"Gang of Four" intelligence notifications generally are oral briefings of certain particularly sensitive non-covert action intelligence activities, including principally, but not exclusively, intelligence collection programs, that the Intelligence Community typically limits to the chairmen and ranking members of the two congressional intelligence committees, and at times, but not always, to their respective staff directors. This report reviews the history of Gang of Four notification process and compares this procedure with that of the "Gang of Eight" notification procedure.

The U.S. program of assistance to Afghanistan is intended to stabilize and strengthen the Afghan economic, social, political, and security environment so as to blunt popular support for extremist forces in the region. Since 2001, nearly $38 billion has been appropriated toward this effort. This report provides a "big picture" overview of the U.S. aid program and congressional action. It describes what various aid agencies report they are doing in Afghanistan. It does not address the effectiveness of their programs.

Over the past 25 years, defined contribution (DC) plans - including 401(k) plans - have become the most prevalent form of employer-sponsored retirement plan in the United States. This report describes seven major policy issues with respect to defined contribution plans: 1) access to employer-sponsored retirement plans; 2) participation in employer-sponsored plans; 3) contribution rates; 4) investment choices; 5) fee disclosure; 6) leakage from retirement savings; and 7) converting retirement savings into income.

The Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program was created by Title I of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-322). The mission of the COPS program is to advance community policing in all jurisdictions across the United States. Legislation introduced in the 111th Congress would reauthorize the COPS program through FY2014 and reestablish COPS as a multi-grant program. This report provides an overview and analysis of issues Congress might choose to consider when taking up legislation to reauthorize the COPS program.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Deepwater Program includes efforts to build or modernize ships and aircraft and to procure other capabilities. In 2002, the Coast Guard contracted with Integrated Coast Guard Systems (ICGS) to manage the acquisition as systems integrator. After a series of project failures, the Coast Guard announced in April 2007 that it would take over the lead role, with future work on individual assets bid competitively, and a program baseline of $24.2 billion was set. In June 2008, GAO reported on the Coast Guard's progress and made several recommendations, which the Coast Guard and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have addressed. In response to a Senate report accompanying the DHS Appropriations Bill, 2009, GAO addressed (1) efforts to manage Deepwater, (2) changes in cost and schedule of the assets, and (3) efforts to build an acquisition workforce. GAO reviewed Coast Guard and DHS documents and interviewed officials."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The General Mining Act of 1872 helped open the West by allowing individuals to obtain exclusive rights to mine billions of dollars worth of gold, silver, and other hardrock (locatable) minerals from federal lands without having to pay a federal royalty. However, western states charge royalties so that they share in the proceeds from the hardrock minerals extracted from their lands. For years, some mining operators abandoned land used in their mining operations, creating environmental and physical safety hazards. To curb further growth in the number of abandoned hardrock mines on federal lands, in 1981, the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) began requiring mining operators to reclaim BLM land disturbed by these operations."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For over a decade, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have been working on initiatives to share electronic health information. To expedite their efforts, Congress mandated in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 that VA and DOD establish a joint interagency program office to act as a single point of accountability in the development of electronic health records systems or capabilities that allow for full interoperability (generally, the ability of systems to exchange data) by September 30, 2009. In this statement, GAO summarizes findings from its upcoming report, focusing on progress in setting up the interagency program office and the departments' actions to achieve fully interoperable capabilities by September 30, 2009. To do so, GAO analyzed agency documentation on project status and conducted interviews with agency officials."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Historically, the vast majority of VA patients have been men, but that is changing. VA provided health care to over 281,000 women veterans in 2008--an increase of about 12 percent since 2006--and the number of women veterans in the United States is projected to increase by 17 percent between 2008 and 2033. Women veterans seeking care at VA medical facilities need access to a full range of health care services, including basic gender-specific services--such as cervical cancer screening--and specialized gender-specific services--such as treatment of reproductive cancers. This testimony, based on ongoing work, discusses GAO's preliminary findings on (1) the on-site availability of health care services for women veterans at VA facilities, (2) the extent to which VA facilities are following VA policies that apply to the delivery of health care services for women veterans, and (3) key challenges that VA facilities are experiencing in providing health care services for women veterans. GAO reviewed applicable VA policies, interviewed officials, and visited 19 medical facilities--9 VA medical centers (VAMC) and 10 community-based outpatient clinics (CBOC)--and 8 Vet Centers. These facilities were chosen based in part on the number of women …

This report reviews the ongoing programs that will affect the expected size and shape of the U.S. strategic nuclear force structure. It begins with an overview of this force structure during the Cold War, and summarizes the reductions and changes that have occurred since 1991. It then offers details about each category of delivery vehicle, focusing on their current deployments and ongoing and planned modernization programs. The report concludes with a discussion of issues related to decisions about the future size and shape of the U.S. strategic nuclear force.

Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. attention to terrorism in Latin America has intensified, with an increase in bilateral and regional cooperation. This report discusses the issue in relation to the U.S. State Department's April 2009 Country Report on Terrorism; Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez's sympathies with terrorist groups and lack of cooperation on antiterrorism efforts; growing U.S. concern over activities of terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas in the tri-border area of Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay; and various legislative initiatives related to Latin American terrorism issues being considered by the 111th Congress.

To investigate the possibility of using HOM signals induced in SC cavities as beam and cavity diagnostics, narrow band (20 MHz) data was recorded around the strong TE111-6(6{pi}/9-like) dipole modes (1.7 GHz) in the 40 L-band (1.3 GHz) cavities at the DESY TTF facility. The analyses of these data have so far focused on using a Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) technique to correlate the signals with each other and data from conventional BPMs to show the dipole signals provide an alternate means of measuring the beam trajectory. However, these analyses do not extract the modal information (i.e., frequencies and Q's of the nearly degenerate horizontal and vertical modes). In this paper, we described a method to fit the signal frequency spectrum to obtain this information, and then use the resulting mode amplitudes and phases together with conventional BPM data to determine the mode polarizations and relative centers and tilts. Compared with the SVD analysis, this method is more physical, and can also be used to obtain the beam position and trajectory angle.

The authors present improved measurements of the branching fraction {Beta}, the longitudinal polarization fraction f{sub L}, and the direct CP asymmetry A{sub CP} in the B meson decay channel B{sup +} {yields} {rho}{sup +}{rho}{sup 0}. The data sample was collected with the BABAR detector at SLAC. The results are {Beta}(B{sup +} {yields} {rho}{sup +}{rho}{sup 0}) = (23.7 {+-} 1.4 {+-} 1.4) x 10{sup -6}, f{sub L} = 0.950 {+-} 0.015 {+-} 0.006, and A{sub CP} = -0.054 {+-} 0.055 {+-} 0.010, where the uncertainties are statistical and systematic, respectively. Based on these results, they perform an isospin analysis and determine the CKM weak phase angle {alpha} to be (92.4{sub -6.5}{sup +6.0}){sup 0}.

Petroleum prices rose sharply in the first half of 2008, at one time reaching more than $140 per barrel of crude oil. This report provides an estimate of the initial impact of the changing oil prices on the nation’s merchandise trade deficit.

The need to answer basic questions regarding the origin of the Solar System will motivate robotic sample return missions to destinations like Pluto, its satellite Charon, and objects in the Kuiper belt. To keep the mission duration short enough to be of interest, sample return from objects farther out in the Solar System requires increasingly higher return velocities. A sample return mission involves several complicated steps to reach an object and obtain a sample, but only the interplanetary return phase of the mission is addressed in this paper. Radioisotope electric propulsion is explored in this parametric study as a means to propel small, dedicated return vehicles for transferring kilogram-size samples from deep space to Earth. Return times for both Earth orbital rendezvous and faster, direct atmospheric re-entry trajectories are calculated for objects as far away as 100 AU. Chemical retro-rocket braking at Earth is compared to radioisotope electric propulsion but the limited deceleration capability of chemical rockets forces the return trajectories to be much slower.

Clouds represent a critical component of the Earth’s atmospheric energy balance as a result of their interactions with solar and terrestrial radiation and a redistribution of heat through convective processes and latent heating. Despite their importance, clouds and the processes that control their development, evolution and lifecycle remain poorly understood. Consequently, the simulation of clouds and their associated feedbacks is a primary source of inter-model differences in equilibrium climate sensitivity. An important step in improving the representation of cloud process simulations is an improved high-resolution observational data set of the cloud systems including their time evolution. The first order quantity needed to understand the important role of clouds is the height of cloud occurrence and how it changes as a function of time. To this end, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facilities (ACRF) suite of instrumentation has been developed to make the observations required to improve the representation of cloud systems in atmospheric models.

