From Summary: "This report provides an overview of the Small Business Administration's (SBA's) Minority Small Business and Capital Ownership Development Program. Based on upon authorities given to the SBA by Sections 7(j) and 8(a) of the Small Business Act of 1958, as amended, this program is commonly known as the "8(a) Program."

This report documents the process used to identify source area target analytes in support of the 100-B/C remedial investigation/feasibility study addendum to DOE/RL-2008-46. This report also establishes the analyte exclusion criteria applicable for 100-B/C use and the analytical methods needed to analyze the target analytes.

A paper discussing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Administration's 2010 and 2011 budget outlines contain a proposal to cap the value of itemized deductions at 28%, for high-income taxpayers. In the 2010 proposal, the expected revenue was dedicated to addressing health care issues; as other sources are expected to finance health care, the proposal is now part of the increased taxes on upper-income taxpayers. This report contains information on the comparisons to past tax changes, estimated effects on aggregate charitable giving, effects by types of charitable objectives, estate tax issues, historical changes in the estate tax, effects of changes in the estate tax by types of charitable objectives, policy options, and related information and figures.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Key scientific assessments have underscored the urgency of reducing emissions of carbon dioxide to help mitigate potentially negative effects of climate change; however, many countries with significant greenhouse gas emissions, including the United States, China, and India, have not committed to binding limits on emissions to date, and carbon dioxide levels continue to rise. Recently, some policymakers have raised questions about geoengineering--large-scale deliberate interventions in the earth's climate system to diminish climate change or its potential impacts--and its role in a broader strategy of mitigating and adapting to climate change. Most geoengineering proposals fall into two approaches: solar radiation management (SRM), which offset temperature increases by reflecting a small percentage of the sun's light back into space, and carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which address the root cause of climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Today's testimony focuses on GAO's preliminary observations on (1) the state of the science regarding geoengineering approaches and their effects, (2) federal involvement in geoengineering activities, and (3) the views of experts and federal officials about the extent to which federal laws and international agreements apply to geoengineering. To address these …

In New York Times Co. v. Tasini, six freelance authors who had contributed articles to several publications, including The New York Times, Newsday, and Time, sued when the publishers licensed rights to copy and sell the articles to electronic databases such as Lexis/Nexis. Shortly after the Court decided Tasini, three preexisting class action infringement suits, which had been suspended pending the decision, were activated and consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A fourth, nearly identical action was coordinated with that consolidated action. Together, these claims comprise the litigation discussed in this report.

This Advanced Detector Research proposal presented a plan to develop an extremely fast time-of-flight detector for measuring the arrival time of beam protons scattered at small angles in high energy hadron colliders, such as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The proposed detectors employ a gas or quartz Cerenkov radiator which produce light when a proton passes through them, coupled to a micro-channel plate photomultiplier tube (MCP-PMT) that converts the light to an electrical pulse. The very small jitter of the pulse time provided by the MCP-PMT, combined with downstream electronics that accurately measure the pulse time results in a time-of-flight measurement of unprecedented accuracy. This ADR proposal was extremely successful, culminating in the development of a 10 ps resolution time-of-flight system, about an order of magnitude better than any time-of-flight system previously deployed at a collider experiment. The primary areas of advance were the usage of new radiator geometries providing fast detector signals, using multiple measurements to obtain a superior system resolution, and development of an electronics readout system tuned to maintain the excellent timing afforded by the detector. Test beam and laser tests have improved the knowledge of MCP-PMT’s and enabled the evaluation of the new detector concepts. In …

