The House and Senate examined their rules on the acceptance of gifts and travel expenses. Press accounts of alleged excesses in privately funded congressional travel and gifts, particularly from lobbyists, have provided an impetus for proposed changes in the 109th Congress. This report provides an analysis of the proposals for change introduced or discussed in the 109th Congress and will be updated as events warrant.

This project aims to understand the characteristics of the free-field strong-motion records that have yielded the 100 largest peak accelerations and the 100 largest peak velocities recorded to date. The peak is defined as the maximum magnitude of the acceleration or velocity vector during the strong shaking. This compilation includes 35 records with peak acceleration greater than gravity, and 41 records with peak velocities greater than 100 cm/s. The results represent an estimated 150,000 instrument-years of strong-motion recordings. The mean horizontal acceleration or velocity, as used for the NGA ground motion models, is typically 0.76 times the magnitude of this vector peak. Accelerations in the top 100 come from earthquakes as small as magnitude 5, while velocities in the top 100 all come from earthquakes with magnitude 6 or larger. Records are dominated by crustal earthquakes with thrust, oblique-thrust, or strike-slip mechanisms. Normal faulting mechanisms in crustal earthquakes constitute under 5% of the records in the databases searched, and an even smaller percentage of the exceptional records. All NEHRP site categories have contributed exceptional records, in proportions similar to the extent that they are represented in the larger database.

This project studies foam flow behavior at a variety of surfactant concentrations using experiments and a numerical model. Thus, the foam behavior examined spans from strong to weak.

Cosmic shear holds great promise for a precision independent measurement of {Omega}{sub m}, the mass density of the universe relative to the critical density. The signal is expected to be weak, so a thorough understanding of systematic effects is crucial. An important systematic effect is the atmosphere: shear power introduced by the atmosphere is larger than the expected signal. Algorithms exist to extract the cosmic shear from the atmospheric component, though a measure of their success applied to a range of seeing conditions is lacking. To gain insight into atmospheric shear, Gemini South imaging in conjunction with ground condition and satellite wind data were obtained. We find that under good seeing conditions Point-Spread-Function (PSF) correlations persist well beyond the separation typical of high-latitude stars. Under these conditions, ellipticity residuals based on a simple PSF interpolation can be reduced to within a factor of a few of the shot-noise induced ellipticity floor. We also find that the ellipticity residuals are highly correlated with wind direction. Finally, we correct stellar shapes using a more sophisticated procedure and generate shear statistics from stars. Under all seeing conditions in our data set the residual correlations lie everywhere below the target signal level. For good …

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

Silicon is currently the most commonly used material for the fabrication of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). However, silicon-based MEMS will not be suitable for long-endurance devices involving components rotating at high speed, where friction and wear need to be minimized, components such as 2-D cantilevers that may be subjected to very large flexural displacements, where stiction is a problem, or components that will be exposed to corrosive environments. The mechanical, thermal, chemical, and tribological properties of diamond make it an ideal material for the fabrication of long-endurance MEMS components. Cost-effective fabrication of these components could in principle be achieved by coating Si with diamond films and using conventional lithographic patterning methods in conjunction with e. g. sacrificial Ti or SiO{sub 2} layers. However, diamond coatings grown by conventional chemical vapor deposition (CVD) methods exhibit a coarse-grained structure that prevents high-resolution patterning, or a fine-grained microstructure with a significant amount of intergranular non-diamond carbon. The authors demonstrate here the fabrication of 2-D and 3-D phase-pure ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) MEMS components by coating Si with UNCD films, coupled with lithographic patterning methods involving sacrificial release layers. UNCD films are grown by microwave plasma CVD using C{sub 60}-Ar or CH{sub 4}-Ar gas mixtures, which …

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The RELAP/MOD3.2 computer code has been assessed using an 11% upper plenum break experiment in the PSB test facility at the Electrogorsk Research and Engineering Center. This work was performed as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's International Nuclear Safety Program, and is part of the effort addressing the capability of the RELAP5/MOD3.2 code to model transients in Soviet-designed reactors. Designated VVER Standard Problem PSBV1, the test addressed several important phenomena related to VVER behavior that the code needs to simulate well. The code was judged to reasonably model the phenomena of two-phase flow natural circulation in the primary coolant system, asymmetric loop behavior, leak flow, loop seal clearance in the cold legs, heat transfer in a covered core, heat transfer in a partially covered core, pressurizer thermal-hydraulics, and integral system effects. The code was judged to be in minimal agreement with the experiment data for the mixture level and entrainment in the core, leading to a user recommendation to assess the sensitivity of transient calculations to the interphase drag modeling in the core. No judgments were made for the phenomena of phase separation without mixture level formation, mixture level and entrainment in the steam generators, pool formation in …

The Department of Defense operates six environmental programs: cleanup of past contamination at military facilities, acceleration of cleanup at military bases designated for closure, compliance with environmental laws and regulations that apply to ongoing military operations, pollution prevention, natural resource conservation, and environmental technology. In addition to these activities, the Department of Energy is responsible for managing defense nuclear waste and remediating contaminated sites. This report discusses the federal laws that established these programs, describes their scope and purpose, provides a history of appropriations, indicates the President’s budget request for FY2001, examines authorization and appropriations legislation for FY2001, and discusses other relevant legislation considered in the 106th Congress.

This report describes several scientifically emerging animal biotechnologies that are raising a variety of questions concerning risks to humans, animals, and the environment, as well as ethical concerns. The report examines applications of the technologies and discusses major issues that may arise.

