This report discusses the free trade agreement (FTA) between United States and Morocco. The United States and Morocco reached agreement on March 2, 2004 to create a free trade agreement.

The goal of the Castle project was to provide a parallel programming environment that enables the construction of high performance applications that run portably across many platforms. The authors approach was to design and implement a multilayered architecture, with higher levels building on lower ones to ensure portability, but with care taken not to introduce abstractions that sacrifice performance.

This report provides an overview of the funding trends on the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA).

Monthly newsletter discussing news and activities related to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program, articles about weather and atmospheric phenomena, and other related topics.

This work develops and demonstrates a laboratory-scale high temperature natural gas furnace that can operate with/without oxygen enrichment to significantly improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions. The laboratory-scale is 5ft in diameter & 8ft tall. This furnace was constructed and tested. This report demonstrates the efficiency and pollutant prevention capabilities of this test furnace. The project also developed optical detection technology to control the furnace output.

The Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA) Program was initiated in fiscal year 2001 (FY-01) by the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in partnership with other national laboratories. The AAA Project and the R&D for its underlying science and technology will require a large cadre of educated scientists and trained technicians in the future. In addition, other applications of nuclear science and engineering (e.g., proliferation monitoring and defense, nuclear medicine, safety regulation, industrial processes, and many others) require increased academic and national infrastructure and student populations. Thus, the DOE AAA Program Office has begun a multi-year program to involve university faculty and students in various phases of the Project to support the infrastructure requirements of nuclear energy, science and technology fields as well as the special needs of the DOE transmutation program. Herein I summarize the goals and accomplishments of the university programs that have supported the AAA Project during FY-01, including the involvement of more than eighty students.

This is one of two companion papers that describe the ENERGY-10 PV design-tool computer simulation program. The other paper is titled ''Hourly Simulation of Grid-Connected PV Systems Using Realistic Building Loads.'' While this paper focuses on the implementation method, the companion paper focuses on the PV aspects of the program. The case study in this paper is a residential building application, whereas the case study in the companion paper is a commercial application with an entirely different building load characteristic. Together, they provide a balanced view.

In earlier work, planar graphs of massless {phi}{sup 3} theory were summed with the help of the light cone world sheet picture and the mean field approximation. In the present article, the same methods are applied to the problem of summing planar bosonic open strings. They find that in the ground state of the system, string boundaries form a condensate on the world sheet, and a new string emerges from this summation. Its slope is always greater than the initial slope, and it remains non-zero even when the initial slope is set equal to zero. If they assume the initial string tends to a field a theory in the zero slope limit, this result provides evidence for string formation in field theory.

This project examined the internal architecture of delta front sandstones at two locations within the Turonian-age Wall Creek Member of the Frontier Formation, in Wyoming. The project involved traditional outcrop field work integrated with core-data, and 2D and 3D ground penetrating radar (GPR) imaging from behind the outcrops. The fluid-flow engineering work, handled through a collaborative grant given to PI Chris White at LSU, focused on effects on fluid flow of late-stage calcite cement nodules in 3D. In addition to the extensive field component, the work funded 2 PhD students (Gani and Lee) and resulted in publication of 10 technical papers, 17 abstracts, and 4 internal field guides. PI Bhattacharya also funded an additional 3 PhD students that worked on the Wall Creek sandstone funded separately through an industrial consortium, two of whom graduated in the fall 2006 ((Sadeque and Vakarelov). These additional funds provided significant leverage to expand the work to include a regional stratigraphic synthesis of the Wall Creek Member of the Frontier Formation, in addition to the reservoir-scale studies that DOE directly funded. Awards given to PI Bhattacharya included the prestigious AAPG Distinguished Lecture Award, which involved a tour of about 25 Universities and Geological Societies in …

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This report defines tax gap concepts, explains the methodology used to calculate the tax gap, examines the relationship between the tax gap and enforcement, and briefly discusses the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS's) strategy to reduce the gross tax gap.

Recent events have focused attention on the threat that terrorists with shoulder fired surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), referred to as Man-Portable Air Defense Systems (MANPADS), pose to commercial airliners. This report discusses SAMs and examines options for mitigating missile threats.

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The low frequency variation in the three dimensional air temperature fields of two reanalyses and two model simulations are described. The data sets used are the monthly mean temperature fields for the NCAR Climate Simulation Model (CSM, Boville and Gent, 1998) 300 year run, a NCAR Community Climate Model version 3 (CCM3, Kiehl et al., 1998) AMIP type simulation, and the NCEPLNCAR and ECMWF (ERA) reanalysis data sets. The variances and correlations are computed for the anomalies from the annual cycle for each data set. In general the reanalyses and models agree fairly well on the structure of the temperature variance. The models tend to have too much variance at the surface compared to the reanalyses. The CSM's poor simulation of the SST in the eastern Pacific leads to a much reduced variance in the Nino3 region. The enhanced variability over land appears to affect the midlatitude simulation of the CSM in that the higher surface variability extends off the east coast of continents. This is not evident in CCM3 and reanalyses where the SSTs are prescribed. At 200 hPa the CCM3 and reanalyses all evince the dumb bell pattern straddling the Equator in the eastern Pacific attributed by Yulaeva …

As in the last two Congresses, campaign finance reform will be a major issue in the 107th Congress, with attention again centered on the Senate McCain-Feingold and House Shays-Meehan bills. S. 27 (Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2001), introduced on January 22, 2001, will be considered by the Senate in March 2001; H.R. 380 (Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Act of 2001) was introduced January 31. Both bills ban the raising of soft money by national parties and the spending of it by state and local parties on federal election-related activities (as defined). But on the other key provision–issue advocacy–they differ notably. H.R. 380 offers a broad new definition of express advocacy, subjecting activity meeting that standard to all aspects of federal election law regulation. S. 27 classifies some messages as electioneering communications, requiring their disclosure and banning their funding by unions or for-profit corporations. This report summarizes and compares these two measures, according to various categories.