Vitrification is currently the most widely used technology for the treatment of high level radioactive wastes (HLW) throughout the world. Most of the nations that have generated HLW are immobilizing in either borosilicate glass or phosphate glass. One of the primary reasons that glass has become the most widely used immobilization media is the relative simplicity of the vitrification process, e.g. melt waste plus glass forming frit additives and cast. A second reason that glass has become widely used for HLW is that the short range order (SRO) and medium range order (MRO) found in glass atomistically bonds the radionuclides and governs the melt properties such as viscosity, resistivity, sulphate solubility. The molecular structure of glass controls contaminant/radionuclide release by establishing the distribution of ion exchange sites, hydrolysis sites, and the access of water to those sites. The molecular structure is flexible and hence accounts for the flexibility of glass formulations to waste variability. Nuclear waste glasses melt between 1050-1150 C which minimizes the volatility of radioactive components such as Tc{sup 99}, Cs{sup 137}, and I{sup 129}. Nuclear waste glasses have good long term stability including irradiation resistance. Process control models based on the molecular structure of glass have been …

Federal support for child care and education comes in many forms, ranging from grant programs to tax provisions. This report provides a funding overview and brief background information on federal child care, early education, and related programs (and tax provisions).

The pathway of electrons required for the reduction of sulfate in sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) is not yet fully characterized. In order to determine the role of a transmembrane protein complex suggested to be involved in this process, a deletion of Desulfovibrio vulgaris Hildenborough was created by marker exchange mutagenesis that eliminated four genes putatively encoding the QmoABC complex and a hypothetical protein (DVU0851). The Qmo complex (quinone-interacting membrane-bound oxidoreductase) is proposed to be responsible for transporting electrons to the dissimilatory adenosine-5?phosphosulfate (APS) reductase in SRB. In support of the predicted role of this complex, the deletion mutant was unable to grow using sulfate as its sole electron acceptor with a range of electron donors. To explore a possible role for the hypothetical protein in sulfate reduction, a second mutant was constructed that had lost only the gene that codes for DVU0851. The second constructed mutant grew with sulfate as the sole electron acceptor; however, there was a lag that was not present with the wild-type or complemented strain. Neither deletion strain was significantly impaired for growth with sulfite or thiosulfate as terminal electron acceptor. Complementation of the D(qmoABC-DVU0851) mutant with all four genes or only the qmoABC genes restored its …

New simulations of graphene growth in flame environments are presented. The simulations employ a kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) algorithm coupled to molecular mechanics (MM) geometry optimization to track individual graphenic species as they evolve. Focus is given to incorporation of five-member rings and resulting curvature and edge defects. The model code has been re-written to be more computationally efficient enabling a larger set of simulations to be run, decreasing stochastic fluctuations in the averaged results. The model also includes updated rate coefficients for graphene edge reactions recently published in the literature. The new simulations are compared to results from the previous model as well as to hydrogen to carbon ratios recorded in experiment and calculated with alternate models.

This report focuses on four areas critical to the success of the biodefense enterprise that the 111th Congress is likely to consider: strategic planning; risk assessment; surveillance; and the development, procurement, and distribution of medical countermeasures.

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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.

This report discusses the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (referred to as the Stafford Act - 42 U.S.C. 5721 et seq.), which authorizes the President to issue "major disaster" or "emergency" declarations before or after catastrophes occur. It includes a description of the declaration process, Presidential and gubernatorial discretion, preliminary damage assessments, and factors for public or individual assistance in major disaster declarations, with concluding observations.

The long-term goal of this research was to better understand the influence of mRNA stability on gene regulation, particularly in response to hormones and the circadian clock. The primary aim of this project was to examine this using DNA microarrays, small RNA analysis and other approaches. We accomplished these objectives, although we were only able to detect small changes in mRNA stability in response to these stimuli. However, the work also contributed to a major breakthrough allowing the identification of small RNAs on a genomic scale in eukaryotes. Moreover, the project prompted us to develop a new way to analyze mRNA decay genome wide. Thus, the research was hugely successful beyond our objectives.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) establishes that federal agencies must provide the public with access to government information, enabling them to learn about government operations and decisions. To help ensure proper implementation, the act requires that agencies annually report specific information about their FOIA operations, such as numbers of requests received and processed and other statistics. In work reported from 2001 to 2008, GAO examined the annual reports for major agencies, describing the status of reported implementation and any observable trends. GAO also reported on agency improvement plans developed in response to a 2005 Executive Order aimed at improving FOIA implementation, including reducing backlogs of overdue requests. GAO was asked to testify on its previous work on FOIA implementation, as well as on selected changes in the FOIA landscape resulting from legislation, policy, and guidance. To develop this testimony, GAO drew on its previous work, as well as publicly available information."

