Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In March 2009, out of concern that the overall security situation in Afghanistan had not improved after more than 7 years of U.S. and international efforts, the administration completed a 60-day strategic review of U.S. policy and the security environment in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Based on this review, and recognizing the vital U.S. interest in addressing security threats posed by extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the administration announced a strategic goal of disrupting, dismantling, and eventually defeating these extremists and eliminating their safe havens in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Subsequently, in August 2009, the United States issued an integrated civilian-military campaign plan for support to Afghanistan. The strategy and campaign plan call for, among other things, the execution of an integrated counterinsurgency mission and continued efforts to build the capacity of military and civilian elements of the Afghan government to lead counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts and provide internal security for the Afghan people. Accordingly, the focus for U.S. forces in Afghanistan will be to (1) secure Afghanistan from insurgent and terrorist threats and (2) rapidly train Afghanistan National Security Forces (ANSF) to lead military and law enforcement operations."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "We have performed the procedures described in this letter, which we agreed to perform and with which the Inspector General of the Department of Transportation concurred, solely to assist the Inspector General's office in ascertaining whether the net excise tax revenue distributed to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund (AATF) for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009, is supported by the underlying records. As agreed with the Inspector General's office, we evaluated fiscal year 2009 activity affecting excise tax distributions to the AATF."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Army has three government-owned and operated manufacturing arsenals that it considers vital to the Department of Defense's (DOD) industrial base because they provide products or services that are either unavailable from private industry or ensure a ready and controlled source of technical competence and resources in case of national defense contingencies or other emergencies. These three arsenals are Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas; Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois; and Watervliet Arsenal, New York. Pine Bluff's core mission is the production of conventional ammunition and other types of munitions. Rock Island's core mission is weapons manufacturing, and the arsenal is home to the Army's only remaining foundry. Watervliet is the Army's only cannon maker and also produces other armaments and mortars. Historically, the Army's arsenals have generally had vacant or underutilized space. For many years the Army has not provided the capital investment needed to keep pace with modern manufacturing requirements and retain core skills in the arsenal workforce. Additionally, the arsenals have generally had lower workloads during peacetime, but since the onset of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan they have experienced a surge in workloads to provide vital …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Labor (Labor) collects information on fees charged to 401(k) plans primarily through its Form 5500. Labor issued final regulations in November 2007, making changes to, among other things, Schedule C of the Form 5500. Labor put emphasis on reporting the indirect compensation paid to service providers and between service providers, in an effort to capture all of the costs that plan sponsors incur. Congress and others are concerned that Labor's rules could result in duplicative and confusing reporting. Given these concerns, Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to examine the new requirements and determine whether Labor's new requirements will provide (1) clear and understandable guidance to plan sponsors and (2) useful information to Labor and others. GAO analyzed Labor's regulations and interviewed Labor and other officials about disclosure and reporting practices."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) financial condition and outlook deteriorated significantly during fiscal year 2009. USPS was not able to cut costs fast enough to offset declining mail volume and revenues resulting from the economic downturn and changing mail use. Facing an unprecedented cash shortfall, USPS stated that it would have insufficient cash on hand to make its mandated $5.4 billion payment to prefund postal retiree health benefits that was due by the end of the fiscal year. In July, 2009, GAO added USPS's financial condition to the list of high-risk areas needing attention by Congress and the executive branch to achieve broad-based transformation. GAO stated that USPS urgently needs to restructure to address its current and long-term financial viability. GAO also stated that USPS needs to use its flexibility to generate revenue through new or enhanced products. This testimony will (1) update USPS's financial condition and outlook, (2) describe changes made by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) of 2006 that provided USPS with greater flexibility to generate revenues, (3) outline USPS's revenue-generation actions and results using this flexibility, and (4) discuss options for USPS to …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has performed the procedures to which we agreed upon to perform and with which you concurred, solely to assist your office in ascertaining whether the net excise tax revenue distributed to the Highway Trust Fund (HTF) for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2009, is supported by the underlying records. GAO evaluated fiscal year 2009 activity affecting excise tax distributions to the HTF. GAO conducted the engagement in accordance with U.S. generally accepted government auditing standards, which incorporate certain financial audit and attestation standards established by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA)."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 2001, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has been working to develop a modern Electronic Records Archive (ERA) system, a major information system that is intended to preserve and provide access to massive volumes of all types and formats of electronic records. The system is being developed incrementally over several years, with the first two pieces providing an initial set of functions and additional capabilities to be added in future increments. NARA plans to deploy full system functionality by 2012 at an estimated life-cycle cost of about $550 million. NARA originally planned to complete the first segment of ERA in September 2007. However, software and contracting problems led the agency and its contractor Lockheed Martin to revise the development approach. The revised plan called for parallel development of two different increments: a "base" ERA system with limited functionality and an Executive Office of the President (EOP) system to support the ingestion and search of records from the outgoing Bush Administration. GAO was asked to summarize NARA's progress in developing the ERA system and the ongoing risks the agency faces in completing it. In preparing this testimony, …

