A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since September 11, 2001, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) mission and workforce have expanded, and the FBI has outgrown its aging headquarters, the J. Edgar Hoover Building (Hoover Building). As a result, the FBI also operates in over 40 annexes, the majority located in the National Capital Region. In the explanatory statement accompanying the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations Act, GAO was directed to examine the FBI's headquarters facilities. In response, GAO examined the extent to which (1) these facilities support the FBI's security, space, and building condition requirements and (2) the FBI and the General Services Administration (GSA)--the real property steward for the Hoover Building--have followed leading capital decision-making practices in identifying alternatives for meeting the FBI's facility needs. GAO reviewed security, space, and condition assessments and planning studies; visited FBI facilities; and interviewed FBI and GSA officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In connection with GAO's requirement to audit the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government, GAO audits the Schedules of Federal Debt managed by the Department of the Treasury's (Treasury) Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD) annually to determine whether, in all material respects, (1) the schedules are reliable and (2) BPD maintained effective internal control over financial reporting relevant to the Schedule of Federal Debt. Further, GAO tests compliance with selected provisions of laws related to the Schedule of Federal Debt. Federal debt managed by BPD consists of Treasury securities held by the public and by certain federal government accounts, referred to as intragovernmental debt holdings. Debt held by the public primarily represents the amount the federal government has borrowed from the public to finance cumulative cash deficits. Intragovernmental debt holdings represent federal debt owed by Treasury to federal government accounts--primarily federal trust funds such as Social Security and Medicare--that typically have an obligation to invest their excess annual receipts (including interest earnings) over disbursements in federal securities."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the preliminary observations of our ongoing investigation into the availability of counterfeit military-grade electronic parts on Internet purchasing platforms. Counterfeit parts--generally those whose sources knowingly misrepresent the parts' identity or pedigree--have the potential to seriously disrupt the Department of Defense (DOD) supply chain, delay missions, affect the integrity of weapon systems, and ultimately endanger the lives of our troops. Almost anything is at risk of being counterfeited, from fasteners used on aircraft to electronics used on missile guidance systems. There can be many sources of counterfeit parts as DOD draws from a large network of global suppliers. We recently reported that the increase in counterfeit electronic parts is one of several potential barriers DOD faces in addressing parts quality problems. This testimony summarizes preliminary observations from our ongoing investigation into the purchase and authenticity testing of selected, military-grade electronic parts that may enter the DOD supply chain."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), within the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), administers the Emergency Relief Program to provide funds to states to repair roads damaged by natural disasters and catastrophic failures. In 2007, GAO reported that in recent years states' annual demand for emergency relief funds often exceeded the program's $100 million annual authorization from the Highway Trust Fund and required supplemental appropriations from general revenues to address a backlog of funding requests from states. GAO recommended that FHWA tighten eligibility standards and coordinate with states to withdraw unneeded emergency relief funds, among other actions. For this report, GAO reviewed (1) Emergency Relief Program funding trends since 2007, (2) key program changes made in response to GAO's 2007 report, and (3) the extent to which selected emergency relief projects were approved in compliance with program eligibility requirements. GAO reviewed projects in New York, Texas, and Washington state, states selected based on the amount and frequency of funding allocations since 2007, among other factors."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Wildland fires can result from both natural and human causes. Human-caused wildland fires are of particular concern in Arizona--especially within 100 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border because this is a primary area of entry for illegal border crossers and GAO has previously reported that illegal border crossers have been suspected of igniting wildland fires. Over half of the land in the Arizona border region is managed by the federal government--primarily by the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and four agencies within the Department of the Interior. These agencies collaborate with state, tribal, and local entities to respond to wildland fires. GAO was asked to examine, for the region, the (1) number, cause, size, and location of wildland fires from 2006 through 2010; (2) economic and environmental effects of human-caused wildland fires burning 10 or more acres; (3) extent to which illegal border crossers were the ignition source of wildland fires on federal lands; and (4) ways in which the presence of illegal border crossers has affected fire suppression activities. GAO reviewed interagency policies and procedures; analyzed wildland fire data; and interviewed federal, tribal, state, and local …

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This document contains information about the Texas Constitution and new amendments for the year 2011.

