A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Defense (DOD) award direct assistance to Afghanistan, using bilateral agreements and multilateral trust funds that provide funds through the Afghan national budget. GAO assessed (1) the extent to which the United States, through USAID and DOD, has increased direct assistance, (2) USAID and DOD steps to ensure accountability for bilateral direct assistance, and (3) USAID and DOD steps to ensure accountability for direct assistance via multilateral trust funds for Afghanistan. GAO reviewed USAID, DOD, and multilateral documents and met with U.S. officials and staffs of multilateral trust funds in Washington, D.C., and Afghanistan."

It is often necessary to protect sensitive electrical equipment from pulsed electric and magnetic fields. To accomplish this electromagnetic shielding structures similar to Faraday Cages are often implemented. If the equipment is inside a facility that has been reinforced with rebar, the rebar can be used as part of a lighting protection system. Unfortunately, such shields are not perfect and allow electromagnetic fields to be created inside due to discontinuities in the structure, penetrations, and finite conductivity of the shield. In order to perform an analysis of such a structure it is important to first determine the effect of the finite impedance of the conductors used in the shield. In this paper we will discuss the impedances of different cylindrical conductors in the time domain. For a time varying pulse the currents created in the conductor will have different spectral components, which will affect the current density due to skin effects. Many construction materials use iron and different types of steels that have a nonlinear permeability. The nonlinear material can have an effect on the impedance of the conductor depending on the B-H curve. Although closed form solutions exist for the impedances of cylindrical conductors made of linear materials, computational …

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a high power laser system capable of supporting high-energy-density experimentation as a user facility for the next 30 years. In order to maximize the facility availability, preventive maintenance enhancements are being introduced into the system. An example of such an enhancement is a camera-based health monitoring system, integrated into the automated alignment system, which provides an opportunity to monitor trends in measurements such as average beam intensity, size of the beam, and pixel saturation. The monitoring system will generate alerts based on observed trends in measurements to allow scheduled pro-active maintenance before routine off-normal detection stops system operations requiring unscheduled intervention.

One of the most persistent political issues facing Congress in recent decades is whether to require that the budget of the United States be in balance. Although a balanced federal budget has long been held as a political ideal, the accumulation of large deficits in recent years has heightened concern that some action to require a balance between revenues and expenditures may be necessary. This report provides an overview of the issues and options that have been raised during prior consideration of proposals for a balanced budget constitutional amendment.

For US transportation fuel independence or reduced dependence on foreign oil, the Federal Government has mandated that the country produce 36 billion gallons (bg) of renewable transportation fuel per year for its transportation fuel supply by 2022. This can be achieved only if development of efficient technology for second generation biofuel from ligno-cellulosic sources is feasible. To be successful in this area, development of a widely available, renewable, cost-effective ligno-cellulosic biomass feedstock that can be easily and efficiently converted biochemically by bacteria or other fast-growing organisms is required. Moreover, if the biofuel type is butanol, then the existing infrastructure to deliver fuel to the customer can be used without additional costs and retrofits. The Claflin Biofuel Initiative project is focused on helping the US meet the above-mentioned targets. With support from this grant, Claflin University (CU) scientists have created over 50 new strains of microorganisms that are producing butanol from complex carbohydrates and cellulosic compounds. Laboratory analysis shows that a number of these strains are producing higher percentages of butanol than other methods currently in use. All of these recombinant bacterial strains are producing relatively high concentrations of acetone and numerous other byproducts as well. Therefore, we are carrying out …

This report contains the history and increases on the debt limit.

The 100-NR-2 site is the location of elevated releases of strontium-90 to the Columbia River via contaminated groundwater. The resulting dose to aquatic and riparian receptors was evaluated in 2005 (DOE 2009) and compared to U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) dose guidance values. We have conducted additional dose assessments for a broader spectrum of aquatic and riparian organisms using RESRAD Biota and specific exposure scenarios. Because strontium-90 accumulates in bone, we have also modeled the dose to the anterior kidney, a blood-forming and immune system organ that lies close to the spinal column of fish. The resulting dose is primarily attributable to the yttrium-90 progeny of strontium-90 and very little of the dose is associated with the beta emission from strontium-90. All dose modeling results were calculated with an assumption of secular equilibrium between strontium-90 and yttrum-90.

