On July 13, 2004, the Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) was used to determine baseline habitat suitability on the Calispell Creek property, an acquisition completed by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in February 2004. Evaluation species and appropriate models include Canada goose, mallard, muskrat, yellow warbler, and white-tailed deer. Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) values were visually estimated and agreed upon by all HEP team members. The Calispell Creek Project provides a total of 138.17 Habitat Units (HUs) for the species evaluated. Emergent wetland habitat provides 5.16 HUs for mallard and muskrat. Grassland provides 132.02 HUs for mallard and Canada goose. Scrub-shrub vegetation provides 0.99 HUs for yellow warbler and white-tailed deer. The objective of using HEP at the Calispell Creek Project and other protected properties is to document the quality and quantity of available habitat for selected wildlife species. In this way, HEP provides information on the relative value of the same area at future points in time so that the effect of management activities on wildlife habitat can be quantified. When combined with other tools, the baseline HEP will be used to determine the most effective on-site management, restoration, and enhancement actions to increase habitat suitability for targeted species. The …

On July 6, 2004, the Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) was used to determine baseline habitat suitability on the Priest River property, an acquisition completed by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in 2001. Evaluation species and appropriate models include bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, Canada goose, mallard, yellow warbler, and white-tailed deer. Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) values were visually estimated and agreed upon by all HEP team members. The Priest River Project provides a total of 105.41 Habitat Units (HUs) for the species evaluated. Conifer forest habitat provides 26.95 HUs for bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, and white-tailed deer. Grassland habitat provides 23.78 HUs for Canada goose and mallard. Scmb-shrub vegetation provides 54.68 HUs for mallard, yellow warbler, and white-tailed deer.

On July 6, 2004, the Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) was used to determine baseline habitat suitability on the Tacoma Creek South property, an acquisition completed by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in June 2004. Evaluation species and appropriate models include bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, Canada goose, mallard, muskrat, yellow warbler, and white-tailed deer. Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) values were visually estimated and agreed upon by all HEP team members. The Tacoma Creek South Project provides a total of 190.79 Habitat Units (HUs) for the species evaluated. Emergent wetlands provide 20.51 HUs for Canada goose, mallard, and muskrat. Grassland provides 1.65 HUs for Canada goose and mallard. Scrub-shrub vegetation provides 11.76 HUs for mallard, yellow warbler, and white-tailed deer. Conifer forest habitat provides 139.92 HUs for bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, and white-tailed deer. Deciduous forest also provides 19.15 HUs for bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, mallard, and white-tailed deer. The objective of using HEP at the Tacoma Creek South Project and other protected properties is to document the quality and quantity of available habitat for selected wildlife species. In this way, HEP provides information on the relative value of the same area at future points in time so that the effect of …

On July 13, 2004, the Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) was used to determine baseline habitat suitability on the Upper Trimble property, an acquisition completed by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in March 2004. Evaluation species and appropriate models include bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, Canada goose, mallard, muskrat, yellow warbler, and white-tailed deer. Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) values were visually estimated and agreed upon by all HEP team members. The Upper Trimble Project provides a total of 250.67 Habitat Units (HUs) for the species evaluated. Wet meadow provides 136.92 HUs for mallard, muskrat, and Canada goose. Mixed forest habitat provides 111.88 HUs for bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, mallard, and white-tailed deer. Scrub-shrub vegetation provides 1.87 HUs for yellow warbler, and white-tailed deer. The objective of using HEP at the Upper Trimble Project and other protected properties is to document the quality and quantity of available habitat for selected wildlife species. In this way, HEP provides information on the relative value of the same area at future points in time so that the effect of management activities on wildlife habitat can be quantified. When combined with other tools, the baseline HEP will be used to determine the most effective on-site management, restoration, …

On September 7, 2004, the Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) was used to determine baseline habitat suitability on the West Beaver Lake property, an acquisition completed by the Kalispel Tribe of Indians in September 2004. Evaluation species and appropriate models include bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, mallard, muskrat, and white-tailed deer. Habitat Suitability Index (HSI) values were visually estimated and agreed upon by all HEP team members. The West Beaver Lake Project provides a total of 103.08 Habitat Units (HUs) for the species evaluated. Emergent wetland habitat provides 7.17 HUs for mallard and muskrat. Conifer forest habitat provides 95.91 HUs for bald eagle, black-capped chickadee, mallard, and white-tailed deer. The objective of using HEP at the West Beaver Lake Project and other protected properties is to document the quality and quantity of available habitat for selected wildlife species. In this way, HEP provides information on the relative value of the same area at future points in time so that the effect of management activities on wildlife habitat can be quantified. When combined with other tools, the baseline HEP will be used to determine the most effective on-site management, restoration, and enhancement actions to increase habitat suitability for targeted species. The same process …

