Recording of the twelfth public hearing held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States on June 16, 2004 at the NTSB Conference Center in Washington, D.C. The two-day hearing focused on two distinct topics: the 9-11 Plot and the federal government's immediate response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. This section includes the staff statement entitled overview of the enemy in addition to the first panel on Al-Qaeda with testimony from Mary Deborah Doran and Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Recording of the twelfth public hearing held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States on June 16, 2004 at the NTSB Conference Center in Washington, D.C. The two-day hearing focused on two distinct topics: the 9-11 Plot and the federal government's immediate response to the attacks on September 11, 2001. This section includes the staff statement entitled outline of the 9/11 plot, in addition to the second panel on the outline of the outline of the 9/11 plot with testimony from Jacqueline Maguire, James N. Fitzgerald, and Adam B. Drucker.

This report discusses projected agricultural imports and exports for FY2004, as well as legislation that deals with federal programs in support of agricultural exports and federal aid dedicated to farms and agricultural reform.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the mid-1990s--and especially since September 11--the government has focused attention and resources on preventing illegal aliens, drug smugglers, and potential terrorists from entering the United States across its land borders with Mexico and Canada. The Border Patrol is responsible for protecting the nation's borders. However, a significant portion of the borderlands are federal or tribal lands managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, and Forest Service. Realizing the importance of coordinating federal law enforcement efforts, GAO agreed to assess: (1) border-related law enforcement challenges for land management agencies in Arizona and Washington, (2) resources land management agencies have received to address these challenges, and (3) how the Border Patrol and land management agencies coordinate border-related law enforcement efforts."

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This annual report describes 1.5 y of progress on a 3 y project. The project addresses the goals of the Environmental Management Sciences Program (EMSP) that seeks innovative basic research to benefit cleanup technologies and decision-making strategies for contaminated environments. Our project specifically addresses Hanford research needs in subsurface science by contributing to the objectives of the Tank Farm Vadose Characterization Project and the 200 Area Remedial Action Project which are components of the Hanford Site Groundwater/Vadose Zone Integration Project (Integration Project). The work described within is intended to advance the technological and scientific needs associated with the long-term management of the enormous in-ground inventories of 235/238U, 99Tc, 60Co, and Cr(VI) present at the Hanford site. We believe that scientifically defensible predictions of contaminant transport and strategies for remediation must be based upon a field-relevant understanding of coupled hydrological and geochemical processes that control subsurface contaminant fate and transport. This research project investigates the migration of 235/238U, 90Sr, 60Co, and Cr(VI) in undisturbed sediments from the Hanford site using realistic experimental protocols designed to delineate complex hydrological and geochemical processes controlling contaminant movement.

Material migration has received renewed interest due to tritium retention associated with carbon transport to remote vessel locations. Those results influence the desirability of carbon usage on ITER. Subsequently, additional experiments have been performed, including tracer experiments attempting to identify material migration from specific locations. In this paper, EDGE2D models a well-diagnosed JET{sup 13}C tracer migration experiment. The role of SOL flows upon the migration patterns is identified.

Electron-impact excitation and ionization of helium is studied in the S-wave model. The problem is treated in full dimensionality using a time-dependent formulation of the exterior complex scaling method that does not involve the solution of large linear systems of equations. We discuss the steps that must be taken to compute stable ionization amplitudes. We present total excitation, total ionization and single differential cross sections from the ground and n=2 excited states and compare our results with those obtained by others using a frozen-core model.

Negative halogen ions have recently been proposed as a possible alternative to positive ions for heavy ion fusion drivers because electron accumulation would not be a problem in the accelerator, and if desired, the beams could be photo-detached to neutrals. To test the ability to make suitable quality beams, an experiment was conducted at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory using chlorine in an RF-driven ion source. Without introducing any cesium (which is required to enhance negative ion production in hydrogen ion sources) a negative chlorine current density of 45 mA/cm{sup 2} was obtained under the same conditions that gave 57 45 mA/cm{sup 2} of positive chlorine, suggesting the presence of nearly as many negative ions as positive ions in the plasma near the extraction plane. The negative ion spectrum was 99.5% atomic chlorine ions, with only 0.5% molecular chlorine, and essentially no impurities. Although this experiment did not incorporate the type of electron suppression technology that i s used in negative hydrogen beam extraction, the ratio of co-extracted electrons to Cl{sup -} was as low as 7 to 1, many times lower than the ratio of their mobilities, suggesting that few electrons are present in the near-extractor plasma. This, along with …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Farmers receive about $15 billion annually in federal payments to help produce major crops, such as corn, cotton, rice, and wheat. The Farm Program Payments Integrity Act of 1987 (1987 Act) limits payments to individuals and entities--such as corporations and partnerships--that are "actively engaged in farming." This testimony is based on GAO's report, Farm Program Payments: USDA Needs to Strengthen Regulations and Oversight to Better Ensure Recipients Do Not Circumvent Payment Limitations (GAO-04-407, April 30, 2004). Specifically, GAO (1) determined how well USDA's regulations limit payments and (2) assessed USDA's oversight of the 1987 Act."

