This report discusses Lebanon's Hezbollah, a Shiite Islamist militia, political party, social welfare organization, and U.S. State Department-designated terrorist organization. The report discusses recent Hezbollah-related conflicts, Hezbollah's relationship with other Lebanese political parties, and U.S. policy regarding Hezbollah.

This report summarizes several federal statutes providing legal authority for the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) programs and activities. These include: the Clean Air Act (CAA), the Clean Water Act (CWA), the Ocean Dumping Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA), the Solid Waste Disposal Act, the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA), the Emergency Planning Act, and the Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA).

This tech note is essentially a summary of a lecture we delivered to the Acc. Phys. Journal Club Apr, 2010. However, since the estimated accuracy of these methods has been naive and misleading in the field of particle accelerators, i.e., ignores the impact of noise, we will elaborate on this in some detail. A prerequisite for a calibration of the nonlinear Hamiltonian is that the quadratic part has been understood, i.e., that the linear optics for the real accelerator has been calibrated. For synchrotron light source operations, this problem has been solved by the interactive LOCO technique/tool (Linear Optics from Closed Orbits). Before that, in the context of hadron accelerators, it has been done by signal processing of turn-by-turn BPM data. We have outlined how to make a basic calibration of the nonlinear model for synchrotrons. In particular, we have shown how this was done for LEAR, CERN (antiprotons) in the mid-80s. Specifically, our accuracy for frequency estimation was {approx} 1 x 10{sup -5} for 1024 turns (to calibrate the linear optics) and {approx} 1 x 10{sup -4} for 256 turns for tune footprint and betatron spectrum. For a comparison, the estimated tune footprint for stable beam for NSLS-II is …

A Symposium on Turbulence and Combustion was held at Cornell University on August 3-4, 2009. The overall goal of the Symposium was to promote future advances in the study of turbulence and combustion, through an unique forum intended to foster interactions between leading members of these two research communities. The Symposium program consisted of twelve invited lectures given by world-class experts in these fields, two poster sessions consisting of nearly 50 presentations, an open forum, and other informal activities designed to foster discussion. Topics covered in the lectures included turbulent dispersion, wall-bounded flows, mixing, finite-rate chemistry, and others, using experiment, modeling, and computations, and included perspectives from an international community of leading researchers from academia, national laboratories, and industry.

A bathymetric and topographic data collection and processing effort involving existing and newly collected data has been performed for the Columbia River through the Hanford Reach in central Washington State, extending 60-miles from the tailrace of Priest Rapids Dam (river mile 397) to near the vicinity of the Interstate 182 bridge just upstream of the Yakima River confluence (river mile 337). The contents of this report provide a description of the data collections, data inputs, processing methodology, and final data quality assessment used to develop a comprehensive and continuous merged 1m resolution bathymetric and topographic surface dataset for the Columbia River through the Hanford Reach.

This report discusses in brief the current political state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the crisis situation in eastern Congo that has displaced more than 250,000 civilians. It also describes U.S., U.N., and other international efforts to aid in resolving the crisis.

This report discusses the current political conditions of Rwanda, including a brief historical overview. The report also includes information about the poor human rights conditions in Rwanda and U.S. Rwanda relations.

This report discusses the political climate of Somalia, which has undergone extreme unrest for years. The report focuses on events since October 2002, including the formation of the Transitional Federal Government (TFG) in 2007 and the TFG's cooperation with the Re-Liberation of Somalia (ARS) in 2008. The report also discusses the U.S. relationship with Somalia under the Obama Administration, including U.S. economic assistance given to Somalia and U.S. efforts to contain Somalian terrorist groups.

Sudan, geographically the largest country in Africa, has been ravaged by civil war intermittently for four decades, resulting in catastrophic civilian casualties and displacements. This report discusses the history of Sudan's civil unrest and the subsequent crisis in Darfur, as well as United Nations and United States aid and peacekeeping efforts and current related policy under the Obama Administration.

