This report discusses the political situation in Afghanistan, more specifically it discusses the recent elections, newly formed constitution and the elected government.

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This report examines the statutory procedures governing covert action and associated questions to consider.

This report will describe the origin, authority, policy, and military food acquisition process.

This report is a brief overview of some selected issues related to animal agriculture that are drawn from CRS reports.

This report provides information about the Clean Air Act Issues in the 109th Congress. Air quality has substantially improved since the passage of the Air act issue in 1970.

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In 1976, Congress approved legislation to establish the regulatory framework for building a pipeline to bring natural gas from the Alaska North Slope to the lower 48 states. This report focuses on two major issues or uncertainties that may serve as economic constraints on a capital investment undertaking of this major scale.

During heavy ion operation in several particle accelerators world-wide, dynamic pressure rises of orders of magnitude were triggered by lost beam ions that bombarded the vacuum chamber walls. This ion-induced molecular desorption, observed at CERN, GSI, and BNL, can seriously limit the ion beam lifetime and intensity of the accelerator. From dedicated test stand experiments we have discovered that heavy-ion induced gas desorption scales with the electronic energy loss (dE{sub e}/dx) of the ions slowing down in matter; but it varies only little with the ion impact angle, unlike electronic sputtering.

We present a Model for simulating experiments of combustion in Shock-Dispersed-Fuel (SDF) explosions. The SDF charge consisted of a 0.5-g spherical PETN booster, surrounded by 1-g of fuel powder (flake Aluminum). Detonation of the booster charge creates a high-temperature, high-pressure source (PETN detonation products gases) that both disperses the fuel and heats it. Combustion ensues when the fuel mixes with air. The gas phase is governed by the gas-dynamic conservation laws, while the particle phase obeys the continuum mechanics laws for heterogeneous media. The two phases exchange mass, momentum and energy according to inter-phase interaction terms. The kinetics model used an empirical particle burn relation. The thermodynamic model considers the air, fuel and booster products to be of frozen composition, while the Al combustion products are assumed to be in equilibrium. The thermodynamic states were calculated by the Cheetah code; resulting state points were fit with analytic functions suitable for numerical simulations. Numerical simulations of combustion of an Aluminum SDF charge in a 6.4-liter chamber were performed. Computed pressure histories agree with measurements.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) is preparing for the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) scheduled in 2010. The NIC is comprised of several ''tuning'' physics subcampaigns leading up to a demonstration of Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) ignition. In some of these experiments, time-resolved x-ray imaging of the imploding capsule may be required to measure capsule trajectory (shock timing) or x-ray ''bang-time''. A capsule fueled with pure tritium (T) instead of a deutriun-tritium (DT) mixture is thought to offer useful physics surrogacy, with reduced yields of up to 5e14 neutrons. These measurements will require the use of the NIF streak x-ray detector (SXD). The resulting prompt neutron fluence at the planned SXD location ({approx}1.7 m from the target) would be {approx}1.4e9/cm{sup 2}. Previous measurements suggest the onset of significant background at a neutron fluence of {approx} 1e8/cm{sup 2}. The radiation damage and operational upsets which starts at {approx}1e8 rad-Si/sec must be factored into an integrated experimental campaign plan. Monte Carlo analyses were performed to predict the neutron and gamma/x-ray fluences and radiation doses for the proposed diagnostic configuration. A possible shielding configuration is proposed to mitigate radiation effects. The primary component of this shielding is an …

Efforts to predict and control laser-plasma interactions (LPI) in ignition hohlraum targets for the National Ignition Facility [G. H. Miller et al., Optical Eng. 43, 2841 (2004)] are based on plasma conditions provided by radiation hydrodynamic simulations. Recent experiments provide compelling evidence that codes such as hydra [M. M. Marinak et al., Phys. Plasmas 8, 2275 (2001)] can accurately predict the plasma conditions in laser heated targets such as gas-filled balloon (gasbag) and hohlraum platforms for studying LPI. Initially puzzling experimental observations are found to be caused by bulk hydrodynamic phenomena. Features in backscatter spectra and transmitted light spectra are reproduced from the simulated plasma conditions. Simulations also agree well with Thomson scattering measurements of the electron temperature. The calculated plasma conditions are used to explore a linear-gain based phenomenological model of backscatter. For long plasmas at ignition-relevant electron temperatures, the measured backscatter increases monotonically with gain and is consistent with linear growth for low reflectivities. These results suggest a role for linear gain postprocessing as a metric for assessing LPI risk.

The demolition of a facility historically used for processing and handling transuranic materials is considered. Residual alpha emitting radionuclide contamination poses an exposure hazard if released to the local environment during the demolition. The process of planning for the demolition of this highly alpha contaminated building, 232-Z, included a predemolition modeling analysis of potential exposures. Estimated emission rates were used as input to an air dispersion model to estimate frequencies of occurrence of peak air and surface exposures. Postdemolition modeling was also conducted, based on the actual demolition schedule and conditions. The modeling results indicated that downwind deposition is the main operational limitation for demolition of a highly alpha-contaminated building. During the demolition of 232-Z, airborne radiation and surface contamination were monitored. The resultant non-detect monitoring results indicate a significant level of conservatism in the modeled results. This comparison supports the use of more realistic assumption in the estimating emission rates. The resultant reduction in modeled levels of potential exposures has significant implications in terms of the projected costs of demolition of such structures.

The purpose of the hydraulic particle tracking animation files is to show where carbon tetrachloride that reached groundwater from the known discharge facilities would have been likely to travel fin the groundwater, and from where carbon tetrachloride presently observed in the aquifer likely would have started. These analyses support the 200-PW-1 Operable Unit activity to identify sources of carbon tetrachloride currently observed in groundwater or locations where carbon tetrachloride may have entered the groundwater. The animation files show travel paths (both forward and backward in time) for hypothetical particles of carbon tetrachloride carried in the groundwater. The travel paths represent the movement of the carbon tetrachloride at the average groundwater velocity. The particles only represent an estimation of where the carbon tetrachloride would be expected to be (or have come from) and do not indicate or imply what the concentration in the groundwater would be.

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This is final report on NA-22 project LL251DP, where the goal was to develop a novel technique, Nuclear Acoustic Resonance (NAR), for remote, non-destructive, nonradiation-based detection of materials of interest to Nonproliferation Programs, including {sup 235}U and {sup 239}Pu. In short, we have developed a magnetic shield chamber and magnetic field, develop a digital lock-in amplifier computer to integrate both the ultrasound radiation with the detector, developed strain measurements, and begun to perform initial measurements to obtain a NAR signal from aluminum at room temperature and near the earth's magnetic field. Since our funding was cut in FY06, I will discuss where this project can go in the future with this technology.

This cleanup verification package documents completion of remedial action for the 118-F-7, 100-F Miscellaneous Hardware Storage Vault. The site consisted of an inactive solid waste storage vault used for temporary storage of slightly contaminated reactor parts that could be recovered and reused for the 100-F Area reactor operations.

The twin Higgs mechanism was proposed recently to solve the little hierarchy problem. We study the implementation of the twin Higgs mechanism in left-right models. At the TeV scale, heavy quark and gauge bosonsappear, with rich collider phenomenology. In addition, there are extra Higgs bosons, some of which couple to both the standard model fermion sector and the gauge sector, while others couple to the gauge bosons only. We present the particle spectrum and study the general features of the collider phenomenology of this class of model at the Large Hadron Collider.