Operation Iraqi Freedom succeeded in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, but Iraq remains unstable because of Sunni Arab resentment and a related insurgency, now compounded by Sunni-Shiite violence that some believe is a civil war. This report discusses the background of the issue and examines several security challenges, response, and other policy options for the U.S.

Section 20 1 (a) requires that the selection be made "without regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of his fitness to perform his duties." Media reports over the years indicate that the CBO director is selected under informal practices in which the House and Senate Budget Committees alternate in recommending a nominee to the Speaker and President pro tempore of the Senate. These reports also indicate that the Speaker and President pro tempore have adhered to the Budget Committees' recommendations in making past selections. To the extent that these practices are informal, there may be disagreement with regard to their operation in the future selection of a CBO director.

A novel concept for creating intense beams of negative hydrogen ion beams has been devised, and first steps towards its realization have been taken. In this approach, an ECR plasma generator operating at 2.45 GHz frequency is utilized as a plasma cathode, and electrons are extracted instead of ions and injected at moderate energy into an SNS type multi-cusp H{sup -} ion source. This secondary source is then driven by chopped d. c. power, rather than rf power, but does not need filaments which are the cause for the rather short lifetime of conventional H{sup -} sources. The development of this ion source is primarily aimed at the future beam-power goal of 3 MW for the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) [1] that will be pursued after the start of SNS operations. The first two phases of this development effort have been successfully passed: assembly of a test stand and verification of the performance of an rf-driven SNS ion-source prototype and extraction of electrons with more than 200 mA current from a 2.45-GHz ECR ion source obtained on loan from Argonne National Laboratory. An electron-extraction chamber that joins these ECR and H{sup -} sources has been fabricated, and the next goal …

This report describes the technical results of tasks and activities conducted in FY07 to support the DOE-CEA collaboration on the OSMOSE program. The activities are divided into five high-level tasks: reactor modeling and pre-experiment analysis, sample fabrication and analysis, reactor experiments, data treatment and analysis, and assessment for relevance to high priority advanced reactor programs (such as GNEP and Gen-IV).

This report discusses the Cost-of-living Adjustments to Social Security in 2003. To compensate for the effects of inflation, Social Security recipients receive a cos-of-living adjustment (COLA) in January of each year. The Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W), updates monthly by the Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is the measure used to compute the change.

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The investigation reported here was conducted by the Commodity Credit Corporation of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (CCC/USDA) in 2006. The investigation addressed carbon tetrachloride contamination on the former CCC/USDA grain storage facility at Ramona, Kansas. The results clearly demonstrate that only minimal contamination is associated with the past use of carbon tetrachloride on the former CCC/USDA property. No soil contamination was detected at concentrations above Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE) risk-based screening level (RBSL) Tier 2 standard of 200 {micro}g/kg for the soil-to-groundwater protection pathway. Carbon tetrachloride concentrations in groundwater above the RBSL and maximum contaminant level (MCL) value of 5.0 {micro}g/L were detected in only two samples, collected at adjacent locations on the southeast part of the property. The relatively low concentrations detected and the limited areal extent of the contamination demonstrate that no imminent threat exists on the former CCC/USDA property to warrant remediation. The soil and groundwater contamination detected on the former CCC/USDA property is clearly separate from contamination detected at off-site locations. The carbon tetrachloride and chloroform contamination in groundwater (at concentrations above the RBSL and MCL value) associated with past activities on the former CCC/USDA property is contained within the property boundaries. …

Following completion of contracting activities, sites were identified for the field leachate characterization study. Sampling and Analyses Plans (SAPs) and Site Access Agreements (SAAs) were developed for each site. A total of ten sites were sampled during this reporting period. Among the trace constituents, boron, silicon, and strontium were present in highest concentrations, with median values above 1 mg/L (1,000 {micro}g/L). Work on the first of three sites for the detailed arsenic and selenium adsorption studies began in 2002, prior to completion of the final DOE award. Kd values ranged from 100 to 12,000 L/kg for arsenic (V), 15 to 160 L.kg for As(III), and 5 to 25 L/kg for Se(VI).

The authors report recent measurements of charmless B decays to the final states K{sup +}K{sup +}K{sup -}, {phi}{phi}K, {eta}'{eta}'K, M{sub S}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}K{sub L}{sup 0}, {bar {Lambda}}p{pi}{sup +}, K*{sup +}h{sup +}h{sup -} and KX(inclusive). The results were obtained using a data sample of up to 288.5 fb{sup -1} recorded by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B factory at SLAC.

We report on preliminary measurements of time-dependent CP-violation asymmetries in charmless neutral B meson decays to K{sup +}K{sup -}K{sup 0} including resonant decays {phi}K{sup 0} and f{sub 0}(980)K{sup 0}, {eta}{prime}K{sup 0}, {pi}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}, K{sub S}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}, K{sub S}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}, {rho}{sup 0}K{sub S}{sup 0}, {omega}{sub S}{sup 0}. The results are obtained from a data sample of up to 347 million B{bar B} pairs produced by e{sup +}e{sup -} annihilation at the {Upsilon}(4S) resonance collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B-meson Factory at SLAC.

