This report discusses Central Asia's regional developments and gives an overview of U.S policy concerns.

On June 25, 2007, in a 5-4 decision, the Sumpreme Court in Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. v. FEC affirmed a lower court ruling, finding that a provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, prohibiting corporate or labor union treasury funds from being spent on advertisements broadcast within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election, was unconstitutional as applied to ads that Wisconsin Right to Life, Inc. sought to run. In later decisions, it was ruled that advertisements that may reasonably be interpreted as something other than as an appeal to vote for or against a specific candidate are not the functional equivalent of express advocacy and, therefore, cannot be regulated. This report examines and analyzes these decisions and how they effect campaign law.

This report gives an overview of Cuba's issues for the 110th Congress. The contents include the most recent developments, political and economic conditions, U.S. policy towards Cuba, issues in the U.S.- Cuban relations, legislations in the 109th congress, and legislative initiatives in the 110th Congress.

In previous studies, 11 elements (Al, As, Cd, Cr, Cu, Fe, Mn, Ni, Pb, Se, and Zn) were determined in 30-minute aerosol samples collected with the University of Maryland Semicontinuous Elements in Aerosol Sampler (SEAS; Kidwell and Ondov, 2001, 2004; SEAS-II) in several locations in which air quality is influenced by emissions from coal- or oil-fired power plants. At this time resolution, plumes from stationary high temperature combustion sources are readily detected as large excursions in ambient concentrations of elements emitted by these sources (Pancras et al. ). Moreover, the time-series data contain intrinsic information on the lateral diffusion of the plume (e.g., {sigma}{sub y}), which Park et al. (2005 and 2006) have exploited in their Pseudo-Deterministic Receptor Model (PDRM), to calculate emission rates of SO{sub 2} and 11 elements (mentioned above) from four individual coal- and oil-fired power plants in the Tampa Bay area. In the current project, we proposed that the resolving power of source apportionment methods might be improved by expanding the set of maker species and that there exist some optimum set of marker species that could be used. The ultimate goal was to determine the utility of using additional elements to better identify and isolate …

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This report documents a collaborative effort between Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Materials Resources International and an industry team of participants to develop, evaluate and understand how high density infrared heating technology could be used to improve infiltrated carbide wear coatings and/or to densify sprayed coatings. The research included HDI fusion evaluations of infiltrated carbide suspensions such (BrazeCoat® S), composite suspensions with tool steel powders, thermally sprayed Ni-Cr- B-Si (self fluxing alloy) and nickel powder layers. The applied work developed practical HDI / transient liquid coating (TLC) procedures on test plates that demonstrated the ability to fuse carbide coatings for industrial applications such as agricultural blades, construction and mining vehicles. Fundamental studies helped create process models that led to improved process understanding and control. The coating of agricultural blades was demonstrated and showed the HDI process to have the ability to fuse industrial scale components. Sliding and brasive wear tests showed that high degree of wear resistance could be achieved with the addition of tool steel powders to carbide particulate composites.

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This funding provided support for over nine years of research on the structure and function of microbial communities in subsurface environments. The overarching goal during these years was to understand the impact of mixed contaminants, particularly heavy metals like uranium, on the structure and function of microbial communities. In addition we sought to identify microbial populations that were actively involved in the reduction of metals because these species of bacteria hold the potential for immobilizing soluble metals moving in subsurface water. Bacterial mediated biochemical reduction of metals like uranium, technetium and chromium, greatly reduces their mobility through complexation and precipitation. Hence, by taking advantage of natural metabolic capabilities of subsurface microbial populations it is possible to bioremediate contaminated subsurface environments with a cost-effective in situ approach. Towards this end we have i.) identified bacterial populations that have thrived under the adverse conditions at the contaminated FRC site, ii.) phylogenetically identified populations that respond to imposed remediation conditions at the FRC, iii.) used metagenomics to begin a reconstruction of the metabolic web in a contaminated subsurface zone, iv.) investigated the metal reducing attributes of a Gram-positive spore forming rod also capable of dechlorination.

