Korea:  U.S.-Korean Relations--Issues for Congress (open access)

Korea: U.S.-Korean Relations--Issues for Congress

None
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Niksch, Larry A.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Export Administration Act: Evolution, Provisions, and Debate (open access)

The Export Administration Act: Evolution, Provisions, and Debate

This paper discusses the Export Administration Act in terms of its evolution in the 20th century, its major features including the types of controls authorized by the act, the Commerce Control List and export licensing procedures, and issues concerning the maintenance of export controls under IEEPA. It then highlights several controlled commodities that have been featured prominently in export control discussions. Finally, it discusses competing business and national security perspectives concerning several of more contentious themes in the export control debate: the controllability of technology, the effectiveness of multilateral control regimes, the organization of the export control system, and the impact of export controls on the U.S. economy and business.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Fergusson, Ian F.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Korea: U.S.-Korean Relations -- Issues for Congress (open access)

Korea: U.S.-Korean Relations -- Issues for Congress

North Korea's decision in December 2002 to restart nuclear installations at Yongbyon that were shut down under the U.S.-North Korean Agreed Framework of 1994 and its announced withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty create an acute foreign policy problem for the United States. The Bush Administration maintains that North Korea must do certain things, such as the dismantling of both its plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU) programs, as well as the institution of financial sanctions at foreign banks and companies that cooperate with North Korea in international illegal activities. Differences have emerged between the Bush Administration and South Korea over policies toward North Korea; South Korea has become critical of the Bush Administration's policies and the U.S. military presence. South Korea emphasizes bilateral reconciliation with North Korea, anti-U.S. demonstrations erupted in 2002, and Roh Moo-hyun was elected President after criticizing the United States.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Niksch, Larry A.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Export Administration Act: Evolution, Provisions, and Debate (open access)

The Export Administration Act: Evolution, Provisions, and Debate

The 109th Congress may consider legislation to renew and to reauthorize the Export Administration Act (EAA). Said legislation would revise the EAA, especially in the areas of penalties, enforcement, and U.S. policy towards multilateral export control regimes. Through the EAA, Congress delegates to the executive branch its express constitutional authority to regulate foreign commerce by controlling exports. EAA confers upon the President the power to control exports for national security, foreign policy or short supply purposes. Conflicting views on the liberalization of export administration controls, especially concerning particular exports such as high performance computers, encryption technology, stealth materials, satellites, machine tools, "hot-section" aerospace technology, and the issue of "deemed exports."
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Fergusson, Ian F.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
NOAA: Next Steps to Strengthen Its Acquisition Function (open access)

NOAA: Next Steps to Strengthen Its Acquisition Function

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) accounts for about half of the Department of Commerce's (Commerce) acquisition spending, over $851 million in fiscal year 2005 alone. In recent years however, NOAA has experienced instances of poor contract management. GAO was asked to determine if NOAA is positioned to effectively carry out its acquisition function. Specifically, GAO assessed the extent to which NOAA has structured an acquisition organization that provides appropriate oversight; established policies and processes that promote, among other things, a knowledge-based acquisition process for development and production of complex systems; and planned and managed its contracting workforce to address future retirement challenges."
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Clean Water: Better Information and Targeted Prevention Efforts Could Enhance Spill Management in the St. Clair-Detroit River Corridor (open access)

Clean Water: Better Information and Targeted Prevention Efforts Could Enhance Spill Management in the St. Clair-Detroit River Corridor

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Spills of oil and hazardous substances in the St. Clair-Detroit River corridor have degraded this border area between the United States and Canada and are a potential threat to local drinking water supplies. Within the United States such spills are reported to the National Response Center (NRC), and in Canada to the Ontario Spills Action Centre. This report discusses (1) how many oil and hazardous substance spills greater than 50 gallons (or of an unknown volume) were reported in the corridor from 1994 to 2004, and how accurately reported spills reflect the extent of actual spills; (2) what processes are used to notify parties of spills, and if they contain explicit requirements for reporting times and spill magnitude; and (3) the extent of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Coast Guard's spill prevention efforts and enforcement activities in the corridor from 1994 to 2004."
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Payday Loans: Federal Regulatory Initiatives (open access)

