This report consists of the character of the American National red cross with current issues and proposed changes.

This report provides a brief background analysis and recent developments regarding China’s Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction and Missiles. The report includes topics such as: Recent Proliferation Transfers, chemical, nuclear, and missile technology sales to Iran, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, trade controls, nonproliferation and arms control.

Concern has grown in Congress and elsewhere about China's military modernization. The topic is an increasing factor in discussions over future required U.S. Navy capabilities. The issue for Congress addressed in this report is: How should China's military modernization be factored into decisions about U.S. Navy programs?

This report is on China-U.S. Trade Issues.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Urban storm water runoff is a major contributor to the nation's degraded waters. Under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established a program requiring communities to obtain permits and implement activities to control storm water pollution. EPA's Phase I regulations (1990) applied to communities with populations of 100,000 or more, and its Phase II regulations (1999) covered smaller urban communities. Communities must report progress in meeting permit requirements. Some have raised concerns that storm water requirements impose an undue burden. To evaluate storm water program costs, EPA developed estimates for both phases. GAO was asked to (1) determine the progress in implementing the storm water program, (2) evaluate the extent to which the program burdens communities, (3) examine the accuracy of EPA's cost estimates, and (4) examine the data available for assessing program burden. GAO collected data for all states and a sample of 130 communities, among other steps."

This report discusses international law aspects of a nation's contributions to climate change.

This report presents an overview of the science of climate change and its potential impacts.It provides highlights on the impacts of climate change.

This report provides an overview of the general background, oversight issues, and options for congress on the Coast Guard Deepwater program.

Semantic graphs are commonly used to represent data from one or more data sources. Such graphs extend traditional graphs by imposing types on both nodes and links. This type information defines permissible links among specified nodes and can be represented as a graph commonly referred to as an ontology or schema graph. Figure 1 depicts an ontology graph for data from National Association of Securities Dealers. Each node type and link type may also have a list of attributes. To capture the increased complexity of semantic graphs, concepts derived for standard graphs have to be extended. This document explains briefly features commonly used to characterize graphs, and their extensions to semantic graphs. This document is divided into two sections. Section 2 contains the feature descriptions for static graphs. Section 3 extends the features for semantic graphs that vary over time.

None

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Three U.S. national strategies, developed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, directed U.S. law enforcement agencies (LEA) to focus on the prevention of terrorist attacks. The strategies called for LEAs to intensify their efforts to help foreign nations identify, disrupt, and prosecute terrorists. GAO was asked to assess (1) the guidance for LEAs to assist foreign nations to identify, disrupt, and prosecute terrorists and (2) the extent to which LEAs have implemented this guidance."

Annealed type 316LN stainless steel in the (1) carburized and the (2) carburized plus nitrided conditions was evaluated for cavitation-erosion resistance in ambient temperature mercury using a vibratory horn method. The results indicated that, relative to the specimens receiving only the carburizing treatment, the specimens that received both surface treatments exhibited substantially greater weight loss, general thinning, and profile development as a function of sonication time - with all observed degradation limited to the nitrided layer. Further, the nitride layer was observed to be susceptible to extensive cracking (occasionally leading to spallation), but the cracking was never observed to penetrate into the carburized layer. These screening test results suggest there is no improvement in cavitation-erosion resistance associated with augmentation of the carburizing treatment with plasma nitriding.

A nominally axisymmetric plasma con�guration, such as a tokamak or a spherical torus, is highly sensitive to non-axisymmetric magnetic perturbations due to currents outside of the plasma. The high sensitivity means that the primary interest is in the response of the plasma to very small perturbations, | →(over) β/→(over)Β | ≈ 10–2 to 10–4, which can be calculated using the theory of perturbed equilibria. The Ideal Perturbed Equilibrium Code (IPEC) is described and applied to the study of the plasma response in a spherical torus to such external perturbations.