The use of fs lasers to directly write photonic structures inside a glass has great potential as a fabrication method for three-dimensional all-optical integrated components. The ability to use this technique with different glass compositions--specifically tailored for a specific photonics application--is critical to its successful exploitation. Consequently, it is important to understand how glass composition effects waveguide fabrication with fs laser pulses and how different glasses are structurally modified after exposure to fs laser pulses. We have used confocal laser spectroscopy to monitor the changes in glass structure that are associated with waveguide fabrication. Using a low power continuous wave (cw) Ar laser as excitation source we have measured both Raman and fluorescence spectra of the modified regions. Raman spectroscopy provides us with information on the network structure, whereas fluorescence measurements reveal the presence of optically active point defects in the glass. In this paper we review our work on fs-laser fabrication and characterization of photonic structures in glass and discuss the effect of glass composition on processing parameters and structural modification.

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Non-invasive, high-resolution imaging of the shallow subsurface is needed for delineation of buried waste, detection of unexploded ordinance, verification and monitoring of containment structures, and other environmental applications. Electromagnetic (EM) measurements at frequencies between 0.1 and 100 MHz are important for such applications, because the induction number of many targets is small and the ability to determine the dielectric permittivity in addition to electrical conductivity of the subsurface is possible. Earlier workers were successful in developing systems for detecting anomalous areas, but no quantifiable information was accurately determined. For high-resolution imaging, accurate measurements are necessary so the field data can be mapped into the space of the subsurface parameters. We are developing a non-invasive method for accurately mapping the electrical conductivity and dielectric permittivity of the shallow subsurface using the EM impedance approach (Frangos, 2001; Lee and Becker, 2001; Song et al., 2002, Tseng et al., 2003). Electric and magnetic sensors are being tested and calibrated on sea water and in a known area against theoretical predictions, thereby insuring that the data collected with the high-frequency impedance (HFI) system will support high-resolution, multi-dimensional imaging techniques.

Imaging sensors and readout electronics have made tremendous strides in the past two decades. The application of modern semiconductor fabrication techniques and the introduction of customized monolithic integrated circuits have made large scale imaging systems routine in high energy physics. This technology is now finding its way into other areas, such as space missions, synchrotron light sources, and medical imaging. I review current developments and discuss the promise and limits of new technologies. Several detector systems are described as examples of future trends. The discussion emphasizes semiconductor detector systems, but I also include recent developments for large-scale superconducting detector arrays.

CRS Report for Congress entailing issues and legislative action in regards to K-12 teacher quality. Topics include, unionization, funding, tenure, etc..

We present in this talk the one-loop electroweak precision constraints in the Littlest Higgs model, including the logarithmically enhanced contributions from both fermion and scalar loops. We find the one-loop contributions are comparable to the tree level corrections in some regions of parameter space. A low cutoff scale is allowed for a non-zero triplet VEV. Constraints on various other parameters in the model are also discussed. The role of triplet scalars in constructing a consistent renormalization scheme is emphasized.

