This report discusses the EPA's authority to control greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from stationary sources under the Clean Air Act, and the various options that EPA could exercise.

This report discusses the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950, which confers upon the President authority to force private industry to give priority to defense and homeland security contracts and to allocate the resources needed.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) is required, by law, to maintain a core logistics capability that is government owned and government operated to meet contingency and other emergency requirements. Military depots play a key role in maintaining this "core capability," although in recent years DOD has significantly increased its use of contractors. At the subcommittee's request, GAO examined the extent to which (1) DOD has accurately assessed whether it has the required core capabilities in military depots and (2) DOD is preparing to support future core requirements for new and modified systems. GAO reviewed DOD's biennial process for determining core capability requirements and the associated workloads for fielded systems. GAO also reviewed whether DOD had identified and established core capability in a timely manner for new and modified systems."

We report measurements of domain wall dynamics in an ultrathin Au/Co/Au system that exhibits a spin reorientation phase transition as a function of temperature.The domain walls exhibit cooperative motion throughout the temperature range of 150 - 300 K. The decay times were found to exhibit a maximum at the transition temperature. The slowdown has been explained as due to formation of a double well in the energy landscape by the different competing interactions. Our results show that the complex, slow dynamics can provide a more fundamental understanding of magnetic phase transitions.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Under personnel reform legislation enacted in 1995, the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implemented a new personnel management system. The system is exempt from most governmentwide personnel laws, but is subject to change only if the Administrator consults and negotiates those changes with the exclusive bargaining representatives of FAA's employees. When FAA and labor cannot reach an agreement regarding changes in the personnel management system, the legislation requires that the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service be used to reach an agreement, and if that step is unsuccessful, FAA's proposed changes become effective 60 days after FAA transmits its proposed changes, along with labor's objections and its reasons for the objections, to Congress. FAA's first labor negotiation following the reform legislation was with the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA), which represents, among others, FAA's 15,000 Air Traffic Controllers, Traffic Management Coordinators, and Traffic Management Specialists. Congress' letter asked us to review FAA's human capital system. Congress also raised several questions, including (1) How personnel reforms have affected FAA's budget and how compensation for FAA's unionized workforce compares with other government employees? and (2) What has FAA …

This report provides information about The Current Structure and Its Role in the Changing Telecommunications Landscape on the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC is an independent agency with its five members appointed by the president.

This report discusses the federal government's role in the country's information technology (IT) research and development (R&D) activities. The government's support of IT R&D began because it had an important interest in creating computers that would be capable of addressing the problems and issues the government needed to solve and study.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

Fifty-five gallon drums are routinely used within the U.S. for the storage and eventual disposal of fissionable materials as Transuranic or low-level waste. To support these operations, criticality safety evaluations are required. A questionnaire was developed and sent to selected Endusers at Hanford, Idaho National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Oak Ridge and the Savannah River Site to solicit current practices. This questionnaire was used to gather information on the kinds of fissionable materials packaged into drums, the models used in performing criticality safety evaluations in support of operations involving these drums, and the limits and controls established for the handling and storage of these drums. The completed questionnaires were reviewed and clarifications solicited through individual communications with each Enduser to obtain more complete and consistent responses. All five sites have similar drum operations involving thousands to tens of thousands of fissionable material waste drums. The primary sources for these drums are legacy (prior operations) and decontamination and decommissioning wastes at all sites except Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The results from this survey and our review are discussed in this paper.

We present new results of searches for neutrino point sources in the northern sky, using data recorded in 2007-08 with 22 strings of the IceCube detector (approximately one-fourth of the planned total) and 275.7 days of livetime. The final sample of 5114 neutrino candidate events agrees well with the expected background of atmospheric muon neutrinos and a small component of atmospheric muons. No evidence of a point source is found, with the most significant excess of events in the sky at 2.2 {sigma} after accounting for all trials. The average upper limit over the northern sky for point sources of muon-neutrinos with E{sup -2} spectrum is E{sup 2} {Phi}{sub {nu}{sub {mu}}} < 1.4 x 10{sup -1} TeV cm{sup -2}s{sup -1}, in the energy range from 3 TeV to 3 PeV, improving the previous best average upper limit by the AMANDA-II detector by a factor of two.

This report provides information on the role the IMF has played in the financial crisis, international agreement to increase the financial resources of the IMF, and the role of Congress in increasing the Fund's resources. As will be discussed in detail at the end of the report, congressional authorization, and perhaps appropriation, would be required to increase U.S. contributions to the IMF.

This report provides background on the Library Project, legal issues raised by digitization and indexing projects, and the proposed settlement.

This report discusses budgetary matters for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD), specifically regarding past instances of debate regarding the Tricare system. The dollar amounts allocated to health care in the budget of the DOD have more than doubled since FY2001, growing from about $17 billion to over $44.8 billion in FY2009.

