The character of the war in Afghanistan evolved from a violent struggle against al Qaeda and its Taliban supporters to a multi-faceted counterinsurgency (COIN) effort. This report provides an examination of the war's background, context, and early execution; an analytical discussion of the COIN war to date, including strategy, organization, participation, and key facets of the effort including population security, advising the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), counter-narcotics, reconciliation, community outreach, and civil-military coordination; and an analysis of major strategic and operational issues and options that the 111th Congress may opt to consider.

This paper discusses solid oxide fuel cells, proton conductors, layered perovskite and Cathodes.

The 111th Congress has considered various immigration issues and has enacted a number of targeted immigration provisions. It has passed legislation to extend the life of several immigration programs--the E-Verify electronic employment eligibility verification system, the Immigrant Investor Regional Center Program, the Conrad State J-1 Waiver Program, and the special immigrant visa for religious workers--all of which are currently authorized until September 30, 2012. Among the other subjects of legislation enacted by this Congress are refugees and border security. This report discusses these and other immigration-related issues that have seen legislative action or are of significant congressional interest.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) was established as an independent government corporation under the authority of the Banking Act of 1933, also known as the Glass- Steagall Act (P.L. 73-66, 48 Stat. 162, 12 U.S.C.), to insure bank deposits. The FDIC is funded through insurance assessments collected from its member depository institutions and held in what is now known as the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF). This report begins with an overview of the FDIC, followed by an explanation of the loss exposure and total risk to the DIF. Next, the report discusses issues regarding the setting of deposit insurance premiums and presents changes to the assessment system proposed by the FDIC to address some of the issues. Finally, recent efforts proposed by Congress to support the DIF are discussed.

This report discusses the current debate over "net neutrality." While there is no single accepted definition of "net neutrality," most agree that any such definition should include the general principles that owners of the networks that compose and provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network, and they should not be able to discriminate against content provider access to that network.

The Indoor Environment Department at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) teamed with seven universities to participate in a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Center of Excellence (COE) for research on environmental quality in aircraft. This report describes research performed at LBNL on selecting and evaluating sensors for monitoring environmental quality in aircraft cabins, as part of Project 7 of the FAA's COE for Airliner Cabin Environmental Research (ACER)1 effort. This part of Project 7 links to the ozone, pesticide, and incident projects for data collection and monitoring and is a component of a broader research effort on sensors by ACER. Results from UCB and LBNL's concurrent research on ozone (ACER Project 1) are found in Weschler et al., 2007; Bhangar et al. 2008; Coleman et al., 2008 and Strom-Tejsen et al., 2008. LBNL's research on pesticides (ACER Project 2) in airliner cabins is described in Maddalena and McKone (2008). This report focused on the sensors needed for normal contaminants and conditions in aircraft. The results are intended to complement and coordinate with results from other ACER members who concentrated primarily on (a) sensors for chemical and biological pollutants that might be released intentionally in aircraft; (b) integration of sensor systems; and …

We compare the performance of hand-tuned CUDA implementations of bilateral and anisotropic diffusion filters for denoising 3D MRI datasets. Our tests sweep comparable parameters for the two filters and measure total runtime, memory bandwidth, computational throughput, and mean squared errors relative to a noiseless reference dataset.

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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.

The largest earthquake ever recorded in Haiti devastated parts of the country, including the capital, on January 12, 2010. This report discusses the disaster and various responses, ranging from the Haitian government's initial response to foreign humanitarian and financial aid.