On April 9, 2001, the President requested $7.3 billion in discretionary budget authority for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for FY2002, $512.0 million (or 7%) less than the FY2001 funding level of $7.8 billion. The request would not have continued funding of about $500 million for activities earmarked for FY2001, and contained provisions shifting more enforcement responsibilities to the states. Popular wastewater infrastructure funding, state roles, and the future of Superfund were some of the predominant topics. On July 17, the House Appropriations Committee recommended $7.545 billion,$229 million more than requested (H.R. 2620, H. Rept. 107-159).

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It is found that the thermal fluctuation level of the shear-Alfven waves in a gyrokinetic plasma decreases with plasma b(* cs2/uA2), where cs is the ion acoustic speed and uA is the Alfven velocity. This unique thermodynamic property based on the fluctuation-dissipation theorem is verified in this paper using a new gyrokinetic particle simulation scheme, which splits the particle distribution function into the equilibrium part as well as the adiabatic and nonadiabatic parts.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) will contain the world's most powerful laser. NIF requires more than 1500 precisely timed trigger pulses to control the timing of laser and diagnostic equipment. The Integrated Timing System applies new concepts to generate and deliver triggers at preprogrammed times to equipment throughout the laser and target areas of the facility. Trigger pulses during the last 2 seconds of a shot cycle are required to have a jitter of less than 20 ps (rms) and a wander of less than 100 ps (max). Also, Timing System allows simultaneous, independent use by multiple clients by partitioning the system hardware into subsets that are controlled via independent software keys. The hardware necessary to implement the Integrated Timing System is commercially available.

This report discusses a concerted effort to close unneeded military bases as part of wide-ranging efforts during the 1980s and 1990s to balance the budget. This effort had been supported by a broad consensus that, among the approximately 3,800 military bases (1990 est.) in the United States, many could be closed without significant detrimental effect to national security. While most analysts agreed that the department of Defense's (DOD's) base structure was larger than necessary to meet the department's needs, there were differences concerning which, if any, additional bases should be closed, at what speed, and what criteria should be used for making those decisions.

The United States has experienced difficulty in closing military bases to match the requirements of downsized forces with changed composition. During the decade of the 1980s, major military base closures were seriously hampered by procedural requirements established by Congress, to the point that none occurred. The mismatch between real estate assets and defense requirements grew with the military downsizing that began late in the Reagan Administration and continued under Presidents George H. W. Bush and Clinton.

We present a patch-based direct Eulerian adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) algorithm for modeling real equation-of-state, multimaterial compressible flow with strength. Our approach to AMR uses a hierarchical, structured grid approach first developed by (Berger and Oliger 1984), (Berger and Oliger 1984). The grid structure is dynamic in time and is composed of nested uniform rectangular grids of varying resolution. The integration scheme on the grid hierarchy is a recursive procedure in which the coarse grids are advanced, then the fine grids are advanced multiple steps to reach the same time, and finally the coarse and fine grids are synchronized to remove conservation errors during the separate advances. The methodology presented here is based on a single grid algorithm developed for multimaterial gas dynamics by (Colella et al. 1993), refined by(Greenough et al. 1995), and extended to the solution of solid mechanics problems with significant strength by (Lomov and Rubin 2003). The single grid algorithm uses a second-order Godunov scheme with an approximate single fluid Riemann solver and a volume-of-fluid treatment of material interfaces. The method also uses a non-conservative treatment of the deformation tensor and an acoustic approximation for shear waves in the Riemann solver. This departure from a strict …

Energy and economic analysis comparing the current Michigan residential energy efficiency code to the 2009 IECC.

Significant progress in the development of burning plasma scenarios, steady-state scenarios at high fusion performance, and basic tokamak physics has been made by the DIII-D Team. Discharges similar to the ITER baseline scenario have demonstrated normalized fusion performance nearly 50% higher than required for Q = 10 in ITER, under stationary conditions. Discharges that extrapolate to Q {approx} 10 for longer than one hour in ITER at reduced current have also been demonstrated in DIII-D under stationary conditions. Proof of high fusion performance with full noninductive operation has been obtained. Underlying this work are studies validating approaches to confinement extrapolation, disruption avoidance and mitigation, tritium retention, ELM avoidance, and operation above the no-wall pressure limit. In addition, the unique capabilities of the DIII-D facility have advanced studies of the sawtooth instability with unprecedented time and space resolution, threshold behavior in the electron heat transport, and rotation in plasmas in the absence of external torque.

The toxicological source terms used for potential accident assessment in the Hanford Tank Farms DSA are based on toxicological sums-of-fractions (SOFs) that were calculated based on the Best Basis Inventory (BBI) from May 2002, using a method that depended on thermodynamic equilibrium calculations of the compositions of liquid and solid phases. The present report describes a simplified SOF-calculation method that is to be used in future toxicological updates and assessments and compares its results (for the 2002 BBI) to those of the old method.

This report provides the background, analysis, and developments of the Vietnam to United States normalization process.

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