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This report provides an overview and policy analysis of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines and the Philippine-U.S. program of military cooperation against it. It examines the origins and operations of Abu Sayyaf, the efforts of the Philippine government and military to eliminate it, and the implications of a greater U.S. military role in attempts to suppress it.

This report discusses the current debate over "net neutrality." While there is no single accepted definition of "net neutrality," most agree that any such definition should include the general principles that owners of the networks that compose and provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network, and they should not be able to discriminate against content provider access to that network.

This report discusses the function, history, and funding for the Adult Education Family Literacy Act (AEFLA) as a means to equip adults with a primary and secondary school education. The report also describes the conditions to acquire a grant from the program. Requirements for the grant are also outlined in the report such as specifying that 82.5 percent of each state's grant must be sub granted to local providers of educational services.

The high-density infrared (HDI) transient-liquid coating (TLC) process was successfully developed and demonstrated excellent, enhanced (5 times higher than the current material and process) wear performance for the selected functionally graded material (FGM) coatings under laboratory simulated, in-service conditions. The mating steel component exhibited a wear rate improvement of approximately one and a half (1.5) times. After 8000 cycles of wear testing, the full-scale component testing demonstrated that the coating integrity was still excellent. Little or no spalling was observed to occur.

Objectives of this program are to provide a thermal barrier coating system with increased temperature capability and improved reliability relative to current state of the art systems. This report describes the bond coat deposition process, manufacturing, and repair.

Presidential elections in Afghanistan were held on October 9, 2004, with heavy turnout and minimal violence. Karzai was declared the winner on November 3, 2004 with about 55% of the vote. Parliamentary, provincial, and district elections were to be held in April-May 2005, but parliamentary and provincial elections are now to be held September 18, 2005; district elections are put off until 2006. See CRS Report RL30588, Afghanistan: Post-War Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy.

Once hostilities end in Afghanistan and the Afghan phase of the war on terrorism starts to wind down, reconstruction efforts will begin in earnest. International attention will likely turn to Afghanistan’s short- and medium-term future, raising questions between the United States and its allies about division of labor, burdensharing, and exit strategies. It is anticipated that Congress will examine reconstruction efforts underway, aid priorities, long-term reconstruction proposals, and the implementation role to be played by the United States.

This report provides statistics on the current numbers and roles of African American Members of Congress as well as historical data on African American Members of Congress.

This report focuses on a conflict between the European Union (EU) and the United States, Canada, and Argentina. The United States suggests that the European Union's moratorium costs the U.S. 300 million dollars in exports to the EU annually. Moreover, the report highlights other concerns the U.S. has with the EU's biotechnology policies.

This report discusses federal credit assistance for farmers and recent issues in Congress related to the programs.

This report contains the results of tests which demonstrated the feasibility of using graphite labyrinth type seals, i.e., a bushing machined with alternate grooves and lands on the inside diameter to create a sufficient pressure drop to provide a satisfactory seal.

"The XF-12 airplane was designed by Republic Aviation Corporation to provide the Army Air Forces with a high performance, photo reconnaissance aircraft. A series of air-stream surveys were made n the vicinity of the empennage of a 1/8.33-scale powered model of the XF-12 airplane in the Langley 19-foot pressure tunnel. Surveys of the vortical-tail region were made through a range of yaw angles of plus or minus 20 degrees at a high and low angle of attack" (p. 1).

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "All-terrain vehicles (ATV), which are off-road motorized vehicles, usually with four tires, a straddle seat for the operator, and handlebars for steering control, have become increasingly popular. However, ATV fatalities and injuries have increased over the last decade and are a matter of concern to the Consumer Product Safety Commission (Commission), which oversees ATV safety, and to others. Many ATV crashes involving children occur when they are riding adult-sized ATVs. Manufacturers and distributors have agreed to use their best efforts to prevent their dealers from selling adult-sized ATVs for use by children under the age of 16. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act requires GAO to report on (1) how ATVs are used and the advantages of their use and (2) the nature, extent, and costs of ATV crashes. GAO addressed these topics by reviewing ATV use and crash data and by discussing these issues with Commission staff, industry officials, user groups, and safety stakeholders."

Radiation portal monitors used for interdiction of illicit materials at borders include highly sensitive neutron detection systems. The main reason for having neutron detection capability is to detect fission neutrons from plutonium. Most currently deployed radiation portal monitors (RPMs) use neutron detectors based upon 3He-filled gas proportional counters, which are the most common large area neutron detector. This type of neutron detector is used in the TSA and other RPMs installed in international locations and in the Ludlum and Science Applications International Corporation RPMs deployed primarily for domestic applications. There is a declining supply of 3He in the world and, thus, methods to reduce the use of this gas in RPMs with minimal changes to the current system designs and sensitivity to cargo-borne neutrons are being investigated. Four technologies have been identified as being currently commercially available, potential alternative neutron detectors to replace the use of 3He in RPMs. These technologies are: 1) Boron trifluoride-filled proportional counters, 2) Boron-lined proportional counters, 3) Lithium-loaded glass fibers, and 4) Coated wavelength-shifting plastic fibers. Reported here is a summary of the testing carried out at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on these technologies to date, as well as measurements on 3He tubes at various …

