The decisions by the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1997 to revise the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for ozone and particulate matter refocused attention on the criteria and the process by which these decisions are made Tracing the steps of the decision pieces, this report identifies the statutory criteria established by the Congress and summarizes the administrative procedures the Agency follows in setting these standards and in reviewing them every 5 years.

Since Shor`s discovery of an algorithm to factor numbers on a quantum computer in polynomial time, quantum computation has become a subject of immense interest. Unfortunately, one of the key features of quantum computers--the difficulty of describing them on classical computers--also makes it difficult to describe and understand precisely what can be done with them. A formalism describing the evolution of operators rather than states has proven extremely fruitful in understanding an important class of quantum operations. States used in error correction and certain communication protocols can be described by their stabilizer, a group of tensor products of Pauli matrices. Even this simple group structure is sufficient to allow a rich range of quantum effects, although it falls short of the full power of quantum computation.

The recirculating induction accelerator is a new class of particle accelerator being developed at LLNL as a reduced-cost driver for heavy-ion beam driven inertial fusion energy. Ongoing research and development of advanced beam control technologies for the recirculator system requires a very stable and reproducible ion beam source. The injector pulse modulator must be capable of producing very precise high-voltage pulses in order to reduce the current modulation instability and achieve the required beam reproducibility. Computer modeled simulations of beam dynamics have established that errors greater than 0.1 percent in the flatness of the 120 kV injector pulse can create intolerable energy deviations. The pulse modulator that was developed to satisfy the stringent requirements is described in the accompanying paper by Wilson [1]. A crucial aspect of the overall solution is a modification made to the vacuum diode apparatus, whereby high-voltage capacitors were added in close proximity to the thermionic potassium-ion emitter. This paper discusses the rationale for augmenting the normally small capacitance of the injector diode, and presents design information, including an illustrated layout, electrostatic field modeling results, and data on ceramic capacitors operating at elevated levels.

None

Report discussing the processes by which immigrants can become U.S. citizens and various problems that impede the process: "This report analyzes the trends in naturalization, discusses the controversies and issues, and tracks the legislative proposals to reform the naturalization process" (Abstract).

None

The work to improve the energy stability of the regenerative amplifier (`regen`) for the National Ignition Facility is described. This includes a fast feed-forward system, designed to regulate the output energy of the regen by monitoring how quickly a pulse builds up over many round trips. Shot-to-shot energy fluctuations of all elements prior to (and including) the regen may be compensated for in this way, at the expense of a loss of approximately 50%. Also included is a detailed study into the alignment sensitivity of the regen cavity, with the goal of quantifying the effect of misalignment on the output energy. This is done by calculating the displacement of the eigenmode by augmenting the cavity ABCD matrix with the misalignment matrix elements, E, F. In this way, cavity misalignment issues due to thermal loading of the gain medium are investigated. Alternative cavity designs, which reduce the alignment sensitivity and therefore the energy drift over periods of continuous operation, are considered. Alterations to the amplifier head design are also considered.

Under current federal law, local governments are compensated through various programs for losses to their tax bases due to the presence of most federally owned land. Some of these programs are run by specific agencies, and apply only to that agency's land. The most widely applicable program, while run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), applies to many types of federally owned land, and is called "Payments in Lieu of Taxes" or PILT. The level of payments is calculated under a complex formula.

None

In the 105th Congress, the property rights agenda has shifted from "compensation" to "process" bills. While the former would ease the standards for when property owners harmed by government action are compensated, the new approach simply streamlines how federal courts handle such claims. This report examines the three leading process bills -- H.R. 992, House-passed H.R. 1534, and Senate-reported H.R. 1534. The bills embody two process approaches: allowing property owners suing the United States to bring invalidation and compensation claims in the same court, and lowering abstention and ripeness barriers when suing local governments in federal court for property rights violations.

This report outlines the chronology of the political status of Puerto Rico. In 1952, Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory since 1898, became a commonwealth. Since then at least three significantly different political status options have been offered by the three major political parties in Puerto Rico. On March 4, 1998, the House passed H.R. 856, a bill to address the political status of Puerto Rico, by a vote of 209-208. On June 23, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held an oversight hearing on issues raised by separate sovereignty and independence.

None

The LLNL effort to develop electrochemical energy storage systems occupies a crucial regime in the hydrogen technologies` adoption process, between pure research/conceptual feasibility and near-term demonstrations of commercial systems This effort leaves as many component innovations as possible to others, and seeks to integrate the best systems from the highest performance, readily procurable components. The integration research and component testing being undertaken has already uncovered many operational and design issues that might hinder the adoption of breakthrough technologies being funded by the DOE and NASA A focus on delivering energy storage to the most weight-sensitive applications (aircraft and spacecraft) ensures that key technologies will be properly implemented and combined to perform in real, upcoming vehicle tests. The two key technologies that LLNL is aggressively implementing are proton exchange membrane (PEM) -based RFCs and high-performance tankage for storing compressed hydrogen and oxygen gases Tankage built from available technologies must be lightweight and must cope with volume penalties, gas permeation, and moisture handling to adequately furnish the breakthrough levels of specific energy that RFC systems offer Such multidisciplinary specifications have yet to be combined in the form of a commercial product. Were it not fat LLNL`s role as integrator leading industry, and …

This position paper provides the approach and detail pertaining to a sensitivity analysis for the Phase II definition of weighted evaluation criteria weights and utility function values on the total utility scores for each Initial List alternative due to uncertainty and bias in engineering judgment.

The objective of this Statement of Work (SOW) is to present the scope, the deliverables, the organization, the technical and schedule expectations for the development of a Package Design Criteria (PDC), cost and schedule estimate for the acquisition of a transportation system for the Immobilized High-Level Waste (IHLW). This transportation system which includes the truck, the trailer, and a shielded cask will be used for on-site transportation of the IHLW canisters from the private vendor vitrification facility to the Hanford Site interim storage facility, i.e., vaults 2 and 3 of the Canister Storage Building (CSB). This Statement of Work asks Waste Management Federal Services, Inc., Northwest Operations, to provide Project W-464 with a Design Criteria Document, plus a life-cycle schedule and cost estimate for the acquisition of a transportation system (shielded cask, truck, trailer) for IHLW on-site transportation.

None

Report on trade between the U.S. and China of missile and satellite technology, including funding, how classified information is handled, jurisdictional concerns, and more.

We derive exact formal expressions for the self-energy, (capital Sigma ^(<i>n</i>), describing the in- teraction of <i>n</i> particles with one another and with the rest of the particles in an interacting quantum N-particle system In contrast to traditional treatments, in which the single-particle self-energy is built out of interactions of a particle with the rest of the system, here a general n-particle quantity, (capital sigma)^(<i>n</i>), is obtained in a straight- forward fashion by integrating the exact <i>N</i>-particle Green function, <i>G</i>^(N), over the coordinates of N ^_ <i>n</i> particles and inverting An alternative expression, based on the canonical many-body equation of motion for the Green function is also discussed and compared with that derived through the integration process. The methodology is developed with respect to two-particle states, with the two-particle Green function being the central quantity from which the single-particle self-energy and Green function are derived It is suggested that the two-particle Green function be calculated directly in six-dimensional space in a two-particle generalization of density functional theory and the corresponding local density approximation. Methods for the calculation of the single-particle, <i>n</i> = 1, self-energy and effective single-particle t-matrix are discussed, and the methodology is illustrated by means of calculations on …