Polymer-Electrolyte-Fuel-Cells (PEFCs) are promising candidates for powering vehicles and portable devices using renewable-energy sources. The core of a PEFC is the solid electrolyte membrane that conducts protons from anode to cathode, where water is generated. The conductivity of the membrane, however, depends on the water content of the membrane, which is strongly related to the cell operating conditions. The membrane and other cell components are typically compressed to minimize various contact resistances. Moreover, the swelling of a somewhat constrained membrane in the cell due to the humidity changes generates additional compressive stresses in the membrane. These external stresses are balanced by the internal swelling pressure of the membrane and change the swelling equilibrium. It was shown using a fuel-cell setup that compression could reduce the water content of the membrane or alter the cell resistance. Nevertheless, the effect of compression on the membrane’s transport properties is yet to be understood, as well as its implications in the structure-functions relationships of the membrane. We previously studied, both experimentally and theoretically, how compression affects the water content of the membrane.6 However, more information is required the gain a fundamental understanding of the compression effects. In this talk, we present the results of …

The effects of different transition metal halides (TiCl{sub 3}, VCl{sub 3}, ScCl{sub 3} and NiCl{sub 2}) on the sorption properties of the 1:1 molar ratio of LiNH{sub 2} to MgH{sub 2} are investigated. The modified mixtures were found to contain LiNH{sub 2}, MgH{sub 2} and LiCl. TGA results showed that the hydrogen desorption temperature was reduced with the modifier addition in this order: TiCl{sub 3} > ScCl{sub 3} > VCl{sub 3} > NiCL{sub 2}. Ammonia release was not significantly reduced resulting in a weight loss greater than the theoretical hydrogen storage capacity of the material. The isothermal sorption kinetics of the modified systems showed little improvement after the first dehydrogenation cycle over the unmodified system but showed drastic improvement in rehydrogenation cycles. X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy identified the cycled material to be composed of LiH, MgH{sub 2}, Mg(NH{sub 2}){sub 2} and Mg{sub 3}N{sub 2}.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

This report discusses the changes to the congressional budget process under H.Res. 5 (an agreement made January 5, 2011), which includes six changes made to the House Standing Rules as well as separate orders also affecting the process.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) relies extensively on information technology (IT) to carry out its mission. For fiscal year 2012, IRS requested about $2.67 billion for IT. Given the size and significance of these investments, GAO was asked to evaluate IRS's capabilities for managing its IT investments. To address this objective, GAO reviewed IRS policies and procedures and assessed them using GAO's IT investment management (ITIM) framework and associated methodology, focusing on the framework's stage relevant to building a foundation for investment management (Stage 2). GAO also interviewed officials responsible for IRS's investment management process."

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This report focuses on the United States' relationship with Iran and how the Obama Administration is handling prior administrations' economic sanctions against Iran. However, with subsequent negotiations yielding no firm Iranian agreement to compromise regarding their nuclear program, the Administration has focused on achieving the imposition of additional U.N., U.S., and allied country sanctions whose cumulative effect would be to compel it to accept a nuclear bargain.

It is well established that energy efficiency is most often the lowest cost approach to reducing national energy use and minimizing carbon emissions. National investments in energy efficiency to date have been highly cost-effective. The cumulative impacts (out to 2050) of residential energy efficiency standards are expected to have a benefit-to-cost ratio of 2.71:1. This project examined energy end-uses in the residential, commercial, and in some cases the industrial sectors. The scope is limited to appliances and equipment, and does not include building materials, building envelopes, and system designs. This scope is consistent with the scope of DOE's appliance standards program, although many products considered here are not currently subject to energy efficiency standards. How much energy could the United States save if the most efficient design options currently feasible were adopted universally? What design features could produce those savings? How would the savings from various technologies compare? With an eye toward identifying promising candidates and strategies for potential energy efficiency standards, the Max Tech and Beyond project aims to answer these questions. The analysis attempts to consolidate, in one document, the energy savings potential and design characteristics of best-on-market products, best-engineered products (i.e., hypothetical products produced using best-on-market components …

This report describes tracer gas uniformity and bias measurements made in the exhaust air discharge of the Hot Fuel Examination Facility at Idaho National Laboratory. The measurements were a follow-up on earlier measurements which indicated a lack of mixing of the two ventilation streams being discharged via a common stack. The lack of mixing is detrimental to the accuracy of air emission measurements. The lack of mixing was confirmed in these new measurements. The air sampling probe was found to be out of alignment and that was corrected. The suspected sampling bias in the air sample stream was disproved.