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This report discusses the current political conditions of Kenya, which has long been an important ally of the United States. The report focuses particularly on the December 2007 elections, which many international observers have declared as rigged and deeply flawed. The report also discusses violence that erupted once election results were announced, as well as U.S. efforts to urge Kenya toward election reforms.

This report attempts to answer basic questions about defense health care, its beneficiary population, the medical services it provides, its costs, and major changes that are underway or have been proposed.

The increasing concern about climate change as well as the expected direct environmental economic impacts of global warming will put considerable constraints on the US building sector, which consumes roughly 48percent of the total primary energy, making it the biggest single source of CO2 emissions. It is obvious that the battle against climate change can only be won by considering innovative building approaches and consumer behaviors and bringing new, effective low carbon technologies to the building / consumer market. However, the limited time given to mitigate climate change is unforgiving to misled research and / or policy. This is the reason why Lawrence Berkeley National Lab is working on an open source long range Stochastic Lite Building Module (SLBM) to estimate the impact of different policies and consumer behavior on the market penetration of low carbon building technologies. SLBM is designed to be a fast running, user-friendly model that analysts can readily run and modify in its entirety through a visual interface. The tool is fundamentally an engineering-economic model with technology adoption decisions based on cost and energy performance characteristics of competing technologies. It also incorporates consumer preferences and passive building systems as well as interactions between technologies (such as …

This grant was in effect for a quite long time: 1984-2008. This period saw a broad range of research activities transpire in my group, and these enlisted the participation of many students, postdoctorals, and visitors. The earliest participants have since enjoyed full careers: faculty members here and abroad, government laboratories, successful entrepreneurs, and so on. Some have even retired! Consequently, during the past few months I have repeatedly asked myself: how can a coherent, readable report be prepared that covers so long a period of time and so varied a collection of projects? On the one hand, the work has evolved — a sensible progression of experimental techniques and strategies, as well as a parallel deepening of our theoretical understanding. On the other hand, there is a distinctive¬ness to many of the projects that enables them to be arranged into groups. In the end a compromise was struck. Areas and topics that received the most focused attention are identified. Our main contributions and how they relate to the field of chemical dynamics, in general, are organized according to these groups. Publications are listed but not explained per se, as this would produce a manifestly unreadable document. They are all available …

We designed and supplied special crucibles for AlSb material. Thermal insulation and limitation of Sb losses were our first work. The protection of the growth environment was also one of our priority to avoid any pollution of the Fibercryst {mu}PD facility. When this work was achieved, the next step was the calibration of the heating power for these new crucibles. Then, it was the definition of single crystal growth conditions that oriented our research. Following our proposal, many growths attempts were performed. We started from Al & Sb pure powder or from LBNL AlSb crystal as expected. We used different crucibles and different seeds.

This report discusses the current political conditions of Rwanda, including a brief historical overview. The report also includes information about the poor human rights conditions in Rwanda and U.S. Rwanda relations.

This report provides a summary of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which proposes a "cap and trade" system to control carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that have been associated with global climate change.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Individual taxpayers who misreport charitable cash contributions they deduct on their tax returns contribute to the tax gap, the difference between tax amounts taxpayers report and pay voluntarily and on time and the amounts they should pay under the law. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) most recently estimated a gross tax gap of $345 billion for tax year 2001. One approach that tends to result in high levels of taxpayer compliance is information reporting to IRS by third parties on taxpayer transactions. GAO was asked to (1) provide information on characteristics of individual taxpayer misreporting of charitable cash contributions, (2) provide information on actions that IRS takes to address misreporting, and (3) evaluate potential benefits and challenges associated with requiring information reporting for charitable cash contributions. To meet its objectives, GAO used data from IRS's tax year 2001 National Research Program (NRP) compliance study of individual taxpayers, reviewed IRS guidance and enforcement data, and interviewed IRS officials and representatives from charities or organizations that represent charities. GAO made no recommendations in this report. In email comments on a draft of this report, IRS agreed with GAO's …

This report discusses the background and potential effects of the DTV Delay Act, which directs that all over-the-air full-power television broadcasts will become digital only.

Lithium evaporated onto plasma facing components in the NSTX lower divertor has made dramatic improvements in discharge performance. As lithium accumulated, plasmas previously exhibiting robust Type 1 ELMs gradually transformed into discharges with intermittent ELMs and finally into continuously evolving ELM-free discharges. During this sequence, other discharge parameters changed in a complicated manner. As the ELMs disappeared, energy confinement improved and remarkable changes in edge and scrape-off layer plasma properties were observed. These results demonstrate that active modification of plasma surface interactions can preempt large ELMs.