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Since September 11, 2001, several bills introduced in the U.S. Congress have included provisions to assist emergency communications. Key provisions from a number of these bills have become law. This report summarizes progress in developing legislation, especially in the 109th Congress, in three areas of emergency communications: communications among first responders and other emergency personnel; emergency warnings and alerts; and 911 call centers and systems. Each area could be the subject of further consideration in the 110th Congress, through oversight, additional legislation, or funding.

This report explores the reasons behind government funding of research and development and subsequent efforts to facilitate private sector commercialization of the results of such work.

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This report provides an overview of some of the goals and provisions of the Indian Child Welfare Act.

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This report discusses Legal Authorizations and Restrictions related to Border Security and Military Support.

This report provides background on Convention developments, including U.S. policy and Congressional actions, and considers arguments for and against ratification.

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This report discusses the continuing resolution, or CR (P.L. 109-383, H.J.Res. 102) which provides spending at FY2006 levels (through February 15, 2007), for those agencies lacking enacted FY2007 appropriations bills.

Pu(Am) is stable in the fcc {delta}-phase from a few atomic percent to nearly 80 atomic percent Am, expanding the average interatomic separation as the alloy concentration of Am increases. Both Pu and Am spontaneously decay by {alpha}-emission creating self-damage in the lattice in the form of vacancy-interstitial pairs and their aggregates. At sufficiently low temperatures, the damage is frozen in place, but can be removed by thermal annealing at sufficiently high temperatures, effectively resetting the system to an undamaged condition. The magnetic susceptibility and magnetization are observed to increase systematically as a function of accumulated damage in the fcc {delta}-Pu{sub 1-x}Am{sub x} (x=0.224). Some results of these observations are reported here.

The objective of this study was to explore new ways to create nanostructured electrodes for rechargeable lithium batteries. Of particular interests are unique nanostructures created by electrochemical deposition, etching and combustion chemical vapor deposition (CCVD). Three-dimensional nanoporous Cu6Sn5 alloy has been successfully prepared using an electrochemical co-deposition process. The walls of the foam structure are highly-porous and consist of numerous small grains. This represents a novel way of creating porous structures that allow not only fast transport of gas and liquid but also rapid electrochemical reactions due to high surface area. The Cu6Sn5 samples display a reversible capacity of {approx}400 mAhg-1. Furthermore, these materials exhibit superior rate capability. At a current drain of 10 mA/cm2(20C rate), the obtainable capacity was more than 50% of the capacity at 0.5 mA/cm2 (1C rate). Highly open and porous SnO2 thin films with columnar structure were obtained on Si/SiO2/Au substrates by CCVD. The thickness was readily controlled by the deposition time, varying from 1 to 5 microns. The columnar grains were covered by nanoparticles less than 20 nm. These thin film electrodes exhibited substantially high specific capacity. The reversible specific capacity of {approx}3.3 mAH/cm2 was demonstrated for up to 80 cycles at a charge/discharge …

A neutron irradiation facility is being developed at the88-Inch Cyclotron at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for thepurposes of measuring neutron reaction cross sections on radioactivetargets and for radiation effects testing. Applications are of benefit tostockpile stewardship, nuclear astrophysics, next generation advancedfuel reactors, and cosmic radiation biology and electronics in space. Thefacility will supply a tunable, quasi-monoenergetic neutron beam in therange of 10-30 MeV or a white neutron source, produced by deuteronbreakup reactions on thin and thick targets, respectively. Because thedeuteron breakup reaction has not been well studied at intermediateincident deuteron energies, above the target Coulomb barrier and below 56MeV, a detailed characterization was necessary of the neutron spectraproduced by thin targets.Neutron time of flight (TOF) methods have beenused to measure the neutron spectra produced on thin targets of low-Z(titanium) and high-Z (tantalum) materials at incident deuteron energiesof 20 MeV and 29 MeV at 0 deg. Breakup neutrons at both energies fromlow-Z targets appear to peak at roughly half of the available kineticenergy, while neutrons from high-Z interactions peak somewhat lower inenergy, owing to the increased proton energy due to breakup within theCoulomb field. Furthermore, neutron spectra appear narrower for high-Ztargets. These centroids are consistent with recent preliminary protonenergy measurements using …

