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.

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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.

The theory of rigid body kinematics is used to derive equations that govern the control and measurement of the position and orientation of undulator girders. The equations form the basis of the girder matlab software on the LCLS control system. The equations are linear for small motion and easily inverted as desired. For reference, some relevant girder geometrical data is also given. Equations 6-8 relate the linear potentiometer readings to the motion of the girder. Equations 9-11 relate the cam shaft angles to the motion of the girder. Both sets are easily inverted to either obtain the girder motion from the angles or readings, or, to find the angles and readings that would give a desired motion. The motion of any point on the girder can be calculated by applying either sets of equations to the two cam-planes and extrapolating in the z coordinate using equation 19. The formulation of the equations is quite general and easily coded via matrix and vector methods. They form the basis of the girder matlab software on the LCLS control system.

This program is focused on the experimental determination of the effects of key hydrogen side impurities on the performance of PEM fuel cells. Experimental data has been leveraged to create mathematical models that predict the performance of PEM fuel cells that are exposed to specific impurity streams. These models are validated through laboratory experimentation and utilized to develop novel technologies for mitigating the effects of contamination on fuel cell performance. Results are publicly disseminated through papers, conference presentations, and other means.

The purpose of this report is to provide a concise but comprehensive overview of Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility instrumentation status. The report is divided into the following five sections: (1) new instrumentation in the process of being acquired and deployed, (2) field campaigns, (3) existing instrumentation and progress on improvements or upgrades, (4) proposed future instrumentation, and (5) Small Business Innovation Research instrument development.

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) is currently evaluating an alternative Chemical Process Cell (CPC) flowsheet to increase throughput. It includes removal of the steam-stripping step, which would significantly reduce the CPC processing time and lessen the sampling needs. However, its downside would be to send 100% of the mercury that comes in with the sludge straight to the melter. For example, the new mercury content in the Sludge Batch 5 (SB5) melter feed is projected to be 25 times higher than that in the SB4 with nominal steam stripping of mercury. This task was initiated to study the impact of the worst-case scenario of zero-mercury-removal in the CPC on the DWPF melter offgas system. It is stressed that this study is intended to be scoping in nature, so the results presented in this report are preliminary. In order to study the impact of elevated mercury levels in the feed, it is necessary to be able to predict how mercury would speciate in the melter exhaust under varying melter operating conditions. A homogeneous gas-phase oxidation model of mercury by chloride was developed to do just that. The model contains two critical parameters pertaining to the partitioning of chloride among HCl, …

The goal of the study was to optimize performance of the fixed-location hydroacoustic systems at Lookout Point Dam (LOP) and the acoustic imaging system at Cougar Dam (CGR) by determining deployment and data acquisition methods that minimized structural, electrical, and acoustic interference. The general approach was a multi-step process from mount design to final system configuration. The optimization effort resulted in successful deployments of hydroacoustic equipment at LOP and CGR.

This report outlines the United Arab Emirates (UAE) governmental structure, economy, military, foreign policy, human rights issues and U.S. policies and relations with the UAE. Major areas of U.S. policy concerns discussed are the UAE's participation in the war in Yemen supporting Saudia Arabia and the current standoff with Quatar over alleged sponsorship of terrorism by Quatar in relation to the significant amount of U.S. military personnel based in the UAE.

This report provides background information and issues for Congress on China's naval modernization effort and its implications for U.S. Navy capabilities. The question of how the United States should respond to China's military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, is a key issue in U.S. defense planning and budgeting. Decisions that Congress reaches on this issue could affect U.S. Navy capabilities and funding requirements and the U.S. defense industrial base.

The report examines, from an acquisition perspective, several reasons for interest in the intelligence community's (IC) use of contractors, notably, the types of functions contractors perform, whether the IC's acquisition workforce has the capacity to oversee contractors.

This report discusses legislation over the future of Internet government that has been introduced in the 113th and 114th Congresses which would prevent, delay, or impose conditions or additional scrutiny on the transition.

This report discusses the current state of Puerto Rico's public finances. Puerto Rico faces several fiscal hurdles in 2015. Concerns regarding the sustainability of Puerto Rico's public finances have intensified over the past year, despite several measures taken by the island's government to reduce spending, increase revenues, and restructure its obligations.

This report discusses the ongoing debate regarding the Export-Import Bank of the United States, a federal government corporation which is the the official export credit agency (ECA) of the U.S. Government. The bank's statutory charter expires on September 30, 2014, meaning that its authority to obligations generally would cease and a wind-down of operations would be required. The report gives four possible scenarios for approaches Congress could take in regards to approaching the bank's future authorization status.

The report discusses the President's annual funding request for the Peace Corps, efforts to reauthorize the Peace Corps, and related issues. Current issues include the extent to which there is available funding for Peace Corps expansion, whether the Peace Corps has the institutional capacity to expand, and whether volunteers are able to function in a safe and secure environment.

This report discusses the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and legal challenges to it. It reviews legal principles applied to determine the validity of a marriage contracted in another state and surveys the various approaches employed by states to address same-sex marriage. It also examines previous congressional resolutions proposing a constitutional amendment and limiting federal courts' jurisdiction to hear or determine any question pertaining to the interpretation of DOMA.

This report provides a brief description of the establishment, purposes, and organization of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC).

This report provides a brief overview of the improper payments in high priority programs.

The Cornell Electron Storage Ring (CESR) has been reconfigured as an ultra low emittance damping ring for use as a test accelerator (CesrTA) for International Linear Collider (ILC) damping ring R&D [1]. One of the primary goals of the CesrTA program is to investigate the interaction of the electron cloud with low emittance positron beam to explore methods to suppress the electron cloud, develop suitable advanced instrumentation required for these experimental studies and benchmark predictions by simulation codes. This paper reports the simulation of the electron-cloud formation in CESRTA and ILC quadrupole and sextupole magnets using the 3D code CLOUDLAND. We found that electrons can be trapped with a long lifetime in a quadrupole and sextupole magnet due to the mirror field trapping mechanism. We study the effects of magnet strength, bunch current, ante-chamber effect, bunch spacing effect and secondary emission yield (SEY) in great detail. The development of an electron cloud in magnets is the main concern where a weak solenoid field is not effective. Quadrupole and sextupole magnets have mirror field configurations which may trap electrons by the mirror field trapping mechanism [2]. Fig.1 shows the orbit of a trapped electron in a quadrupole magnet. The electron makes …

This note details the magnetic measurements and the magnetic center fiducializations that were performed on all of the thirty-six LCLS undulator quadrupoles. Temperature rise, standardization reproducibility, vacuum chamber effects and magnetic center reproducibility measurements are also presented. The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) undulator beam line has 33 girders, each with a LCLS undulator quadrupole which focuses and steers the beam through the beam line. Each quadrupole has main quadrupole coils, as well as separate horizontal and vertical trim coils. Thirty-six quadrupoles, thirty-three installed and three spares were, manufactured for the LCLS undulator system and all were measured to confirm that they met requirement specifications for integrated gradient, harmonics and for magnetic center shifts after current changes. The horizontal and vertical dipole trims of each quadrupole were similarly characterized. Each quadrupole was also fiducialized to its magnetic center. All characterizing measurements on the undulator quads were performed with their mirror plates on and after a standardization of three cycles from -6 to +6 to -6 amps. Since the undulator quadrupoles could be used as a focusing or defocusing magnet depending on their location, all quadrupoles were characterized as focusing and as defocusing quadrupoles. A subset of the undulator quadrupoles were …