The phenomenal coherence and brightness of x-ray free-electron laser light sources, such as the LCLS at SLAC, have the potential of revolutionizing the investigation of structure and dynamics in the nano-domain. However, this potential will go unrealized without a similar revolution in the way the data are analyzed. While it is true that the ambitious design parameters of the LCLS have been achieved, the prospects of realizing the most publicized goal of this instrument — the imaging of individual bio-particles — remains daunting. Even with 10{sup 12} photons per x-ray pulse, the feebleness of the scattering process represents a fundamental limit that no amount of engineering ingenuity can overcome. Large bio-molecules will scatter on the order of only 10{sup 3} photons per pulse into a detector with 106 pixels; the diffraction “images” will be virtually indistinguishable from noise. Averaging such noisy signals over many pulses is not possible because the particle orientation cannot be controlled. Each noisy laser snapshot is thus confounded by the unknown viewpoint of the particle. Given the heavy DOE investment in LCLS and the profound technical challenges facing single-particle imaging, the final two years of this project have concentrated on this effort. We are happy to …

In mirrors with E × B rotation, a fixed azimuthal perturbation in the lab frame can appear as a wave in the rotating frame. If the rotation frequency varies with radius, the plasma-frame wave frequency will also vary radially due to the Doppler shift. A wave that propagates in the high rotation plasma region might therefore be evanescent at the plasma edge. This can lead to radially localized Alfven eigenmodes with high azimuthal mode numbers. Contained Alfven modes are found both for peaked and non-peaked rotation profiles. These modes might be useful for alpha channeling or ion heating, as the high azimuthal wave number allows the plasma wave frequency in the rotating frame to exceed the ion cyclotron frequency. __________________________________________________

We present a broad-brush survey of the phenomenology, history and importance of the electron-cloud effect (ECE). We briefly discuss the simulation techniques used to quantify the electron-cloud (EC) dynamics. Finally, we present in more detail an effective theory to describe the EC density build-up in terms of a few effective parameters. For further details, the reader is encouraged to refer to the proceedings of many prior workshops, either dedicated to EC or with significant EC contents, including the entire 'ECLOUD' series. In addition, the proceedings of the various flavors of Particle Accelerator Conferences contain a large number of EC-related publications. The ICFA Beam Dynamics Newsletter series contains one dedicated issue, and several occasional articles, on EC. An extensive reference database is the LHC website on EC.

Some in Congress have expressed concern about the government's use of private-sector lead system integrators (LSIs) for executing large, complex, defense-related acquisition programs. LSIs are large, prime contractors hired to manage such programs. Supporters of the LSI concept argue that it is needed to execute such complex acquisition efforts, and can promote better technical oversight and innovation. This report discusses both the praise for and criticisms of the LSI concept, as well as related legislation.

This report discusses the recent widespread flooding in Pakistan, which has affected about 20 million Pakistanis. U.S. interest in the flooding stems from the significant humanitarian and economic implications for Pakistan, and the security implications for U.S. interests in the region.

The U.S. Fire Administration (USFA) - which includes the National Fire Academy (NFA) - is currently an entity within the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The objective of the USFA is to significantly reduce the nation's loss of life from fire, while also achieving a reduction in property loss and non-fatal injury due to fire. In the 111th Congress, debate over the USFA budget focuses on whether the USFA is receiving sufficient funding to accomplish its mission, given that appropriations for USFA have consistently been well below the agency's authorized level. An ongoing issue is the viability and status of the USFA and National Fire Academy within the Department of Homeland Security.

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Traditionally, modeling investment and dispatch problems in electricity economics has been limited by computation power. Due to this limitation, simplifications are applied. One common practice, for example, is to reduce the temporal resolution of the dispatch by clustering similar load levels. The increase of intermittent electricity from renewable energy sources (RES-E) changes the validity of this assumption. RES-E already cover a certain amount of the total demand. This leaves an increasingly volatile residual demand to be matched by the conventional power market. This paper quantifies differences in investment decisions by applying three different time-resolution residual load patterns in an investment and dispatch power system model. The model optimizes investment decisions in five year steps between today and 2030 with residual load levels for 8760, 288 and 16 time slices per year. The market under consideration is the four zone ERCOT market in Texas. The results show that investment decisions significantly differ across the three scenarios. In particular, investments into base-load technologies are substantially reduced in the high resolution scenario (8760 residual load levels) relative to the scenarios with lower temporal resolution. Additionally, the amount of RES-E curtailment and the market value of RES-E exhibit noteworthy differences.

The diminishment of Arctic sea ice has led to increased human activities in the Arctic, and has heightened concerns about the region's future. Issues such as Arctic sovereignty claims; commercial shipping through the Arctic; Arctic oil, gas, and mineral exploration; endangered Arctic species; and increased military operations in the Arctic could cause the region in coming years to become an arena of international cooperation, competition, or conflict. This report provides an overview of Arctic-related issues for Congress, and refers readers to more in-depth CRS reports on specific Arctic-related issues.

