This report provides a description of debt-for-nature transactions and a summary of the Tropical Forest Conservation Act. Debt-for- nature transactions are generally viewed as a success by conservation organizations and government.

In New York Times Co. v. Tasini, six freelance authors who had contributed articles to several publications, including The New York Times, Newsday, and Time, sued when the publishers licensed rights to copy and sell the articles to electronic databases such as Lexis/Nexis. Shortly after the Court decided Tasini, three preexisting class action infringement suits, which had been suspended pending the decision, were activated and consolidated in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. A fourth, nearly identical action was coordinated with that consolidated action. Together, these claims comprise the litigation discussed in this report.

This report summarizes the workforce, prevention, quality, and related provisions in H.R. 3590, as passed by the Senate. It begins with some background on health care delivery reform, followed by an overview of the report’s content and organization

This report examines poverty in the United States. In 2008, 39.8 million people were counted as poor in the United States - an increase of 2.6 million persons from 2007, and nearly the largest number of persons counted as poor since 1960. The poverty rate, or percent of the population considered poor under the official definition, was reported at 13.2%; this is up from 12.5% in 2007, and is the highest rate since 1997. The recent increase in poverty reflects the worsening of economic conditions since the onset of the economic recession in December 2007. Many expect poverty to rise further next year, and it will likely remain comparatively high even after the economy begins to recover. The incidence of poverty varies widely across the population according to age, education, labor force attachment, family living arrangements, and area of residence, among other factors.

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This report is categorized into four categories: (I) Introduction, (II) The Federal Advisory Committee Act, (III) Creating a FACA Committee and (IV) Analysis.

This report provides background information on the types of water supply and wastewater treatment projects traditionally funded by the federal government and the several existing programs to assist communities with water supply and wastewater recycling and treatment.

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This report discusses the MultiPollutant approaches to controlling Powerplant emissions regarding Clean Air after the Clean Air Interstate Rule(CAIR) decision.

Federal support for child care and education comes in many forms, ranging from grant programs to tax provisions. This report provides a funding overview and brief background information on federal child care, early education, and related programs (and tax provisions).

This report is about Calculation of lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions for the renewable Fuel Standards

This Corrective Action Decision Document/Closure Report (CADD/CR) was prepared by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 383, Area 12 E-Tunnel Sites, which is the joint responsibility of DTRA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office (NNSA/NSO). This CADD/CR is consistent with the requirements of the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) agreed to by the State of Nevada, the DOE, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Corrective Action Unit 383 is comprised of three Corrective Action Sites (CASs) and two adjacent areas: • CAS 12-06-06, Muckpile • CAS 12-25-02, Oil Spill • CAS 12-28-02, Radioactive Material • Drainage below the Muckpile • Ponds 1, 2, and 3 The purpose of this CADD/CR is to provide justification and documentation to support the recommendation for closure with no further corrective action, by placing use restrictions at the three CASs and two adjacent areas of CAU 383.

The objective of this project was to develop and apply enabling tools and methods towards advanced combustion diagnostics and control of fired-equipment in large-scale petrochemical manufacturing. There are a number of technology gaps and opportunities for combustion optimization, including technologies involving advanced in-situ measurements, modeling, and thermal imaging. These technologies intersect most of manufacturing and energy systems within the chemical industry. This project leveraged the success of a previous DOE funded project led by Dow, where we co-developed an in-situ tunable diode laser (TDL) analyzer platform (with Analytical Specialties Inc, now owned by Yokogawa Electric Corp.). The TDL platform has been tested and proven in a number of combustion processes within Dow and outside of Dow. The primary focus of this project was on combustion diagnostics and control applied towards furnaces, fired heaters and boilers. Special emphasis was placed on the development and application of in-situ measurements for O2, CO and methane since these combustion gases are key variables in optimizing and controlling combustion processes safely. Current best practice in the industry relies on measurements that suffer from serious performance gaps such as limited sampling volume (point measurements), poor precision and accuracy, and poor reliability. Phase I of the project …

