of the domain that can be probed with the ASU lidar. Ranges 2 or 3 times the distance to the cluster of buildings in the photograph can be probed with a properly functioning, commercially available lidar. This could be of significant value for protecting key buildings with roof-top located remote sensors coupled with dispersion …