We report the measurement of charged D* mesons in inclusive jets produced in proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy {radical}s = 200 GeV with the STAR experiment at RHIC. For D* mesons with fractional momenta 0.2 < z < 0.5 in inclusive jets with 11.5 GeV mean transverse energy, the production rate is found to be N(D*{sup +} + D*{sup -})/N(jet) = 0.015 {+-} 0.008(stat) {+-} 0.007(sys). This rate is consistent with perturbative QCD evaluation of gluon splitting into a pair of charm quarks and subsequent hadronization.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) commitment to assuring the health and safety of its workers includes the conduct of illness and injury surveillance activities that provide an early warning system to detect health problems among workers. The Illness and Injury Surveillance Program monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

One of the major challenges facing the commercialization of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography remains simultaneously achieving resist sensitivity, line-edge roughness, and resolution requirement. Sensitivity is of particular concern owing to its direct impact on source power requirements. Most current EUV exposure tools have been calibrated against a resist standard with the actual calibration of the standard resist dating back to EUV exposures at Sandia National Laboratories in the mid 1990s. Here they report on an independent sensitivity calibration of two baseline resists from the SEMATECH Berkeley MET tool performed at the Advanced Light Source Calibrations and Standards beamline. The results show the baseline resists to be approximately 1.9 times faster than previously thought based on calibration against the long standing resist standard.

We study the formation of fifty-three galaxy cluster-size dark matter halos (M = 10{sup 14.0-14.76} M{sub {circle_dot}}) formed within a pair of cosmological {Lambda}CDM N-body simulations, and track the accretion histories of cluster subhalos with masses large enough to host {approx} 0.1L{sub *} galaxies. By associating subhalos with cluster galaxies, we find the majority of galaxies in clusters experience no 'pre-processing' in the group environment prior to their accretion into the cluster. On average, {approx} 70% of cluster galaxies fall into the cluster potential directly from the field, with no luminous companions in their host halos at the time of accretion; and less than {approx} 12% are accreted as members of groups with five or more galaxies. Moreover, we find that cluster galaxies are significantly less likely to have experienced a merger in the recent past ({approx}< 6 Gyr) than a field halo of the same mass. These results suggest that local, cluster processes like ram-pressure stripping, galaxy harassment, or strangulation play the dominant role in explaining the difference between cluster and field populations at a fixed stellar mass; and that pre-evolution or past merging in the group environment is of secondary importance for setting cluster galaxy properties for most …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From January 2003 to September 2007, GAO testified before the Committee on three occasions to describe security vulnerabilities that terrorists could exploit to enter the country. GAO's first two testimonies focused on covert testing at ports of entry--the air, sea, and land locations where international travelers can legally enter the United States. In its third testimony, GAO focused on limited security assessments of unmanned and unmonitored border areas between land ports of entry. GAO was asked to summarize the results of covert testing and assessment work for these three testimonies. This report discusses the results of testing at land, sea, and air ports of entry; however, the majority of GAO's work was focused on land ports of entry. The unmanned and unmonitored border areas GAO assessed were defined as locations where the government does not maintain a manned presence 24 hours per day or where there was no apparent monitoring equipment in place. GAO assessed a nonrepresentative selection of these locations and did not attempt to evaluate all potential U.S. border security vulnerabilities. Further, GAO's work was limited in scope and cannot be projected to represent …

This report provides an overview of these issues and a discussion of how the pension protection act (P.L. 109-280), as well as IRS guidance, affect them.

A dip sample of the liquid phase from Tank 11H and a 3-L slurry sample from Tank 51H were obtained and sent to Savannah River National Laboratory for characterization. These samples provide data to verify the amount of aluminum dissolved from the sludge as a result of the low temperature aluminum dissolution process conducted in Tank 51H. The characterization results for the as-received Tank 11H and Tank 51H supernate samples and the total dried solids of the Tank 51H sludge slurry sample appear quite good with respect to the precision of the sample replicates and minimal contamination present in the blank. The two supernate samples show similar concentrations for the major components as expected.

In 1998, a U.S. district court held that the imposition of the coal excise tax, or black lung excise tax, on coal destined for export was unconstitutional. The process of refunding the tax has been controversial. This is because some coal producers and exporters have attempted to bypass the limitations in the Internal Revenue Code's refund scheme for bringing suit under the Export Clause in the Court of Federal Claims, seeking damages from the United States in the amount of coal excise taxes paid. The Federal Circuit Court of Appeals held the court had jurisdiction under the Tucker Act to hear the suits and allowed them as an alternative to the Code's refund process. However, in a 2008 decision, United States v. Clintwood Elkhorn Mining Co., the Supreme Court unanimously held that taxpayers must comply with the Code's administrative refund process before bringing suit. Meanwhile, H.R. 1762 and S. 373 would provide an alternative method for taxpayers to receive coal excise tax refunds.

