Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Marshal Service was created by the first Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789. U.S. Marshals were placed in each federal judicial district and were given broad authority to support the federal courts and to carry out all lawful orders issued by judges, Congress, and the President. Early duties of U.S. Marshals included taking the census, distributing presidential proclamations, protecting the borders, and making arrests. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, some responsibilities of U.S. Marshals were transferred to newly created federal agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Today, the primary responsibilities of U.S. Marshals include protecting federal judges and witnesses, transporting federal prisoners, apprehending federal fugitives, and managing assets seized from criminal enterprises. We obtained information on the (1) U.S. Marshals' appointment process and, for comparison, the processes used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF); Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) to select senior field supervisors; (2) experience, education and diversity of U.S. Marshalls and senior field supervisors at the ATF, DEA, and IRS-CI; (3) authority of the Director …

One of the least controversial provisions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-163) established corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new passenger cars. This report presents a brief background and analysis regarding the price of crude oil that brought into sharp focus the fuel inefficiency of U.S. automobiles. The report also discusses the previous issues and the most recent developments regarding CAFE.

When conducting investigations of the executive branch, congressional committees and Members of Congress generally receive the information required for legislative needs. If agencies fail to cooperate or the President invokes executive privilege, Congress can turn to a number of legislative powers that are likely to compel compliance. The two techniques described in this report are the issuance of subpoenas and the holding of executive officials in contempt. These techniques usually lead to an accommodation that meets the needs of both branches. Litigation is used at times, but federal judges generally encourage congressional and executive parties to settle their differences out of court. The specific examples in this report explain how information disputes arise and how they are resolved.

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We present a model for materials undergoing diffusionless structural changes including martensitic phase transformation and twinning, with the phase transformations involving large volume changes. Within a given material element, structural changes induce mass fraction rates between the constituents in the material. Deformation results from both these structural changes and elasto-viscoplastic deformation of the constituents themselves.

Boron-neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is an experimental radiation treatment modality used for highly malignant tumor treatments. Prior to irradiation with low energetic neutrons, a 10B compound is located selectively in the tumor cells. The effect of the treatment is based on the high LET radiation released in the {sup 10}B(n,{alpha}){sup 7}Li reaction with thermal neutrons. BNCT has been used experimentally for brain tumor and melanoma treatments. Lately applications of other severe tumor type treatments have been introduced. Results have shown that liver tumors can also be treated by BNCT. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, various compact neutron generators based on D-D or D-T fusion reactions are being developed. The earlier theoretical studies of the D-D or D-T fusion reaction based neutron generators have shown that the optimal moderator and reflector configuration for brain tumor BNCT can be created. In this work, the applicability of 2.5 MeV neutrons for liver tumor BNCT application was studied. The optimal neutron energy for external liver treatments is not known. Neutron beams of different energies (1eV < E < 100 keV) were simulated and the dose distribution in the liver was calculated with the MCNP simulation code. In order to obtain the optimal neutron energy …

Prior to final dispositioning of Savannah River Site (SRS) residual depleted uranium (DU) following reactor irradiation the amount of contamination from other radionuclides must be determined. The Nonproliferation Technology Section (NTS) was requested by the SRS Nuclear Materials Management Division (NMMD) to analyze a number of samples in the SRTC/NTS clean labs. The requested analytes were Am-241, Np-237, Ra-226, Cs-137, I-129, Tc-99, Sr-90 and the plutonium isotopes from 238 through 242. The NTS routinely analyzes all types of samples for trace plutonium by mass spectrometry. The other analytes are routinely analyzed only in environmental samples. This report documents the analytical data and the analysis methods developed and used for these analyses. All requested analytes were determined to be less than one tenth of the waste acceptance criteria in all samples analyzed.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The District of Columbia (DC) Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) is responsible for protecting thousands of foster care children at risk of abuse and neglect and ensuring that critical services are provided for them and their families. Representative Tom Davis, Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, asked GAO to discuss the extent to which CFSA has taken actions to address the requirements of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 and other selected performance criteria, adopted and implemented child protection and foster care placement policies, and enhanced its working relationship with the D.C. Family Court."

