This report discusses the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) Program, also known as fire grants of the FIRE Act grant program, which was established by Title XVII of the FY2001 National Defense Authorization Act. The program provides federal grants directly to local fire departments and unaffiliated Emergency Medical Services (EMS) organizations to help address a variety of equipment, training, and other firefighter-related and EMS needs. This report also discusses the possible reauthorization of AFG and the related Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Firefighters (SAFER) program. Current debates on the issue revolve around a competition for funding between career/urban/suburban departments and volunteer/rural departments. Complicating the issue is the recent economic downturn, which has left many local communities increasingly hard pressed to allocate funding for their local fire departments.

This report discusses the current state of Bahrain, which has undergone substantial political reforms since the late 1990s, but which still suffers from tension between the Shiite majority and the Sunni-led government. This report focuses particularly on Bahrain's relationship with the United States and with regional issues.

Child welfare services are intended to ensure and improve the safety, permanence, and well-being of children. This report provides a brief description of each child welfare program and recent and proposed funding of the program.

Côte d'Ivoire is emerging from a severe political crisis that followed a disputed November 28, 2010, presidential runoff election between former president Laurent Gbagbo and his, former Prime Minister Alassane Ouattara. Both claimed electoral victory and formed opposing governments. Their rivalry spurred a full-scale civil military conflict in early March 2011, after months of growing political violence. The main conflict died down days after Gbagbo's arrest by pro-Ouattara forces, aided by United Nations (U.N.) and French peacekeepers, but limited residual fighting was continuing to occur as of April 20.

This report gives an overview of the federal debt limit, its history, and recent increases

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) plans to cease commissary operations at Naval Air Station (NAS) Brunswick, Maine because of a 2005 base realignment and closure recommendation to close the installation and transfer the assigned active-duty personnel and equipment to NAS Jacksonville, Florida. DOD plans to close NAS Brunswick and its commissary by September 15, 2011. As of January 2009, NAS Brunswick commissary--located approximately 6 miles northwest of the air station in the town of Topsham--had more than 19,000 authorized patrons. About 10,000 authorized patrons are expected to remain after the installation closes. Representatives from communities surrounding Brunswick and certain elected state officials expressed concern that the commissary's closure will limit shopping options and purchase prices will rise for reservists, military retirees, and dependents and the relatively small number of active-duty personnel remaining in the region after the installation closes. Commissaries are intended to enhance the quality of life of active-duty personnel, military retirees, and their dependents, and support military readiness, recruitment, and retention goals. Commissaries are not expected to be self-supporting, and provide a noncash benefit for active-duty personnel by offering food and related household and health and …

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X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) are expensive instruments and a large part of the cost of the entire facility is driven by the accelerator. Using a high-energy gain dielectric wake-field accelerator (DWA) instead of the conventional accelerator may provide a significant cost saving and reduction of the facility size. In this article, we investigate using a collinear dielectric wakefield accelerator to provide a high repetition rate, high current, high energy beam to drive a future FEL x-ray light source. As an initial case study, a {approx}100 MV/m loaded gradient, 850 GHz quartz dielectric based 2-stage, wakefield accelerator is proposed to generate a main electron beam of 8 GeV, 50 pC/bunch, {approx}1.2 kA of peak current, 10 x 10 kHz (10 beamlines) in just 100 meters with the fill factor and beam loading considered. This scheme provides 10 parallel main beams with one 100 kHz drive beam. A drive-to-main beam efficiency {approx}38.5% can be achieved with an advanced transformer ratio enhancement technique. rf power dissipation in the structure is only 5 W/cm{sup 2} in the high repetition rate, high gradient operation mode, which is in the range of advanced water cooling capability. Details of study presented in the article include the overall …

The proposed U.S.-South Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA)1 follows current U.S. free trade agreement (FTA) practice in containing two types of dispute settlement: (1) State-State, applicable to disputes between the Parties to the KORUS FTA, and (2) investor-State, applicable to claims by an investor of one Party against the other Party for breach of a KORUS FTA investment obligation.

XPG is a structure-specific endonuclease required for nucleotide excision repair (NER). XPG incision defects result in the cancer-prone syndrome xeroderma pigmentosum, whereas truncating mutations of XPG cause the severe postnatal progeroid developmental disorder Cockayne syndrome. We show that XPG interacts directly with WRN protein, which is defective in the premature aging disorder Werner syndrome, and that the two proteins undergo similar sub-nuclear redistribution in S-phase and co-localize in nuclear foci. The co-localization was observed in mid- to late-S-phase, when WRN moves from nucleoli to nuclear foci that have been shown to contain protein markers of both stalled replication forks and telomeric proteins. We mapped the interaction between XPG and WRN to the C-terminal domains of each and show that interaction with the C-terminal domain of XPG strongly stimulates WRN helicase activity. WRN also possesses a competing DNA single-strand annealing activity that, combined with unwinding, has been shown to coordinate regression of model replication forks to form Holliday junction/chicken foot intermediate structures. We tested whether XPG stimulated WRN annealing activity and found that XPG itself has intrinsic strand annealing activity that requires the unstructured R- and C-terminal domains, but not the conserved catalytic core or endonuclease activity. Annealing by XPG is …

We have measured the electrically detected magnetic resonance of donor-doped silicon field-effect transistors in resonant X- (9.7 GHz) and W-band (94 GHz) microwave cavities. The two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) resonance signal increases by two orders of magnitude from X- to W-band, while the donor resonance signals are enhanced by over one order of magnitude. Bolometric effects and spin-dependent scattering are inconsistent with the observations. We propose that polarization transfer from the donor to the 2DEG is the main mechanism giving rise to the spin resonance signals.

