On April 10, 1995, President Clinton signed P.L. 104-6, which contained a provision that rescinds the Federal air quality implementation plan (FIP) for the South Coast, Ventura, and Sacramento areas of California.(1) As a result, the FIP issued by EPA has no further force and effect, and California will continue pursuing approval of its own State implementation plan (SIP) in lieu of the FIP. Promulgation of the FIP was perceived by some within the State as having a detrimental effect on California's industries and economy resulting from costly and burdensome air pollution control measures contained in the plan.

This report discusses the broad-ranging provisions in Title IV of The Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (P.L. 101-549), which raise myriad implementation issues, particularly with respect to the system of tradable "allowances."

This report summarizes the fact that northern right whale is the most endangered among all the whale species. The National Marine Fisheries Service is taking extra measures to protect these whales from any negative human interactions.

This report will provide an overview of some of the more common legal, procedural and practical issues, questions, and problems that committees have faced in the course of an investigation. Following a summary of the case law developing the scope and limitations of the power of inquiry, the essential tools of investigative oversight--subpoenas, staff interviews and depositions, grants of immunity, and the contempt power -- are described. Next, some of the special problems of investigating the executive are detailed, with particular emphasis on claims of presidential executive privilege, the problems raised by attempts to access information with respect to open or closed civil or criminal investigative matters, or to obtain information that is part of the agency deliberative process, and the effect on congressional access of statutory prohibitions on public disclosure. The discussion then focuses on various procedural and legal requirements that accompany the preparation for, and conduct of, an investigative hearing, including matters concerning jurisdiction, particular rules and requirements for the conduct of such proceedings, and the nature, applicability and scope of certain constitutional and common law testimonial privileges that may be claimed by witnesses. The case law and practice respecting the rights of minority party members during the …

This report discusses protocols and treaties designed and implemented to protect Antarctica as a haven for environmental research, preservation, and conservation, as well as related legislation and Congressional efforts.

The United States has pressed China over the past several years to improve its enforcement of U.S. intellectual property rights (IPR) in China and to provide greater market access to intellectual property-related products, such as computer software, CDs, and audio-visual products. Trade tensions over these issues nearly led the United States to impose trade sanctions against China in 1992 and 1995. In March 1995, the United States and China signed a new and detailed IPR trade agreement, which pledges China to substantially reform its IPR enforcement regime and improve market access. This report examines the U.S.-Chinese IPR dispute and analyzes the implications of the new IPR agreement on future U.S.-Chinese trade relations

Although the end of the Cold War has freed U.S.-India relations from the constraints of a bipolar world, relations continue to be affected by the burden of history, most notably the longstanding India-Pakistan regional rivalry. The main areas of U.S. and congressional interest in India include nuclear weapons and missile proliferation, regional stability, human rights, and economic policy issues.

The Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative is a pilot project to return idle or underused industrial and commercial facilities back to productive use, in situations where redevelopment is complicated by potential environmental contamination. The program is flexible, allowing cities to use a variety of approaches in utilizing grants of up to $200,000 to develop abandoned and underused sites, neighborhoods, and small regional areas. States and Indian tribes are eligible as well as local governments.

On July 29, 1994, the United States signed the Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982. This agreement substantially reforms the seabed mining provisions of the 1982 Convention, which the United States found objectionable. In signing the Agreement, President Clinton accepted provisional application of it which enables the United States to participate in the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and its organs and bodies. On November 16, 1994, the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention entered into force without accession by the United States.The treaty document was referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations late in the 103d Congress and awaits committee action in the 104th Congress.

In 1993, the Clinton Administration proposed eliminating many natural resource "subsidies" and increasing fees for many Federal services. Among the proposals advanced were increases in existing grazing and recreation fees and new mining and commercial fishing fees. Other proposals would have affected timber sales and water deliveries from Federal projects. Many of these proposals have been advanced by fiscal conservatives in the 104th Congress to reduce the Federal budget deficit.

