A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) senior leadership vacancy rates, while reaching a peak of 25 percent in 2006, have generally declined since that time—from 25 percent in fiscal year 2006 to 10 percent at the end of fiscal year 2011. From fiscal years 2006 through 2010—the most recent year for which governmentwide vacancy and attrition data were available—DHS vacancy rates in 2006, 2007, and 2010 were statistically higher than the average of other agencies subject to the Chief Financial Officers (CFO) Act but were not statistically different in 2008 and 2009. DHS’s components’—such as the Transportation Security Administration and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement—vacancy rates varied. Many had vacancy rates above 20 percent—one as high as 57 percent—in fiscal year 2006, but generally had lower rates at the end of fiscal year 2011."

This report discusses the current political and economic conditions in Russia, focusing on the impact of Vladimir Putin's leadership and the leadership of his successor/protégé, Dmitriy Medvedev, both of which have steered Russia away from progress toward democratization. The report also discusses the state of the economy since the Soviet collapse in 1999, how the recent global economic downturn has affected Russia, the state of Russia's military, and the current relationship between Russia and the United States.

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A space-charge-limited beam with current densities (J) exceeding 1 mA/cm{sup 2} have been measured from lithium alumino-silicate ion sources at a temperature of ∼1275{degrees}C. At higher extraction voltages, the source appears to become emission limited with J ≥ 1.5 mA/cm{sup 2}, and J increases weakly with the applied voltage. A source with an alumino-silicate coating 6.35 mm in diameter and ≤0.25 mm thick, has a lifetime of ∼40 hours at ∼1275{degrees}C, when pulsed at 0.05 Hz and with pulse length of ∼6 μs each. At this rate, the source lifetime was independent of the actual beam charge extracted due to the loss of neutral atoms at high temperature. Furthermore, the source lifetime increases with the amount of alumino-silicate coated on the emitting surface, and may also be extended if the temperature is reduced between pulses.

In this study, the microwave materials interactions were studied through dielectric property measurements, process modeling, and lab scale microwave hybrid calcination tests. Characterization and analysis were performed to evaluate material reactions and energy usage. Processing parameters for laboratory scale and larger scale calcining experiments were developed for MAT limestone calcination. Early stage equipment design concepts were developed, with a focus on microwave post heating treatment. The retrofitting of existing rotary calcine equipment in the lime industry was assessed and found to be feasible. Ceralink sought to address some of the major barriers to the uptake of MAT identified as the need for (1) team approach with end users, technology partners, and equipment manufacturers, (2) modeling that incorporates kiln materials and variations to the design of industrial microwave equipment. This project has furthered the commercialization effort of MAT by working closely with an industrial lime manufacturer to educate them regarding MAT, identifying equipment manufacturer to supply microwave equipment, and developing a sophisticated MAT modeling with WPI, the university partner. MAT was shown to enhance calcining through lower energy consumption and faster reaction rates compared to conventional processing. Laboratory testing concluded that a 23% reduction in energy was possible for calcining small …

This report forms part of the Conceptual Design Report (CDR) of the Compact LInear Collider (CLIC). The CLIC accelerator complex is described in a separate CDR volume. A third document, to appear later, will assess strategic scenarios for building and operating CLIC in successive center-of-mass energy stages. It is anticipated that CLIC will commence with operation at a few hundred GeV, giving access to precision standard-model physics like Higgs and top-quark physics. Then, depending on the physics landscape, CLIC operation would be staged in a few steps ultimately reaching the maximum 3 TeV center-of-mass energy. Such a scenario would maximize the physics potential of CLIC providing new physics discovery potential over a wide range of energies and the ability to make precision measurements of possible new states previously discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The main purpose of this document is to address the physics potential of a future multi-TeV e{sup +}e{sup -} collider based on CLIC technology and to describe the essential features of a detector that are required to deliver the full physics potential of this machine. The experimental conditions at CLIC are significantly more challenging than those at previous electron-positron colliders due to the much higher …