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This report provides background on hedge funds and private equity and summarizes the tax issues.

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We use on-shell recursion relations to compute analytically the one-loop corrections to maximally-helicity-violating n-gluon amplitudes in QCD. The cut-containing parts have been computed previously; our work supplies the remaining rational parts for these amplitudes, which contain two gluons of negative helicity and the rest positive, in an arbitrary color ordering. We also present formulae specific to the six-gluon cases, with helicities (-+-+++) and (-++-++), as well as numerical results for six, seven, and eight gluons. Our construction of the n-gluon amplitudes illustrates the relatively modest growth in complexity of the on-shell-recursive calculation as the number of external legs increases. These amplitudes add to the growing body of one-loop amplitudes known for all n, which are useful for studies of general properties of amplitudes, including their twistor-space structure.

This report assesses the extent of the Army officer shortfall, examines perceived causes, reviews recent retention initiatives, identifies other possible retention incentives, and concludes with a review of possible options for Congress. This report is focused on the Army’s “line” or basic branch officers.

On June 20, 2000, congressional leaders of both parties gathered to participate in a symbolic groundbreaking ceremony for the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC). The center has been designed to enhance the security, educational experience, and comfort of those visiting the U.S. Capitol when it is completed. The cost of the center is estimated to be at least $555 million. This report details the different methods of funding for the center, as well as the design and development process for the center.

This report presents the cost of the center, the most extensive addition to the Capitol since the Civil War, and the largest in the structure’s more than 200-year history, is now estimated to be at least $555 million. The project is being financed with appropriated funds, and a total of $65 million from private donations and revenue generated by the sale of commemorative coins.

This report presents the cost of the center, the most extensive addition to the Capitol since the Civil War, and the largest in the structure’s more than 200-year history, is now estimated to be at least $555 million. The project is being financed with appropriated funds, and a total of $65 million from private donations and revenue generated by the sale of commemorative coins.

The study of the electrochemical behavior of wrought and welded Alloy 22 was carried out in 5 M CaCl{sub 2} as a function of temperatures between 45 and 120 C with Multiple Crevice Assembly (MCA) specimens. The susceptibility to corrosion was found to increase with increase in electrolyte temperature in both the wrought (in the mill annealed condition) and the welded forms of the alloy. The weld metal was found to be less susceptible to localized corrosion under the conditions tested.

FastBit is a software package designed to meet the searching and filtering needs of data intensive sciences. In these applications, scientists are trying to find nuggets of information from petabytes of raw data. FastBit has been demonstrated to be an order of magnitude faster than comparable technologies. In this brief report, we highlight how we work with a visualization team, a network security team and a DNA sequencing center to find the nuggets in their data.

In this project, personnel at Tulane University and Sapidyne Instruments Inc. developed an in-line uranium immunosensor that could be used to determine the efficacy of specific in situ biostimulation approaches. This sensor was designed to operate autonomously over relatively long periods of time (2-10 days) and was able to provide near real-time data about uranium immobilization in the absence of personnel at the site of the biostimulation experiments. An alpha prototype of the in-line immmunosensor was delivered from Sapidyne Instruments to Tulane University in December of 2002 and a beta prototype was delivered in November of 2003. The beta prototype of this instrument (now available commercially from Sapidyne Instruments) was programmed to autonomously dilute standard uranium to final concentrations of 2.5 to 100 nM (0.6 to 24 ppb) in buffer containing a fluorescently labeled anti-uranium antibody and the uranium chelator, 2,9-dicarboxyl-1,10-phenanthroline. The assay limit of detection for hexavalent uranium was 5.8 nM or 1.38 ppb. This limit of detection is well below the drinking water standard of 30 ppb recently promulgated by the EPA. The assay showed excellent precision; the coefficients of variation (CV’s) in the linear range of the assay were less than 5% and CV’s never rose above …

This report is a guide to one of the regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year.

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