The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including Osama bin Laden. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security.

The V-22 Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft, capable of vertical or short take-off and landing, with forwarding flight like a conventional fixed-wing aircraft. The MV-22 is the Marine Corps’ top aviation priority. Marine Corps leaders believe that Osprey will provide them an unprecedented capability to quickly and decisively project power from well over the horizon. The Air Force’s CV-22 version will be used for special operations. Army officials have testified that the service has no requirement for the V-22, but the Navy has expressed interest in purchasing MV-22s for a variety of missions.

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In the new context of Fidel’s transfer of power, there are two broad policy approaches to contend with political change in Cuba: a stay-the-course or status-quo approach that would maintain the U.S. dual-track policy of isolating the Cuban government while providing support to the Cuban people; and an approach aimed at influencing the Cuban government and Cuban society through increased contact and engagement.

The United States and its allies are helping Afghanistan emerging from more than 22 years of warfare, although substantial risk to Afghan stability remains. Before the U.S. military campaign against the orthodox Islamist Taliban movement began on October 7, 2001, Afghanistan had been mired in conflict since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The defeat of the Taliban has enabled the United States and its coalition partners to send forces throughout Afghanistan to search for Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters and leaders that remain at large, including Osama bin Laden. As the war against remaining Al Qaeda and Taliban elements winds down, the United States is shifting its military focus toward stabilizing the interim government, including training a new Afghan national army, and supporting the international security force (ISAF) that is helping the new government provide security.

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Afghanistan's political transition was completed with the convening of a parliament in December 2005, but since then insurgent threats to Afghanistan's government have escalated to the point that some experts are questioning the future of U.S. stabilization efforts. Afghan citizens are enjoying new personal freedoms that were forbidden under the Taliban. Women are participating in economic and political life. U.S. stabilization measures focus on strengthening the central government and its security forces and on promoting reconstructing while combating the renewed insurgent challenge.

The V-22 Osprey is a tilt-rotor aircraft, capable of vertical or short take off and landing, with forward flight like a conventional fixed-wing aircraft. The MV-22 is the Marine Corps' top aviation priority. Marine Corps leaders believe that the Osprey will provide them an unprecedented capability to quickly and decisively project power from well over the horizon. The V-22 program has been under development for over 25 years. Safety and maintenance concerns have arisen over this period. Supporters tout the V-22's potential operational capabilities relative to the helicopters it will replace. It will fly faster, farther, and with more payload than the currently used machinery. Detractors tend to emphasize the V-22's long development schedule, its three fatal accidents, and its high cost relative to the helicopters it will replace.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The importance and widespread use of federal information makes its accuracy imperative. The Information Quality Act (IQA) required that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issue guidelines to ensure the quality of information disseminated by federal agencies by fiscal year 2003. GAO was asked to (1) assess OMB's role in helping agencies implement IQA; (2) identify the number, type, and source of IQA correction requests agencies received; and (3) examine if IQA has adversely affected agencies' overall operations and, in particular, rulemaking processes. In response, GAO interviewed OMB and agency officials and reviewed agency IQA guidelines, related documents, and Web sites."

This report analyzes the establishment and organizational requirements set forth in the presidential mandate, and its relationship to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA).

This report is a guide to one of the regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development, the Judiciary, District of Columbia of the House Committee on Appropriations, and by the Subcommittee on Transportation, Treasury, the Judiciary, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies of the Senate Committee on Appropriations. It summarizes the current legislative status of the bill, its scope, major issues, funding levels, and related legislative activity.

This report mainly discuss about the Summary of Supreme Court Decisions of the 2005-2006 Term.

This report consists of career and technological education with selected changes made by P.L. 109-270.

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This report is on Asbestos Litigation: Prospects for Legislative Resolution.

In order to study the molecular structure and dynamics of liquid water with soft x-ray probes, samples with nanoscale dimensions are needed. This paper describes a simple method for preparing nanofluidic water cells. The idea is to confine a thin layer of water between two silicon nitride windows. The windows are 1 mm x 1 mm and 0.5 mm x 0.5 mm in size and have a thickness of 150 nm. The thickness of the water layer was measured experimentally by probing the infrared spectrum of water in the cells with a Fourier Transform InfraRed (FTIR) apparatus and from soft x-ray static measurements at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Water layers ranging from 10 nm to more than 2 {micro}m were observed. Evidence for changes in the water structure compared to bulk water is observed in the ultrathin cells.

