Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 became law on January 2, 2011, and established a World Trade Center Health Program (WTCHP) to assume the functions of the World Trade Center (WTC) responder health programs beginning on July 1, 2011. From September 11, 2001, through fiscal year 2010, approximately $475 million in federal funds was made available for screening, monitoring, and treating WTC responders for illnesses and conditions related to the WTC disaster. These include asthma, persistent coughing, and other respiratory conditions and mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The three federal programs that provided screening, monitoring, and treatment services to responders prior to July 1, 2011, which we refer to here as the WTC responder health programs, were the New York City Fire Department's (FDNY) WTC Medical Monitoring and Treatment Program, the New York/New Jersey (NY/NJ) WTC Consortium, and the WTC National Responder Health Program. The WTCHP is administered by HHS and provides screening, monitoring, and treatment services through contracted clinical centers in the NYC area for responders in that area and through a nationwide network of providers …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Marine Corps received approximately $16 billion in appropriated funds between fiscal years 2006 and 2010 for reset of aviation and ground equipment that has been degraded, damaged, and destroyed during oversees contingency operations. Reset encompasses activities for repairing, upgrading, or replacing equipment used in contingency operations. The Marine Corps continues to request funding to reset equipment used in Afghanistan. GAO initiated this review under its authority to address significant issues of broad interest to the Congress. GAO's objectives were to evaluate the extent to which the Marine Corps has made progress toward (1) developing effective reset strategies for both aviation and ground equipment used in Afghanistan and (2) providing accurate estimates of total reset costs."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government's real property portfolio includes more than 900,000 buildings and structures worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Many of these properties are leased from private-sector owners, often at total costs that would exceed what the government would pay for ownership. Overreliance on costly leased space was one of several factors that contributed to GAO's designation of federal real property management as a governmentwide high-risk issue. The administration's proposed Civilian Property Realignment Act (CPRA) would reform federal real property management and disposal. For this subcommittee, GAO is currently examining opportunities for consolidating federal operations and moving them from leased space to federally owned sites. This statement identifies (1) the factors that contribute to the government's reliance on costly leasing, (2) how CPRA may provide an opportunity to reduce reliance on leasing, and (3) federal agencies' independent leasing authorities and General Services Administration's (GSA) delegations of leasing authorities. To do this work, GAO relied on its prior work and reviewed CPRA and other relevant reports."

This report reviews how the program works and provides an analysis of recent program funding, recipients, and the role the program plays in the distribution of federal student aid.

The project team consisting of the Consensus Building Institute, Inc., Raab Associates, Ltd., and the MIT-Harvard Program on Negotiation created a model and set of tools for building the capacity of state officials to effectively collaborate with diverse stakeholders in advancing wind development policy formation, wind facility siting, and transmission policy and siting. The model was used to enhance the ability of state officials to advance wind development in their states. Training was delivered in Cambridge, MA, in Spring 2011. The training and associated materials, including a Wind Energy Workbook, website, and simulations, is available for ongoing and widespread dissemination throughout the US.

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Mass filters using rotating plasmas have been considered for separating nuclear waste and spent nuclear fuel. We propose a new mass filter that utilizes centrifugal and magnetic confinement of ions in a way similar to the asymmetric centrifugal trap. This magnetic centrifugal mass filter is shown to be more proliferation resistant than present technology. This filter is collisional and produces well confined output streams, among other advantages. __________________________________________________

The unprecedented laser capabilities of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) make it possible for the first time to countenance laboratory-scale experiments in which gigabar pressures can be applied to a reasonable volume of material, and sustained long enough for percent level equation of state measurements to be made. We describe the design for planned experiments at the NIF, using a hohlraum drive to induce a spherically-converging shock in samples of different materials. Convergence effects increase the shock pressure to several gigabars over a radius of over 100 microns. The shock speed and compression will be measured radiographically over a range of pressures using an x-ray streak camera. In some cases, we will use doped layers to allow a radiographic measurement of particle velocity.

In support of Hanford's waste certification and delivery of tank waste to the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP), Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) was tasked by the Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) to evaluate the effectiveness of mixing and transferring tank waste in a Double Shell Tank (DST) to the WTP Receipt Tank. The work discussed in this report (Phase III) address the impacts cohesive simulants have on mixing and batch transfer performance. The objective of the demonstrations performed in Phase III was to determine the impact that cohesive particle interactions in the simulants have on tank mixing using 1/22{sup nd} scale mixing system and batch transfer of seed particles. This testing is intended to provide supporting evidence to the assumption that Hanford Small Scale Mixing Demonstration (SSMD) testing in water is conservative. The batch transfers were made by pumping the simulants from the Mixing Demonstration Tank (MDT) to six Receipt Tanks (RTs), and the consistency in the amount of seed particles in each batch was compared. Tests were conducted with non-Newtonian cohesive simulants with Bingham yield stress ranging from 0.3 Pa to 7 Pa. Kaolin clay and 100 {mu}m stainless steel seed particles were used for all the …

