In 2012, the 112th Congress is considering the President's annual funding request for the Peace Corps, efforts to reauthorize the Peace Corps, and related issues. Current issues include the extent to which there is available funding for Peace Corps expansion, whether the Peace Corps has the institutional capacity to expand, and whether volunteers are able to function in a safe and secure environment.

The Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) account of the National Science Foundation (NSF) supports the acquisition and construction of major research facilities and equipment that are to extend the boundaries of science, engineering, and technology. The Administration's FY2013 budget request for the NSF is $7,373.1 million, a 4.8% increase over the FY2012 estimated level of $7,033.1 million. Included in the request total is $196.2 million for MREFC, slightly below the FY2012 estimate of $197.1 million.

The European Union (EU) has long viewed the enlargement process as an extraordinary opportunity to promote political stability and economic prosperity in Europe. U.S. Administrations and many Members of Congress have long backed EU enlargement, believing that it serves U.S. interests by advancing democracy and economic prosperity throughout the European continent. Some U.S. officials are concerned that "enlargement fatigue" as well as the EU's ongoing financial crisis could hinder EU expansion. The status of EU enlargement and its implications for both the EU itself and U.S.-EU relations may be of interest to the second session of the 112th Congress.

The U.S. government has committed over $4 billion in bilateral assistance to the Palestinians Since the establishment of limited Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the mid-1990s. This aid has been requested to support prevention/combating against terrorism, creating coexistence with Israel and self-governance, and meeting humanitarian needs.

This report discusses the current political state of Afghanistan, focusing particularly on the influence of the Taliban and other militant groups and on the leadership of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. This report also discusses the U.S.-Afghanistan relationship, in both the short and long term, and U.S. efforts under the Obama Administration to provide military, reconstructive, and stabilization aid.

CVN-78, CVN-79, and CVN-80 are the first three ships in the Navy's new Gerald R. Ford (CVN- 78) class of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs). This report provides background information and potential oversight issues for Congress on the CVN-78 program.

This report looks at the growing popularity of locally produced foods, and how that popularity and regional/local food systems are affected by the reauthorization of the 2008 farm bill.

This report provides an overview of current and proposed laws at the state and federal levels that require the disclosure of the chemicals added to the fluid used in hydraulic fracturing.

Oil import and export developments pose a host of policy issues. Concerns about import dependence continue to generate interest in policy options to directly discourage imports or to reduce the need for imports by increasing domestic supply and decreasing demand. Rising exports at a time of rising prices has led to calls for policies to restrict such trade. The debate around the Keystone XL pipeline involves concerns about imports, exports, and the environment. The rising cost for fuels has led to calls for release of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, meant to provide a short term policy option in case of supply disruptions. Policy options may entail various economic, fiscal, and environmental trade-offs.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To finance renewable energy projects, the military services use up-front appropriations, such as operation and maintenance funds, and alternative-financing approaches that generally rely on private capital, such as arranging financing and implementing a project with a private developer or utility. The military services have funded about 85 percent of nearly 600 projects that were in design, under construction, or operating in fiscal year 2011 with up-front appropriations, but financed 8 of the 9 large-scale projects and 19 of the 57 medium-scale projects with alternative financing. Several factors affect the military services’ use of financing approaches, including perceived benefits and drawbacks such as how long it takes to obtain funding."

Newsletter of the Texas House of Representative House Research Organization, addressing law reform in Texas and the activities of the agency.

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In our work we revisit Ag and Au adsorbates on Si(111)-7x7, as well as experiment with a ternary system of Pentacene, Ag and Si(111). Of particular interest to us is the Si(111)-({radical}3x{radical}3)R30{degree}–Ag (Ag-Si-{radical}3 hereafter). In this thesis I systematically e plore effects of Ag deposition on the Ag-Si-{radical}3 at different temperatures, film thicknesses and deposition fluxes. The generated insight of the Ag system on the Si(111) is then applied to generate novel methods of nanostructuring and nanowire growth. I then extend our expertise to the Au system on the Ag-Si(111) to gain insight into Au-Si eutectic silicide formation. Finally we explore behavior and growth modes of an organic molecule on the Ag-Si interface.

