Report that gives an overview of current intelligence issues of interest to the 112th Congress. It includes background and analysis including most recent development, ongoing Congressional concerns, specific issues for the 112th Congress, and a summary of related legislation from the 109th through the 112th Congresses.

Report that addresses some of the questions that have been raised about the changes made by the Federal Highway Administration to certain standardized street and highways signs.

This report reviews the intelligence appropriations process, describes various changes that have been proposed, and analyzes the issues associated with the proposals.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2010, 13 federal agencies invested over $3 billion in 209 programs designed to increase knowledge of STEM fields and attainment of STEM degrees. The number of programs within agencies ranged from 3 to 46, with the Departments of Health and Human Services and Energy and the National Science Foundation administering more than half of these programs. Almost a third of the programs had obligations of $1 million or less, while some had obligations of over $100 million. Beyond programs specifically focused on STEM education, agencies funded other broad efforts that contributed to enhancing STEM education."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From fiscal years 1994 through 2009, the Department of Defense (DOD) separated over 13,000 active military servicemembers under its homosexual conduct policy. These separations represent about 0.37 percent of the 3.6 million members separated for all reasons, including expiration of terms of service and retirement. In 2005, GAO reported on the number of separated servicemembers under DOD's homosexual conduct policy who held critical skills and the costs associated with administering the policy from fiscal years 1994 through 2003. GAO was asked to examine data from fiscal years 2004 through 2009 to determine (1) the extent to which the policy has resulted in the separation of servicemembers with skills in critical occupations and important foreign languages and (2) the services' costs for certain activities associated with administering the policy. GAO obtained and analyzed DOD personnel and cost data; examined DOD regulations and policy documents; and conducted interviews with officials from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, the Defense Manpower Data Center, and each of the military services. GAO provided a draft of this report to DOD for review and comment. DOD …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Justice Management Division (JMD), the component responsible for managing the working capital fund, effectively tracks fund functions to ensure adherence to applicable fiscal laws and sound management practices. For example, JMD has well-established policies and procedures for tracking and monitoring the four working capital fund functions so that the fund adheres to authorized purposes. Further, JMD structures its reimbursable agreements with customers to facilitate adherence to the Economy Act—the statutory authority underlying most of JMD’s customer orders. JMD also clearly delineates roles and responsibilities, which allows customers to know who to contact with questions and clearly assigns responsibility for obligating and expending funds. Justice also ensures the fund’s self-sufficiency by recovering total costs for the provided services. These actions are consistent with two of the four key operating principles for working capital funds.Customers noted positive benefits from Justice’s shared services but seek more information on rate structures and want assurances that fund costs are equitably distributed. For example, customers said they valued the breadth of services offered as well as the experience of fund staff but wanted to better understand the basis for shared services …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Assistance provided by the Department of the Treasury (Treasury), under the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve) to American International Group, Inc. (AIG) represents one of the federal government's largest investments in a private-sector institution since the financial crisis began in 2008. AIG is a holding company that, through its subsidiaries, engaged in a broad range of insurance and insurancerelated activities in the United States and abroad. As part of GAO's statutory oversight of TARP, this report updates a set of indicators GAO last reported in April 2010. Specifically, GAO discusses (1) trends in AIG's financial condition, (2) trends in the unwinding of AIG Financial Products (AIGFP) and the financial condition of AIG's insurance companies, and (3) the status of the government's exposure to AIG. To update the indicators, GAO primarily used available public filings as of September 30, 2010, and more current publicly available information; reviewed rating agencies' reports; and identified critical activities and discussed them with officials from Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and AIG. Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and AIG provided technical comments …

Increasing calls for intelligence support and continuing innovations in intelligence technologies combine to create significant challenges for both the executive and legislative branches. This report discusses Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) systems, which are integral components of both national policymaking and military operations, including counterterrorism operations. ISR systems are costly and complicated, and the relationships among organizations responsible for designing and operating these systems are equally complicated. These factors create numerous oversight issues for Congress, which this report addresses.

