This report compares and analyzes three different categories of loans issued in different time periods in the program's history: "traditional" loans issued between 1974 and 2005, in 2007, and between 2009 and 2011 (TCDLs); "special" (SCDLs) loans issued in 2005-2006 following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita; and loans issued under unique provisions in 2008 (2008 CDLs).

This report provides links to selected authoritative resources related to cybersecurity issues, including: legislation, hearings in the 112th Congress, data and statistics, and cybersecurity glossaries.

In the 112th Congress, issues of concern related to the trade and economic relationship with Mexico have involved mostly economic conditions in Mexico, issues related to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the effect of NAFTA, and Mexican migration to the United States. This report provides an overview of Mexico's free trade agreements, its motivations for trade liberalization and entering into free trade agreements, and some of the issues Mexico faces in addressing its economic challenges.

This report presents current data on estimated ownership of U.S. Treasury securities and major holders of federal debt by country. Federal debt represents the accumulated balance of borrowing by the federal government.

This report covers the recent background of the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, since its independence from Portugal in May 2002. It discusses the many serious challenges the country faces as it seeks to establish and deepen a stable democracy and develop its economy.

This report covers the dispute between the U.S with its neighbors Canada and Mexico, who say that the recent country-of-origin labeling (COOL) system implemented by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is unfair and does not meet its original objectives. This dispute was brought before the WTO dispute panel and found to be valid. The report ends with a discussion of options for the U.S. in regards to modifying COOL to follow WTO rulings.

This report discusses the creation of the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS (HOPWA) Program, which was created to alleviate the difficulties that many individuals with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) have finding affordable, stable housing. It also looks at distributions of HOPWA funds, including eligibility and eligible uses for such funding.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From 2003 through 2011, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) made more than $46 billion in direct payments to farmers and other producers. These producers planted varying percentages of acres that qualified for payments based on their historical planting yields and designated payment rates (qualifying acres). Cumulatively, USDA paid $10.6 billion—almost one-fourth of total direct payments made from 2003 through 2011—to producers who did not, in a given year, grow the crop associated with their qualifying acres, which they are allowed to do. About 2,300 farms (0.15 percent of farms receiving direct payments) reported all their land as “fallow,” and producers did not plant any crops on this land for each year for the last 5 years, from 2007 through 2011; in 2011, these producers received almost $3 million in direct payments."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The number of Regulation A offerings filed and qualified (that is, cleared) by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has declined significantly after peaking in fiscal years 1997 and 1998, respectively. In particular, offerings filed since 1997 decreased from 116 in 1997 to 19 in 2011. Similarly, the number of qualified offerings dropped from 57 in 1998 to 1 in 2011. Securities attorneys GAO interviewed suggested that the decrease in filings after 1997 could be attributed to a number of factors, including the increased attractiveness of Regulation D. The National Securities Markets Improvement Act of 1996 preempted state registration requirements for other categories of securities including certain Regulation D offerings, which are also exempt from SEC registration. In contrast, Regulation A offerings are generally subject to state securities laws and must go through a federal filing and review process. In recent years, businesses have used Regulation D and registered public offerings to a greater extent than Regulation A."

This report summarizes the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and the legal challenges it has faced. The report contains information on various lawsuits due to the ACA and provides the reasoning behind them as Congress violating its enumerated powers in the constitution. Moreover, the report covers the challenges of implementing the law.

There is growing demand from the industrial and research communities for high gradient, compact RF accelerating structures. The commonly used S-band SLAC-type structure has an operating gradient of only about 20 MV/m; while much higher operating gradients (up to 70 MV/m) have been recently achieved in X-band, as a consequence of the substantial efforts by the Next Linear Collider (NLC) collaboration to push the performance envelope of RF structures towards higher accelerating gradients. Currently however, high power X-band RF sources are not readily available for industrial applications. Therefore, RadiaBeam Technologies is developing a short, standing wave S-band structure which uses frequency scaled NLC design concepts to achieve up to a 50 MV/m operating gradient at 2856 MHz. The design and prototype commissioning plans are presented.

A Mono-Energetic Gamma-Ray (MEGa-Ray) Compton scattering light source is being developed at LLNL in collaboration with the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The electron beam for the Compton scattering interaction will be generated by a X-band RF gun and a X-band LINAC at the frequency of 11.424 GHz. High power RF in excess of 500 MW is needed to accelerate the electrons to energy of 250 MeV or greater for the interaction. Two high power klystron amplifiers, each capable of generating 50 MW, 1.5 msec pulses, will be the main high power RF sources for the system. These klystrons will be powered by state of the art solid-state high voltage modulators. A RF pulse compressor, similar to the SLED II pulse compressor, will compress the klystron output pulse with a power gain factor of five. For compactness consideration, we are looking at a folded waveguide setup. This will give us 500 MW at output of the compressor. The compressed pulse will then be distributed to the RF gun and to six traveling wave accelerator sections. Phase and amplitude control are located at the RF gun input and additional control points along the LINAC to allow for parameter control during operation. This …

The Linac Group at SLAC is actively pursuing a broad range of R&D to improve the reliability and reduce the cost of the L-band (1.3 GHz) rf system proposed for the ILC linacs. Current activities include the long-term evaluation of a 120 kV Marx Modulator driving a 10 MW Multi-Beam Klystron, design of a second-generation Marx Modulator, testing of a sheet-beam gun and beam transport system for a klystron, construction of an rf distribution system with remotely-adjustable power tapoffs, and development of a system to combine the power from many klystrons in low-loss circular waveguide where it would be tapped-off periodically to power groups of cavities. This paper surveys progress during the past few years.

This is the final report from SDSC and UC Davis on DE-FC02-01ER25486, Scientific Data Management Integrated Software Infrastructure Center (SDM/ISIC): Scientific Process Automation (SPA).

