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This report looks at how the European Union Emission Trading Scheme's coverage of carbon emission from commercial flights affects air carriers from the United States and other countries.

Recent congressional interest in U.S. energy policy has focused in part on ways through which the United States could secure more economical and reliable crude oil resources both domestically and internationally. Many forecasters identify petroleum refined from Canadian oil sands as one possible solution. This report discusses conclusions revealed from a survey of available literature on the matter, particularly in regards to Greenhouse Gas and Well-to-Tank emissions.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Multiple U.S. agencies and international partners are engaged in efforts to assist Pakistan in countering improvised explosive devices (IEDs) but face a variety of ongoing challenges. The agencies providing counter-IED assistance to Pakistan are primarily the Departments of State (State), Defense (DOD), Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ). The following table identifies the types of assistance these U.S. agencies have provided and the corresponding objectives of Pakistan’s National Counter-IED Strategy. According to U.S. officials, U.S. agencies have encountered ongoing challenges to their efforts to assist Pakistan, such as delays in obtaining visas and in the delivery of equipment. U.S. officials have also identified broader challenges to Pakistan’s ability to counter IEDs, including the extreme difficulty of interdicting smugglers along its porous border with Afghanistan. In addition, though Pakistan developed a National Counter-IED Strategy in June 2011, it has yet to finalize an implementation plan for carrying out the strategy."

Using spectroscopic data produced in the experimental investigations of bulk systems, including X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS), Photoelectron Spectroscopy (PES) and Bremstrahlung Isochromat Spectroscopy (BIS), the theoretical results within for UO{sub 2}{sup 6}, PuO{sub 2}{sup 6} and Pu{sup 7} clusters have been evaluated. The calculations of the electronic structure of the clusters have been performed within the framework of the Relativistic Discrete-Variational Method (RDV). The comparisons between the LLNL experimental data and the Russian calculations are quite favorable. The cluster calculations may represent a new and useful avenue to address unresolved questions within the field of actinide electron structure, particularly that of Pu. Observation of the changes in the Pu electronic structure as a function of size suggests interesting implications for bulk Pu electronic structure.

The research conducted in this work package is aimed at taking advantage of the long term thermodynamic stability of crystalline ceramics to create more durable waste forms (as compared to high level waste glass) in order to reduce the reliance on engineered and natural barrier systems. Durable ceramic waste forms that incorporate a wide range of radionuclides have the potential to broaden the available disposal options and to lower the storage and disposal costs associated with advanced fuel cycles. Assemblages of several titanate phases have been successfully demonstrated to incorporate radioactive waste elements, and the multiphase nature of these materials allows them to accommodate variation in the waste composition. Recent work has shown that they can be successfully produced from a melting and crystallization process. The objective of this report is to explain the design of ceramic host systems culminating in a reference ceramic formulation for use in subsequent studies on process optimization and melt property data assessment in support of FY13 melter demonstration testing. The waste stream used as the basis for the development and testing is a combination of the projected Cs/Sr separated stream, the Trivalent Actinide - Lanthanide Separation by Phosphorous reagent Extraction from Aqueous Komplexes (TALSPEAK) …

The Langevin equations describing the average collisional dynamics of suprathermal particles in nonstationary plasma remarkably admit an exact analytical solution in the case of recombining plasma. The current density produced by arbitrary particle fluxes is derived including the effect of charge recombination. Since recombination has the effect of lowering the charge density of the plasma, thus reducing the charged particle collisional frequencies, the evolution of the current density can be modified substantially compared to plasma with fixed charge density. The current drive efficiency is derived and optimized for discrete and continuous pulses of current, leading to the discovery of a nonzero "residual" current density that persists indefinitely under certain conditions, a feature not present in stationary plasmas.

In the last decade, domestic terrorists-people who commit crimes within the homeland and draw inspiration from U.S.-based extremist ideologies and movements-have killed American citizens and damaged property across the country. Not all of these criminals have been prosecuted under terrorism statutes. This report discusses domestic terrorism's significance to policymakers per five topics: level of activity, use of nontraditional tactics, exploitation of the internet, decentralized nature of the threat, and prison radicalization. The report also discusses three areas that Congress may consider the federal role of combating such activities: the issue of definitions, adequacy of domestic terrorism intelligence collection efforts, and the value of community outreach driven efforts to quell terrorism related radicalization in the United States.

