This report provides the information related to the fishery, aquaculture, and marine mammal issues in the 111th Congress

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Global Positioning System (GPS), which provides position, navigation, and timing data to users worldwide, has become essential to U.S. national security and a key tool in an expanding array of public service and commercial applications at home and abroad. The United States provides GPS data free of charge. The Air Force, which is responsible for GPS acquisition, is in the process of modernizing GPS. In light of the importance of GPS, the modernization effort, and international efforts to develop new systems, GAO was asked to undertake a broad review of GPS. Specifically, GAO assessed progress in (1) acquiring GPS satellites, (2) acquiring the ground control and user equipment necessary to leverage GPS satellite capabilities, and evaluated (3) coordination among federal agencies and other organizations to ensure GPS missions can be accomplished. To carry out this assessment, GAO's efforts included reviewing and analyzing program documentation, conducting its own analysis of Air Force satellite data, and interviewing key officials."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2008, GAO issued two reports on hedge funds--pooled investment vehicles that are privately managed and often engage in active trading of various types of securities and commodity futures and options contracts--highlighting the need for continued regulatory attention and for guidance to better inform pension plans on the risks and challenges of hedge fund investments. Hedge funds generally qualified for exemption from certain securities laws and regulations, including the requirement to register as an investment company. Hedge funds have been deeply affected by the recent financial turmoil. But an industry survey of institutional investors suggests that these investors are still committed to investing in hedge funds in the long term. For the first time hedge funds are allowed to borrow from the Federal Reserve under the Term-Asset Backed Loan Facility. As such, the regulatory oversight issues and investment challenges raised by the 2008 reports still remain relevant. This testimony discusses: (1) federal regulators' oversight of hedge fund-related activities; (2) potential benefits, risks, and challenges pension plans face in investing in hedge funds; (3) the measures investors, creditors, and counterparties have taken to impose market discipline on hedge funds; …

This report discusses the current political and social climate of Iraq, specifically in regards to the influence of the U.S. military presence over recent years. This report addresses planned and possible future efforts under the Obama Administration, including the scheduled gradual troops withdrawal.

Using a streak camera, we measured the longitudinal profiles of a positron bunch in the Low Energy Ring (LER) of KEKB at various currents. The measured charge densities were used to construct a simple Q=1 broadband impedance model. The model, with three parameters, not only gave an excellent description of longitudinal dynamics for positive momentum compaction factor but also for the negative ones, including bunch shortening below a threshold and bursting modes above the threshold. Furthermore, our study indicated that the threshold of microwave instability was about 0.5 mA in bunch current in the LER. At the nominal operating current 1.0 mA, there was a 20% increase of the energy spread. The results of measurement, analysis, and simulations will be presented in this paper.

We report measurements of the CKM angles {beta}/{phi}{sub 1} and {alpha}/{phi}{sub 2} done by the BABAR and Belle experiments. Both experiments have collected large data samples, corresponding to a total of more than 1 billion of B{bar B} pairs, at the e{sup +}e{sup -} asymmetric-energy colliders PEP-II (SLAC) and KEK-B (KEK), respectively.

Bunch compressors, designed to increase the peak current, can lead to a microbunching instability with detrimental effects on the beam quality. This is a major concern for free electron lasers (FELs) where very bright electron beams are required, i.e. beams with low emittance and energy spread. In this paper, we apply our self-consistent, parallel solver to study the microbunching instability in the first bunch compressor system of FERMI{at}Elettra. Our basic model is a 2D Vlasov-Maxwell system. We treat the beam evolution through a bunch compressor using our Monte Carlo mean field approximation. We randomly generate N points from an initial phase space density. We then calculate the charge density using a smooth density estimation procedure, from statistics, based on Fourier series. The electric and magnetic fields are calculated from the smooth charge/current density using a novel field formula that avoids singularities by using the retarded time as a variable of integration. The points are then moved forward in small time steps using the beam frame equations of motion, with the fields frozen during a time step, and a new charge density is determined using our density estimation procedure. We try to choose N large enough so that the charge density …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy's (DOE) Hanford Site in Washington State stores 56 million gallons of untreated radioactive and hazardous wastes resulting from decades of nuclear weapons production. DOE is constructing facilities at the site to treat these wastes before permanent disposal. As part of meeting health, safety, and other standards, work at the site has sometimes been suspended to address safety or construction quality issues. This report discusses (1) work stoppages from January 2000 through December 2008 and what is known about them, (2) the types of costs associated with work stoppages and who paid for them, and (3) whether more effective regulation or oversight could have prevented the work stoppages. GAO interviewed knowledgeable DOE and contractor officials about these events. When documentation was available, GAO obtained DOE and contractor accident and safety incident reports, internal DOE and independent external evaluations, and costs."

