Congress is now debating reauthorization of omnibus farm legislation, as most commodityprice support provisions expire in 2002. This report discusses this debate, specifically aspects relating to commitments that the U.S. has as a World Trade Organization (WTO) member. Because of the interrelationships between trade and domestic support policies, lawmakers are interested in what the Agreement on Agriculture stipulates with regard to domestic supports, and how not only the United States but also other countries are meeting their Agreement commitments.

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Report discussing the Iran Libya Sanctions Act as well as the legislative developments that occurred regarding the act.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program and the North American Free Trade Agreement Transitional Adjustment Assistance (NAFTA-TAA) Program are designed to help dislocated workers, communities, and firms adjust to the rapid economic changes that characterize the globalization of national economies. Although globalization has increased the importance of technology and service sector jobs, it has also resulted in the loss of many manufacturing jobs as companies that cannot compete with lower-priced imports go out of business or relocate abroad. The federal government recognizes that although the benefits of increased trade are widely dispersed across the economy, the costs of worker dislocation effects are more localized. This has heightened concerns about the efficacy of federal trade adjustment assistance efforts. This testimony discusses (1) the nature of trade impacts on communities and the use of benefits and services under TAA and the NAFTA-TAA programs, (2) the structural problems that impede effective delivery of those services and benefits, and (3) the longer-term challenges facing trade-impacted communities."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses prisoner releases and reintegration programs and provides some perspectives on the particular challenges posed by the District of Columbia offenders. Nationally, the total inmate population in federal and state prisons increased almost fourfold during the last two decades. Consistent with the trend of larger prison populations, the number of inmates who complete their sentences and return to communities has also risen significantly in recent years, surpassing the half-million mark in 1998. After being released, many individuals--about 40 percent historically--later return to prison for new offenses or parole violations. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) most recent nationwide survey of prison inmates showed that 40 percent of federal inmates and 55 percent of state inmates in prison in 1997 had served prior sentences. BJS data showed that D.C. offenders, in particular, had more extensive criminal histories than the national averages. For example, 98.3 percent of all adult probationers in D.C. had prior convictions, almost twice the national average of 50 percent. BJS' 1997 survey also showed that the bulk of inmates in prison were drug abusers. The National Institute of Justice noted that 69 percent of …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "A sound public infrastructure plays a vital role in encouraging a more productive and competitive national economy and meeting public demands for safety, health, and improved quality of life. The federal government has spent an average of $149 billion (in constant 1998 dollars) annually since the late 1980s on the nation's infrastructure. Little is known, however, about the comparability and reasonableness of individual agencies' estimates for infrastructure needs. This report discusses infrastructure investment or "needs" estimates compiled by seven agencies--the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), the General Services Administration (GSA), and the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC). GAO focuses on the following infrastructure areas: water resources (inland and deep draft navigation, flood control, and shore protection), hydropower, water supply, wastewater treatment, airports, highways, mass transit, and public buildings. GAO found that the agencies' estimates for infrastructure investments ranged from GSA's calculation of $4.58 billion (in current dollars) over one to five years to repair public buildings to FHWA's estimate of $83.4 billion (in constant 1997 dollars) per …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "On-line trading continues to be an important part of the securities trading market. The industry reports investing greater resources to improve the performance of their systems, and regulators have made substantial progress in ensuring that investors receive better information in key investor protection areas. However, investors trading on-line continue to file many complaints about failures and delays in processing orders. GAO believes that providing complete information on the websites of on-line broker-dealers would allow investors to make more informed investment decisions."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "After the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact in 1991, North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies and the United States sought new ways to cooperate with the political and military leadership of their former adversaries. In January 1994, NATO established the Partnership for Peace to increase defense cooperation with former Warsaw Pact members and other former communist states in Central and Eastern Europe. Supported by the United States through the Warsaw Initiative, the Partnership plays a key role in developing the capabilities of those states and reforming their defense establishments. Given the key role the Partnership for Peace has played in the transformation of NATO's relationship with these states, the significant U.S. involvement and investment in this program through the Warsaw Initiative, and the impending debate on potential NATO members drawn from the Partnership, this report (1) provides an historic overview of previous NATO accessions, (2) describes the cost and content of the Warsaw Initiative, and (3) describes the results and benefits of Warsaw Initiative programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seeks to apply the law fairly to all taxpayers. Under the continuous levy program, however, taxpayers who receive federal payments are treated differently depending on whether the payments are made by the Federal Management Service (FMS) on behalf of other agencies or directly by the agencies themselves. Delinquent taxpayers receiving payments from FMS generally are subject to continuous levy, while those receiving payments directly from federal agencies are not. Although it may prove impractical to treat similarly all delinquent taxpayers who receive federal payments, progress--and substantial additional revenues--could be achieved in this area. FMS plans to include salaries at the U.S. Postal Service and salaries and retirement payments at the Defense Department (DOD) in the continuous levy program. There are similar plans to include all vendor payments from the Postal Service, DOD, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Discussions among FMS, IRS, and the agencies could ensure that all of these payments all included in the continuous levy program as soon as possible. These discussions could also speed the inclusion of some categories of vendor payments. The continuous levy …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Home Loan Bank (FHLBank) System is establishing a new capital structure that, if properly implemented, is likely to be an improvement over the historic structure. Capital will become more permanent, and new risk-based and leverage capital requirements will also be implemented. The new capital structure has the potential to address the risks associated with advances as well as the direct acquisition of mortgages. However, it is too early to assess the overall adequacy of the structure. So far, direct acquisition appears to provide regional diversification of mortgage acquisitions and incentives to member institutions for sound mortgage underwriting and servicing through the sharing of credit risks. However, risks could be affected if changes are made in the level of mortgage acquisition activity and in the risk-sharing agreements between the FHLBanks and their member institutions. Such changes might also increase the importance of risk-based capital requirements compared to the leverage requirements of the Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB). Risks in the FHLBank System will increase because of expanded collateral provisions in the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and direct mortgage acquisition activity. Mitigation of that risk will depend on …