This report discusses Pakistan's nuclear proliferation and security issues. It discusses the steps that could enable Pakistan to undertake both quantitative and qualitative improvements to its nuclear arsenal. Whether and to what extent Pakistan's current expansion of its nuclear weapons-related facilities is a response to the 2008 U.S.-India nuclear cooperation agreement is unclear.

Results for Version 4.110 of the Area 5 Radioactive Waste Management Site (RWMS) performance assessment (PA) model are summarized. Version 4.110 includes the fiscal year (FY) 2010 inventory estimate, including a future inventory estimate. Version 4.110 was implemented in GoldSim 10.11(SP4). The following changes have been implemented since the last baseline model, Version 4.105: (1) Updated the inventory and disposal unit configurations with data through the end of FY 2010. (1) Implemented Federal Guidance Report 13 Supplemental CD dose conversion factors (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1999). Version 4.110 PA results comply with air pathway and all-pathways annual total effective dose (TED) performance objectives (Tables 2 and 3, Figures 1 and 2). Air pathways results decrease moderately for all scenarios. The time of the maximum for the air pathway open rangeland scenario shifts from 1,000 to 100 years (y). All-pathways annual TED increases for all scenarios except the resident scenario. The maximum member of public all-pathways dose occurs at 1,000 y for the resident farmer scenario. The resident farmer dose was predominantly due to technetium-99 (Tc-99) (82 percent) and lead-210 (Pb-210) (13 percent). Pb-210 present at 1,000 y is produced predominantly by radioactive decay of uranium-234 (U-234) present at the time …

Hydroxycinnamate coenzyme A (CoA) thioesters are substrates for biosynthesis of lignin and hydroxycinna- mate esters of polysaccharides and other polymers. Hence, a supply of these substrates is essential for investigation of cell wall biosynthesis. In this study, three recombinant enzymes, caffeic acid 3-O-methyltransferase, 4-coumarate- CoA ligase 1, and 4-coumarate-CoA ligase 5, were cloned from wheat, tobacco, and Arabidopsis, respectively, and were used to synthesize {sup 14}C-feruloyl-CoA, caffeoyl-CoA, p-coumaroyl-CoA, feruloyl-CoA, and sinapoyl-CoA. The corresponding hydroxycinnamoyl-CoA thioesters were high-performance liquid chromatography purified, the only extraction/purification step necessary, with total yields between 88-95%. Radiolabeled {sup 14}C-feruloyl-CoA was generated from caffeic acid and S-adenosyl-{sup 14}C-methionine under the combined action of caffeic acid 3-O-methyltransferase and 4-coumarate-CoA ligase 1. About 70% of {sup 14}C-methyl groups from S-adenosyl methionine were incorporated into the final product. The methods presented are simple, fast, and efficient for the preparation of the hydroxycinnamate thioesters.

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This report provides detailed information on the legal services overhead rates of the Office of Attorney General by division and cost detail.

The Cementitious Barriers Partnership (CBP) is a collaborative program sponsored by the US DOE Office of Waste Processing. The objective of the CBP is to develop a set of computational tools to improve understanding and prediction of the long-term structural, hydraulic, and chemical performance of cementitious barriers and waste forms used in nuclear applications. CBP tools are expected to better characterize and reduce the uncertainties of current methodologies for assessing cementitious barrier performance and increase the consistency and transparency of the assessment process, as the five-year program progresses. In September 2009, entering its second year of funded effort, the CBP sought opportunities to provide near-term tangible support to DOE Performance Assessments (PAs). The Savannah River Saltstone Disposal Facility (SDF) was selected for the initial PA support effort because (1) cementitious waste forms and barriers play a prominent role in the performance of the facility, (2) certain important long-term behaviors of cementitious materials composing the facility are uncertain, (3) review of the SDF PA by external stakeholders is ongoing, and (4) the DOE contractor responsible for the SDF PA is open to receiving technical assistance from the CBP. A review of the current (SRR Closure & Waste Disposal Authority 2009) and …

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