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A round robin of testing was performed to compare the performance of rotational dynamic mechanical spectrometers being used within the nuclear weapons complex. Principals from Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico; Lockheed Martin Y12 Plant at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Los Alamos National Laboratory, New Mexico (polycarbonate only); and Honeywell Federal Manufacturing and Technologies (FM and T), Kansas City, MO, performed identical testing of hydrogen blown polysiloxane S5370 and bisphenol-A polycarbonate. Over an oscillation frequency sweep from 0.01 Hz to 15.9 Hz at 135 C, each site produced shear storage modulus values with standard deviations of less than 5%. The data from Sandia, Y12, and Kansas City agreed to within 4%, while the Los Alamos data differed by as much as 13%. Storage modulus values for a frequency sweep of the S5370 at 35 C had standard deviations between 6% and 8%, and site-to-site agreement averaged 3%. The shear loss modulus values had standard deviations of 5%, 7%, and 52% for the sites participating, while the results differed by 12% on average.

Semi-continuous measurements of fine particle composition were made over a period of several weeks in summer 2002 in Yosemite National Park, California. These included measurement of aerosol ionic composition (by PILS- Particle-Into-Liquid System) and aerosol carbon (by dual wavelength aethalometer and an R&P particulate carbon monitor). The data reveal that aerosol composition at the site is highly :variable in time, with a strong diurnal cycle. Interestingly, however, different diurnal cycles were sometimes observed for different chemical constituents of the particles. Organic carbon was observed to dominate fine particle mass, with some periods apparently associated with influx of smoke from wildfires in the western U.S. Measurements of fine particle carbon isotopes revealed the fraction of carbon from biogenic sources to range from approximately 73 to 95%. The ionic fraction of the aerosol was usually dominated by ammoniated sulfate. During most periods, PM{sub 2.5} nitrate was found primarily in sea salt particles from which chloride had been displaced. Strong variations in the extent of ammonia neutralization of sulfate were also observed. The ability to observe rapid changes in aerosol composition using these semi-continuous aerosol composition measurements is helpful for understanding the dynamic chemical composition of fine particles responsible for regional haze.

This report, which will be updated periodically, focuses on the interactions between Mexico and the United States on migration and border issues during the administrations of President George W. Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico. These interactions are increasingly tense in 2006 due to violence in the border region and debate over U.S. immigration reform. The discussions and agreements fall into four areas: (1) the bilateral migration talks, (2) the Partnership for Prosperity, (3) the Border Partnership Agreement, and (4) the trilateral "Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America."

This report focuses on the interactions between Mexico and the United States on migration and border issues during the administrations of President George W. Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico. The discussions and agreements fall into four areas: (1) the bilateral migration talks, (2) the Partnership for Prosperity, (3) the Border Partnership Agreement, and (4) the trilateral “Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America.

This report focuses on the interactions between Mexico and the United States on migration and border issues during the administrations of President George W. Bush and President Vicente Fox of Mexico. The discussions and agreements fall into four areas: (1) the bilateral migration talks, (2) the Partnership for Prosperity, (3) the Border Partnership Agreement, and (4) the trilateral “Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) of North America.

RL30437: Water Quality Initiatives and Agriculture Claudia Copeland Specialist in Resources and Environmental Policy Resources, Science, and Industry Division February 16, 2000 ABSTRACT Agriculture, which has been a relatively minor component of national water quality policies and programs, especially regulatory policies, is currently involved with several recent Administration water quality initiatives. This report provides background on three ongoing initiatives with potential to affect agriculture: the Clean Water Action Plan, the Unified National Animal Feeding Operations Strategy, and implementation of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) provisions of the Clean Water Act. The report includes a glossary of terms and a chronology of the key deadlines in the initiatives and identifies other CRS reports for additional information. It will be updated as developments warrant. Summary Congress most recently enacted amendments to the nation's water quality law, the Clean Water Act (CWA), in 1987. But national water quality policy has evolved in the intervening years, as a result of implementation of the 1987 amendments and related Administration initiatives intended to fulfill the requirements and meet the goals and objectives of the Act. Agriculture, which has been a relatively minor component of national water quality policies and programs, especially regulatory policies, is now …

This report describes a scientific analysis to bound credible horizontal peak ground velocities (PGV) for the repository waste emplacement level at Yucca Mountain. Results are presented as a probability distribution for horizontal PGV to represent uncertainties in the analysis. The analysis also combines the bound to horizontal PGV with results of ground motion site-response modeling (BSC 2004 [DIRS 170027]) to develop a composite hazard curve for horizontal PGV at the waste emplacement level. This result provides input to an abstraction of seismic consequences (BSC 2004 [DIRS 169183]). The seismic consequence abstraction, in turn, defines the input data and computational algorithms for the seismic scenario class of the total system performance assessment (TSPA). Planning for the analysis is documented in Technical Work Plan TWP-MGR-GS-000001 (BSC 2004 [DIRS 171850]). The bound on horizontal PGV at the repository waste emplacement level developed in this analysis complements ground motions developed on the basis of PSHA results. In the PSHA, ground motion experts characterized the epistemic uncertainty and aleatory variability in their ground motion interpretations. To characterize the aleatory variability they used unbounded lognormal distributions. As a consequence of these characterizations, as seismic hazard calculations are extended to lower and lower annual frequencies of being …