A briefing report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which went into effect in 1994, was intended to spur trade and investment throughout North America. Separately, the three NAFTA countries--the United States, Canada, and Mexico--negotiated and entered into two side agreements, the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and the North American Agreement on Labor Cooperation. The side agreements allow citizens and governments to raise questions about failures to effectively enforce environmental or labor laws in any of the three countries. This can be accomplished through both a submission process and a government-to-government dispute settlement process. NAFTA also provides protections for investors, such as nondiscriminatory treatment and the right to freely transfer funds related to an investment, as well as a mechanism to settle investor-state disputes through the agreement's chapter 11. This report provides information on the institutional structure, principles, process, cases, and outcomes associated with (1) the environmental side agreement's submission process, (2) the labor side agreement's submission process, and (3) NAFTA's investor-state dispute settlement mechanism. This report includes information on fines and trade sanctions under the side agreements, as well as summary date on cases filed …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Walter J. Poirier, a Peace Corps volunteer, was reportedly last seen in La Paz, Bolivia in February 2001. This report reviews (1) whether the Peace Corps failed to properly supervise Mr. Poirier's activities and (2) the actions taken by the Peace Corps and the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia when they learned that Mr. Poirier was missing. GAO found that Mr. Poirier failed to follow Peace Corps location and notification procedures. Although the Peace Corps Associate Director responsible for Mr. Poirier while he was in Bolivia knew that Mr. Poirier was not following these procedures, he took no steps to correct the situation and, as a result, lost track of Mr. Poirier. Furthermore, the Associate Director's failure to adequately monitor Mr. Poirier contributed to the U.S. Embassy's difficulties in locating him. Once it was determined that Mr. Poirier was missing, the U.S. Embassy, the Peace Corps, the Bolivian National Police, and fire and rescue teams in La Paz and throughout Bolivia conducted an extensive search. So far, Mr. Poirier has not been found."

In passenger vehicles the ability to absorb energy due to impact and be survivable for the occupant is called the ''crashworthiness'' of the structure. To identify and quantify the energy absorbing mechanisms in candidate automotive composite materials, test methodologies were developed for conducting progressive crush tests on composite plate specimens. The test method development and experimental set-up focused on isolating the damage modes associated with the frond formation that occurs in dynamic testing of composite tubes. Quasi-static progressive crush tests were performed on composite plates manufactured from chopped carbon fiber with an epoxy resin system using compression molding techniques. The carbon fiber was Toray T700 and the epoxy resin was YLA RS-35. The effect of various material and test parameters on energy absorption was evaluated by varying the following parameters during testing: fiber volume fraction, fiber length, fiber tow size, specimen width, profile radius, and profile constraint condition. It was demonstrated during testing that the use of a roller constraint directed the crushing process and the load deflection curves were similar to progressive crushing of tubes. Of all the parameters evaluated, the fiber length appeared to be the most critical material parameter, with shorter fibers having a higher specific energy …

Issues concerning beam stability of the proposed Fermi-lab proton driver are studied in its Phase I. Although the betatron tune shifts are dominated by space charge, these shifts are less than 0.25 and will therefore not drive the symmetric and antisymmetric modes of the beam envelope into instability. The longitudinal space-charge force is large and inductive inserts may be needed to compensate for the distortion of the rf potential. Although the longitudinal impedance is space-charge dominated, it will not drive any microwave instability, unless the real part of the impedance coming from the inductive inserts and wall resistivity of the beam tube are large enough. The design of the beam tube is therefore very important in order to limit the flow of eddy current and keep wall resistivity low. The transverse impedance is also space-charge dominated. With the proton driver operated at an imaginary transition gamma, however, Landau damping will never be canceled and beam stability can be maintained with negative chromaticities.

