Vibrating wire stressmeters were installed in the Spent Fuel Facility at the Nevada Test Site. These stressmeters will measure the changes in in situ stress during the five-year spent fuel test. Before installation, laboratory tests were conducted to study reproducibility of placement and to develop a program hopefully to reduce corrosion of the stressmeters while in place at the Spent Fuel Facility. These laboratory tests are discussed along with the installation of the stressmeters at the Spent Fuel Facility.

This report details the constitutional standards that currently apply to indirect school aid programs and summarizes all of the pertinent Supreme Court decisions, with particular attention to Zelman. It also summarizes the pending case of Davey v. Locke and other recent and ongoing state and lower federal court cases concerning vouchers.

This report discusses the variety of current U.S. security assistance programs to Lebanon including objectives, vetting processes, end-use monitoring, and issues for Congress. The last section of this report discusses the upcoming elections and the future of U.S. security assistance to Lebanon.

This report examines the economic partnership between the United States and the European Union. Not only is the U.S.-EU trade and investment relationship the largest in the world, but it is also arguably the most important. Agreement between the two partners in the past has been critical to making the world trading system more open and efficient.

The Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA) is a proposed accelerator for the low energy nuclear physics community. Its goal is to understand the natural abundances of the elements heavier than iron, explore the nuclear force in systems far from stability, and study symmetry violation and fundamental physics in nuclei. To achieve these scientific goals, RIA promises to produce isotopes far from stability in sufficient quantities to allow experiments. It would also produce near stability isotopes at never before seen production rates, as much as 10{sup 12} pps. Included in these isotopes are many that are important to stockpile stewardship, such as {sup 87}Y, {sup 146-50}Eu, and {sup 231}Th. Given the expected production rates at RIA and a reasonably intense neutron source, one can expect to make {approx} 10 {micro}g targets of nuclei with a half-life of {approx}1 day. Thus, it will be possible at RIA to obtain experimental information on the neutron cross section for isotopes that have to date only been determined by theory. There are two methods to perform neutron cross-section measurements, prompt and delayed. The prompt method tries to measure each reaction as it happens. The exact technique employed will depend on the reaction of interest, (n,2n), (n,{gamma}), …

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The average tenure of Members of the Senate and House of Representatives at the beginning of each Congress has varied substantially since 1789. The purpose of this report is to provide a Congress-by-Congress summary of the average years of service for Senators and Representatives for the First through the 110th Congresses.

The official clergy of Congress are the two chaplains — one in the House, the other in the Senate. They are among the elected officers of their respective houses. At the beginning of each Congress, the House chaplain is elected for a two-year term. The Senate chaplain does not have to be reelected at the beginning of a new Congress. This fact sheet is one of a series on the legislative process. For more information on the legislative process.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region, receives over a quarter of all U.S. bilateral foreign assistance. Aid to Africa more than quadrupled over the past decade, primarily due to sizable increases in global health spending during the Bush Administration and more measured increases in development, economic, and security assistance. The Obama Administration's FY2012 bilateral Africa aid budget request, at $7.8 billion, represents an increase of roughly 10% compared to FY2010, albeit at a more restrained growth rate than in previous years (see "The FY2012 Request by the Numbers"). FY2011 enacted levels are not yet available by region. The proposed increases are concentrated in the areas of health, governance, and agriculture.

Eliminating a Major Cause of Wire Drawing Breakage in A-15 High-Field Superconductors Phase 1 Summary Purpose of the research: The Phase 1 goal was to make a significant improvement in the wire drawing technology used for difficult to draw superconductor precursor composites. Many ductile Nb-Al and Nb-Sn precursor wire composites have experienced the onset of wire drawing breakage at about 1.5 mm diameter. Phase 1 focused on evaluating the role that precision rigid guidance of the wire into the drawing die and the hydrostatic stress state at the die entrance played in preventing wire breakage. Research carried out: The research performed depended upon the construction of both a mechanical wire guide and a hydrostatic pressure stiffened wire guidance system. Innovare constructed the two wire guidance systems and tested them for their ability to reduce wire drawing breakage. One set of hardware provided rigid alignment of the wires to their wire drawing die axes within 0.35 degrees using ''hydrostatic pressure stiffening'' to enable the precision guidance strategy to be implemented for these highly flexible small diameter wires. This apparatus was compared to a guide arrangement that used short span mechanical guide alignment with a misalignment limit of about 0.75 degrees. Four …

500 cfm portable exhausters will be utilized on single shell tanks involved in saltwell pumping. This will be done, in part, to remove flammable gases from the tank vapor space. The exhaust filter train, fan, stack, and associated instrumentation and equipment are mounted on a portable skid. The design analysis and basis for the skid system design are documented in reference 1. A pumped drainage collection system is being added to the existing portable exhausters. Additional equipment and instrumentation are also being added to the exhausters, including a vacuum pump cabinet and a generic effluent monitoring system (GEMS). The GEMS will provide sampling and monitoring capabilities. The purpose of this analysis is three fold. First, to determine the maximum saltwell tank vapor space temperature. Second, to determine an allowable exhauster inlet air temperature increase to ensure the humidity is less than 70%. Third, to assess potential adverse temperature effects to the continuous air monitor (CAM) sample head. The results of this analysis will be used to ensure that air stream temperatures in the portable exhausters are increased sufficiently to prevent condensation from forming on either the pre or HEPA filters without adversely effecting the CAM.