Corrosion has prevented use of SiC/Mg multilayers in applications requiring good lifetime stability. We have developed Al-based barrier layers that dramatically reduce corrosion, while preserving high reflectance and low stress. The aforementioned advances may enable the implementation of corrosion-resistant, high-performance SiC/Mg coatings in the 28-75 nm region in applications such as tabletop EUV/soft x-ray laser sources and solar physics telescopes. Further study and optimization of corrosion barrier structures and coating designs is underway.

The production of fuels from sunlight represents one of the main challenges in the development of a sustainable energy system. Hydrogen is the simplest fuel to produce and although platinum and other noble metals are efficient catalysts for photoelectrochemical hydrogen evolution earth-abundant alternatives are needed for large-scale use. We show that bioinspired molecular clusters based on molybdenum and sulphur evolve hydrogen at rates comparable to that of platinum. The incomplete cubane-like clusters (Mo{sub 3}S{sub 4}) efficiently catalyse the evolution of hydrogen when coupled to a p-type Si semiconductor that harvests red photons in the solar spectrum. The current densities at the reversible potential match the requirement of a photoelectrochemical hydrogen production system with a solar-to-hydrogen efficiency in excess of 10% (ref. 16). The experimental observations are supported by density functional theory calculations of the Mo{sub 3}S{sub 4} clusters adsorbed on the hydrogen-terminated Si(100) surface, providing insights into the nature of the active site.

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) is developing and deploying Mobile Arm Retrieval System (MARS) technologies solutions to support retrieval of radioactive and chemical waste from underground single shell storage tanks (SST) located at the Hanford Site, which is near Richland, Washington. WRPS has developed the MARS using a standardized platform that is capable of deploying multiple retrieval technologies. To date, WRPS, working with their mentor-protege company, Columbia Energy and Environmental Services (CEES), has developed two retrieval mechanisms, MARS-Sluicing (MARS-S) and MARS-Vacuum (MARS-V). MARS-S uses pressurized fluids routed through spray nozzles to mobilize waste materials to a centrally located slurry pump (deployed in 2011). MARS-V uses pressurized fluids routed through an eductor nozzle. The eductor nozzle allows a vacuum to be drawn on the waste materials. The vacuum allows the waste materials to be moved to an in-tank vessel, then extracted from the SST and subsequently pumped to newer and safer double shell tanks (DST) for storage until the waste is treated for disposal. The MARS-S system is targeted for sound SSTs (i.e., non leaking tanks). The MARS-V is targeted for assumed leaking tanks or those tanks that are of questionable integrity. Both versions of MARS are beinglhave been developed in …

Crab cavities have been proposed for a wide number of accelerators and interest in crab cavities has recently increased after the successful operation of a pair of crab cavities in KEK-B. In particular crab cavities are required for both the ILC and CLIC linear colliders for bunch alignment. Consideration of bunch structure and size constraints favour a 3.9 GHz superconducting, multi-cell cavity as the solution for ILC, whilst bunch structure and beam-loading considerations suggest an X-band copper travelling wave structure for CLIC. These two cavity solutions are very different in design but share complex design issues. Phase stabilisation, beam loading, wakefields and mode damping are fundamental issues for these crab cavities. Requirements and potential design solutions will be discussed for both colliders.

The time to simulate pp collisions in the ATLAS detector is largely dominated by the showering of electromagnetic particles in the heavy parts of the detector, especially the electromagnetic barrel and endcap calorimeters. Two procedures have been developed to accelerate the processing time of electromagnetic particles in these regions: (1) a fast shower parameterisation and (2) a frozen shower library. Both work by generating the response of the calorimeter to electrons and positrons with Geant 4, and then reintroduce the response into the simulation at runtime. In the fast shower parameterisation technique, a parameterization is tuned to single electrons and used later by simulation. In the frozen shower technique, actual showers from low-energy particles are used in the simulation. Full Geant 4 simulation is used to develop showers down to {approx} 1 GeV, at which point the shower is terminated by substituting a frozen shower. Judicious use of both techniques over the entire electromagnetic portion of the ATLAS calorimeter produces an important improvement of CPU time. We discuss the algorithms and their performance in this paper.