Among the current issues in U.S.-Egyptian relations are the shared concerns over the terrorist attacks against Egyptian police, religious, government, and tourist facilities, and what those attacks maysignal for Egypt’s domestic stability. The two nations may disagree over Egypt’s interpretation of applying human rights practices to Islamic terrorists. The two countries disagree over the speed and depth, but not the need for some of Egypt’s economic reforms. Egypt and the United States agree on the importance of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, the need to continue current Arab-Israel peace talks, and the need for regional stability. The two nations agree on Egypt’s determination to introduce democratic reforms to Egypt.

The 108th Congress has acted on a variety of disparate environmental measures; some of these represent proposals or issues that had been under consideration in the 107th Congress and earlier. Environmental issues considered by Congress tend to fall into several major categories: (1) funding issues — whether funding levels are adequate and focused on appropriate priorities; (2) expanding, renewing, or refocusing specific environment programs; (3) environmental issues that are important “subsets” of other major areas of concern, such as energy, defense, or transportation programs; and more recently, (4) terrorism and infrastructure protection in areas such as wastewater and chemical facilities.

Noble gases widely exist in nature, and except for radon, they are stable. Modern techniques can detect noble gases to relatively low concentrations and with great precision. These factors suggest that noble gases can be useful tracers for subsurface characterization. Their applications, however, require an appropriate transport model for data analyses. A new fluid property module, EOSN, was developed for TOUGH2 to simulate transport of noble gases in the subsurface. Currently any of five different noble gases (except radon) as well as CO{sub 2} can be selected, two at a time. For the two selected gas components, the Crovetto et al. (1982) model is used to calculate the Henry's law coefficients; and the Reid et al. (1987) correlation is used to calculate the gas phase diffusivities. Like most other sister modules, TOUGH2/EOSN can simulate nonisothermal multiphase flow and fully coupled transport in fractured porous media. Potential applications of the new module include, but are not limited to: (a) study of different reservoir processes such as recharge, boiling, condensation, and fracture-matrix fluid exchange; (b) characterization of reservoir geometry such as fracture spacing; and (c) analysis of CO{sub 2} sequestration.

Soft x-ray scanning microscopy (1) is under continuing development at the Advanced Light Source. Significant progress has been made implementing new scan control systems in both operational microscopes (2) and they now operate at beam lines 5.3.2 and 11.0.2 with interferometer servo scanning and stabilization. The interferometer servo loop registers the images on a universal x/y coordinate system and locks the x-ray spot on selected features for spectro-microscopic studies. At the present time zone plates are in use with 35nm outer zone width and the imaging spatial resolution is at the diffraction limit of these lenses. Current research programs are underway in areas of polymer chemistry, environmental chemistry and materials science. A dedicated polymer STXM is in operation on a bend magnet beam line (4) and is the subject of a separate article (3) in this issue. Here we focus on the capabilities of STXM at a new beam line that employs an elliptical undulator (5) to give control of the polarization of the x-ray beam. This facility is in the process of commissioning and some results are available, other capabilities will be developed during the first half of 2003.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The General Services Administration (GSA) has responsibility for more than 8,000 owned and leased buildings nationwide, together encompassing about 338 million square feet of space. Understanding construction and operating costs for these buildings is important, as the increased federal budget deficit has led to intensified competition for federal resources and recent events have highlighted security needs. GAO examined (1) factors that have affected GSA's construction, leasing, and operating costs and (2) our designation of federal real property as a high-risk area."

This report discusses the effect of human activities on global climate change. Human activities, particularly burning of fossil fuels, have increased atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) and other trace gases, including chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), methane, and nitrous oxide.

This report presents legislative changes affecting Pharmaceutical Patents related to the Hatch-Waxman Act.

This report is an Overview of the effects on Institutional operations, the Legislative process, and future Planning related to House of Representatives Information Technology Management issues.