FACET is a proposed facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. It will provide high energy, tightly focused and compressed electron and positron bunches for beam driven plasma wakefield acceleration research and other experiments. FACET will be built in the SLAC linac sector 20, where it will be separated from the LCLS located immediately downstream and will take advantage of the upstream 2 km linac for up to 23 GeV beam acceleration. FACET will also include an upgrade to linac sector 10, where a new e+ compressor chicane will be installed. The sector 20 will contain a new optics consisting of two chicanes for e+ and ebunch length compression, a final focus and an experimental line with a dump. The e+ and e- chicanes will allow the transport of e+ and ebunches together, their compression and proper positioning of e+ witness bunch behind the e- drive bunch at the plasma Interaction Point. The new optics will mostly use the existing SLAC magnets to minimize the project cost. Details of the FACET optics design and results of particle tracking simulations are presented.

The 1-MW High Voltage Converter Modulators [1] have operated in excess of 250,000 hours at the Spallation Neutron Source. Increased demands on the accelerator performance require increased modulator reliability. An effort is underway at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to redesign the modulator H-bridge switch plate with the goals of increasing reliability and performance [2]. The major difference between the SLAC design and the existing design is the use of press-pack IGBTs. Compared to other packaging options, these IGBTs have been shown to have increased performance in pulsed-power applications, have increased cooling capability, and do not fragment and disassemble during a fault event. An overview of the SLAC switch plate redesign is presented. Design steps including electrical modeling of the modulator and H-bridge, development of an integrated IGBT clamping mechanism, and fault tests are discussed. Experimental results will be presented comparing electrical performance of the SLAC switch plate to the existing switchplate under normal and fault conditions.

May report of the U.S. Congressional Oversight Panel describing their activities and findings regarding consumer lending to small businesses and households through the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility program (TALF).

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, questions have been raised about the capacity of the Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) Division of Enforcement (Enforcement) to manage its resources and fulfill its law enforcement and investor protection responsibilities. This testimony focuses on (1) the extent to which Enforcement has an appropriate mix of resources; (2) considerations affecting penalty determinations, and recent trends in penalties and disgorgements ordered; and (3) the adoption, implementation, and effects of recent penalty policies. The testimony is based on the GAO report, Securities and Exchange Commission: Greater Attention Needed to Enhance Communication and Utilization of Resources in the Division of Enforcement (GAO-09-358, March 31, 2009). For this work, GAO analyzed information on resources, enforcement actions, and penalties; and interviewed current and former SEC officials and staff, and others."

We show that the ability to probe primordial non-Gaussianity with cluster counts is drastically improved by adding the excess variance of counts which contains information on the clustering. The conflicting dependences of changing the mass threshold and including primordial non-Gaussianity on the mass function and biasing indicate that the self-calibrated cluster counts well break the degeneracy between primordial non-Gaussianity and the observable-mass relation. Based on the Fisher matrix analysis, we show that the count variance improves constraints on f{sub NL} by more than an order of magnitude. It exhibits little degeneracy with dark energy equation of state. We forecast that upcoming Hyper Suprime-cam cluster surveys and Dark Energy Survey will constrain primordial non-Gaussianity at the level {sigma}(f{sub NL}) {approx} 8, which is competitive with forecasted constraints from next-generation cosmic microwave background experiments.

