The precise measurement of time has been a goal of physicists for centuries. With every new increase in our ability to measure time we have discovered new phenomena. The most advanced clocks available to us currently are atomic clocks that use electronic transitions to track the passage of time. In this proposal, I put forward the framework for the first nuclear clock estimated to be 1000 to 10000 times more precise than the current atomic clocks. This research will explore in detail the atomic nuclear interactions and help perfect and refine current atomic-nuclear interaction models. The realization of a {sup 229}Th nuclear clock will allow tests of cosmology by measuring the change of the fine structure constant as a function of time. The results of these experiments could dramatically alter our view of the universe, its past and future evolution. Precision clocks - with fundamental physics applications - require a long-lived quantum transition (two-level system) that is immune to external perturbations. Nuclear transitions would be better suited than atomic transitions for these applications except that nuclear transitions are typically much higher in energy and therefore cannot be accessed with table-top lasers. There is, however, one promising nuclear transition: the doublet …

When Congress seeks to pass a law, it uses a bill or joint resolution, which must be passed by both houses in identical form, then presented to the President for his approval or disapproval. This report briefly describes this process.

This report is a brief summary of House and Senate procedures for reaching agreement on legislation. It discusses the provisions of House Rule XXII and Senate Rule XXVIII as well as other applicable rules, precedents, and practices. The report focuses on the most common and customary procedures.

This report discusses the following aspects of the congressional appropriations process: the annual appropriations cycle; types of appropriations measures; spending ceilings for appropriations associated with the annual budget resolution; and the relationship between authorization and appropriation measures.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The estimated number of Iraqis who have been internally displaced since February 2006 is about 1.6 million, and numerous Iraqis are in neighboring countries. Tens of thousands of Iraqi families have returned home and the number is slowly increasing. GAO examined (1) conditions in Iraq that pose a challenge to the reintegration of displaced Iraqis, (2) actions the international community is taking to address these conditions and reintegration, and (3) the extent to which the international community has an effective reintegration strategy. GAO analyzed reports and data, met with officials from the U.S. and Iraqi governments and international and nongovernmental organizations, and did fieldwork in Geneva and Baghdad."

This report looks at how Congress has been proactive in helping the economy recover after the 2008-2009 recession, as well as how it can help to keep recessions at bay in the future. Issues include typical post-war recessions, insufficient pace of private spending, and the long-term debt problem.

This report examines the ramifications of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's April 6, 2010 ruling that the FCC could not base ancillary authority to regulate cable Internet services solely upon broad policy goals contained in the Communications Act. The decision has intensified the Net Neutrality debate and made the governments regulatory authority on the matter less clear.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), maps flood hazard areas across the country and makes flood insurance available to more than 20,100 communities through the National Flood Insurance Program. From 2003 through 2008, FEMA spent $1.2 billion in a comprehensive effort to update the nation's flood insurance maps. In 2009, FEMA began an annual review of 20 percent of the nation's flood maps, for which Congress allocated $440 million in 2009 and 2010. As requested, GAO reviewed the actions FEMA has taken to enhance the accuracy of updated flood maps, and FEMA's outreach efforts in conducting flood mapping activities. GAO analyzed FEMA's mapping standards and information systems, tested quality assurance processes, and interviewed FEMA officials and contractors."

Over the last several years increasing energy and petroleum prices have propelled biofuels and the feedstocks used to produce them, to the forefront of alternative energy production. This growth has increased the linkages between energy and agricultural markets and these changes around the world are having a significant effect on agricultural markets as biofuels begin to play a more substantial role in meeting the world's energy needs. Biofuels are alternatively seen as a means to reduce carbon emissions, increase energy independence, support rural development and to raise farm income. However, concern has arisen that the new demand for traditional commodities or alternative commodities which compete for land can lead to higher food prices and the environmental effects from expanding crop acreage may result in uncertain changes in carbon emissions as land is converted both in the US and abroad. While a number of studies examine changes in land use and consumption from changes in biofuels policies many lack effective policy representation or complete coverage of land types which may be diverted in to energy feedstock production. Many of these biofuels and renewable energy induced land use changes are likely to occur in developing countries with at-risk consumers and on environmentally …

