A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The mission of the Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) includes enforcing provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which is designed to ensure that millions of workers are paid the federal minimum wage and overtime. Conducting investigations based on worker complaints is WHD's priority. On March 25, 2009, GAO testified on its findings related to (1) undercover tests of WHD's complaint intake process, (2) case study examples of inadequate WHD responses to wage complaints, and (3) the effectiveness of WHD's complaint intake process, conciliations (phone calls to the employer), and other investigative tools. To test WHD's complaint intake process, GAO posed as complainants and employers in 10 different scenarios. To provide case study examples and assess effectiveness of complaint investigations, GAO used data mining and statistical sampling of closed case data for fiscal year 2007. This report summarizes the testimony (GAO-09-458T) and provides recommendations."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since the 1980s, the V-22, developed to transport combat troops, supplies, and equipment for the U.S. Marine Corps and to support other services' operations, has experienced several fatal crashes, demonstrated various deficiencies, and faced virtual cancellation--much of which it has overcome. Although recently deployed in Iraq and regarded favorably, it has not performed the full range of missions anticipated, and how well it can do so is in question. Given concerns about the V-22 program, GAO recently reviewed and on May 11, 2009, reported on MV-22 operations in Iraq; strengths and deficiencies in terms of the capabilities expected of the V-22; and past, current, and future costs. In that report, GAO recommended that the Secretary of Defense require (1) a new alternatives analysis of the V-22 and (2) that the Marine Corps develop a prioritized strategy to improve system suitability, reduce operational costs, and align future budget requests. The Department of Defense (DOD) concurred with the second recommendation, but not the first. GAO believes both recommendations remain valid. This testimony highlights GAO's findings from that report. In speaking of the V-22, we are actually speaking of two variants …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the implementation of high speed intercity passenger rail projects in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the Recovery Act). The $8 billion provided by the Recovery Act for high speed and other intercity passenger rail projects has focused more attention on and generated a great deal of anticipation about the possibility of developing high speed rail systems in the United States. These projects are seen by some as serving an important transportation role, by moving people quickly and safely, reducing highway and airport congestion, and being environmentally friendly. This testimony focuses on (1) the factors identified that affect the economic viability of high speed rail projects and (2) how the Federal Railroad Administration's (FRA) recent strategic plan incorporates those factors."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since September 2001, the Department of Defense (DOD) has relied heavily on the reserve component primarily in support of ongoing contingency operations for the Global War on Terrorism, which is now known as the Overseas Contingency Operation. As of February 2009, approximately 691,000 reserve servicemembers have been activated in support of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, with many of these servicemembers being called for multiple deployments or extended for more than one year. This increased use of the reserve component servicemembers has led to questions by Congress about whether reserve component servicemembers might be experiencing a decline in earnings as a result of extended and frequent activations. Citing the nation's increased reliance on the reserve component, Congress mandated in 2002 that we review compensation programs available to reserve component servicemembers serving on active duty. In September 2003, we reported that DOD lacked sufficient information to determine the need for compensation programs and recommended that DOD obtain more complete information on the magnitude of income change, the causes of any such identified change, and the effect of income change on retention. The results of DOD's 2004 Status of Forces …

The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Act (the "SAFER Act") was enacted by the 108th Congress as part of the FY2004 National Defense Authorization Act. This report describes the SAFER Act in brief and discusses possible budgetary modifications to the SAFER Act that are being considered due to the recent economic downturn.

U.S.-China economic ties have expanded substantially over the past three decades. With a huge population and a rapidly expanding economy, China is a potentially huge market for U.S. exporters. However, bilateral economic relations have become strained over a number of issues, which this report discusses at length. The current global economic crisis could further challenge China-U.S. economic ties. Several Members of Congress have urged the Obama Administration to take a more assertive approach in dealing with Chinese economic practices.