Electron cooling was proposed to increase luminosity of the RHIC collider for heavy ion beams at low energies. Luminosity decreases as the square of bunch intensity due to the beam loss from the RF bucket as a result of the longitudinal intra beam scattering (IBS), as well as due to the transverse emittance growth because of the transverse IBS. Both transverse and longitudinal IBS can be counteracted with electron cooling. This would allow one to keep the initial peak luminosity close to constant throughout the store essentially without the beam loss. In addition, the phase-space density of the hadron beams can be further increased by providing stronger electron cooling. Unfortunately, the defining limitation for low energies in RHIC is expected to be the space charge. Here we explore an idea of additional improvement in luminosity, on top of the one coming from just IBS compensation and longer stores, which may be expected if one can operate with longer bunches at the space-charge limit in a collider. This approach together with electron cooling may result in about 10-fold improvement in total luminosity for low-energy RHIC program.

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.

We describe how to apply the recently developed pole expansion plus selected inversion (PEpSI) technique to Kohn-Sham density function theory (DFT) electronic structure calculations that are based on atomic orbital discretization. We give analytic expressions for evaluating charge density, total energy, Helmholtz free energy and atomic forces without using the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the Kohn-Sham Hamiltonian. We also show how to update the chemical potential without using Kohn-Sham eigenvalues. The advantage of using PEpSI is that it has a much lower computational complexity than that associated with the matrix diagonalization procedure. We demonstrate the performance gain by comparing the timing of PEpSI with that of diagonalization on insulating and metallic nanotubes. For these quasi-1D systems, the complexity of PEpSI is linear with respect to the number of atoms. This linear scaling can be observed in our computational experiments when the number of atoms in a nanotube is larger than a few hundreds. Both the wall clock time and the memory requirement of PEpSI is modest. This makes it even possible to perform Kohn-Sham DFT calculations for 10,000-atom nanotubes on a single processor. We also show that the use of PEpSI does not lead to loss of accuracy required in …

This report provides a historical examination of the SBA's size standards, assesses competing views concerning how to define a small business, and discusses how the alternative size standards adopted under the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 might affect program eligibility.

This report addresses traditional funding for major disaster declarations, workings of the President's Disaster Relief Fund, a basic overview of how disaster assistance is appropriated, what factors affect how much the federal government spends on disasters, how disaster relief is impacted by the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011, and what the policy implications are for disaster assistance under the constraints of the BCA, and the increasing number of disaster declarations and both the possible causes and likely cost implications of a greater number of declarations.

This CRS report, updated as warranted, discusses policy issues regarding military-to-military (mil-to-mil) contacts with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and provides a record of major contacts and crises since 1993. Issues for Congress include whether the Obama Administration has complied with legislation overseeing dealings with the PLA and pursued contacts with the PLA that advance a prioritized set of U.S. security interests, especially the operational safety of U.S. military personnel. Oversight legislation includes the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for FY1990-FY1991 and National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for FY2000.

Congress established the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) through the National Science and Technology Policy, Organization, and Priorities Act of 1976. The act states that “The primary function of the OSTP Director is to provide, within the Executive Office of the President [EOP], advice on the scientific, engineering, and technological aspects of issues that require attention at the highest level of Government.” Issues for Congress to consider regarding OSTP are the nomination of the OSTP director by the President; engagement of OSTP with China; the title, rank, and responsibilities of the OSTP director; OSTP policy foci; OSTP funding and staffing; roles and functions of the OSTP and NSTC; and the status and influence of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST).

This report focuses on the United States' relationship with Iran and how the Obama Administration is handling prior administration's economic sanctions against Iran. The Obama Administration's policy approach toward Iran has contrasted with the Bush Administration's by attempting to couple the imposition of sanctions to an active and direct U.S. effort to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear issue. That approach was not initially altered because of the Iranian dispute over its June 12, 2009, elections. However, with subsequent negotiations yielding no firm Iranian agreement to compromise, since early 2010 the Administration has focused on achieving the imposition of additional U.N., U.S., and allied country sanctions whose cumulative effect would be to compel it to accept a nuclear bargain.

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