16th National Conference of Black Physics Students - The agenda and its report.

This report provides an overview of the 2002 farm bill and an update status of the farm bill.

The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including Osama bin Laden. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security.

The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including Osama bin Laden. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security.

This report discusses the issue of U.S. economic assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the importance of continued assistance in light of U.S. national security and also various U.S.-led efforts to promote reform amongst African citizens themselves. U.S. assistance finds its way to Africa through a variety of channels, including the USAID-administered DA program, food aid programs, and indirect aid provided through international financial institutions and the United Nations.

The 107th Congress is considering trade issues with implications for the U.S. agricultural sector. Trade in agricultural commodities and food products affects farm income and rural employment, and it also generates economic activity beyond the farm gate. With agricultural export sales the equivalent of one-quarter of farm income, some policymakers view U.S. efforts to develop market opportunities overseas as vital to the sector’s financial health. Decisions taken by the Bush Administration, and actions taken by Congress, thus will affect the outlook for agricultural trade.

The first AlGaAsSb/GaSb quarter-wave distributed Bragg reflectors grown by metallic vapor phase epitaxy are reported. The peak reflectance is 96% for a 10-period structure.

Several different types of sorbents have been synthesized and submitted to WSRC for testing in the removal of Sr and several actinides from Savannah River nuclear waste solutions. Results of screening tests at the Savannah River Site showed that the nonatitanate samples exhibited as good, or better, performance than the monosodium titanate samples proposed for the treatment process.

As the EB Tile Calorimeter is constructed, the support saddles and the modules will be subjected to different forces, stresses, and deflections than when completely assembled. The purpose of this analysis is to examine the forces, stresses, and deflections acting on the support saddles and modules at various stages of assembly.

A two-dimensional joint inversion technique, based on a least-squares criterion of the data misfit and model smoothness, has been developed using electromagnetic (EM) and seismic traveltime data to assess the feasibility of directly inverting for hydrological parameters, such as fluid electrical conductivity, porosity, and saturation. This is accomplished by relating hydrological parameters to geophysical properties with the help of the empirical Archie's law and the Wyllie time average equation. While the latter links the underground seismic wave velocity and subsurface media porosity, the former relates the bulk formation conductivity to hydrological parameters such as fluid conductivity and porosity. Direct joint inversion using various geophysical data also reduces the non-uniqueness of the problem since common parameters are involved, as is the porosity related to both seismic traveltime and magnetic field. This newly developed joint inversion algorithm has been applied to a set of crosshole seismic and EM field data provided by Chevron as part of the Lost Hills CO{sub 2} pilot project in Southern California. Both EM and seismic pre- and post-injection data were evaluated in terms of hydrological parameters using general empirical relationships derived from logging data. The results show that the injection has decreased the water saturation and bulk …

The GriPhyN project is one of several major efforts working to enable large-scale data-intensive computation as a routine scientific tool. GriPhyN focuses in particular on virtual data technologies that allow computational procedures and results to be exploited as community resources so that, for example, scientists can not only run their own computations on raw data, but also discover computational procedures developed by others and data produced by these procedures. A request to retrieve data on a particular cluster might thus either lead to the retrieval of the requested data from a local or remote database or the scheduling of a computation to produce the data.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement information provided by the House and Senate Commerce, Justice, State Appropriations Subcommittees.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittees.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, consolidated, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriations Subcommittees.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the Subcommittees on Transportation of the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations.

This Report is categorized into four categories: (I) Background, (II) Description of the Restructuring Program, (III) Implementation of the Restructuring Program and (IV) Conclusion.

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.

We discuss the electromagnetic form factors, axial form factors, and structure functions of a nucleon bound in the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model. Free space nucleon form factors are calculated using the improved cloudy bag model (ICBM). After describing finite nuclei and nuclear matter in the quark-based (EMC) model, the in-medium modification of the bound nucleon form factors is calculated in the same model. Finally, the bound nucleon structure function, F2, is extracted using the calculated in-medium electromagnetic form factors and Bloom-Gilman (quark-hadron) duality.