Recent experiments on the National Spherical Torus eXperiment (NSTX) have shown the benefits of solid lithium coatings on carbon PFC's to diverted plasma performance, in both Land H- mode confinement regimes. Better particle control, with decreased inductive flux consumption, and increased electron temperature, ion temperature, energy confinement time, and DD neutron rate were observed. Successive increases in lithium coverage resulted in the complete suppression of ELM activity in H-mode discharges. A liquid lithium divertor (LLD), which will employ the porous molybdenum surface developed for the LTX shell, is being installed on NSTX for the 2010 run period, and will provide comparisons between liquid walls in the Lithium Tokamak eXperiment (LTX) and liquid divertor targets in NSTX. LTX, which recently began operations at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, is the world's first confinement experiment with full liquid metal plasma-facing components (PFCs). All materials and construction techniques in LTX are compatible with liquid lithium. LTX employs an inner, heated, stainless steel-faced liner or shell, which will be lithium-coated. In order to ensure that lithium adheres to the shell, it is designed to operate at up to 500 - 600 oC to promote wetting of the stainless by the lithium, providing the first …

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This report provides a primer on the confluence of transnational terrorist and criminal groups and related activities abroad. It evaluates possible motivations and disincentives for cooperation between terrorist and criminal organizations, variations in the scope of crime-terrorism links, and the types of criminal activities--fundraising, material and logistics support, and exploitation of corruption and gaps in the rule of law--used by terrorist organizations to sustain operations.

This report provides an overview of nanotechnology, the National Nanotechnology Initiative, possible reauthorization of the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 (P.L. 108-153), and appropriations issues.

This report discusses government assistance for American International Group (AIG), the future of AIG and the ultimate government cost of the intervention that are unclear. The Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) has been the primary vehicle for most of these actions.

Accurate short-term forecasts of wind resources are required for efficient wind farm operation and ultimately for the integration of large amounts of wind-generated power into electrical grids. Siemens Energy Inc. and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with the University of Colorado at Boulder, are collaborating on the design of an operational forecasting system for large wind farms. The basis of the system is the numerical weather prediction tool, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model; large-eddy simulations and data assimilation approaches are used to refine and tailor the forecasting system. Representation of the atmospheric boundary layer is modified, based on high-resolution large-eddy simulations of the atmospheric boundary. These large-eddy simulations incorporate wake effects from upwind turbines on downwind turbines as well as represent complex atmospheric variability due to complex terrain and surface features as well as atmospheric stability. Real-time hub-height wind speed and other meteorological data streams from existing wind farms are incorporated into the modeling system to enable uncertainty quantification through probabilistic forecasts. A companion investigation has identified optimal boundary-layer physics options for low-level forecasts in complex terrain, toward employing decadal WRF simulations to anticipate large-scale changes in wind resource availability due to global climate change.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony is based on our report "Secure Border Initiative: DHS Needs to Address Testing and Performance Limitations That Place Key Technology Program at Risk." In September 2008, we reported to Congress that important aspects of SBInet were ambiguous and in a continuous state of flux, making it unclear and uncertain what technology capabilities were to be delivered when. In addition, the program did not have an approved integrated master schedule to guide the program's execution, and key milestones continued to slip. This schedule-related risk was exacerbated by the continuous change in and the absence of a clear definition of the approach used to define, develop, acquire, test, and deploy SBInet. Furthermore, different levels of SBInet requirements were not properly aligned, and all requirements had not been properly defined and validated. Also, the program office had not tested the individual system components to be deployed to initial locations, even though the contractor had initiated integration testing of these components with other system components and subsystems, and its test management strategy did not contain, among other things, a clear definition of testing roles and responsibilities; or sufficient detail to …