The Center for Plasma Edge Simulation (CPES) project was a multi-institutional research effort funded jointly by the Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research (OASCR) and the Office of Fusion Energy Sciences (OFES) within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. The effort was led by our Principal Investigator, CS Chang, at the Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences at New York University. The Center included participants from Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Lehigh University, Rutgers University, University of Colorado, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California at Davis, University of California at Irvine, North Carolina State University, and Georgia Institute of Technology. This report concerns the work performed by Dr. Julian C. Cummings, who was the institutional Principal Investigator for the CPES project at Caltech.

This report is about G-20 Reform of the Over-the-Counter Derivatives Markets. It discusses the derivatives, or financial instruments whose value is based on an underlying assets.

This report discusses constitutional provisions allocating war powers between Congress and the President, and presenting a historical overview of relevant court cases. It considers Congress's constitutional authority to end a military conflict via legislative action; the implications that the War Powers Resolution or the repeal of prior military authorization may have upon the continued use of military force; and other considerations which may inform congressional decisions to limit the use of military force via statutory command or through funding limitations.

The overall goal of this project is to create a Tribal Energy Action Plan that will serve as the Tribe’s blueprint for creating long term energy self‐sufficiency. The Plan will be developed with input from a committed group of key stakeholders and landowners in the area, will be based on sound data and research, and will address both “supply‐side” options of the development of sustainable energy sources, as well as “demand-side” options for reducing energy consumption. The resulting plan will include defined comprehensive energy strategies and built upon a baseline assessment of where the Tribe currently is in terms of alternative and renewable energy activities; a vision of where the Tribe wants to go; and an action plan of how the Tribe will reach its vision including the identification of viable energy options based on the long-term strategic plan of the Tribe.

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This report discusses elements of this controversy, providing background on stationary sources of GHG pollution and identifying options Congress has at its disposal to address the issues.

This report contains the unconventional monetary policy options on the federal reserve. It also discusses about Legislative Options to Prevent Quantitative Easing.

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As Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) initiated a Core Business Hours program, it became a challenge to ensure that the hundreds of systems campus wide were operating within their programmed schedules. Therefore, a collaborative exchange between PNNL operations and PNNL researchers developing the Decision Support for Operations and Maintenance (DSOM) software package was initiated to create a tool to solve this problem. This new DSOM tool verifies systems are operating within scheduled operation times by polling Building Automation and Control Network (BACnet) identifiers of systems’ on/off or command statuses. The tool records the time spent in operation state (ON) and totalizes each system over a rolling 7-day period, highlighting systems that are running over the scheduled hours. This snapshot view allows building management to look quickly at the entire campus to ensure that systems are not operating beyond their scheduled hours.

This report describes Pakistan's political landscape, including the structure of parliament, prominent officials and key political parties. The report discusses these topics in the context of Pakistan's 2008 parliamentary elections.

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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.

This report identifies key elements of the Environmental Protection Agency's approach to the implementation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and regulations of coal combustion residuals. Under this approach, the EPA would have no formal role in creating state program to regulate coal combustion residuals and instead allows states that opt in to implement a coal combustion residuals permit program.

We report on the use of the recently-developed Mathematica package VEST (Vector Einstein Summation Tools) to automatically derive the guiding center transformation. Our Mathematica code employs a recursive procedure to derive the transformation order-by-order. This procedure has several novel features. (1) It is designed to allow the user to easily explore the guiding center transformation's numerous nonunique forms or representations. (2) The procedure proceeds entirely in cartesian position and velocity coordinates, thereby producing manifestly gyrogauge invariant results; the commonly-used perpendicular unit vector fields e1, e2 are never even introduced. (3) It is easy to apply in the derivation of higher-order contributions to the guiding center transformation without fear of human error. Our code therefore stands as a useful tool for exploring subtle issues related to the physics of toroidal momentum conservation in tokamaks

The Saltstone facilities at the DOE Savannah River Site (SRS) stabilize and dispose of low-level radioactive salt solution originating from liquid waste storage tanks at the site. The Saltstone Production Facility (SPF) receives treated salt solution and mixes the aqueous waste with dry cement, blast furnace slag, and fly ash to form a grout slurry which is mechanically pumped into concrete disposal cells that compose the Saltstone Disposal Facility (SDF). The solidified grout is termed “saltstone”. Cementitious materials play a prominent role in the design and long-term performance of the SDF. The saltstone grout exhibits low permeability and diffusivity, and thus represents a physical barrier to waste release. The waste form is also reducing, which creates a chemical barrier to waste release for certain key radionuclides, notably Tc-99. Similarly, the concrete shell of an SDF disposal unit (SDU) represents an additional physical and chemical barrier to radionuclide release to the environment. Together the waste form and the SDU compose a robust containment structure at the time of facility closure. However, the physical and chemical state of cementitious materials will evolve over time through a variety of phenomena, leading to degraded barrier performance over Performance Assessment (PA) timescales of thousands to …

This report discusses some of the most difficult immigration policy questions regarding unauthorized immigration and unauthorized employment.

This report discusses next generation broadband service; universal broadband service; mobile wireless broadband innovation and coverage; broadband access of Community Anchor Institutions; a nationwide, wireless, interoperable broadband public safety network; and broadband for tracking energy consumption.

This report discusses Pakistan's nuclear proliferation and security issues. It discusses the steps that could enable Pakistan to undertake both quantitative and qualitative improvements to its nuclear arsenal. Whether and to what extent Pakistan's current expansion of its nuclear weapons-related facilities is a response to the 2008 U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement is unclear.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States has kept strategic goals for Lebanon constant since 2007 and adjusted security assistance in response to political and security conditions. Since 2007, U.S. strategic goals for Lebanon have been to support the nation as a stable, secure, and independent democracy. According to U.S. officials, U.S. policy priorities include supporting the Government of Lebanon in establishing stability and security against internal threats from militant extremists and the influence of Iran and Syria. U.S. programs to help achieve these priorities include Foreign Military Financing, International Military Education and Training (IMET), International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement (INCLE), Antiterrorism Assistance, Counterterrorism Financing, Export Control and Related Border Security, and Section 1206 and 1207 authorities. While strategic goals have not changed, program implementation has changed to meet conditions on the ground, according to U.S. officials. For example, the Department of State (State) delayed committing Foreign Military Financing funds to Lebanon for 3 months in 2010, following an exchange of fire between the Lebanese Armed Forces and Israeli forces."

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This report examines the issues related to the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the state and substance of the negotiations (to the degree that the information is publically available), the specific areas under negotiation, the policy and economic contexts in which the TPP would fit, and the issues for Congress that the TPP presents.

This report discusses policy issues regarding military-to-military (mil-to-mil) contacts with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and provides a record of major contacts and crises since 1993.

This report provides an overview of U.S.-Mexico economic relations, trade trends, the Mexican economy, NAFTA, and trade issues between the United States and Mexico.