Recent experiments on tokamaks around the world [1-5] have demonstrated discharges with moderately high performance in which the q-profile remains stationary, as measured by the motional Stark effect diagnostic, for periods up to several {tau}{sub R}. Hybrid discharges are characterize by q{sub min} {approx} 1, high {beta}{sub N}, and good confinement. These discharges have been termed hybrid because of their intermediate nature between that of an ordinary H-mode and advanced tokamak discharges. They form an attractive scenario for ITER as the normalized fusion performance ({beta}{sub N}H{sub 89P}/q{sub 95}{sup 2}) is at or above that for the ITER baseline Q{sub fus} = 10 scenario, even for q{sub 95} as high as 4.6. The startup phase is thought to be crucial to the ultimate evolution of the hybrid discharge. An open question is how hybrid discharges achieve and maintain their stationary state during the initial startup phase. To investigate this aspect of hybrid discharges, we have used the CORSICA code to model the early stages of a discharge. Results clearly indicate that neoclassical current evolution alone is insufficient to account for the time evolution of the q-profile and that an addition of non-inductive current source must be incorporated into the model to …

This research demonstrates economically optimal distributedenergy resource (DER) system choice using the DER choice and operationsoptimization program, the Distributed Energy Resources Customer AdoptionModel (DER-CAM). DER-CAM finds the optimal combination of installedequipment given prevailing utility tariffs and fuel prices, siteelectrical and thermal loads (including absorption cooling), and a menuof available equipment. It provides a global optimization, albeitidealized, that shows how site useful energy loads can be served atminimum cost. Five prototype Japanese commercial buildings are examinedand DER-CAM is applied to select the economically optimal DER system foreach. Based on the optimization results, energy and emission reductionsare evaluated. Significant decreases in fuel consumption, carbonemissions, and energy costs were seen in the DER-CAM results. Savingswere most noticeable in the prototype sports facility, followed by thehospital, hotel, and office building. Results show that DER with combinedheat and power equipment is a promising efficiency and carbon mitigationstrategy, but that precise system design is necessary. Furthermore, aJapan-U.S. comparison study of policy, technology, and utility tariffsrelevant to DER installation is presented.

In early May 2006, assessments of insufficient Serbian cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) led the European Union (EU) to suspend association talks with Serbia. Later that month, the U.S. Secretary of State withheld certification of full Serbian cooperation with ICTY, leading to a partial suspension of U.S. bilateral assistance to Serbia. From late 2004 through early 2005, a combination of intensified international pressure and deadlines associated with Euro-Atlantic integration processes prompted a spate of transfers of indicted persons to the tribunal. Full cooperation with ICTY is a key prerequisite to further progress toward a shared long-term goal for the western Balkan countries: closer association with and eventual membership in the European Union and NATO.

The report is about the Balkan Cooperation on War Crimes Issues.In early May 2006, assessments of insufficient Serbian cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) led the European Union (EU) to suspend association talks with Serbia. Later that month, the U.S. Secretary of State withheld certification of full Serbian cooperation with ICTY, leading to a partial suspension of U.S. bilateral assistance to Serbia.

This report is on The Basel Accords: The Implementation of II and the Modification of I.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments of 1988 (CLIA) strengthened and extended quality requirements for labs that perform tests to diagnose or treat disease. About 36,000 labs that perform certain complex tests must be surveyed biennially by either a state or one of six private accrediting organizations. CMS oversees implementation of CLIA requirements and the activities of survey organizations. GAO was asked to examine (1) the quality of lab testing; (2) the effectiveness of surveys, complaint investigations, and enforcement actions in detecting and addressing lab problems; and (3) the adequacy of CMS's CLIA oversight."

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This report gives an overview of Dairy policy issues and the contents include Dairy forward pricing pilot program, Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) payments, Milk protein concentrate trade issues, and dairy price support program

The article talks about the impact of Hurricane Katrine and the debris that was left as a result od the destruction. It provides the background and information necessary to understand why additional funding of debris removal activities will be needed for months to come.

