This report discusses the political context and congressional consideration of various funding and other restrictive legislative language applying to military operations in Indochina between 1970 and 1973.It briefly mentions similar congressional actions applying to U.S. military operations in Somalia in 1993 and Kosovo in 1999.

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Low-frequency electromagnetic scattering from one or more tunnels in a lossy dielectric half-space is considered. The tunnel radii are assumed small compared to the wavelength of the electromagnetic field in the surrounding medium; a tunnel can thus be modeled as a thin scatterer, described by an equivalent impedance per unit length. We examine the normalized backscattering width for cases in which the air-ground interface is either smooth or rough.

State renewables portfolio standards (RPS) have emerged as one of the most important policy drivers of renewable energy capacity expansion in the U.S. Collectively, these policies now apply to roughly 40% of U.S. electricity load, and may have substantial impacts on electricity markets, ratepayers, and local economies. As RPS policies have been proposed or adopted in an increasing number of states, a growing number of studies have attempted to quantify the potential impacts of these policies, focusing primarily on projecting cost impacts, but sometimes also estimating macroeconomic and environmental effects. This report synthesizes and analyzes the results and methodologies of 28 distinct state or utility-level RPS cost impact analyses completed since 1998. Together, these studies model proposed or adopted RPS policies in 18 different states. We highlight the key findings of these studies on the costs and benefits of RPS policies, examine the sensitivity of projected costs to model assumptions, assess the attributes of different modeling approaches, and suggest possible areas of improvement for future RPS analysis.

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This report presents a brief overview of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) programs for veterans as well as some of the issues that have been or likely will be subjects of congressional attention during the 109th Congress. In particular, it outlines the veterans benefits provisions that have seen legislative action. Issues concerning the Veterans Health Administration and health care issues are discussed in a companion report, CRS Report RL32961, Veterans’ Health Care Issues in the 109th Congress, by Sidath Viranga Panangala.

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Traditional security approaches do not adequately addressall the requirements of open, scientific computing facilities. Many ofthe methods used for more restricted environments, including almost allcorporate/commercial systems, do not meet the needs of today's science.Use of only the available "state of the practice" commercial methods willhave adverse impact on the ability of DOE to accomplish its sciencegoals, and impacts the productivity of the DOE Science community. Inparticular, NERSC and other high performance computing (HPC) centers havespecial security challenges that are unlikely to be met unless DOE fundsdevelopment and support of reliable and effective tools designed to meetthe cyber security needs of High Performance Science. The securitychallenges facing NERSC can be collected into three basic problem sets:network performance and dynamics, application complexity and diversity,and a complex user community that can have transient affiliations withactual institutions. To address these problems, NERSC proposes thefollowing four general solutions: auditing user and system activityacross sites; firewall port configuration in real time;cross-site/virtual organization identity management and access control;and detecting security issues in application middleware. Solutions arealsoproposed for three general long term issues: data volume,application complexity, and information integration.

This report provides historical background on the enactment of declarations of war and authorizations for the use of force and analyzes their legal effects under international and domestic law.

We report on the first observations of the Askaryan effect in ice: coherent impulsive radio Cherenkov radiation from the charge asymmetry in an electromagnetic (EM) shower. Such radiation has been observed in silica sand and rock salt, but this is the first direct observation from an EM shower in ice. These measurements are important since the majority of experiments to date that rely on the effect for ultra-high energy neutrino detection are being performed using ice as the target medium. As part of the complete validation process for the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, we performed an experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in June 2006 using a 7.5 metric ton ice target, yielding results fully consistent with theoretical expectations.

This report provides background information on major instances, since 1970, when congress has utilized funding cutoffs to compel the withdrawal of United States military forces from overseas military deployments.

In response to the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001, the Congress passed legislation, S.J.Res. 23, on September 14, 2001, authorizing the President to "use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons..." The President signed this legislation into law on September 18, 2001. This report provides a legislative history of this statue, the "Authorization of Use of Military Force", which, as Congress stated in its text, constitutes the legislative authorization for the use of U.S. military force contemplated by the War Powers Resolution.

This report contains the presidential compliance on war powers resolution.

Dose-response curves for induction of micro-nuclei (MN) was measured in Chinese hamster V79 and xrs6 (Ku80-) cells and in human mammary epithelial MCF10A cells in the dose range of 0.05-1 Gy. The Chinese Hamster cells were exposed to 1 GeV/u Fe ions, 600 MeV/u Fe ions, and 300 MeV/u Fe ions (LETs of 151, 176 and 235 keV/{micro}m respectively) as well as with 320 kVp X-rays as reference. Second-order polynomials were fitted to the induction curves and the initial slopes (the alpha values) were used to calculate RBE. For the repair proficient V79 cells the RBE at these low doses increased with LET. The values obtained were 3.1 (LET=151 keV/{micro}m), 4.3 (LET = 176 keV/{micro}m) and 5.7 (LET = 235 keV/{micro}m), while the RBE was close to 1 for the repair deficient xrs6 cells regardless of LET. For the MCF10A cells the RBE was determined for 1 GeV/u Fe ions and found to be 5.4, slightly higher than for V79 cells. To test the effect of shielding, the 1 GeV/u Fe ion beam was intercepted by various thickness of high-density polyethylene plastic absorbers, which resulted in energy loss and fragmentation. It was found that the MN yield for V79 cells …

This report provides a brief explanation of the audio flag and its relationship to digital audio radio broadcasts, and summarizes legislative proposals considered by the 109th Congress, including H.R. 4861 (Audio Broadcast Flag License Act of 2006) and S. 2686 (Digital Content Protection Act of 2006), that would have authorized its adoption.

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This document summaries the actions taken to remove asbestos-reinforced-concrete (transite) pipe and miscellaneous debris from Power Purst Facility (PBF)-33 and PBF-34 sites. Removal of pipe and debris were performed in November 2006 in accordance with the requirements discussed in notice of soil disturbance NSD-PBF-07-01. Debris at these two sites were classified as industrial waste that could be disposed at the Central Facilities Area (CFA) landfill at the Idaho National Laboratory. Asbestos removal was performed as Class IV asbestos cleanup work. All transite pipe was double bagged and dispositioned in the INL Landfill Complex at CFA. The remaining miscellaneous debris was loaded into dump trucks and taken to the INL Landfill Complex at CFA for final disposition. Cleanup actions are complete for both sites, and no debris or hazardous constituents remain. Therefore, both sites will be classified as No action sites.

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This report discusses the Trade Restriction, The livestock "Feed Ban", BSE Surveillance and testing in Cattle and Federal spending in BSE.

This report opens with a discussion of how to analyze the impact of immigrants on the pay and job opportunities of native-born workers. It then uses this framework to examine and interpret the empirical literature on the subject. The report concludes with a discussion of policy implications.

Simulations are performed using GEANT4 of a second-generation compact Compton imaging detector called CCI2 which uses silicon and germanium detector crystals. Realistic simulated detector geometry and realistic detector parameters are used. Results are obtained for the CCI2 detector for the intrinsic photopeak efficiency, imaging efficiency, and angular resolution, and simulated images are created for point sources with various energies and source angles.

This report discusses design approaches for a Greenhouse Gas reduction program related to Climate change.

The reports is categorized into sic categories: (I) Types of Retirement Plans, (II) Enrollment Practices, (III) IRS Rulings, (IV) Policy Issues, (V) Plan Participation, and (VI) The Pension Protection Act.