This report discusses proposals to limit the consideration by domestic courts of religious principles in general, and Islamic law in particular. The report also addresses the role of foreign and international law generally in U.S. courts and potential unintended consequences of restrictions on the consideration of religious of foreign law.

This report outlines federal programs that provide direct or indirect incentives for biofuels. For each program described, the report provides details including administering agency, authorizing statute(s), annual funding, and expiration date.

This is the final report for the project 'Correlations in Confined Quantum Plasmas', NSF-DOE Partnership Grant DE FG02 07ER54946, 8/1/2007 - 7/30/2010. The research was performed in collaboration with a group at Christian Albrechts University (CAU), Kiel, Germany. That collaboration, almost 15 years old, was formalized during the past four years under this NSF-DOE Partnership Grant to support graduate students at the two institutions and to facilitate frequent exchange visits. The research was focused on exploring the frontiers of charged particle physics evolving from new experimental access to unusual states associated with confinement. Particular attention was paid to combined effects of quantum mechanics and confinement. A suite of analytical and numerical tools tailored to the specific inquiry has been developed and employed

N/A

None

This report discusses major provisions of federal student loans made available through the DL program and previously made through the FFEL program.

This report describes FSAs, the basis for their tax treatment, and data on their use.

This report is intended for Members and staff assisting grant seekers in districts and states and covers writing proposals for both government and private foundations grants.

This study focused on the potential impacts of the addition of Crystalline Silicotitanate (CST) and Monosodium Titanate (MST) from the Small Column Ion Exchange (SCIX) process on the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) glass waste form and the applicability of the DWPF process control models. MST from the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) is also considered in the study. The KT08-series of glasses was designed to evaluate any impacts of the inclusion of uranium and thorium in glasses containing the SCIX components. All but one of the study glasses were found to be amorphous by X-ray diffraction (XRD). One of the slowly cooled glasses contained a small amount of trevorite, which is typically found in DWPF-type glasses and had no practical impact on the durability of the glass. The measured Product Consistency Test (PCT) responses for the study glasses and the viscosities of the glasses were well predicted by the current DWPF models. No unexpected issues were encountered when uranium and thorium were added to the glasses with SCIX components.

This report discusses U.S. policy in relation to North Korea following the death of Kim Jong-Il. North Korea represents one of the United States' biggest foreign policy challenges due to its production and proliferation of nuclear weapons and missiles, the threat of attacks against South Korea, its record of human rights abuses, and the possibility that its internal problems could destabilize Northeast Asia.

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site is located in southeast Washington and consists of 1,518 square kilometers (586 square miles) of land. Established in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project, Hanford workers produced plutonium for our nation's nuclear defense program until the mid 1980's. Since then, the site has been in cleanup mode that is being accomplished in phases. As we achieve remedial objectives and complete active cleanup, DOE will manage Hanford land under the Long-Term Stewardship (LTS) Program until completion of cleanup and the site becomes ready for transfer to the post cleanup landlord - currently planned for DOE's Office of Legacy Management (LM). We define Hanford's LTS Program in the ''Hanford Long-Term Stewardship Program Plan,'' (DOE/RL-201 0-35)[1], which describes the scope including the relationship between the cleanup projects and the LTS Program. DOE designed the LTS Program to manage and provide surveillance and maintenance (S&M) of institutional controls and associated monitoring of closed waste sites to ensure the protection of human health and the environment. DOE's Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) and Hanford cleanup and operations contractors collaboratively developed this program over several years. The program's scope also includes 15 key activities that are identified in …

This report is intended to respond to the many inquiries that CRS gets for Social Security vote information, which range from requests for general information about legislative action over the years to requests for information about specific floor amendments. Thus, it is intended to be a reference document on the major statutory decisions made by Congress on the Social Security program. A detailed table of contents and a summary table of the legislation discussed are provided to aid the reader.