Payday Loans: Federal Regulatory Initiatives

None
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: unknown
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
AIDS: The Ryan White CARE Act (open access)

AIDS: The Ryan White CARE Act

This report discusses the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act, which makes federal funds available to metropolitan areas and states to assist in health care costs and support services for individuals and families affected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) or acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS). This report discusses related legislation and appropriations.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Johnson, Judith A. & Morgan, Paulette C.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S. Policy (open access)

Ukraine: Current Issues and U.S. Policy

None
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: unknown
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Foreign Aid: Understanding Data Used to Compare Donors (open access)

Foreign Aid: Understanding Data Used to Compare Donors

This report explains differences and discusses other issues to the debate over how much wealthy countries contribute to international development and what share U.S. resources represent.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Nowels, Larry
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Legislative Branch: FY2007 Appropriations (open access)

Legislative Branch: FY2007 Appropriations

None
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: unknown
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Heritage Areas: Background, Proposals, and Current Issues (open access)

Heritage Areas: Background, Proposals, and Current Issues

This report focuses on heritage areas designated by Congress, and related issues and legislation.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Vincent, Carol Hardy & Whiteman, David L.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Changing Demographic Profile of the United States (open access)

The Changing Demographic Profile of the United States

This report provides an overview of the changing demographic profile of the United States.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Shrestha, Laura B.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Lobbying and Related Reform Proposals: Consideration of Selected Measures, 109th Congress (open access)

Lobbying and Related Reform Proposals: Consideration of Selected Measures, 109th Congress

None
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: unknown
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
The H II Region of a Primordial Star (open access)

The H II Region of a Primordial Star

The concordance model of cosmology and structure formation predicts the formation of isolated very massive stars at high redshifts in dark matter dominated halos of 10{sup 5} to 10{sup 6} Msun. These stars photo-ionize their host primordial molecular clouds, expelling all the baryons from their halos. When the stars die, a relic H II region is formed within which large amounts of molecular hydrogen form which will allow the gas to cool efficiently when gravity assembles it into larger dark matter halos. The filaments surrounding the first star hosting halo are largely shielded and provide the pathway for gas to stream into the halo when the star has died. We present the first fully three dimensional cosmological radiation hydrodynamical simulations that follow all these effects. A novel adaptive ray casting technique incorporates the time dependent radiative transfer around point sources. This approach is fast enough so that radiation transport, kinetic rate equations, and hydrodynamics are solved self-consistently. It retains the time derivative of the transfer equation and is explicitly photon conserving. This method is integrated with the cosmological adaptive mesh refinement code enzo, and runs on distributed and shared memory parallel architectures. Where applicable the three dimensional calculation not only …
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Abel, Tom; Wise, John H.; /KIPAC, Menlo Park; Bryan, Greg L. & /Columbia U., Astron. Astrophys.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Quarkonium and Charm Hadrons: New Results on Spectroscopy in BaBar (open access)

Quarkonium and Charm Hadrons: New Results on Spectroscopy in BaBar

We report on recent results in spectroscopy from BABAR. This includes the discovery of a new {Lambda}{sub c} baryon, detailed studies of the D*{sub sJ}(2317){sup +}, D{sub sJ}(2460){sup +}, X(3872) and Y(4260) particles and the first measurement of hadronic non-B{bar B} decays of the {Upsilon}(4S) meson.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Gowdy, S.J.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Ensuring the Sustainability of Russian Federation National Nuclear Material Accounting System (open access)

Ensuring the Sustainability of Russian Federation National Nuclear Material Accounting System

