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From late 2004 through early 2005, a combination of intensified international pressure and deadlines associated with Euro- Atlantic integration processes prompted a spate of transfers of indicted persons to the tribunal. Full cooperation with ICTY is a key prerequisite to further progress toward a shared long-term goal for the western Balkan countries: closer association with and eventual membership in the European Union (EU) and NATO. As of March 2006, six persons indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) remained at large, including wartime Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In April 2005, GAO reported on factors affecting the timely production of up-armored high-mobility multi-purpose wheeled vehicles (HMMWV) and add-on armor kits for HMMWVs, as well as other items critically needed by deployed forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Due to high interest by Congress and the public regarding vehicle armor, GAO initiated this subsequent engagement to examine issues affecting the production and installation of armor for medium and heavy trucks. The objectives were to (1) determine the extent to which truck armor was produced and installed to meet identified requirements, (2) identify what factors affected the time to provide truck armor, and (3) identify what actions the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Army have taken to improve the timely availability of truck armor. To address these objectives, GAO collected and analyzed supply data for medium and heavy tactical trucks used by Army forces."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Preventing radioactive material from being smuggled into the United States is a key national security objective. To help address this threat, in October 2002, DHS began deploying radiation detection equipment at U.S. ports-of-entry. This report reviews recent progress DHS has made (1) deploying radiation detection equipment, (2) using radiation detection equipment, (3) improving the capabilities and testing of this equipment, and (4) increasing cooperation between DHS and other federal agencies in conducting radiation detection programs."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government is placing greater emphasis on thinning vegetation on public lands to reduce the risk of wildland fire. To help defray the cost of thinning efforts, it also is seeking to stimulate a market for the resulting material, including the smaller trees, limbs, and brush--referred to as woody biomass--that traditionally have had little or no commercial value. As GAO has reported in the past, the increased use of woody biomass faces obstacles, including the high cost of harvesting and transporting it and an unpredictable supply in some locations. Nevertheless, some entities, such as schools and businesses, are utilizing the material, potentially offering insights for broadening its use. GAO agreed to (1) identify key factors facilitating the use of woody biomass among selected users, (2) identify challenges these users have faced in using woody biomass, and (3) discuss any insights that these findings may offer for promoting greater use of woody biomass. In responding to a draft of this report, the Departments of Agriculture, Energy, and the Interior all generally agreed with GAO's findings."

This report examines the probation system and reforms debated during the 79th Legislature.

This report provides a concise historical account of the dispute over softwood lumber imports from Canada, summarizes the subsidy and injury evidence, and discusses current issues and events.

Federal farm support, food assistance, agricultural trade, marketing, and rural development policies are governed by a variety of separate laws. Many of these laws periodically have been evaluated, revised, and renewed through an omnibus, multi-year farm bill. This report discusses the "farm bill" and it's components.

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We calculate centrifugal force for a short bunch in vacuum moving in a circular orbit and estimate the emittance growth of the beam in a bend due to this force. Many of the basic features of the coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR) of short bunches and its effect on beam dynamics in accelerators are now well established. The effect is usually described in terms of the longitudinal force, or wakefield, that causes the energy loss in the beam, and also redistributes the energy between the particles by accelerating the head and decelerating the tail of the bunch. Coherent radiation becomes most important for short bunches and high currents. More subtle features of CSR such as transition effect due to the entrance to and exit from the bend, CSR force in the undulator, and shielding due to the close metallic boundaries have been also studied. Much less is known about the transverse force in a short bunch moving on a circular orbit. The problem has been treated in several papers beginning from R. Talman's work, who pointed out that the centrifugal force of a rotating bunch can result in a noticeable tune shift of betatron oscillations. Later, an important correction to the …

This report describes information that has been gathered about impacts of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities and on ongoing efforts to assess damages and needs to repair and reconstruct damaged systems.