Hamas, or the Islamic Resistance Movement, is a Palestinian Islamist military and sociopolitical movement that grew out of the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni religious and political organization founded in Egypt in 1928 that has branches throughout the world. The United States, Israel, the European Union, and Canada consider Hamas a terrorist organization. The overarching U.S. goal regarding Hamas is to deter, transform, marginalize, or neutralize it so that it no longer presents a threat to Israel's security, to a peaceful and lasting resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, or to other U.S. interests. This report discusses U.S. efforts and policy debates on these issues.

The House of Representatives has several different parliamentary procedures through which it can bring legislation to the chamber floor. Which of these will be used in a given situation depends on many factors, including the type of measure being considered, its cost, the amount of political or policy controversy surrounding it, and the degree to which members want to debate it and propose amendments. This report provides a snapshot of the forms and origins of measures which, according to the Legislative Information System of the U.S. Congress (LIS), received action on the House floor in the 110th Congress (2007-2008) and the parliamentary procedures used to bring them up.

This report provides a detailed introduction to the federal budget process, which is an enormously complex process.

In this paper, we propose a novel mesh coarsening method called brick coarsening method. The proposed method can be used in conjunction with any graph partitioners and scales to very large meshes. This method reduces problem space by decomposing the original mesh into fixed-size blocks of nodes called bricks, layered in a similar way to conventional brick laying, and then assigning each node of the original mesh to appropriate brick. Our experiments indicate that the proposed method scales to very large meshes while allowing simple RCB partitioner to produce higher-quality partitions with significantly less edge cuts. Our results further indicate that the proposed brick-coarsening method allows more complicated partitioners like PT-Scotch to scale to very large problem size while still maintaining good partitioning performance with relatively good edge-cut metric. Graph partitioning is an important problem that has many scientific and engineering applications in such areas as VLSI design, scientific computing, and resource management. Given a graph G = (V,E), where V is the set of vertices and E is the set of edges, (k-way) graph partitioning problem is to partition the vertices of the graph (V) into k disjoint groups such that each group contains roughly equal number of vertices …

An experts' workshop was convened in Dublin Ireland September 27th – 28th 2010 in support of IEA Ocean Energy Systems Implementing Agreement Annex IV. PNNL was responsible for organizing the content of the workshop, overseeing the contractors (Irish Marine Institute) hosting the event, presenting material on Annex IV and materials applicable to the workshop intent. PNNL is also overseeing a contractor (Wave Energy Center/University of Plymouth – WEC/UP) in the collection and analysis of the Annex IV data. Fifty-eight experts from 8 countries attended the workshop by invitation, spending two days discussing the needs of Annex IV. Presentations by DOE (background on Annex IV), PNNL (process for developing Annex IV; presentation of the draft database for PNNL project, plans for incorporating Annex IV data), WEC/UP on the environmental effect matrix, and four MHK developers (two from the UK, one from Ireland and one from Sweden; each discussing their own projects and lessons learned for measuring and mitigating environmental effects, as well as interactions with consenting [permitting] processes) helped provide background. The workshop participants worked part of the time in the large group and most of the time in four smaller breakout groups. Participants engaged in the process and provided a …

This report discusses the issues surrounding whether or not the U.S. should grant Russia permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) following its accession into the World Trade Organization (WTO). The change in Russia's trade status will require legislation to lift the restrictions of Title IV of the Trade Act of 1974 as they apply to Russia, which includes the "freedom-of-emigration" requirements of the Jackson-Vanik amendment.

The October 2010 discovery of two explosive devices being prepared for loading on U.S.-bound all-cargo aircraft overseas has heightened concerns over the potential use of air cargo shipments to bomb passenger and all-cargo aircraft. This incident renewed congressional interest in air cargo security. This report discusses a number of policy issues that may arise regarding air cargo security.

Although seafood consumption can contribute to a healthy diet, some fish and shellfish can cause foodborne illnesses or contain environmental contaminants. This report discusses whether current food safety programs are sufficiently protecting consumers, and if not, what changes should be considered.

