This report discusses the issue of U.S. economic assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the importance of continued assistance in light of U.S. national security and also various U.S.-led efforts to promote reform amongst African citizens themselves. U.S. assistance finds its way to Africa through a variety of channels, including the USAID-administered DA program, food aid programs, and indirect aid provided through international financial institutions and the United Nations.

Three simulated waste solutions representing wastes from tanks SY-102 (high nitrate, modified to exceed guidance limits), AN-107, and AY-102 were supplied by PNNL. Out of the three solutions tested, both optical and electrochemical results show that carbon steel samples corroded much faster in SY-102 (high nitrate) than in the other two solutions with lower ratios of nitrate to nitrite. The effect of the surface preparation was not as strong as the effect of solution chemistry. In areas with pristine mill-scale surface, no corrosion occurred even in the SY-102 (high nitrate) solution, however, corrosion occurred in the areas where the mill-scale was damaged or flaked off due to machining. Localized corrosion in the form of pitting in the vapor space of tank walls is an ongoing challenge to overcome in maintaining the structural integrity of the liquid waste tanks at the Savannah River and Hanford Sites. It has been shown that the liquid waste condensate chemistry influences the amount of corrosion that occurs along the walls of the storage tanks. To minimize pitting corrosion, an effort is underway to gain an understanding of the pitting response in various simulated waste solutions. Electrochemical testing has been used as an accelerated tool in …

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Amorphous silicon nanowires (a-SiNWs) were prepared by electrospinning cyclohexasilane (Si{sub 6}H{sub 12}) admixed with polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) in toluene. Raman spectroscopy characterization of these wires (d {approx} 50-2000 nm) shows 350 C treatment yields a-SiNWs. Porous a-SiNWs are obtained using a volatile polymer.

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.

This report analyzes relevant provisions in enacted legislation and selected pending bills relating to the U.S. Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a facility in which alleged enemy belligerents are detained.

The American impeachment process places in the legislative branch the authority to remove the President, Vice President, and other federal civil officers in the executive and judicial branches upon a determination that such officers have engaged in treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. It is one of the checks and balances grounded in the American constitutional structure. This report summarizes impeachment proceedings in the 111th Congress, examines relevant constitutional provisions, and provides a brief historical overview.

Current state-of-the-art and next generation laser systems - such as those used in the NIF and LIFE experiments at LLNL - depend on ever larger optical elements. The need for wide aperture optics that are tolerant of high power has placed many demands on material growers for such diverse materials as crystalline sapphire, quartz, and laser host materials. For such materials, it is either prohibitively expensive or even physically impossible to fabricate monolithic pieces with the required size. In these cases, it is preferable to optically bond two or more elements together with a technique such as Chemically Activated Direct Bonding (CADB{copyright}). CADB is an epoxy-free bonding method that produces bulk-strength bonded samples with negligible optical loss and excellent environmental robustness. The authors have demonstrated CADB for a variety of different laser glasses and crystals. For this project, they will bond quartz samples together to determine the suitability of the resulting assemblies for large aperture high power laser optics. The assemblies will be evaluated in terms of their transmitted wavefront error, and other optical properties.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the absence of underground nuclear weapons testing, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) relies on its supercomputing operations at its three weapons laboratories to simulate the effects of changes to current weapons systems, calculate the confidence of future untested systems, and ensure military requirements are met. GAO was requested to assess the extent to which (1) NNSA has implemented contingency and disaster recovery planning and testing for its classified supercomputing systems, (2) the laboratories are able to share supercomputing capacity for recovery operations, and (3) NNSA tracks the costs for contingency and disaster recovery planning for supercomputing assets. To do this work, GAO examined contingency and disaster recovery planning policies and activities, and analyzed classified supercomputing capabilities at the weapons laboratories, and NNSA budgetary data."

This report discusses the current political conditions of Kenya, which has long been an important ally of the United States. The report focuses particularly on the December 2007 elections, which many international observers have declared as rigged and deeply flawed. The report also discusses violence that erupted once election results were announced, as well as U.S. efforts to urge Kenya toward election reforms.

