A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) operates 37 laboratories to provide the scientific foundation for its mission. Over the past 20 years, independent evaluations have identified problems with the laboratories' operations and management and called for improved planning, coordination, and leadership, as well as consolidation of laboratories. In its 2012 budget, EPA requested $2 million for another independent study of its laboratories. GAO was asked to examine the extent to which EPA (1) has addressed the findings of prior independent evaluations; (2) uses an agencywide, coordinated approach to manage its laboratory infrastructure and whether its new study will achieve stated cost savings and laboratory improvement goals; and (3) uses a comprehensive planning process to manage its laboratory workforce. GAO reviewed agency documents and independent evaluations, visited EPA laboratories, interviewed agency officials, and examined agency databases."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to the U.S. Strategic Command, the Department of Defense (DOD) is in the midst of a global cyberspace crisis as foreign nation states and other actors, such as hackers, criminals, terrorists, and activists exploit DOD and other U.S. government computer networks to further a variety of national, ideological, and personal objectives. This report identifies (1) how DOD is organized to address cybersecurity threats; and assesses the extent to which DOD has (2) developed joint doctrine that addresses cyberspace operations; (3) assigned command and control responsibilities; and (4) identified and taken actions to mitigate any key capability gaps involving cyberspace operations. It is an unclassified version of a previously issued classified report. GAO analyzed policies, doctrine, lessons learned, and studies from throughout DOD, commands, and the services involved with DOD's computer network operations and interviewed officials from a wide range of DOD organizations.."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) was established in 2004 to help developing countries reduce poverty and stimulate economic growth through multiyear compact agreements. As of June 2011, MCC had signed compacts with 23 countries totaling approximately $8.2 billion in assistance. MCC asks countries to develop compacts with a focus on results and effective monitoring and evaluation. MCC sets targets, which may be revised, to measure the compact results. In late 2010, the Cape Verde and Honduras compacts reached the end of the 5-year implementation period. This report, prepared in response to a congressional mandate to review compact results, examines the extent to which MCC has (1) achieved performance targets and sustainability for projects in Cape Verde and Honduras and (2) assessed progress toward the goal of income growth and poverty reduction. GAO analyzed MCC documents and interviewed MCC officials and stakeholders in Washington, D.C., Cape Verde, and Honduras."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The School Improvement Grants (SIG) program, which was created in 2002, funds reforms in the country's lowest-performing schools with the goal of improving student outcomes, such as standardized test scores and graduation rates. Congress greatly increased SIG program funding from $125 million available in fiscal year 2007--the first year the program was funded--to $3.5 billion in fiscal year 2009 for the 2010-11 school year. Three billion dollars of this amount was provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). In addition, $546 million was appropriated in both fiscal years 2009 and 2010, and $535 million was appropriated in fiscal year 2011. These funds were provided to states by formula after the Department of Education (Education) approved state SIG grant applications. The funding increases provided by the Recovery Act spurred Education to make substantive changes to the SIG program. For example, the persistently lowest-achieving schools receiving SIG funding must now implement one of four intervention models, each with specific requirements for reform interventions, such as replacing principals or turning over school management to a charter organization or other outside organization. Also, after states …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Criminal cartel activity, such as competitors conspiring to set prices, can harm consumers and the U.S. economy through lack of competition and overcharges. The Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division's leniency program offers the possibility that the first individual or company that self-reports cartel activity will avoid criminal conviction and penalties. In 2004, the Antitrust Criminal Penalty Enhancement and Reform Act (ACPERA) was enacted to encourage such reporting. The 2010 reauthorization mandated that GAO study ACPERA's effect. This report addresses (1) the extent that ACPERA affected DOJ's criminal cartel enforcement, (2) the ways ACPERA has reportedly affected private civil actions, and (3) key stakeholder perspectives on rewards and antiretaliatory protection for whistleblowers reporting criminal antitrust violations. GAO analyzed DOJ data on criminal cartel cases (1993-2010) and interviewed DOJ officials. GAO also interviewed a nongeneralizable sample of plaintiffs' and defense attorneys from 17 civil cases and key stakeholders including other antitrust attorneys selected using a snowball sampling technique whereby GAO identified contacts through referrals."

