The Working Group III Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN) presents an assessment of the literature on the scientific, technological, environmental, economic and social aspects of the contribution of six renewable energy (RE) sources to the mitigation of climate change. It is intended to provide policy relevant information to governments, intergovernmental processes and other interested parties. This Summary for Policymakers provides an overview of the SRREN, summarizing the essential findings. The SRREN consists of 11 chapters. Chapter 1 sets the context for RE and climate change; Chapters 2 through 7 provide information on six RE technologies, and Chapters 8 through 11 address integrative issues.

The degradation of organic matter by microorganisms provides a source of electrical potential or so-called 'self potential' (SP) that can be measured by using a voltmeter. During this process electrons are being produced as a waste-product and bacterial cells have to dispose of these to allow for the complete biodegradation of organic matter. Especially in anaerobic microbial communities, exo-cellular electron transfer is the most important driving force behind this process and organisms have developed different, but also similar, ways to transfer electrons to other microorganisms. Recently, it has been postulated that direct electron transfer from cell-to-cell is actually done by 'hard-wired' microorganisms. This shuttling of electrons is most likely done by certain c-type cytochromes that form the functional part of electrically conductive nanowires. In this study we investigated if nanowires can explain the geoelectrical (self potential and spectral induced polarization) signals observed at some biostimulated environments such as DOE sites. The objectives of our project are to: (1) investigate any temporal changes in the geophysical signatures (Self Potential (SP) and Induced Polarization (IP)) associated with nanowires of the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, wild type and mtrc/omcA deletion mutant, (2) demonstrate that mutant strains of bacteria that produce nonconductive nanowires do …

This report discusses the revolution and post-conflict transition in Libya, triggered in mid-February 2011 by a chain of events resulting in the death of the Prime Minister (Qadhafi); a new government was elected in July. The report also looks at the military and economic state of the country, including human rights, Islam and politics, and Libya's oil assets.

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This report briefly discusses the options for federal support and assistance for areas affected by wildfire disasters, including the period during wildfires, in the aftermath, and subsequently for preventing a recurrence.

This report discusses the unauthorized immigrant (illegal alien) population in the United States, which is a key and controversial immigration issue.

This report discusses the unauthorized immigrant (illegal alien) population in the United States, which is a key and controversial immigration issue.

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Hackensack University Medical Center's major initiative to create a cleaner healthier and safer environment for patients, employees and the community served by the medical center is built on its commitment to protect the environment and conserve precious energy resources. Since 2004 the Medical Center launched a long term campaign to temper the negative environmental impact of proposed and existing new construction at the medical center and to improve campus wide overall energy efficiency. The plan was to begin by implementing a number of innovative and eco-friendly enhancements to the Gabrellian Women's and Children's Pavilion, in construction at the time, which would lead to Certification by the US Green Building Councils Leadership & Environmental Design (LEED) program. In addition the medical center would evaluate the feasibility of implementing a photovoltaic system in the new construction (in development and planned) to provide clean pollution free electricity. The steps taken to achieve this included conducting a feasibility study complete with architectural and engineering assessments to determine the potential for implementation of a photovoltaic system on the campus and also to conduct an energy survey that would focus on determining specific opportunities and upgrades that would lead to a healthier energy efficient interior environment …

This Report is being provided by the Denton County Historical Commission. This report describe the Chisolm trail research, identification and documentation through Denton County.

This report covers Special Operations Forces (SOF) budgets for FY2014 and expected uses of the bugeted money. SOF actions play a significant role in U.S. military operations, and the Administration has given U.S. SOF greater responsibility for planning and conducting worldwide counterterrorism operations.

The parent phases of the Fe-arsenide superconductors harbor an antiferromagnetic ground state. Significantly, the Neel transition is either preceded or accompanied by a structural transition that breaks the four fold symmetry of the high-temperature lattice. Borrowing language from the field of soft condensed matter physics, this broken discrete rotational symmetry is widely referred to as an Ising nematic phase transition. Understanding the origin of this effect is a key component of a complete theoretical description of the occurrence of superconductivity in this family of compounds, motivating both theoretical and experimental investigation of the nematic transition and the associated in-plane anisotropy. Here we review recent experimental progress in determining the intrinsic in-plane electronic anisotropy as revealed by resistivity, reflectivity and ARPES measurements of detwinned single crystals of underdoped Fe arsenide superconductors in the '122' family of compounds.

