Solid-state lighting based on LEDs has emerged as a superior alternative to inefficient conventional lighting, particularly incandescent. LED lighting can lead to 80 percent energy savings; can last 50,000 hours – 2-50 times longer than most bulbs; and contains no toxic lead or mercury. However, to enable mass adoption, particularly at the consumer level, the cost of LED luminaires must be reduced by an order of magnitude while achieving superior efficiency, light quality and lifetime. To become viable, energy-efficient replacement solutions must deliver system efficacies of ≥ 100 lumens per watt (LPW) with excellent color rendering (CRI > 85) at a cost that enables payback cycles of two years or less for commercial applications. This development will enable significant site energy savings as it targets commercial and retail lighting applications that are most sensitive to the lifetime operating costs with their extended operating hours per day. If costs are reduced substantially, dramatic energy savings can be realized by replacing incandescent lighting in the residential market as well. In light of these challenges, Cree proposed to develop a multi-chip integrated LED package with an output of > 1000 lumens of warm white light operating at an efficacy of at least 128 …

Most civilian federal employees who were hired before 1984 are covered by the Civil Service Retirement System, and contribute 7.0% of their pay to a retirement fund. Federal employees hired in 1984 or later are covered by the Federal Employees' Retirement System and contribute 0.8% of their pay to a retirement fund. Both require participants to contribute toward the cost of their pensions through a payroll tax. The taxable wage base is $106,800 in 2010. This report discusses both retirement funds.

This report focuses on how major developed and emerging-market country governments, particularly the G-20 and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, limit their fiscal deficits.

This report provides an overview and analysis of issues Congress might choose to consider when taking up legislation to reauthorize the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program.

The Berkshire Environmental Resource Center at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts was established in 2005 to advance student and faculty research, promote environmental awareness and preservation throughout the community, and serve as a resource center for students, faculty, and community members. The project proposed is to enhance programming and outreach.

This report discusses U.S. security assistance to Taiwan, or Republic of China (ROC), including policy issues for Congress and legislation. Congress has oversight of the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), P.L. 96-8, which has governed arms sales to Taiwan since 1979, when the United States recognized the People's Republic of China (PRC) instead of the ROC. Two other relevant parts of the "one China" policy are the August 17, 1982, U.S.-PRC Joint Communique and the "Six Assurances" to Taiwan. U.S. arms sales to Taiwan have been significant. The United States also expanded military ties with Taiwan after the PRC's missile firings in 1995-1996. However, the U.S.-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty terminated in 1979.

This report analyzes U.S. and international sanctions against Iran and provides some examples, based on open sources, of companies and countries that conduct business with Iran. CRS has no way to independently corroborate any of the reporting on which these examples are based and no mandate to assess whether any firm or other entity is complying with U.S. or international sanctions against Iran. The sections are grouped by function, in the chronological order in which the themes have emerged

This report discusses the state of Iraqi politics, governance, and human rights, including the worsening relations between local Sunni and Shiite populations.

This report describes the open economy and society of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as U.S. concern over proliferation of advanced technology due to said open economy and the UAE's lax export controls. This report describes these issues in relation to a recently-signed U.S.-UAE civilian nuclear agreement. It also provides a general description of the UAE's government and political structure, as well as the effects of the recent global economic downturn on the UAE in general and on the city of Dubai in particular.

This report discusses the Iran nuclear agreement that was made on July 14, 2015 and the lifting of sanctions related to their nuclear weapons programs which occurred on January 16, 2016. Iran's obligations under the agreement and Congressional discussion of adjustments to the agreement or withdrawal are outlined.

The objective of this project is to demonstrate improved reliability and increased performance made possible by deeply embedding instrumentation and controls (I&C) in nuclear power plant (NPP) components and systems. The project is employing a highly instrumented canned rotor, magnetic bearing, fluoride salt pump as its I&C technology demonstration platform. I&C is intimately part of the basic millisecond-by-millisecond functioning of the system; treating I&C as an integral part of the system design is innovative and will allow significant improvement in capabilities and performance. As systems become more complex and greater performance is required, traditional I&C design techniques become inadequate and more advanced I&C needs to be applied. New I&C techniques enable optimal and reliable performance and tolerance of noise and uncertainties in the system rather than merely monitoring quasistable performance. Traditionally, I&C has been incorporated in NPP components after the design is nearly complete; adequate performance was obtained through over-design. By incorporating I&C at the beginning of the design phase, the control system can provide superior performance and reliability and enable designs that are otherwise impossible. This report describes the progress and status of the project and provides a conceptual design overview for the platform to demonstrate the performance and …

Methane hydrate was formed in two moist sands and a sand/silt mixture under a confining stress in an X-ray-transparent pressure vessel. Three initial water saturations were used to form three different methane-hydrate saturations in each medium. X-ray computed tomography (CT) was used to observe location-specific density changes caused by hydrate formation and flowing water. Gas-permeability measurements in each test for the dry, moist, frozen, and hydrate-bearing states are presented. As expected, the effective permeabilities (intrinsic permeability of the medium multiplied by the relative permeability) of the moist sands decreased with increasing moisture content. In a series of tests on a single sample, the effective permeability typically decreased as the pore space became more filled, in the order of dry, moist, frozen, and hydrate-bearing. In each test, water was flowed through the hydrate-bearing medium and we observed the location-specific changes in water saturation using CT scanning. We compared our data to a number of models, and our relative permeability data compare most favorably with models in which hydrate occupies the pore bodies rather than the pore throats. Inverse modeling (using the data collected from the tests) will be performed to extend the relative permeability measurements.

The Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response Act (the "SAFER Act") was enacted by the 108th Congress as part of the FY2004 National Defense Authorization Act. This report describes the SAFER Act in brief, discusses possible budgetary modifications to the SAFER Act that are being considered due to the recent economic downturn, and explores related issues for the 112th Congress as they consider reauthorization.

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Schatz Energy Research Center's Hydrogen Energy in Engineering Education curriculum development project delivered hydrogen energy and fuel cell learning experiences to over 1,000 undergraduate engineering students at five California universities, provided follow-on internships for students at a fuel cell company; and developed commercializable hydrogen teaching tools including a fuel cell test station and a fuel cell/electrolyzer experiment kit. Monitoring and evaluation tracked student learning and faculty and student opinions of the curriculum, showing that use of the curriculum did advance student comprehension of hydrogen fundamentals. The project web site (hydrogencurriculum.org) provides more information.

This report discusses the new emergency preparedness rules for organizations which participate in the Medicaid and Medicare programs that will be required to be in place by November 16, 2017.

Optimality principles have been used for investigating physical processes in different areas. This work attempts to apply an optimal principle (that water flow resistance is minimized on global scale) to steady-state unsaturated flow processes. Based on the calculus of variations, we show that under optimal conditions, hydraulic conductivity for steady-state unsaturated flow is proportional to a power function of the magnitude of water flux. This relationship is consistent with an intuitive expectation that for an optimal water flow system, locations where relatively large water fluxes occur should correspond to relatively small resistance (or large conductance). Similar results were also obtained for hydraulic structures in river basins and tree leaves, as reported in other studies. Consistence of this theoretical result with observed fingering-flow behavior in unsaturated soils and an existing model is also demonstrated.

This report discusses the national infrastructure and ways to provide low-cost, long-term loans for the propose of increasing federal infrastructure investment.

This report provides information about the Burma’s Political Prisoners and U.S. Sanctions including the Burmese freedom and Democracy act of 2003.

This data package developed for the DuraLith wasteform includes information available in the open literature and from data obtained from testing currently underway. DuraLith is an alkali-activated geopolymer waste form developed by the Vitreous State Laboratory at The Catholic University of America (VSL-CUA) for encapsulating liquid radioactive waste. A DuraLith waste form developed for treating Hanford secondary waste liquids is prepared by alkali-activation of a mixture of ground blast furnace slag and metakaolinite with sand used as a filler material. Based on optimization tests, solid waste loading of {approx}7.5% and {approx}14.7 % has been achieved using the Hanford secondary waste S1 and S4 simulants, respectively. The Na loading in both cases is equivalent to {approx}6 M. Some of the critical parameters for the DuraLith process include, hydrogen generation and heat evolution during activator solution preparation using the waste simulant, heat evolution during and after mixing the activator solution with the dry ingredients, and a working window of {approx}20 minutes to complete the pouring of the DuraLith mixture into molds. Results of the most recent testing indicated that the working window can be extended to {approx}30 minutes if 75 wt% of the binder components, namely, blast furnace slag and metakaolin are …

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The use of gasoline in homogeneous charge compression ignition engines (HCCI) and in duel fuel diesel - gasoline engines, has increased the need to understand its compression ignition processes under engine-like conditions. These processes need to be studied under well-controlled conditions in order to quantify low temperature heat release and to provide fundamental validation data for chemical kinetic models. With this in mind, an experimental campaign has been undertaken in a rapid compression machine (RCM) to measure the ignition of gasoline mixtures over a wide range of compression temperatures and for different compression pressures. By measuring the pressure history during ignition, information on the first stage ignition (when observed) and second stage ignition are captured along with information on the phasing of the heat release. Heat release processes during ignition are important because gasoline is known to exhibit low temperature heat release, intermediate temperature heat release and high temperature heat release. In an HCCI engine, the occurrence of low-temperature and intermediate-temperature heat release can be exploited to obtain higher load operation and has become a topic of much interest for engine researchers. Consequently, it is important to understand these processes under well-controlled conditions. A four-component gasoline surrogate model (including n-heptane, …

This report examines varying opinion in regards to Scotland's Independence Referendum. The report also discusses U.S. views on the topic.

The muon collider and/or the neutrino factory require large accelerating electric field gradients immersed in large (3 to 6 T) solenoidal magnetic fields for ionization cooling of muon beams. Our original vacuum breakdown study demonstrated a loss of achievable peak accelerating gradient in solenoidal magnetic fields by a factor 2 or greater. The Muon Collaboration has developed a theory of a method to suppress high electric field breakdown in vacuum cavities needed for a Muon collider or neutrino factory. It has been shown in our studies and by others that high gradient electric field emitted electrons (dark current) are the primary cause of breakdown. A DC magnetic field orthogonal to the RF electric accelerating field prevents dark current high field emitted electrons from traveling across the accelerating gap and then will prevent breakdown. We have decided to test this theory by building a special cavity in the shape of vacuum box. Figure 1 is a simplified view of the cavity design. The design is based on an 805 MHz WR975 waveguide cavity resonating in the TE{sub 101} mode. For the TE{sub 101} mode the resonant frequency f{sub 0} is given by the relationship f{sub 0} = c[(I/a){sup 2} + (m/b){sup …