A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. government efforts to protect and enforce intellectual property (IP) rights are crucial to preventing billions of dollars in losses and mitigating health and safety risks from trade in counterfeit and pirated goods. These efforts are coordinated through the National Intellectual Property Law Enforcement Coordination Council (NIPLECC), created by Congress in 1999, and the Strategy for Targeting Organized Piracy (STOP), initiated by the Bush administration in 2004. This report describes the evolution of NIPLECC and STOP, assesses the extent to which STOP addresses the desirable characteristics of an effective national strategy, and evaluates the challenges to implementing a strategy for protecting and enforcing IP rights. GAO examined relevant documents, interviewed agency and industry officials, and assessed STOP using criteria previously developed by GAO."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In March 2003, the Department of State (State) awarded a sole-source contract to EmbSEC, a Virginia limited liability corporation, for work at U.S. embassies. The contract currently has a ceiling price of $354 million. The contractor is required to install and maintain technical security equipment, such as alarms, cameras, and controlled-access equipment; establish X-ray capability for special projects; and maintain and repair physical security products. The contractor also procures equipment and materials and operates the warehouse where they are stored. EmbSEC was created as a joint venture, mentor/protege partnership under the Small Business Administration's (SBA) 8(a) business development program. A joint venture in the 8(a) program is an agreement between an 8(a) participant and one or more businesses to work together on a specific 8(a) contract. SBA regulations state that the purpose of the mentor/protege relationship is to enhance the capabilities of the protege and to improve its ability to successfully compete for contracts. The EmbSEC joint venture is comprised of RDR, Inc., the mentor, and BP International (BPI), the protege, an 8(a) firm at the time the contract was awarded. State had awarded 8(a) contracts to RDR …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In March 2003, the Department of State (State) awarded a sole-source contract to EmbSEC, a Virginia limited liability corporation, for work at U.S. embassies. The contract currently has a ceiling price of $354 million. The contractor is required to install and maintain technical security equipment, such as alarms, cameras, and controlled-access equipment; establish X-ray capability for special projects; and maintain and repair physical security products. The contractor also procures equipment and materials and operates the warehouse where they are stored. EmbSEC was created as a joint venture, mentor/protege partnership under the Small Business Administration's (SBA) 8(a) business development program. A joint venture in the 8(a) program is an agreement between an 8(a) participant and one or more businesses to work together on a specific 8(a) contract. SBA regulations state that the purpose of the mentor/protege relationship is to enhance the capabilities of the protege and to improve its ability to successfully compete for contracts. The EmbSEC joint venture is comprised of RDR, Inc., the mentor, and BP International (BPI), the protege, an 8(a) firm at the time the contract was awarded. The terms of the EmbSEC joint venture …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over 25 years ago, Congress transformed federal freight rail transportation policy. At that time, after almost 100 years of economic regulation, the railroad industry was in serious economic decline, with rising costs, losses, and bankruptcies. In response, Congress passed the Railroad Revitalization and Regulatory Reform Act of 1976 and the Staggers Rail Act of 1980. Together, these pieces of legislation substantially deregulated the railroad industry. Since the passage of the Staggers Rail Act in 1980, we have issued several reports on the freight railroad industry. In October 2006, we issued our most recent report on the freight rail industry. The objectives of this report were to determine (1) the changes that have occurred in the freight railroad industry since the enactment of the Staggers Rail Act, including changes in rail rates and competition in the industry; (2) the actions STB has taken to address concerns about competition and captivity and any alternative approaches that could be considered to address remaining concerns; and (3) the projections for freight traffic demand over the next 15 to 25 years, the freight railroad industry's ability to meet that demand, and potential federal …

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This report discusses potential changes to the Fair Labor Standards Act that may occur during the 109th Congress.

This report discusses India's nonproliferation record and reported transfers to Iran of limited nuclear, chemical, and missile-related materials. Members of Congress have questioned whether India's cooperation with Iran might affect U.S. and other efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

This document builds on the discussion notes from September 21, 2006. It provides a summary of the ideas relating to the scenario bank tables and their associated requirements. Two conceptual groupings were identified for the contents requirements of the scenario bank. The first, called ProjectTemplate, shall consist of <Project, Scenarios, and Miscellaneous Files> groups. The second, ProjectArchive, shall consist of groups of <Project, Scenarios, Results, and Miscellaneous Files>. The figure below illustrates the multiplicity of the associations between the different tables, with color coding used to distinguish between current MESA (brown) and USDA (light green) requirements. Scenario bank tables are shown in black with their general contents specified within the box. The metadata associated with each table is expected to include database key information as well as relevant timestamps. Each File is expected to be a file with an arbitrary format.

This report provides background information on the history of Canadian waste imports, reviews recent developments, and discusses issues raised by the voluntary agreement and proposed legislation.