Achieving public acceptance has become a central issue in discussions regarding the future of nuclear power and associated nuclear activities. Effective public communication and public participation are often put forward as the key building blocks in garnering public acceptance. A recent international workshop in Finland provided insights into other features that might also be important to building and sustaining public confidence in nuclear activities. The workshop was held in Finland in close cooperation with Finnish stakeholders. This was most appropriate because of the recent successes in achieving positive decisions at the municipal, governmental, and Parliamentary levels, allowing the Finnish high-level radioactive waste repository program to proceed, including the identification and approval of a proposed candidate repository site Much of the workshop discussion appropriately focused on the roles of public participation and public communications in building public confidence. It was clear that well constructed and implemented programs of public involvement and communication and a sense of fairness were essential in building the extent of public confidence needed to allow the repository program in Finland to proceed. It was also clear that there were a number of other elements beyond public involvement that contributed substantially to the success in Finland to date. …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "According to United Nations data, Cambodia has received more than $3 billion in assistance since 1993. Although Cambodia has achieved relative peace and stability, continued widespread corruption and a weak judicial system undermine efforts to reduce poverty and foster economic growth. Since 1993, the United States has provided Cambodia with over $200 million to reduce poverty and foster economic growth. This assistance has included programs to strengthen democracy, improve education and health care, and address problems posed by land mines. To address weaknesses in Cambodia's economic, social, and legal foundations, the Cambodian government and international donors of financial and technical assistance have established goals for strengthening governance in seven areas: increasing government revenue and strengthening budget management; creating a smaller, more professional military; providing Cambodian citizens with legal titles to land; developing Cambodia's weak legal framework and establishing an independent and competent judiciary; reducing risks in corrupt activities in the public sector and making public officials more accountable for their behavior; restructuring the civil service so that it can effectively provide services such as health care, primary education, and licenses to begin businesses; and preserving Cambodia's …

Experiments conducted in FY01 previously indicated a potential cesium stripping problem in the CSSX process due to the presence of nitrite in the waste simulant. The stripping issue seemed all the more important as the nitrite concentration increased. Experiments presented in this work have demonstrated that the true reason for the cesium stripping problem was in fact the presence of an anti-caking agent in the,sodium nitrite. used for the preparation of the simulants. The anti-caking agent is actually a mixture of well-known surfactants, sodium mono- and di-methyl naphthalene sulfonate that can partition into the organic-phase on extraction, then retain cesium upon stripping. The effect was demonstrated by adding known amounts of the anti-caking agent to clean systems. Data suggest that rejuvenation of the solvent can be obtained by a caustic wash following the stripping stage.

An extension of the model developed in FY01 for predicting equilibrium distribution ratios in the Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) process is presented here. Motivation for extending the model arose from the need to predict extraction performance of the recently optimized solvent composition and the desire to include additional waste components. This model involves the extraction of cesium and potassium from different cesium, potassium, and sodium media over a large range of concentrations. Those different media include a large variety of anions such as nitrate, hydroxide, nitrite, chloride, fluoride, sulfate, and carbonate. The model was defined based on several hundreds of experimental data points and predicted satisfactorily the cesium extraction from five different SRS waste simulants. This process model encompassed almost exclusively 1:1:1 metal:anion:ligand species. Fluoride, sulfate, and carbonate species were found to be very little extractable, and their main impact is reflected through their activity effects. This model gave a very good cesium and potassium extraction prediction from sodium salts, which is what is needed when trying to predict the behavior from actual waste. However, the extraction from potassium or cesium salts, and the extraction of sodium could be improved, and some additional effort was devoted to improve the thermodynamic …

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Electrical conductivity measurements for middle, bottom, and top phases, as well as bottom/middle, and middle/bottom conjugate pair phases of the NEODOX 23-4/dodecane/10mM water system were continued from the previous reporting period. Electrical conductivity of the mixture decreased as the fraction of volume of the middle phase was increased and vice versa. Also inversion phenomena was observed. Following this, more emulsion studies at various temperatures were progresses. A theoretical model to predict the conductivity measurements using Maxwell equations was developed and sensitivity analyses to test the performance of the model was completed. Surtek, Golden, CO, our industrial partner in this project, investigated the suitability of the surfactant for enhanced oil recovery employing coreflooding techniques and observed lower surfactant and hydrocarbon recovery for NEODOX 23-4.