A chapter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report is intended to help the Congress in reviewing and reconsidering the base of federal spending and tax programs. It is intended as one input among many that Congress will receive as it decides what its agenda will be for oversight and program review. We have framed the issues presented as illustrative questions for policymakers to consider as a supplement to their own efforts. The questions are drawn from GAO's issued work, our strategic plan prepared in consultation with the Congress, input from several inspectors general and the institutional knowledge of our staff. They cover discretionary spending, mandatory spending, including entitlements, as well as tax policies and programs. While answers to these questions may draw on the work of GAO and others, only elected officials can and should decide which questions to address as well as how and when to address them. The report is organized in three sections. The first section sets the stage by providing the rationale for reexamining the base of the federal government and the scope of GAO's effort. The second section is organized around 12 areas of federal activity and …

The Analytical Development Section of Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) was requested by the Facilities Disposition Division to determine the holdup of enriched uranium in the 321-M facility as part of an overall deactivation project of the facility. The 321-M facility was used to fabricate enriched uranium fuel assemblies, lithium-aluminum target tubes, neptunium assemblies, and miscellaneous components for the production reactors. The results of the holdup assays are essential for determining compliance with the Waste Acceptance Criteria, Material Control & Accountability, and to meet criticality safety controls. This report covers holdup measurements of uranium residue in three HEPA filter exhaust banks of the 321-M facility. Each of the exhaust banks has dimensions near 7' x 14' x 4' and represents a complex holdup problem. A portable HPGe detector and EG&G Dart system that contains the high voltage power supply and signal processing electronics were used to determine highly enriched uranium (HEU) holdup. A personal computer with Gamma-Vision software was used to control the Dart MCA and to provide space to store and manipulate multiple 4096-channel {gamma}-ray spectra. Some acquisitions were performed with the portable detector configured to a Canberra Inspector using NDA2000 acquisition and analysis software. Our results for each …

Here we have developed formulations for the reconstruction of 3D tensor fields from planar (Radon) and line-integral (X-ray) projections of 3D vector and tensor fields. Much of the motivation for this work is the potential application of MRI to perform diffusion tensor tomography. The goal is to develop a theory for the reconstruction of both Radon planar and X-ray or line-integral projections because of the flexibility of MRI to obtain both of these type of projections in 3D. The development presented here for the linear tensor tomography problem provides insight into the structure of the nonlinear MRI diffusion tensor inverse problem. A particular application of tensor imaging in MRI is the potential application of cardiac diffusion tensor tomography for determining in vivo cardiac fiber structure. One difficulty in the cardiac application is the motion of the heart. This presents a need for developing future theory for tensor tomography in a motion field. This means developing a better understanding of the MRI signal for diffusion processes in a deforming media. The techniques developed may allow the application of MRI tensor tomography for the study of structure of fiber tracts in the brain, atherosclerotic plaque, and spine in addition to fiber structure …

A laser hazard analysis and safety assessment was performed for the 3rd Tech model DeltaSphere-3000{reg_sign} Laser 3D Scene Digitizer, infrared laser scanner model based on the 2000 version of the American National Standard Institute's Standard Z136.1, for the Safe Use of Lasers. The portable scanner system is used in the Robotic Manufacturing Science and Engineering Laboratory (RMSEL). This scanning system had been proposed to be a demonstrator for a new application. The manufacture lists the Nominal Ocular Hazard Distance (NOHD) as less than 2 meters. It was necessary that SNL validate this NOHD prior to its use as a demonstrator involving the general public. A formal laser hazard analysis is presented for the typical mode of operation for the current configuration as well as a possible modified mode and alternative configuration.

Plutonium-239 ({sup 239}Pu) and plutonium-239+240 ({sup 239+240}Pu) activities concentrations and {sup 240}Pu/{sup 239}Pu atom ratios are reported for a series of chemically purified soil extracts received from the Carlsbad Environmental Monitoring & Research Center (CEMRC) in New Mexico. Samples were analyzed without further purification at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) using accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS). This report also includes a brief description of the AMS system and internal laboratory procedures used to ensure the quality and reliability of the measurement data.