The light-front holographic QCD approach is used to describe baryon spectroscopy and the systematics of nucleon transition form factors. Baryon spectroscopy and the excitation dynamics of nucleon resonances encoded in the nucleon transition form factors can provide fundamental insight into the strong-coupling dynamics of QCD. The transition from the hard-scattering perturbative domain to the non-perturbative region is sensitive to the detailed dynamics of confined quarks and gluons. Computations of such phenomena from first principles in QCD are clearly very challenging. The most successful theoretical approach thus far has been to quantize QCD on discrete lattices in Euclidean space-time; however, dynamical observables in Minkowski space-time, such as the time-like hadronic form factors are not amenable to Euclidean numerical lattice computations.

We present an analysis of the gamma-ray measurements by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) onboard the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in the region of the supernova remnant (SNR) Cygnus Loop (G74.0-8.5). We detect significant gamma-ray emission associated with the SNR in the energy band 0.2-100 GeV. The gamma-ray spectrum shows a break in the range 2-3 GeV. The gamma-ray luminosity is {approx} 1 x 10{sup 33} erg s{sup -1} between 1-100 GeV, much lower than those of other GeV-emitting SNRs. The morphology is best represented by a ring shape, with inner/outer radii 0{sup o}.7 {+-} 0{sup o}.1 and 1{sup o}.6 {+-} 0{sup o}.1. Given the association among X-ray rims, H{alpha} filaments and gamma-ray emission, we argue that gamma rays originate in interactions between particles accelerated in the SNR and interstellar gas or radiation fields adjacent to the shock regions. The decay of neutral pions produced in nucleon-nucleon interactions between accelerated hadrons and interstellar gas provides a reasonable explanation for the gamma-ray spectrum.

We study paths to significantly reduce the emittance of the SPEAR3 storage ring. Lattice possibilities are explored with the GLASS technique. New lattices are designed and optimized for practical dynamic aperture and beam lifetime. Various techniques are employed to optimize the nonlinear dynamics, including the Elegant-based genetic algorithm. Experimental studies are also carried out on the ring to validate the lattice design. The SPEAR3 storage ring is a third generation light source which has a racetrack layout with a circumference of 234.1 m. The requirement to maintain the photon beamline positions put a significant constraint on the lattice design. Consequently the emittance of SPEAR3 is not on par with some of the recently-built third generation light sources. The present operational lattice has an emittance of 10 nm. For the photon beam brightness of SSRL to remain competitive among the new or upgraded ring-based light sources, it is necessary to significantly reduce the emittance of SPEAR3. In this paper we report our ongoing effort to develop a lower emittance solution for SSRL. We first show the potential of the SPEAR3 lattice with results of the standard cell study using the GLASS technique. This is followed by a discussion of the design …

We report on measurements of broadband, intense, coherent transition radiation at terahertz frequencies, generated as the highly compressed electron bunches in Linear Coherent Light Source (LCLS) pass through a thin metal foil. The foil is inserted at 45{sup o} to the electron beam, 31 m downstream of the undulator. The THz emission passes downward through a diamond window to an optical table below the beamline. A fully compressed 350-pC bunch produces up to 0.5 mJ in a nearly half-cycle pulse of 50 fs FWHM with a spectrum peaking at 10 THz. We estimate a peak field at the focus of over 2.5 GV/m. A 20-fs Ti:sapphire laser oscillator has recently been installed for electro-optic measurements. We are developing plans to add an x-ray probe to this THz pump, by diffracting FEL x rays onto the table with a thin silicon crystal. The x rays would arrive with an adjustable time delay after the THz. This will provide a rapid start to user studies of materials excited by intense single-cycle pulses and will serve as a step toward a THz transport line for LCLS-II.