We analyzed spectral data of Fe XXII and Ar XIV from laboratory sources in which the electron density varies by several orders of magnitude to help benchmark density-sensitive emission lines useful for astrophysics and to test the atomic models underlying the diagnostic line ratios. We found excellent agreement for Fe XXII, but poorer agreement for Ar XIV. A number of astrophysically important emission lines are sensitive to electron density in the EUV and soft X-ray regions. Lines from Fe XXII, for example, have been used in recent years as diagnostics of stellar coronae, such as the active variable AB Dor, Capella, and EX Hya (Sanz-Forcada et al. 2003, Mewe et al. 2001, Mauche et al. 2003). Here we report spectral data of Fe XXII and Ar XIV from laboratory sources in which the electron density is known from either K-shell density diagnostics (for electron beam ion traps) or from non-spectroscopic means (tokamaks), ranging from 5 x 10{sup 10} cm{sup -3} to 5 x 10{sup 14} cm{sup -3}. These measurements were used to test the atomic data underlying the density diagnostic line ratios, complementing earlier work (Chen et al. 2004).

The Main Injector Particle Production Experiment at Fermilab uses particle beams of charged pions, kaons, proton and anti-proton with beam momenta of 5 to 90 GeV/c and thin targets spanning the periodic table from (liquid) hydrogen to uranium to measure particle production cross sections in a full acceptance spectrometer with charged particle identification for particles from 0.1 to 120 GeV/c using Time Projection Chamber, Time of Flight, multicell Cherenkov, and Ring Imaging Cherenkov detectors and Calorimeter for neutrons. Particle production using 120 GeV/c protons from Main Injector on the MINOS target was also measured. We describe the physics motivation to perform such cross section measurements and highlight the impact of hadronic interaction data on neutrino physics. Recent results on forward neutron cross sections and analysis of MINOS target data are also presented.

This report discusses overarching trends in Millennium Development Goals (MDG) progress and lessons learned from previous and ongoing efforts to achieve them. The MDGs are a group of measurable development targets agreed to by 189 U.N. member states - including the United States - as part of the 2000 Millennium Declaration. The MDGs cover a number of issues, such as eradicating extreme hunger and poverty, combating HIV/AIDS, and promoting gender equality and women's empowerment. This report examines U.S. policy toward the MDGs and how, if at all, the Goals fit into U.S. development and foreign assistance policy. It also examines different schools of thought regarding the effectiveness of the Goals, their role in international development, and their long-term sustainability. This report addresses the MDGs as a whole; it does not assess or analyze issues pertaining to the individual Goals.

Progress in the last few decades has left neutrino physics with several vexing issues. Among them are the following questions: (1) Why are lepton mixing angles so different from those in the quark sector? (2) What is the most probable range of the reactor mixing angle? (3) Is the atmospheric mixing angle maximal? (4) What is the number of fermion generations? These are some of the issues that neutrino science hopes to study; this article will explore these questions as part of a more general scientific landscape, and will discuss the part MiniBooNE might play in this exploration. We discuss the current state of measurements taken by MiniBooNE, and emphasize the uniqueness of neutrino oscillations as an important probe into the 'Windows on the Universe.'

The Navy is procuring a new type of surface combatant called the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS). The Navy wants to procure a total of 55 LCSs. This report details the 2007 restructuring of the LCS program, as well as various financial information relating to the program. The issue for Congress is whether to approve, reject, or modify the Navy's plans for the LCS program. The LCS program raises potential oversight issues for Congress relating to various aspects of the program, all of which are explored within this report.

This report provides background information and issues for Congress on the Navy's proposal to homeport a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier (CVN) at Mayport, Florida. Economic and homeland security concerns are discussed.

This report focuses on potential Navy shipboard lasers for countering surface, air, and ballistic missile threats. Department of Defense (DOD) development work on high-energy military lasers, which has been underway for decades, has reached the point where lasers capable of countering certain surface and air targets at ranges of about a mile could be made ready for installation on Navy surface ships over the next few years.

Parent map for Burleson County, Texas showing the area of one geographic block for which the U.S. Census Bureau collected data. The plotted map scale is 1:17,000.

Parent map for Burleson County, Texas showing the area of one geographic block for which the U.S. Census Bureau collected data. The plotted map scale is 1:17,000.

Parent map for Burleson County, Texas showing the area of one geographic block for which the U.S. Census Bureau collected data. The plotted map scale is 1:17,000.

Parent map for Burleson County, Texas showing the area of one geographic block for which the U.S. Census Bureau collected data. The plotted map scale is 1:17,000.

Parent map for Burleson County, Texas showing the area of one geographic block for which the U.S. Census Bureau collected data. The plotted map scale is 1:17,000.

Parent map for Burleson County, Texas showing the area of one geographic block for which the U.S. Census Bureau collected data. The plotted map scale is 1:17,000.

Parent map for Burleson County, Texas showing the area of one geographic block for which the U.S. Census Bureau collected data. The plotted map scale is 1:17,000.