The first half of this report looks at the background of U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba over the last 40 years. The second half of this report looks at several initiatives from the 111th Congress that would ease U.S. travel restrictions to Cuba.

"The first objective is to develop driving cycles for classified roads incorporating both a vehicle's driving activities and its emission characteristics, using the data collected by Portable Emission Measurement System (PEMS), which was neither available nor has ever been used in developing driving cycles. A comprehensive database is established for the collected data and a sophisticated computer program is developed to generate the specific driving cycles. The second objective is to develop an evaluation approach of driving cycles in which Vehicle Specific Power (VSP), a parameter that can readily connect the driving modes with emissions, is used to evaluate how well the driving cycles can represent the driving and emission characteristics on real roads."

Final report of the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission describing its activities commemorating the 200th birthday of America's 16th president.

This report discusses about Green Procurement, Federal Green Purchasing Initiatives and Issues for congress. It also discusses about Market-Focused Programs and Agency-Focused Initiatives.

This report details the changes in tax law that will be made as a result of the health-related revenue provisions in PPACA.

The Endangered Species Act has been one of the more contentious environmental laws. This may stem from its strict substantive provisions, which can affect the use of both federal and nonfederal lands and resources. This report discusses oversight issues and legislation introduced in the 11th Congress to address Endangered Species Act implementation and management of endangered and threatened species.

This report provides a brief summary of legal issues raised by the choice of forum for trying accused terrorists and a table comparing selected military commissions rules under the Military Commissions Act, as amended, to the corresponding rules that apply in federal court.

In December 2008, the United States and Russia signed a protocol aimed at resolving various emerging trade issues between the two countries in order to continue U.S. livestock and poultry exports to Russia through the end of 2009. This report examines the current trade relationship between the U.S. and Russia in regards to meat and poultry.

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This report discusses the budget for the 2008 Farm Bill, and its reauthorization. Moreover, the report discusses the increasing level of demand for fiscal constraint and the current large budget deficits.

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The changing structure of U.S. agriculture has generated concerns about reduced competition in a wide variety of agricultural products markets, including dairy. Two primary areas of concern in the dairy industry are consolidation- the shift to fewer an larger firms- and industry concentration- the extent to which a small number of firms control most of the sales. This report contains information on financial stress for dairy farmers, the development of the U.S. dairy industry, farm and retail price movements, dairy industry structure, effects of concentration in the dairy industry, concerns about dairy pricing, U.S. antitrust law, and more.

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This report provides background on regulatory requirements, controversies and legal challenges to mountaintop mining, and recent Administration actions. Congressional interest in these issues also is discussed, including legislation in the 111th Congress seeking to restrict the practice of mountaintop mining and other legislation intended to block the Obama Administration’s regulatory actions.

The Midlatitude Continental Convective Clouds Experiment (MC3E) will take place in central Oklahoma during the April–May 2011 period. The experiment is a collaborative effort between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) mission Ground Validation (GV) program. The field campaign leverages the unprecedented observing infrastructure currently available in the central United States, combined with an extensive sounding array, remote sensing and in situ aircraft observations, NASA GPM ground validation remote sensors, and new ARM instrumentation purchased with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding. The overarching goal is to provide the most complete characterization of convective cloud systems, precipitation, and the environment that has ever been obtained, providing constraints for model cumulus parameterizations and space-based rainfall retrieval algorithms over land that have never before been available.

Photoinjectors in advanced high-energy accelerators reduce beam energy spreads and enhance undulator photon fluxes. Photoinjector design is difficult because of the substantial differences in time and spatial scales. This Phase I program explored an innovative technique, the local Taylor polynomial (LTP) formulation, for improving finite difference analysis of photoinjectors. This included improved weighting techniques, systematic formula for high order interpolation and electric field computation, and improved handling of space charge. The Phase I program demonstrated that the approach was powerful, accurate, and efficient. It handles space charge gradients better than currently available technology.

During the 2009 calendar year, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) provided health physics support for the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Transparency Program for external and internal radiation protection. LLNL also provided technical expertise related to BDMS radioactive sources and Russian radiation safety regulatory compliance. For the calendar year 2009, there were 159 person-trips that required dose monitoring of the U.S. monitors. Of the 159 person-trips, 149 person-trips were SMVs and 10 person-trips were Transparency Monitoring Office (TMO) trips. There were 4 monitoring visits by TMO monitors to facilities other than UEIE and 10 to UEIE itself. LLNL's Hazard Control Department laboratories provided the dosimetry services for the HEU Transparency monitors. In 2009, the HEU Transparency activities in Russia were conducted in a radiologically safe manner for the HEU Transparency monitors in accordance with the expectations of the HEU Transparency staff, NNSA and DOE. The HEU Transparency Program now has over fifteen years of successful experience in developing and providing health and safety support in meeting its technical objectives.

