A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As with conventional oil and gas development, requirements from eight federal environmental and public health laws apply to unconventional oil and gas development. For example, the Clean Water Act (CWA) regulates discharges of pollutants into surface waters. Among other things, CWA requires oil and gas well site operators to obtain permits for discharges of produced water—which includes fluids used for hydraulic fracturing, as well as water that occurs naturally in oil- or gas-bearing formations—to surface waters. In addition, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) governs the management and disposal of hazardous wastes, among other things. However, key exemptions or limitations in regulatory coverage affect the applicability of six of these environmental and public health laws. For example, CWA also generally regulates stormwater discharges by requiring that facilities associated with industrial and construction activities get permits, but the law and its regulations largely exempt oil and gas well sites. In addition, oil and gas exploration and production wastes are exempt from RCRA hazardous waste requirements based on a regulatory determination made by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1988. EPA generally retains its authorities under federal …

Report that discusses and assesses the War Powers Resolution and its application since enactment in 1973, providing detailed background on various cases in which it was used, as well as cases in which issues of its applicability were raised.

A CERN-SLAC-KEK collaboration on high gradient X-band accelerator structure development for CLIC has been ongoing for three years. The major outcome has been the demonstration of stable 100 MV/m gradient operation of a number of CLIC prototype structures. These structures were fabricated using the technology developed from 1994 to 2004 for the GLC/NLC linear collider initiative. One of the goals has been to refine the essential parameters and fabrication procedures needed to realize such a high gradient routinely. Another goal has been to develop structures with stronger dipole mode damping than those for GLC/NLC. The latter requires that the surface temperature rise during the pulse be higher, which may increase the breakdown rate. One structure with heavy damping has been RF processed and another is nearly finished. The breakdown rates of these structures were found to be higher by two orders of magnitude compared to those with equivalent acceleration mode parameters but without the damping features. This paper presents these results together with some of the earlier results from non-damped structures.

In this note, the analysis on linac quadrupole misalignment is presented for the FACET linac section LI05-09 plus LI11-19. The effectiveness of the beam-based alignment technique is preliminarily confirmed by the measurement. Beam-based alignment technique was adopted at SLAC linac since SLC time. Here the beam-based alignment algorithms are further developed and applied in the FACET commissioning during 2012 run.

This report discusses the current issues in Burma (Myanmar) in regards to political prisoners and the resulting U.S. sanctions against the nation. It includes an introduction and definitions; information about current estimates of prisoners and prisoner releases; the relation of political prisoners, parliamentary elections and national reconciliation; and U.S. sanctions and U.S. efforts regarding political prisoners, as well as relevant issues for Congress to consider.

Short guide with rules on acceptance and filing of financial donations as well as rules for candidates of different political openings.

The prior project consisted of two main project lines. First, characterization of novel nanomaterials for hydrodesulfurization (HDS) applications. Second, studying more traditional model systems for HDS such as vapor-deposited silica-supported Mo and MoSx clusters. In the first subproject, we studied WS2 and MoS2 fullerene-like nanoparticles as well as WS2 nanotubes. Thiophene (C4H4S) was used as the probe molecule. Interestingly, metallic and sulfur-like adsorption sites could be identified on the silica-supported fullerene-particles system. Similar structures are seen for the traditional system (vapor-deposited clusters). Thus, this may be a kinetics fingerprint feature of modern HDS model systems. In addition, kinetics data allowed characterization of the different adsorption sites for thiophene on and inside WS2 nanotube bundles. The latter is a unique feature of nanotubes that has not been reported before for any inorganic nanotube system; however, examples are known for carbon nanotubes, including prior work of the PI. Although HDS has been studied for decades, utilizing nanotubes as nanosized HDS reactors has never been tried before, as far as we know. This is of interest from a fundamental perspective. Unfortunately, the HDS activity of the nanocatalysts at ultra-high vacuum (UHV) conditions was close to the detection limit of our techniques. Therefore, we …

This report discusses the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and their attempts to define the term "supervisor" in the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) so that such employees can join or form a labor union as regular employees.