In the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), a large increase in the charge exchange neutral flux localized at the Neutral Beam (NB) injection full energy is measured by the E||B (superimposed parallel electric and magnetic fields) Neutral Particle Analyzer (NPA). Termed the High-Energy Feature (HEF), it appears on the NB-injected energetic ion spectrum only in discharges where tearing or kink-type modes (f < 50 kHz) are absent, Toroidal Alfvén Eigenmode (TAE) activity (f ~ 50 - 150 kHz) is weak and Global Alfvén Eigenmode (GAE) activity (f ~ 400 – 1000 kHz) is robust. Compressional Alfvén eigenmode (CAE) activity (f > 1000 kHz) is usually sporadic or absent during the HEF event. The HEF exhibits growth times of Δt ~ 20 - 80 ms, durations of ~ 100 – 600 ms and peak-to-base flux ratios up to H = Fmax /Fmin ~ 10. In infrequent cases, a slowing down distribution below the HEF energy can develop that continues to evolve over periods > 100 ms, a time scale long compared with the typical fast ion equilibration times. HEFs are Transient energetic charge exchange flux enhancement (ʻspike-on-tailʼ) 2 observed only in H-mode (not L-mode) discharges with injected power Pb ≥ 4 …

Guidance materials based on use of conceptual model scenarios were developed to assist evaluation and implementation of attenuation-based remedies for groundwater and vadose zones contaminated with inorganic and radionuclide contaminants. The Scenarios approach is intended to complement the comprehensive information provided in the US EPA's Technical Protocol for Monitored Natural Attenuation (MNA) of Inorganic Contaminants by providing additional information on site conceptual models and extending the evaluation to consideration of Enhanced Attenuation approaches. The conceptual models incorporate the notion of reactive facies, defined as units with hydrogeochemical properties that are different from surrounding units and that react with contaminants in distinct ways. The conceptual models also incorporate consideration of biogeochemical gradients, defined as boundaries between different geochemical conditions that have been induced by waste disposal or other natural phenomena. Gradients can change over time when geochemical conditions from one area migrate into another, potentially affecting contaminant mobility. A recognition of gradients allows the attenuation-affecting conditions of a site to be projected into the future. The Scenarios approach provides a stepwise process to identify an appropriate category of conceptual model and refine it for a specific site. Scenario materials provide links to pertinent sections in the EPA technical protocol and present …

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This report discusses the statutory prohibitions that may be implicated, including the Espionage Act; the extraterritorial application of such statutes; and the First Amendment implications related to such prosecutions against domestic or foreign media organizations and associated individuals.

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This report discusses China's incomplete transition to a free market economy and its use of distortive economic policies that have contributed to growing trade friction with the United States over a number of issues.

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I have been constructing Alternating Current (AC) motor controllers for manipulation of particle beam detectors. The capability and reliability of these motor controllers are essential to the Laboratory's mission of accurate analysis of the particle beam's position. The device is moved in and out of the beam's path by the motor controller followed by the Neutrinos at the Main Injector Off-Axis {nu}{sub e} Appearance (NOvA) Experiment further down the beam pipe. In total, I built and tested ten ac motor controllers for new beam operations in the NOvA experiment. These units will prove to be durable and provide extremely accurate beam placement for NOvA Experiment far into the future.

This report focuses on the $59.65 billion requested for programs and activities funded through the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill, which excludes some portions of the International Affairs request such as certain commissions and foreign food aid requested as part of other budget functions.

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.

The Dynamic Transmission Electron Microscope (DTEM) team at Harvey Mudd College has been sponsored by LLNL to design and build a test setup for optimizing the performance of the DTEM's electron source. Unlike a traditional TEM, the DTEM achieves much faster exposure times by using photoemission from a photocathode to produce electrons for imaging. The DTEM team's work is motivated by the need to improve the coherence and current density of the electron cloud produced by the electron gun in order to increase the image resolution and contrast achievable by DTEM. The photoemission test setup is nearly complete and the team will soon complete baseline tests of electron gun performance. The photoemission laser and high voltage power supply have been repaired; the optics path for relaying the laser to the photocathode has been finalized, assembled, and aligned; the internal setup of the vacuum chamber has been finalized and mostly implemented; and system control, synchronization, and data acquisition has been implemented in LabVIEW. Immediate future work includes determining a consistent alignment procedure to place the laser waist on the photocathode, and taking baseline performance measurements of the tantalum photocathode. Future research will examine the performance of the electron gun as a …

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