A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In January 2007 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported the results of its study that assigned the fiscal year 2005 costs of its Air Traffic Organization (ATO) to users. FAA used this study to support the President's proposal to replace many current excise taxes with cost-based fees for commercial aviation users and higher fuel taxes for general aviation users. GAO assessed (1) the consistency of FAA's cost assignment methodology with established standards and guidance, (2) the support for selected cost assignment assumptions and methods, and (3) the impact of including budgeted capital costs in the cost baseline. GAO compared FAA's methodology to federal accounting standards and international guidance, reviewed available documents and analyses supporting FAA's assumptions and methods, and interviewed FAA officials and consultants."

This report provides a brief overview of the climate change issue as well as other Clean Air Act issues the 110th Congress may consider.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Prices for four energy commodities--crude oil, heating oil, unleaded gasoline, and natural gas--have risen substantially since 2002. Some observers believe that higher energy prices are the result of changes in supply and demand. Others believe that increased futures trading activity has also contributed to higher prices. This report, conducted under the Comptroller General of the United States' authority, examines (1) trends and patterns in the physical and energy derivatives markets, (2) the scope of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) regulatory authority over these markets, and (3) the effectiveness of CFTC's monitoring and detection of market abuses and enforcement. For this work, GAO analyzed futures and large trader data and interviewed market participants, experts, and officials at six federal agencies."

U.S. real GDP growth has been positive for 23 consecutive quarters, and the economy is considered to be in an "expansion" phase. As of the second quarter of 2007, real or inflation-adjusted growth was some 16% above its previous high near the end of the 1991-2001 expansion. This report contains information on current economic conditions, the posture of fiscal and monetary policy, economic forecasts, and related information.

The Department of Energy’s Industrial Assessment Center at Colorado State University (CSU IAC) has been helping manufacturers in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region save energy, reduce waste, and save money while helping to produce highly-trained and highly-capable energy engineers since 1984. The most recent four-year contract continues that trend. This contract ran from September 1, 2002 through May 31, 2007 and included assessments conducted from September 1, 2002 through August 31, 2006. During this contract, the CSU IAC served 77 manufacturers in six Rocky Mountain States and recommended about 311,800 MMBtu/yr in energy savings, 12.6 million gallons of waste water reduction per year, nearly 650,000 pounds of solid waste reduction per year, and more than 5,600 gallons of hazardous solid waste per year, saving more than $9.54 million dollars per year in utility, waste disposal, raw material, and labor costs. Total expenditures for the period were about $814,000 for the period or about $203,500 per year. Thus, the CSU IAC generated almost 12 times more recommended cost savings than the project cost. In addition, the program employed 24 undergraduate mechanical and civil engineering students and seven graduate mechanical engineering students. Of these students, more than 75% have gone on …

High energy density science (HEDS), as a discipline that has developed in the United States from National Nuclear Security Agency (NNSA)-sponsored laboratory research programs, is, and will remain, a major component of the NNSA science and technology strategy. Its scientific borders are not restricted to NNSA. 'Frontiers in High Energy Density Physics: The X-Games of Contemporary Science' identified numerous exciting scientific opportunities in this field, while pointing to the need for a overarching interagency plan for its evolution. Meanwhile, construction of the first x-ray free-electron laser, the Office-of-Science-funded Linear Coherent Light Source-LCLS: the world's first free electron x-ray laser, with 100-fsec time resolution, tunable x-ray energies, a high rep rate, and a 10 order-of-magnitude increase in brightness over any other x-ray source--led to the realization that the scientific needs of NNSA and the broader scientific community could be well served by an LCLS HEDS endstation employing both short-pulse and high-energy optical lasers. Development of this concept has been well received in the community. NNSA requested a workshop on the applicability of LCLS to its needs. 'High Energy Density Science at the LCLS: NNSA Defense Programs Mission Need' was held in December 2006. The workshop provided strong support for the relevance …

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Soft X-ray imager mirrors have been designed, calibrated and fabricated at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and characterized at the Advanced Light Source for their performance between 200 and 1300 eV. The mirrors are coated with a multilayer coating consisting of 70 bilayers of W/ SiC. The mirrors are to reflect at 22.5 deg from grazing angle at 1.50 nm wavelength and the width of the reflectivity peak should be at least 1.3%. Also, the mirrors should be non-reflective elsewhere. Our multilayer design was optimized to satisfy these requirements. The coating is very challenging since the individual layer thicknesses need to be less than 1 nm thick and reproducibility from layer to layer is crucial. To minimize the second harmonic peak we designed a multilayer with {Gamma} = 0.5 (W and SiC layer thicknesses are the same). This way we end up with a mirror that has only the 1st and 3rd harmonic peak as shown in Figure 1. To suppress reflectivity outside the first peak we used our novel approach, an antireflective coating. Modeling predicted substantial reduction in reflectivity, especially for lower energies as shown in Figure 1. The experimental results of the soft x-ray imager mirror as measured at …

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 1988, the Department of State (State) has ordered over 270 evacuations from overseas posts due to civil strife, terrorist incidents, natural disasters, conventional war threats, and disease outbreaks. To prepare for evacuation, overseas posts rely on a variety of guidance, plans, and training, such as Emergency Action Plans (EAP). GAO was asked to assess State's (1) guidance and plans to prepare for evacuation, (2) training and exercises to prepare post staff for crisis, and (3) efforts to collect, analyze, and incorporate evacuation lessons learned into guidance and training. GAO examined State and Department of Defense (DOD) documents, spoke with State and DOD officials, conducted a survey of 243 overseas posts, and completed 22 structured interviews with State personnel."

In the Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment, (SSPX) ['Improved operation of the SSPX spheromak', R.D. Wood, D.N. Hill, E.B. Hooper, S. Woodruff1, H.S. McLean and B.W. Stallard, Nucl. Fusion 45 1582-1588 (2005)], plasmas with core electron temperatures reaching up to 500 eV at densities of 10{sup 20}/m{sup 3} have been sustained for several milliseconds, making them suitable as targets for neutral beam injection. High performance and further progress in understanding Spheromak plasma physics are expected if neutral beams are injected into the plasma. This paper presents the results of numerical 1.5 D modeling of the plasma to calculate neutral beam current drive and ion and electron heating. The results are presented for varying initial conditions of density, temperatures and profiles and beam energy, injection angle and power. Current drive efficiency (Ampere/Watt of absorbed power) of up to 0.08 can be achieved with best performance SSPX shots as target. Analyses of neutral beam heating indicate that ion temperatures of up to 1.5 keV and electron temperatures of up to 750 eV can be obtained with injection of about 1 MW of neutral beam for 5-10 ms and with diffusivities typically observed in SSPX. Injection targeting near the magnetic axis appears to be …