We report on the first simultaneous observations that cover the optical, X-ray, and high-energy gamma-ray bands of the BL Lac object PKS 2155-304. The gamma-ray bands were observed for 11 days, between 2008 August 25 and 2008 September 6 (MJD 54704-54715), jointly with the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope and the HESS atmospheric Cherenkov array, providing the first simultaneous MeV-TeV spectral energy distribution (SED) with the new generation of {gamma}-ray telescopes. The ATOM telescope and the RXTE and Swift observatories provided optical and X-ray coverage of the low-energy component over the same time period. The object was close to the lowest archival X-ray and very high energy (VHE; >100 GeV) state, whereas the optical flux was much higher. The light curves show relatively little ({approx}30%) variability overall when compared to past flaring episodes, but we find a clear optical/VHE correlation and evidence for a correlation of the X-rays with the high-energy spectral index. Contrary to previous observations in the flaring state, we do not find any correlation between the X-ray and VHE components. Although synchrotron self-Compton models are often invoked to explain the SEDs of BL Lac objects, the most common versions of these models are at odds with the correlated …

The United States and Soviet Union signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty in 1991; it entered into force in December 1994 and expired in December 2009. This report provides background information about the START Treaty and reviews the discussions about a possible successor to START. It also presents a range of alternatives that the United States and Russia might consider if they choose to follow START with a new framework for the arms control process.

The results of the environmental surveillance program conducted at Site A/Plot M in the Palos Forest Preserve area for Calendar Year 2008 are presented. Based on the results of the 1976-1978 radiological characterization of the site, a determination was made that a surveillance program be established. The characterization study determined that very low levels of hydrogen-3 (as tritiated water) had migrated from the burial ground and were present in two nearby hand pumped picnic wells. The current surveillance program began in 1980 and consists of sample collection and analysis of surface and subsurface water. The results of the analyses are used to (1) monitor the migration pathway of hydrogen-3 contaminated water from the burial ground (Plot M) to the hand-pumped picnic wells, (2) establish if other buried radionuclides have migrated, and (3) monitor for the presence of radioactive materials in the environment of the area. Hydrogen-3 in the Red Gate Woods picnic wells was still detected this year, but the average and maximum concentrations were significantly less than found earlier. Hydrogen-3 continues to be detected in a number of wells, boreholes, dolomite holes, and a surface stream. Analyses since 1984 have indicated the presence of low levels of strontium-90 in …

This report, intended as a background overview, briefly summarizes U.S. political history with Taiwan and discusses the complications it has for current U.S. policy and for congressional actions.

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Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Millions of federal taxpayers receive billions of dollars in income tax refunds every year. Many of these refunds are paid to taxpayers who owe money to the federal government or to their state or local government. The law allows certain types of debts to be collected through offsets of federal income tax refunds before payments are issued to taxpayers--in calendar year 2008, over $5 billion was deducted from income tax refunds and used instead to pay other federal agency nontax debt, state income tax debt, and overdue child support payments. Due in part to the current economic downturn and the financial problems of state and local governments, interest has grown in potential expansion of the refund offset program Congressional request, this letter's objectives are to describe (1) recent proposals to expand the refund offset program, and (2) challenges and design issues that would need to be addressed by policymakers and program administrators in the event of program expansion, including the implications of eliminating the current requirement that tax refund offsets for state income tax debts are allowed only when the affected taxpayer lives in the state seeking the …

This report discusses the United States counterterrorism cooperation with China after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. This effort raised short-term policy issues about how to elicit cooperation and how to address China's concerns about military action (Operation Enduring Freedom). Longer-term questions have concerned whether counterterrorism has strategically transformed bilateral relations and whether China's support has been valuable and not obtained at the expense of other U.S. interests.

This report provides an overview of carbon offsets and examines some of the issue that are generating debate. This report focuses on the voluntary offsets market.

We report on a reflection microscope that operates at 13.2-nm wavelength with a spatial resolution of 55{+-}3 nm. The microscope uses a table-top EUV laser to acquire images of photolithography masks in 20 seconds.

April report of the U.S. Congressional Oversight Panel describing their activities and findings regarding the federal government's current strategy in mitigating the effects of the 2007-2008 financial crisis through the Troubled Asset Relief Fund (TARP).

This report focuses on the CSE program. It examines the CSE program within the context of large numbers of former inmates re-entering local communities.