This report provides a brief overview of the European Union (EU), an economic and political partnership between 27 sovereign member states. The report describes the formation of the EU, the three main institutions of the EU, and the EU's relationship with the United States.

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The spin Hall effect depends crucially on the intrinsic spin-orbit coupling of the energy band. Because of the smaller spin-orbit coupling in silicon, the spin Hall effect is expected to be much reduced. We show that the electric field in p-doped silicon can induce a dissipationless orbital current in a fashion reminiscent of the spin Hall effect. The vertex correction due to impurity scattering vanishes and the effect is therefore robust against disorder. The orbital Hall effect can lead to the accumulation of local orbital momentum at the edge of the sample, and can be detected by the Kerr effect.

We show that the dissipationless spin current in the ground state of the Rashba model gives rise to a reactive coupling between the spin and charge propagation, which is formally identical to the coupling between the electric and the magnetic fields in the 2 + 1 dimensional Maxwell equation. This analogy leads to a remarkable prediction that a density packet can spontaneously split into two counter propagation packets, each carrying the opposite spins. In a certain parameter regime, the coupled spin and charge wave propagates like a transverse 'photon'. We propose both optical and purely electronic experiments to detect this effect.

We show that the bulk Dresselhauss (k{sup 3}) spin-orbit coupling term leads to an intrinsic spin-Hall effect in n-doped bulk GaAs, but without the appearance of uniform magnetization. The spin-Hall effect in strained and unstrained bulk GaAs has been recently observed experimentally by Kato et. al. [1]. We show that the experimental result is quantitatively consistent with the intrinsic spin-Hall effect due to the Dresselhauss term, when lifetime broadening is taken into account. On the other hand, extrinsic contribution to the spin-Hall effect is several orders of magnitude smaller than the observed effect.

We show that two types of spin-orbit coupling in the 2 dimensional hole gas (2DHG), with and without inversion symmetry breaking, contribute to the intrinsic spin Hall effect. Furthermore, the vertex correction due to impurity scattering vanishes in both cases, in sharp contrast to the case of usual Rashba coupling in the electron band. Recently, the spin Hall effect in a hole doped GaAs semiconductor has been observed experimentally by Wunderlich et al. From the fact that the life time broadening is smaller than the spin splitting, and the fact impurity vertex corrections vanish in this system, we argue that the observed spin Hall effect should be in the intrinsic regime.

The quantum Hall liquid is a novel state of matter with profound emergent properties such as fractional charge and statistics. Existence of the quantum Hall effect requires breaking of the time reversal symmetry caused by an external magnetic field. In this work, we predict a quantized spin Hall effect in the absence of any magnetic field, where the intrinsic spin Hall conductance is quantized in units of 2 e/4{pi}. The degenerate quantum Landau levels are created by the spin-orbit coupling in conventional semiconductors in the presence of a strain gradient. This new state of matter has many profound correlated properties described by a topological field theory.

We present a theory for two recent experiments in bulk strained semiconductors and show that a new, previously overlooked, strain spin-orbit coupling term may play a fundamental role. We propose simple experiments that could clarify the origin of strain-induced spin-orbit coupling terms in inversion asymmetric semiconductors. We predict that a uniform magnetization parallel to the electric field will be induced in the samples studied in for specific directions of the applied electric field. We also propose special geometries to detect spin currents in strained semiconductors.

This report contains the distinction between foreign and law enforcement intelligence that remain important when civil liberties and privacy rights of U.S. persons are involved.

This report looks at inadequacies present in the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) which prevent the Center from adequately performing its duty. These inadequacies include issues with agency organization, lack of resources, and a focus on threats from Yemen over domestic threats.

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This report discusses the minimum wage provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which is the federal legislation that establishes the minumem hourly wage that ust be paid to all covered workers.

This report tracks the process by which Congress provides the funding for U.S. assessed contributions to the regular budgets of the United Nations, its agencies, and U.N. peacekeeping operation accounts, as well as for U.S. voluntary contributions to U.N. system programs and funds. It includes information on the President's request and the congressional response, as well as congressional initiatives during this legislative process. Basic information is provided to help the reader understand this process.

This report provides the assessment level, actual payment, and total outstanding contributions for the United States and other selected U.N. member states from 1990 to 2010 — the last year for which data are publicly available.

This report provides basic information on congressional salaries and allowances and recent developments. First, the report briefly summarizes the current salary of Members of Congress; limits or prohibitions on their outside earned income, honoraria, and tax deductions; options for life and health insurance; and retirement benefits. Second, the report provides information on allowances available to Representatives and Senators to support them in their official and representational duties.

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Transcript of a public teleconference held by the Commission to Eliminate Child Abuse and Neglect Fatalities (CECANF) on February 15, 2016. This meeting includes deliberations on recommendations for its final report to the President and Congress.

This report discusses the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program by the Department of Energy (DOE). Furthermore, the report establishes the program as giving loans to businesses in the automotive industry to make new factories or redesign old ones to produce vehicles that achieve at least 25% higher fuel economy than vehicles from 2005. The report also covers the spending on the program and the requirements to receive a loan.

Au-YSZ, Au-TiO{sub 2} and Au-CeO{sub 2} nanocomposite films have been investigated as a potential sensing element for high-temperature plasmonic sensing of H{sub 2}, CO, and NO{sub 2} in an oxygen containing environment. The Au-YSZ and Au-TiO{sub 2} films were deposited using PVD methods, while the CeO{sub 2} thin film was deposited by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and Au was implanted into the as-grown film at an elevated temperature followed by high temperature annealing to form well-defined Au nanoclusters. Each of the films were characterized by x-ray diffraction (XRD) and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry (RBS). For the gas sensing experiments, separate exposures to varying concentrations of H{sub 2}, CO, and NO{sub 2} were performed at a temperature of 500°C in oxygen backgrounds of 5.0, 10, and ~21% O{sub 2}. Changes in the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) absorption peak were monitored during gas exposures and are believed to be the result of oxidation-reduction processes that fill or create oxygen vacancies in the respective metal oxides. This process affects the LSPR peak position either by charge exchange with the Au nanoparticles or by changes in the dielectric constant surrounding the particles. Hyperspectral multivariate analysis was used to gauge the inherent selectivity of the …

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This report provides background information on the negotiations over North Korea's nuclear weapons program that began in the early 1990s under the Clinton Administration. As U.S. policy toward Pyongyang evolved through the George W. Bush and Obama presidencies, the negotiations moved from mostly bilateral to the multilateral Six-Party Talks (made up of China, Japan, Russia, North Korea, South Korea, and the United States).

This report covers the overall relationship between the U.S. and North Korea, with an emphasis on nuclear diplomacy.

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