Deng Xiaoping's death will create a vacuum at the center of political power in China. Successor leaders will decide whether to continue the recent collective leadership decision-making processes and policy emphasis on political stability and economic reform; or to press for political power in a search for personal or policy advantage. A struggle for political power in Beijing would complicate an already difficult set of problems of governance caused by rapid economic growth, social change, realignment of central and local power arrangements and other factors. Nevertheless, there are important reasons why China may effectively work its way through the leadership transition.

This report provides an overview of some of the more common legal, procedural, and practical issues, questions and problems that committees have faced in the courts of an oversight investigation.

This report describes the history and background of the offset and the legislative history of recent attempts to eliminate or reduce the offset. It delineates and analyzes the arguments for and against eliminating or reducing the offset and allowing concurrent receipt, and addresses the issues of costs, precedents in other Federal programs, purposes of the two programs, and equity issues. Finally, options other than full concurrent receipt are mentioned.

This report surveys the potential benefits and drawbacks of expanded cooperation with Russia and other nations of the Former Soviet Union in space activities, and examines the impacts of closer cooperation on U.S. industry and U.S. national security concerns.

This report discusses the major issues in the public school system, providing information, and contributing a broad range of perspectives that helped shape the issues regarding education and technology. The report shows that helping schools to make the connection between teachers and technology may be one of the most important steps to making the most of past, present, and future investments in educational technology and in our children’s future.

This report analyzes what International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards can and cannot be expected to accomplish, identifies areas where they might be broadened and improved, and presents options for doing so.

This paper presents an analysis of the cost-effectiveness of colorectal cancer (CRC) screening in average-risk adults beginning at age 50. It examines the relative cost effectiveness of competing CRC screening technologies and schedules.

The Air Force`s Armstrong Laboratory at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, has supported the research and development of Radio Frequency Soil Decontamination. Radio frequency soil decontamination is essentially a heat-assisted soil vapor extraction process. Site S-1 at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, was selected for the demonstration of two patented techniques. The site is a former sump that collected spills and surface run-off from a waste petroleum, oils, and lubricants and solvent storage and transfer area. In 1993, a technique developed by the IIT Research Institute using an array of electrodes placed in the soil was demonstrated. In 1994, a technique developed by KAI Technologies, Inc. using a single applicator placed in a vertical borehole was demonstrated. Approximately 120 tons of soil were heated during each demonstration to a temperature of about 150 degrees Celsius.

A series of hydrous pyrolysis experiments were conducted at temperatures ranging from 125 to 360C at 350 bars pressure to examine variations in sulfur speciation during thermal maturation of Monterey shale. The total sediment, kerogen and bitumen from each experiment in addition to unheated representatives were analyzed via x-ray absorption spectroscopy, pyrolysis-gas chromatography, {sup 30}NMR spectrometry, elemental analysis, thin-layer chromatography and reflected light microscopy. Based on these measurements, it was possible to recognize three distinct temperature regimes, within which the type and amount of sulfur in the analyzed fractions underwent transformations: (1) between 150 and 225C significant proportion of kerogen-bound sulfur is lost probably due to the collapse of polysulfide bridges; (2) between 225 and 275C, cleavage of -S-S- and -S-C- linkages within the kerogen is believed to occur, resulting in substantial production of polar sulfur-rich bitumen; (3) above 275C total bitumen yields as well as the proportion of bitumen sulfur decrease, while C-C bond scission leads to increased yields of saturated and aromatic hydrocarbons. The results from this study clearly and quantitatively establish a link between organically-bound sulfur, and more specifically, organic polysulfides, and the low-temperature evolution of soluble petroleum-like products (bitumen) from sulfur-rich source rocks.

This report describes the formal test plan that will be used for the data acquisition and management system developed to monitor a bioremediation study by Argonne National Laboratory in association with Sandia National Laboratories. The data acquisition and management system will record the site data during the bioremediation and assist experts in site analysis. The three major subsystems of this system are described in detail in this report. In addition, this report documents the component- and system-level test procedures that will be implemented at each phase of the project. Results of these test procedures are documented in this report.