The Federal Nuclear Material Control and Accounting Information System (FIS) is the national information source on nuclear material accounting of the Russian Federation (RF). RF regulations mandated the creation of a national nuclear material accounting system to be managed by Federal Agency For Atomic Energy (Rosatom), and for the past decade, the FIS has been developed for all organizations required to report to Rosatom. The system represents a successful integration of U.S. financial support and consulting with Russian vision and technical expertise, creating a viable national nuclear material accounting system. This paper discusses crucial elements to ensure Sustainability of the FIS. A long-term plan for operation and maintenance of the information system is critical to a sustainable national accounting system. Plans undertaken throughout the FIS Project lifecycle have supported the necessary elements to ensure success. Through the next two years, long-term planning will be reevaluated and the successful elements and new initiatives will become part of an overall Operations Management Program. FIS resource needs will be managed through prioritization and ranking for each Program element, including: system operation; revising and implementing supporting regulations; establishing monitoring and control mechanisms to ensure validity of the data reported; maintaining and improving communication channels; …
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Pitel, V. A.; Kasumova, L. A.; Kushnaryov, M. S. & Babcock, R. A.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Silica Extraction at Mammoth Lakes, California (open access)

Silica Extraction at Mammoth Lakes, California

The purpose of this project is to develop a cost-effective method to extract marketable silica (SiO{sub 2}) from fluids at the Mammoth Lakes, California geothermal power plant. Silica provides an additional revenue source for the geothermal power industry and therefore lowers the costs of geothermal power production. The use of this type of ''solution mining'' to extract resources eliminates the need for acquiring these resources through energy intensive and environmentally damaging mining technologies. We have demonstrated that both precipitated and colloidal silica can be produced from the geothermal fluids at Mammoth Lakes by first concentrating the silica to over 600 ppm using reverse osmosis (RO). The RO permeate can be used in evaporative cooling at the plant; the RO concentrate is used for silica and potentially other resource extraction (Li, Cs, Rb). Preliminary results suggest that silica recovery at Mammoth Lakes could reduce the cost of geothermal electricity production by 1.0 cents/kWh.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Bourcier, W; Ralph, W; Johnson, M; Bruton, C & Gutierrez, P
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
LLNL Capabilities in Underground Coal Gasification (open access)

LLNL Capabilities in Underground Coal Gasification

Underground coal gasification (UCG) has received renewed interest as a potential technology for producing hydrogen at a competitive price particularly in Europe and China. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) played a leading role in this field and continues to do so. It conducted UCG field tests in the nineteen-seventies and -eighties resulting in a number of publications culminating in a UCG model published in 1989. LLNL successfully employed the ''Controlled Retraction Injection Point'' (CRIP) method in some of the Rocky Mountain field tests near Hanna, Wyoming. This method, shown schematically in Fig.1, uses a horizontally-drilled lined injection well where the lining can be penetrated at different locations for injection of the O{sub 2}/steam mixture. The cavity in the coal seam therefore gets longer as the injection point is retracted as well as wider due to reaction of the coal wall with the hot gases. Rubble generated from the collapsing wall is an important mechanism studied by Britten and Thorsness.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Friedmann, S J; Burton, E & Upadhye, R
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
A Family of Zinc Finger Proteins Is Required forChromosome-specific Pairing and Synapsis during Meiosis in C.elegans (open access)

A Family of Zinc Finger Proteins Is Required forChromosome-specific Pairing and Synapsis during Meiosis in C.elegans

Homologous chromosome pairing and synapsis are prerequisitefor accurate chromosome segregation during meiosis. Here, we show that afamily of four related C2H2 zinc-finger proteins plays a central role inthese events in C. elegans. These proteins are encoded within a tandemgene cluster. In addition to the X-specific HIM-8 protein, threeadditional paralogs collectively mediate the behavior of the fiveautosomes. Each chromosome relies on a specific member of the family topair and synapse with its homolog. These "ZIM" proteins concentrate atspecial regions called meiotic pairing centers on the correspondingchromosomes. These sites are dispersed along the nuclear envelope duringearly meiotic prophase, suggesting a role analogous to thetelomere-mediated meiotic bouquet in other organisms. To gain insightinto the evolution of these components, wecharacterized homologs in C.briggsae and C. remanei, which revealed changes in copy number of thisgene family within the nematode lineage.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Phillips, Carolyn M. & Dernburg, Abby F.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Radiative cooling of laser ablated vapor plumes: experimental andtheoretical analyses (open access)

