A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) relies on a global network of DOD and non-DOD infrastructure so critical that its unavailability could have a debilitating effect on DOD's ability to project, support, and sustain its forces and operations worldwide. DOD established the Defense Critical Infrastructure Program (DCIP) to assure the availability of mission-critical infrastructure. GAO was asked to evaluate the extent to which DOD has (1) incorporated aspects of DCIP into its exercises in the Transportation Defense Sector and (2) developed DCIP training standards departmentwide and made installation personnel aware of existing DCIP expertise. GAO examined a nonprojectable sample of 46 critical assets representing the four military services, five combatant commands, and selected installations within five defense sectors. GAO reviewed relevant DOD DCIP guidance and documents and interviewed cognizant officials regarding DCIP exercises, training, and awareness."

This project was a collaborative effort between Dr Teresa Burns and Dr John Larese to study the physisorption of polar molecules on ionic substrates. The work will be completed at both Coastal Carolina University and Brookhaven National Laboratory. The goals of the research are: 1) to provide detailed thermodynamic information about dipolar molecules adsorbed on ionic substrates, critical to accurately modeling the systems of interest using a spin-1 Ising model; 2) to study the structure of the adsorbed layer from the gas phase, experimentally verifying the application of the model to these systems; 3) to extend the modeling studies and structural measurements to systems adsorbed from the liquid phase. The systems will be studied using thermodynamic techniques, e.g., adsorption isotherm both from the gas and liquid phase, and x-ray structural measurements. This project will strengthen the physical science research efforts at CCU, and hence in South Carolina.

A subcritical facility driven by an electron accelerator is planned at the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology (KIPT) in Ukraine for medical isotope production, materials research, training, and education. The conceptual design of the facility is being pursued through collaborations between ANL and KIPT. As part of the design effort, the high-fidelity analyses of various target options are performed with formulations to reflect the realistic configuration and the three dimensional geometry of each design. This report summarizes the results of target design optimization studies for electron beams with two different beam profiles. The target design optimization is performed via the sequential neutronic, thermal-hydraulic, and structural analyses for a comprehensive assessment of each configuration. First, a target CAD model is developed with proper emphasis on manufacturability to provide a basis for separate but consistent models for subsequent neutronic, thermal-hydraulic, and structural analyses. The optimizations are pursued for maximizing the neutron yield, streamlining the flow field to avoid hotspots, and minimizing the thermal stresses to increase the durability. In addition to general geometric modifications, the inlet/outlet channel configurations, target plate partitioning schemes, flow manipulations and rates, electron beam diameter/width options, and cladding material choices are included in the design optimizations. The …

This overview is intended to be a very concise, limited summary of the key project activities discussed in the detailed report that follows. Due to the large scope of this project, the detailed report is broken into three individually titled sections. Each section repeats key background information, with the goal that the sections will eventually stand alone as complete reports on the major activities of the project. The information presented herein comes from ongoing research, so please note that all observations, findings and recommendations presented are preliminary and subject to change in the future. We invite and welcome your comments and suggestions for improving the project. Advanced Energy completed its first jointly-funded crawl space research project with the Department of Energy in 2005. That project, funded under award number DE-FC26-00NT40995 and titled 'A Field Study Comparison of the Energy and Moisture Performance Characteristics of Ventilated Versus Sealed Crawl Spaces in the South' demonstrated the substantial energy efficiency and moisture management benefits that result from using properly closed crawl space foundations for residential construction instead of traditional wall vented crawl space foundations. Two activities of this first project included (1) an assessment of ten existing homes to document commonly observed energy …

The University of Illinois at Chicago Energy Resources Center (UIC/ERC) was originally selected to carry out the role of project integrator for a planned solicitation calling for proposals for innovative concepts for energy efficient systems in the chemical industry. The selection was made as a result of a DOE Announcement of Funding Opportunity issued by the DOE Golden Field Office. The U.S. DOE, due to funding constraints, decided to change the role of project integrator into one of technical support to DOE and the Vision 2020 Steering Committee in carrying out the oversight and management of the projects selected from the planned innovative concepts solicitation. This project, initiated in April, 2005, was established to provide that technical support to the U.S. DOE Innovative Energy Systems Pilot Project for the US Chemical Industry. In the late summer of 2006, and as a continuation of the baseline technology analysis conducted by UIC/ERC under this project, DOE requested that UIC/ERC assist in the development of “technology briefs” in support of the DOE Save Energy Now program. The 100 technology briefs developed under this contract were utilized by the Energy Experts as part of their Energy Saving Assessments (ESA).

