This report gives an overview of key technology policy issues of the internet affecting its use and growth.

Over the past decade, worldwide production of illicit drugs has risen dramatically: opium and marijuana production has roughly doubled and coca production tripled. Street prices of cocaine and heroin have fallen significantly in the past 20 years, reflecting increased availability. Despite apparent national political resolve to deal with the drug problem, inherent contradictions regularly appear between U.S. anti-drug policy and other national policy goals and concerns. The mix of competing domestic and international pressures and priorities has produced an ongoing series of disputes within and between the legislative and executive branches concerning U.S. international drug policy. One contentious issue has been the Congressionally-mandated certification process, an instrument designed to induce specified drug-exporting countries to prioritize or pay more attention to the fight against narcotics businesses.

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In 1994, 34 Western Hemisphere nations met at the first Summit of the Americas, envisioning a plan for completing a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by January 1, 2005. Nine years later, the third draft text of the agreement was presented at the November 2003 Miami trade ministerial. The Ministerial Declaration, negotiated largely by the two co-chairs, Brazil and the United States, took the FTAA in a new direction, away from the comprehensive, single undertaking principle, toward a two-tier framework comprising a set of “common rights and obligations” for all countries, augmented by voluntary plurilateral arrangements with country benefits related to commitments. A follow-up meeting in early 2004 in Puebla, Mexico was unable to clarify this concept, highlighting the deep differences that remained between the United States and Brazil. FTAA talks subsequently stalled and the original January 1, 2005 deadline was missed. In the meantime, both Brazil and the United States are pursuing subregional trade pacts that may further complicate the negotiation process. Talks between Brazil and the United States may resume in early 2005, but it is still unclear if significant progress can be made on the FTAA this year.

The United States and Morocco reached agreement on March 2, 2004, to create a free trade agreement (FTA). The FTA is intended to strengthen bilateral ties, boost trade and investment flows, and bolster Morocco’s position as a moderate Arab state. More than 95% of bilateral trade in consumer and industrial products will become duty-free upon entry into force of the agreement. The Senate approved implementing legislation (S. 2677) on July 2, 2004, by a vote of 85-13 and the House approved identical legislation (H.R. 4842) on July 22, 2004, by a vote of 323-99. The next day, the Senate passed House approved H.R. 4842 without amendment by unanimous consent.

The State Department’s new Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization (S/CRS) is intended to address longstanding concerns, both within Congress and the broader foreign policy community, over the perceived lack of the appropriate capabilities and processes to deal with transitions from conflict to sustainable stability. These capabilities and procedures include adequate planning mechanisms for stabilization and reconstruction operations, efficient inter-agency coordination structures and procedures in carrying out such tasks, and appropriate civilian personnel for many of the non-military tasks required.

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: Post-hearing procedure in cases involving nonconsent tows (RQ-0278-GA)

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In January 2005, GAO released its 2005 high-risk series update report for the 109th Congress. GAO's high-risk series has increasingly focused on major government programs and operations that need urgent attention and transformation to ensure that the U.S. government functions in the most economical, efficient, and effective manner possible. GAO also emphasizes those federal programs and operations that are at high risk because of their greater vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. Of the 25 areas on GAO's 2005 high-risk list, 8 are Department of Defense (DOD) programs or operations and 6 are governmentwide high-risk areas for which DOD shares some responsibility. These high-risk areas touch on all of DOD's major business operations. DOD's failure to effectively address these many high-risk areas results in billions of dollars of waste each year and inadequate accountability to Congress and the American people. Congress asked GAO to provide its views on (1) DOD's high-risk areas, including those it shares responsibility for with other federal agencies; (2) an emerging challenge for DOD that merits close attention, involving DOD's approach to risk management; and (3) key elements, such as a chief management …

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1981, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) began a program to modernize the national airspace system and a primary component, the air traffic control (ATC) system. The ATC component of this program, which is designed to replace aging equipment and accommodate predicted growth in air traffic, has had difficulty for more than two decades in meeting cost, schedule, and performance targets. The performance-based Air Traffic Organization (ATO) was created in February 2004 to improve the management of the modernization effort. On October 7, 2004, GAO hosted a panel to discuss attempts to address the ATC modernization program's persistent problems. Participants discussed the factors that they believed have affected FAA's ability to acquire new ATC systems. Participants also identified steps that FAA's ATO could take in the short term to address these factors, as well as longer term steps that could be taken to improve the modernization program's chances of success and help the ATO achieve its mission. The participants included domestic and foreign aviation experts from industry, government, private think tanks, and academia. They are recognized for their expertise in aviation safety, economics, and engineering; transportation …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The FHLBank System (FHLBank System or System) is a government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) that consists of 12 Federal Home Loan Banks (FHLBanks) and is cooperatively owned by member financial institutions, typically commercial banks and thrifts. The primary mission of the FHLBank System is to promote housing and community development generally by making loans, also known as advances, to member financial institutions. To minimize the potential for significant financial problems, the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) regulates the FHLBank System's safety and soundness. Over time, a number of developments have affected the System's safety and soundness and have created pressures on its traditional cooperative structure. To assist the committee in understanding the important issues surrounding the FHLBank System and its regulation, this testimony provides information on the development of the System; two legislative changes and FHFB rulemaking that led to changes in membership, asset composition, and capital structure; and important challenges and questions the FHLBank System currently faces."