Protective barriers are being investigated for the containment of radioactive waste within subsurface environments. Predicting the effectiveness of cryogenic barriers and near-surface barriers in temperate or arctic climates requires capabilities for numerically modeling subsurface flow and transport for freezing soil conditions. A predictive numerical model is developed herein to simulate the flow and transport of radioactive solutes for three-phase (water-ice-air) systems under freezing conditions. This physically based model simulates the simultaneous flow of water, air, heat, and radioactive solutes through variably saturated and variably frozen geologic media. Expressions for ice (frozen water) and liquid water saturations as functions of temperature, interfacial pressure differences, and osmotic potential are developed from nonhysteretic versions of the Brooks and Corey and van Genuchten functions for soil moisture retention. Aqueous relative permeability functions for variably saturated and variably frozen geologic media are developed from the Mualem and Burdine theories for predicting relative permeability of unsaturated soil. Soil deformations, caused by freezing and melting transitions, are neglected. Algorithms developed for predicting ice and liquid water saturations and aqueous-phase permeabilities were incorporated into the finite-difference based numerical simulator STOMP (Subsurface Transport Over Multiple Phases). Application of the theory is demonstrated by the solution of heat and mass …

In 1992, Congress passed the Federal Facilities Compliance Act that requires the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to treat and dispose of its mixed waste in accordance with the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) land disposal restrictions (LDRs). In response to the need for mixed-waste treatment capacity where available off-site commercial treatment facilities do not exist or cannot be used, the DOE Albuquerque Operations Office (DOE-AL) organized a Treatment Selection Team to match mixed wastes with treatment options and develop a strategy for treatment of its mixed wastes. DOE-AL manages operations at nine sites with mixed-waste inventories. The Treatment Selection Team determined a need to develop mobile treatment capacity to treat wastes at the sites where the wastes are generated. Treatment processes used for mixed waste not only must address the hazardous component (i.e., meet LDRs) but also must contain the radioactive component in a form that allows final disposal while protecting workers, the public, and the environment. On the basis of recommendations of the Treatment Selection Team, DOE-AL assigned projects to the sites to bring mixed-waste treatment capacity on-line. The three technologies assigned to the DOE Grand Junction Projects Office (GJPO) are evaporative oxidation, thermal desorption, and treated …

Most geoscience applications, such as assessment of an oil reservoir or hazardous waste site, require geological characterization of the site. Geological characterization involves analysis of spatial distributions of lithology, porosity, etc. Because of the complexity of the spatial relationships, the authors find that a 3-D model of geology is better suited for integration of many different types of data and provides a better representation of a site than a 2-D one. A 3-D model of geology is constructed from sample data obtained from field measurements, which are usually scattered. To create a volume model from scattered data, interpolation between points is required. The interpolation can be computed using one of several computational algorithms. Alternatively, a manual method may be employed, in which an interactive graphics device is used to input by hand the information that lies between the data points. For example, a mouse can be used to draw lines connecting data points with equal values. The combination of these two methods presents yet another approach. In this study, the authors will compare selected methods of 3-D geological modeling, They used a flow-based, modular visualization environment (AVS) to construct the geological models computationally. Within this system, they used three modules, …

A filter pack system for sampling trace constituents in the atmosphere from aircraft and ground-based measurement platforms has been developed. The system simultaneously and quantitatively collects atmospheric aerosol, nitric acid, and sulfur dioxide using three sequential filter stages. The quartz aerosol filter is routinely analyzed for sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, and hydrogen ions, and specifically for sulfuric acid. The sodium chloride filter is analyzed for nitrate ion (from collected nitric acid), and the carbonate-glycerine filter for sulfate ion (from collected sulfur dioxide). Details of the procedures used for filter preparation, sampling, extraction and analysis are given.