Joint resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to proposing a constitutional amendment to permit a state justice or judge who reaches the mandatory age of retirement while in office to complete the justice's or judge's current term.

This report discusses the ongoing major USDA disaster programs designed to help crop producers recover from the financial effects of natural disasters — federal crop insurance, noninsured assistance program (NAP) payments, and emergency disaster loans.

Key components of federal policies to reduce fuel consumption include the promotion of alternatives to petroleum fuels and the promotion of more efficient vehicles. This report provides an overview of current issues surrounding alternative fuels and advanced technology vehicles — issues discussed in further detail in other CRS reports referred to in each section.

This white paper provides information and guidance to the Department of Energy (DOE) sites on Agile software development methods and the impact of their application on weapon/weapon-related software development. The purpose of this white paper is to provide an overview of Agile methods, examine the accepted interpretations/uses/practices of these methodologies, and discuss the applicability of Agile methods with respect to Nuclear Weapons Complex (NWC) Technical Business Practices (TBPs). It also provides recommendations on the application of Agile methods to the development of weapon/weapon-related software.

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

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.

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.

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This report provides information about the Dairy Policy Issues. Several dairy issues are considered by Congress, some of which effects the three major federal dairy policy tools. Federal milk marketing orders regulate the farm price of milk for roughly two-thirds of U.S Milk production.

At present, there is a significant need to develop decontamination agents that can be used effectively after detonation of a radiological dispersal device (RDD) in an urban environment. There is also a need for the development of reproducible test surfaces to be used to determine the efficacy of the agent being developed. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), under the auspices of the US Department of Energy (DoE), conducted a field study to evaluate the deposition of an explosively dispersed radionuclide surrogate (CsCl) on grime-bearing and non-grime-bearing urban surfaces. The goal was to investigate the preparation and contamination of urban surfaces that closely mimic what one would expect to encounter following the detonation of an RDD. Migration of Cs into concrete surfaces was investigated in detail. Many non-proliferation, security and response organizations that have modeled RDD scenarios use cesium-137, as well as cobalt-60, strontium-90, americium-241 as the most likely RDD agents. Cesium-137 is an isotope of concern for possible use in an RDD due to its potential availability resulting from its widespread legitimate use in construction, geotechnical and medical industrial devices. In some Cs-containing instruments the Cesium-137 is present as the highly dispersible and water soluble salt, cesium chloride …

The distribution and characteristics of surface cracks (i.e., sub-surface damage or scratching) on fused silica formed during grinding/polishing resulting from the addition of rogue particles in the base slurry has been investigated. Fused silica samples (10 cm diameter x 1 cm thick) were: (1) ground by loose abrasive grinding (alumina particles 9-30 {micro}m) on a glass lap with the addition of larger alumina particles at various concentrations with mean sizes ranging from 15-30 {micro}m, or (2) polished (using 0.5 {micro}m cerium oxide slurry) on various laps (polyurethanes pads or pitch) with the addition of larger rogue particles (diamond (4-45 {micro}m), pitch, dust, or dried Ceria slurry agglomerates) at various concentrations. For the resulting ground samples, the crack distributions of the as-prepared surfaces were determined using a polished taper technique. The crack depth was observed to: (1) increase at small concentrations (>10{sup -4} fraction) of rogue particles; and (2) increase with rogue particle concentration to crack depths consistent with that observed when grinding with particles the size of the rogue particles alone. For the polished samples, which were subsequently etched in HF:NH{sub 4}F to expose the surface damage, the resulting scratch properties (type, number density, width, and length) were characterized. The …

This report will identify and discuss oversight issues and legislation introduced in the 110th Congress to address specific concerns related to how ESA is implemented and how endangered species are managed, and will be updated periodically to reflect legislative action.

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Measures the fast pulses seen with exploding bridge flyers by PDV

Aquaculture — the farming of fish, shellfish, and other aquatic animals and plants in a controlled environment — is expanding rapidly abroad, with more modest advances in the United States. This report discusses the federal laws and regulations that guide the management of resources in open ocean and near-shore coastal areas.

This report discusses Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) amendments proposed by the 109th and 110th Congress.

This report contains information on federal appropriations for the fiscal year 2007 in the area of defense, foreign affairs, and related subjects.

We have evaluated the usefulness of the self-potential (SP)geophysical method to track the onset and location of microbialsulfate-reduction in saturated sediments during organic carbon amendment.Following stimulation of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB) by addition oflactate, anomalous voltages exceeding 600 mV correlated in space and timewith the accumulation of dissolved sulfide. Abiotic experiments in whichthe sulfide concentration at the measurement electrode was systematicallyvaried showed a positive correlation between the magnitude of the SPanomaly and differences in the half-cell potential associated with themeasurement and reference electrodes. Thus, we infer that the SPanomaliesresulted from electrochemical differences that developedbetween sulfide-rich regions and areas having higher oxidation potential.In neither experiment did generation of an SP anomaly require thepresence of an in situ electronic conductor, as is required by othermodels. These findings emphasize the importance of incorporation ofelectrochemical effects at electrode surfaces in interpretation of SPdata from geophysical studies. We conclude that SP measurements provide aminimally invasive means for monitoring stimulated sulfate-reductionwithin saturated sediments.

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We present the results of applying new object classificationtechniques to difference images in the context of the Nearby SupernovaFactory supernova search. Most current supernova searches subtractreference images from new images, identify objects in these differenceimages, and apply simple threshold cuts on parameters such as statisticalsignificance, shape, and motionto reject objects such as cosmic rays,asteroids, and subtraction artifacts. Although most static objectssubtract cleanly, even a very low false positive detection rate can leadto hundreds of non-supernova candidates which must be vetted by humaninspection before triggering additional followup. In comparison to simplethreshold cuts, more sophisticated methods such as Boosted DecisionTrees, Random Forests, and Support Vector Machines provide dramaticallybetter object discrimination. At the Nearby Supernova Factory, we reducedthe number of non-supernova candidates by a factor of 10 while increasingour supernova identification efficiency. Methods such as these will becrucial for maintaining a reasonable false positive rate in the automatedtransient alert pipelines of upcoming projects such as PanSTARRS andLSST.

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This report provides an overview of developments and considerations regarding wave, tidal, and in-stream energy generation technology. It summarizes federal involvement in the regulation of this new industry and highlights current issues in the field.

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