This report discusses U.S. air defense, in the wake of 9/11. Protecting U.S. airspace may require improvements in detecting aircraft and cruise missiles, making quick operational decisions, and intercepting them. A number of options exist in each of these areas. A variety of issues must be weighed including expediency, cost, and minimizing conflicts with civilian aviation.

The country of Syria is a prominent player in the Middle East scene, due to a number of border disputes with the region, as well as problems of resource allocation, and political rivalries have caused frequent tensions between Syria and its neighbors. An array of bilateral issues continue to affect relations between the United States and Syria: the course of Arab-Israeli talks; questions of arms proliferation; Syrian connections with terrorist activity; Syria's role in Lebanon; and Syria's opposition to the U.S. occupation in Iraq. This report explores these issues, as well as the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri--who had been a vocal Syrian critic--and the Syria Accountability Act, which President Bush signed on December 12, 2003, and which imposes sanctions upon Syria unless it halts support for terrorism.

The September 11th attacks drew attention to U.S. air defense, and the 9/11 Commission Report recommended that Congress regularly assess the ability of Northern Command to defend the United States against military threats. Protecting U.S. airspace may require improvements in detecting aircraft and cruise missiles, making quick operational decisions, and intercepting them. A number of options exist in each of these areas. A variety of issues must be weighed including expediency, cost, and minimizing conflicts with civilian aviation.

A chapter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The 2004 general election was the first presidential election that tested substantial changes states made to their election systems since the 2000 election, including some changes required by the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA). HAVA required some major changes in the nation's elections processes, not all which had to be implemented by the November 2004 election. HAVA addressed issues of people, processes, and technology, all of which must be effectively integrated to ensure effective election operations. GAO initiated a review under the authority of the Comptroller General to examine an array of election issues of broad interest to Congress. For each major stage of the election process, this report discusses (1) changes to election systems since the 2000 election, including steps taken to implement HAVA, and (2) challenges encountered in the 2004 election. For this report, GAO sent a survey to the 50 states and the District of Columbia (all responded) and mailed a questionnaire to a nationwide sample of 788 local election jurisdictions about election administration activities (80 percent responded). To obtain more detailed information about experiences for the 2004 election, GAO also …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The decennial census is a constitutionally mandated activity, with immutable deadlines. It produces data used to allocate about $200 billion yearly in federal financial assistance, reapportion the seats of the House of Representatives, and provide a profile of the nation's people to help guide policy decisions. The U.S. Census Bureau (Bureau) estimates the 2010 Census will cost $11.3 billion, making it the most expensive census in the nation's history, even after adjusting for inflation. Based primarily on GAO's issued reports, this testimony addresses the extent to which the Bureau has (1) developed detailed and timely cost data for effective oversight and cost control, (2) reduced nonresponse mail follow up costs, and (3) produced risk mitigation plans to address identified challenges."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In its role as the nation's tax collector, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a demanding responsibility in annually collecting over $2 trillion in taxes, processing hundreds of millions of tax and information returns, and enforcing the nation's tax laws. Since its first audit of IRS's financial statements in fiscal year 1992, GAO has identified a number of weaknesses in IRS's financial management operations. In related reports, GAO has recommended corrective action to address those weaknesses. Each year, as part of the annual audit of IRS's financial statements, GAO not only makes recommendations to address any new weaknesses identified but also follows up on the status of weaknesses GAO identified in previous years' audits. The purpose of this report is to (1) assist IRS management in tracking the status of audit recommendations and actions needed to fully address them and (2) demonstrate how the recommendations fit into IRS's overall management and internal control structure."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "With the current governmentwide telecommunications contracts set to expire, the General Services Administration's (GSA) Federal Technology Service (FTS) and its customer agencies must prepare to transition their services to a new contract vehicle. The previous federal effort to transition telecommunications services proved to be a large, complex task. GAO was asked to determine to what extent (1) selected agencies used sound practices in preparing for the transition and (2) GSA's FTS has prepared for the transition by addressing previous lessons learned and providing agencies with guidance on sound transition planning."

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This report provides the issues for Congress international population assistance and family planning programs.