Multiscale modeling of stochastic systems, or uncertainty quantization of multiscale modeling is becoming an emerging research frontier, with rapidly growing engineering applications in nanotechnology, biotechnology, advanced materials, and geo-systems, etc. While tremendous efforts have been devoted to either stochastic methods or multiscale methods, little combined work had been done on integration of multiscale and stochastic methods, and there was no method formally available to tackle multiscale problems involving uncertainties. By developing an innovative Multiscale Stochastic Finite Element Method (MSFEM), this research has made a ground-breaking contribution to the emerging field of Multiscale Stochastic Modeling (MSM) (Fig 1). The theory of MSFEM basically decomposes a boundary value problem of random microstructure into a slow scale deterministic problem and a fast scale stochastic one. The slow scale problem corresponds to common engineering modeling practices where fine-scale microstructure is approximated by certain effective constitutive constants, which can be solved by using standard numerical solvers. The fast scale problem evaluates fluctuations of local quantities due to random microstructure, which is important for scale-coupling systems and particularly those involving failure mechanisms. The Green-function-based fast-scale solver developed in this research overcomes the curse-of-dimensionality commonly met in conventional approaches, by proposing a random field-based orthogonal expansion approach. …

This report summarizes Detection and Analysis of Threats to the Energy Sector (DATES), a project sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and performed by a team led by SRI International, with collaboration from Sandia National Laboratories, ArcSight, Inc., and Invensys Process Systems. DATES sought to advance the state of the practice in intrusion detection and situational awareness with respect to cyber attacks in energy systems. This was achieved through adaptation of detection algorithms for process systems as well as development of novel anomaly detection techniques suited for such systems into a detection suite. These detection components, together with third-party commercial security systems, were interfaced with the commercial Security Information Event Management (SIEM) solution from ArcSight. The efficacy of the integrated solution was demonstrated on two testbeds, one based on a Distributed Control System (DCS) from Invensys, and the other based on the Virtual Control System Environment (VCSE) from Sandia. These achievements advance the DOE Cybersecurity Roadmap [DOE2006] goals in the area of security monitoring. The project ran from October 2007 until March 2010, with the final six months focused on experimentation. In the validation phase, team members from SRI and Sandia coupled the two test environments and carried …

The overarching goal of the project was to improve the transfer of solar and thermal radiation in the most sophisticated computer tools that are currently available for climate studies, namely Global Climate Models (GCMs). This transfer can be conceptually separated into propagation of radiation under cloudy and under cloudless conditions. For cloudless conditions, the factors that affect radiation propagation are gaseous absorption and scattering, aerosol particle absorption and scattering and surface albedo and emissivity. For cloudy atmospheres the factors are the various cloud properties such as cloud fraction, amount of cloud condensate, the size of the cloud particles, and morphological cloud features such as cloud vertical location, cloud horizontal and vertical inhomogeneity and cloud shape and size. The project addressed various aspects of the influence of the above contributors to atmospheric radiative transfer variability. In particular, it examined: (a) the quality of radiative transfer for cloudless and non-complex cloudy conditions for a substantial number of radiation algorithms used in current GCMs; (b) the errors in radiative fluxes from neglecting the horizontal variabiity of cloud extinction; (c) the statistical properties of cloud horizontal and vertical cloud inhomogeneity that can be incorporated into radiative transfer codes; (d) the potential albedo effects of …

This program was undertaken in response to the US Department of Energy Solicitation DE-PS30-03GO93010, resulting in this Cooperative Agreement with the Ford Motor Company and BP to demonstrate and evaluate hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and required fueling infrastructure. Ford initially placed 18 hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (FCV) in three geographic regions of the US (Sacramento, CA; Orlando, FL; and southeast Michigan). Subsequently, 8 advanced technology vehicles were developed and evaluated by the Ford engineering team in Michigan. BP is Ford's principal partner and co-applicant on this project and provided the hydrogen infrastructure to support the fuel cell vehicles. BP ultimately provided three new fueling stations. The Ford-BP program consists of two overlapping phases. The deliverables of this project, combined with those of other industry consortia, are to be used to provide critical input to hydrogen economy commercialization decisions by 2015. The program's goal is to support industry efforts of the US President's Hydrogen Fuel Initiative in developing a path to a hydrogen economy. This program was designed to seek complete systems solutions to address hydrogen infrastructure and vehicle development, and possible synergies between hydrogen fuel electricity generation and transportation applications. This project, in support of that national goal, was designed …

This Corrective Action Decision Document (CADD)/Closure Report (CR) was prepared by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 476, Area 12 T-Tunnel Muckpile. This CADD/CR is consistent with the requirements of the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) agreed to by the State of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Corrective Action Unit 476 is comprised of one Corrective Action Site (CAS): • 12-06-02, Muckpile The purpose of this CADD/CR is to provide justification and documentation supporting the recommendation for closure in place with use restrictions for CAU 476.