This report compares only the major provisions in the House-and Senate-passed versions of the farm bill with each other and with current law, providing a brief description of all individual sections or subsections within each title.

This report provides an overview of the motions to instructing conferees with congress budget resolutions.

This report provides an overview of the Administration's rationale for the possible deployment of conventional warheads on long-range ballistic missiles. It then reviews the Air Force and Navy efforts to develop these systems. It summarizes congressional reaction to these proposals, then provides a more detailed account of the issues raised by these concepts and programs.

This report examines the scope of and response to the disaster, as well as its links to Burma's political situation and U.S. policy.

This report is a guide to one of the regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Defense. For both defense authorization and appropriations, this report summarizes the status of the bills, their scope, major issues, funding levels, and related congressional activity. This report is updated as events warrant and lists the key CRS staff relevant to the issues covered as well as related CRS products.

Issues with coupling efficiency, beam illumination symmetry, and Rayleigh-Taylor instability are discussed for spherical heavy-ion-beam-driven targets with and without hohlraums. Efficient coupling of heavy-ion beams to compress direct-drive inertial fusion targets without hohlraums is found to require ion range increasing several-fold during the drive pulse. One-dimensional implosion calculations using the LASNEX inertial confinement fusion target physics code shows the ion range increasing fourfold during the drive pulse to keep ion energy deposition following closely behind the imploding ablation front, resulting in high coupling efficiencies (shell kinetic energy/incident beam energy of 16% to 18%). Ways to increase beam ion range while mitigating Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities are discussed for future work.

This report explores the Bush Administration's initiative of implementing electronic rulemaking (e-rulemaking) in the federal government, the questions regarding how this initiative is being funded, its overall structure, its costs and expected financial benefits, the functionality of some of the applications being used, and its effect on public participation in the rulemaking process.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) is a triagency acquisition--managed by the Department of Commerce's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)--that has experienced escalating costs, schedule delays, and technical difficulties. These factors led to a June 2006 decision to restructure the program by reducing the number of satellites and sensors, increasing estimated costs to $12.5 billion, and delaying the first two satellites by 3 to 5 years. Among other objectives, GAO was asked to evaluate progress in restructuring the acquisition, assess the status of key program components and risks, and assess NASA's, NOAA's, and DOD's plans for obtaining the data originally planned to be collected by NPOESS sensors, but eliminated by the restructuring. To do so, GAO analyzed program and contractor data, attended program reviews, and interviewed agency officials."

Currently, total electricity consumption of furnaces is unregulated, tested at laboratory conditions using the DOE test procedure, and is reported in the GAMA directory as varying from 76 kWh/year to 1,953 kWh/year. Furnace blowers account for about 80percent of the total furnace electricity consumption and are primarily used to distribute warm air throughout the home during furnace operation as well as distribute cold air during air conditioning operation. Yet the furnace test procedure does not provide a means to calculate the electricity consumption during cooling operation or standby, which account for a large fraction of the total electricity consumption. Furthermore, blower electricity consumption is strongly affected by static pressure. Field data shows that static pressure in the house distribution ducts varies widely and that the static pressure used in the test procedure as well as the calculated fan power is not representative of actual field installations. Therefore, accurate determination of the blower electricity consumption is important to address electricity consumption of furnaces and air conditioners. This paper compares the potential regional and national energy savings of two-stage brushless permanent magnet (BPM) blower motors (the blower design option with the most potential savings that is currently available in the market) to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has experienced significant problems with its information technology systems that support the delivery of benefits programs to farmers. In October 2006, these systems began experiencing considerable delays while attempting to process a large number of transactions, and by January 2007, the systems became inoperable for 1 month. In response to these issues, USDA developed a near-term stabilization plan and long-term plans to modernize its delivery of these programs. GAO was asked to determine (1) the extent to which USDA's stabilization plan addresses key management issues, including consistently tracking reported problems, establishing performance metrics and goals, and defining roles and responsibilities and (2) the adequacy of USDA's assessment of existing product capabilities, as well as cost and schedule estimates for its new, long-term modernization investment. To address these objectives, GAO, among other things, compared USDA's plans with industry best practices. On March 25, 2008, GAO briefed the requesters' staff on the results of this review."

None

This report presents various governmental and nongovernmental estimates of Iraqi civilian dead and wounded. The Department of Defense (DOD) regularly updates total U.S. military death and wounded statistics from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). However, no Iraqi or U.S. government office regularly releases publicly available statistics on Iraqi civilian deaths or civilians who have been wounded. Statistics on Iraqi civilian dead and wounded are sometimes available through alternative sources, such as nonprofit organizations, or through statements made by officials to the press. Because these estimates are based on varying time periods and have been created using differing methodologies, readers should exercise caution when using these statistics and should look on them as guideposts rather than as statements of fact.