The National Weatherization Assistance Program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and implemented by state and local agencies throughout the United States, weatherizes homes for low-income residents in order to increase their energy efficiency and lower utility bills. Research staff members at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have performed two previous metaevaluations of this program (Berry, 1997; Schweitzer and Berry, 1999). Both of these earlier metaevaluations involved synthesizing the results from individual studies of state weatherization efforts completed during a several year period. This report is the third in a series of metaevaluations of state-level studies. It is built on the foundation developed by the previous two metaevaluations. The purpose of this report, like that of the two earlier ORNL metaevaluations, is to provide a current estimate of the average national energy savings per home weatherized for the Weatherization Assistance Program based on the relevant state-level studies. All three of the metaevaluations, including this one, were designed to be updates to the findings of a national evaluation of the Weatherization Assistance Program, which examined a representative national sample of several thousand structures weatherized in 1989 (Brown, Berry, Balzer, and Faby 1993). Although the first and second metaevaluations used …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "DOD faces growing challenges in carrying out realistic training at installations and training ranges--land, air, and sea--because of encroachment by outside factors. These include urban growth, competition for radio frequencies or airspace, air or noise pollution, unexploded ordnance and munition components, endangered species habitat, and protected marine resources. Building on work reported on in 2002, GAO assessed (1) the impact of encroachment on training ranges, (2) DOD's efforts to document the effect on readiness and cost, and (3) DOD's progress in addressing encroachment."

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Ecosystem CO{sub 2} exchange and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) mixing are correlated diurnally and seasonally. Tracer transport models predict that these covariance signals produce a meridional gradient of annual mean CO{sub 2} concentration in the marine boundary layer that is half as strong as the signal produced by fossil fuel emissions. This rectifier effect has been predicted by many inversion models. However, observations to constrain the strength of the rectifier effect in nature are lacking. The fundamental objective of this project was to measure the strength of these covariance signals between ecosystem CO{sub 2} flux and ABL dynamics by employing ABL profiling systems at eddy flux tower sites. We found that (1) the observed diurnal and seasonal covariance between ecosystem CO{sub 2} fluxes and ABL turbulent mixing are strong; (2) the inversion model underestimates the diurnal and seasonal covariance; (3) the rectifier effect in the model appears to be too weak. However, these results are subject to significant uncertainties associated with the use of a point measurement to represent an area, fair weather bias among the data and instruments, and nonlinear transport processes between continental and marine boundary layers.

Independent control of particle velocity and temperature in the HVOF process has been achieved in this research, allowing the variables to change by 170 m/s and 200{degree}C, respectively. The independence was achieved using a specially designed nozzel with multiple axial injection ports, and with an inert diluent added to the oxygen used for combustion. With these changes, notable changes in splat morphology, porosity, and coating oxidation are readily apparent. Increased particle velocity correlates with improved splat deformation, but appears to have little effect on porosity or oxidation. Particle temperature, however, correlates strongly with splat deformation, porosity, and oxidation. In fact, highly dense coatings that have little oxidation can be formed with relatively low velocity particles that have average temperatures in the vicinity of the melting point of the material. This surprising result suggests particle temperature control is the key to creating dense, low-oxide HVOF-sprayed coatings.

This report (1) summarizes provisions of several laws and regulations, including the Patent Law, the Atomic Energy Act, International Traffic in Arms Control regulations, the USA PATRIOT Act (P.L. 107-56), the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-188), and the Homeland Security Act (P.L. 107-296), that permit the federal government to restrict disclosure of scientific and technical information that could harm national security; (2) describes the development of federal controls on “sensitive but unclassified” (SBU) scientific and technical information; (3) summarizes current controversies about White House policy on “Sensitive But Unclassified Information,” and “Sensitive Homeland Security Information” (SHSI) issued in March 2002; and (4) identifies controversial issues which might affect the development of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and agency guidelines for sensitive unclassified information, which are expected to be released during 2003.

The developmental increase in structural complexity in multicellular life forms depends on local, often non-periodic differences in gene expression. These depend on a network of gene-gene interactions coded within the organismal genome. To better understand how genomic information generates complex expression patterns, I have modeled the pattern forming behavior of small artificial genomes in virtual blastoderm embryos. I varied several basic properties of these genomic signaling networks, such as the number of genes, the distributions of positive (inductive) and negative (repressive) interactions, and the strengths of gene-gene interactions, and analyzed their effects on developmental pattern formation. The results show how even simple genomes can generate complex non-periodic patterns under suitable conditions. They also show how the frequency of complex patterns depended on the numbers and relative arrangements of positive and negative interactions. For example, negative co-regulation of signaling pathway components increased the likelihood of (complex) patterns relative to differential negative regulation of the pathway components. Interestingly, neither quantitative differences either in strengths of signaling interactions nor multiple response thresholds to signal concentration (as in morphogen gradients) were essential for formation of multiple, spatially unique cell types. Thus, with combinatorial code of gene regulation and hierarchical signaling interactions, it is theoretically …

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