Distributed generation (DG) technologies, such as gas-fired reciprocating engines and microturbines, have been found to be economically beneficial in meeting commercial-sector electrical, heating, and cooling loads. Even though the electric-only efficiency of DG is lower than that offered by traditional central stations, combined heat and power (CHP) applications using recovered heat can make the overall system energy efficiency of distributed energy resources (DER) greater. From a policy perspective, however, it would be useful to have good estimates of penetration rates of DER under various economic and regulatory scenarios. In order to examine the extent to which DER systems may be adopted at a national level, we model the diffusion of DER in the US commercial building sector under different technical research and technology outreach scenarios. In this context, technology market diffusion is assumed to depend on the system's economic attractiveness and the developer's knowledge about the technology. The latter can be spread both by word-of-mouth and by public outreach programs. To account for regional differences in energy markets and climates, as well as the economic potential for different building types, optimal DER systems are found for several building types and regions. Technology diffusion is then predicted via two scenarios: a …

This paper examines a California-based microgrid s decision to invest in a distributed generation (DG) unit that operates on natural gas. While the long-term natural gas generation cost is stochastic, we initially assume that the microgrid may purchase electricity at a fixed retail rate from its utility. Using the real options approach, we find natural gas generating cost thresholds that trigger DG investment. Furthermore, the consideration of operational flexibility by the microgrid accelerates DG investment, while the option to disconnect entirely from the utility is not attractive. By allowing the electricity price to be stochastic, we next determine an investment threshold boundary and find that high electricity price volatility relative to that of natural gas generating cost delays investment while simultaneously increasing the value of the investment. We conclude by using this result to find the implicit option value of the DG unit.

Electricity produced by distributed energy resources (DER)located close to end-use loads has the potential to meet consumerrequirements more efficiently than the existing centralized grid.Installation of DER allows consumers to circumvent the costs associatedwith transmission congestion and other non-energy costs of electricitydelivery and potentially to take advantage of market opportunities topurchase energy when attractive. On-site, single-cycle thermal powergeneration is typically less efficient than central station generation,but by avoiding non-fuel costs of grid power and by utilizing combinedheat and power (CHP) applications, i.e., recovering heat from small-scaleon-site thermal generation to displace fuel purchases, DER can becomeattractive to a strictly cost-minimizing consumer. In previous efforts,the decisions facing typical commercial consumers have been addressedusing a mixed-integer linear program, the DER Customer Adoption Model(DER-CAM). Given the site s energy loads, utility tariff structure, andinformation (both technical and financial) on candidate DER technologies,DER-CAM minimizes the overall energy cost for a test year by selectingthe units to install and determining their hourly operating schedules. Inthis paper, the capabilities of DER-CAM are enhanced by the inclusion ofthe option to store recovered low-grade heat. By being able to keep aninventory of heat for use in subsequent periods, sites are able to lowercosts even further by reducing lucrative peak-shaving generation …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In April 2005 GAO reported on the EEO policy framework in the federal workplace and the roles of EEOC and OPM. This report, in response to a congressional request, provides information on (1) federal agency EEO and human capital managers' views of the EEO framework requirements; (2) their views on the usefulness of guidance and feedback from EEOC and OPM concerning these requirements; and (3) how and to what extent EEOC and OPM coordinate in developing policy, providing guidance, and exercising oversight."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) faced the challenge of providing assistance quickly while having sufficient controls to provide assurance that benefits were paid only to those eligible under the Individuals and Households Program (IHP). On February 13, 2006, GAO testified on the initial results of its ongoing work related to whether (1) controls are in place and operating effectively to limit assistance to qualified applicants, (2) indications exist of fraud and abuse in the application for and receipt of assistance payments, and (3) controls are in place and operating effectively over debit cards to prevent duplicate payments and improper usage."

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The Tech-X contribution to the NTCC project was completed on 03/31/06. Below are some of the highlights of the #12;nal year. A TEQ users' meeting was held at the Sherwood 2005 conference and a tech-support mail list was created <teq-users@fusion.txcorp.com>. The stand-alone separatrix module was added to the NTCC repository and is available on the web. For the main TEQ module a portable build system was developed (based on GNU Autotools and similar to the the separatrix build system). Especially IBM xlf had problems with mixed code (F77 with F90 snippets) in the same #12;le and approximately 6000 lines of code was rewritten as pure F90. Circular dependencies between F90 modules were resolved to robustly allow correct compilation order. Exception handling was implemented in both the separatrix and TEQ modules and an user manual was written for TEQ. Johan Carlsson visited LLNL 05/16/05{05/20/05.