The overall objective of this study was to measure a number of key input parameters quantifying geochemical processes in the subsurface environment of the Savannah River Site's (SRS's) Saltstone Facility. For the first time, sorption (K{sub d}) values of numerous radionuclides were measured with Saltstone and Vault 2 concrete. Particular attention was directed at understanding how Tc adsorbs and desorbs from these cementitious materials with the intent to demonstrate that desorption occurs at a much slower rate than adsorption, thus permitting the use of kinetic terms instead of (or along with) the steady state K{sub d} term. Another very important parameter measured was the reduction capacity of these materials. This parameter is used to estimate the duration that the Saltstone facility remains in a reduced chemical state, a condition that maintains several otherwise mobile radionuclides in an immobile form. Key findings of this study follow. K{sub d} values for Am, Cd, Ce, Co, Cs, Hg, I, Np, Pa, Pu, Se, Sn, Tc, U, and Y for Saltstone and Vault 2 concrete were measured under oxidized and reduced conditions. Precipitation of several of the higher valence state radionuclides was observed. There was little evidence that the Vault 2 and Saltstone K{sub …

The ARM Mobile Facility Surface Meteorology station (AMF MET) uses mainly conventional in situ sensors to obtain 1-minute statistics of surface wind speed, wind direction, air temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and rain-rate. Additional sensors may be added to or removed from the base set of sensors depending upon the deployment location, climate regime or programmatic needs. Additionally, sensor types may change depending upon the climate regime of the deployment. These changes/additions are noted in the Deployment Locations and History section.

This project built a global land use model to examine the implications of land based carbon sequestration on land uses. The model also can be used to assess the costs of different land-based actions to reduce carbon emissions.

This report discusses issues related to peace in the Middle East, including post-Gulf War negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon; U.S. interest in these and continuing negotiations and peacetalks between Middle Eastern countries; and the role of the U.S., the U.N., the European Union, and Russia in Middle Eastern relations.

The detection and identification of weak gaseous plumes using thermal imaging data is complicated by many factors. These include variability due to atmosphere, ground and plume temperature, and background clutter. This paper presents an analysis of one formulation of the physics-based model that describes the at-sensor observed radiance. The motivating question for the analyses performed in this paper is as follows. Given a set of backgrounds, is there a way to predict the background over which the probability of detecting a given chemical will be the highest? Two statistics were developed to address this question. These statistics incorporate data from the long-wave infrared band to predict the background over which chemical detectability will be the highest. These statistics can be computed prior to data collection. As a preliminary exploration into the predictive ability of these statistics, analyses were performed on synthetic hyperspectral images. Each image contained one chemical (either carbon tetrachloride or ammonia) spread across six distinct background types. The statistics were used to generate predictions for the background ranks. Then, the predicted ranks were compared to the empirical ranks obtained from the analyses of the synthetic images. For the simplified images under consideration, the predicted and empirical ranks showed …

This report examines issues regarding the recent acquisitions of U.S. meat companies. In July 2007, JBS — a Brazilian company regarded as the world’s largest meat processor — purchased the U.S. beef processor Swift & Co., then the third-largest U.S. beef processing company. In February and March 2008, JBS signed agreements to acquire the fourth- and fifth-largest U.S. beef packers, National Beef Packing Company and the Smithfield Beef Group, respectively. These planned acquisitions have undergone customary regulatory review by the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Antitrust Division.

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This report addresses some of the critical matters a House committee chair confronts from the time of the early organization meetings in November to approximately the spring district work-period in March or April.

This report provides an overview of the wool and mohair price support.

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This report discusses two potential roles the International Monetary Fund (IMF) may have in helping to resolve the current global financial crisis: (1) immediate crisis control through balance of payments lending to emerging market and less-developed countries and (2) increased surveillance of the global economy through better coordination with the international financial regulatory agencies.

The Presidential Transition Act of 1963 (PTA), as amended, authorizes funding for the General Services Administration (GSA) to provide suitable office space, staff compensation, and other services associated with the presidential transition process. The President's FY2009 budget proposal included $8.52 million in funding for the 2008-2009 presidential transition. This report outlines facets of the PTA, as well as the details of the FY2009 budget appropriations for the 2008-2009 presidential transition.

Names for Navy ships traditionally have been chosen and announced by the Secretary of the Navy. Congress in recent years has proposed, and sometimes passed, legislation regarding the naming of specific ships.