Prior to and during the design of the APS's Access Control Interlock System (ACIS), an effort was made to insure that the design complied with the relevant DOE and ANL requirements as well as those set forth in other recognized documents then in circulation. A paragraph-by-paragraph listing of the requirements (in some cases, recommended practices) and the corresponding ACIS design features was compiled for use by the review committees then in place. This tabulation was incorporated in the APS Safety Analysis Document (SAD) as Appendix A. With the evolutionary changes that have occurred to the APS and to the documents referenced, some of the details of these compliances have evolved as well. It has been decided to maintain the SAD as a ''living'' document, editing it in close time proximity to the evolving APS. Since Appendix A depicted the ACIS's original design compliance to an also-evolving set of documents, it was decided to remove Appendix A but to retain it as a reference document. This LS Note now contains that set of original design compliances. As the APS and the ACIS continue to evolve, the changes made will be subject to internal review and approval and will always be subject …

Two recent strike-slip earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault(SAF) in California, the M6.0 2004 Parkfield and M7.0 1989 Loma Prietaevents, revealed peaks in the acoustic emission (AE) activity in thesurrounding crust several months prior to the main events. Earthquakesdirectly within the SAF zone were intentionally excluded from theanalysis. The observed increase in AE is assumed to be a signature of theincreasing stress level in the surrounding crust, while the peak andsubsequent decrease in AE starting several months prior to the mainevents is attributed to damage-induced softening processes as discussedherein. Further, distinctive zones of low seismic activity surroundingthe epicentral regions in the pre-event time period are present for thetwo studied events. Both AE increases in the crust surrounding apotential future event and the development of a low-seismicity epicentralzone can be regarded as promising precursory information that could helpsignal the arrival of large earthquakes.

This RD&D project is a three year team effort to develop a hybrid solar lighting (HSL) system that transports daylight from a paraboloidal dish concentrator to a luminaire via a bundle of small core or a large core polymer fiber optics. The luminaire can be a device to distribute sunlight into a space for the production of algae or it can be a device that is a combination of daylighting and electric lighting for space/task lighting. In this project, the sunlight is collected using a one-meter paraboloidal concentrator dish with two-axis tracking. For the second generation (alpha) system, the secondary mirror is an ellipsoidal mirror that directs the visible light into a bundle of small-core fibers. The IR spectrum is filtered out to minimize unnecessary heating at the fiber entrance region. This report describes the following investigations of various aspects of the system: (1) Performance specifications were developed for the tracking subsystem and collector optics, (2) Thermal management experiments for the fiber optic bundle entrance region, and (3) Bioreactor testing, cost-modeling, and redesign. Much of the planned work has been slowed due to significant procurement delays of the primary mirror. However, taken as a whole, they do confirm progress towards …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Drug court programs, which were established in the late 1980s as a local response to increasing numbers of drug-related cases and expanding jail and prison populations, have become popular nationwide in the criminal justice system. These programs are designed to reduce defendants' repeated crime (that is, recidivism), and substance abuse behavior by engaging them in a judicially monitored substance abuse treatment. However, determining whether drug court programs are effective at reducing recidivism and substance use has been challenging because of a large amount of weak empirical evidence. he 21st Century Department of Justice Appropriations Authorization Act requires that GAO assess drug court program effectiveness. To meet this mandate, GAO conducted a systematic review of drug court program research, from which it selected 27 evaluations of 39 adult drug court programs that met its criteria for, among other things, methodological soundness. This report describes the results of that review of published evaluations of adult drug court programs, particularly relating to (1) recidivism outcomes, (2) substance use relapse, (3) program completion, and (4) the costs and benefits of drug court programs. DOJ reviewed a draft of this report …

This report provides documentation of the physics analysis performed to determine the linear heat generation rate (LHGR) and burnup calculations for the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) tests, AFC-1D, AFC-1H, and AFC-1G. The AFC-1D and AFC-1H tests consists of low-fertile metallic fuel compositions and the AFC-1G test consists of non-fertile and low-fertile nitride compositions. These tests will be irradiated in the East Flux Trap (EFT) positions E1, E2, and E3, respectively, during Advanced Test Reactor (ATR) Cycle 135B.

