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Unemployment compensation (UC) benefits have been fully subject to the federal income tax since the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-514). Individuals who receive UC benefits during a year may elect to have the federal (and in some cases state) income tax withheld from their benefits. H.R. 6844 would provide a two-year suspension of the taxation of UC benefits. This report provides an overview of the taxation of UC benefits and legislation related to taxing UC benefits.

This report frames potential policy questions concerning the Service's mission and organization through an examination of the USSS history and its statutory authorities, mission, and present activities within DHS.

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Final Report for grant DE-FG02-06ER54888, "Simulation of Beam-Electron Cloud Interactions in Circular Accelerators Using Plasma Models" Viktor K. Decyk, University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547 The primary goal of this collaborative proposal was to modify the code QuickPIC and apply it to study the long-time stability of beam propagation in low density electron clouds present in circular accelerators. The UCLA contribution to this collaborative proposal was in supporting the development of the pipelining scheme for the QuickPIC code, which extended the parallel scaling of this code by two orders of magnitude. The USC work was as described here the PhD research for Ms. Bing Feng, lead author in reference 2 below, who performed the research at USC under the guidance of the PI Tom Katsouleas and the collaboration of Dr. Decyk The QuickPIC code [1] is a multi-scale Particle-in-Cell (PIC) code. The outer 3D code contains a beam which propagates through a long region of plasma and evolves slowly. The plasma response to this beam is modeled by slices of a 2D plasma code. This plasma response then is fed back to the beam code, and the process repeats. The pipelining is based on the observation that …

Uranium dioxide (UO2) is the most common fuel material in commercial nuclear power reactors. UO2 has the advantages of a high melting point, good high-temperature stability, good chemical compatibility with cladding and coolant, and resistance to radiation. The main disadvantage of UO2 is its low thermal conductivity. During a reactor’s operation, because the thermal conductivity of UO2 is very low, for example, about 2.8 W/m-K at 1000 oC [1], there is a large temperature gradient in the UO2 fuel pellet, causing a very high centerline temperature, and introducing thermal stresses, which lead to extensive fuel pellet cracking. These cracks will add to the release of fission product gases after high burnup. The high fuel operating temperature also increases the rate of fission gas release and the fuel pellet swelling caused by fission gases bubbles. The amount of fission gas release and fuel swelling limits the life time of UO2 fuel in reactor. In addition, the high centerline temperature and large temperature gradient in the fuel pellet, leading to a large amount of stored heat, increase the Zircaloy cladding temperature in a lost of coolant accident (LOCA). The rate of Zircaloy-water reaction becomes significant at the temperature above 1200 oC [2]. …

The commercialization path of the Calderon technology for making a feedstock for steelmaking with assistance from DOE initially focused on making coke and work was done which proved that the Calderon technology is capable of making good coke for hard driving blast furnaces. U.S. Steel which participated in such demonstration felt that the Calderon technology would be more meaningful in lowering the costs of making steel by adapting it to the making of iron--thus obviating the need for coke. U.S. Steel and Calderon teamed up to jointly work together to demonstrate that the Calderon technology will produce in a closed system iron units from iron concentrate (ore) and coal competitively by eliminating pelletizing, sintering, coking and blast furnace operation. If such process steps could be eliminated, a huge reduction in polluting emissions and greenhouse gases (including CO{sub 2}) relating to steelmaking would ensue. Such reduction will restructure the steel industry away from the very energy-intensive steelmaking steps currently practiced and drastically reduce costs of making steel. The development of a technology to lower U.S. steelmaking costs and become globally competitive is a priority of major importance. Therefore, the development work which Calderon is conducting presently under this Agreement with the …

This report discusses the administrations' proposal to use reverse Dutch auctions to purchase troubled assets -- primarily mortgage-related securities from financial institutions.

This report discusses the conversion of employees from appointed (noncareer) positions to career positions in the executive branch. This practice, commonly referred to as "burrowing in," is permissible when laws and regulations governing career appointments are followed.

This report discusses the enactment of greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction program, such as a cap-and-trade system. An estimate of the quantity and type of offset projects that might be available would provide for a more informed debate over the design elements of a cap-and-trade program.

This report outlines the implementation process for the 1997 fine particulate matter (PM2.5) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) and describes issues raised as U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and states develop implementation strategies.

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This report discusses pieces of legislation passed by Congress that are intended to help surmount failures in public safety radio communications such as insufficient interoperability among radio systems, a problem that hampered rescue efforts on and after September 11; and insufficiently robust networks, a shortcoming revealed after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005.

This report presents basic background information on health insurance that may be useful to legislators considering health insurance reforms. It describes health insurance reform approaches and provides brief descriptions of health insurance reform bills introduced in the 111th Congress.

Accretion formation and the associated clogging of SENs is a major problem for the steel industry leading to decreased strand speed, premature changing of SENs or strand termination and the associated reductions in productivity, consistency, and steel quality. A program to evaluate potentially clog resistance materials was initiated at the University of Missouri-Rolla. The main objective of the research effort was to identify combinations of steelmaking and refractory practices that would yield improved accretion resistance for tundish nozzles and submerged entry nozzles. A number of tasks were identified during the initial kick-off meeting and each was completed with two exceptions, the thermal shock validation and the industrial trials. Not completing these two tasks related to not having access to industrial scale production facilities. Though much of the results and information generated in the project is of proprietary nature.

Members of Congress often get requests from constituents for information and help in obtaining funds for projects. Many state and local governments, nonprofit social service and community action organizations, private research groups, small businesses, and individuals approach congressional offices to find out about funding, both from the federal government and from the private sector. The success rate in obtaining federal assistance is not high, given the competition for federal funds. A grants staff’s effectiveness often depends on both an understanding of the grants process and on the relations it establishes with agency and other contacts. The following report does not constitute a blueprint for every office involved in grants and projects activity, nor does it present in-depth information about all aspects of staff activity in this area. The discussion is aimed at describing some basics about the grants process and some of the approaches and techniques used by congressional offices in dealing with this type of constituent service.

The House passed a bill (H.R. 3146) on September 24 to extend TAIF, mandatory child care, abstinence education, and transitional Medicaid, on current terms, through March 31, 2004. In the absence of legislation these programs would expire on September 30. The Senate Finance Committee approved a comprehensive TAIF preauthorization proposal of Chairman Chuck Grassley on September 10. Entitled Personal Responsibility and Individual Development for Everyone (PRIDE), the legislation would extend TANF, mandatory child care, abstinence education, and transitional Medicaid for 5 years, FY2004 through FY2008. It would raise TANF work participation standards, increase weekly work hours, add new countable work activities,

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The central government's limited writ and perceived corruption are helping sustain a Taliban insurgency and feeding pessimism about the Afghanistan stabilization effort. However, ethnic disputes have been confined to political debate and competition, enabling Karzai to focus on improving governance, reversing security deterioration and on his re-election bid in the fall of 2009. See CRS Report RL30588, Afghanistan: Post- War Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, by Kenneth Katzman.

The Federal Protective Service (FPS) -- within U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- is responsible for protecting federal government property, personnel, visitors, and customers, including property leased by the General Services Administration (GSA). FPS currently employs over 15,000 contract security guards to protect federal property. DHS intends, according to its FY2009 budget justification, to continue the use of contract security guards to focus FPS activities on maintaining security policy and standards, conducting building security assessments, and monitoring federal agency compliance with security standards.

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