RL30437: Water Quality Initiatives and Agriculture Claudia Copeland Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division February 16, 2000 ABSTRACT Agriculture, which has been a relatively minor component of national water quality policies and programs, especially regulatory policies, is currently involved with several recent Administration water quality initiatives. This report provides background on three ongoing initiatives with potential to affect agriculture: the Clean Water Action Plan, the Unified National Animal Feeding Operations Strategy, and implementation of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) provisions of the Clean Water Act. The report includes a glossary of terms and a chronology of the key deadlines in the initiatives and identifies other CRS reports for additional information. It will be updated as developments warrant. Summary Congress most recently enacted amendments to the nation's water quality law, the Clean Water Act (CWA), in 1987. But national water quality policy has evolved in the intervening years, as a result of implementation of the 1987 amendments and related Administration initiatives intended to fulfill the requirements and meet the goals and objectives of the Act. Agriculture, which has been a relatively minor component of national water quality policies and programs, especially regulatory policies, is now …

The growth of the Internet may be affected by issues now being debated by Congress. This report summarizes several key technology policy issues.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the status of efforts by the Forest Service to achieve accountability for the tax dollars appropriated to carry out its mission, focusing on: (1) actions the agency has taken to improve its financial and performance accountability; (2) the remaining hurdles to those improvements; and (3) strategies the agency is developing to address these hurdles."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed options for increasing Medicare beneficiaries' access to prescription drugs, focusing on the: (1) factors contributing to the growth in prescription drug spending and efforts to control that growth; and (2) design and implementation issues to be considered regarding proposals to improve seniors' access to affordable prescription drugs."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Defense Security Service's (DSS) personnel security investigations, focusing on the: (1) completeness and timeliness of the agency's investigations; and (2) factors that contributed to the deficiencies GAO found."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Justice's (DOJ) policy and guidance for selecting structured settlement brokers, focusing on: (1) the policies and guidance for selecting structured settlement brokers used by DOJ and six selected agencies; and (2) a list of the structured settlement brokerage companies used by DOJ and the number of settlements awarded to each company since May 1997."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the U.S. Export-Import Bank's (Eximbank) draft fiscal years 2001-2006 strategic plan, focusing on the: (1) improvements made to the February 1999 draft strategic plan; and (2) areas where Eximbank's draft strategic plan could better meet the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 and related guidance."

The microrheology of dry soap foams subjected to large, quasistatic, simple shearing deformations is analyzed. Two different monodisperse foams with tetrahedrally close-packed (TCP) structure are examined: Weaire-Phelan (A15) and Friauf-Laves (C15). The elastic-plastic response is evaluated by calculating foam structures that minimize total surface area at each value of strain. The minimal surfaces are computed with the Surface Evolver program developed by Brakke. The foam geometry and macroscopic stress are piecewise continuous functions of strain. The stress scales as T/V{sup 1/3} where T is surface tension and V is cell volume. Each discontinuity corresponds to large changes in foam geometry and topology that restore equilibrium to unstable configurations that violate Plateau's laws. The instabilities occur when the length of an edge on a polyhedral foam cell vanishes. The length can tend to zero smoothly or abruptly with strain. The abrupt case occurs when a small increase in strain changes the energy profile in the neighborhood of a foam structure from a local minimum to a saddle point, which can lead to symmetry-breaking bifurcations. In general, the new foam topology associated with each stable solution branch results from a cascade of local topology changes called T1 transitions. Each T1 cascade produces …

Monthly newsletter discussing news and activities related to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program, articles about weather and atmospheric phenomena, and other related topics.

Technology fact sheet on installing insulation coverage and air sealing for the access between living space and the unconditioned attic.