We consider the hexagonal Wilson loop dual to the six-point MHV amplitude in planar N = 4 super Yang-Mills theory. We apply constraints from the operator product expansion in the near-collinear limit to the symbol of the remainder function at three loops. Using these constraints, and assuming a natural ansatz for the symbol's entries, we determine the symbol up to just two undetermined constants. In the multi-Regge limit, both constants drop out from the symbol, enabling us to make a non-trivial confirmation of the BFKL prediction for the leading-log approximation. This result provides a strong consistency check of both our ansatz for the symbol and the duality between Wilson loops and MHV amplitudes. Furthermore, we predict the form of the full three-loop remainder function in the multi-Regge limit, beyond the leading-log approximation, up to a few constants representing terms not detected by the symbol. Our results confirm an all-loop prediction for the real part of the remainder function in multi-Regge 3 {yields} 3 scattering. In the multi-Regge limit, our result for the remainder function can be expressed entirely in terms of classical polylogarithms. For generic six-point kinematics other functions are required.

Recent technological innovations now make it feasible to construct hard x-ray telescopes for space-based astronomical missions. Focusing optics are capable of improving the sensitivity in the energy range above 10 keV by orders of magnitude compared to previously used instruments. The last decade has seen focusing optics developed for balloon experiments and they will soon be implemented in approved space missions such as the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and ASTRO-H. The full characterization of x-ray optics for astrophysical and solar imaging missions, including measurement of the point spread function (PSF) as well as scattering and reflectivity properties of substrate coatings, requires a very high spatial resolution, high sensitivity, photon counting and energy discriminating, large area detector. Novel back-thinned Electron Multiplying Charge-Coupled Devices (EMCCDs) are highly suitable detectors for ground-based calibrations. Their chip can be optically coupled to a microcolumnar CsI(Tl) scintillator via a fiberoptic taper. Not only does this device exhibit low noise and high spatial resolution inherent to CCDs, but the EMCCD is also able to handle high frame rates due to its controllable internal gain. Additionally, thick CsI(Tl) yields high detection efficiency for x-rays. This type of detector has already proven to be a unique device very …

FACET at SLAC provides high charge, high peak current, low emittance electron beam that is bunched at THz wavelength scale during its normal operation. A THz light source based coherent transition radiation (CTR) from this beam would potentially be the brightest short-pulse THz source ever constructed. Efforts have been put into building this photon source together with a user area, to provide a platform to utilize this unique THz radiation for novel nonlinear and ultrafast phenomena researches and experiments. Being a long-time underutilized portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz (100 GHz {approx} 10 THz) spectral range is experiencing a renaissance in recent years, with broad interests from chemical and biological imaging, material science, telecommunication, semiconductor and superconductor research, etc. Nevertheless, the paucity of THz sources especially strong THz radiation hinders both its commercial applications and nonlinear processes research. FACET - Facilities for Accelerator science and Experimental Test beams at SLAC - provides 23 GeV electron beam with peak currents of {approx} 20 kA that can be focused down to 100 {mu}m{sup 2} transversely. Such an intense electron beam, when compressed to sub-picosecond longitudinal bunch length, coherently radiates high intensity EM fields well within THz frequency range that are orders of …

We have addressed the specific requirements for the integrated systems controlling an array of klystrons used for Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD). The immediate goal for our design was to modernize the transmitter protection system (TPS) for LHCD on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak at the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center (MIT-PSFC). Working with the Alcator C-Mod team, we have upgraded the design of these controls to retrofit for improvements in performance and safety, as well as to facilitate the upcoming expansion from 12 to 16 klystrons. The longer range goals to generalize the designs in such a way that they will be of benefit to other programs within the international fusion effort was met by designing a system which was flexible enough to address all the MIT system requirements, and modular enough to adapt to a large variety of other requirements with minimal reconfiguration.

It is a challenge to produce a practical design of an electron storage ring with a theorectical minimum emittance (TME) lattice of ultra low emittance, e.g. several pico-meters, due to the very strong focusing and extremely large natural chromaticity associated to these lattice designs. To help dealing with this challenge, it is requisite to scale the parameters and look for a best solution. In this paper, the parameter scaling is summarized, and it is argued that, with the lattice configuration with defocusing quadrupole closer to the dipole or just defocusing dipole, one can reach a good balance of the low emittance and relative small natural chromaticity, with phase advance per half cell below {pi}/2. The 10 pm TME lattice for PEP-X is shown at last as demonstration of the design procedure.

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