The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) - which includes the National Fire Academy (NFA) - is currently an entity within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The objective of the USFA is to significantly reduce the nation's loss of life from fire, while also achieving a reduction in property loss and non-fatal injury due to fire. In the 111th Congress, debate over the USFA budget focuses on whether the USFA is receiving sufficient funding to accomplish its mission, given that appropriations for USFA have consistently been well below the agency's authorized level. An ongoing issue is the viability and status of the USFA and National Fire Academy within the Department of Homeland Security.

This report discusses the April 2009 outbreak of the influenza strain known as H1N1, or commonly, swine influenza. This report describes the distribution of the virus and the statistics of affected areas, as well as international and U.S. efforts to treat infected persons, respond to outbreaks in various countries (such as Mexico and other Latin American nations), and prepare for a possible influenza pandemic.

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Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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Isotope effects (IEs) are a powerful tool for examining the reactivity of, and interactions between, molecules. Recently, secondary IEs have been used to probe the nature of noncovalent interactions between guest and host molecules in supramolecular systems. While these studies can provide valuable insight into the specific interactions governing guest recognition and binding properties, IEs on noncovalent interactions are often very small and difficult to measure precisely. The Perrin group has developed an NMR titration method capable of determining ratios of equilibrium constants with remarkable precision. They have used this technique to study small, secondary equilibrium isotope effects (EIEs) on the acidity of carboxylic acids and phenols and on the basicity of amines, measuring differences down to thousandths of a pK{sub a} unit. It occurred to us that this titration method can in principle measure relative equilibrium constants for any process which is fast on the NMR timescale and for which the species under comparison are distinguishable by NMR. Here we report the application of this method to measure very small EIEs on noncovalent host-guest interactions in a supramolecular system.

In 2008, the National Marine Fisheries Service completed the sixteenth year of a study to estimate survival and travel time of juvenile salmonids Oncorhynchus spp. passing through dams and reservoirs on the Snake and Columbia Rivers. All estimates were derived from detections of fish tagged with passive integrated transponder (PIT) tags. We PIT tagged and released a total of 18,565 hatchery steelhead O. mykiss, 15,991 wild steelhead, and 9,714 wild yearling Chinook salmon O. tshawytscha at Lower Granite Dam in the Snake River. In addition, we utilized fish PIT tagged by other agencies at traps and hatcheries upstream from the hydropower system and at sites within the hydropower system in both the Snake and Columbia Rivers. These included 122,061 yearling Chinook salmon tagged at Lower Granite Dam for evaluation of latent mortality related to passage through Snake River dams. PIT-tagged smolts were detected at interrogation facilities at Lower Granite, Little Goose, Lower Monumental, Ice Harbor, McNary, John Day, and Bonneville Dams and in the PIT-tag detector trawl operated in the Columbia River estuary. Survival estimates were calculated using a statistical model for tag-recapture data from single release groups (the single-release model). Primary research objectives in 2008 were to: (1) estimate …

Attosecond x-ray pulses are an indispensable tool for the study of electronic and structural changes in molecules undergoing chemical reactions. They have a wide bandwidth comparable to the energy bands of valence electronic states and, therefore, are well suited for making and probing multiple valence electronic excitations using core electron transitions. Here we propose a method of creating a sequence of two attosecond soft x-ray pulses in a free electron laser by optical manipulation of electrons located in two different sections of the electron bunch. The energy of each x-ray pulse can be of the order of 100 nJ and the pulse width of the order of 250 attoseconds. The carrier frequency of each x-ray pulse can be independently tuned to a resonant core electron transition of a specific atom of the molecule. The time interval between the two attosecond pulses is tunable from a few femtoseconds to a hundred femtoseconds with better than 100 attoseconds precision.

There is growing interest in producing intense, coherent x-ray radiation with an adjustable and arbitrary polarization state. The crossed-planar undulator, which was first proposed by Kim, could achieve rapid polarization control in synchrotron radiation sources and free electron lasers (FELs) through the manipulation of a phase shifter. Recently, a statistical analysis shows that a polarization degree of over 80% is obtainable for a Self-Amplified Spontaneous Emission (SASE) FEL near saturation. In such a scheme, nonlinear harmonic radiation is also generated in each undulator and the polarization of the radiation is controllable in the same manner. In this paper, we study the degree of polarization achievable at the third harmonic in a crossed-planar undulator. We also propose a method for generating second harmonic radiation with arbitrary polarization.