The Department of Energy (DOE) identified the caustic side solvent extraction (CSSX) process as the preferred technology to remove cesium from radioactive waste solutions at the Savannah River Site (SRS). As a result, Washington Savannah River Company (WSRC) began designing and building a Modular CSSX Unit (MCU) in the SRS tank farm to process liquid waste for an interim period until the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) begins operations. Both the solvent and the strip effluent streams could contain high concentrations of cesium which must be removed from the contactors, process tanks, and piping prior to performing contactor maintenance. When these vessels are drained, thin films or drops will remain on the equipment walls. Following draining, the vessels will be flushed with water and drained to remove the flush water. The draining reduces the cesium concentration in the vessels by reducing the volume of cesium-containing material. The flushing, and subsequent draining, reduces the cesium in the vessels by diluting the cesium that remains in the film or drops on the vessel walls. MCU personnel requested that Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) researchers conduct a literature search to identify models to calculate the thickness of the liquid films remaining in the …

On Friday, April 21, 2006, a PNNL electrician was performing repair of an electrical system for the 331 Building chilled water pump (CHWP) No.2, when an electrical arc flash occurred inside a 480V combination motor starter. The electrician was taken to the on-site medical provider for evaluation and was released for return to work without restriction. The electrician was not shocked, but did receive a minor, superficial (first degree) burn on the left wrist. This report, the result of a thorough review by the 331 Building Arc Flash Assessment Team, provides an in-depth look at the steps leading up to the arc-flash and recommendations and opportunities for improvement.

The tracker sub-system is one of the five sub-detectors of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment under construction at CERN for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) accelerator. The tracker subdetector is designed to reconstruct tracks of charged sub-atomic particles generated after collisions. The tracker system processes analogue signals from 10 million channels distributed across 14000 silicon micro-strip detectors. It is designed to process signals of a few nA and digitize them at 40 MHz. The overall sub-detector is embedded in a high particle radiation environment and a magnetic field of 4 Tesla. The evaluation of the electromagnetic immunity of the system is very important to optimize the performance of the tracker sub-detector and the whole CMS experiment. This paper presents the EMC diagnosis of the CMS silicon tracker sub-detector. Immunity tests were performed using the final prototype of the Silicon Tracker End-Caps (TEC) system to estimate the sensitivity of the system to conducted noise, evaluate the weakest areas of the system and take corrective actions before the integration of the overall detector. This paper shows the results of one of those tests, that is the measurement and analysis of the immunity to CM external conducted noise perturbations.

The objective of this project was to develop experimental techniques for using coherent extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) radiation generated using the high-order harmonic generation technique, as an illumination source for studies of high-density plasmas relevant to the stockpile stewardship mission. In this project, we made considerable progress, including the first demonstration of imaging of dynamic processes using this coherent ultrashort pulse light. This work also stimulated considerable progress in the development of the required ultrashort EUV pulses, and in the development of new laser technologies that have been commercialized. We also demonstrated the first EUV sources that exhibit full intrinsic optical coherence. This work resulted in 12 publications.

This paper addresses electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) studies applied to high-energy physics (HEP) detectors. They are focused on the quantification of the front-end electronic (FEE) sensitivity to conductive noise coupled through the input/output cables. Immunity tests performed on FEE prototypes of both the CMS hadron calorimeter and the CMS silicon tracker are presented. These tests characterize the sensitivity of the FEE to common and differential mode noise coupled through the power cables and the slow control network. Immunity tests allow evaluating the weakest areas of the system to take corrective actions before the integration of the overall detector, saving time and important costs.

Semantic Web applications require robust and accurate annotation tools that are capable of automating the assignment of ontological classes to words in naturally occurring text (ontological annotation). Most current ontologies do not include rich lexical databases and are therefore not easily integrated with word sense disambiguation algorithms that are needed to automate ontological annotation. WordNet provides a potentially ideal solution to this problem as it offers a highly structured lexical conceptual representation that has been extensively used to develop word sense disambiguation algorithms. However, WordNet has not been designed as an ontology, and while it can be easily turned into one, the result of doing this would present users with serious practical limitations due to the great number of concepts (synonym sets) it contains. Moreover, mapping WordNet to an existing ontology may be difficult and requires substantial labor. We propose to overcome these limitations by developing an analytical platform that (1) provides a WordNet-based ontology offering a manageable and yet comprehensive set of concept classes, (2) leverages the lexical richness of WordNet to give an extensive characterization of concept class in terms of lexical instances, and (3) integrates a class recognition algorithm that automates the assignment of concept classes to …