The National Security Council (NSC) was established in 1947. This report describes the history of the NSC, how is structure and influence have varied over the years from one Administration to another, what its current structure and who its current members are, varying opinions as to what the role of the NSC should be, and future developments for the NSC.

None

Under the Constitution, the Rules of the Senate, statutory law, and consistent Senate practices, an individual elected to the United States Senate during a session of Congress to succeed an appointed Senator may begin his or her term of office upon receipt by the Senate of "credentials" in proper form from the state, and by taking the constitutionally required oath of office in open Senate session. The appointed Senator who is being succeeded remains in the office until the new "Senator-elect" is qualified (i.e. is sworn in and seated as a "Senator" by the Senate). This report details the formal and informal rules in such cases.

None

None

This report introduces and analyzes innovation policy issues concerning pharmaceutical patent litigation settlements, including pharmaceutical patent litigation procedures under the Hatch-Waxman Act, the concept of reverse payment settlements, the status of reverse payment settlements under the antitrust laws, and congressional issues and alternatives.

This report reviews the evolution of the U.S. biofuels sector and the role that federal policy has played in shaping its development. In addition, it highlights emerging issues that are critical to the biofuels sector and of relevance to Congress.

A new scheme for mode locking a free-electron laser amplifier is proposed based on electron beam current modulation. It is found that certain properties of the original concept, based on the energy modulation of electrons, are improved including the spectral brightness of the source and the purity of the series of short pulses. Numerical comparisons are made between the new and old schemes and between a mode-locked free-electron laser and self-amplified spontaneous emission free-electron laser. Illustrative examples using a hypothetical mode-locked free-electron laser amplifier are provided. The ability to generate intense coherent radiation with a large bandwidth is demonstrated.

OPV cell efficiencies have increased significantly over the last decade and verified champion efficiencies are currently at 8.3% for both single and multi-junction device types. These increases in efficiency have been driven through the development and optimization of the donor and acceptor materials in bulk heterojunction active layers. Plextronics and Solarmer Energy Inc. are two of the world leading developers of these donor and acceptor materials. Solarmer Energy has reported NREL certified 6.77% efficiencies using optimized low band gap donor materials in combination with PC61BM and PC71BM acceptors and recently reported a champion NREL certified efficiency of 8.1%. Plextronics has reported Newport certified efficiencies of 6.7% using PC71BM acceptors with low band gap materials. In addition, Plextronics has also demonstrated that OPV efficiency of P3HT based materials can be improved by 50% by improving the Voc using alternative acceptors (indene substituted C60 and C70) to PC61BM and PC71BM. However, performance of these alternative acceptors in combination with low band gap materials has not been investigated and the potential for efficiency improvement is evident. In this collaboration, four low band gap donor materials from Solarmer Energy Inc were combined with Plextronics’ indene-class acceptors Plextronics’ indene substituted C60 and C70 acceptors to …

None

In this technical report we investigate efficient methods for numerical simulation of active suspensions. The prototypical system is a suspension of swimming bacteria in a Newtonian fluid. Rheological and other macroscopic properties of such suspensions can differ dramatically from the same properties of the suspending fluid alone or of suspensions of similar but inactive particles. Elongated bacteria, such as E. coli or B. subtilis, swim along their principal axis, propelling themselves with the help of flagella, attached at the anterior of the organism and pushing it forward in the manner of a propeller. They interact hydrodynamically with the surrounding fluid and, because of their asymmetrical shape, have the propensity to align with the local flow. This, along with the dipolar nature of bacteria (the two forces a bacterium exerts on a fluid - one due to self-propulsion and the other opposing drag - have equal magnitude and point in opposite directions), causes nearby bacteria to tend to align, resulting in a intermittent local ordering on the mesoscopic scale, which is between the microscopic scale of an individual bacterium and the macroscopic scale of the suspension (e.g., its container). The local ordering is sometimes called a collective mode or collective swimming. …

This report reviews the management and performance of the Fort Bend Independent School District's (Fort Bend ISD) student behavior management system.