This article presents a report on the progress made in designing 18 MW water based Beam Dumps for electrons or positrons for an International Linear Collider (ILC). Multi-dimensional technology issues have to be addressed for the successful design of the Beam Dump. They include calculations of power deposition by the high energy electron/positron beam bunch trains, computational fluid dynamic analysis of turbulent water flow, mechanical design, process flow analysis, hydrogen/oxygen recombiners, handling of radioactive 7Be and 3H, design of auxiliary equipment, provisions for accident scenarios, remote window exchanger, radiation shielding, etc. The progress made to date is summarized, the current status, and also the issues still to be addressed.

The laser and optics system for the photon collider seeks to minimize the required laser power by using an optical stacking cavity to recirculate the laser light. An enhancement of between 300 to 400 is desired. In order to achieve this the laser pulses which drive the cavity must precisely match the phase of the pulse circulating within the cavity. We report on simulations of the performance of a stacking cavity to various variations of the drive laser in order to specify the required tolerances of the laser system.

I attended the 20th biannual International Conference on Plasma Surface Interaction (PSI) in Fusion Devices in Aachen, Germany, hosted this year by the Forschungszentrum Julich (FZJ) research center. The PSI conference is one of the main international forums for the presentation and discussion of results on plasma surface interactions and edge plasma physics relevant to magnetic confinement fusion devices. I disseminated the recent results of FESP/LLNL tokamak research by presenting three posters on: (i) understanding reconnection and controlling edge localized modes (ELMs) using the BOUT++ code, (ii) simulation of resistive ballooning mode turbulence, and (iii) innovative design of Snowflake divertors. I learned of many new and recent results from international tokamak facilities and had the opportunity for discussion of these topics with other scientists at the poster sessions, conference lunches/receptions, etc. Some of the major highlights of the PSI conference topics were: (1) Review of the progress in using metallic tungsten and beryllium (ITER-like) walls at international tokamak facilities: JET (Culham, UK), TEXTOR (FZJ, Germany) and Alcator CMOD (MIT, USA). Results included: effect of small and large-area melting on plasma impurity content and recovery, expected reduction in retention of hydrogenic species, increased heat load during disruptions and need for mitigation …

Given the recent success of >GV/m dielectric wakefield accelerator (DWA) breakdown experiments at SLAC, and follow-on coherent Cerenkov radiation production at the UCLA Neptune, a UCLA-USC-SLAC collaboration is now implementing a new set of experiments that explore various DWA scenarios. These experiments are motivated by the opportunities presented by the approval of FACET facility at SLAC, as well as unique pulse-train wakefield drivers at BNL. The SLAC experiments permit further exploration of the multi-GeV/m envelope in DWAs, and will entail investigations of novel materials (e.g. CVD diamond) and geometries (Bragg cylindrical structures, slab-symmetric DWAs), and have an over-riding goal of demonstrating >GeV acceleration in {approx}33 cm DWA tubes. In the nearer term before FACET's commissioning, we are planning measurements at the BNL ATF, in which we drive {approx}50-200 MV/m fields with single pulses or pulse trains. These experiments are of high relevance to enhancing linear collider DWA designs, as they will demonstrate potential for efficient operation with pulse trains.

The ultra high luminosity B-factory (SuperB) project of INFN requires a high performance and reliable injection system, providing electrons at 4 GeV and positrons at 7 GeV, to fulfil the very tight requirements of the collider. Due to the short beam lifetime, continuous injection of electron and positron bunches in both LER and HER rings is necessary to maintain an high average luminosity. Polarized electrons are required for experiments and must be delivered by the injection system, due to the beam lifetime shorter than the ring polarization build-up: they will be produced by means of a SLAC-SLC polarized gun. The emittance and the energy spread of the e{sup -}/e{sup +} beams are reduced in a 1 GeV Damping Ring (DR) before injection in the main rings. Two schemes for positron production are under study, one with e{sup -}/e{sup +} conversion at low energy (< 1 Gev) and one with conversion at 6 GeV and a recirculation line to bring the positrons back to the DR. Acceleration through the Linac is provided by a 2856 MHz RF system made of travelling wave (TW), room temperature accelerating structures.