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The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Reactor (MITR-II) is a research reactor in Cambridge, Massachusetts designed primarily for experiments using neutron beam and in-core irradiation facilities. It delivers a neutron flux comparable to current LWR power reactors in a compact 6 MW core using Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) fuel. In the framework of its non-proliferation policies, the international community presently aims to minimize the amount of nuclear material available that could be used for nuclear weapons. In this geopolitical context, most research and test reactors both domestic and international have started a program of conversion to the use of Low Enriched Uranium (LEU) fuel. A new type of LEU fuel based on an alloy of uranium and molybdenum (UMo) is expected to allow the conversion of U.S. domestic high performance reactors like the MITR-II reactor. Toward this goal, core geometry and power distributions are presented. Distributions of power are calculated for LEU cores depleted with MCODE using an MCNP5 Monte Carlo model. The MCNP5 HEU and LEU MITR models were previously compared to experimental benchmark data for the MITR-II. This same model was used with a finer spatial depletion in order to generate power distributions for the LEU cores. The objective …

The design of power amplifiers in any semi-conductor process is not a trivia exercise and it is often encountered that the simulated solution is qualitatively different than the results obtained. Phenomena such as oscillation occurring either in-band or out of band and sometimes at subharmonic intervals, continuous spectrum noticed in some frequency bands, often referred to as chaos, and jumps and hysteresis effects can all be encountered and render a design useless. All of these problems might have been identified through a more rigorous approach to stability analysis. Designing for stability is probably the one area of amplifier design that receives the least amount of attention but incurs the most catastrophic of effects if it is not performed properly. Other parameters such as gain, power output, frequency response and even matching may suitable mitigation paths. But the lack of stability in an amplifier has no mitigating path. In addition to of loss of the design completely there are the increased production cycle costs, costs involved with investigating and resolving the problem and the costs involved with schedule slips or delays resulting from it. The Linville or Rollett stability criteria that many microwave engineers follow and rely exclusively on is not …

Electroweak radiative corrections to observable quantities of Moeller scattering of polarized particles are calculated. We emphasize the contribution induced by infrared divergent parts of cross section. The covariant method is used to remove infrared divergences, so that our results do not involve any unphysical parameters. When applied to the kinematics of SLAC E158 experiment, these corrections reduce the parity violating asymmetry by about -6.5% at E = 48 GeV and y = 0.5, and kinematically weighted 'hard' bremsstrahlung effect for SLAC E158 is {approx} 1%.

3D Silicon sensors fabricated at FBK-irst with the Double-side Double Type Column (DDTC) approach and columnar electrodes only partially etched through p-type substrates were tested in laboratory and in a 1.35 Tesla magnetic field with a 180 GeV pion beam at CERN SPS. The substrate thickness of the sensors is about 200 {mu}m, and different column depths are available, with overlaps between junction columns (etched from the front side) and ohmic columns (etched from the back side) in the range from 110 {mu}m to 150 {mu}m. The devices under test were bump bonded to the ATLAS Pixel readout chip (FEI3) at SELEX SI (Rome, Italy). We report leakage current and noise measurements, results of functional tests with Am{sup 241} {gamma}-ray sources, charge collection tests with Sr90 {beta}-source and an overview of preliminary results from the CERN beam test.

Series of tests were conducted following ASTM Standard Procedure C1733 to evaluate the repeatability of the test and the effects of several test parameters, including the solution-to-soil mass ratio, test duration, pH, and the concentrations of contaminants in the solution. This standard procedure is recommended for measuring the distribution coefficient (K{sub d}) of a contaminant in a specific soil/groundwater system. One objective of the current tests was to identify experimental conditions that can be used in future interlaboratory studies to determine the reproducibility of the test method. This includes the recommendation of a standard soil, the range of contaminant concentrations and solution matrix, and various test parameters. Quantifying the uncertainty in the distribution coefficient that can be attributed to the test procedure itself allows the differences in measured values to be associated with differences in the natural systems being studied. Tests were conducted to measure the uptake of Cs and Sr dissolved as CsCl and Sr(NO{sub 3}){sub 2} in a dilute NaHCO{sub 3}/SiO{sub 2} solution (representing contaminants in a silicate groundwater) by a NIST standard reference material of San Joaquin soil (SRM 2709a). Tests were run to measure the repeatability of the method and the sensitivity of the test response …

The authors present improved measurements of the branching fractions and CP-asymmetries fin the B{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}, B{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}, and B{sup +} {yields} {rho}{sup +}{rho}{sup 0} decays, which impact the determination of {alpha}. The combined branching fractions of B {yields} K{sub 1}(1270){pi} and B {yields} K{sub 1}(1400){pi} decays are measured for the first time and allow a novel determination of {alpha} in the B{sup 0} {yields} {alpha}{sub 1}(1260){sup {+-}}{pi}{sup {-+}} decay channel. These measurements are performed using the final dataset collected by the BaBar detector at the PEP-II B-factory. The primary goal of the experiments based at the B factories is to test the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) picture of CP violation in the standard model of electroweak interactions. This can be achieved by measuring the angles and sides of the Unitarity Triangle in a redundant way.