The results by A.S. Barabash [Phys. Rev. C 81, 035501 (2010)] are shown to be incomplete.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To improve aviation safety, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to have in place the initial capabilities of a risk-based approach to safety oversight, known as a safety management system (SMS), by the end of fiscal year 2010. FAA is also implementing new procedures and technologies to enhance the safety, capacity, and efficiency of the national airspace system. Data are central to SMS and FAA's ability to test the impact of these changes on safety. This congressionally requested report addresses FAA's (1) current and planned use of data to oversee aviation safety, (2) access to data for monitoring aviation safety and the safety performance of various industry sectors, and (3) efforts to help ensure data quality. To perform this work, GAO reviewed 13 databases that contain data on key aviation safety events, assessed data quality controls for the databases, and interviewed agency and industry officials, as well as 10 experts in aviation safety and data."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For several decades, Congress and the Department of Defense (DOD) have explored ways to improve the acquisition of major weapon systems, yet program outcomes and their underlying causes have proven resistant to change. Last year, we reported that the cumulative cost growth in DOD's portfolio of major programs was $296 billion. The opportunity to achieve meaningful improvements may now be at hand with the recent introduction of major reforms to the acquisition process. In response to a mandate from this Committee, GAO has issued several reports about DOD's budget and requirements processes to support weapon program stability. This follow-on report focuses on (1) identifying weapon programs that are achieving good outcomes, (2) the factors that enable some programs to succeed, and (3) lessons to be learned from these programs to guide implementation of recent reforms. GAO analyzed DOD's portfolio of major defense programs and conducted case study reviews of five programs."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2009 GAO conducted a study on the role of leverage in the recent financial crisis and federal oversight of leverage, as mandated by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act. This testimony presents the results of that study, and discusses (1) how leveraging and deleveraging by financial institutions may have contributed to the crisis, (2) how federal financial regulators limit the buildup of leverage; and (3) the limitations the crisis has revealed in regulatory approaches used to restrict leverage and regulatory proposals to address them. To meet these objectives, GAO built on its existing body of work, reviewed relevant laws and regulations and academic and other studies, and interviewed regulators and market participants."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Food imported from around the world constitutes a substantial and increasing percentage of the U.S. food supply. Ensuring the safety of imported food challenges the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to better target its resources on the foods posing the greatest risks to public health and to coordinate efforts with the Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection (CBP) so that unsafe food does not enter U.S. commerce. This testimony focuses on (1) FDA's overseas inspections, (2) identified gaps in agencies' enforcement efforts to ensure the safety of imported food, and (3) statutory authorities that GAO has identified that could help FDA's oversight of food safety. This testimony is principally based on GAO's September 2009 report, Food Safety: Agencies Need to Address Gaps in Enforcement and Collaboration to Enhance Safety of Imported Food (GAO-09-873) and has been updated with information from FDA."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "At the end of fiscal year 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) National Priorities List (NPL) included 1,111 of the most seriously contaminated nonfederal hazardous waste sites. Of these sites, EPA had identified 75 with unacceptable human exposure, 164 with unknown exposure, and 872 with controlled exposure that may need additional cleanup work. EPA may fund remedial actions--long-term cleanup--from its trust fund, and compel responsible parties to perform or reimburse costs of the cleanup. GAO was asked to determine (1) the cleanup and funding status at currently listed nonfederal NPL sites with unacceptable or unknown human exposure; (2) what is known about EPA's future cleanup costs at nonfederal NPL sites; (3) EPA's process for allocating remedial program funding; and (4) how many NPL sites some state and EPA officials expect to be added in the next 5 years, and their expected cleanup costs. GAO analyzed Superfund program data, surveyed and interviewed EPA officials, and interviewed state officials."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses issues related to the financial condition of state unemployment insurance (UI) programs. This has been a topic of concern for the last 3 decades and has generated multiple studies, including several by GAO. The severity and length of the recent recession have resulted in the worst labor market conditions in the United States since at least the early 1980s, if not since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and placed a heavy demand on state UI trust funds. While preliminary data showed that the economy added the most jobs in any month in 3 years during March 2010, unemployment remains very high and has continued to increase in most states, suggesting that state UI programs will continue to face serious financial challenges for at least the near future. This testimony is based on our report, "Unemployment Insurance Trust Funds: Long-standing State Financing Policies Have Increased Risk of Insolvency"."

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.

The Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) program provides income support to individuals who become unemployed as a direct result of a major disaster and who are not eligible for regular Unemployment Compensation (UC) benefits. DUA is funded through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and is administered by the Department of Labor (DOL) through each state's UC agency. This report contains information on how to ascertain if an individual is eligible for DUA benefits.

The United States and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991; it entered into force in December 1994 and expired in December 2009. This report provides background information about the START Treaty and reviews the discussions about a possible successor to START. It also presents a range of alternatives that the United States and Russia might consider if they choose to follow START with a new framework for the arms control process.