During the first session of the 110th Congress, the House and Senate considered many different budgetary measures. This report describes House and Senate action on major budgetary legislation within the framework of the congressional budget process and other procedural requirements.

This report responds to congressional inquiries concerning this process, and includes a historical examination and chronological list of these awards. It is intended to assist Members of Congress and staff in their consideration of future Gold Medal proposals, and will be updated as Gold Medals are approved.

This report provides information about the Congressional Oversight Manual. Congressional Oversight of the executive is designed to fulfill a number of purposes like ensuring executive compliance with legislative intent etc.

This report discusses the political context and congressional consideration of various funding and other restrictive legislative language applying to military operations in Indochina between 1970 and 1973.It briefly mentions similar congressional actions applying to U.S. military operations in Somalia in 1993 and Kosovo in 1999.

This report provides information about the Consideration of the Budget Resolution.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Transportation's (DOT) Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) is responsible for protecting consumers involved in interstate household goods moves by issuing regulations and conducting oversight and enforcement actions. The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act--A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU), enacted in 2005, included provisions to enhance consumer protections for household goods moves and mandated that GAO study (1) the protections federal laws and regulations provide to consumers of interstate household goods moves and the effectiveness of federal enforcement efforts, (2) the protections states provide to consumers of intrastate household goods moves and how they have affected consumers and movers, and (3) the potential effects on both consumers and interstate movers if movers were subject to state consumer protection laws. To address these issues, GAO analyzed federal and state legislation, federal complaint and enforcement data, and interviewed federal and state officials."

Since sensitivity to contamination is one of the verities of solid state joining, there is a need for assessing contamination of the part(s) to be joined, preferably nondestructively while it can be remedied. As the surfaces that are joined in pinch welds are inaccessible and thus provide a greater challenge, most of the discussion is of the search for the origin and effect of contamination on pinch welding and ways to detect and mitigate it. An example of contamination and the investigation and remediation of such a system is presented. Suggestions are made for techniques for nondestructive evaluation of contamination of surfaces for other solid state welds as well as for pinch welds. Surfaces that have good visual access are amenable to inspection by diffuse reflection infrared Fourier transform (DRIFT) spectroscopy. Although other techniques are useful for specific classes of contaminants (such as hydrocarbons), DRIFT can be used most classes of contaminants. Surfaces such as the interior of open tubes or stems that are to be pinch welded can be inspected using infrared reflection spectroscopy. It must be demonstrated whether or not this tool can detect graphite based contamination, which has been seen in stems. For tubes with one closed …

One in a series of tip sheets to help manufacturers optimize their industrial pumping systems

The Advanced Integrated Microturbine Systems (AIMS) project was kicked off in October of 2000 to develop the next generation microturbine system. The overall objective of the project was to develop a design for a 40% electrical efficiency microturbine system and demonstrate many of the enabling technologies. The project was initiated as a collaborative effort between several units of GE, Elliott Energy Systems, Turbo Genset, Oak Ridge National Lab and Kyocera. Since the inception of the project the partners have changed but the overall direction of the project has stayed consistent. The project began as a systems study to identify design options to achieve the ultimate goal of 40% electrical efficiency. Once the optimized analytical design was identified for the 40% system, it was determined that a 35% efficient machine would be capable of demonstrating many of the advanced technologies within the given budget and timeframe. The items that would not be experimentally demonstrated were fully produced ceramic parts. However, to understand the requirements of these ceramics, an effort was included in the project to experimentally evaluate candidate materials in representative conditions. The results from this effort would clearly identify the challenges and improvement required of these materials for the full …

This report provides a side-by-side comparison of several bills in the 110th Congress addressing passenger vehicle fuel economy in general and the CAFE program specifically.The report covers CAFE- related Senate and House bills.

This report provides information about the Insurance and Tax Issues of Corporate Owned Life Insurance (COLI).These policies are distinct and separate from typical from group life policies offered to many employees.