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A presentation at the 22nd Industry Growth Forum by Marty Murphy about making connections and business opportunities in the cleantech industry.

Laser-induced magnetic fields in ICF capsules Final Report, DE-FG02-08ER85128, Phase 1 E. L. LINDMAN, Otowi Technical Services, Los Alamos, NM. The performance of an inertial-confinement-fusion (ICF) capsule can be improved by inserting a magnetic field into it before compressing it [Kirkpatrick, et al., Fusion Technol. 27, 205 (1995)]. To obtain standoff in an ICF power generator, a method of inserting the field without the use of low-inductance leads attached to the capsule is desired. A mechanism for generating such a field using a laser was discovered in Japan [Sakagami, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 42, 839 (1979), Kolodner and Yablonovitch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 43, 1402 (1979)] and studied at Los Alamos in the 1980s [M. A. Yates, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1702 (1982); Forslund and Brackbill, Phys. Rev. Lett. 48, 1614 (1982)]. In this mechanism, a p-polarized laser beam strikes a solid target producing hot electrons that are accelerated away from the target surface by resonant absorption. An electric field is created that returns the hot electrons to the target. But, they do not return to the target along the same trajectory on which they left. The resulting current produces a toroidal magnetic field that was observed to …

Metal corrosion tests were conducted with four high waste loading non-Fe-limited HLW glass compositions. The results at 1150 C (the WTP nominal melter operating temperature) show corrosion performance for all four glasses that is comparable to that of other typical borosilicate waste glasses, including HLW glass compositions that have been developed for iron-limited WTP streams. Of the four glasses tested, the Bi-limited composition shows the greatest extent of corrosion, which may be related to its higher phosphorus content. Tests at higher suggest that a moderate elevation of the melter operating temperature (up to 1200 C) should not result in any significant increase in Inconel corrosion. However, corrosion rates did increase significantly at yet higher temperatures (1230 C). Very little difference was observed with and without the presence of an electric current density of 6 A/inch{sup 2}, which is the typical upper design limit for Inconel electrodes. The data show a roughly linear relationship between the thickness of the oxide scale on the coupon and the Cr-depletion depth, which is consistent with the chromium depletion providing the material source for scale growth. Analysis of the time dependence of the Cr depletion profiles measured at 1200 C suggests that diffusion of Cr …

This presentation, Deployment Partnerships, was given by Mike Pacheco at the Industry Growth Forum in Golden, Colorado, November 5, 2009.