A CERN-SLAC-KEK collaboration on high gradient X-band structure research has been established in order to demonstrate the feasibility of the CLIC baseline design for the main linac stably operating at more than 100 MV/m loaded accelerating gradient. Several prototype CLIC structures were successfully fabricated and high power tested. They operated at 105 MV/m with a breakdown rate that meets the CLIC linear collider specifications of < 5 x 10{sup -7}/pulse/m. This paper summarizes the fabrication technologies including the mechanical design, precision machining, chemical cleaning, diffusion bonding as well as vacuum baking and all related assembly technologies. Also, the tolerances control, tuning and RF characterization will be discussed.

SLAC participates in the U.S. High Gradient collaboration whose charter includes basic studies of rf breakdown properties in accelerating structures. These studies include experiments with different materials and construction methods for single cell standing wave accelerating structures. The most commonly used method of joining cells of such structures is the high temperature bonding and/or brazing in hydrogen and/or vacuum. These high temperature processes may not be suitable for some of the new materials that are under consideration. We propose to build structures from cells with an rf choke, taking the cell-to-cell junction out of the electromagnetic field region. These cells may be clamped together in a vacuum enclosure, the choke joint ensuring continuity of rf currents. Next, we propose a structure with a choke joint in a high gradient cell and a view port which may allow us microscopic, in-situ observation of the metal surface during high power tests. And third, we describe the design of a TM01 choke flange for these structures.

This section deals with multiphysics radiation hydrodynamics codes used to design and simulate targets in the ignition campaign. These topics encompass all the physical processes they model, and include consideration of any approximations necessary due to finite computer resources. The section focuses on what developments would have the highest impact on reducing uncertainties in modeling most relevant to experimental observations. It considers how the ICF codes should be employed in the ignition campaign. This includes a consideration of how the experiments can be best structured to test the physical models the codes employ.

The 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) yields positive benefits for Pennsylvania homeowners. Moving to the 2012 IECC from Chapter 11 of the 2009 International Residential Code (IRC) is cost-effective over a 30-year life cycle. On average, Pennsylvania homeowners will save $8,632 with the 2012 IECC. Each year, the reduction to energy bills will significantly exceed increased mortgage costs. After accounting for up-front costs and additional costs financed in the mortgage, homeowners should see net positive cash flows (i.e., cumulative savings exceeding cumulative cash outlays) in 1 year for the 2012 IECC. Average annual energy savings are $515 for the 2012 IECC.

In support of Compton scattering gamma-ray source efforts at LLNL, a multi-bunch test stand is being developed to investigate accelerator optimization for future upgrades. This test stand will enable work to explore the science and technology paths required to boost the current 10 Hz monoenergetic gamma-ray (MEGa-Ray) technology to an effective repetition rate exceeding 1 kHz, potentially increasing the average gamma-ray brightness by two orders of magnitude. Multiple bunches must be of exceedingly high quality to produce narrow-bandwidth gamma-rays. Modeling efforts will be presented, along with plans for a multi-bunch test stand at LLNL. The test stand will consist of a 5.5 cell X-band rf photoinjector, single accelerator section, and beam diagnostics. The photoinjector will be a high gradient standing wave structure, featuring a dual feed racetrack coupler. The accelerator will increase the electron energy so that the emittance can be measured using quadrupole scanning techniques. Multi-bunch diagnostics will be developed so that the beam quality can be measured and compared with theory. Design will be presented with modeling simulations, and layout plans.

The research agenda of this project are: (1) Modeling of preferential transport from mesoscale to macroscale; (2) Modeling of fast flow in narrow fractures in porous media; (3) Pseudo-parabolic Models of Dynamic Capillary Pressure; (4) Adaptive computational upscaling of flow with inertia from porescale to mesoscale; (5) Adaptive modeling of nonlinear coupled systems; and (6) Adaptive modeling and a-posteriori estimators for coupled systems with heterogeneous data.

The beam for FACET (Facility for Advanced aCcelerator Experimental Tests) at SLAC requires an energy-time correlation ('chirp') along the linac, so it can be compressed in two chicanes, one at the midpoint in sector 10 and one W-shaped chicane just before the FACET experimental area. The induced correlation has the opposite sign to the typical used for BNS damping, and therefore any orbit variations away from the center kick the tail of the beam more than the head, causing a shear in the beam and emittance growth. Any dispersion created along the linac has similar effects due to the high (>1.2% rms) energy spread necessary for compression. The initial huge emittances could be reduced by a factor of 10, but were still bigger than expected by a factor of 2-3. Normalized emittance of 3 {micro}m-rad in Sector 2 blew up to 150 {micro}m-rad in Sector 11 but could be reduced to about 6-12 {micro}m-rad, for the vertical plane although the results were not very stable. Investigating possible root causes for this, we found locations where up to 10 mm dispersion was created along the linac, which were finally verified with strong steering and up to 7 mm settling of the …

This document provides details of the contributions made by NIST to the Collaboratory for Multiscale Chemical Science (CMCS) project. In particular, efforts related to the provision of data (and software in support of that data) relevant to the combustion pilot project are described.

The 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) yields positive benefits for Nevada homeowners. Moving to the 2012 IECC from the 2009 IECC is cost-effective over a 30-year life cycle. On average, Nevada homeowners will save $4,736 with the 2012 IECC. Each year, the reduction to energy bills will significantly exceed increased mortgage costs. After accounting for up-front costs and additional costs financed in the mortgage, homeowners should see net positive cash flows (i.e., cumulative savings exceeding cumulative cash outlays) in 2 years for the 2012 IECC. Average annual energy savings are $360 for the 2012 IECC.

None