X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) has been used to investigate the structure and valence of thorium (Th{sup 4+}) and uranyl (UO{sub 2}{sup 2+}) cations exchanged into two classes of microporous aluminosilicate minerals: zeolites and smectite clays. XAS is also employed to examine the fate of the exchanged cations after modification of the mineral surface using self-assembled organic films and/or exposure to hydrothermal conditions. These treatments serve as models for the forces that ultimately determine the chemical fate of the actinide cations in the environment. The speciation of the cations depends on the pore size of the aluminosilicate, which is fixed for the zeolites and variable for the smectites.

The authors have developed a new electron microscopy technique called fluctuation microscopy which is sensitive to medium-range order in disordered materials. The technique relies on quantitative statistical analysis of low-resolution dark-field electron micrographs. Extracting useful information from such micrographs involves correcting for the effects of the imaging system, incoherent image contrast caused by large scale structure in the sample, and the effects of the foil thickness.

In this paper, the authors overview several of the critical materials growth, design and performance issues for nitride-based UV (< 400 nm) LEDs. The critical issue of optical efficiency is presented through temperature-dependent photoluminescence studies of various UV active regions. These studies demonstrate enhanced optical efficiencies for active regions with In-containing alloys (InGaN, AlInGaN). The authors discuss the trade-off between the challenging growth of high Al containing alloys (AlGaN, AlGaInN), and the need for sufficient carrier confinement in UV heterostructures. Carrier leakage for various composition AlGaN barriers is examined through a calculation of the total unconfined carrier density in the quantum well system. They compare the performance of two distinct UV LED structures: GaN/AlGaN quantum well LEDs for {lambda}< 360 nm emission, and InGaN/AlGaInN quantum well LEDs for 370 nm <{lambda}< 390 nm emission.

The incorporation of heavy metal ions and radioactive contaminants into hydrous oxide films has been investigated in order to provide fundamental knowledge that could lead to the technological development of cost-effective processes and techniques for the decontamination of storage tanks, piping systems, surfaces, etc., in DOE nuclear facilities. The formation of oxide/hydroxide films was simulated by electrodeposition onto a graphite substrate from solutions of the appropriate metal salt. Synchrotron X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS), supplemented by Laser Raman Spectroscopy (LRS), was used to determine the structure and composition of the host oxide film, as well as the impurity ion. Results have been obtained for the incorporation of Ce, Sr, Cr, Fe, and U into hydrous nickel oxide films. Ce and Sr oxides/hydroxides are co-precipitated with the nickel oxides in separate phase domains. Cr and Fe, on the other hand, are able to substitute into Ni lattice sites or intercalate in the interlamellar positions of the brucite structure of Ni(OH){sub 2}. U was found to co-deposit as a U(VI) hydroxide. The mode of incorporation of metal ions depends both on the size and charge of the metal ion. The structure of iron oxide (hydroxide) films prepared by both anodic and cathodic deposition …

The technical progress obtained for this time frame consisted of the awarding of two contracts for determination of metallurgical parameters for heat treatment of strapping and strip which are unavailable from current technology and/or published data in this field. The two contractors were Bricmont, Inc. and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Technological Institute of Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. Phase 1 of the two stage contract with Bricmont, Inc. which provided a computer analysis of the cooling rates of a typical range of thickness' of strapping was completed. This study was developed for the purpose of determining the time parameters for quenching low carbon steels to a martensitic microstructure within the time frame of the design of the proposed process. It also provides design criteria for cooling to ambient for the total process. This data is required for Phase 2 of the Bricmont proposal which completes the design and specifications of the total heat treating and cooling system for the process. This becomes the basis for developing the cost and space requirements for this component of the production line. The authors do not intend to award Phase 2 until the work done at Northwestern University discussed hereafter …

Technology fact sheet on sealing air leaks to save energy in your home.

Recent work demonstrates that phase displacements within horizontal fractures large with respect to the spatial correlation length of the aperture field lead to a satiated condition that constrains the relative permeability to be less than one. The authors use effective media theory to develop a conceptual model for satiated relative permeability, then compare predictions to existing experimental measurements, and numerical solutions of the Reynolds equation on the measured aperture field within the flowing phase. The close agreement among all results and data show that for the experiments considered here, in-plane tortuosity induced by the entrapped phase is the dominant factor controlling satiated relative permeability. They also find that for this data set, each factor in the conceptual model displays an approximate power law dependence on the satiated saturation of the fracture.