The overall goal of the project described in this report is to provide a sound scientific basis for operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) in ways that will effectively protect and enhance chum salmon populations----a species listed in March 1999 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). The study objective during fiscal year 2008 was to provide real-time data on Ives Island area water temperature and water surface elevations from the onset of chum salmon spawning through the end of chum salmon emergence. Sampling locations included areas where riverbed temperatures were elevated, potentially influencing alevin development and emergence timing. In these locations, hydrosystem operation caused large, frequent changes in river discharge that affected salmon habitat by dewatering redds and altering egg pocket temperatures. The 2008 objective was accomplished using temperature and water-level sensors deployed inside piezo¬meters. Sensors were integrated with a radio telemetry system such that real-time data could be downloaded remotely and posted hourly on the Internet.

The overall goal of the project described in this report is to provide a sound scientific basis for operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS) in ways that will effectively protect and enhance chum salmon populations - a species listed in March 1999 as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (ESA). The study objective during fiscal year 2008 was to provide real-time data on Ives Island area water temperature and water surface elevations from the onset of chum salmon spawning through the end of chum salmon emergence. Sampling locations included areas where riverbed temperatures were elevated, potentially influencing alevin development and emergence timing. In these locations, hydrosystem operation caused large, frequent changes in river discharge that affected salmon habitat by dewatering redds and altering egg pocket temperatures. The 2008 objective was accomplished using temperature and water-level sensors deployed inside piezometers. Sensors were integrated with a radio telemetry system such that real-time data could be downloaded remotely and posted hourly on the Internet. During our overall monitoring period (October 2007 through June 2008), mean temperature in chum spawning areas was nearly 2 C warmer within the riverbed than in the overlying river. During chum salmon spawning (mid-November …

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The ultra-fast switching of power MOSFETs, in about 1ns, is very challenging. This is largely due to the parasitic inductance that is intrinsic to commercial packages used for both MOSFETs and drivers. Parasitic gate and source inductance not only limit the voltage rise time on the MOSFET internal gate structure but can also cause the gate voltage to oscillate. This paper describes a hybrid approach that substantially reduces the parasitic inductance between the driver and MOSFET gate, as well as between the MOSFET source and its external connection. A flip chip assembly is used to directly attach a die-form power MOSFET and driver on a PCB. The parasitic inductances are significantly reduced by eliminating bond wires and minimizing lead length. The experimental results demonstrate ultra-fast switching of the power MOSFET with excellent control of the gate-source voltage.

Individual raw data streams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Climate Research Facility (ACRF) fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near-real time. Raw and processed data are then sent approximately daily to the ACRF Archive, where they are made available to users. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of data records received daily at the archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual data stream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year (FY) dating back to 1998. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) requires national user facilities to report time-based operating data. The requirements concern the actual hours of operation (ACTUAL); the estimated maximum operation or uptime goal (OPSMAX), which accounts for planned downtime; and the VARIANCE [1 - (ACTUAL/OPSMAX)], which accounts for unplanned downtime. The OPSMAX time for the third quarter of FY 2009 for the Southern Great Plains (SGP) site is 2,074.80 hours (0.95 x 2,184 hours this quarter); for the North Slope Alaska (NSA) locale it is 1,965.60 hours …

This report discusses background information on the V-22 Osprey Tilt-Rotor Aircraft, as well as procurement and related oversight issues for Congress.

This report reviews the ongoing programs that will affect the expected size and shape of the U.S. strategic nuclear force structure. It includes an overview of this force structure during the Cold War, and summarizes the reductions and changes that have occurred since 1991. It also offers details about each category of delivery vehicle--land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine launched ballistic missiles and heavy bombers--focusing on their current deployments and ongoing and planned modernization programs.

This report provides background on current International Criminal Court (ICC) cases and examines issues raised by the ICC's actions in Africa, including the potential deterrence of future abuses and the potential impact on African peace processes.

This report provides an overview of issues Congress may consider when taking up legislation to reauthorize the Community Oriented Policing Services program.