A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) is required by law to conduct a comprehensive examination of the national defense strategy, force structure, modernization plans, infrastructure, and budget every 4 years including an assessment of the force structure best suited to implement the defense strategy at low-to-moderate level of risk. The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), completed in February 2006, represents the first comprehensive review that DOD had undertaken since the military forces have been engaged in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. GAO was asked to assess (1) the strengths and weaknesses of DOD's approach and methodology for the 2006 QDR and (2) what changes, if any, in the QDR legislation could improve the usefulness of the report, including any changes that would better reflect 21st century security conditions. To conduct its review, GAO analyzed DOD's methodology, QDR study guidance, and results from key analyses and also obtained views of defense analysts within and outside of DOD."

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Elastic constants for tantalum single crystals have been calculated by Orlikowski, et al. [1] for a broad range of temperatures and pressures. These moduli can be utilized directly in continuum crystal simulations or dislocation dynamics calculations where the individual grains of the polycrystalline material are explicitly represented. For simulations on a larger size scale, the volume of material represented by the quadrature points of the simulation codes includes many grains, and average moduli are needed. Analytic bounding and averaging schemes exist, but since these do not account for nonuniform stress and strain within the interacting grains, the upper and lower bounds tend to diverge as the crystal anisotropy increases. Local deformation and stress equilibrium accommodate the anisotropic response of the individual grains. One method of including grain interactions in shear modulus averaging calculations is through a highly-descretized finite element model of a polycrystal volume. This virtual test sample (VTS) can be probed to determine the average response of the polycrystal. The desire to obtain isotropic moduli imposes attributes on the VTS. The grains should be equiax and the crystal orientation distribution function should be random. For these simulations, a cube, 300 {micro}m on a side, was discretized with 1 million …

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This report discusses the District of Columbia (DC) Tuition Assistance Program, which provides scholarships for undergraduate education to DC residents ranging from $2,500 to $10,000. Originally, the program was limited to providing scholarships for attending public higher education institutions in Maryland and Virginia, but it was expanded to include public institutions nationwide in May 2000.

COMcheck provides an optional way to demonstrate compliance with commercial and high-rise residential building energy codes. Commercial buildings include all use groups except single family and multifamily not over three stories in height. COMcheck was originally based on ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-1989 (Standard 90.1-1989) requirements and is intended for use with various codes based on Standard 90.1, including the Codification of ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-1989 (90.1-1989 Code) (ASHRAE 1989a, 1993b) and ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-1999 (Standard 90.1-1999). This includes jurisdictions that have adopted the 90.1-1989 Code, Standard 90.1-1989, Standard 90.1-1999, or their own code based on one of these. We view Standard 90.1-1989 and the 90.1-1989 Code as having equivalent technical content and have used both as source documents in developing COMcheck. This technical support document (TSD) is designed to explain the technical basis for the COMcheck software as originally developed based on the ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-1989 (Standard 90.1-1989). Documentation for other national model codes and standards and specific state energy codes supported in COMcheck has been added to this report as appendices. These appendices are intended to provide technical documentation for features specific to the supported codes and for any changes made for state-specific codes that differ from the standard features that …

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This report provides information about the Consumer Bankruptcy and Household Debt. The principal impetus behind bankruptcy reform is high number of consumer bankruptcy filings which in 2005 and 2006 reached five times more than in 1980's.

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This report provides current statistical information, profiles the Afghanistan narcotics trade's participants, explores linkages between narcotics, insecurity, and corruption, and reviews U.S. and international policy responses since late 2001. The report also considers ongoing policy debates regarding the counternarcotics role of coalition military forces, poppy eradication, alternative livelihoods, and funding issues for Congress.