Field-rugged and field-programmable differential mobility spectrometry (DMS) networks provide highly selective, universal monitoring of vapors and aerosols at detectable levels from persons or areas involved with illicit chemical/biological/explosives (CBE) production. CBE sensor motes used in conjunction with automated fast gas chromatography with DMS detection (GC/DMS) verification instrumentation integrated into situational operations-management systems can be readily deployed and optimized for changing application scenarios. The feasibility of developing selective DMS motes for a “smart dust” sampling approach with guided, highly selective, fast GC/DMS verification analysis is a compelling approach to minimize or prevent the illegal use of explosives or chemical and biological materials. DMS is currently one of the foremost emerging technologies for field separation and detection of gas-phase chemical species. This is due to trace-level detection limits, high selectivity, and small size. Fast GC is the leading field analytical method for gas phase separation of chemical species in complex mixtures. Low-thermal-mass GC columns have led to compact, low-power field systems capable of complete analyses in 15–300 seconds. A collaborative effort optimized a handheld, fast GC/DMS, equipped with a non-rad ionization source, for peroxide-based explosive measurements.

We present here results of continued efforts to understand the performance of microchannel plate (MCP)–based, high-speed, gated, x-ray detectors. This work involves the continued improvement of a Monte Carlo simulation code to describe MCP performance coupled with experimental efforts to better characterize such detectors. Our goal is a quantitative description of MCP saturation behavior in both static and pulsed modes. A new model of charge buildup on the walls of the MCP channels is briefly described. The simulation results agree favorably with experimental data obtained with a short-pulse, high-intensity ultraviolet (UV) laser. These results indicate that a weak saturation can change the exponent of gain with voltage and that a strong saturation lead to a gain plateau. These results also demonstrate that the dynamic range of an MCP in pulsed mode has a value of between 10^2 and 10^3.

This note presents a comparison of Most-Probable-Number Rapid Viability (MPN-RV) PCR and traditional culture methods for the quantification of Bacillus anthracis Sterne spores in macrofoam swabs generated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for a multi-center validation study aimed at testing environmental swab processing methods for recovery, detection, and quantification of viable B. anthracis spores from surfaces. Results show that spore numbers provided by the MPN RV-PCR method were in statistical agreement with the CDC conventional culture method for all three levels of spores tested (10{sup 4}, 10{sup 2}, and 10 spores) even in the presence of dirt. In addition to detecting low levels of spores in environmental conditions, the MPN RV-PCR method is specific, and compatible with automated high-throughput sample processing and analysis protocols.

In this document we describe work done under the SciDAC-1 Project National Computerational Infrastructure for Lattice Gauge Theory. The objective of this project was to construct the computational infrastructure needed to study quantim chromodynamics (QCD). Nearly all high energy and nuclear physicists in the United States working on the numerical study of QCD are involved in the project, as are Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). A list of the serior participants is given in Appendix A.2. The project includes the development of community software for the effective use of the terascale computers, and the research and development of commodity clusters optimized for the study of QCD. The software developed as part of this effort is pubicly available, and is being widely used by physicists in the United States and abroad. The prototype clusters built with SciDAC-1 fund have been used to test the software, and are available to lattice guage theorists in the United States on a peer reviewed basis.

This report tracks nominations made by President George W. Bush to judgeships on the U.S. courts of appeals, the U.S. district courts, and the U.S. Court of International Trade. It lists and keeps count of all nominations made to these courts during the 110th Congress, including pertinent actions taken by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the full Senate. It also tracks the number of judicial vacancies on the courts (including vacancies classified by the federal judiciary as "judicial emergencies"), the number of nominations pending to fill the vacancies, and the names of the pending nominees. It presents the number of persons nominated by President Bush to each category of lower Article III court during his entire presidency (breaking down each total to show the number confirmed, pending, returned and not re-nominated, and withdrawn). Last, it provides a tabular comparison of President Bush's lower court nominee statistics with those of the four Presidents who immediately preceded him.

We have grown single crystals of novel ruthenates (Sr,Ba)(Fe,Co){sub 2+x}Ru{sub 4-x}O{sub 11} that exhibit long-range ferromagnetic order well above room temperature, accompanied by narrow-gap semiconducting properties that include a large anomalous Hall conductance, low resistivity, high carrier concentration and low coercive field, which are properties well suited to spintronic applications. X-ray diffraction, EDX, neutron diffraction and x-ray absorption measurements on single crystals firmly establish the 'R-Type' hexagonal ferrite structure (space group P6{sub 3}/mmc, No 194) and single-phase nature of all samples. The electronic structure and physical properties can be tuned by simple chemical substitution of two elements, M = Fe or Co, or by varying the relative concentration of 3d solutes and 4d Ru. Our magnetotransport, x-ray magnetic circular dichroism and magnetic moment data suggest the mechanism for FM order is quite different from that governing known dilute magnetic semiconductors.