The objective of this project management plan is to define the tasks and deliverables that will support the treatment, storage, and disposal of remote-handled and large container contact-handled low-level mixed waste, and the storage of Greater-thaw category 3 waste. The plan is submitted to fulfill the requirements of the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order Milestone M-91-10, The plan was developed in four steps: (1) the volumes of the applicable waste streams and the physical, dangerous, and radioactive characteristics were established using existing databases and forecasts; (2) required treatment was identified for each waste stream based on land disposal restriction treatment standards and waste characterization data; (3) alternatives for providing the required treatment were evaluated and the preferred options were selected; (4) an acquisition plan was developed to establish the technical, schedule, and cost baselines for providing the required treatment capabilities. The major waste streams are tabulated, along with the required treatment for disposal.

Future-looking high end computing initiatives will deploy powerful, large-scale computing platforms that leverage novel component technologies for superior node performance in advanced system architectures with tens or even hundreds of thousands of nodes. Recent advances in performance tools and modeling methodologies suggest that it is feasible to acquire such systems intelligently and achieve excellent performance, while also significantly reducing the user time required to attain high performance. These developments are relevant to several aspects of future HEC technology outlined in the recent HECRTF white paper request, in particular items 5.4, 5.5, 5.6, and 5.8. We envision the following specific capabilities: (1) Performance modeling tools, available to researchers and vendors, will extrapolate performance from prototype systems to full-scale systems, and even accurately predict performance behavior before systems are manufactured, thus enabling both improved designs and more intelligent selection of systems in procurements. (2) System simulation facilities, implemented on highly parallel platforms and available to researchers and vendors, will for instance realistically model the performance of a specific interprocessor network design running a specific scientific application code. As with item 1, these facilities can lead both to improved designs and procurement decisions that yield significantly greater sustained performance for targeted scientific applications. …

This Sampling and Analysis Plan (SAP) provides direction for the first sampling of sludge from the K East Basin spent fuel canisters. The specially developed sampling equipment used removes representative samples of sludge while maintaining the radioactive sample underwater in the basin pool (equipment is described in WHC-SD-SNF-SDD-004). Included are the basic background logic for sample selection, the overall laboratory analyses required and the laboratory reporting required. These are based on requirements put forth in the data quality objectives (WHC-SD-SNF-DQO-008) established for this sampling and characterization activity.

A report on high voltage pulse transformer designs at the University of California Radiation Laboratory.

Scientific applications and experimental facilities generate massive data sets that need to be transferred to remote collaborating sites for sharing, processing, and long term storage. In order to support increasingly data-intensive science, next generation research networks have been deployed to provide high-speed on-demand data access between collaborating institutions. In this paper, we present a practical model for online data scheduling in which data movement operations are scheduled in advance for end-to-end high performance transfers. In our model, data scheduler interacts with reservation managers and data transfer nodes in order to reserve available bandwidth to guarantee completion of jobs that are accepted and confirmed to satisfy preferred time constraint given by the user. Our methodology improves current systems by allowing researchers and higher level meta-schedulers to use data placement as a service where theycan plan ahead and reserve the scheduler time in advance for their data movement operations. We have implemented our algorithm and examined possible techniques for incorporation into current reservation frameworks. Performance measurements confirm that the proposed algorithm is efficient and scalable.

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In a novel application of the multiwire proportional counter we have imaged a collimated neutron beam. Although preliminary, the results are of sufficient import to be described here because of the potential wide application of the multiwire proportional counter to Laboratory problems. The counter was operated with a counting gas pressure of 20 Torr; the counting gas was pure C/sub 4/H/sub 10/. The radiator was a /sup 235/U foil. Under these conditions, the counter is (1) relatively insensitive to charged particles (other than fission fragments), (2) insensitive to ..gamma..-radiation, and (3) has an efficiency for the detection of fission fragments independent of incident neutron energy over a wide range of neutron energies.

This report examines the key factors that shape French foreign policy. From that context, it analyzes some of the reasons for the tensions in and the accomplishments of U.S.-French relations. The report is illustrative, rather than exhaustive. Instead, the report reviews issues selected because they exemplify some of the essential features of the U.S.-French relationship.

This report provides an introduction to German foreign and security policy. The report discusses the foundations of German foreign policy, Germany in the European Union (EU), evolving security and defense policy, and transatalantic implications.

This report answers several frequently asked questions about military health care, including: how the system is structured, a TRICARE summary, TRICARE eligibility and plan options, cost of military health care to beneficiaries, relationship of TRICARE to MEDICARE, how the Affordable Care Act affects TRICARE, long-term trends of defense health care costs, and a summary of the fund which funds TRICARE - the Medicare Eligible Retiree Health Care fund.

Earlier Microwave Measurements of the ETA Accelerating Cells has uncovered eleven resonances in the frequency range of 0 > 850 MHz. The Q values of these modes ranged from 14 to 70. A three phase program directed at substantially reducing these Q values is reported. In particular the dampening methods described below resulted in a decrease of Q value from 40 to 5 for the beam breakup mode (TM/sub 110/) with a corresponding reduction for most of the other cavity modes.

This report discusses Boko Haram, a violent Nigerian Islamist movement, that has grown increasingly active and deadly in its attacks against state and civilian targets in recent years.