This report provides statistics on the current numbers and roles of African American Members of Congress as well as historical data on African American Members of Congress.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is used to produce certain types of plastic. Containers made of these plastics may expose people to small amounts of BPA in food and water. Some animal experiments have found that fetal and infant development may be harmed by small amounts of BPA, but scientists disagree about the value of the animal studies for predicting harmful effects in people. This report discusses this issue and relevant legislation, as well as inquiries into studies currently underway to determine the true harm inherent in BPA and the degree to which people are regularly exposed to BPA.

This report addresses relevant policy questions in current U.S.-China relations, discusses trends and key legislation in the current Congress and provides a chronology of developments and high-level exchanges.

This paper presents an approach to comparing computer run time of building simulation programs. The computing run time of a simulation program depends on several key factors, including the calculation algorithm and modeling capabilities of the program, the run period, the simulation time step, the complexity of the energy models, the run control settings, and the software and hardware configurations of the computer that is used to make the simulation runs. To demonstrate the approach, simulation runs are performed for several representative DOE-2.1E and EnergyPlus energy models. The computer run time of these energy models are then compared and analyzed.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) is one of the largest landholding agencies in the federal government with more than 577,500 facilities at 5,300 sites on over 32 million acres. GAO has previously reported that the management of DOD-held real property is a high-risk area, in part because of deteriorating facilities and problems with excess and underutilized property. To address these problems, DOD has developed a multipart strategy involving base realignment and closure, housing privatization, and demolition of facilities that are no longer needed. DOD is also leasing out underutilized real property to gain resources to repair or construct facilities. The House Armed Services Committee Report on the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008 directed the Comptroller General to provide an analysis of DOD's use of its land use planning authorities. Specifically, GAO examined (1) how DOD has used its authorities; (2) the reasons why land, buildings, and facilities on DOD installations may appear to be underutilized or not utilized; and (3) the policies and procedures used by the services to respond to requests by other federal agencies for space at a DOD installation. GAO …

This report discusses the Department of Defense (DOD) fuel costs in Iraq. It analyzes the disparity between the higher price of fuel supplied to the United States Central Command compared to Iraq's civilian population that has been a point of contention.

Since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the average price of fuels purchased for military operations in Iraq has steadily increased. The disparity between the higher price of fuel supplied to the United States Central Command compared to Iraq's civilian population has been a point of contention. Several factors contribute to the disparity, including the different types of fuel used by the military compared to Iraqi civilians, the Iraqi government's price subsidies, and the level pricing that the DOD's Defense Logistics Agency charges for military customers around the world. The Iraqi government has been pressured to reduce its fuel subsidy and black market fuel prices remain higher than the official subsidized price.

The need for a magnet circuit discharge system, in order to protect the magnet HTS leads during a power failure, has been discussed in recent MICE reports [1], [2]. In order to rapidly discharge a magnet, one has to put enough resistance across the lead. The resistance in this case is varistor that is put across the magnet in the event of a power outage. The resistance consists of several diodes, which act as constant voltage resistors and the resistance of the cables connecting the magnets in the circuit to each other and to the power supply. In order for the rapid discharge system to work without quenching the magnets, the voltage across the magnets must be low enough so that the diodes in the quench protection circuit don't fire and cause the magnet current to bypass the superconducting coils. It is proposed that six rapid discharge varistors be installed across the three magnet circuits the power the tracker solenoids, which are connected in series. The focusing magnets, which are also connected in series would have three varistors (one for each magnet). The coupling magnets would have a varistor for each magnet. The peak voltage that is allowed per varistor …

In simulations of turbulent plasma transport due to long wavelength, (k⊥pi ≤ 1), electrostatic drift-type instabilities we find that a nonlinear upshift of the effective threshold persists. This `Dimits shift' represents the difference between the linear threshold, at the onset of instability, and the nonlinear threshold, where transport increases suddenly as the driving temperature gradient is increased. As the drive increases, the magnitudes of turbulent eddies and zonal ows grow until the zonal flows become nonlinearly unstable to 'tertiary' modes and their sheared ows no longer grow fast enough to strongly limit eddy size. The tertiary mode threshold sets the effective nonlinear threshold for the heat transport, and the Dimits shift arises when this occurs at a zonal flow magnitude greater than that needed to limit transport near the linear threshold. Nextgeneration tokamaks will likely benefit from the higher effective threshold for turbulent transport, and transport models should incorporate suitable corrections to linear thresholds. These gyrokinetic simulations are more realistic than previous reports of a Dimits shift because they include nonadiabatic electron dynamics, strong collisional damping of zonal flows, and finite electron and ion collisionality together with realistic shaped magnetic geometry. Reversing previously reported results based on idealized adiabatic electrons, …

This report provides a brief overview of recent executive branch reorganization actions and related management initiatives. It reviews the relevant plans and preparations of President-elect Barack Obama as the new Administration transitions to assuming management of the executive branch. Briefly examined, as well, are the organization and management efforts of the most recent regimes.