We present a new measurement of the scaling relation between X-ray luminosity and total mass for 17,000 galaxy clusters in the maxBCG cluster sample. Stacking sub-samples within fixed ranges of optical richness, N200, we measure the mean 0.1-2.4 keV X-ray luminosity, <L{sub X}>, from the ROSAT All-Sky Survey. The mean mass, <M{sub 200}>, is measured from weak gravitational lensing of SDSS background galaxies (Johnston et al. 2007). For 9 {le} N{sub 200} < 200, the data are well fit by a power-law, <L{sub X}>/10{sup 42} h{sup -2} ergs{sup -1} = (12.6{sub -1.3}{sup +1.4}(stat) {+-} 1.6 (sys)) (<M{sub 200}>/10{sup 14} h{sup -1} M{sub {circle_dot}}){sup 1.65{+-}0.13}. The slope agrees to within 10% with previous estimates based on X-ray selected catalogs, implying that the covariance in L{sub X} and N{sub 200} at fixed halo mass is not large. The luminosity intercept is 30%, or 2{sigma}, lower than determined from the X-ray flux-limited sample of Reiprich & Boehringer (2002), assuming hydrostatic equilibrium. This slight difference could arise from a combination of Malmquist bias and/or systematic error in hydrostatic mass estimates, both of which are expected. The intercept agrees with that derived by Stanek et al. (2006) using a model for the statistical correspondence between …

Concerns about global climate change have substantially increased the likelihood that future policy will seek to minimize carbon dioxide emissions. Assuch, even today, electric utilities are making resource planning and investment decisions that consider the possible implications of these future carbon regulations. In this article, we examine the manner in which utilities assess the financial risks associated with future carbon regulations within their long-term resource plans. We base our analysis on a review of the most recent resource plans filed by fifteen electric utilities in the Western United States. Virtually all of these utilities made some effort to quantitatively evaluate the potential cost of future carbon regulations when analyzing alternate supply- and demand-side resource options for meeting customer load. Even without Federal climate regulation in the U.S., the prospect of that regulation is already having an impact on utility decision-making and resource choices. That said, the methods and assumptions used by utilities to analyze carbon regulatory risk, and the impact of that analysis on their choice of a particular resource strategy, vary considerably, revealing a number of opportunities for analytic improvement. Though our review focuses on a subset of U.S. electric utilities, this work holds implications for all electric utilities …

The authors study the merger histories of galaxy dark matter halos using a high resolution {Lambda}CDM N-body simulation. The merger trees follow {approx} 17,000 halos with masses M{sub 0} = (10{sup 11} - 10{sup 13})h{sup -1}M{sub {circle_dot}} at z = 0 and track accretion events involving objects as small as m {approx_equal} 10{sup 10} h{sup -1}M{sub {circle_dot}}. They find that mass assembly is remarkably self-similar in m/M{sub 0}, and dominated by mergers that are {approx}10% of the final halo mass. While very large mergers, m {approx}> 0.4 M{sub 0}, are quite rare, sizeable accretion events, m {approx} 0.1 M{sub 0}, are common. Over the last {approx} 10 Gyr, an overwhelming majority ({approx} 95%) of Milky Way-sized halos with M{sub 0} = 10{sup 12} h{sup -1}M{sub {circle_dot}} have accreted at least one object with greater total mass than the Milky Way disk (m > 5 x 10{sup 10} h{sup -1}M{sub {circle_dot}}), and approximately 70% have accreted an object with more than twice that mass (m > 10{sup 11} h{sup -1}M{sub {circle_dot}}). The results raise serious concerns about the survival of thin-disk dominated galaxies within the current paradigm for galaxy formation in a {Lambda}CDM universe. in order to achieve a {approx} 70% …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 1992, GAO has published long-term fiscal simulations of what might happen to federal deficits and debt levels under varying policy assumptions. We developed our long-term model in response to a bipartisan request from Members of Congress who were concerned about the long-term effects of fiscal policy. Our simulations were updated with the Trustees 2008 intermediate projections and continue to indicate that the long-term federal fiscal outlook remains unsustainable. This update combined with our analysis of the fiscal outlook of state and local governments demonstrates that the fiscal challenges facing all levels of government are linked and should be considered in a strategic and integrated manner. We update our simulations three times a year as new estimates become available from the Congressional Budget Office's (CBO) Budget and Economic Outlook (January), Social Security and Medicare Trustees Reports (spring), and CBO's Budget and Economic Outlook: An Update (late summer). This product responds to congressional interest in receiving updated simulation results. Additional information about the GAO model, its assumptions, data, and charts can be found at http://www.gao.gov/special.pubs/longterm/. For more information, contact Susan J. Irving at (202) 512-9142 or irvings@gao.gov."