This report discusses the Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) FY2011 appropriations bill, which includes funding for the Department of the Treasury, the Executive Office of the President (EOP), the judiciary, the District of Columbia, and 26 independent agencies, including the Small Business Administration and the United States Postal Service.

Seclusion and restraint have been used in various situations to deal with violent or noncompliant behavior. Because of congressional interest in the use of seclusion and restraint in schools, including passage of H.R. 4247 and the introduction of S. 2860, 111th Congress, first session, this report focuses on the legal issues concerning the use of these techniques in schools, including their application both to children covered by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and to those not covered by IDEA.

This report provides an overview of Jordanian politics and current issues in U.S.-Jordanian relations. It provides a brief discussion of Jordan's government and economy and of its cooperation in promoting Arab-Israeli peace and other U.S. policy objectives in the Middle East.

This report describes the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" military policy, which holds that the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in same-sex acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion which are the essence of military capability. Under this policy, but not the law, service members are not to be asked about nor allowed to discuss their "same-sex orientation." This report also describes recent efforts by certain Members of Congress to amending this policy.

This report reviews the evolution of the U.S. biofuels sector and the role that federal policy has played in shaping its development. In addition, it highlights emerging issues that are critical to the biofuels sector and of relevance to Congress.

This report will briefly discuss existing disaster-related tax provisions and their application to the recent Depewater Horizon oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The report then provides an analysis of the tax treatment of the BP payments to the individuals and businesses impacted by the oil spill as well as various policy options for providing tax relief to oil spill victims, highlighting the circumstantial differences between previous natural disasters and the current oil spill. The report concludes with a brief summary of current legislative efforts.

To address the challenges facing the U.S. intelligence community in the 21st century, congressional and executive branch initiatives have sought to improve coordination among the different agencies and to encourage better analysis. This report discusses these challenges and efforts the current and previous Administrations and Congresses have taken and are taking to address them. The report includes criticism of the intelligence community's efforts regarding Iraq, Iran, and other areas. Improved analysis remains a key goal in these discussions.

The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is a relatively inexpensive Navy surface combatant equipped with modular "plug-and-fight" mission packages. FY2011 issues for Congress include whether to approve, reject, or modify the Navy's request for FY2011 procurement and advance procurement funding for the LCS program, and whether to provide any additional direction to the Navy regarding LCS acquisition strategy.

This report focuses on the mandated minimum usage requirements - referred to as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) - whereby a minimum volume of biofuels is to be used in the national transportation fuel supply each year. It describes the general nature of the biofuels RFS and its implementation, and outlines some of the emerging issues related to the sustainability of the continued growth in U.S. biofuels production needed to fulfill the expanding RFS mandate, as well as the emergence of potential unintended consequences of this rapid expansion. This report does not address the broader public policy issue of how best to support U.S. energy policy.

None

This report is an Analysis of Policy Issues for Congress regarding Cellulosic Biofuels.

This report provides information about the mandatory appropriations and fund transfers in patient protection and ACA.

Recently a collaboration of LLNL and LBNL has constructed a second generation Compton coincidence instrument to study the non-proportionality of scintillators. This device, known as SLYNCI (Scintillator Light-Yield Non-proportionality Characterization Instrument), has can completely characterize a sample with less than 24 hours of running time. Thus, SLYNCI enables a number of systematic studies of scintillators since many samples can be processed in a reasonable length of time. These studies include differences in nonproportionality between different types of scintillators, different members of the same family of scintillators, and impact of different doping levels. The results of such recent studies are presented here, including a study of various alkali halides, and the impact of europium doping level in strontium iodide. Directions of future work area also discussed.

In many commercial cells, long tabs at both cell sides, leading to uniform potentials along the spiral direction of wound jelly rolls, are rarely seen because of their high manufacturing cost. More often, several metal strips are welded at discrete locations along both current collector foils. With this design, the difference of electrical potentials is easily built up along current collectors in the spiral direction. Hence, the design features of the tabs, such as number, location and size, can be crucial factors for spiral-shaped battery cells. This paper presents a Li-ion battery cell model having a 3-dimensional spiral mesh involving a wound jellyroll structure. Further results and analysis will be given regarding impacts of tab location, number, and size.

A straightforward method to evaluate the tritium content of Zircaloy-2 cladding hulls via oxidation of the hull and capture of the volatilized tritium in liquids has been demonstrated. Hull samples were heated in air inside a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA). The TGA was rapidly heated to 1000 C to oxidize the hulls and release absorbed tritium. To capture tritium, the TGA off-gas was bubbled through a series of liquid traps. The concentrations of tritium in bubbler solutions indicated that tritiated water vapor was captured nearly quantitatively. The average tritium content measured in the hulls was 19% of the amount of tritium produced by the fuel, according to ORIGEN2 isotope generation and depletion calculations. Published experimental data show that Zircaloy-2 oxidation follows an Arrhenius model, and that an initial, nonlinear oxidation rate is followed by a faster, linear rate after 'breakaway' of the oxide film. This study demonstrates that the linear oxidation rate of Zircaloy samples at 974 C is faster than predicted by the extrapolation of data from lower temperatures.

Following recommendations made in Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7, which established a national policy for the identification and increased protection of critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR) by Federal departments and agencies, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2006 developed the Enhanced Critical Infrastructure Protection (ECIP) program. The ECIP program aimed to provide a closer partnership with state, regional, territorial, local, and tribal authorities in fulfilling the national objective to improve CIKR protection. The program was specifically designed to identify protective measures currently in place in CIKR and to inform facility owners/operators of the benefits of new protective measures. The ECIP program also sought to enhance existing relationships between DHS and owners/operators of CIKR and to build relationships where none existed (DHS 2008; DHS 2009). In 2009, DHS and its protective security advisors (PSAs) began assessing CIKR assets using the ECIP program and ultimately produced individual protective measure and vulnerability values through the protective measure and vulnerability indices (PMI/VI). The PMI/VI assess the protective measures posture of individual facilities at their 'weakest link,' allowing for a detailed analysis of the most vulnerable aspects of the facilities (Schneier 2003), while maintaining the ability to produce an overall protective measures …

Phase-resolved x-ray ferromagnetic resonance (XFMR) has been measured in fluorescence yield, extending the application of XFMR to opaque samples on opaque substrates. Magnetization dynamics were excited in a Co{sub 50}Fe{sub 50}(0.7)/Ni{sub 90}Fe{sub 10}(5) bilayer by means of a continuous wave microwave excitation, while x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) spectra were measured stroboscopically at different points in the precession cycle. By tuning the x-ray energy to the L{sub 3} edges of Ni and Fe, the dependence of the real and imaginary components of the element specific magnetic susceptibility on the strength of an externally applied static bias field was determined. First results from measurements on a Co{sub 50}Fe{sub 50}(0.7)/Ni{sub 90}Fe{sub 10}(5)/Dy(1) sample confirm that enhanced damping results from the addition of the Dy cap.

October report of the U.S. Congressional Oversight Panel describing their activities and findings regarding the use of private contractors in the implementation of the U.S. Treasury's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

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 focuses specifically on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). It describes the general nature of the biofuels RFS and its implementation, and outlines some of the emerging issues related to the sustainability of the continued growth in U.S. biofuels production needed to fulfill the expanding RFS mandate, as well as the emergence of potential unintended consequences of this rapid expansion. This report does not address the broader public policy issue of how best to support U.S. energy policy.