The local structure around Sn dopants in CeCoIn{sub 5-x}Sn{sub z} has been probed by extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) technique. The fit results for both x = 0.12 and x = 0.18 clearly indicate the dopant Sn atoms predominantly occupying the planar In(1) site. These results are consistent with the quasi-two-dimensional electronic properties of CeCoIn{sub 5} and is discussed in relation to the observed bulk properties.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In February 2004, we issued our opinions on the calendar year 2003 financial statements of the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF), the Savings Association Insurance Fund (SAIF), and the FSLIC Resolution Fund (FRF). We also issued our opinion on the effectiveness of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's (FDIC) internal controls as of December 31, 2003, and our evaluation of FDIC's compliance with significant provisions of selected laws and regulations for the three funds for the year ended December 31, 2003. The purpose of this report is to discuss issues identified during our audits of the 2003 financial statements regarding accounting procedures and internal controls that could be improved and to recommend improvements to address these issues. Although these issues were not material in relation to the financial statements, we believe they warrant management's attention. We conducted our audits in accordance with U.S. generally accepted government auditing standards."

Inversion of transient electromagnetic (TEM) data sets to image the subsurface three-dimensional (3-D) electrical conductivity and magnetic permeability properties can be done directly in the time domain. The technique, first introduced by Wang et al. (1994) for causal and diffusive electromagnetic fields and subsequently implemented by Zhdanov and Portniaguine (1997) in the framework of iterative migration, is based upon imaging methods originally developed for seismic wavefields (Claerbout, 1971; Tarantola, 1984). In this paper we advance the original derivations of Wang et al. (1994) and Zhdanov and Portniaguine (1997) to treat non-causal TEM fields, as well as correct a flaw in the theory for treatment of magnetic field data. Our 3D imaging scheme is based on a conjugate-gradient search for the minimum of an error functional involving EM measurements governed by Maxwell's equations without displacement currents. Treatment for magnetic field, voltage (time derivative of the magnetic field) and electric field data are given. The functional can be computed by propagating the data errors back into the model in reverse time along with a DC field, sourced by the integrated data errors over the measurement time range. By correlating these fields, including the time-integrated back-propagated fields, with the corresponding incident field and …

H Area Operations is planning to process Pu-contaminated uranium scrap in support of de-inventory efforts. Nylon bags will be used to hold materials to be dissolved in H-Canyon. Based on this set of twelve nylon dissolutions, it is concluded that (when other variables are held constant): increased acid concentration results in increased dissolution rates; increased acid concentration results in a lower dissolution onset temperature; little, if any, H plus is consumed during the depolymerization process; and 2.0-3.0 M HNO3, with 0.025 M KF and 2 g/L B, is satisfactory for the dissolution of nylon bag materials to be used during H-Canyon processing.

The condensation of energetic metal ions on a surface may cause self-sputtering even in the absence of substrate bias. Charge-state-averaged self-sputtering yields were determined for both zirconium and gold ions generated by a cathodic vacuum arc. Films were deposited on differently biased substrates exposed to streaming Zr and Au vacuum arc plasma. The self-sputtering yields for both metals were estimated to be about 0.05 in the absence of bias, and exceeding 0.5 when bias reached-50 V. These surprisingly high values can be reconciled with binary collision theory and molecular dynamics calculations taking high the kinetic and potential energy of vacuum arc ions into account.

The problem of robust automatic road detection in remotely sensed images is complicated by the fact that the sensor, spatial resolution, acquisition conditions, road width, road orientation and road material composition can all vary. A novel technique for detecting road pixels in multi-source remotely sensed images based on the phase (i.e., orientation or directional) information in edge pixels is described. A very dense map of edges extracted from the image is separated into channels, each containing edge pixels whose phases lie within a different range of orientations. The edge map associated with each channel is de-cluttered. A map of road pixels is formed by re-combining the de-cluttered channels into a composite edge image which is itself then separately de-cluttered. Road detection results are provided for DigitalGlobe and TerraServerUSA images. Road representations suitable for various applications are then discussed.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Interstate pipelines carrying natural gas and hazardous liquids (such as petroleum products) are safer to the public than other modes of freight transportation. The Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS), the federal agency that administers the national regulatory program to ensure safe pipeline transportation, has been undertaking a broad range of activities to make pipeline transportation safer. However, the number of serious accidents--those involving deaths, injuries, and property damage of $50,000 or more--has not fallen. Among other things, OPS takes enforcement action against pipeline operators when safety problems are found. OPS has several enforcement tools to require the correction of safety violations. It can also assess monetary sanctions (civil penalties). This testimony is based on ongoing work for the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and for other committees, as required by the Pipeline Safety Improvement Act of 2002. The testimony provides preliminary results on (1) the effectiveness of OPS's enforcement strategy and (2) OPS's assessment of civil penalties."