Indonesia has participated in cooperative technical programs with the IAEA since 1957, and has cooperated with regional partners in all of the traditional areas where nuclear science is employed: in medicine, public health (such as insect control and eradication programs), agriculture (e.g. development of improved varieties of rice), and the gas and oil industries. Recently, Indonesia has contributed significantly to the Reduced Enrichment Research and Training Reactor (RERTR) Program by conducting experiments to confirm the feasibility of Mo-99 production using high-density low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, a primary goal of the RERTR Program. Indonesia's first research reactor, the TRIGA Mark II at Bandung, began operation in 1964 at 250 kW and was subsequently upgraded in 1971 to 1 MW and further upgraded in 2000 to 2 MW. This reactor was joined by another TRIGA Mark II, the 100-kW Kartini-PPNY at Yogyakarta, in 1979, and by the 30-MW G.A. Siwabessy multipurpose reactor in Serpong, which achieved criticality in July 1983. A 10-MW radioisotope production reactor, to be called the RPI-10, also was proposed for construction at Serpong in the late 1990s, but the project apparently was not carried out. In the five decades since its nuclear research program began, Indonesia has …

''Legacy Management Requires Information'' describes the goal(s) of the US Department of Energy's Office of Legacy Management (LM) relative to maintaining critical records and the way those goals are being addressed at Hanford. The paper discusses the current practices for document control, as well as the use of modern databases for both storing and accessing the data to support cleanup decisions. In addition to the information goals of LM, the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order, known as the ''Tri-Party Agreement'' (TPA) is one of the main drivers in documentation and data management. The TPA, which specifies discrete milestones for cleaning up the Hanford Site, is a legally binding agreement among the US Department of Energy (DOE), the Washington State Department of Ecology (Ecology), and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The TPA requires that DOE provide the lead regulatory agency with the results of analytical laboratory and non-laboratory tests/readings to help guide them in making decisions. The Agreement also calls for each signatory to preserve--for at least ten years after the Agreement has ended--all of the records in its or its contractors, possession related to sampling, analysis, investigations, and monitoring conducted. The tools used at Hanford to meet …

Vietnam's nuclear program began in the 1960s with the installation at Dalat of a 250 kW TRIGA Mk-II research reactor under the U.S. Atoms for Peace Program. The reactor was shut down and its core removed only a few years later, and the nuclear research program was suspended until after the end of the civil war in the late 1970s. The Soviet Union assisted Vietnam in restoring the Dalat reactor to an operational status in 1984, trained a cadre of scientific and technical staff in its operation, and contributed to the development of nuclear science for the medical and agricultural sectors. In the agricultural area in particular, Vietnamese experts have been very successful in developing mutant strains of rice, and continue to work with the IAEA to yield strains that have a shorter growing period, increased resistance to disease, and other desirable characteristics. Rice has always been the main crop in Vietnam, but technical cooperation with the IAEA and other states has enabled the country to become one of the top rice producers in the world, exporting much of its annual crop to over two dozen countries annually. More recently, Vietnam's government has shown increasing interest in developing a civil …

The Malaysian Deputy Prime Minister Tun Dr Ismail Abdul Rahman suggested in the early 1970s that Malaysia should have a role in the development of nuclear science and technology for peaceful purposes. Accordingly, the Center for the Application of Nuclear Energy (CRANE) was established, with a focus on the development of a scientific and technical pool critical to a national nuclear power program. The Malaysian Cabinet next established the Tun Ismail Atomic Research Center (TIARC) under the Ministry of Science, Technology and the Environment on 19 September 1972, at a site in Bangi, about 35 km south of Kuala Lampur. On 28 June 1982, the PUSPATI reactor, a 1-MW TRIGA MK-II research reactor, first reached criticality. On 10 August 1994, TIARC was officially renamed as the Malaysian Institute for Nuclear Technology Research (MINT). In addition to radioisotope production and neutron radiography conducted at the PUSPATI research reactor, MINT also supports numerous programs employing nuclear technology for medicine, agriculture and industry, and has been involved in both bilateral and multilateral technical cooperation to extend its capabilities. As an energy exporting country, Malaysia has felt little incentive to develop a nuclear energy program, and high level opposition within the government discouraged it …

This paper presents a novel method for determining the probability that a supernova candidate belongs to a known supernova type (such as Ia, Ibc, IIL, etc.), using its photometric information alone. It is validated with Monte Carlo, and both space- and ground-based data. We examine the application of the method to well-sampled as well as poorly sampled supernova light curves and investigate to what extent the best currently available supernova models can be used for typing supernova candidates. Central to the method is the assumption that a supernova candidate belongs to a group of objects that can be modeled; we therefore discuss possible ways of removing anomalous or less well understood events from the sample. This method is particularly advantageous for analyses where the purity of the supernova sample is of the essence, or for those where it is important to know the number of the supernova candidates of a certain type (e.g., in supernova rate studies).

A novel parallel kinetic Monte Carlo (kMC) algorithm formulated on the basis of perfect time synchronicity is presented. The algorithm provides an exact generalization of any standard serial kMC model and is trivially implemented in parallel architectures. We demonstrate the mathematical validity and parallel performance of the method by solving several well-understood problems in diffusion.