A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The drawdown from Iraq is a complex operation of significant magnitude. Established drawdown timelines dictate a reduction in forces to 50,000 troops by August 31, 2010, and a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by December 31, 2011. While DOD has made progress toward meeting these goals, a large amount of equipment, personnel, and bases remain to be drawn down. Moreover, escalating U.S. involvement in Afghanistan may increase the pressure on DOD to efficiently execute the drawdown. Due to broad congressional interest in drawdown issues, GAO performed this work under the Comptroller General's Authority. GAO examined (1) the extent to which DOD has planned for the drawdown from Iraq in accordance with set timelines, and (2) factors that may impact the efficient execution of the drawdown. To evaluate these efforts GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from over 20 DOD organizations in the U.S., Kuwait, and Iraq."

The report makes several observations concerning current cost allocation policy for electricity transmission at the federal and state levels. The report also reviews several recent developments in the cost allocation area.

Photoinjectors in advanced high-energy accelerators reduce beam energy spreads and enhance undulator photon fluxes. Photoinjector design is difficult because of the substantial differences in time and spatial scales. This Phase I program explored an innovative technique, the local Taylor polynomial (LTP) formulation, for improving finite difference analysis of photoinjectors. This included improved weighting techniques, systematic formula for high order interpolation and electric field computation, and improved handling of space charge. The Phase I program demonstrated that the approach was powerful, accurate, and efficient. It handles space charge gradients better than currently available technology.

Preliminary evaluation for blending Hanford site waste with the objective of minimizing the amount of high-level waste (HLW) glass volumes without major changes to the overall waste retrieval and processing sequences currently planned. The evaluation utilizes simplified spreadsheet models developed to allow screening type comparisons of blending options without the need to use the Hanford Tank Waste Operations Simulator (HTWOS) model. The blending scenarios evaluated are expected to increase tank farm operation costs due to increased waste transfers. Benefit would be derived from shorter operating time period for tank waste processing facilities, reduced onsite storage of immobilized HLW, and reduced offsite transportation and disposal costs for the immobilized HLW.

The purpose of this report is to provide a concise but comprehensive overview of Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Climate Research Facility instrumentation status. The report is divided into the following five sections: (1) new instrumentation in the process of being acquired and deployed, (2) field campaigns, (3) existing instrumentation and progress on improvements or upgrades, (4) proposed future instrumentation, and (5) Small Business Innovation Research instrument development.

Photograph of Nancy Pelosi speaking at the Congressional Gold Medal ceremony for the WASP at the United States Capitol building. She is standing at a podium, wearing a tan suit jacket. There is a large crowd in the foreground.

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Volume x-ray gratings consisting of a multilayer coating deposited on a blazed substrate can diffract with very high efficiency even in high orders if diffraction conditions in-plane (grating) and out-of-plane (Bragg multilayer) are met simultaneously. This remarkable property however depends critically on the ability to create a structure with near atomic perfection. In this work we report on a method to produce these structures. We report measurements that show, for a 5000 l/mm grating diffracting in the 3rd order, a diffraction efficiency of 37.6percent at a wavelength of 13.6 nm, close to the theoretical maximum. This work now shows a direct route to achieving high diffraction efficiency in high order at wavelengths throughout the soft x-ray energy range.

A general approach for ab initio calculations of electronic continuum processes is described in which the many-electron wave function is expanded using a combination of orbitals at short range and the finite-element discrete variable representation(FEM-DVR) at larger distances. The orbital portion of the basis allows the efficient construction of many-electron configurations in which some of the electrons are bound, but because the orbitals are constructed from an underlying FEM-DVR grid, the calculation of two-electron integrals retains the efficiency of the primitive FEM-DVR approach. As an example, double photoionization of beryllium is treated in a calculation in which the 1s{sup 2} core is frozen. This approach extends the use of exterior complex scaling (ECS) successfully applied to helium and H{sub 2} to calculations with two active electrons on more complicated targets. Integrated, energy-differential and triply-differential cross sections are exhibited, and the results agree well with other theoretical investigations.

Implicit Monte Carlo (IMC) and Implicit Monte Carlo Diffusion (IMD) are approaches to the numerical solution of the equations of radiative transfer. IMD was previously derived and numerically tested on grey, or frequency-integrated problems. In this research, we extend Implicit Monte Carlo Diffusion (IMD) to account for frequency dependence, and we implement the difference formulation as a source manipulation variance reduction technique. We derive the relevant probability distributions and present the frequency dependent IMD algorithm, with and without the difference formulation. The IMD code with and without the difference formulation was tested using both grey and frequency dependent benchmark problems. The Su and Olson semi-analytic Marshak wave benchmark was used to demonstrate the validity of the code for grey problems. The Su and Olson semi-analytic picket fence benchmark was used for the frequency dependent problems. The frequency dependent IMD algorithm reproduces the results of both Su and Olson benchmark problems. Frequency group refinement studies indicate that the computational cost of refining the group structure is likely less than that of group refinement in deterministic solutions of the radiation diffusion methods. Our results show that applying the difference formulation to the IMD algorithm can result in an overall increase in the …

A new Dual Channel Highly Ordered Pyrolytic Graphite (DC-HOPG) x-ray spectrometer was developed to study laser-generated electron beam transport. The instrument uses a pair of graphite crystals and has the advantage of simultaneously detecting self emission from low-Z materials in first diffraction order and high-Z materials in second order. The emissions from the target are detected using a pair of parallel imaging plates positioned in a such way that the noise from background is minimized and the mosaic focusing is achieved. Initial tests of the diagnostic on Titan laser (I {approx} 10{sup 20} W/cm{sup 2}, {tau} = 0.7 ps) show excellent signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) > 1000 for the low energy channel and SNR > 400 for the high energy channel.

