The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) commitment to assuring the health and safety of its workers includes the conduct of epidemiologic surveillance activities that provide an early warning system for health problems among workers. The Illness and Injury Surveillance Program monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence of workdays, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

Marine microbes include representatives from all three kingdoms of life and collectively carry out virtually all forms of metabolisms found on the planet. Because of this metabolic and genetic diversity, these microbes mediate many of the reactions making up global biogeochemical cycles which govern the flow of energy and material in the biosphere. The goal of this conference is to bring together approaches and concepts from studies of microbial evolution, genomics, ecology, and oceanography in order to gain new insights into marine microbes and their biogeochemical functions. The integration of scales, from genes to global cycles, will result in a better understanding of marine microbes and of their contribution to the carbon cycle and other biogeochemical processes.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The illicit drug trade remains a challenge to the overall U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan. Afghanistan produces over 90 percent of the world's opium, which competes with the country's licit agriculture industry, provides funds to insurgents, and fuels corruption in Afghanistan. Since 2005, the United States has allotted over $2 billion to stem the production, consumption, and trafficking of illicit drugs while building the Afghan government's capacity to conduct counternarcotics activities on its own. In this report, GAO (1) examines how the U.S. counternarcotics strategy in Afghanistan has changed; (2) assesses progress made and challenges faced within the elimination/eradication, interdiction, justice reform, public information, and drug demand reduction program areas; and (3) assesses U.S. agencies' monitoring and evaluation efforts. To address these objectives, GAO obtained pertinent program documents and interviewed relevant U.S. and Afghan officials. GAO has prepared this report under the Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations on his own initiative."

The purpose of this report is to provide background and analysis for Congress on U.S. rule of law (ROL) and justice sector assistance programs to Afghanistan. The report also describes the scope of the ROL problem in Afghanistan, including the role of corruption, and surveys the range of Afghan justice sector institutions. In addition, the report describes U.S., Afghan, and multilateral policy approaches to the Afghan justice sector since the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; U.S. policy coordination and funding; and current U.S. justice sector assistance programs in Afghanistan.

The purpose of this report is to provide background and analysis for Congress on U.S. rule of law (ROL) and justice sector assistance programs to Afghanistan. The report also describes the scope of the ROL problem in Afghanistan, including the role of corruption, and surveys the range of Afghan justice sector institutions. In addition, the report describes U.S., Afghan, and multilateral policy approaches to the Afghan justice sector since the U.S. military invasion of Afghanistan in 2001; U.S. policy coordination and funding; and current U.S. justice sector assistance programs in Afghanistan.

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.

This paper presents a summary of design and testing of material and composites for use in radioactive material packages. These materials provide thermal protection and provide structural integrity and energy absorption to the package during normal and hypothetical accident condition events as required by Title 10 Part 71 of the Code of Federal Regulations. Testing of packages comprising these materials is summarized.

this research is targeted at developing improved experimentally-based scaling relationships for the hydrodynamics of shallow, gas-spouted beds of dense particles. The work is motivated by the need to more effctively scale up shallow spouted beds used in processes such as in the coating of nuclear fuel particles where precise control of solids and gas circulation is critically important. Experimental results reported here are for a 50 mm diameter spouted bed containing two different types of bed solids (alumina and zirconia) at different static bed depths and fluidized by air and helium. Measurements of multiple local average pressures, inlet gas pressure fluctuations, and spout height were used to characterize the bed hydrodynamics for each operating condition. Follow-on studies are planned that include additional variations in bed size, particle properties, and fluidizing gas. The ultimate objective is to identify the most important non-dimensional hydrodynamic scaling groups and possible spouted-bed design correlations based on these groups.

The National Wind Coordinating Collaborative (NWCC) is a consensus-based stakeholder group comprised of representatives from the utility, wind industry, environmental, consumer, regulatory, power marketer, agricultural, tribal, economic development, and state and federal government sectors. The purpose of the NWCC is to support the development of an environmentally, economically, and politically sustainable commercial market for wind power (NWCC 2010). The NWCC has been funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) since its inception in 1994. In order to evaluate the impact of the work of the NWCC and how this work aligns with DOE’s strategic priorities, DOE tasked Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to conduct a series of informal interviews with a small sample of those involved with NWCC.

Individual raw datastreams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near real-time. Raw and processed data are then sent approximately daily to the ARM Archive, where they are made available to users. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of data records received daily at the Archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual datastream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year (FY) dating back to 1998.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Weather Service's (NWS) weather products are a vital component of the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) air traffic control system. In addition to providing aviation weather products developed at its own facilities, NWS also provides on-site staff at each of FAA's en route centers--the facilities that control high-altitude flight outside the airport tower and terminal areas. NWS's on-site staff is called a center weather service unit. For several years, NWS and FAA have been exploring options for improving the aviation weather services provided at en route centers. GAO agreed to (1) determine the status of the agencies' efforts to restructure aviation weather services, (2) assess the agencies' progress in establishing performance baselines in order to measure the effect of any changes, and (3) evaluate plans to address key challenges. To do so, GAO evaluated agency progress and plans and compared agency efforts with leading practices."

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act provides $7.2 billion primarily for broadband grant programs to be administered by two separate agencies: the National Telecommunications and Information Administration of the Department of Commerce and the Rural Utilities Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This report is over the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the implementation of the Broadband programs, and issues related to the implementation.

