The appropriate size and role of the government is one of the most fundamental and enduring debates in American politics. What role does the state play in economic activity? How is the economy affected by government intervention? Many of the arguments surrounding the proper size of government are economic in nature, and they will be discussed in this report.

This report explores the relationship between the United States and Mexico in terms of trade, drug trafficking, and cooperative disease control and management. Specifically, the report discusses the Mérida Initiative, the trade dispute involving the implementation of NAFTA trucking provisions, Secretary of State Clinton's March 2009 visit to Mexico, and the April 2009 outbreak of the H1N1 "swine flu" virus.

The issue of North Korea's inclusion on the U.S. list of terrorism-supporting countries has been a major issue in U.S.-North Korean diplomacy since 2000, particularly in connection with negotiations over North Korea's nuclear program. North Korea demanded that the Clinton and Bush Administration remove North Korea from the terrorism support list. Secretary of State Clinton said on June 7, 2009, that the Obama Administration would consider reinstating North Korea on the list of state supporters of terrorism. However, she said that there would have to be "recent evidence of their support for international terrorism."

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) was established in 1969 and began operations in 1971 as a development agency to promote and assist U.S. business investment in developing nations. Today, OPIC is a U.S. government agency that provides project financing, investment insurance, and other services for U.S. businesses in over 150 developing nations and emerging economies. To date, OPIC has funded, guaranteed, or insured over $180 billion in investments.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for assessing the safety of certain medical products after approval (a process called postmarket risk surveillance). To this end, the Food and Drug Administration Amendments Act of 2007 required that FDA establish a postmarket risk identification and analysis system based on electronic health data. In May 2008, FDA began its Sentinel initiative, intended to fulfill this requirement. Additionally, the Act established a requirement for GAO to review FDA's planned system. GAO's specific objectives were to (1) describe the current status of FDA's implementation of the Sentinel system and (2) identify the key privacy and security challenges associated with FDA's plans for the Sentinel system. To do so, GAO analyzed available system documentation; reviewed key privacy and security laws, guidance, standards, and practices; and obtained and analyzed the views of privacy and security experts."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Honest Leadership and Open Government Act (HLOGA) of 2007 amended the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995 by doubling the frequency of lobbyists' reporting and increasing criminal and civil penalties. This is GAO's second report in response to the Act's requirement for GAO to annually (1) determine the extent to which lobbyists can demonstrate compliance with the Act by providing support for information on their registrations and reports, (2) describe challenges identified by lobbyists to complying with the Act, and (3) describe the resources and authorities available to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia's efforts to enforce the Act. For this report, GAO placed increased emphasis on written documentation to support disclosure reports. GAO reviewed a random sample of 100 lobbyist disclosure reports filed during the first three quarters of calendar year 2008. GAO also selected a random sample of 100 reports of federal political contributions, filed for the first time, for mid-calendar-year 2008. This methodology allowed GAO to generalize the sample results to the populations of 40,169 lobbying activity disclosure reports and 6,048 reports with contributions filed. GAO met with lobbyists regarding …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Departments of Defense (DOD) and State and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have relied extensively on contractors to provide a range of services in Iraq and Afghanistan, but as GAO has previously reported, the agencies have faced challenges in obtaining sufficient information to plan and manage their use of contractors. As directed by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year (FY) 2008, GAO analyzed DOD, State, and USAID data for Iraq and Afghanistan for FY 2008 and the first half of FY 2009 on the (1) status of agency efforts to track information on contracts and contractor personnel; (2) number of contractor personnel; (3) number of killed and wounded contractors; and (4) number and value of contracts and extent to which they were awarded competitively. GAO reviewed selected contracts and compared personnel data to other available sources to assess the reliability of agency-reported data."

This report discusses the drastic increase in demand for homeowners' insurance in Atlantic and Gulf Coast states following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. This report also discusses various measures and efforts underway to enhance insurer capacity, pursue alternative forms of risk transfer, and create a national catastrophe financing facility, the last of which is an issue under considerable debate.

There are 645 informal (Congressional) Member organizations listed in the Congressional Yellow Book or registered with the Committee on House Administration. Of these 645 informal organizations, 256 are registered with the Committee on House Administration as a congressional Member organization (CMO). This report examines the purpose and activities of CMOs and the reasons Members form them. It also identifies and describes seven CMO types, and it provides an overview of the historical development of informal Member organizations since the first Congress. It concludes with a step-by-step guide for House Members and staff who might be interested in forming a CMO.

The United Nations Security Council unanimously passed Res. 1874 on June 12, 2009, in response to North Korea's second nuclear test. The resolution puts in place a series of sanctions on North Korea's arms sales, luxury goods, and financial transactions related to its weapons programs, and calls upon states to inspect North Korean vessels suspected of carrying such shipments. This report summarizes and analyzes Res. 1874.