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Many years ago people living on atolls depended entirely on foods gathered from the sea and reefs and grown on land. Only a few plants, such as coconut (ni), Pandanus (bob), and arrowroot (mok-mok), could be grown on the lower rainfall atolls, although adequate groundwater conditions also allowed taro (iaraj, kotak, wot) to be cultivated. On higher rainfall atolls, breadfruit (ma) was a major food source, and banana (binana, kepran), lime (laim), and taros (iaraj, kotak, wot) could be grown. The early atoll populations were experts in growing plants that were vital to sustaining their nutrition requirements and to providing materials for thatch, basketry, cordage, canoe construction, flowers, and medicine. They knew which varieties of food plants grew well or poorly on their atolls, how to propagate them, and where on their atoll they grew best. They knew the uses of most native plants and what the various woods were well suited for. Many varieties of Pandanus (bob) and breadfruit (ma) grew well with high rainfall, but only a few produced well on drier atolls. Such information had been passed down through the generations although some of it has been lost in the last century. Today there are new plants …

At 650 C, Si freely intermixes with Ge in the dome islands causing a reduction in the strain of the islands and an increase in island size. The shape reversal of Ge/Si domes to pyramids is investigated by analysis of the strain and size changes that occur on an island by island basis. This was carried out for anneal times of 0, 20, 40 and 60 minutes. Transition islands were observed consistent with previous work, which are partially domes and partially pyramids. These islands demonstrated a strain gradient, having a slightly lower strain on the side that has transformed to a pyramid. Cross-sectional STEM was then used to show that this strain gradient is associated with a non-uniform Si intermixing in the islands.

The authors have studied the temperature stability of M41S class siliceous mesoporous materials loaded with carbonaceous material by temperature programmed small-angle X-ray scattering (TPSAXS) techniques. Results show the thermal structural instability of large pore pure silica sieve material with carbonaceous material (such as coal extracts) occluded within the pores of mesoporous 31 {angstrom} M41S materials. Unfilled pore M41S materials do not show thermal-related structural instability.

The goal of the Castle project was to provide a parallel programming environment that enables the construction of high performance applications that run portably across many platforms. The authors approach was to design and implement a multilayered architecture, with higher levels building on lower ones to ensure portability, but with care taken not to introduce abstractions that sacrifice performance.

A round robin of testing was performed to compare the performance of rotational dynamic mechanical spectrometers being used within the nuclear weapons complex. Principals from Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico; Lockheed Martin Y12 Plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico (polycarbonate only); and Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies (FM and T), Kansas City, MO, performed identical testing of hydrogen blown polysiloxane S5370 and bisphenol-A polycarbonate. Over an oscillation frequency sweep from 0.01 Hz to 15.9 Hz at 135 C, each site produced shear storage modulus values with standard deviations of less than 5%. The data from Sandia, Y12, and Kansas City agreed to within 4%, while the Los Alamos data differed by as much as 13%. Storage modulus values for a frequency sweep of the S5370 at 35 C had standard deviations between 6% and 8%, and site-to-site agreement averaged 3%. The shear loss modulus values had standard deviations of 5%, 7%, and 52% for the sites participating, while the results differed by 12% on average.

Reuse and interoperability are two keywords in the mantra of the modeling and simulation community. In order to achieve these goals, one must be able to capture, express, and manage the context of individual entities, models, and applications. Capturing the context requires having a thorough understanding of what the entity, model, or application was intended to do and is able to do. While many aspects of context are not easily expressible in a format or language that could be understood and managed in a simulation environment, there are some aspects that can be and the authors discuss how these aspects can be represented in a generalized object-oriented framework.