We have developed a new, comprehensive set of simulation tools aimed at modeling the interaction of intense ion beams and electron clouds (e-clouds). The set contains the 3-D accelerator PIC code WARP and the 2-D ''slice'' e-cloud code POSINST [M. Furman, this workshop, paper TUAX05], as well as a merger of the two, augmented by new modules for impact ionization and neutral gas generation. The new capability runs on workstations or parallel supercomputers and contains advanced features such as mesh refinement, disparate adaptive time stepping, and a new ''drift-Lorentz'' particle mover for tracking charged particles in magnetic fields using large time steps. It is being applied to the modeling of ion beams (1 MeV, 180 mA, K+) for heavy ion inertial fusion and warm dense matter studies, as they interact with electron clouds in the High-Current Experiment (HCX) [experimental results discussed by A. Molvik, this workshop, paper THAW02]. We describe the capabilities and present recent simulation results with detailed comparisons against the HCX experiment, as well as their application (in a different regime) to the modeling of e-clouds in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

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A computational study was performed to better understand the differences between human arylamine N-acetyltransferase (NAT) 1 and 2. Homology models were constructed from available crystal structures and comparisons of the active site residues 125, 127, and 129 for these two enzymes provide insight into observed substrate differences. The NAT2 model provided a basis for understanding how some of the common mutations may affect the structure of the protein. Molecular dynamics simulations of the human NAT models and the template structure (NAT from Mycobacterium smegmatis) were performed and showed the models to be stable and reasonable. Docking studies of hydroxylated heterocyclic amines in the models of NAT1 and NAT2 probed the differences exhibited by these two proteins with mutagenic agents. The hydroxylated heterocyclic amines were only able to fit into the NAT2 active site, and an alternative binding site by the P-loop was found using our models and will be discussed. Additionally, quantum mechanical calculations were performed to study the O-acetylation reaction of the hydroxylated heterocyclic amines N-OH MeIQx and N-OH PhIP. This study has given us insight into why there are substrate differences among isoenzymes and explains some of the polymorphic activity differences.

Toroidally-asymmetric biasing of the divertor plate may increase convective cross-field transport in SOL and thereby reduce the divertor heat load. Experiments performed with the MAST spherical tokamak generally agree with a simple theory of non-axisymmetric biasing. However, some of the experimental results have not yet received a theoretical explanation. In particular, existing theory seems to overestimate the asymmetry between the positive and the negative biasing. Also lacking a theoretical explanation is experimentally observed increase of the average floating potential in the main SOL in the presence of biasing. In this paper we attempt to solve these problems by accounting for the closing of the currents (driven by the biasing) in a strong-shear region near the X-point. We come up with the picture which, at least qualitatively, agrees with these experimental results.

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An updated systems code for a laser-driven IFE power plant has been developed as part of the U.S. High Average Power Laser (HAPL) program. The cost of electricity (COE) is calculated using standardized methods for fusion reactor studies. In this paper, we describe the systems code and present results for capital cost and COE as a function of key design variables and parameters. We show how the COE varies as a function of driver energy and pulse repetition rate for different lasers. We examine the dependence of COE on other parameters such as laser cost ($/J), laser efficiency, plant efficiency, and net power output of the plant. Finally we compare results for a plant using direct-drive central ignition targets to results with fast ignition targets and note the potential advantages of fast ignition for various assumptions.

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) is about to process High Level Waste (HLW) Sludge Batch 4 (SB4). This sludge batch is high in alumina and nepheline can crystallize readily depending on the glass composition. Large concentrations of crystallized nepheline can have an adverse effect on HLW glass durability. Several studies have been performed to study the potential for nepheline formation in SB4. The Phase 3 Nepheline Formation study of SB4 glasses examined sixteen different glasses made with four different frits. Melt rate experiments were performed by the Process Science and Engineering Section (PS&E) of the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) using the four frits from the Phase 3 work, plus additional high B2O3/high Fe2O3 frits. Preliminary results from these tests showed the potential for significant improvements in melt rate for SB4 glasses using a higher B2O3-containing frit, particularly Frit 503. The main objective of this study was to investigate the durability of SB4 glasses produced with a high B2O3 frit likely to be recommended for SB4 processing. In addition, a range of waste loadings (WLs) was selected to continue to assess the effectiveness of a nepheline discriminator in predicting concentrations of nepheline crystallization that would be sufficient to influence …