This report summarizes important recent developments in Pakistan and in Pakistan-U.S. relations. These include high-profile political assassinations in early 2011; the Raymond Davis affair involving a CIA operative accused of murder in the city of Lahore; and the May killing of Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad, among others. The report also summarizes key issues in the bilateral relationship.

The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission's Plowshare Program focused on developing the capability to use nuclear detonations for civil works projects and industrial applications. The participants envisioned canals and harbors constructed quickly and cheaply and the augmentation of natural gas, oil, and geothermal power production. The Plowshare Program began in the 1950s and ended in the 1970s. The archaeological effort to relocate and record places associated with this project has identified a unique and varied historical legacy on the landscape in the western United States and discovered that the range and types of projects considered and planned are more diverse than formerly recognized.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Government agencies have a long-standing obligation under the Privacy Act of 1974 to protect the privacy of individuals about whom they collect personal information. A number of additional laws have been enacted in recent years directing agency heads to designate senior officials as focal points with overall responsibility for privacy. GAO was asked to (1) describe laws and guidance that set requirements for senior privacy officials within federal agencies, and (2) describe the organizational structures used by agencies to address privacy requirements and assess whether senior officials have oversight over key functions. To achieve these objectives, GAO analyzed the laws and related guidance and analyzed policies and procedures relating to key privacy functions at 12 agencies."

Carbon fiber-reinforced bisphenol-A epoxy matrix composite was evaluated for gamma radiation resistance. The composite was exposed to total gamma doses of 50, 100, and 200 Mrad. Irradiated and baseline samples were tested for tensile strength, hardness and evaluated using FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) spectroscopy and DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) for structural changes. Scanning electron microscopy was used to evaluate microstructural behavior. Mechanical testing of the composite bars revealed no apparent change in modulus, strain to failure, or fracture strength after exposures. However, testing of only the epoxy matrix revealed changes in hardness, thermal properties, and FTIR results with increasing gamma irradiation. The results suggest the epoxy within the composite can be affected by exposure to gamma irradiation.

The 100-F-44:2 waste site is a steel pipeline that was discovered in a junction box during confirmatory sampling of the 100-F-26:4 pipeline from December 2004 through January 2005. The 100-F-44:2 pipeline feeds into the 100-F-26:4 subsite vitrified clay pipe (VCP) process sewer pipeline from the 108-F Biology Laboratory at the junction box. In accordance with this evaluation, the confirmatory sampling results support a reclassification of this site to No Action. The current site conditions achieve the remedial action objectives and the corresponding remedial action goals established in the Remaining Sites ROD. The results of confirmatory sampling show that residual contaminant concentrations do not preclude any future uses and allow for unrestricted use of shallow zone soils. The results also demonstrate that residual contaminant concentrations are protective of groundwater and the Columbia River.

This report addresses Russian economic policies and performance raise important policy questions for the United States and the U.S.-Russian relationship.

This report discusses a bill providing $212.2 billion in supplemental appropriations for FY2008 and FY2009. The measure includes $169.1 billion for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, $9.9 billion for international affairs programs, and $33.1 billion for domestic programs, of which $15.6 billion is for extended unemployment compensation.

The SciDAC Visualization and Analytics Center for Enabling Technologies (VACET) isa highly productive effort combining the forces of leading visualization researchersfrom five different institutions to solve some of the most challenging dataunderstanding problems in modern science. The VACET technology portfolio isdiverse, spanning all typical visual data analysis use models and effectivelybalancing forward-looking research with focused software architecture andengineering resulting in a production-quality software infrastructure. One of the keyelements in VACET's success is a rich set of projects that are collaborations withscience stakeholders: these efforts focus on identifying and overcoming obstacles toscientific knowledge discovery in modern, large, and complex scientific datasets.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Following the World Trade Center (WTC) attack, the Congress appropriated more than $8 billion to the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Federal Emergency Management Agency for response and recovery activities. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) received some of this funding to establish health screening and monitoring programs for responders to the disaster and later received additional appropriations to fund treatment. In total, about $369.2 million has been appropriated or awarded for the WTC health programs. GAO previously reported on problems that these programs have had in ensuring the availability of services for all responders. GAO was asked to examine lessons from the WTC health programs that could guide future programs. GAO examined (1) lessons from the programs' experience and (2) HHS actions or plans that incorporate the lessons. GAO interviewed WTC health program officials and other experts and reviewed DHS and HHS documents."