Recent testing has identified the presence of hydrogen and oxygen in MIS Item 011589A. This isolated observation has effectuated concern regarding the potential for flammable gas mixtures in containers in the storage inventory. This study examines the known physicochemical characteristics of MIS Item 011589A and queries the ISP Database for items that are most similar or potentially similar. Items identified as most similar are believed to have the highest probability of being chemically and structurally identical to MIS Item 011589A. Items identified as potentially like MIS Item 011589A have some attributes in common, have the potential to generate gases, but have a lower probability of having similar gas generating characteristics. MIS Item 011589A is an oxide that was generated prior to 1990 at Rocky Flats in Building 707. It was associated with foundry processing and had an actinide assay of approximately 77%. Prompt gamma analysis of MIS Item 011589A indicated the presence of chloride, fluorine, magnesium, sodium, and aluminum. Queries based on MIS representation classification and process of origin were applied to the ISP Database. Evaluation criteria included binning classification (i.e., innocuous, pressure, or pressure and corrosion), availability of prompt gamma analyses, presence of chlorine and magnesium, percentage of chlorine …

Our work for this DOE funded project includes: (1) measurements of the kinetics and mechanism of the gas-phase oxidation reactions of the aromatic hydrocarbons initiated by OH; (2) measurements of aerosol formation from the aromatic hydrocarbons; and (3) theoretical studies to elucidate the OH-toluene reaction mechanism using quantum-chemical and rate theories.

This report covers the period from Oct. 2002 to Sep. 2004 when Old Dominion University (ODU) was the lead institution for the TOPS ISIC, until in Oct. 2004 Columbia University replaced ODU as the lead institution. The TOPS members from ODU focused on various aspects of the linear and nonlinear solver infrastructure required by the partial differential equations simulation codes, working directly with SciDAC teams from the Fusion Energy Sciences program: the Center for Extended agnetohydrodynamic Modeling (CEMM) at Princeton, and with the Center for Magnetic Reconnection Studies (CMRS) at University of New Hampshire. With CEMM we worked with their MHD simulation code, called M3D, which is semi-implicit, requiring linear solves but no onlinear solves. We contributed several improvements to their current semi-implicit code. Among these was the use of multilevel reconditioning, which provides optimal scaling. This was done through the multigrid preconditioner available in Hypre, another major solver package available in TOPS. We also provided them direct solver functionality for their linear solves since they may be required for more accurate solutions in some regimes. With the CMRS group, we implemented a fully implicit parallel magnetic reconnection simulation code, built on top of PETSc. Our first attempt was a …

We report a measurement of the B {yields} {pi}{ell}{nu} branching fraction based on 211 fb{sup -1} of data collected with the BABAR detector. We use samples of B{sup 0} and B{sup +} mesons tagged by a second B meson reconstructed in a semileptonic or hadronic decay, and combine the results assuming isospin symmetry to obtain {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup -}{ell}{sup +}{nu}) = (1.33 {+-} 0.17{sub stat} {+-} 0.11{sub syst}) x 10{sup -4}. We determine the magnitude of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix element |V{sub ub}| by combining the partial branching fractions measured in ranges of the momentum transfer squared and theoretical calculations of the form factor. Using a recent lattice QCD calculation, we find |{sub ub}| = (4.5 {+-} 0.5{sub stat} {+-} 0.3{sub syst} {sub -0.5}{sup +0.7}FF) x 10{sup -3}, where the last error is due to the normalization of the form factor.

The authors present a measurement of the branching fraction and time-dependent CP asymmetry of B{sup 0} {yields} {rho}{sup 0}K{sup 0}. The results are obtained from a data sample of 227 x 10{sup 6} {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} decays collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. From a time-dependent maximum likelihood fit yielding 111 {+-} 19 signal events they find {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {rho}{sup 0}K{sup 0}) = (4.9 {+-} 0.8 {+-} 0.9) x 10{sup -6}, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. They report the measurement of the CP parameters S{sub {rho}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}} = 0.20 {+-} 0.52 {+-} 0.24 and C{sub {rho}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}} = 0.64 {+-} 0.41 {+-} 0.20.

The Sivers mechanism for the single-spin asymmetry in unpolarized lepton scattering from a transversely polarized nucleon is driven by the orbital angular momentum carried by its quark and gluon constituents, combined with QCD final-state interactions. Both quark and gluon mechanisms can generate such a single-spin asymmetry, though only the quark mechanism can explain the small single-spin asymmetry measured by the COMPASS collaboration on the deuteron, suggesting the gluon mechanism is small relative to the quark mechanism. We detail empirical studies through which the gluon and quark orbital angular momentum contributions, quark-flavor by quark-flavor, can be elucidated.

The initial stage of the oxidation of Ge(111) surfaces etched by HF, HCl and HBr solutions is systematically studied using synchrotron radiation photoelectron spectroscopy (SR-PES). We perform controlled experiments to differentiate the effects of different oxidation factors. SR-PES results show that both moisture and oxygen contribute to the oxidation of the surfaces; however, they play different roles in the oxidation process. Moisture effectively replaces the hydrogen and halogen termination layers with hydroxyl (OH), but hardly oxidizes the surfaces further. On the other hand, dry oxygen does not replace the termination layers, but breaks the Ge-Ge back bonds and oxidizes the substrates with the aid of moisture. In addition, room light enhances the oxidation rate significantly.