The increased presence of foreign students in graduate science and engineering programs and in the scientific workforce has been and continues to be of concern to some in the scientific community. Enrollment of U.S. citizens in graduate science and engineering programs has not kept pace with that of foreign students in those programs. Many in the scientific community maintain that in order to compete with countries that are rapidly expanding their scientific and technological capabilities, the country needs to bring to the United States those whose skills will benefit society and will enable us to compete in the new-technology based global economy. This report analyzes this issue in detail and includes discussion of related legislation.

The discovery of molecular metal-metal bonds has been of fundamental importance to the understanding of chemical bonding. For the actinides, examples of unsupported metal-metal bonds are relatively uncommon, consisting of Cp{sub 3}U-SnPh{sub 3}, and several actinide-transition metal complexes. Traditionally, bonding in the f-elements has been described as electrostatic; however, elucidating the degree of covalency is a subject of recent research. In carbon monoxide complexes of the trivalent uranium metallocenes, decreased {nu}{sub CO} values relative to free CO suggest that the U(III) atom acts as a {pi}-donor. Ephritikhine and coworkers have demonstrated that {pi}-accepting ligands can differentiate trivalent lanthanide and actinide ions, an effect that renders this chemistry of interest in the context of nuclear waste separation technology.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2005, GAO placed the issue of information sharing for homeland security on its high-risk list of federal functions needing broad-based transformation and since then has monitored the government's progress in resolving barriers to sharing. This testimony discusses three key information sharing efforts: (1) the actions that have been taken to guide the design and implementation of the Information Sharing Environment (ISE) and to report on its progress, (2) the characteristics of state and local fusion centers and the extent to which federal efforts are helping to address some of the challenges centers reported, and (3) the progress made in developing streamlined policies and procedures for designating, marking, safeguarding, and disseminating sensitive but unclassified information. This testimony is based on GAO's products issued from March 2006 through July 2008 and selected updates conducted in July 2008."

This report discusses the different kinds of intellectual property rights (IPR); forms of IPR infringement; importance of IPR to the U.S. economy; estimated losses associated with IPR infringement; organizational structure of IPR protection in multilateral, regional, bilateral; U.S. government agencies involved with IPR and trade; and issues for Congress regarding IPR and international trade.

No firms have been sanctioned under the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), and a GAO study in December 2007 said that the effects of ISA and other U.S. sanctions on Iran's economy are "difficult to determine." However, with Iran under increasing U.N. and other diplomatic pressure, many foreign firms now seem hesitant to finalize investment deals with Iran. In the 110th Congress, several bills, including the House-passed H.R. 1400 would add ISA provisions.

This document provides an update of the status of stacks on the Hanford Site and the potential radionuclide emissions, i.e., emissions that could occur with no control devices in place. This review shows the calculations that determined whether the total effective dose equivalent (TEDE) received by the maximum public receptor as a result of potential emissions from any one of these stacks would exceed 0.1 millirem/year. Such stacks require continuous monitoring of the effluent, or other monitoring, to meet the requirements of Washington Administrative code (WAC) 246-247-035(1)(a)(ii) and WAC 246-247-075(1), -(2), and -(6). This revised update reviews the potential-to-emit (PTE) calculations of 31 stacks for Fluor Hanford, Inc. Of those 31 stacks, 11 have the potential to cause a TEDE greater than 0.1 mrem/year.

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This report discusses the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171) that authorized an array of agricultural, rural, and nutrition programs. Many provisions of the 2002 farm bill were scheduled to expire in 2007. If a new farm bill or year-long extension were not enacted before the 2008 harvest, permanent law would have taken effect.

This report provides background information regarding the 2002 farm bill (P.L. 107-171), and discusses discretionary programs in the farm bill that include some conservation programs, federal farm loan programs, rural development programs, agricultural research, some foreign food aid, and other programs.

This report describes the Life Extension Program (LEP), which is meant to replace and maintain aging nuclear warheads. It includes extensive background information, program developments, fiscal year actions from 2006-2009, various policy options and issues, and supplemental information about the topic.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In January 2007, the President announced a new U.S. strategy to stem the violence in Iraq and help the Iraqi government foster conditions for national reconciliation. In The New Way Forward, the Administration articulated near-term goals to achieve over a 12- to 18-month period and reasserted the end state for Iraq: a unified, democratic, federal Iraq that can govern, defend, and sustain itself and is an ally in the war on terror. To support this strategy, the United States increased its military presence and financial commitments for Iraq operations. This testimony discusses (1) progress in meeting key security, legislative, and economic goals of The New Way Forward; and (2) past and current U.S. strategies for Iraq and the need for an updated strategy. GAO reviewed documents and interviewed officials from U.S. agencies, MNF-I, the UN, and the Iraqi government. GAO also had staff stationed in Baghdad. Since 2003, GAO has issued about 140 Iraq-related products, which provided baseline information for this assessment."

This report discusses the history of Sudan's civil unrest and the subsequent crisis in Darfur, as well as United Nations and United States aid and peacekeeping efforts, and current related policy under the Obama Administration.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a municipality may adopt particular subdivision ordinances applicable to its extraterritorial jurisdiction and whether a county may do so in its unincorporated areas (RQ-0664-GA)