We have been exploring interaction dynamics in an ultracold, trapped gas of bosonic and fermionic atoms. Investigation of this new class of quantum degenerate gases concentrates on interaction dominated phenomena such as sympathetic cooling, phase separation, excitations, Feshbach resonances, and the effects of quantum degeneracy. In addition to exploring these new phenomena, we seek to understand and ultimately control the interactions in the gas. In particular, effective interactions between the fermionic atoms will be explored in the context of the longer term goal of realizing Cooper pairing of atoms.

This report discusses the past four years of administration proposals to terminate the program to develop the General Electric/Rolls-Royce F136 engine as an alternative to the Pratt & Whitney F135 engine that currently powers the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). These proposals have been continually rejected by Congress. The Obama Administration's FY2011 budget submission against proposes to terminate the program. This report explores both sides of the termination argument.

The interval during the fiscal year when agency appropriations are not enacted into law, either in the form of a regular appropriations act or a continuing resolution, is referred to as a funding gap. When a funding gap occurs, the federal government begins a shutdown of the affected agencies, entailing the prompt furlough of non-emergency personnel and curtailment of agency activities. This report discusses the funding gaps that occurred between FY1977-FY2010, as well as the events surrounding them and related legislation.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government manages about 650 million acres, or 29 percent, of the 2.27 billion acres of U.S. land. Four land management agencies--the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the National Park Service (NPS) in the Department of the Interior (Interior) and the Forest Service, in the Department of Agriculture--manage about 95 percent of these federal acres. Interior's Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) manages another 1 percent of these acres and focuses on water projects. The five agencies collect certain data to help manage these federal lands. GAO was asked to review whether the five agencies collect certain federal land and resource data (referred to as data elements), how these data elements are stored, and their potential reliability. GAO included over 100 data elements at each agency in its analysis that can be categorized as information on (1) federal land and the resources the five agencies manage, (2) revenues generated from selected activities on these lands, and (3) federal land subject to selected land use designations. GAO assessed the potential reliability of data elements collected by the agencies generally for fiscal years …

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

This report provides an historical perspective on contemporary federalism issues in surface transportation policy that are likely to be addressed by Congress during the 112th Congress, including possible devolution of programmatic responsibility to states and proposals to change state maintenance-of-effort requirements and state cost matching requirements.

Past operations at a grain storage facility formerly leased and operated by the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA) in Ramona, Kansas, resulted in low concentrations of carbon tetrachloride in groundwater that slightly exceed the regulatory standard in only one location. As requested by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the CCC/USDA has prepared a Corrective Action Study (CAS) for the facility. The CAS examines corrective actions to address groundwater impacted by the former CCC/USDA facility but not releases caused by other potential groundwater contamination sources in Ramona. Four remedial alternatives were considered in the CAS. The recommended remedial alternative in the CAS consists of Environmental Use Control to prevent the inadvertent use of groundwater as a water supply source, coupled with groundwater monitoring to verify the continued natural improvement in groundwater quality. The Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA) has directed Argonne National Laboratory to prepare a Corrective Action Study (CAS), consistent with guidance from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE 2001a), for the CCC/USDA grain storage facility formerly located in Ramona, Kansas. This effort is pursuant to a KDHE (2007a) request. Although carbon tetrachloride levels at the …

Models for describing solution- and surface-phase reactions have been used for 30 years, but only recently applicable to complex surfaces. Duff et al., using micro-XANES, found that Pu was concentrated on Mn-oxide and smectite phases of zeolitic tuff, providing an evaluation of contaminant speciation on surfaces for modeling. Experiments at Los Alamos demonstrated that actinides display varying surface residence time distributions, probably reflective of mineral surface heterogeneity. We propose to investigate the sorption/desorption behavior of radionuclides from mineral surfaces, as effected by microorganisms, employing isolates from Nevada Test Site deep alluvium as a model system. Characterizations will include surface area, particle size distribution, x-ray diffraction (XRD), microprobe analysis, extractions, and microbiology. Surface interactions will be assessed by electron spectroscopy (XPS), x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (XAFS), X-ray emission spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Desert Research Institute (DRI), University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), and University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) researchers will collaborate to enhance scientific infrastructure and the understanding of contaminant behavior on surfaces, with broader implications for the management of DOE sites.

This report presents data regarding the persons killed, missing, and buildings totally or partially damaged after the disaster in Japan. The report discusses the economic impact the disaster had on Japan and the impact on U.S. imports from and exports to Japan.

Proceedings of the House of Representatives of Texas for the 60th day of the regular session of the 82nd Legislature documenting legislation, reports, discussions, votes, and points-of-order.

To heat targets to electron-volt temperatures for the study of warm dense matter with intense ion beams, low mass ions, such as lithium, have an energy loss peak (dE/dx) at a suitable kinetic energy. The Heavy Ion Fusion Sciences (HIFS) program at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will carry out warm dense matter experiments using Li{sup +} ion beam with energy 1.2-4 MeV in order to achieve uniform heating up to 0.1-1 eV. The accelerator physics design of Neutralized Drift Compression Experiment (NDCX-II) has a pulse length at the ion source of about 0.5 {micro}s. Thus for producing 50 nC of beam charge, the required beam current is about 100 mA. Focusability requires a normalized (edge) emittance {approx}2 {pi}-mm-mrad. Here, lithium aluminosilicate ion sources, of {beta}-eucryptite, are being studied within the scope of NDCX-II construction. Several small (0.64 cm diameter) lithium aluminosilicate ion sources, on 70%-80% porous tungsten substrate, were operated in a pulsed mode. The distance between the source surface and the mid-plane of the extraction electrode (1 cm diameter aperture) was 1.48 cm. The source surface temperature was at 1220 C to 1300 C. A 5-6 {micro}s long beam pulsed was recorded by a Faraday cup (+300 V on …

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