Final report on 2nd American Conference on Neutron Scattering.

Significant energy savings can be achieved in commercial building operation, along with increased comfort and control for occupants, through the implementation of advanced technologies. This document provides a market assessment of existing building sensors and controls and presents a range of technology pathways (R&D options) for pursuing advanced sensors and building control strategies. This paper is actually a synthesis of five other white papers: the first describes the market assessment including estimates of market potential and energy savings for sensors and control strategies currently on the market as well as a discussion of market barriers to these technologies. The other four cover technology pathways: (1) current applications and strategies for new applications, (2) sensors and controls, (3) networking, security, and protocols and standards, and (4) automated diagnostics, performance monitoring, commissioning, optimal control and tools. Each technology pathway chapter gives an overview of the technology or application. This is followed by a discussion of needs and the current status of the technology. Finally, a series of research topics is proposed.

The purpose of this DOE-funded effort is to develop continuous processes for solvent extraction of coal for the production of carbon products. These carbon products include materials used in metals smelting, especially in the aluminum and steel industries, as well as porous carbon structural material referred to as ''carbon foam'' and carbon fibers. Table 1 provides an overview of the major markets for carbon products. Current sources of materials for these processes generally rely on petroleum distillation products or coal tar distillates obtained as a byproduct of metcoke production facilities. In the former case, the American materials industry, just as the energy industry, is dependent upon foreign sources of petroleum. In the latter case, metcoke production is decreasing every year due to the combined difficulties associated with poor economics and a significant environmental burden. Thus, a significant need exists for an environmentally clean process which can used domestically obtained raw materials and which can still be very competitive economically.

The purpose of this DOE-funded effort is to develop continuous processes for solvent extraction of coal for the production of carbon products. These carbon products include materials used in metals smelting, especially in the aluminum and steel industries, as well as porous carbon structural material referred to as ''carbon foam'' and carbon fibers. A process has been developed which results in high quality binder pitch suitable for use in graphite electrodes or carbon anodes. A detailed description of the protocol is given by Clendenin. Briefly, aromatic heavy oils are hydro-treated under mild conditions in order to increase their ability to dissolve coal. An example of an aromatic heavy oil is Koppers Carbon Black Base (CBB) oil. CBB oil has been found to be an effective solvent and acceptably low cost (i.e., significantly below the market price for binder pitch, or about $280 per ton at the time of this writing). It is also possible to use solvents derived from hydrotreated coal and avoid reliance on coke oven recovery products completely if so desired.

The nonlinear dynamics of a single ion in a field-reversed configuration (FRC) were investigated. FRC is a toroidal fusion device which uses a specific type of magnetic field to confine ions. As a result of angular invariance, the full three-dimensional Hamiltonian system can be expressed as two coupled, highly nonlinear oscillators. Due to the high nonlinearity in the equations of motion, the behavior of the system is extremely complex, showing different regimes, depending on the values of the conserved canonical angular momentum and the geometry of the fusion vessel. Perturbation theory and averaging were used to derive the unperturbed Hamiltonian and frequencies of the two degrees of freedom. The derived equations were then used to find resonances and compare to Poincar{copyright} surface-of-section plots. A regime was found where the nonlinear resonances were clearly separated by KAM [Kolmogorov-Arnold-Mosher] curves. The structure of the observed island chains was explained. The condition for the destruction of KAM curves and the onset of strong chaos was derived, using Chirikov island overlap criterion, and shown qualitatively to depend both on the canonical angular momentum and geometry of the device. After a brief discussion of the adiabatic regime the paper goes on to explore the degenerate …

Record of Technical Change, Technical Change No. CAP-1, dated April 13, 2005 for Corrective Action Plan for Corrective Action Unit 204: Storage Bunkers, Nevada Test Site, Nevada, Revision 0, September 2004, DOE/NV--1003.

Extremely short collision mean free paths and near-singular elastic and inelastic differential cross sections (DCS) make analog Monte Carlo and deterministic computational approaches impractical for charged particle transport. The widely used alternative, the condensed history method, while efficient, also suffers from several limitations arising from the use of precomputed infinite medium distributions for sampling particle directions and energies.

This paper describes a simple image processing algorithm for identifying and smoothing cell membranes in tomographic reconstructions of electron micrographs of frozen bacteria.

We have carried out a systematic study of the effects of irradiation on the electronic and optical properties of InGaN alloys over the entire composition range. High energy electrons, protons, and {sup 4}He{sup +} were used to produce displacement damage doses (D{sub d}) spanning over five orders of magnitude. The free electron concentrations in InN and In-rich InGaN increase with D{sub d} and finally saturate after a sufficiently high D{sub d}. The saturation of carrier density is attributed to the formation of native donors and the Fermi level pinning at the Fermi Stabilization Energy (E{sub FS}), as predicted by the amphoteric native defect model. Electrochemical capacitance-voltage (ECV) measurements reveal a surface electron accumulation whose concentration is determined by pinning at E{sub FS}.

This report includes information regarding United States relations and bilateral issues with Jordan. Jordan's reaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Jordan's role in peace negotiations, and trade issues are among topics discussed in this report.

This report discusses Egypt-U.S. relations, issues in Egyptian-U.S. relations, and U.S. foreign assistance to Egypt

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