This report discusses the U.S.-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement (PTPA) and the two types of formal dispute settlement it contains: 1) State-State and 2) investor-State. The report also discusses how the PTPA differs from earlier U.S. Free Trade Agreements (FTAs).

This report discusses Special Operations Forces (SOFs), which are elite military units with special training and equipment that can infiltrate hostile territory through land, sea, or air to conduct a variety of operations, many of them classified.

In the wake of the tragic shootings in Tuscon, AZ, which resulted in the hospitalization of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, as well as 6 fatalities and 13 wounded, the 112th Congress could reexamine certain issues and legislation related to gun control and firearms. This report provides basic firearms-related statistics, an overview of federal firearms law, and a summary of legislative action in the 111th Congress.

This purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the role, purposes, and results of the Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC) in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK or North Korea) and examine U.S. interests, policy issues, options, and legislation.

The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (referred to as the Stafford Act - 42 U.S.C. 5721 et seq.) authorizes the President to issue "major disaster" or "emergency" declarations before or after catastrophes occur. Emergency declarations trigger aid that protects property, public health, and safety and lessens or averts the threat of an incident becoming a catastrophic event. A major disaster declaration, issued after catastrophes occur, constitutes broader authority for federal agencies to provide supplemental assistance to help state and local governments, families and individuals, and certain nonprofit organizations recover from the incident.

The report discusses issues that may be of interest to Congress-managing, sharing, and coordinating geospatial information-and includes examples of legislation. The report also summarizes a diverse set of recommendations and proposals from different non-governmental organizations for how to improve the coordination and management of geospatial information at the federal and state levels.

This report looks at issues in funding all of the Army Corps requests for the fiscal year. The Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for much of the federal water resources infrastructure in the United States. The Corps is faced with more demands for building and maintaining its projects than available federal funding allows. At issue for Congress is deciding how to tackle Corps fiscal challenges during a tight fiscal climate and under earmark moratoriums.

This report covers the sovereign debt crisis currently faced by the Eurozone which has culminated with Greece, which is at the center of the crisis, Ireland, and Portugal borrowing money from other European countries and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in order to avoid default. Topics covered include: the build-up of Greece's debt crisis, policy responses with limited success, and broader implications. Specific issues for Congress include how the U.S. economy and banking industry will be affect by these recent events.

This report provides historical background of the Council, including the role of the previous Commission. It discusses the Council's current mandate and structures, as well as U.S. policy and congressional actions. Finally, it highlights possible policy issues for the 112th Congress, including the overall effectiveness of the Council in addressing human rights, implications for U.S. membership, and U.S. financial contributions to the Council.

The first half of this report looks at the background of U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba over the last 40 years. The second half of this report looks at several initiatives from the 111th Congress that would have eased U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba, but were not completed.

This report examines the evolution of counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and the European Union (EU), particularly since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. It includes a discussion of U.S.-EU cooperation progress and ongoing challenges, as well as perspectives and issues for Congress.

This report provides an overview of recent political developments in Colombia. It reviews the administration of President Uribe (2002-2010), continuing into the election of President Juan Manuel Santos and his first months in office. The report then provides background on the longstanding conflict with internal armed groups that has marked Colombia’s modern development, examining the roots of the conflict and its major actors as well as their present status. The report considers ongoing challenges such as human rights, demobilization and displacement, drug trends, and Colombia’s regional relations. It outlines the National Consolidation Plan which updates Plan Colombia with a whole-of-government approach to eliminate the insurgency, and it describes the U.S.-Colombia Defense Cooperation Agreement. The report raises some of the major policy issues that the U.S. Congress has had, and will continue to pursue, in relation to U.S.-Colombia policy, such as the pending U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

"Gang of Four" intelligence notifications are oral briefings on sensitive non-covert action intelligence activities (including intelligence collection programs) that the Intelligence Community typically limits to the chairmen and ranking members of the two congressional intelligence committees, and at times to their respective staff directors. This report reviews the history of Gang of Four notification process and compares this procedure with that of the "Gang of Eight" notification procedure.

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This report provides information about the Legal and Administrative Responses on Deregulating Genetically Engineered Alfalfa and Sugar Beets.