Radiative cooling of laser ablated vapor plumes: experimental andtheoretical analyses

None
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Wen, Sy-Bor; Mao, Xianglei; Grief, Ralph & Russo, Richard E.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Integrated modeling and field study of potential mechanisms forinduced seismicity at The Geysers Goethermal Field, California (open access)

Integrated modeling and field study of potential mechanisms forinduced seismicity at The Geysers Goethermal Field, California

In this paper, we present progress made in a study aimed atincreasing the understanding of the relative contributions of differentmechanisms that may be causing the seismicity occurring at The Geysersgeothermal field, California. The approach we take is to integrate: (1)coupled reservoir geomechanical numerical modeling, (2) data fromrecently upgraded and expanded NCPA/Calpine/LBNL seismic arrays, and (3)tens of years of archival InSAR data from monthly satellite passes. Wehave conducted a coupled reservoir geomechanical analysis to studypotential mechanisms induced by steam production. Our simulation resultscorroborate co-locations of hypocenter field observations of inducedseismicity and their correlation with steam production as reported in theliterature. Seismic and InSAR data are being collected and processed foruse in constraining the coupled reservoir geomechanicalmodel.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Rutqvist, Jonny; Majer, Ernie; Oldenburg, Curt; Peterson, John & Vasco, Don
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Shock Desensitization Effect in the STANAG 4363 Confined Explosive Component Water Gap Test (open access)

Shock Desensitization Effect in the STANAG 4363 Confined Explosive Component Water Gap Test

The Explosive Component Water Gap Test (ECWGT) in the Stanag 4363 has been recently investigated to assess the shock sensitivity of lead and booster components having a diameter less than 5 mm. For that purpose, Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN) based pellets having a height and diameter of 3 mm have been confined by a steel annulus of wall thickness 1-3.5 mm and with the same height as the pellet. 1-mm wall thickness makes the component more sensitive (larger gap). As the wall thickness is increased to 2-mm, the gap increases a lesser amount, but when the wall thickness is increased to 3.5-mm a decrease in sensitivity is observed (smaller gap). This decrease of the water gap has been reproduced experimentally by many nations. Numerical simulations using Ignition and Growth model have been performed in this paper and have reproduced the experimental results for the steel confinement up to 2 mm thick and aluminum confinement. A stronger re-shock following the first input shock from the water is focusing on the axis due to the confinement. The double shock configuration is well-known to lead in some cases to shock desensitization.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Lefrancois, A. S.; Lee, R. S. & Tarver, C. M.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Silica Extraction at the Mammoth Lakes Geothermal Site (open access)

Silica Extraction at the Mammoth Lakes Geothermal Site

The purpose of this project is to develop a cost-effective method to extract marketable silica (SiO{sub 2}) from fluids at the Mammoth Lakes, California geothermal power plant. Marketable silica provides an additional revenue source for the geothermal power industry and therefore lowers the costs of geothermal power production. The use of this type of ''solution mining'' to extract resources from geothermal fluids eliminates the need for acquiring these resources through energy intensive and environmentally damaging mining technologies. We have demonstrated that both precipitated and colloidal silica can be produced from the geothermal fluids at Mammoth Lakes by first concentrating the silica to over 600 ppm using reverse osmosis (RO). The RO permeate can be used in evaporative cooling at the plant; the RO concentrate is used for silica and potentially other (Li, Cs, Rb) resource extraction. Preliminary results suggest that silica recovery at Mammoth Lakes could reduce the cost of geothermal electricity production by 1.0 cents/kWh.
Date: June 7, 2006
Creator: Bourcier, W; Ralph, W; Johnson, M; Bruton, C & Gutierrez, P
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library