Borehole electromagnetic (EM) measurements, using fiberglass-cased boreholes, have proven useful in oil field reservoir characterization and process monitoring (Wilt et al., 1995). It has been presumed that these measurements would be impossible in steel-cased wells due to the very large EM attenuation and phase shifts. Recent laboratory and field studies have indicated that detection of EM signals through steel casing should be possible at low frequencies, and that these data provide a reasonable conductivity image at a useful scale. Thus, we see an increased application of this technique to mature oilfields, and an immediate extension to geothermal industry as well. Along with the field experiments numerical model studies have been carried out for analyzing the effect of steel casing to the EM fields. The model used to be an infinitely long uniform casing embedded in a homogeneous whole space. Nevertheless, the results indicated that the formation signal could be accurately recovered if the casing characteristics were independently known (Becker et al., 1998; Lee el al., 1998). Real steel-cased wells are much more complex than the simple laboratory models used in work to date. The purpose of this study is to develop efficient numerical methods for analyzing EM fields in realistic …

Results on diffraction obtained by the CDF Collaboration in Run I of the Fermilab Tevatron {bar p}p collider are reviewed. New results are reported on soft double diffraction and diffractive J/{psi} production. The CDF program for diffractive studies in Run II is briefly discussed.

Slow resonant extraction from the Fermilab Main Injector through the extraction channel was achieved in February, 2000, with a spill length of 0.3 sec. Beam losses were small. Excellent wire chamber profiles were obtained and analyzed. The duty factor was not very good and needs to be improved.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has a long history of involvement in the development and validation of the ORIGEN series of isotope summation codes and nuclear data libraries, widely recognized and used to predict the decay heat for spent nuclear fuel. In particular, the ORIGEN-S code, the depletion/decay module of the SCALE code system, has been extensively validated using experimental isotopic assay data and decay heat measurements for commercial spent fuel. This work was used in the development of the technical basis for NRC Regulatory Guide 3.54 on spent fuel decay heat. The bulk of the experimental data used to validate spent fuel decay heat predictions are from programs of the 1970s and 1980s and consequently involve older-design fuel assemblies with a relatively low enrichment and burnup. This has led to a situation where the spent fuel now being discharged from operating reactors extends well beyond the regime of the experimental data and area of code applicability based o n the data. The absence of validation data for modern fuel designs has potentially serious consequences for decay heat predictions in terms of added safety factors to account for larger uncertainties and lower volumetric transport and storage capacities.

The Nearby Supernova Factory Project will provide a unique opportunity to bring together simulation and observation to address crucial problems in particle and nuclear physics. Its goal is to significantly enhance our understanding of the nuclear processes in supernovae and to improve our ability to use both Type Ia and Type II supernovae as reference light sources (standard candles) in precision measurements of cosmological parameters. Over the past several years, astronomers and astrophysicists have been conducting in-depth sky searches with the goal of identifying supernovae in their earliest evolutionary stages and, during the 4 to 8 weeks of their most ''explosive'' activity, measure their changing magnitude and spectra. The search program currently under development at LBNL is an earth-based observation program utilizing observational instruments at Haleakala and Mauna Kea, Hawaii and Mt. Palomar, California. This new program provides a demanding testbed for the integration of computational, data management and collaboratory technologies. A critical element of this effort is the use of emerging workflow management tools to permit collaborating scientists to manage data processing and storage and to integrate advanced supernova simulation into the real-time control of the experiments. This paper describes the workflow management framework for the project, discusses security …

The Magnet Test Facility at Fermilab tests a variety of full-scale and model superconducting magnets for both R and D and production. As the design characteristics and test requirements of these magnets vary widely, the magnet test stand must accommodate a wide range of Data Acquisition (DAQ) and Control requirements. Such a system must provide several functions, which includes: quench detection, quench protection, power supply control, quench characterization, and slow DAQ of temperature, mechanical strain gauge, liquid helium level, etc. The system must also provide cryogenic valve control, process instrumentation monitoring, and process interlock logic associated with the test stand. A DAQ and Control system architecture that provides the functionality described above has been designed, fabricated, and put into operation. This system utilizes a modular approach that provides both extensibility and flexibility. As a result, the complexity of the hardware is minimized while remaining optimized for future expansion. The architecture of this new system is presented along with a description of the different technologies applied to each module. Commissioning and operating experience as well as plans for future expansion are discussed.

This paper describes the double aperture dipole magnets developed for a VLHC based on Nb{sub 3}Sn superconductor, a cos-theta coil, cold and warm iron yokes, and the wind-and-react fabrication technique. Status of the model R and D program, strand and cable and other major component development are also discussed.

All electron cooling systems in operation to date can be classified as low energy systems. The electron beam kinetic energy in such a system is limited to about 0.6-1 MeV by the use of a conventional commercial Cockcroft-Walton high-voltage power supply. This, in turn, bounds the maximum ion kinetic energy, accessible for cooling with today's standard technology, to about 2 GeV/nucleon (about a factor of 2-3 times higher than the electron systems in operation today). Electron cooling systems with kinetic energies above 1 MeV could provide economically justifiable improvements in the performance of many existing and proposed accelerator complexes, such as RHIC, Tevatron and HERA. This paper reviews the status of the development of the technology needed for high energy electron cooling.