In support of the HB-Line Engineering agitator mixing project, flow pattern calculations have been made for a 90{sup o} apart and helical pitch agitator submerged in a flat tank containing dissolver baskets. The work is intended to determine maximum agitator speed to keep the dissolver baskets from contacting the agitator for the nominal tank liquid level. The analysis model was based on one dissolver basket located on the bottom surface of the flat tank for a conservative estimate. The modeling results will help determine acceptable agitator speeds and tank liquid levels to ensure that the dissolver basket is kept from contacting the agitator blade during HB-Line dissolver tank operations. The numerical modeling and calculations have been performed using a computational fluid dynamics approach. Three-dimensional steady-state momentum and continuity equations were used as the basic equations to estimate fluid motion driven by an agitator with four 90{sup o} pitched blades or three flat blades. Hydraulic conditions were fully turbulent (Reynolds number about 1 x 10{sup 5}). A standard two-equation turbulence model ({kappa},{var_epsilon}), was used to capture turbulent eddy motion. The commercial finite volume code, Fluent [5], was used to create a prototypic geometry file with a non-orthogonal mesh. Hybrid meshing was …

The research and development programs in support of the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) and other high level waste vitrification processes require the use of both nonradioactive waste simulants and actual waste samples. The nonradioactive waste simulants have been used for laboratory testing, pilot-scale testing and full-scale integrated facility testing. Recent efforts have focused on matching the physical properties of actual sludge. These waste simulants were designed to reproduce the chemical and, if possible, the physical properties of the actual high level waste. This technical report documents a study of simulant production methods for high level waste simulated sludge and their impact on the physical properties of the resultant SRAT product. The sludge simulants used in support of DWPF have been based on average waste compositions and on expected or actual batch compositions. These sludge simulants were created to primarily match the chemical properties of the actual waste. These sludges were produced by generating manganese dioxide, MnO{sub 2}, from permanganate ion (MnO{sub 4}{sup -}) and manganous nitrate, precipitating ferric nitrate and nickel nitrate with sodium hydroxide, washing with inhibited water and then addition of other waste species. While these simulated sludges provided a good match for chemical reaction studies, they …

This paper discusses the use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods to understand and characterize erosion of the floor and internal structures in the slurry mixing vessels in the Defense Waste Processing Facility. An initial literature survey helped identify the principal drivers of erosion for a solids laden fluid: the solids content of the working fluid, the regions of recirculation and particle impact with the walls, and the regions of high wall shear. A series of CFD analyses was performed to characterize slurry-flow profiles, wall shear, and particle impingement distributions in key components such as coil restraints and the vessel floor. The calculations showed that the primary locations of high erosion resulting from abrasion were at the leading edge of the coil guide, the tank floor below the insert plate of the coil guide support, and the upstream lead-in plate. These modeling results based on the calculated high shear regions were in excellent agreement with the observed erosion sites in both location and the degree of erosion. Loss of the leading edge of the coil guide due to the erosion damage during the slurry mixing operation did not affect the erosion patterns on the tank floor. Calculations for a lower …

The thrust of this research was to identify and understand current limiting mechanisms (CLMs) that limit the current carrying capacity of (Bi,Pb)2Sr2Ca2Cu3Ox (2223) in Ag-sheathed wire. Our program concentrated on developing new methods to identify CLMs at the micrometer scale and new processing techniques to eliminate CLMs. All of the DOE Superconductivity Partnership Initiative (SPI) programs are using 2223 wire, so increasing the critical current density (Jc) in the wire can improve the technical performance of the demonstration projects, and at the same time it can decrease the cost of the wire. The important cost metric for superconducting wire is $/kAm, so increasing Jc, which is in the denominator, decreases the wire cost. The obvious CLMs were micrometer size obstacles in the 2223 ceramic that block current flow, including: misaligned grains, cracks, pores, and nonsuperconducting phases. Pores and cracks - regions where there is no superconductor or the grains are not physically connected to one another ? cannot carry supercurrent, so they were the first CLMs we tried to eliminate with improved processing. Prior to the contract, we had started investigating overpressure (OP) processing with Williams at ORNL to heal cracks and remove pores. OP processing, which is a variant …