Gravitational instability of the distribution of stars in a galaxy is a well-known phenomenon in astrophysics. This report is an attempt to analyze this phenomenon by applying standard tools developed in accelerator physics. It is found that a nonrotating galaxy would become unstable if its size exceeds a certain limit that depends on its mass density and its velocity spread.

Environmental monitoring data were collected at and around the Area 3 and Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Sites (RWMSs) at the Nevada Test Site. These data are associated with radiation exposure, air, groundwater, meteorology, vadose zone, subsidence, and biota. This report summarizes the 2008 environmental data to provide an overall evaluation of RWMS performance and to support environmental compliance and performance assessment (PA) activities.

Axion Like Particles (ALPs) are predicted to couple with photons in the presence of magnetic fields. This effect may lead to a significant change in the observed spectra of gamma-ray sources such as AGNs. Here we carry out a detailed study that for the first time simultaneously considers in the same framework both the photon/axion mixing that takes place in the gamma-ray source and that one expected to occur in the intergalactic magnetic fields. An efficient photon/axion mixing in the source always means an attenuation in the photon flux, whereas the mixing in the intergalactic medium may result in a decrement and/or enhancement of the photon flux, depending on the distance of the source and the energy considered. Interestingly, we find that decreasing the value of the intergalactic magnetic field strength, which decreases the probability for photon/axion mixing, could result in an increase of the expected photon flux at Earth if the source is far enough. We also find a 30% attenuation in the intensity spectrum of distant sources, which occurs at an energy that only depends on the properties of the ALPs and the intensity of the intergalactic magnetic field, and thus independent of the AGN source being observed. …

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As scientific instruments and computer simulations produce more and more data, the task of locating the essential information to gain insight becomes increasingly difficult. FastBit is an efficient software tool to address this challenge. In this article, we present a summary of the key underlying technologies, namely bitmap compression, encoding, and binning. Together these techniques enable FastBit to answer structured (SQL) queries orders of magnitude faster than popular database systems. To illustrate how FastBit is used in applications, we present three examples involving a high-energy physics experiment, a combustion simulation, and an accelerator simulation. In each case, FastBit significantly reduces the response time and enables interactive exploration on terabytes of data.

A rotatable collimator is proposed for the LHC phase II collimation upgrade. When the beam crosses the collimator, it will excite trapped modes that can contribute to the beam energy loss and power dissipation on the vacuum chamber wall. Transverse trapped modes can also generate transverse kicks on the beam and may thus affect the beam quality. In this paper, the parallel eigensolver code Omega3P is used to search for all the trapped modes below 2 GHz in two collimator designs, one with rectangular and the other with circular vacuum chamber. It is found that the longitudinal trapped modes in the circular vacuum chamber design may cause excessive heating. Adding ferrite tiles on the circular vacuum chamber wall can strongly damp these trapped modes. We will present and discuss the simulation results.

A presentation that analysis the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 as well as the economic wide cap and trade program, the energy efficiency provisions, and the competitiveness provisions.

The charmonium yields are expected to be considerably suppressed if a deconfined medium is formed in high-energy heavy-ion collisions. In addition, the bottomonium states, with the possible exception of the {Upsilon}(1S) state, are also expected to be suppressed in heavy-ion collisions. However, in proton-nucleus collisions the quarkonium production cross sections, even those of the {Upsilon}(1S), scale less than linearly with the number of binary nucleon-nucleon collisions. These 'cold nuclear matter' effects need to be accounted for before signals of the high density QCD medium can be identified in the measurements made in nucleus-nucleus collisions. We identify two cold nuclear matter effects important for midrapidity quarkonium production: 'nuclear absorption', typically characterized as a final-state effect on the produced quarkonium state and shadowing, the modification of the parton densities in nuclei relative to the nucleon, an initial-state effect. We characterize these effects and study their energy and rapidity dependence.