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A primary focus of the Mackenzie laboratory is the elucidation of processes and machinery for mitochondrial genome maintenance and transmission in higher plants. We have found that numerous organellar DNA maintenance components in plants appear to be dual targeted to mitochondria and plastids. Of particular interest was the observation that some twin (tandemly arrayed) dual targeting presequences appeared to utilize non-AUG alternative translation initiation, allowing for multiple translation starts at a single gene. Two aspects of this phenomenon were of particular interest: (1) Alternative translation initiation might provide a mechanism to regulate protein targeting temporally and spatially, a possibility that had not been demonstrated previously, and (2) alternative translation initiation might occur in genes involved in nuclear-controlled mitochondrial genome recombination, thought to be exclusively mitochondrial in their function. During the course of this research, we pursued three aims, with an emphasis on two specific genes of interest: POLgamma2, an organellar DNA polymerase, and MSH1, a MutS homolog thought to participate in mitochondrial, but not plastid, genome recombination surveillance. Our aims were to (1) Identify additional genes within Arabidopsis and other genomes that employ non-AUG alternative translation initiation, (2) Locate sequences upstream to the annotated AUG that confer alternative non-AUG translation …

This 'What/If' Hazards Analysis addresses hazards affecting the Sludge Treatment Project Engineered Container Retrieval and Transfer System (ECRTS) NPH and external events at the preliminary design stage. In addition, the hazards of the operation sequence steps for the mechanical handling operations in preparation of Sludge Transport and Storage Container (STSC), disconnect STSC and prepare STSC and Sludge Transport System (STS) for shipping are addressed.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [LLNL] was tasked to compare the impact response of NFL helmet pad systems and U.S. Army pad systems compatible with an Advanced Combat Helmet [ACH] at impact velocities up to 20 ft/s. This was a one-year study funded by the U.S. Army and JIEDDO. The Army/JIEDDO point of contact is COL R. Todd Dombroski, DO, JIEDDO Surgeon. LLNL was chosen by committee to perform the research based on prior published computational studies of the mechanical response of helmets and skulls to blast. Our collaborators include the U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory [USAARL] (a DoD laboratory responsible for impact testing helmets), Team Wendy and Oregon Aero (current and former ACH pad manufacturers), Riddell and Xenith (NFL pad manufacturers), and d3o (general purpose sports pad manufacturer). The manufacturer-supplied pad systems that were studied are shown in the figure below. The first two are the Army systems, which are bilayer foam pads with both hard and soft foam and a water-resistant airtight wrapper (Team Wendy) or a water-resistant airtight coating (Oregon Aero). The next two are NFL pad systems. The Xenith system consists of a thin foam pad and a hollow air-filled cylinder that elastically buckles under load. The …

SSRL, a division of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a national user facility which provides synchrotron radiation, a name given to x-rays or light produced by electrons circulating in a storage ring at nearly the speed of light. The synchrotron radiation is produced by the 3.3 GeV storage ring, SPEAR. SPEAR is a fully dedicated synchrotron radiation facility which has been operating for user experiments 6 to 7 months per year. 1994, the third year of operation of SSRL as a fully dedicated, low-emittance, independent user facility was superb. The facility ran extremely well, delivering 89% of the scheduled user beam to 25 experimental stations during 6.5 months of user running. Over 600 users came from 167 institutions to participate in 343 experiments. Users from private industry were involved in 31% of these experiments. The SPEAR accelerator ran very well with no major component failures and an unscheduled down time of only 2.9%. In addition to this increased reliability, there was a significant improvement in the stability of the beam. The enhancements to the SPEAR orbit as part of a concerted three-year program were particularly noticeable to users. the standard deviation of beam movement (both planes) in the last …

This study seeks to provide policymakers and other stakeholders with actionable information towards a road map for reducing energy consumption cost-effectively. We focus on individual end use equipment types (hereafter referred to as appliance groups) that might be the subject of policies - such as labels, energy performance standards, and incentives - to affect market transformation in the short term, and on high-efficiency technology options that are available today. As the study title suggests, the high efficiency or Business Case scenario is constructed around a model of cost-effective efficiency improvement. Our analysis demonstrates that a significant reduction in energy consumption and emissions is achievable at net negative cost, that is, as a profitable investment for consumers. Net savings are calculated assuming no additional costs to energy consumption such as carbon taxes. Savings relative to the base case as calculated in this way is often referred to as 'economic savings potential'. Chinese energy demand has grown dramatically over the last few decades. While heavy industry still plays a dominant role in greenhouse gas emissions, demand from residential and commercial buildings has also seen rapid growth in percentage terms. In the residential sector this growth is driven by internal migration from the …

The purpose of this report is to provide a concise status update for value-added products (VAP) implemented by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility. The report is divided into the following sections: (1) new VAPs for which development has begun, (2) progress on existing VAPs, (3) future VAPs that have been recently approved, (4) other work that leads to a VAP, and (5) top requested VAPs from the archive

Nuclear reaction data play an important role in nuclear reactor, medical, and fundamental science and national security applications. The wealth of information is stored in internally adopted ENDF-6 and EXFOR formats. We present a complete calculation of resonance integrals, Westcott factors, thermal and Maxwellian-averaged cross sections for Z = 1-100 using evaluated nuclear reaction data. The addition of newly-evaluated neutron reaction libraries, and improvements in data processing techniques allows us to calculate nuclear industry and astrophysics parameters, and provide additional insights on all currently available neutron-induced reaction data. Nuclear reaction calculations will be discussed and an overview of the latest reaction data developments will be given.