The inventory of dust in next-step magnetic fusion devices will be regulated for safety reasons, however diagnostics to measure in-vessel dust are still in their infancy. Advances in dust particle detection on remote surfaces are reported. Two grids of interlocking circuit traces with spacing in the range 125 mu m to 25 mu m are biased to 30 V. Impinging dust creates a short circuit and the result current pulse is recorded. The detector response was measured with particles scraped from a carbon fiber composite tile and sorted by size category. The finest 25 mu m grid showed a sensitivity more than an order of magnitude higher than the 125 mu m grid. The response to the finest particle categories (5 –30 mu m) was two orders of magnitude higher than the largest (125 –250 mu m) category. Longer duration current pulses were observed from the coarser particles. The results indicate a detection threshold for fine particles below 1 mu g/cm^2.

Crystal Geyser in eastern Utah is a rare, non-geothermal geyser that emits carbon dioxide gas in periodic eruptions. This geyser is the largest single source of CO{sub 2} originating from a deep reservoir. For this study, the amount of CO{sub 2} emitted from Crystal Geyser is estimated through measurements of downwind CO{sub 2} air concentration applied to an analytical model for atmospheric dispersion. Five eruptions occurred during the 48-hour field study, for a total of almost 3 hours of eruption. Pre-eruption emissions were also timed and sampled. Slow wind during three of the active eruptions conveyed the plume over a grid of samplers arranged in arcs from 25 to 100 m away from the geyser. An analytical, straight-line Gaussian model matched the pattern of concentration measurements. Plume width was determined from least-squares fit of the CO{sub 2} concentrations integrated over time. The CO{sub 2} emission rate was found to be between 2.6 and 5.8 kg/s during the eruption events, and about 0.17 kg/s during the active pre-eruptive events. Our limited field study can be extrapolated to an annual CO{sub 2} emission of 12 kilotonnes from this geyser. As this is the first application of Gaussian dispersion modeling and objective timing …

The project ''Creating an Educational Consortium to Support the Recruitment and Retention of Expertise for the Nuclear Weapons Complex'' was also known as the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI) University Fellowship Program. Since its inception, the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative program and its predecessor, the Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) program, have engaged university researchers and students in the sciences necessary to answer technical questions related to reducing high-level waste volumes, optimizing the economics and performance of Yucca Mountain, reducing the technical need for a second repository, reducing the long-term inventories of plutonium in spent fuel, and enabling the proliferation-resistant recovery of the energy contained in spent fuel. The Advanced Fuel Cycle University Fellowship Program is intended to support top students across the nation in a variety of disciplines that will be required to support transmutation research and technology development in the coming decades.

This report discusses post-war governance and security in Afghanistan after more than 22 years of warfare, including a U.S.- led war that brought the current government to power.

This plan provides an overview, work to date, and the path forward for the design development strategy of the Aging cask for aging commercial spent nuclear fuel (CSNF) at the Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) repository site. Waste for subsurface emplacement at the repository includes US Department of Energy (DOE) high-level radioactive waste (HLW), DOE SNF, commercial fuel in dual-purpose canisters (DPCs), uncanistered bare fuel, naval fuel, and other waste types. Table 1-1 lists the types of radioactive materials that may be aged at YMP, and those materials that will not be placed in an aging cask or module. This plan presents the strategy for design development of the Aging system. The Aging system will not handle naval fuel, DOE HLW, MCOs, or DOE SNF since those materials will be delivered to the repository in a state and sequence that allows them to be placed into waste packages for emplacement. Some CSNF from nuclear reactors, especially CSNF that is thermally too hot for emplacement underground, will need to be aged at the repository.

The potential of terrorist attacks against agricultural targets (agroterrorism) is increasingly recognized as a national security threat, especially after the events of September 11, 2001. In this context, agroterrorism is defined as the deliberate introduction of an animal or plant disease with the goal of generating fear, causing economic losses, and/or undermining stability. This report addresses the use of biological weapons against agriculture, rather than the threat of terrorists using agricultural inputs for other purposes. It also focuses more on agricultural production than food processing and distribution.

This report discusses the AIDS issues in Africa and the Bush administration call to double U.S. international funding for AIDS.

This report discusses the issue of children that have been left as orphans due to AIDS taking their parents lives. Moreover, the report details that between 2001 and 2003 the number of children orphaned from AIDS increased by 3.5 million. The rate of orphaned children is only expected to increase in the future if massive spending is not issued to curb the problem.

This report discusses the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which makes federal funds available to metropolitan areas and states to assist in health care costs and support services for individuals and families affected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). This report discusses related legislation and appropriations.