The chemical stability, sulfur dioxide transport, ionic conductivity, and electrolyzer performance have been measured for several commercially available and experimental proton exchange membranes (PEMs) for use in a sulfur dioxide depolarized electrolyzer (SDE). The SDE's function is to produce hydrogen by using the Hybrid Sulfur (HyS) Process, a sulfur based electrochemical/thermochemical hybrid cycle. Membrane stability was evaluated using a screening process where each candidate PEM was heated at 80 C in 63.5 wt. % H{sub 2}SO{sub 4} for 24 hours. Following acid exposure, chemical stability for each membrane was evaluated by FTIR using the ATR sampling technique. Membrane SO{sub 2} transport was evaluated using a two-chamber permeation cell. SO{sub 2} was introduced into one chamber whereupon SO{sub 2} transported across the membrane into the other chamber and oxidized to H{sub 2}SO{sub 4} at an anode positioned immediately adjacent to the membrane. The resulting current was used to determine the SO{sub 2} flux and SO{sub 2} transport. Additionally, membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) were prepared from candidate membranes to evaluate ionic conductivity and selectivity (ionic conductivity vs. SO{sub 2} transport) which can serve as a tool for selecting membranes. MEAs were also performance tested in a HyS electrolyzer measuring current density versus …

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) began processing Sludge Batch 6 (SB6), also referred to as Macrobatch 7 (MB7), in June 2010. SB6 is a blend of the heel of Tank 40 from Sludge Batch 5 (SB5), H-Canyon Np transfers and SB6 that was transferred to Tank 40 from Tank 51.1 SB6 was processed using Frit 418. Sludge is received into the DWPF Chemical Processing Cell (CPC) and is processed through the Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank (SRAT) and Slurry Mix Evaporator Tank (SME). The treated sludge slurry is then transferred to the Melter Feed Tank (MFT) and fed to the melter. During processing of each sludge batch, the DWPF is required to take at least one glass sample to meet the objectives of the Glass Product Control Program (GPCP) and to complete the necessary Production Records so that the final glass product may be disposed of at a Federal Repository. The DWPF requested various analyses of radioactive glass samples obtained from the melter pour stream during processing of SB6 as well as reduction/oxidation (REDOX) analysis of MFT samples to determine the impact of Argon bubbling. Sample analysis followed the Task Technical and Quality Assurance Plan (TTQAP) and an Analytical …

The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) was requested by SRR to provide sample preparation and analysis of the Tank 5F final characterization samples to determine the residual tank inventory prior to grouting. Two types of samples were collected and delivered to SRNL: floor samples across the tank and subsurface samples from mounds near risers 1 and 5 of Tank 5F. These samples were taken from Tank 5F between January and March 2011. These samples from individual locations in the tank (nine floor samples and six mound Tank 5F samples) were each homogenized and combined in a given proportion into 3 distinct composite samples to mimic the average composition in the entire tank. These Tank 5F composite samples were analyzed for radiological, chemical and elemental components. Additional measurements performed on the Tank 5F composite samples include bulk density and water leaching of the solids to account for water soluble species. With analyses for certain challenging radionuclides as the exception, all composite Tank 5F samples were analyzed and reported in triplicate. The target detection limits for isotopes analyzed were based on customer desired detection limits as specified in the technical task request documents. SRNL developed new methodologies to meet these target detection …

Large-scale evacuations from major cities during no-notice events - such as chemical or radiological attacks, hazardous material spills, or earthquakes - have an obvious impact on large regions rather than on just the directly affected area. The scope of impact includes the accommodation of emergency evacuation traffic throughout a very large area; the planning of resources to respond appropriately to the needs of the affected population; the placement of medical supplies and decontamination equipment; and the assessment and determination of primary escape routes, as well as routes for incoming emergency responders. Compared to events with advance notice, such as evacuations based on hurricanes approaching an affected area, the response to no-notice events relies exclusively on pre-planning and general regional emergency preparedness. Another unique issue is the lack of a full and immediate understanding of the underlying threats to the population, making it even more essential to gain extensive knowledge of the available resources, the chain of command, and established procedures. Given the size of the area affected, an advanced understanding of the regional transportation systems is essential to help with the planning for such events. The objectives of the work described here (carried out by Argonne National Laboratory) is the …