America’s dependence on foreign sources for fuel represents a economic and security threat for the country. These non renewable resources are depleting, and the effects of pollutants from fuels such as oil are reaching a problematic that affects the global community. Solar concentration power (SCP) production systems offer the opportunity to harness one of the United States’ most under utilized natural resources; sunlight. While commercialization of this technology is increasing, in order to become a significant source of electricity production in the United States the costs of deploying and operating SCP plants must be further reduced. Parabolic Trough SCP technologies are close to meeting energy production cost levels that would raise interest in the technology and help accelerate its adoption as a method to produce a significant portion of the Country’s electric power needs. During this program, Aspen Aerogels will develop a transparent aerogel insulation that can replace the costly vacuum insulation systems that are currently used in parabolic trough designs. During the Phase I program, Aspen Aerogels will optimize the optical and thermal properties of aerogel to meet the needs of this application. These properties will be tested, and the results will be used to model the performance of …

Check shot seismic velocity surveys were collected in 100 B/C, 200 East, 200-PO-1 Operational Unit (OU), and the Gable Gap areas in order to provide time-depth correlation information to aid the interpretation of existing seismic reflection data acquired at the Hanford Site (Figure 1). This report details results from 5 wells surveyed in fiscal year (FY) 2008, 7 wells in FY 2009, and 17 wells in FY 2010 and provides summary compressional-wave seismic velocity information to help guide future seismic survey design as well as improve current interpretations of the seismic data (SSC 1979/1980; SGW-39675; SGW-43746). Augmenting the check shot database are four surveys acquired in 2007 in support of the Bechtel National, Inc. Waste Treatment Plant construction design (PNNL-16559, PNNL-16652), and check shot surveys in three wells to support seismic testing in the 200 West Area (Waddell et al., 1999). Additional sonic logging was conducted during the late 1970s and early 1980s as part of the Basalt Waste Isolation Program (BWIP) (SSC 1979/1980) and check shot/sonic surveys as part of the safety report for the Skagit/Hanford Nuclear project (RDH/10-AMCP-0164). Check shot surveys are used to obtain an in situ measure of compressional-wave seismic velocity for sediment and rock in …

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "On October 8, 2008, the Prenatally and Postnatally Diagnosed Conditions Awareness Act was signed into law, requiring GAO to submit a report concerning the effectiveness of current health care and family support programs for the families of children with disabilities. In this report, GAO focused on Down syndrome because it is a medical condition that is associated with disabilities and occurs frequently enough to yield a sufficient population size for an analysis. GAO examined (1) what is known about the extent to which children with Down syndrome receive medical care during early childhood and (2) what resources families of children with Down syndrome receive through their health care providers and what barriers families face to using these resources. GAO analyzed fee-for-service claims data from a very large private health insurance company, for the claims representing its experience with one of the largest national employers, and Medicaid claims data from seven states with high Medicaid enrollment and low percentages of enrollees in Medicaid managed care. GAO also interviewed specialists at six prominent Down syndrome clinics and 12 advocacy groups to examine what resources families receive and to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. funding for global HIV/AIDS and other health-related programs rose significantly from 2001 to 2008. The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), reauthorized in 2008 at $48 billion through 2013, has made significant investments in support of prevention of HIV/AIDS as well as care and treatment for those affected by the disease in 31 partner countries and 3 regions. In May 2009, the President proposed spending $63 billion through 2014 on global health programs, including HIV/AIDS, under a new Global Health Initiative. The Office of the U.S. Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC), at the Department of State (State), coordinates PEPFAR implementation. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), among other agencies, implement PEPFAR as well as other global health-related assistance programs, such as maternal and child health, infectious disease prevention, and malaria control, among others. Responding to legislative directives, this report examines U.S. disbursements (referred to as spending) for global HIV/AIDS- and other health-related bilateral foreign assistance programs (including basic health and population and reproductive health programs) in fiscal years 2001-2008. The report also provides information on …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In February 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) initially provided states and the District of Columbia (the District) with an estimated $87 billion in increased Medicaid funds through December 2010, provided they met certain requirements. Funds were made available to states and the District through an increase in the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP), the rate at which the federal government matches state expenditures for most Medicaid services. In March 2010, Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which prohibits states from adopting certain changes to program eligibility in order to receive federal reimbursement, and in August 2010, extended increased FMAP rates through June 2011. GAO was asked to examine issues related to Medicaid funds under the Recovery Act. GAO examined (1) states' and the District's access to and use of increased FMAP funds, and (2) states' and the District's plans to sustain their Medicaid programs once these funds are no longer available. To do this work, GAO surveyed state Medicaid officials in the 50 states and the District in August 2009 and March 2010 about their program …