Although seafood consumption can contribute to a healthy diet, some fish and shellfish can cause foodborne illnesses or contain environmental contaminants. This report discusses whether current food safety programs are sufficiently protecting consumers, and if not, what changes should be considered.

Airborne electromagnetic (AEM) surveys were flown during fiscal year (FY) 2008 within the 600 Area in an attempt to characterize the underlying subsurface and to aid in the closure and remediation design study goals for the 200-PO-1 Groundwater Operable Unit (OU). The rationale for using the AEM surveys was that airborne surveys can cover large areas rapidly at relatively low costs with minimal cultural impact, and observed geo-electrical anomalies could be correlated with important subsurface geologic and hydrogeologic features. Initial interpretation of the AEM surveys indicated a tenuous correlation with the underlying geology, from which several anomalous zones likely associated with channels/erosional features incised into the Ringold units were identified near the River Corridor. Preliminary modeling resulted in a slightly improved correlation but revealed that more information was required to constrain the modeling (SGW-39674, Airborne Electromagnetic Survey Report, 200-PO-1 Groundwater Operable Unit, 600 Area, Hanford Site). Both time-and frequency domain AEM surveys were collected with the densest coverage occurring adjacent to the Columbia River Corridor. Time domain surveys targeted deeper subsurface features (e.g., top-of-basalt) and were acquired using the HeliGEOTEM{reg_sign} system along north-south flight lines with a nominal 400 m (1,312 ft) spacing. The frequency domain RESOLVE system acquired electromagnetic …

For decades, computer scientists have sought guidance on how to evolve architectures, languages, and programming models in order to improve application performance, efficiency, and productivity. Unfortunately, without overarching advice about future directions in these areas, individual guidance is inferred from the existing software/hardware ecosystem, and each discipline often conducts their research independently assuming all other technologies remain fixed. In today's rapidly evolving world of on-chip parallelism, isolated and iterative improvements to performance may miss superior solutions in the same way gradient descent optimization techniques may get stuck in local minima. To combat this, we present TORCH: A Testbed for Optimization ResearCH. These computational reference kernels define the core problems of interest in scientific computing without mandating a specific language, algorithm, programming model, or implementation. To compliment the kernel (problem) definitions, we provide a set of algorithmically-expressed verification tests that can be used to verify a hardware/software co-designed solution produces an acceptable answer. Finally, to provide some illumination as to how researchers have implemented solutions to these problems in the past, we provide a set of reference implementations in C and MATLAB.

The average tenure of Members of the Senate and House of Representatives at the beginning of each Congress has varied substantially since 1789. The purpose of this report is to provide a Congress-by-Congress summary of the average years of service for Senators and Representatives for the First through the 111th Congresses. The report contains a brief summary of some of the explanations by political scientists and others for the various changes in the average years of service.

As Congress and the Administration considered new legislation to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that contribute to climate change over the last year and a half (a process that has now stalled), the Environmental Protection Agency simultaneously began to exercise its existing authority under the Clean Air Act to set standards for GHG emissions. The Administration has made clear that its preference would be for Congress to address the climate issue through new legislation. Nevertheless, it is moving forward on several fronts to define how the Clean Air Act will be used and to promulgate regulations. This report covers the steps that the Administration is taking on this topic.

From 1933 to 2009 (the 73rd Congress through the 111th Congress), the U.S. House of Representatives considered 107 contested election cases. The summaries of contested election cases contained in this report focus primarily on the nature of the contest and the disposition of the case. For more detailed information regarding each contest, it is important to consult relevant House records. This report examines only cases considered by the House of Representatives involving the question of whether a Member-elect was duly elected.

This report describes the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU), which is the World Trade Organization's (WTO) means of resolving disputes arising under WTO agreements. The report includes criticisms of certain flaws in the DSU, as well as WTO Members' suggestions for improvement. The report also describes the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR), which represents the United States in WTO disputes. Also discussed are pieces of legislation that dictate procedures for specifically the United States in instances of WTO disputes.