On May 14, 2008, Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne announced the listing of polar bears as threatened under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The listing itself was praised by some environmentalists, other parties, who opposed the listing itself, argued that the science supporting listing was weak, but felt that the regulations mitigated some of the economic impacts of the listing.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) management of the 287(g) program. Recent reports indicate that the total population of unauthorized aliens residing in the United States is about 12 million. Some of these aliens have committed one or more crimes, although the exact number of aliens that have committed crimes is unknown. Some crimes are serious and pose a threat to the security and safety of communities. ICE does not have the agents or the detention space that would be required to address all criminal activity committed by unauthorized aliens. Thus, state and local law enforcement officers play a critical role in protecting our homeland because, during the course of their daily duties, they may encounter foreign-national criminals and immigration violators who pose a threat to national security or public safety. On September 30, 1996, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act was enacted and added section 287(g) to the Immigration and Nationality Act. This section authorizes the federal government to enter into agreements with state and local law enforcement agencies, and to train selected state and local …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (DOE) manages over 100 construction projects with estimated costs over $90 billion and 97 nuclear waste cleanup projects with estimated costs over $230 billion. DOE has about 14,000 employees to oversee the work of more than 93,000 contractor employees. Due to DOE's history of inadequate oversight and management of contractors, GAO continues to include DOE contract and project management on its list of government programs at high risk for fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement. This testimony discusses (1) recent GAO work on contract and project management within two of DOE's largest program offices--the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) and the Office of Environmental Management (EM), (2) preliminary results of ongoing GAO work on project management at NNSA's Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility (MFFF) project at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina, and (3) actions needed by NNSA and EM to improve contract and project management. GAO's reports over the past 3 years have contained nearly 60 recommendations collectively calling for DOE to ensure that project management requirements are consistently followed, to improve oversight of contractors, and to strengthen accountability. While DOE has generally …

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This document is an E-supplement to GAO-09-144. It presents information from a GAO survey of states' trade offices throughout the United States on the nature of states' export promotion services and their partnerships with the Commercial Service (CS) of the U.S. Department of Commerce. We surveyed these offices to obtain information including (1) the types of export promotion services these states' trade offices provide and the user fees charged, (2) the number of state trade office staff providing these services, (3) whether small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) can use state grant programs or direct payments to defray the cost of CS's export promotion programs and services, (4) the importance of CS services to the operations of states' trade offices, and (5) the effect of CS user fees on SMEs' participation in CS export promotion programs. We surveyed all 50 states' trade offices and received responses from 45 of them. For a further discussion of our scope and methodology, see Export Promotion: Commerce Needs Better Information to Evaluate Its Fee-Based Programs and Customers. (GAO-09-144). We administered the survey from May 2008 to October 2008 in accordance with …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal and state trade promotion activities are intended to help U.S. firms compete successfully in foreign markets. Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME)--firms with fewer than 500 employees--represent a key segment of exporting firms. GAO was asked to determine (1) the relationship between the Department of Commerce's (Commerce) U.S. Commercial Service (CS) and states' trade offices' export promotion programs, (2) CS's methodology and practices for determining costs and establishing user fees for export promotion services, and (3) how CS's user fees affect SMEs' use of its programs. GAO conducted a survey of states' trade offices and reviewed data such as export promotion budgets and fees, program information, government standards, and user fee studies. GAO met with officials from Commerce, the State International Development Organizations, six states' trade offices, and others."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) overarching mission is to protect human health and the environment by implementing and enforcing environmental laws intended to improve the quality of the nation's air and water and to protect its land. EPA's policies and programs affect virtually all segments of the economy, society, and government. As such, it operates in a highly complex and controversial regulatory arena. In recent years, GAO has identified several key challenges EPA faces and corrective actions that would enable the agency to more effectively accomplish its mission. GAO was asked to identify challenges at EPA that hinder its ability to implement its programs effectively, based on prior GAO work. These challenges include (1) improving agencywide management, (2) transforming EPA's processes for assessing and controlling toxic chemicals, (3) improving implementation of the Clean Air Act, (4) reducing pollution in the nation's waters, (5) speeding the pace of cleanup at Superfund and other hazardous waste sites, and (6) addressing emerging climate change issues."

This report provides an overview of U.S.-China economic relations, surveys major trade disputes, and lists bills introduced in the 111th Congress that would impact bilateral commercial ties.

This report summarizes the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and the major regulatory programs that mandate reporting by industrial facilities of releases of hazardous chemicals to the environment, as well as local planning to respond in the event of significant, accidental releases.