This report describes the results of studies related to the incorporation of sulfate in high level waste (HLW) borosilicate glass produced at the Savannah River Site (SRS) Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). A group of simulated HLW glasses produced for earlier sulfate retention studies was selected for full chemical composition measurements to determine whether there is any clear link between composition and sulfate retention over the compositional region evaluated. In addition, the viscosity of several glasses was measured to support future efforts in modeling sulfate solubility as a function of predicted viscosity. The intent of these studies was to develop a better understanding of sulfate retention in borosilicate HLW glass to allow for higher loadings of sulfate containing waste. Based on the results of these and other studies, the ability to improve sulfate solubility in DWPF borosilicate glasses lies in reducing the connectivity of the glass network structure. This can be achieved, as an example, by increasing the concentration of alkali species in the glass. However, this must be balanced with other effects of reduced network connectivity, such as reduced viscosity, potentially lower chemical durability, and in the case of higher sodium and aluminum concentrations, the propensity for nepheline crystallization. …

This report examines the source of the contempt power, reviews the historical development of the early case law, outlines the statutory and common law basis for Congress's contempt power, and analyzes the procedures associated with inherent contempt, criminal contempt, and the civil enforcement of subpoenas. It also includes a detailed discussion of two recent information access disputes that led to the approval of contempt citations in the House against then-White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder. Finally, the report discusses both non-constitutional and constitutionally-based limitations on the contempt power.

This report examines the source of the contempt power, reviews the historical development of the early case law, outlines the statutory and common law basis for Congress's contempt power, and analyzes the procedures associated with inherent contempt, criminal contempt, and the civil enforcement of subpoenas. In addition, the report discusses both non-constitutional and constitutionally based limitations on the power. Finally, the report includes a discussion of the significance of the House Judiciary Committee dispute with the White House over the dismissal of several U.S. Attorneys that resulted in votes for criminal contempt of Congress and the United States District Court opinion in Committee on the Judiciary v. Miers.

This project had goals of advancing the performance capabilities of the numerical general circulation model EULAG and using it to produce a fully operational atmospheric global climate model (AGCM) that can employ either static or dynamic grid stretching for targeted phenomena. The resulting AGCM combined EULAG's advanced dynamics core with the "physics" of the NCAR Community Atmospheric Model (CAM). Effort discussed below shows how we improved model performance and tested both EULAG and the coupled CAM-EULAG in several ways to demonstrate the grid stretching and ability to simulate very well a wide range of scales, that is, multi-scale capability. We leveraged our effort through interaction with an international EULAG community that has collectively developed new features and applications of EULAG, which we exploited for our own work summarized here. Overall, the work contributed to over 40 peer-reviewed publications and over 70 conference/workshop/seminar presentations, many of them invited. 3a. EULAG Advances EULAG is a non-hydrostatic, parallel computational model for all-scale geophysical flows. EULAG's name derives from its two computational options: EULerian (flux form) or semi-LAGrangian (advective form). The model combines nonoscillatory forward-in-time (NFT) numerical algorithms with a robust elliptic Krylov solver. A signature feature of EULAG is that it is formulated …

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about the Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT) program including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet discusses a battery-to-grid energy distribution design as part of the "Gallium-Nitride Switch Technology for Bi-Directional Battery-to-Grid Charger Applications" project.

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This report provides a succinct overview with analysis of the issues in the U.S.-Taiwan relationship.

This report discusses the current state of reform and foreign policy in Bahrain. An uprising against Bahrain's Al Khalifa royal family that began on February 14, 2011, has not achieved the goals of Shiite oppositionists to establish a constitutional monarchy. Public unrest has diminished since 2012, but occasional large demonstrations, opposition boycotts of elections, and continued arrests of dissidents counter government assertions that Bahrain has "returned to normal."

It was hypothesized that the variations in time to solution are driven by the competing mechanisms of exploration and exploitation.This thesis explores this hypothesis by examining two contrasting problems that embody the hypothesized tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. Plus one recall store (PORS) is an optimization problem based on the idea of a simple calculator with four buttons: plus, one, store, and recall. Integer addition and store are classified as operations, and one and memory recall are classified as terminals. The goal is to arrange a fixed number of keystrokes in a way that maximizes the numerical result. PORS 15 (15 keystrokes) represents the subset of difficult PORS problems and PORS 16 (16 keystrokes) represents the subset of PORS problems that are easiest to optimize. The goal of this work is to examine the tradeoff between exploitation and exploration in graph based evolutionary algorithm (GBEA) optimization. To do this, computational experiments are used to examine how solutions evolve in PORS 15 and 16 problems when solved using GBEAs. The experiment is comprised of three components; the graphs and the population, the evolutionary algorithm rule set, and the example problems. The complete, hypercube, and cycle graphs were used for this experiment. …

This report provides an explanation of such provisions, highlights how those provisions compare with a traditional budget resolution, and places them within the context of the budget process for FY2014 and FY2015.

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Northwestern University with DOE support created a Facility for Clean Catalytic Process Research. This facility is designed to further strengthen our already strong catalysis research capabilities and thus to address these National challenges. Thus, state-of-the art instrumentation and experimentation facility was commissioned to add far greater breadth, depth, and throughput to our ability to invent, test, and understand catalysts and catalytic processes, hence to improve them via knowledge-based design and evaluation approaches.