Sodium-potassium alloy (NaK) is currently treated at the Y-12 Plant by open burning. Due to uncertainties with future permits for this process alternative treatment methods were investigated, revealing that two treatment processes are feasible. One process reacts the NaK with water in a highly concentrated molten caustic solution (sodium and potassium hydroxide). The final waste is a caustic that may be used elsewhere in the plant. This process has two safety concerns: Hot corrosive materials used throughout the process present handling difficulties and the process must be carefully controlled (temperature and water content) to avoid explosive NaK reactions. To avoid these problems a second process was developed that dissolves NaK in a mixture of propylene glycol and water at room temperature. While this process is safer, it generates more waste than the caustic process. The waste may possibly be used as a carbon food source in biological waste treatment operations at the Y-12 Plant. Experiments were conducted to demonstrate both processes, and they showed that both processes are feasible alternatives for NaK treatment. Process flow sheets with mass balances were generated for both processes and compared. While the caustic process generates less waste, the propylene glycol process is safer in …

Report discussing three fuels conforming to AN-F-58 specification were investigated in order to determine the influence of boiling temperatures and aromatic content on altitude performance in single combustor of a 4600-pound-thrust turbojet engine.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2007, the United States enacted a law incrementally raising the minimum wages in American Samoa and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The law applied the first $.50 per hour increase in July 2007 and mandated additional increases in each subsequent year until the minimum wages reach the level of the U.S. minimum wage--currently $7.25 per hour. American Samoa's lowest paid will reach that wage in 2016, and the CNMI in 2015. In American Samoa, one of two tuna canneries employing almost a third of workers closed in September 2009. In the CNMI, where the garment industry was one of two major employers, the last garment factory closed in early 2009. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act requires GAO to report annually on the impact of the minimum wage increases in American Samoa and the CNMI. In this report GAO describes, since the increases began, wages, employment, employer actions, inflation-adjusted earnings, and worker views. GAO reviewed existing information from federal and local sources. GAO also collected data from large employers (at least 50 employees) through a questionnaire and from small employers and workers …

This report outlines the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and the current Renewable Identification Numbers (RIN) system, discusses the current market for various RINs, and outlines policy considerations to address RIN fraud going forward.

An extensive literature search was conducted and geological and mathematical analyses were performed to investigate the significance of using surface lineaments and fractures for delineating oil and gas reservoirs in the Mid-Continent region. Tremendous amount of data were acquired including surface lineaments, surface major fracture zones, surface fracture traces, gravity and magnetic lineaments, and Precambrian basement fault systems. An orientation analysis of these surface and subsurface linear features was performed to detect the basic structural grains of the region. The correlation between surface linear features and subsurface oil and gas traps was assessed, and the implication of using surface lineament and fracture analysis for delineating hydrocarbon reservoirs in the Mid-Continent region discussed. It was observed that the surface linear features were extremely consistent in orientation with the gravity and magnetic lineaments and the basement faults in the Mid-Continent region. They all consist of two major sets bending northeast and northwest, representing, therefore, the basic structural grains of the region. This consistency in orientation between the surface and subsurface linear features suggests that the systematic fault systems at the basement in the Mid-Continent region have probably been reactivated many times and have propagated upward all the way to the surface. They …

Annual report submitted by the Boy Scouts of America to Congress describing highlights from 1929, activities, department reports, finance, foreign relations, organizational leadership, and other information about scouting programs.

The anode ablation rate is investigated as a function of anode diameter for a carbon nanotube arc plasma. It is found that anomalously high ablation occurs for small anode diameters. This result is explained by the formation of a positive anode sheath. The increased ablation rate due to this positive anode sheath could imply greater production rate for carbon nanotubes.

As increasingly large volumes of sophisticated options (called derivative securities) are traded in world financial markets, determining a fair price for these options has become an important and difficult computational problem. Many valuation codes use the binomial pricing model, in which the stock price is driven by a random walk. In this model, the value of an n-period option on a stock is the expected time-discounted value of the future cash flow on an n-period stock price path. Path-dependent options are particularly difficult to value since the future cash flow depends on the entire stock price path rather than on just the final stock price. Currently such options are approximately priced by Monte carlo methods with error bounds that hold only with high probability and which are reduced by increasing the number of simulation runs. In this paper the authors show that pricing an arbitrary path-dependent option is {number_sign}-P hard. They show that certain types f path-dependent options can be valued exactly in polynomial time. Asian options are path-dependent options that are particularly hard to price, and for these they design deterministic polynomial-time approximate algorithms. They show that the value of a perpetual American put option (which can be computed …

Growth of channel catfish (Ictalurus punctatus) and Tilapia zillii in the Reft River Geothermal Area (RRGT) geothermal waters can equal or surpass that in a commercial aquaculture facility. Fish and prawn mortality over the course of the intermediate term preliminary study did not appear to be related to any inherent geothermal water chemistry conditions. Temperature control was a problem but does not appear to be beyond design control. The absence of temperature-related mortality in channel catfish, Tilapia zilli, and yellow perch (Perca flavescens) indicates increased survival and suggests reduced expenditures for disease control. It may also allow higher fish densities in commercial aquaculture operations using geothermal water. Results of this study indicate potential for commercial aquaculture development at the Raft River Geothermal Testing Site.