This report describes the FY2009 appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Administration requested a net appropriation of $38, 849 million in budget authority for FY2009.

This report explains the different measures of the U.S. government debt, discusses the historical growth in the debt, identifies the current owners of the debt, presents comparisons with government debt in other countries, and examines the potential economic risks associated with a growing federal debt.

This report discusses tax policy in relation to capital gains. Proposals dealing with the taxation of capital gains have ranged from the outright elimination of capital gains taxation to the reduction of capital gains tax rates for certain classes of taxpayers to the elimination of the preferential tax treatment.

This report provides analysis of the education tax credit program.

This report discusses the social security benefits and the spousal benefits of individuals who are not financially dependent on their spouses because they receive benefits based on their own work records.

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This report discusses selected campaign finance policy issues that may receive attention during the 111th congress. Questions about the health of the presidential public financing system were especially prominent during the 2008 election cycle.

This report discusses the congressional activities that have included ratification of the UNFCCC (1992), enactment of implementing legislation and funding of research and development of climate change.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) commitment to assuring the health and safety of its workers includes the conduct of epidemiologic surveillance activities that provide an early warning system for health problems among workers. The Illness and Injury Surveillance Program monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence of workdays, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

We describe a setup for the resonance frequency measurement of individual microcantilevers. The setup displays both high spatial selectivity and sensitivity to specimen vibrations by utilizing a tapered uncoated fiber tip. The high sensitivity to specimen vibrations is achieved by the combination of optical Fabry-Perot interferometry and narrow band RF detection. Wave fronts reflected on the specimen and on the fiber tip end face interfere, thus no reference plane on the specimen is needed, as demonstrated with the example of freestanding silicon nitride micro-cantilevers. The resulting system is integrated in a DB-235 dual beam FIB system, thereby allowing the measurement of micro-cantilever responses during observation in SEM mode. The FIB was used to modify the optical fiber tip. At this point of our RF system development, the microcantilevers used to characterize the detector were not modified in situ.

Development of a first generation prototype (P1) Marx-topology klystron modulator for the International Linear Collider is nearing completion at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. It is envisioned as a smaller, lower cost, and higher reliability alternative to the present, bouncer-topology, 'Baseline Conceptual Design'. The Marx presents several advantages over conventional klystron modulator designs. It is physically smaller; there is no pulse transformer (quite massive at ILC parameters) and the energy storage capacitor bank is quite small, owing to the active droop compensation. It is oil-free; voltage hold-off is achieved using air insulation. It is air cooled; the secondary air-water heat exchanger is physically isolated from the electronic components. The P1-Marx employs all solid state elements; IGBTs and diodes, to control the charge, discharge and isolation of the cells. A general overview of the modulator design and the program status are presented.

The conclusions of this presentation are: (1) Fuel cells operating on bio-gas offer a pathway to renewable electricity generation; (2) With federal incentives of $3,500/kW or 30% of the project costs, reasonable payback periods of less than five years can be achieved; (3) Tri-generation of electricity, heat, and hydrogen offers an alternative route to solving the H{sub 2} infrastructure problem facing fuel cell vehicle deployment; and (4) DOE will be promoting bio-gas fuel cells in the future under its Market Transformation Programs.

Generation of attosecond x-ray pulses is attracting much attention within the x-ray free-electron laser (FEL) user community. Several schemes using extremely short laser pulses to manipulate the electron bunches have been proposed. In this paper, we extend the attosecond two-color ESASE scheme proposed by Zholents et al. to the long optical cycle regime using a second detuned laser and a tapered undulator. Both lasers can be about ten-optical-cycles long, with the second laser frequency detuned from the first to optimize the contrast between the central and side current spikes. A tapered undulator mitigates the degradation effect of the longitudinal space charge (LSC) force in the undulator and suppresses the FEL gain of all side current peaks. Simulations using the LCLS parameters show a single attosecond x-ray spike of {approx} 110 attoseconds can be produced. The second laser can also be detuned to coherently control the number of the side x-ray spikes and the length of the radiation pulse.

Omega3P is a parallel eigenmode calculation code for accelerator cavities in frequency domain analysis using finite-element methods. In this report, we will present detailed finite-element formulations and resulting eigenvalue problems for lossless cavities, cavities with lossy materials, cavities with imperfectly conducting surfaces, and cavities with waveguide coupling. We will discuss the parallel algorithms for solving those eigenvalue problems and demonstrate modeling of accelerator cavities through different examples.