A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is responsible for promoting environmental justice--that is, the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people in developing, implementing, and enforcing environmental laws, regulations, and policies. In January 2010, the EPA Administrator cited environmental justice as a top priority for the agency. GAO was asked to examine (1) how EPA is implementing its environmental justice efforts, and (2) the extent that EPA has followed leading federal strategic planning practices in establishing a framework for these efforts. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed EPA strategy documents and interviewed agency officials and key stakeholders."

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.

This report discusses pending U.S. free trade agreements (FTAs) with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama. The bills to implement these agreements will now be debated under trade promotion authority, or fast-track rules, designed to expedite congressional consideration. The report includes an overview of agricultural issues regarding FTAs and pending FTA partners, as well as a closer breakdown of the specific issues for each of the countries.

This report provides an overview of actions taken by Congress to provide FY2012 appropriations for Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies(CJS) accounts.

This report discusses current tax treatment of dependent care expenses under the DCTC and the dependent care assistance programs (DCAP), and issues for Congress in expanding tax benefits for working caregivers (including President Obama's Budget proposal).

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Drawing to a close after five years of funding from DOE's ASCR and BER program offices, the SciDAC-2 project called the Earth System Grid (ESG) Center for Enabling Technologies has successfully established a new capability for serving data from distributed centers. The system enables users to access, analyze, and visualize data using a globally federated collection of networks, computers and software. The ESG software - now known as the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) - has attracted a broad developer base and has been widely adopted so that it is now being utilized in serving the most comprehensive multi-model climate data sets in the world. The system is used to support international climate model intercomparison activities as well as high profile U.S. DOE, NOAA, NASA, and NSF projects. It currently provides more than 25,000 users access to more than half a petabyte of climate data (from models and from observations) and has enabled over a 1,000 scientific publications.

The ELI-NP project is now working on the design of their conventional facility. Dr. Gheorghe Cata-Danil recently requested that I provide them with information on the location and amount of electron-beam loss in the MEGa-ray source they have proposed for ELI-NP. This memo is intended to document that information, for transmission to ELI-NP. The ELI-NP MEGa-ray source, as presently proposed, consists of two x-band accelerator sections separated by a large chicane, as show in figure 1. The basic parameters of the machine that are pertinent for specifying the radiation source terms are shown in table 1. These are the parameters of the intentionall-produced photobeam. In addition to the photobeam, the electron gun and accelerator will produce 'dark current' that originates throughout the RF structures (that is, distributed along the accelerator axis) and therefore has a distribution of energy below the energy of the photobeam. Because it is emitted from surfaces inside the RF structures, much of it is not transported through the accelerator and is lost in the accelerator RF structures. A large fraction of the total dark current is produced in the photogun and lost at the entrance of the 1st accelerator RF structure. Important sources of radiation during …

The purpose of the high-level waste (HLW) glass melt rate study is two-fold: (1) to gain a better understanding of the impact of feed chemistry on melt rate through bench-scale testing, and (2) to develop a predictive tool for melt rate in support of the on-going frit development efforts for the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). In particular, the focus is on predicting relative melt rates, not the absolute melt rates, of various HLW glass formulations solely based on feed chemistry, i.e., the chemistry of both waste and glass-forming frit for DWPF. Critical to the successful melt rate modeling is the accurate determination of the melting rates of various HLW glass formulations. The baseline procedure being used at the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) is to; (1) heat a 4 inch-diameter stainless steel beaker containing a mixture of dried sludge and frit in a furnace for a preset period of time, (2) section the cooled beaker along its diameter, and (3) measure the average glass height across the sectioned face using a ruler. As illustrated in Figure 1-1, the glass height is measured for each of the 16 horizontal segments up to the red lines where relatively large-sized bubbles begin …

This project examines renewable energy deployment in the United States using a version of the GCAM integrated assessment model with detailed a representation of renewables, the GCAM-RE. Electricity generation was modeled in four generation segments and 12-subregions. This level of regional and sectoral detail allows a more explicit representation of renewable energy generation. Wind, solar thermal power, and central solar PV plants are implemented in explicit resource classes with new intermittency parameterizations appropriate for each technology. A scenario analysis examines a range of assumptions for technology characteristics, climate policy, and long-distance transmission. We find that renewable generation levels grow over the century in all scenarios. As expected, renewable generation increases with lower renewable technology costs, more stringent climate policy, and if alternative low-carbon technology are not available. The availability of long distance transmission lowers policy costs and changes the renewable generation mix.

A workshop on 'Decay Spectroscopy at CARIBU: Advanced Fuel Cycle Applications, Nuclear Structure and Astrophysics' will be held at Argonne National Laboratory on April 14-16, 2011. The aim of the workshop is to discuss opportunities for decay studies at the Californium Rare Isotope Breeder Upgrade (CARIBU) of the ATLAS facility with emphasis on advanced fuel cycle (AFC) applications, nuclear structure and astrophysics research. The workshop will consist of review and contributed talks. Presentations by members of the local groups, outlining the status of relevant in-house projects and availabile equipment, will also be organized. time will also be set aside to discuss and develop working collaborations for future decay studies at CARIBU. Topics of interest include: (1) Decay data of relevance to AFC applications with emphasis on reactor decay heat; (2) Discrete high-resolution gamma-ray spectroscopy following radioactive decya and related topics; (3) Calorimetric studies of neutron-rich fission framgents using Total ABsorption Gamma-Ray Spectrometry (TAGS) technique; (4) Beta-delayed neutron emissions and related topics; and (5) Decay data needs for nuclear astrophysics.

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Cuba remains a one-party communist state with a poor record on human rights. The country's political succession in 2006 from the long-ruling Fidel Castro to his brother Raul was characterized by a remarkable degree of stability. This report contains information on U.S. policy as related to Cuba, legislative action, and more related information.

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This report discusses three proposals-one by the National Cotton Council, one by Representative Neugebauer, and another by a private crop insurance company-focus on modifications to crop insurance programs. The National Farmers Union proposes to replace existing farm programs with a combination of farmer-owned-reserves, increased loan rates, and set asides. A proposed new dairy program-the Dairy Security Act-would provide a voluntary margin insurance program and market stabilization activities in place of current dairy programs. Finally, the proposed REFRESH Act (Senator Lugar) would eliminate most commodity programs (including the sugar program), and incorporate ARRM, the Dairy Security Act, and expanded whole-farm revenue insurance in their place.

This report discusses the current state of Bahrain, which has undergone substantial political reforms since the late 1990s, but which still suffers from tension between the Shiite majority and the Sunni-led government. This report focuses particularly on Bahrain's relationship with the United States and with regional issues.