The drift and diffusion of a cloud of ions in a fluid are distorted by an inhomogeneous electric field. If the electric field carries the center of the distribution in a straight line and the field configuration is suitably symmetric, the distortion can be calculated analytically. We examine the specific examples of fields with cylindrical and spherical symmetry in detail assuming the ion distributions to be of a generally Gaussian form. The effects of differing diffusion coefficients in the transverse and longitudinal directions are included.

Solids such as granular activated carbon, hematite and sodium phosphates, if present as sludge components in nuclear waste storage tanks, have been found to be capable of precipitating/sorbing actinides like plutonium, neptunium and uranium from nuclear waste storage tank supernatant liqueur. Thus, the potential may exists for the accumulation of fissile materials in such nuclear waste storage tanks during lengthy nuclear waste storage and processing. To evaluate the nuclear criticality safety in a typical nuclear waste storage tank, a study was initiated to measure the affinity of granular activated carbon, hematite and anhydrous sodium phosphate to sorb plutonium, neptunium and uranium from alkaline salt solutions. Tests with simulated and actual nuclear waste solutions established the affinity of the solids for plutonium, neptunium and uranium upon contact of the solutions with each of the solids. The removal of plutonium and neptunium from the synthetic salt solution by nuclear waste storage tank solids may be due largely to the presence of the granular activated carbon and transition metal oxides in these storage tank solids or sludge. Granular activated carbon and hematite also showed measurable affinity for both plutonium and neptunium. Sodium phosphate, used here as a reference sorbent for uranium, as expected, …

This report presents the software engineering effort under way at ANL towards a comprehensive integrated computational framework (SHARP) for high fidelity simulations of sodium cooled fast reactors. The primary objective of this framework is to provide accurate and flexible analysis tools to nuclear reactor designers by simulating multiphysics phenomena happening in complex reactor geometries. Ideally, the coupling among different physics modules (such as neutronics, thermal-hydraulics, and structural mechanics) needs to be tight to preserve the accuracy achieved in each module. However, fast reactor cores in steady state mode represent a special case where weak coupling between neutronics and thermal-hydraulics is usually adequate. Our framework design allows for both options. Another requirement for SHARP framework has been to implement various coupling algorithms that are parallel and scalable to large scale since nuclear reactor core simulations are among the most memory and computationally intensive, requiring the use of leadership-class petascale platforms. This report details our progress toward achieving these goals. Specifically, we demonstrate coupling independently developed parallel codes in a manner that does not compromise performance or portability, while minimizing the impact on individual developers. This year, our focus has been on developing a lightweight and loosely coupled framework targeted at UNIC …

The development of a secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) based technique of Ion Microscopy in boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) was the main goal of this project, so that one can study the subcellular location of boron-10 atoms and their partitioning between the normal and cancerous tissue. This information is fundamental for the screening of boronated drugs appropriate for neutron capture therapy of cancer. Our studies at Cornell concentrated mainly on studies of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). The early years of the grant were dedicated to the development of cryogenic methods and correlative microscopic approaches so that a reliable subcellular analysis of boron-10 atoms can be made with SIMS. In later years SIMS was applied to animal models and human tissues of GBM for studying the efficacy of potential boronated agents in BNCT. Under this grant the SIMS program at Cornell attained a new level of excellence and collaborative SIMS studies were published with leading BNCT researchers in the U.S.

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: Constitutionality of section 41(e)(3) of the Probate Code, which permits a probate court to declare that a parent may not inherit from his own child if the parent has been convicted of one of several crimes against a child (RQ-0649-GA)

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 an educational institution violates article 6228a-5, section 9(a)(4)–(7) of the Texas Revised Civil Statutes if the institution contracts with a third-party administrator that is owned by or otherwise affiliated with a company that sells qualified 403(b) investment products to the institutions employees (RQ-0653-GA)

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

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Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies are required to use the procedures contained in OMB Circular A-76 in determining whether commercial services should be performed by government personnel or through contracts with private-sector entities. In general, the circular instructs agencies to base these decisions on competitions among public and private-sector entities conducted in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR). Under the FAR, agencies have broad discretion in establishing the criteria they will use to select the winners of these competitions. An agency may decide, for example, that selection of the lowest priced, acceptable offer would best meet its needs. The FAR advises that this may be appropriate when requirements are clearly defined and the risk of unsuccessful performance is minimal. On the other hand, the FAR says that it may be in the best interest of an agency to provide for selecting other than the low offer when requirements are less definite, development work is required, or the risk of unsuccessful performance is high. An evaluation scheme that allows for considering the relative importance of both price and technical factors (such as an offeror's management capability, experience, or ability to apply …