The {gamma} decay of the Giant Dipole Resonance in the {sup 132}Ce compound nucleus with temperature up to {approx} 4 MeV has been measured. The symmetric {sup 64}Ni + {sup 68}Zn at E{sub beam} = 300, 400, 500 MeV and the asymmetric reaction {sup 16}O + {sup 116}Sn at E{sub beam} = 130, 250 MeV have been investigated. Light charged particles and {gamma} rays have been detected in coincidence with the recoiling compound system. In the case of the mass symmetric {sup 64}Ni induced reaction the {gamma} and charged particle spectral shapes are found to be consistent with the emission from a fully equilibrated compound nuclei and the GDR parameters are extracted from the data using a statistical model analysis. The GDR width is found to increase almost linear with temperature. This increase is rather well reproduced within a model which includes both the thermal fluctuation of the nuclear shape and the lifetime of the compound nucleus.

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On-site cogeneration of heat and electricity, thermal and electrical storage, and curtailing/rescheduling demand options are often cost-effective to commercial and industrial sites. This collection of equipment and responsive consumption can be viewed as an integrated energy system(IES). The IES can best meet the sites cost or environmental objectives when controlled in a coordinated manner. However, continuously determining this optimal IES dispatch is beyond the expectations for operators of smaller systems. A new algorithm is proposed in this paper to approximately solve the real-time dispatch optimization problem for a generic IES containing an on-site cogeneration system subject to random outages, limited curtailment opportunities, an intermittent renewable electricity source, and thermal storage. An example demonstrates how this algorithm can be used in simulation to estimate the value of IES components.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since the early 1990s, growth in the use of the Internet has revolutionized the way that our nation communicates and conducts business. While the Internet was originally developed by the Department of Defense, the vast majority of its infrastructure is currently owned and operated by the private sector. Federal policy recognizes the need to prepare for debilitating Internet disruptions and tasks the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) with developing an integrated public/private plan for Internet recovery. GAO was asked to (1) identify examples of major disruptions to the Internet, (2) identify the primary laws and regulations governing recovery of the Internet in the event of a major disruption, (3) evaluate DHS plans for facilitating recovery from Internet disruptions, and (4) assess challenges to such efforts."

For self-consistent ion-beam simulations including electron motion, it is desirable to be able to follow electron dynamics accurately without being constrained by the electron cyclotron timescale. To this end, we have developed a particle-advance that interpolates between full particle dynamics and drift motion. By making a proper choice of interpolation parameter, simulation particles experience physically correct parallel dynamics, drift motion, and gyroradius when the timestep is large compared to the cyclotron period, though the effective gyro frequency is artificially low; in the opposite timestep limit, the method approaches a conventional Boris particle push. By combining this scheme with a Poisson solver that includes an interpolated form of the polarization drift in the dielectric response, the movers utility can be extended to higher-density problems where the plasma frequency of the species being advanced exceeds its cyclotron frequency. We describe a series of tests of the mover and its application to simulation of electron clouds in heavy-ion accelerators.

On November 16, 1994, the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention entered into force but without accession by the United States. The major part of the 1982 Law of the Sea Convention had been supported by U.s. Administrations, beginning with President Reagan, as fulfilling U.S. interests in having a comprehensive legal framework relating to competing uses of the world's oceans. However, the United States and many industrialized countries found some of the provisions relating to deep seabed mining in Part XI and Annexes III and IV of the Convention contrary to their interests and would not sign or act to ratify the Convention. A number of questions face the Senate as it considers the Convention/Agreement package, including the following: 1) Does the Agreement sufficiently resolve opposing concerns about the deep seabed mining provisions? 2) What precedent does U.S. acceptance of the Convention/Agreement definition of the common heritage of mankind concept establish? 3) What authority should Congress exert over the expenses of another international organization (the International Seabed Authority)?

This report provides background and analysis and discusses the most recent regarding the law of the sea convention.

This report discusses potential changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that may occur during the 109th Congress.