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) was expanded under the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA; P.L. 110-140) in an effort to reduce dependence on foreign oil, promote biofuel use, and stabilize transportation fuel prices, among other goals. Over a 15-year period, the RFS seeks to establish a market for biofuels in the transportation sector by requiring that increasing amounts of biofuels-36 billion gallons by 2022-be blended into transportation fuel. The mandate is to be accomplished with an assortment of advanced biofuels, including cellulosic biofuels-fuels produced from cellulosic materials including grasses, trees, and agricultural and municipal wastes-which will ramp up over time to comprise some 44% of the RFS in 2022.

The National Defense Authorization Act for FY2012 (2012 NDAA, P.L. 112-81) contains a subtitle addressing issues related to detainees at the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and more broadly, the disposition of persons captured in the course of hostilities against Al Qaeda and associated forces. This report offers a brief background of the salient issues and provides a section-by-section analysis of the detainee provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2012.

None

This report provides background information regarding oil spills in U.S. coastal waters and identifies the legal authorities governing oil spill prevention, response, and cleanup. Based on data between 1973 and 2009, the annual number and volume of oil spills have shown declines- in some cases, dramatic declines.

None

None

None

None

General corrosion was observed on high strength low alloy carbon steel after electrochemical impedance spectroscopy experiments (EIS) performed in H{sub 2}O saturated with CO{sub 2} at 50 C and 15.2 MPa. However, general and localized were observed on the same material surfaces after the EIS experiments performed in supercritical CO{sub 2} containing approximately 6100 ppmv H{sub 2}O at 50 C and 15.2 MPa. The general corrosion areas were uniformly covered by the FeCO{sub 3}-like phase identified by X-ray diffraction (XRD). In the area of localized corrosion, XRD also revealed FeCO{sub 3}-rich islands embedded in {alpha}-iron. The energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) analysis revealed high concentrations of iron, carbon, and oxygen in the area affected by general corrosion and in the islands formed in the area of localized corrosion. The real and imaginary impedances were lower in H{sub 2}O saturated with CO{sub 2} than those in the supercritical CO{sub 2} containing the aqueous phase indicating faster corrosion kinetics in the former.

All electron cooling systems which were in operation so far employed electron beam generated with an electrostatic electron gun in DC operating mode, immersed in a longitudinal magnetic field. At low energies magnetic field is also being used to transport electron beam through the cooling section from the gun to the collector. At higher energies (few MeV), it was shown that one can have simpler electron beam transport without continuous magnetic field. Because of a rather weak magnetic field on the cathode and in the cooling section the latter approach was referred to as 'non-magnetized cooling', since there was no suppression of the transverse angular spread of the electron beam with the magnetic field in the cooling section. Such a cooler successfully operated at FNAL (2005-11) at electron beam energy of 4.3 MeV. Providing cooling at even higher energies would be easier with RF acceleration of electron beam, and thus using bunched electron beam for cooling. Significant efforts were devoted to explore various aspects of such bunched electron beam cooling as part of R and D of high-energy electron cooling for RHIC. However, experimental studies of such cooling are still lacking. Establishing this technique experimentally would be extremely useful for …

EPA response to Office of the Inspector General (OIG) final report "Procedural Review of Greenhouse Gases Endangerment Finding Data Quality Processes" (Project No. OPE-FY10-0017), dated September 26, 2011.

This is a memorandum of understanding between the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and the experimenters of Department of Physics and Center for Exploration of Energy and Matter, Indiana University, who have committed to participate in detector tests to be carried out during the 2012 Fermilab Neutrino program. The memorandum is intended solely for the purpose of recording expectations for budget estimates and work allocations for Fermilab, the funding agencies and the participating institutions. it reflects an arrangement that currently is satisfactory to the parties; however, it is recognized and anticipated that changing circumstances of the evolving research program will necessitate revisions. The parties agree to modify this memorandum to reflect such required adjustments. Actual contractual obligations will be set forth in separate documents. The experimenters propsoe to test their prototype 'SciBat-768' detector in the MI-12 building for 3 months (February-April) in Spring 2012. The major goal of this effort is to measure or limit the flux of beam-induced neutrons in a far-off-axis (> 45{sup o}) location of the Booster Neutrino Beamline (BNB). This flux is of interest for a proposed coherent neutral-current neutrino-argon elastic scattering experiment. A second goal is to collect more test data for the SciBath-768 to …