DOWTHERM A oil is being considered for use as a heat transfer fluid in experiments to help in the design of heat transfer components for the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP). In conjection with the experiments RELAP5-3D/ATHENA will be used to help design and analyzed the data generated by the experiments. Inorder to use RELAP5-3D the thermophysical properties of DOWTHERM A were implemented into the fluids package of the RELAP5-3D/ATHENA computer propgram. DOWTHERM A properties were implemented in RELAP5-3D/ATHENA using thermophysical property data obtain from a Dow Chemical Company brochure. The data were curve fit and the polynomial equations developed for each required property were input into a fluid property generator. The generated data was then compared to the orginal DOWTHERM A data to verify that the fluid property data generated by the RELAP5-3D/ATHENA code was representitive of the original input data to the generator.

A significant barrier to investing in renewable energy and comprehensive energy efficiency improvements to homes across the country is the initial capital cost. Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing is one of several new financial models broadening access to clean energy by addressing this upfront cost issue. Recently, the White House cited PACE programs as an important element of its 'Recovery through Retrofit' plan. The residential PACE model involves the creation of a special clean energy financing district that homeowners elect to opt into. Once opted in, the local government (usually at the city or county level) finances the upfront investment of the renewable energy installation and/or energy efficiency improvements. A special lien is attached to the property and the assessment is paid back as a line item on the property tax bill. As of April 2010, 17 states have passed legislation to allow their local governments to create PACE programs, two already have the authority to set up PACE programs, and over 10 additional states are actively developing enabling legislation. This policy brief analyzes one of the advantages of PACE, which is the transferability of the special assessment from one homeowner to the next when the home is sold. …

The Wabash gasification facility, owned and operated by sgSolutions LLC, is one of the largest single train solid fuel gasification facilities in the world capable of transforming 2,000 tons per day of petroleum coke or 2,600 tons per day of bituminous coal into synthetic gas for electrical power generation. The Wabash plant utilizes Phillips66 proprietary E-Gas (TM) Gasification Process to convert solid fuels such as petroleum coke or coal into synthetic gas that is fed to a combined cycle combustion turbine power generation facility. During plant startup in 1995, reliability issues were realized in the gas filtration portion of the gasification process. To address these issues, a slipstream test unit was constructed at the Wabash facility to test various filter designs, materials and process conditions for potential reliability improvement. The char filtration slipstream unit provided a way of testing new materials, maintenance procedures, and process changes without the risk of stopping commercial production in the facility. It also greatly reduced maintenance expenditures associated with full scale testing in the commercial plant. This char filtration slipstream unit was installed with assistance from the United States Department of Energy (built under DOE Contract No. DE-FC26-97FT34158) and began initial testing in November of …

The objective of the proposed research is to utilize modern computational tools, integrated with focused experiments, to design innovative ferritic NiAl-strengthened superalloys for fossil-energy applications at temperatures up to 1,033 K. Specifically, the computational alloy design aims toward (1) a steady-state creep rate of approximately 3 x 10{sup -11} s{sup -1} at a temperature of 1,033 K and a stress level of 35 MPa, (2) a ductility of 10% at room temperature, and (3) good oxidation and corrosion resistance at 1,033 K. The research yielded many outstanding research results, including (1) impurity-diffusion coefficients in {alpha} Fe have been calculated by first principles for a variety of solute species; (2) the precipitates were characterized by the transmission-electron microscopy (TEM) and analytical-electron microscopy (AEM), and the elemental partitioning has been determined; (3) a bending ductility of more than 5% has been achieved in the unrolled materials; and (4) optimal compositions with minimal secondary creep rates at 973 K have been determined. Impurity diffusivities in {alpha} Fe have been calculated within the formalisms of a harmonic transition-state theory and Le Claire nine-frequency model for vacancy-mediated diffusion. Calculated diffusion coefficients for Mo and W impurities are comparable to or larger than that for Fe …

The Multi-sensor Airborne Radiation Survey Flight Engineering project (MARS FE) has designed a high purity germanium (HPGe) crystal array for conducting a wide range of field measurements. In addition to the HPGe detector system, a platform-specific shock and vibration isolation system and environmental housing have been designed to support demonstration activities in a maritime environment on an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV). This report describes the status of the equipment as of the end of FY09.