Assessing the performance of the proposed high-level radioactive waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, requires an understanding of the chemistry of the water that moves through the host rock. The uniaxial compression method used to extract pore water from samples of tuffaceous borehole core was successful only for nonwelded tuff. An ultracentrifugation method was adopted to extract pore water from samples of the densely welded tuff of the proposed repository horizon. Tests were performed using both methods to determine the efficiency of pore water extraction and the potential effects on pore water chemistry. Test results indicate that uniaxial compression is most efficient for extracting pore water from nonwelded tuff, while ultracentrifugation is more successful in extracting pore water from densely welded tuff. Pore water splits taken from a single nonwelded tuff core during uniaxial compression tests have shown changes in pore water chemistry with increasing pressure for calcium, chloride, sulfate, and nitrate, while the chemistry of pore water splits from welded and nonwelded tuffs using ultracentrifugation indicates that there is no significant fractionation of solutes.

B mesons are unique among well-established non-quarkonium mesons in their ability to decay into baryons. Baryonic B decays offer a wide range of interesting areas of study: they can be used to test our theoretical understanding of rare decay processes involving baryons, search for direct CP violation and study low-energy QCD. This thesis presents measurements of branching fractions and a study of the decay dynamics of the charmless three-body decays of B meson into p{bar p}h final states, where h = {pi}{sup +}, K{sup +}, K{sub S}{sup 0}, K*{sup 0} or K*{sup +}. With a sample of 232 million {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} events collected with the BaBar detector, we report the first observation of the B {yields} p{bar p}K*{sup 0} decay, and provide improved measurements of branching fractions of the other modes. The distribution of the three final-state particles is of particular interest since it provides dynamical information on the possible presence of exotic intermediate states such as the hypothetical pentaquark states {Theta}*{sup ++} and {Theta}{sup +}in the m{sub pK{sup +}} and m{sub pK{sub S}{sup 0}} spectra, respectively, or glueball states (such as the tensor glueball f{sub J}(2220)) in the m{sub p{bar p}} spectrum. No evidence for exotic states …

A non-technical introduction to the design of web sites for archives based on the experiences of the SLAC Archives and History Office in designing and redesigning its own web site.

Theoretical and computational research results on several aspects of porous media transport are reviewed.

We demonstrate a triggerable continuum source based on a modulated DFB laser. Such a source eliminates the need to synchronize a mode-locked-laser with an incoming signal in applications such as spectroscopy and wideband signal processing.

A controller for the third generation, 6 degree-of-freedom (DOF) piezoelectric translation stage shown in Figure 1 is presented. This was tested by monitoring all six coordinate motions using an orthogonal array of six, high-resolution capacitance gages. The full 6 DOF matrix transformations and controller block diagrams for this system have been measured and the system operated under closed loop control. Results of early experiments to determine the 21 open loop response functions as well as preliminary results showing the closed loop response for the 3 linear translations are presented in this abstract. The ultimate goal of this project is to incorporate this 6 DOF stage within a long range X-Y scanning system for nanometer pick-and-place capability over an area of 50 x 50 mm. The control strategy and early results from this system will be presented.

Spontaneous mixing of materials at unstably stratified interfaces occurs in a wide variety of atmospheric, oceanic, geophysical and astrophysical flows. The Rayleigh-Taylor instability, in particular, plays key roles in the death of stars, planet formation and the quest for controlled thermonuclear fusion. Despite its ubiquity, fundamental questions regarding Rayleigh-Taylor instability persist. Among such questions are: Does the flow forget its initial conditions? Is the flow self-similar? What is the value of the scaling constant? How does mixing influence the growth rate? Here we show results from a 3072{sup 3} grid-point Direct Numerical Simulation in an attempt to answer these and other questions. The data indicate that the scaling constant cannot be found by fitting a curve to the width of the mixing region (as is common practice) but can only be accurately obtained by recourse to the similarity equation for the growth rate. The data further establish that the ratio of kinetic energy to released potential energy is not constant, as has heretofore been assumed. The simulated flow reaches a Reynolds number of 32,000, far exceeding that of all previous simulations. The latter stages of the simulation reveal a weak Reynolds number dependence, which may have profound consequences for modeling …