Climate change is a long-term process that will trigger a range of multi-dimensional demographic, economic, geopolitical, and national security issues with many unknowns and significant uncertainties. At first glance, climate-change-related national security dimensions seem far removed from today's major national security threats. Yet climate change has already set in motion forces that will require U.S. attention and preparedness. The extent and uncertainty associated with these situations necessitate a move away from conventional security practices, toward a small but flexible portfolio of assets to maintain U.S. interests. Thoughtful action is required now if we are to acquire the capabilities, tools, systems, and institutions needed to meet U.S. national security requirements as they evolve with the emerging stresses and shifts of climate change.

This Corrective Action Decision Document (CADD)/Closure Report (CR) was prepared by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 559, T-Tunnel Compressor/Blower Pad. This CADD/CR is consistent with the requirements of the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) agreed to by the State of Nevada, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Defense. Corrective Action Unit 559 is comprised of one Corrective Action Site (CAS): • 12-25-13, Oil Stained Soil and Concrete The purpose of this CADD/CR is to provide justification and documentation supporting the recommendation for closure in place with use restrictions for CAU 559.

A technical and design evaluation was carried out to meet DOE hydrogen fuel targets for 2010. These targets consisted of a system gravimetric capacity of 2.0 kWh/kg, a system volumetric capacity of 1.5 kWh/L and a system cost of $4/kWh. In compressed hydrogen storage systems, the vast majority of the weight and volume is associated with the hydrogen storage tank. In order to meet gravimetric targets for compressed hydrogen tanks, 10,000 psi carbon resin composites were used to provide the high strength required as well as low weight. For the 10,000 psi tanks, carbon fiber is the largest portion of their cost. Quantum Technologies is a tier one hydrogen system supplier for automotive companies around the world. Over the course of the program Quantum focused on development of technology to allow the compressed hydrogen storage tank to meet DOE goals. At the start of the program in 2004 Quantum was supplying systems with a specific energy of 1.1-1.6 kWh/kg, a volumetric capacity of 1.3 kWh/L and a cost of $73/kWh. Based on the inequities between DOE targets and Quantum’s then current capabilities, focus was placed first on cost reduction and second on weight reduction. Both of these were to be …

This Corrective Action Decision Document (CADD)/Closure Report (CR) was prepared by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) for Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 504, 16a-Tunnel Muckpile. This CADD/CR is consistent with the requirements of the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO) agreed to by the State of Nevada; U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Environmental Management; U.S. Department of Defense; and DOE, Legacy Management. Corrective Action Unit 504 is comprised of four Corrective Action Sites (CASs): • 16-06-01, Muckpile • 16-23-01, Contaminated Burial Pit • 16-23-02, Contaminated Area • 16-99-01, Concrete Construction Waste Corrective Action Site 16-23-01 is not a burial pit; it is part of CAS 16-06-01. Therefore, there is not a separate data analysis and assessment for CAS 16-23-01; it is included as part of the assessment for CAS 16-06-01. In addition to these CASs, the channel between CAS 16-23-02 (Contaminated Area) and Mid Valley Road was investigated with walk-over radiological surveys and soil sampling using hand tools. The purpose of this CADD/CR is to provide justification and documentation supporting the recommendation for closure in place with use restrictions for CAU 504. A CADD was originally submitted for CAU 504 and approved by the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection …

ECR International and its joint venture company, Climate Energy, are at the forefront of the effort to deliver residential-scale combined heat and power (Micro-CHP) products to the USA market. Part of this substantial program is focused on the development of a new class of steam expanders that offers the potential for significantly lower costs for small-scale power generation technology. The heart of this technology is the scroll expander, a machine that has revolutionized the HVAC refrigerant compressor industry in the last 15 years. The liquid injected cogeneration (LIC) technology is at the core of the efforts described in this report, and remains an excellent option for low cost Micro-CHP systems. ECR has demonstrated in several prototype appliances that the concept for LIC can be made into a practical product. The continuing challenge is to identify economical scroll machine designs that will meet the performance and endurance requirements needed for a long life appliance application. This report describes the numerous advances made in this endeavor by ECR International. Several important advances are described in this report. Section 4 describes a marketing and economics study that integrates the technical performance of the LIC system with real-world climatic data and economic analysis to …

The research described herein was undertaken to provide needed physical property descriptions of the Hanford transuranic tank sludges under conditions that might exist during retrieval, treatment, packaging and transportation for disposal. The work addressed the development of a fundamental understanding of the types of systems represented by these sludge suspensions through correlation of the macroscopic rheological properties with particle interactions occurring at the colloidal scale in the various liquid media. The results of the work have advanced existing understanding of the sedimentation and aggregation properties of complex colloidal suspensions. Bench scale models were investigated with respect to their structural, colloidal and rheological properties that should be useful for the development and optimization of techniques to process the wastes at various DOE sites.