This report discusses the situation in South Sudan as it faces a number of challenges in the coming years. Relations between Juba, in South Sudan, and Khartoum are poor, and there are a number of unresolved issues between them. The crisis in the disputed area of Abyei remains a contentious issue, despite a temporary agreement reached in mid-June 2011.

This report explains how the sovereign credit default swap (CDS) market works and how such CDS price trends may illuminate fiscal stresses facing sovereign governments. Although CDS prices may be imperfect measures of the federal government's fiscal condition, some investors may try to glean information from those price trends. CDS prices have been playing an important role in the European government debt markets and could potentially affect U.S debt markets in the future. European policymakers have debated certain restrictions on types of sovereign CDS trading, and such calls for reform may be of interest to U.S. lawmakers.

This report discusses the current political state of Iran, focusing particularly on the influence of the Taliban and other militant groups and on the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This report also discusses the U.S.-Iran relationship and U.S. efforts under the Obama Administration to provide military, reconstructive, and stabilization aid.

This report provides a short description of the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility microwave radiometer (MWR) Retrieval (MWRRET) value-added product (VAP) algorithm. This algorithm utilizes a complementary physical retrieval method and applies brightness temperature offsets to reduce spurious liquid water path (LWP) bias in clear skies resulting in significantly improved precipitable water vapor (PWV) and LWP retrievals. We present a general overview of the technique, input parameters, output products, and describe data quality checks. A more complete discussion of the theory and results is given in Turner et al. (2007b).

National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec) shall provide one (1) Mechanical Engineer to support the Linear Collider Subsystem Development Program at Lawrence Livermore National Security, LLC (LLNS). The NSTec Mechanical Engineer's efforts will include engineering, design, and drawing support for the Vacuum Seal Test. NSTec will also provide a final report of the setup and input to LLNL's project management on project status. The NSTec Mechanical Engineer's efforts will also include engineering, design, and drawing support to the conceptual design for manufacturing of the Flux Concentrator Magnet. NSTec will also contribute to LLNS's final report on the Flux Concentrator Magnet. The deliverables are drawings, sketches, engineering documents, and final reports delivered to the LLNS Technical Representative.

To prevent significant loss of the luminosity due to large crossing angle in the future ERL based Electron Ion Collider at BNL (eRHIC), there is a demand for crab cavities. In this article, we will present a novel design of the deflecting/crabbing 181 MHz superconducting RF cavity that will fulfil the requirements of eRHIC. The quarter-wave resonator structure of the new cavity possesses many advantages, such as compact size, high R{sub t}/Q, the absence of the same order mode and lower order mode, and easy higher order mode damping. We will present the properties and characteristics of the new cavity in detail. As the accelerator systems grow in complexity, developing compact and efficient deflecting cavities is of great interest. Such cavities will benefit situations where the beam line space is limited. The future linac-ring type electron-ion collider requires implementation of a crab-crossing scheme for both beams at the interaction region. The ion beam has a long bunches and high rigidity. Therefore, it requires a low frequency, large kicking angle deflector. The frequency of the deflecting mode for the current collider design is 181 MHz, and the deflecting angle is {approx}5 mrad for each beam. At such low frequency, the previous …

Shot planning and analysis tools (SPLAT) integrate components necessary to help achieve a high over-all operational efficiency of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) by combining near and long-term shot planning, final optics demand and supply loops, target diagnostics planning, and target fabrication requirements. Currently, the SPLAT project is comprised of two primary tool suites for shot planning and optics demand. The shot planning component provides a web-based interface to selecting and building a sequence of proposed shots for the NIF. These shot sequences, or 'lanes' as they are referred to by shot planners, provide for planning both near-term shots in the Facility and long-term 'campaigns' in the months and years to come. The shot planning capabilities integrate with the Configuration Management Tool (CMT) for experiment details and the NIF calendar for availability. Future enhancements will additionally integrate with target diagnostics planning and target fabrication requirements tools. The optics demand component is built upon predictive modelling of maintenance requirements on the final optics as a result of the proposed shots assembled during shot planning. The predictive models integrate energetics from a Laser Performance Operations Model (LPOM), the status of the deployed optics as provided by the online Final Optics Inspection system, …

Magnetic vortices pinned near the inner surface of SRF Nb cavities are a possible source of RF hotspots, frequently observed by temperature mapping of the cavities outer surface at RF surface magnetic fields of about 100 mT. Theoretically, we expect that the thermal gradient provided by a 10 W green laser shining on the inner cavity surface at the RF hotspot locations can move pinned vortices to different pinning locations. The experimental apparatus to send the beam onto the inner surface of a photoinjector-type large-grain Nb cavity is described. Preliminary results on the changes in thermal maps observed after applying the laser heating are also reported.

