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.

Post-Taliban Afghanistan has adopted a constitution and elected a president and a parliament; that body is emerging as a significant force and sometimes challenger to President Hamid Karzai. The central government’s limited writ, which many Afghans believe should remain limited, and its perceived corruption, are helping sustain a Taliban insurgency. See CRS Report RL30588, Afghanistan: Post-War Governance, Security, and U.S. Policy, by Kenneth Katzman.

None

After the massive reorganization of federal agencies precipitated by the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), there are now four main federal agencies charged with securing the United States' borders: the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the Bureau of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the United States Coast Guard, and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). This report briefly describes each agency's role in securing our nation's borders.

This report provides background information regarding broad band over powerlines. The report discusses the federal communications commission activity, the national communication and information administration activity.

This report details the information related to the change of postal Zip code boundaries. The contents include background, concerns, Postal service attempts to resolve, etc.

This report provides background on China's economic rise and current economic structure and the challenges China faces to keep its economy growing strong, and describes Chinese economic policies that are of concern to U.S. policymakers.

The 2002 farm bill required retailers to provide country-of-origin labeling (COOL) for fresh produce, red meats, peanuts, and seafood by September 30, 2004. Congress twice postponed implementation for all bu seafood; COOL now must be implemented by September 30, 2008. This report describes the current status of the COOL issue, as well as the ongoing discussion of additional COOL requirements for other foods and food ingredients as part of the proposed Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act overhaul.

The density distribution of two legacy types of 1,3,5-triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene (TATB) particles were compared with TATB synthesized by new routes and recrystallized in several different solvents using a density gradient technique. Legacy wet (WA) and dry aminated (DA) TATB crystalline aggregates gave average densities of 1.9157 and 1.9163 g/cc, respectively. Since the theoretical maximum density (TMD) for a perfect crystal is 1.937 g/cc, legacy TATB crystals averaged 99% of TMD or about 1% voids. TATB synthesized from phloroglucinol (P) had comparable particle size to legacy TATBs, but significantly lower density, 1.8340 g/cc. TATB synthesized from 3,5 dibromoanisole (BA) was very difficult to measure because it contained extremely fine particles, but had an average density of 1.8043 g/cc over a very broad range. Density distributions of TATB recrystallized from dimethylsulfoxide (DMSO), sulfolane, and an 80/20 mixture of DMSO with the ionic liquid 1-ethyl-3-methyl- imidazolium acetate (EMImOAc), with some exceptions, gave average densities comparable or better than the legacy TATBs.

None

The report discusses the Federal Communications Commission (FCC)-Related Congressional Actions in the 112th Congress. The policymakers, including some in Congress, have long called for varying degrees and types of reform to the FCC.

All of the work conducted under the auspices of DE-FC02-01ER25473 was characterized by exceptionally close collaboration with researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). This included having one of my graduate students - Sarah Williams - spend the summer working with Dr. Ann Almgren a staff scientist in the Center for Computational Sciences and Engineering (CCSE) which is a part of the National Energy Research Supercomputer Center (NERSC) at LBNL. As a result of this visit Sarah decided to work on a problem suggested by Dr. John Bell the head of CCSE for her PhD thesis, which she finished in June 2007. Writing a PhD thesis while working at one of the University of California (UC) managed DOE laboratories is a long established tradition at the University of California and I have always encouraged my students to consider doing this. For example, in 2000 one of my graduate students - Matthew Williams - finished his PhD thesis while working with Dr. Douglas Kothe at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). Matt is now a staff scientist in the Diagnostic Applications Group in the Applied Physics Division at LANL. Another one of my graduate students - Christopher Algieri - who …

This document represents a summary of work carried out at Utah State University in conjunction with the Center for Extended Magnetohyrodynamic Modeling (CEMM). The principal investigator, Dr. Eric Held, was aided in this work by two former graduate students, Drs. John James and Michael Addae-Kagyah, who completed their PhD's while being partially funded by CEMM monies. In addtion, Dr. Jeong-Young Ji, a postdoctoral researcher and Mukta Sharma, a graduate student were supported. The work associated with this grant focused on developing an efficient, hybrid fluid/kinetic model for fusion plasmas. Specifically, expressions for the parallel heat fluxes and stresses in magnetized plasmas were implemented and exercised in the NIMROD plasma fluid code.

Congress has expressed a great deal of interest in using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to surveil the United States' international land border. This report examines the strengths and limitations of deploying UAVs along the borders and related issues for Congress.

Several new physics scenarios can lead to monojet signatures at the LHC. If such events are observed above the Standard Model background it will be important to identify their origin. In this paper we compare and contrast these signatures as produced in two very different pictures: vector or scalar unparticle production in the scale-invariant/conformal regime and graviton emission in the Arkani-Hamed, Dimopoulos and Dvali extra-dimensional model. We demonstrate that these two scenarios can be distinguished at the LHC for a reasonable range of model parameters through the shape of their respective monojet and/or missing E{sub T} distributions.