The East African and Ethiopian Plateaus have long been recognized to be part of a much larger topographic anomaly on the African Plate called the African Superswell. One of the few places within the African Superswell that exhibit elevations of less than 1 km is southeastern Sudan and northern Kenya, an area containing both Mesozoic and Cenozoic rift basins. Crustal structure and uppermost mantle velocities are investigated in this area by modeling Rayleigh wave dispersion. Modeling results indicate an average crustal thickness of 25 {+-} 5 km, some 10-15 km thinner than the crust beneath the adjacent East African and Ethiopian Plateaus. The low elevations can therefore be readily attributed to an isostatic response from crustal thinning. Low Sn velocities of 4.1-4.3 km/s also characterize this region.

The current results on B {yields} {pi}{pi} decays and SU(2) constraints on the Unitarity Triangle angle {alpha} or {phi}{sub 2} from the B-factories are summarized. Based on these measurements, predictions of the isospin analysis constraints at the end of the lifetime of both B-factories are given.

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and subsequent discussions of religious extremism have called attention to Islamic puritanical movements known as Wahhabism and Salafiyya. Al Qaeda leaders and their ideological supporters have advocated a violent message that some suggest is an extremist interpretation of this line of puritanical Islam. Other observers have accused Saudi Arabia, the center of Wahhabism, of having disseminated a religion that promotes hatred and violence, targeting the United States and its allies. Saudi officials strenuously deny these allegations. This report provides a background on Wahhabism and its relationship to active terrorist groups; it also summarizes recent charges against Wahhabism and responses, including the findings of the final report of the 9/11 Commission and relevant legislation in the 110th Congress.

This report provides background information on the World Heritage Convention, outlines U.S. participation and funding, and highlights criteria for adding and removing sites from the World Heritage Lists. It discusses possible issues for the 111th Congress, including the Convention's possible impact on U.S. sovereignty, the role of the legislative branch in designating sites, and the potential implications for a site's inclusion on the Lists.

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The SCALE (Standardized Computer Analyses for Licensing Evaluation) computer software system developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is widely used and accepted around the world for criticality safety analyses. The well-known KENO V.a three-dimensional Monte Carlo criticality computer code is the primary criticality safety analysis tool in SCALE. The KENO V.a primer is designed to help a new user understand and use the SCALE/KENO V.a Monte Carlo code for nuclear criticality safety analyses. It assumes that the user has a college education in a technical field. There is no assumption of familiarity with Monte Carlo codes in general or with SCALE/KENO V.a in particular. The primer is designed to teach by example, with each example illustrating two or three features of SCALE/KENO V.a that are useful in criticality analyses. The primer is based on SCALE 4.4a, which includes the Criticality Safety Processor for Analysis (CSPAN) input processor for Windows personal computers (PCs). A second edition of the primer, which uses the new KENO Visual Editor, is currently under development at ORNL and is planned for publication in late 2003. Each example in this first edition of the primer uses CSPAN to provide the framework for data input. Starting with …

EUV optics play a key role in attosecond science since only with higher photon energies is it possible to achieve the wide spectral bandwidth required for ultrashort pulses. Multilayer EUV mirrors have been proposed and are being developed to temporally shape (compress) attosecond pulses. To fully characterize a multilayer optic for pulse applications requires not only knowledge of the reflectivity, as a function of photon energy, but also the reflected phase of the mirror. This work develops the metrologies to determine the reflected phase of an EUV multilayer mirror using the photoelectric effect. The proposed method allows one to determine the optic's impulse response and hence its pulse characteristics.

This paper describes the application of four evolutionary algorithms to the identification of feature subsets for classification problems. Besides a simple GA, the paper considers three estimation of distribution algorithms (EDAs): a compact GA, an extended compact GA, and the Bayesian Optimization Algorithm. The objective is to determine if the EDAs present advantages over the simple GA in terms of accuracy or speed in this problem. The experiments used a Naive Bayes classifier and public-domain and artificial data sets. In contrast with previous studies, we did not find evidence to support or reject the use of EDAs for this problem.

This is the final report for the LLNL LDRD 01-LW-068. The Principle Investigator was Daniel White of the Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC). Collaborators included Paul Castillo and Mark Stowell of CASC, and Ph.D students Joe Koning and Rob Rieben of UC Davis. Some of the simulation results in this report were partially funded by a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency research grant, and the two Ph.D. students were supported by the LLNL Student-Employee Graduate Research Fellow program. We begin with a short Administrative Overview which describes the motivation, scope, and deliverables of this research effort. Then follows the Technical section, which introduces the theory behind our Discrete Differential Forms approach, provides an overview of our FEMSTER C++ class library, and concludes with example simulations.

We define the class of sequentially semi-separable matrices in this paper. Essentially this is the class of matrices which have low numerical rank on their off diagonal blocks. Examples include banded matrices, semi-separable matrices, their sums as well as inverses of these sums. Fast and stable algorithms for solving linear systems of equations involving such matrices and computing Moore-Penrose inverses are presented. Supporting numerical results are also presented. In addition, fast algorithms to construct and update this matrix structure for any given matrix are presented. Finally, numerical results that show that the coefficient matrices resulting from global spectral discretizations of certain integral equations indeed have this matrix structure are given.

We are conducting research into the direct electrochemical conversion of reactive carbons into electricity--with experimental evidence of total efficiencies exceeding 80% of the heat of combustion of carbon. Together with technologies for extraction of reactive carbons from broad based fossil fuels, direct carbon conversion addresses the objectives of DOE's ''21st Century Fuel Cell'' with exceptionally high efficiency (>70% based on standard heat of reaction, {Delta}H{sub std}), as well as broader objectives of managing CO{sub 2} emissions. We are exploring the reactivity of a wide range of carbons derived from diverse sources, including pyrolyzed hydrocarbons, petroleum cokes, purified coals and biochars, and relating their electrochemical reactivity to nano/microstructural characteristics.