Lidar backscattered signal is a useful tool for identifying vertical cloud structure in the atmosphere in optically thin clouds. Cloud boundaries derived from lidar signals are a necessary input for popular ARM data products, such as the Active Remote Sensing of Clouds (ARSCL) product. An operational cloud boundary algorithm (Wang and Sassen 2001) has been implemented for use with the ARM Micropulse Lidar (MPL) systems. In addition to retrieving cloud boundaries above 500 m, the value-added product (VAP) named Micropulse Lidar Cloud Mask (MPLCMASK) applies lidar-specific corrections (i.e., range-square, background, deadtime, and overlap) as described in Campbell et al. (2002) to the measured backscattered lidar. Depolarization ratio is computed using the methodology developed by Flynn et al. (2007) for polarization-capable MPL systems. The cloud boundaries output from MPLCMASK will be the primary lidar cloud mask for input to the ARSCL product and will be applied to all MPL systems, including historical data sets.

A 112 MHz superconducting quarter-wave resonator electron gun will be used as the injector of the Coherent Electron Cooling (CEC) proof-of-principle experiment at BNL. Furthermore, this electron gun can be the testing cavity for various photocathodes. In this paper, we present the design of the cathode stalks and a Fundamental Power Coupler (FPC) designated to the future experiments. Two types of cathode stalks are discussed. Special shape of the stalk is applied in order to minimize the RF power loss. The location of cathode plane is also optimized to enable the extraction of low emittance beam. The coaxial waveguide structure FPC has the properties of tunable coupling factor and small interference to the electron beam output. The optimization of the coupling factor and the location of the FPC are discussed in detail. Based on the transmission line theory, we designed a half wavelength cathode stalk which significantly brings down the voltage drop between the cavity and the stalk from more than 5.6 kV to 0.1 kV. The transverse field distribution on cathode has been optimized by carefully choosing the position of cathode stalk inside the cavity. Moreover, in order to decrease the RF power loss, a variable diameter design of …

Developing Superconducting RF (SRF) electron guns is an active field with several laboratories working on different gun designs. While the first guns were based on elliptic cavity geometries, Quarter Wave Resonator (QWR) option is gaining popularity. QWRs are especially well suited for producing beams with high charge per bunch. In this talk we will describe recent progress in developing both types of SRF guns. SRF guns made excellent progress in the last two years. Several guns generated beams and one, at HZDR, injected beam into an accelerator. By accomplishing this, HZDR/ELBE gun demonstrated feasibility of the SRF gun concept with a normal-conducting Cs{sub 2}Te cathode. The cathode demonstrated very good performance with the lifetime of {approx}1 year. However, for high average current/high bunch charge operation CsK{sub 2}Sb is preferred as it needs green lasers, unlike UV laser for the Cs{sub 2}Te, which makes it easier to build laser/optics systems. Other high QE photocathodes are being developed for SRF guns, most notably diamond-amplified photocathode. Several QWR guns are under development with one producing beam already. They are very promising for high bunch charge operation. The field is very active and we should expect more good results soon.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a stadium-sized facility that contains a 192-beam, 1.8-Megajoule, 500-Terawatt, ultraviolet laser system coupled with a 10-meter diameter target chamber. There are over 6,200 Line Replaceable Units (LRUs) comprised of more than 104,000 serialized parts that make up the NIF. Each LRU is a modular unit typically composed of a mechanical housing, laser optics (glass, lenses, or mirrors), and utilities. To date, there are more than 120,000 data sets created to characterize the attributes of these parts. Greater than 51,000 Work Permits have been issued to install, maintain, and troubleshoot the components. One integrated system is used to manage these data, and more. The Location Component and State (LoCoS) system is a web application built using Java Enterprise Edition technologies and is accessed by over 1,200 users. It is either directly or indirectly involved with each aspect of NIF work activity, and interfaces with ten external systems including the Integrated Computer Control System (ICCS) and the Laser Performance Operations Model (LPOM). Besides providing business functionality, LoCoS also acts as the NIF enterprise service bus. In this role, numerous integration approaches had to be adopted including: file exchange, database sharing, …

