In recent years, several Members of Congress have expressed interest in amending "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," (DADT) a legislation that requires those of homosexual orientation in the military to keep quiet about their orientation in order to maintain "morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion." At least two bills that would repeal the law and replace it with a policy of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation - H.R. 1283 and S. 3065 - have been introduced in the 111th Congress. This report provides a legal analysis of the various constitutional challenges that have been brought against DADT; for a policy analysis, see CRS Report R40782, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": Military Policy and the Law on

This report provides a brief overview of the European Union's (EU) accession process; Turkey's path to EU membership; the impact of the Cyprus problem; and a review of the United States' interest in Turkey's future in the European Union.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Training update with Environmental a health focus. Training conducted as part of the United Negro College Fund Special Programs Corporation/National Library of Medicine - HBCU ACCESS Project at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington, DC on November 2, 2010.

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The Final Optics Damage Inspection (FODI) system automatically acquires and utilizes the Optics Inspection (OI) system to analyze images of the final optics at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). During each inspection cycle up to 1000 images acquired by FODI are examined by OI to identify and track damage sites on the optics. The process of tracking growing damage sites on the surface of an optic can be made more effective by identifying and removing signals associated with debris or reflections. The manual process to filter these false sites is daunting and time consuming. In this paper we discuss the use of machine learning tools and data mining techniques to help with this task. We describe the process to prepare a data set that can be used for training and identifying hardware reflections in the image data. In order to collect training data, the images are first automatically acquired and analyzed with existing software and then relevant features such as spatial, physical and luminosity measures are extracted for each site. A subset of these sites is 'truthed' or manually assigned a class to create training data. A supervised classification algorithm is used to test if the features can predict the …

A QED approach to the calculation of the spectra of the lithium isoelectronic sequence is implemented. A modified Furry representation based on the Kohn-Sham potential is used to evaluate all one- and two-photon diagrams with the exception of the two-loop Lamb shift. Three-photon diagrams are estimated with Hamiltonian methods. After incorporating recent calculations of the two-loop Lamb shift and recoil corrections a comprehensive tabulation of the 2s, 2p{sub 1/2} and 2p{sub 3/2} energy levels as well as the 2s - 2p{sub 1/2} and 2s - 2p{sub 3/2} transition energies for Z = 10 - 100 is presented.

This report is a summary of the assessments of the vital safety systems (VSS) that are administered under WCH’s system engineer program.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.