The financial crisis that began in 2007 spread and gathered intensity in 2008, despite the efforts of central banks and regulators to restore calm. By early 2009, the financial system and the global economy appeared to be locked in a descending spiral, and the primary focus of policy became the prevention of a prolonged downturn on the order of the Great Depression. This report sets out in tabular form a number of the factors that have been identified as causes of the crisis. The left column of Table 1 below summarizes the causal role of each such factor. The next column presents a brief rejoinder to that argument. The right-hand column contains a reference for further reading.

Nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and renewable energy (including biofuels) are the only energy sources capable of satisfying the Earth's need for power for the next century and beyond without the negative environmental impacts of fossil fuels. Substantially increasing the use of nuclear fission and renewable energy now could help reduce dependency on fossil fuels, but nuclear fusion has the potential of becoming the ultimate base-load energy source. Fusion is an attractive fuel source because it is virtually inexhaustible, widely available, and lacks proliferation concerns. It also has a greatly reduced waste impact, and no danger of runaway reactions or meltdowns. The substantial environmental, commercial, and security benefits of fusion continue to motivate the research needed to make fusion power a reality. Replicating the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars to meet Earth's energy needs has been a long-sought scientific and engineering challenge. In fact, this technological challenge is arguably the most difficult ever undertaken. Even after roughly 60 years of worldwide research, much more remains to be learned. the magnitude of the task has caused some to declare that fusion is 20 years away, and always will be. This glib criticism ignores the enormous progress that has occurred …

We discuss the results of SEM and TEM measurements with the BPRML test samples fabricated from a BPRML (WSi2/Si with fundamental layer thickness of 3 nm) with a Dual Beam FIB (focused ion beam)/SEM technique. In particular, we demonstrate that significant information about the metrological reliability of the TEM measurements can be extracted even when the fundamental frequency of the BPRML sample is smaller than the Nyquist frequency of the measurements. The measurements demonstrate a number of problems related to the interpretation of the SEM and TEM data. Note that similar BPRML test samples can be used to characterize x-ray microscopes. Corresponding work with x-ray microscopes is in progress.

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This report focuses on the potential implications of China's naval modernization for future required U.S. Navy capabilities. This report is based on unclassified open-source information, such as the annual Department of Defense (DOD) report to Congress on China's military power, an August 2009 report from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and published reference sources such as Jane's Fighting Ships.

This report focuses on the potential implications of China's naval modernization for future required U.S. Navy capabilities. The report particularly discusses how potential United States responses to China's military modernization effort -- including its naval modernization effort -- have emerged as a key issue in U.S. defense planning.

Recently, attention has been drawn towards black carbon aerosols as a likely short-term climate warming mitigation candidate. However the global and regional impacts of the direct, cloud-indirect and semi-direct forcing effects are highly uncertain, due to the complex nature of aerosol evolution and its climate interactions. Black carbon is directly released as particle into the atmosphere, but then interacts with other gases and particles through condensation and coagulation processes leading to further aerosol growth, aging and internal mixing. A detailed aerosol microphysical scheme, MATRIX, embedded within the global GISS modelE includes the above processes that determine the lifecycle and climate impact of aerosols. This study presents a quantitative assessment of the impact of microphysical processes involving black carbon, such as emission size distributions and optical properties on aerosol cloud activation and radiative forcing. Our best estimate for net direct and indirect aerosol radiative forcing change is -0.56 W/m{sup 2} between 1750 and 2000. However, the direct and indirect aerosol effects are very sensitive to the black and organic carbon size distribution and consequential mixing state. The net radiative forcing change can vary between -0.32 to -0.75 W/m{sup 2} depending on these carbonaceous particle properties. Assuming that sulfates, nitrates and secondary …

This document is of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act consolidating the amendments made by title X of the Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010.

An anisotropic constitutive model for the long term dimensional stability of insensitive high explosives is proposed. Elastic, creep, thermal, and ratchet growth strains are developed. Pressure and temperature effects are considered. The constitutive model is implemented in an implicit finite element code and compared to a variety of experimental data.

Semi-insulating (Cd,Mn)Te crystals offer a material that may compete well with the commonly used (Cd,Zn)Te crystals for manufacturing large-area X- and gamma-ray detectors. The Bridgman growth method yields good quality, high-resistivity (10{sup 9} - 10{sup 10} {Omega} {center_dot} cm) crystals of (Cd,Mn)Te:V. Doping the as-grown crystals with the compensating agent vanadium ({approx} 10{sup 16} cm{sup -3}) ensures their high resistivity; thereafter, annealing them in cadmium vapors reduces the number of cadmium vacancies. Applying the crystals as detectors necessitates having satisfactory electrical contacts. Accordingly, we explored various techniques of ensuring good electrical contacts to these semi-insulating (Cd,Mn)Te crystals, assessing metallic layers, monocrystalline semiconductor layers, and amorphous (or nanocrystalline) semiconductor layers. We found that ZnTe heavily doped ({approx} 10{sup 18} cm{sup -3}) with Sb, and CdTe heavily doped ({approx} 10{sup 17} cm{sup -3}) with In, proved satisfactory semiconductor contact layers. They subsequently enabled us to establish good contacts (with only narrow tunneling barriers) to the Au layer that usually constitutes the most external contact layer. We outline our technology of applying electrical contacts to semi-insulating (Cd,Mn)Te, and describe some important properties.

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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 …