As part of the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP), a fast reactor simulation program was launched in April 2007 to develop a suite of modern simulation tools specifically for the analysis and design of sodium cooled fast reactors. The general goal of the new suite of codes is to reduce the uncertainties and biases in the various areas of reactor design activities by enhanced prediction capabilities. Under this fast reactor simulation program, a high-fidelity deterministic neutron transport code named UNIC is being developed. The final objective is to produce an integrated, advanced neutronics code that allows the high fidelity description of a nuclear reactor and simplifies the multi-step design process by direct coupling with thermal-hydraulics and structural mechanics calculations. Currently there are three solvers for the neutron transport code incorporated in UNIC: PN2ND, SN2ND, and MOCFE. PN2ND is based on a second-order even-parity spherical harmonics discretization of the transport equation and its primary target area of use is the existing homogenization approaches that are prevalent in reactor physics. MOCFE is based upon the method of characteristics applied to an unstructured finite element mesh and its primary target area of use is the fine grained nature of the explicit geometrical problems …

This is a more comprehensive report of the accelerator physics in the white paper 'PEP-X Light Source at SLAC'. A new light source called 'PEP-X' would reside in the 2.2-km PEP-II tunnel. It has a hybrid lattice where two of its six arcs contain DBA cells that provide a total of 30 straight sections for insertion device beam lines and the remaining arcs contain TME cells for an extremely low emittance. Using 90 meter damping wigglers the horizontal emittance at 4.5 GeV is further reduced to 0.1 nm-rad. Many collective effects including intra-beam scattering, Touschek lifetime, and fast ion instability are studied. We expect that PEP-X will produce photon beams having brightnesses near 10{sup 22} (ph/s/mm{sup 2}/mrad{sup 2}/0.1% BW) at 10 keV and 10{sup 21} at 35 keV.

This report provides an overview of industry and federal activities related to LNG security. The report describes U.S. LNG infrastructure, the industry's safety record and security risks, and the industry's security initiatives since September 11, 2001. It summarizes recent changes in federal LNG and maritime security law and related changes in the security roles of federal agencies. The report discusses several policy concerns related to federal LNG security efforts: 1) public costs of marine security, 2) uncertainty regarding LNG terrorism risks, and 3) security implications of promoting U.S.-flagged LNG tankers and U.S. crews.

This report provides an overview of industry and federal activities related to LNG security. The report describes U.S. LNG infrastructure, the industry's safety record and security risks, and the industry's security initiatives since September 11, 2001. It summarizes recent changes in federal LNG and maritime security law and related changes in the security roles of federal agencies. The report discusses several policy concerns related to federal LNG security efforts: 1) public costs of marine security, 2) uncertainty regarding LNG terrorism risks, and 3) security implications of promoting U.S.-flagged LNG tankers and U.S. crews.

None

Foreign direct investment is sparking a national debate. Local communities compete for investment projects, while many of the residents of those communities fear losing their jobs to foreign outsourcing. Some opponents argue that such job losses have disproportionately negative impact on local communities. Economists generally argue that free and unimpeded international capital flows have a positive impact on both domestic and foreign economies. This report provides an overview of CRS Report RL32461, Outsourcing and Insourcing Jobs in the U.S. Economy: Evidence Based on Foreign Investment Data, that analyzes the extent of direct investment into and out of the economy and the relationship between direct investment and the broader economic changes that are occurring in the U.S. economy.

This report addresses the debate of job creation in the U.S. versus job outsourcing and its effects on the economy by analyzing the extent of direct investment into and out of the economy, the role such investment plays in U.S. trade, jobs, and production, and the relationship between direct investment and the broader economic changes that are occurring in the U.S. economy.

None

Objectives. The overall objective of this application is to develop novel technologies for non-invasive imaging of adoptive stem cell-based therapies with positron emission tomography (PET) that would be applicable to human patients. To achieve this objective, stem cells will be genetically labeled with a PET-reporter gene and repetitively imaged to assess their distribution, migration, differentiation, and persistence using a radiolabeled reporter probe. This new imaging technology will be tested in adoptive progenitor cell-based therapy models in animals, including: delivery pro-apoptotic genes to tumors, and T-cell reconstitution for immunostimulatory therapy during allogeneic bone marrow progenitor cell transplantation. Technical and Scientific Merits. Non-invasive whole body imaging would significantly aid in the development and clinical implementation of various adoptive progenitor cell-based therapies by providing the means for non-invasive monitoring of the fate of injected progenitor cells over a long period of observation. The proposed imaging approaches could help to address several questions related to stem cell migration and homing, their long-term viability, and their subsequent differentiation. The ability to image these processes non-invasively in 3D and repetitively over a long period of time is very important and will help the development and clinical application of various strategies to control and direct stem cell …