This report was prepared by PNNL for DOE's Building America program and is intended as a guide that energy performance contractors can share with homeowners to describe various insulation options for improving the energy performance and comfort of existing homes. The report provides descriptions of many common insulation types, including their advantages and disadvantages, R-values, characteristics, and typical uses. The report also describes potentially hazardous products such as asbestos and formaldehyde and safety issues when conducting energy-efficient upgrades including radon. The guide is available for download at the DOE Building America website, www.buildingamerica.gov.

We present the first single-shot images of ferromagnetic, nanoscale spin order taken with femtosecond x-ray pulses. X-ray-induced electron and spin dynamics can be outrun with pulses shorter than 80 fs in the investigated fluence regime, and no permanent aftereffects in the samples are observed below a fluence of 25 mJ/cm{sup 2}. Employing resonant spatially-muliplexed x-ray holography results in a low imaging threshold of 5 mJ/cm{sup 2}. Our results open new ways to combine ultrafast laser spectroscopy with sequential snapshot imaging on a single sample, generating a movie of excited state dynamics.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (Global Fund, or the Fund) was established in 2002 as a public-private partnership that could provide significant financial support for global responses to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and malaria. In November 2011, the Global Fund Board announced that due to inadequate resources from donors, it would cancel its 11th round of funding, but would maintain support for existing activities to avoid disruptions in ongoing services. Global health advocates urge Congress to meet the President's FY2013 request for the Fund in order to support the sustainability of its activities and to encourage continued contributions from other donors. Although Congress has traditionally been a strong supporter of the Fund, several issues may affect congressional views about the Fund in the future, which are discussed in this report.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Information on the overall effectiveness (or impact) of the CDBG and HOME programs is limited. According to HUD officials, the agency has faced challenges in evaluating the impact of CDBG and HOME because, among other things, such an evaluation would have to compare neighborhoods that received program assistance with those that did not. Our previous work has also identified the difficulties of evaluating the impact of block grant programs that do not represent a uniform package of activities or desired outcomes across the country, as well as the common problem of attributing differences in communities’ outcomes to the effect of a program in the absence of controls for other explanations. As a result, few comprehensive studies on the impact of the CDBG and HOME programs exist, but studies that focused on specific activities have generally found that each of the programs has made positive contributions. We identified two studies that attempted to examine the overall impact of the CDBG program on communities, but both studies encountered evaluation challenges due to the program’s design. For example, a 1995 study that HUD considers the most comprehensive evaluation of CDBG suggests …

This report discusses the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA, P.L. 103-322) that congress passed in 1994. This legislation created new programs within the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services that aimed to both reduce domestic violence and improve response to and recovery from domestic violence incidents.

The effects of partial ionization (ni/nn ≤ 1%) on magnetic reconnection in the Hall regime have been studied systematically in the Magnetic Reconnection Experiment (MRX). It is shown that, when neutrals are added the Hall quadrupole field pattern and thus electron flow is unchanged while the ion outflow speed is reduced due to ion-neutral drag. However, in constrast to theoretical predictions, the ion diffusion layer width does not change appreciably. Therefore, the total ion outflow flux and the normalized reconnection rate are reduced.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complex has a surplus of classified legacy weapon components generated over the years with no direct path for disposal. The majority of the components have been held for uncertainty of future use or no identified method of sanitization or disposal. As more weapons are retired, there is an increasing need to reduce the amount of components currently in storage or on hold. A process is currently underway to disposition and dispose of the legacy/retired weapons components across the DOE complex.

The Navajo Hopi Land Commission Office (NHLCO), a Navajo Nation executive branch agency has conducted activities to determine capacity-building, institution-building, outreach and management activities to initiate the development of large-scale renewable energy - 100 megawatt (MW) or larger - generating projects on land in Northwestern New Mexico in the first year of a multi-year program. The Navajo Hopi Land Commission Renewable Energy Development Project (NREP) is a one year program that will develop and market a strategic business plan; form multi-agency and public-private project partnerships; compile site-specific solar, wind and infrastructure data; and develop and use project communication and marketing tools to support outreach efforts targeting the public, vendors, investors and government audiences.