An installation in a Federal building tested the effectiveness of a highly-controlled, workstation-specific lighting retrofit. The study took place in an open-office area with 86 cubicles and low levels of daylight. Each cubicle was illuminated by a direct/indirectpendant luminaire with three 32 watt lamps, two dimmable DALI ballasts, and an occupancy sensor. A centralized control system programmed all three lamps to turn on and off according to occupancy on a workstation-by-workstation basis. Field measurements taken over the course of several monthsdemonstrated 40% lighting energy savings compared to a baseline without advanced controls that conforms to GSA's current retrofit standard. A photometric analysis found that the installation provided higher desktop light levels than the baseline, while an occupant survey found that occupants in general preferred the lighting system to thebaseline.Simple payback is fairly high; projects that can achieve lower installation costs and/or higher energy savings and those in which greenhouse gas reduction and occupant satisfaction are significant priorities provide the ideal setting for workstation-specific lighting retrofits.

This report analyzes questions regarding space policy challenges and gives some possible answers. It also addresses a number of cross-cutting issues, such as NASA's interactions with other federal agencies and the growing role of the commercial space industry.

This report discusses the history of Sudan's civil unrest and the subsequent crisis in Darfur, as well as United Nations and United States aid and peacekeeping efforts, and current related policy under the Obama Administration.

This report discusses recent pirate attacks on vessels, including United States vessels, in the waters off the Horn of Africa. The Horn of Africa is sometimes called the Somali Peninsula and includes the nations of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia. This report explores reasons behind the increased number of pirate attacks in recent years, as well as what efforts are being taken to combat said attacks, including those by the 111th Congress and President Obama and his Administration.

This report discusses: earthquake hazards and risk in the United States, federal programs that support earthquake monitoring, the U.S. capability to detect earthquakes and issue notifications and warnings, and federally-supported research to improve the fundamental scientific understanding of earthquakes with a goal of reducing U.S. vulnerability.

This report provides background information and potential oversight issues for Congress on the CVN-78 program, which includes the CVN-78, CVN-79, and CVN-80 as the first three ships in the Navy's new Gerald R. Ford (CVN- 78) class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs).

This report provides an overview of the funding provided for the Mérida Initiative and related assistance programs in Central America and the Caribbean, the status of Mérida implementation, and a discussion of some policy issues that Congress may consider as it oversees the initiative and related programs.

Daily newspaper from Sweetwater, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This project sought to further our understanding of non-Local Thermodynamic Equilibrium (NLTE) processes by providing benchmark data to validate computational models. This has been a difficult regime to study in the laboratory, where experimental scales produce strong gradients while interpretation requires well-characterized uniform plasmas. It has also been a difficult regime to simulate, as evidenced by the large discrepancies in predictions of NLTE spectra for fixed plasma properties. Not surprisingly, discrepancies between data and calculations of recombining laser-produced plasmas have been in evidence since the 1980's. The goal here was to obtain data of sufficient accuracy to help resolve these discrepancies and enable better modeling of the NLTE processes that are integral to high-energy density experiments. Advances in target fabrication, diagnostic development and simulation capabilities provided the foundations for this project. Uniform plasmas were to be achieved by using aerogel foams of low enough density ({approx}mg/cm{sup 3}) and thickness ({approx}mm) to be volumetrically heated by a laser. The foams were doped with Ti to provide K- and L-shell emission and recombination spectra during the experiments. A new absolutely calibrated transmission grating spectrometer provided absolute temporal measurements at 18 frequencies, in addition to a CCD image of the time-integrated spectrum. Finally, …

This report considers U.S. agricultural imports and predicts that FY2010 will be the second highest on record at 77.5 billion. The report also discusses the farm bill of 2008 in relation to this information. Moreover, the report provides data on the U.S. agricultural exports.

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Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held April 19, 2010 in Washington, D.C. This hearing includes testimony from two panels of witnesses representing governmental agencies and contractors on improving the federal government's oversight on service contracts in Southwest Asia operations.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Donald Shedd. Shedd joined the Marine Corps with his two brothers in February 1942. He joined the 1st Division, 5th Marines after basic training. Shedd was sent to Guadalcanal where he witnessed shore bombardment by Japanese ships. He was then sent to Cape Glouster, New Britain where he saw combat on several patrols. Next Shedd’s unit was sent to Peleliu where he landed with the second wave. He was wounded on the tenth day of the battle and was evacuated to a hospital ship and eventually sent back to the United States. He spent the remainder of the war as a guard at a naval ammunition depot in Massachusetts. He was discharged on 15 September 1945.