Niobium (Nb) is the material of choice for superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities due to its high critical temperature and critical magnetic field. Interstitial impurity elements such as H directly influence the efficiency of these cavities. Quantification of H in Nb is difficult since H is extremely mobile in Nb with a very high diffusion coefficient even at room temperature. In the presented work, Time of Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) was used to characterize H in Nb over a wide temperature range (160°K to 475°K) in situ to check for changes in mobility. Multiple experiments showed that as the specimen temperature is decreased below 300 °K, the H/Nb intensity changes by first increasing and then decreasing drastically at temperatures below 200°K. As specimen temperature is increased from 300°K to 450°K, the H/Nb intensity decreases. Remarkably, the H intensity with respect to Nb increases with time at 475°K (approximately 200°C). Correlation between this data and the H-Nb phase diagram appears to account for the H behaviour.

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The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory creates large numbers of images during each shot cycle for the analysis of optics, target inspection and target diagnostics. These images must be readily accessible once they are created and available for the 30 year lifetime of the facility. The Livermore Computing Center (LC) runs a High Performance Storage System (HPSS) that is capable of storing NIF's estimated 1 petabyte of diagnostic images at a fraction of what it would cost NIF to operate its own automated tape library. With Oracle 11g Release 2 database, it is now possible to create an application transparent, hierarchical storage system using the LC's HPSS. Using the Oracle DBMS-LOB and DBMS-DBFS-HS packages a SecureFile LOB can now be archived to storage outside of the database and accessed seamlessly through a DBFS 'link'. NIF has chosen to use this technology to implement a hierarchical store for its image based SecureFile LOBs. Using a modified external store and DBFS links, files are written to and read from a disk 'staging area' using Oracle's backup utility. Database external procedure calls invoke OS based scripts to manage a staging area and the transfer of the backup files …

Brookhaven National Laboratory and Niowave, Inc. have designed and fabricated a superconducting 112 MHz quarter-wave resonator (QWR) electron gun. The first cold test of the QWR cryomodule has been completed at Niowave. The paper describes the cryomodule design, presents the cold test results, and outline plans to upgrade the cryomodule. Future experiments include studies of different photocathodes and use for the coherent electron cooling proof-of-principle experiment. Two cathode stalk options, one for multi-alkali photocathodes and the other one for a diamond-amplified photocathode, are discussed. A quarter-wave resonator concept of superconducting RF (SRF) electron gun was proposed at BNL for electron cooling hadron beams in RHIC. QWRs can be made sufficiently compact even at low RF frequencies (long wavelengths). The long wavelength allows to produce long electron bunches, thus minimizing space charge effects and enabling high bunch charge. Also, such guns should be suitable for experiments requiring high average current electron beams. A 112 MHz QWR gun was designed, fabricated, and cold-tested in collaboration between BNL and Niowave. This is the lowest frequency SRF gun ever tested successfully. In this paper we describe the gun design and fabrication, present the cold test results, and outline our plans. This gun will also …

Here we describe recent measurements of the 2-D motion of turbulence in the edge and scrape-off layer (SOL) of the Alcator C-Mod tokamak. This data was taken using the outer midplane gas puff imaging (GPI) camera, which views a 6 cm radial by 6 cm poloidal region near the separatrix just below the outer midplane [1]. The data were taken in Ohmic or RF heated L-mode plasmas at 400,000 frames/sec for {approx}50 msec/shot using a Phantom 710 camera in a 64 x 64 pixel format. The resulting 2-D vs. time movies [2] can resolve the structure and motion of the turbulence on a spatial scale covering 0.3-6 cm. The images were analyzed using either a 2-D cross-correlation code (Sec. 2) or a 2-D blob tracking code (Sec. 3).

Individual raw datastreams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near real-time. Raw and processed data are then sent approximately daily to the ARM Archive, where they are made available to users. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of processed data records received daily at the Archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual datastream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year (FY) dating back to 1998.