After several decades of widespread stagnation, nuclear power is attracting renewed interest. Expanding global access to nuclear power has the potential to lead to the spread of nuclear technology that could be used for nuclear weapons. This report discusses the issue of nuclear power with regard to nuclear weapons nonproliferation policies, the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) begun under the Bush Administration, the future of the GNEP under the Obama Administration, and four areas of oversight in which Congress will have a considerable role.

This report summarizes what is known from open sources about the North Korean nuclear weapons program - including weapons-usable fissile material and warhead estimates - and assesses current developments in achieving denuclearization.

On March 15, 2006, the U.N. General Assembly passed a resolution replacing the Commission on Human Rights with a new Human Rights Council (the Council). The Council was designed to be an improvement over the Commission, which was widely criticized for the composition of its membership when perceived human rights abusers were elected as members. This report discusses the history of the Council, the previous participation of the Bush Administration, the current participation of the Obama Administration, and ongoing international and Congressional concerns of the credibility and effectiveness of the Council.

In October 2007, the United States and Mexico announced the Mérida Initiative, a three-year proposal for $1.4 billion in U.S. assistance to Mexico and Central America aimed at combating drug trafficking, gangs, and organized crime. This report provides an overview and discussion of the funding provided for Mérida, and presents several issues that Congress may consider as it oversees implementation of the Initiative.

In February 2009, Kyrgyzstan announced that it was terminating an agreement permitting U.S. forces to upgrade and use portions of the Manas international airport near the capital of Bishkek to support coalition military operations in Afghanistan. U.S. forces faced leaving the airbase by late August 2009. Major U.S. concerns included working out alternative logistics routes and support functions for a surge in U.S. and NATO operations in Afghanistan and possibly cooler security ties with Kyrgyzstan that could set back U.S. counter-terrorism efforts and other U.S. interests in Central Asia. After reportedly intense negotiations, the United States and Kyrgyzstan reached agreement in June 2009 on modalities for maintaining U.S. and NATO transit operations at Manas.

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 Iran and Bahrain's relationship with the United States.

The project objective is to study structure-property relations in solid solutions of nitrides and oxides with surrogate elements to simulate the behavior of fuels of inert matrix fuels of interest to the Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative (AFCI), with emphasis in zirconium-based materials. Work with actual fuels will be carried out in parallel in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Three key aspects will be explored: microstructure characterization through measurement of global texture evolution and local crystallographic variations using Electron Backscattering Diffraction (EBSD); determination of mechanical properties, including fracture toughness, quasi-static compression strength, and hardness, as functions of load and temperature, and, finally, development of structure-property relations to describe mechanical behavior of the fuels based on experimental data. Materials tested will be characterized to identify the mechanisms of deformation and fracture and their relationship to microstructure and its evolution. New aspects of this research are the inclusion of crystallographic information into the evaluation of fuel performance and the incorporation of statistical variations of microstructural variables into simplified models of mechanical behavior of fuels that account explicitly for these variations. The work is expected to provide insight into processing conditions leading to better fuel performance and structural reliability during manufacturing and …

A consumer guide about solar electricity for the home. Includes information about types of solar electric systems, how to choose a system, financing, and costs.

The work reported here embodies a device-physics approach based on careful measurement and interpretation of data from CIGS and CdTe solar cells.

Simplified equations of graphite oxidation are reviewed for semi-infinite slab, finite slab, and cylinder geometries, using the principal assumptions of linearized oxidation kinetics and quasi-steady state oxidation profile. All equations are coupled to a general surface mass transfer boundary condition. The equations include those for oxidant concentration distribution, surface oxidation rate, burnoff profile, and oxidation efficiency. This review also covers some areas that may not be well recognized. The key role of the effective diffusivity is highlighted, with a brief review of measured values. The temperature-dependence of the surface oxidation rate is shown to be more complex than usually shown for the diffusion-affected zone. Assumption of linear kinetics permits ready estimation of equilibration time for development of the quasi-steady burnoff profile. In addition, approximations for the time-steady hydrogen concentration profiles are developed for the case of oxidation by H2O. All cited methods can be readily evaluated by spreadsheet calculation.

The U.S. Department of Energy has issued a challenge to the homebuilding industry to build 220,000 high-performance homes by 2012. To qualify, homes must meet the requirements of a performance path, prescriptive path, or participating in a partner program.

Clean Cities Now is the official newsletter of DOE's Clean Cities program. It includes articles on coalition activities, fleet and stakeholder success stories, and helpful resources.

This report summarizes probable causes and contributing factors that led to a rocket motor initiating prematurely while employees were preparing instrumentation for an AIII rocket sled test at SNL/NM, resulting in a Type-B Accident. Originally prepared by the Technical Advisory Team that provided technical assistance to the NNSA's Accident Investigation Board, the report includes analyses of several proposed causes and concludes that the most probable source of power for premature initiation of the rocket motor was the independent battery contained in the HiCap recorder package. The report includes data, evidence, and proposed scenarios to substantiate the analyses.

Intended for those who blend, distribute, and use biodiesel and its blends, this guide contains procedures for handling and using these fuels.