Alloy 22 is a nickel base alloy highly resistant to all forms of corrosion. In very aggressive conditions (e.g. hot concentrated chloride containing brines) Alloy 22 could suffer localized attack, namely pitting and crevice corrosion. Chloride ion is known to be the most detrimental aggressive agent for Alloy 22 and is able to promote crevice corrosion when tight crevices exist in hot chloride containing solutions of different concentrations. Nitrate ion is an effective inhibitor of chloride induced crevice corrosion when present in a high enough [NO{sub 3}{sup -}]/[Cl{sup -}] ratio. The occurrence of localized corrosion in a given environment is governed by the values of the critical potential (E{sub crit}) for crevice corrosion and the corrosion potential (E{sub corr}) that the alloy may establish in the studied environment. If E{sub corr} is equal or higher than E{sub crit}, localized corrosion may be expected. This paper discusses the evolution of E{sub corr} and corrosion rate (CR) of Alloy 22 specimens in 18 m CaCl{sub 2} + 9 m Ca(NO{sub 3}){sub 2} and 18 m CaCl{sub 2} + 0.9 m Ca(NO{sub 3}){sub 2} brines at 155 C. Two types of specimens were used, polished as-welded (ASW) creviced and non-creviced specimens and as-welded …

The resistance of Alloy 22 (N06022) to localized corrosion, mainly crevice corrosion, has been extensively investigated in the last few years. However, the behavior of Alloy 22 in concentrated aqueous solutions that may simulate concentrated ground waters was not fully understood. Systematic electrochemical tests using cyclic potentiodynamic polarization as well as the Tsujikawa-Hisamatsu electrochemical method were performed to determine the crevice corrosion susceptibility of Alloy 22 in simulated concentrated water (SCW), simulated acidified water (SAW) and basic saturated water (BSW). Results show that Alloy 22 is immune to crevice corrosion in SCW and SAW but may suffer crevice corrosion initiation in BSW. Results also show that in a naturally aerated environment, the corrosion potential would never reach the critical potential for crevice corrosion initiation.

Fano Effect measurements are the key to direct observation of the Kondo or spin shielding intrinsic to models of electron correlation. The Fano Effect is the observation of spin polarized photoelectron emission from NONMAGNETIC materials, under chirally selective excitation, such as circularly polarized photons. Below are described three spectrometers, with which Fano Effects measurements have been made.

Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) performed pilot-scale hydraulic/chemical testing of spherical resorcinol formaldehyde (RF) ion exchange (IX) resin for the River Protection Project-Hanford Tank Waste Treatment & Immobilization Plant (WTP) Project. The RF resin cycle testing was conducted in two pilot-scale IX columns, 1/4 and 1/2 scale. A total of twenty-three hydraulic/chemical cycles were successfully completed on the spherical RF resin. Seven of the cycles were completed in the 12 inch IX Column and sixteen cycles were completed in the 24 inch IX Column. Hydraulic testing showed that the permeability of the RF resin remained essentially constant, with no observed trend in the reduction of the permeability as the number of cycles increased. The permeability during the pilot-scale testing was 2 1/2 times better than the design requirements of the WTP full-scale system. The permeability of the resin bed was uniform with respect to changes in bed depth. Upflow Regeneration and Simulant Introduction in the IX columns revealed another RF resin benefit; negligible radial pressures to the column walls from the swelling of resin beads. In downflow of the Regeneration and Simulant Introduction steps, the resin bed particles pack tightly together and produce higher hydraulic pressures than that found in …

We present the one-step theory of neutron-pickup transfer reactions with {sup 3}He projectiles on {sup 235}U and {sup 238}U. We find all the neutron eigenstates in a deformed potential, and use those in a given energy range for ({sup 3}He, {alpha}) DWBA pickup calculations to find the spin and parity distributions of the residual target nuclei. A simple smoothing convolution is used to take into account the spreading width of the single-neutron hole states into the more complicated compound nuclear states. We assume that the initial target is an even-even rotor, but can take into account spectator neutrons outside such a rotor by recombining their spin and parity at the end of the calculations.

The benchmarking of theoretical modeling is crucial to the ultimate determination of the nature of the electronic structure of Pu. Examples of experimental techniques used for cross checking state of the art calculations will be given.

Recent work on closed string tachyon condensation suggests the existence of a 'nothing state' where closed strings and space itself vanish. We consider the evolution of D-branes in such condensation processes, focusing on what happens in the condensate itself. We find evidence that the branes exist in the region; although, generically their apparent mass grows exponentially with time. However, there exist specific branes whose boundary state is unaltered by the tachyon.

Amorphous and partially crystalline WO3 thin films wereprepared by reactive dual magnetron sputtering and successively implantedby erbium ions with a fluence in the range from 7.7 x 1014 to 5 x 1015ions/cm2. The electrical and optical properties were studied as afunction of the film deposition parameters and the ion fluence. Ionimplantation caused a strong decrease of the resistivity, a moderatedecrease of the index of refraction and a moderate increase of theextinction coefficient in the visible and near infrared, while theoptical band gap remained almost unchanged. These effects could belargely ascribed to ion-induced oxygen deficiency. When annealed in air,the already low resistivities of the implanted samples decreased furtherup to 70oC, whereas oxidation, and hence a strong increase of theresistivity, was observed at higher annealing temperatures.

This International Workshop on Orbital and Spin Magnetism of Actinides (IWOSMA) is the third in a series. The first workshop took place in Daresbury in 1999 and the second in Berkeley, CA, USA in 2002. These workshops are informal gatherings of theoreticians and experimentalists addressing the latest issues in the electronic and magnetic properties of actinides. The magnetism of transition metal systems and lanthanide systems is now fairly well understood, where d and f electrons can be described in a delocalized and localized model, respectively. On the other hand, actinide systems do not fit in such a description. The localization of the 5f is in between that of the 3d and 4f and the strong spin-orbit interaction necessitates a relativistic approach. Furthermore, electron correlation effects play a major role in these compounds. Recently, it has become possible to determine element-specific magnetic moments using neutron diffraction and x-ray scattering and absorption. The latter technique makes it even possible to separate the orbital and spin contribution to the total magnetic moment. The results are very interesting but difficult to reproduce with present state-of-art calculations. Not only a very large orbital polarization but also a large magnetic dipole term has been measured in …