The Office of Waste Processing identifies and reduces engineering and technical risks and uncertainties of the waste processing programs and projects of the Department of Energy's Environmental Management (EM) mission through the timely development of solutions to technical issues. The risks, and actions taken to mitigate those risks, are determined through technology readiness assessments, program reviews, technology information exchanges, external technical reviews, technical assistance, and targeted technology development and deployment. The Office of Waste Processing works with other DOE Headquarters offices and project and field organizations to proactively evaluate technical needs, identify multi-site solutions, and improve the technology and engineering associated with project and contract management. Participants in this program are empowered with the authority, resources, and training to implement their defined priorities, roles, and responsibilities. The Office of Waste Processing Multi-Year Program Plan (MYPP) supports the goals and objectives of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) - Office of Environmental Management Engineering and Technology Roadmap by providing direction for technology enhancement, development, and demonstration that will lead to a reduction of technical risks and uncertainties in EM waste processing activities. The MYPP summarizes the program areas and the scope of activities within each program area proposed for the next …

This presentation, Working With NREL, was given by Casey Porto at the Industry Growth Forum in Golden, Colorado, November 5, 2009.

We demonstrate an exchange bias in (Ga,Mn)As induced by antiferromagnetic coupling to a thin overlayer of Fe. Bias fields of up to 240 Oe are observed. Using element-specific x-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurements, we distinguish an interface layer that is strongly pinned antiferromagnetically to the Fe. The interface layer remains polarized at room temperature.

This report discusses the reasons that Iran is considered a threat to U.S. security, including Iran's nuclear program, involvement with terrorist organizations, and involvement with neighboring countries' local governments. The report also discusses ways which the U.S. hopes to modify Iran's behavior with sanctions, and the effectiveness of these sanctions.

The report opens with a discussion of how to analyze the impact of immigrants on the pay and job opportunities of native-born workers. It then uses this framework to examine and interpret the empirical literature on the subject. The report concludes with a discussion of policy implications.

This report discusses health care reform, which was at the top of the domestic policy agenda for the 111th Congress, driven by concerns about the growing ranks of the uninsured and the unsustainable growth in spending on health care and health insurance.

In a previous paper, Morel and Montry used a Galerkin-based diffusion analysis to define a particular weighted diamond angular discretization for S{sub n}n calculations in curvilinear geometries. The weighting factors were chosen to ensure that the Galerkin diffusion approximation was preserved, which eliminated the discrete-ordinates flux dip. It was also shown that the step and diamond angular differencing schemes, which both suffer from the flux dip, do not preserve the diffusion approximation in the Galerkin sense. In this paper we re-derive the Morel and Montry weighted diamond scheme using a formal asymptotic diffusion-limit analysis. The asymptotic analysis yields more information than the Galerkin analysis and demonstrates that the step and diamond schemes do in fact formally preserve the diffusion limit to leading order, while the Morel and Montry weighted diamond scheme preserves it to first order, which is required for full consistency in this limit. Nonetheless, the fact that the step and diamond differencing schemes preserve the diffusion limit to leading order suggests that the flux dip should disappear as the diffusion limit is approached for these schemes. Computational results are presented that confirm this conjecture. We further conjecture that preserving the Galerkin diffusion approximation is equivalent to preserving the …

This report gives a brief overview of P.L. 110-49, the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007. This law broadens Congress's oversight role in formulating the scope and direction of U.S. foreign investment policy. It also explicitly includes the areas of homeland security and critical infrastructure as separately-identifiable components of national security that the President must consider when evaluating the implications of a foreign investment transaction.

This report discusses the federal use of technology transfer, a process by which technology developed in one organization, in one area, or for one purpose is applied in another organization, in another area, or for another purpose.

This report discusses congressional interest in the pace of U.S. technological advancement due to its influence on U.S. economic growth, productivity, and international competitiveness. The proper role of the federal government in technology development and the competitiveness of U.S. industry continues to be a topic of congressional debate.

This report provides a comparison of the cap-and-trade provisions of two bills. The first is H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. In addition to establishing a cap-and-trade system to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, this bill addresses energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other energy topics. Later, Senator Kerry introduced S. 1733, the Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act, which was referred to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.

This report evaluates the Copenhagen climate talks, including the status of the negotiations on the key issues under the formal negotiating tracks and the provisions of the Copenhagen Accord, and draws implications for the implementation of actions in developing countries.