The dynamics of an order parameter's amplitude and phase determines the collective behaviour of novel states emerging in complex materials. Time- and momentum-resolved pump-probe spectroscopy, by virtue of measuring material properties at atomic and electronic time scales out of equilibrium, can decouple entangled degrees of freedom by visualizing their corresponding dynamics in the time domain. Here we combine time-resolved femotosecond optical and resonant X-ray diffraction measurements on charge ordered La{sub 1.75}Sr{sub 0.25}NiO{sub 4} to reveal unforeseen photoinduced phase fluctuations of the charge order parameter. Such fluctuations preserve long-range order without creating topological defects, distinct from thermal phase fluctuations near the critical temperature in equilibrium. Importantly, relaxation of the phase fluctuations is found to be an order of magnitude slower than that of the order parameter's amplitude fluctuations, and thus limits charge order recovery. This new aspect of phase fluctuations provides a more holistic view of the phase's importance in ordering phenomena of quantum matter.

With the shutdown of the Tevatron, the T-980 crystal collimation experiment at Fermilab has been successfully completed. Results of dedicated beam studies in May 2011 are described in this paper. For these studies, two multi-strip crystals were installed in the vertical goniometer and an O-shaped crystal installed in a horizontal goniometer. A two-plane CMS pixel detector was also installed in order to enhance the experiment with the capability to image the profile of crystal channeled or multiple volume reflected beam. The experiment successfully imaged channeled beam from a crystal for 980-GeV protons for the first time. This new enhanced hardware yielded impressive results. The performance and characterization of the crystals studied have been very reproducible over time and consistent with simulations.

A resolution of inquiry is a simple resolution making a direct request or demand of the President or the head of an executive department to furnish the House with specific factual information in the Administration's possession. Under the rules and precedents of the U.S. House of Representatives, such resolutions, if properly drafted, are given a privileged parliamentary status. This means that, under certain circumstances, a resolution of inquiry can be brought up on the House floor even if the committee to which it was referred has not reported it and the majority party leadership has not scheduled it for consideration. This report discusses the background, purpose, and efficiency of these inquiries.

We performed resonant soft X-ray diffraction on known charge density wave (CDW) compounds, rare earth tri-tellurides. Near the M{sub 5} (3d - 4f) absorption edge of rare earth ions, an intense diffraction peak is detected at a wavevector identical to that of CDW state hosted on Te{sub 2} planes, indicating a CDW-induced modulation on the rare earth ions. Surprisingly, the temperature dependence of the diffraction peak intensity demonstrates an exponential increase at low temperatures, vastly different than that of the CDW order parameter. Assuming 4f multiplet splitting due to the CDW states, we present a model to calculate X-ray absorption spectrum and resonant profile of the diffraction peak, agreeing well with experimental observations. Our results demonstrate a situation where the temperature dependence of resonant X-ray diffraction peak intensity is not directly related to the intrinsic behavior of the order parameter associated with the electronic order, but is dominated by the thermal occupancy of the valence states.

Through an inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed monitoring framework.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Many State Partnership Program stakeholders, including State Partnership Program Coordinators, Bilateral Affairs Officers, and combatant command officials, cited benefits to the program, but the program lacks a comprehensive oversight framework that includes clear program goals, objectives, and metrics to measure progress against those goals, which limits the Department of Defense’s (DOD) and Congress’ ability to assess whether the program is an effective and efficient use of resources. The benefits described by all stakeholders focused on the program’s contributions to meeting their specific missions, such as building security relationships, providing experience to guardsmen, and supporting combatant commands’ missions. Goals, objectives, and metrics to measure progress are necessary for management oversight, and National Guard Bureau officials told GAO that they recognize the need to update the program’s goals and develop metrics and have initiated efforts in these areas. Officials expect completion of these efforts in summer 2012. Until program goals and metrics are implemented, DOD cannot fully assess or adequately oversee the program."

Fermilab's Recycler ring was used as a storage ring for accumulation and subsequent manipulations of 8 GeV antiprotons destined for the Tevatron collider. To satisfy these missions, a unique electron cooling system was designed, developed and successfully implemented. The most important features that distinguish the Recycler cooler from other existing electron coolers are its relativistic energy, 4.3 MV combined with 0.1-0.5 A DC beam current, a weak continuous longitudinal magnetic field in the cooling section, 100 G, and lumped focusing elsewhere. With the termination of the Tevatron collider operation, so did the cooler. In this article, we summarize the experience of running this unique machine.