Linac Energy Management (LEM) is a control system program that scales magnet field set-point settings following a change in beam energy. LEM is necessary because changes in the number, phase, and amplitude of the active klystrons change the beam's rigidity, and therefore, to maintain constant optics, one has to change focusing gradients and bend fields accordingly. This paper describes the basic process, the control system application programs we developed for LEM, and some of the implementation lessons learned at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).

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This report discusses federal government funding for the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies appropriations bill, which provides funding for the planning, design, construction, alteration, and improvement of facilities used by active and reserve military components worldwide.

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The ATF2 facility at KEK is a proving ground for linear collider technology with a well instrumented extracted beam line and Final Focus (FF). The primary ATF2 goal is to demonstrate the extreme beam demagnification and spot stability needed for a linear collider FF. But the ATF2 FF uses water cooled magnets and the ILC baseline has a superconducting (SC) FF. We plan to upgrade ATF2 and replace some of the warm FF magnets with SC FF magnets. The ATF2 SC magnets, like the ILC FF, will made via direct wind construction. ATF2 coil winding is in progress at BNL and warm magnetic measurements indicate we have achieved good field quality. Studies indicate that having ATF2 FF magnets with larger aperture and better field quality should allow reducing the ATF2 FF beta function for study of focusing regimes relevant to CLIC. The ATF2 magnet cryostat will have laser view ports for directly monitoring cold mass movement. We plan to make stability measurements at BNL and KEK to relate ATF2 FF magnet performance to that of a full length ILC QD0 R&D FF prototype under construction at BNL.

The following table provides access to names and contact information for CRS experts on policy concerns relating to wildfires. Policy areas identified include federal wildfire policy; long-term land use management; federal firefighting assistance; federal emergency management policy; federal preparedness system and response plan; hazard mitigation; armed forces and national guard assistance; supplemental disaster funding; and disaster insurance.

The author show that using existing electron gun technology and a high energy linac like the one at SLAC, it is possible to build a Free Electron Laser operating around the 4 nm water window. A modest improvement in the gun performance would further allow to extend the FEL to the 0.1 nm region. Such a system would produce radiation with a brightness many order of magnitude above that of any synchrotron radiation source, existing or under construction, with laser power in the multigawatt region and subpicosecond pulse length.

This report examines the developments associated with the implementation of mortgage lending reforms. The report begins with a summary of proposed ability to repay and risk-retention standards. Next, the report describes risky underwriting and financing practices that occurred prior to the mortgage crisis, followed by a discussion of how access to mortgage credit might be affected.

For years shipping packages have been used to store radioactive materials at many DOE sites. Recently, the K-Area Material Storage facility at the Savannah River Site became interested in and approved the Model 9977 Shipping Package for use as a storage package. In order to allow the 9977 to be stored in the facility, there were a number of evaluations and modifications that were required. There were additional suggested modifications to improve the performance of the package as a storage container that were discussed but not incorporated in the design that is currently in use. This paper will discuss the design being utilized for shipping and storage, suggested modifications that have improved the storage configuration but were not used, as well as modifications that have merit for future adaptations for both the 9977 and for other shipping packages to be used as storage packages.

This report discusses the current political state of Afghanistan, as well as the Afghan government. This report also discusses Afghanistan's relationship with the United States, particularly U.S. efforts to urge President Hamid Karzai, to address corruption within the Afghan government. The report also includes discussion of election fraud and corruption in Afghanistan.

This report discusses the current political state of Afghanistan, as well as the Afghan government. This report also discusses Afghanistan's relationship with the United States, particularly U.S. efforts to urge President Hamid Karzai, to address corruption within the Afghan government. The report also includes discussion of election fraud and corruption in Afghanistan.