This report discusses the recent legislation regarding whaling in general, and aboriginal whaling in particular. Legislative measures, primarily in the form of concurrent resolutions, have been proposed in four categories: protesting commercial, scientific, or community (nonaboriginal) whaling; ensuring aboriginal whaling rights; providing a tax break for aboriginal whaling captains; and addressing the United States' policy at the annual meetings of the IWC.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) has, to date, opened cases exclusively in Africa. Cases concerning 25 individuals are open before the Court, pertaining to crimes allegedly committed in six African states: Libya, Kenya, Sudan (Darfur), Uganda (the Lord's Resistance Army, LRA), the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Central African Republic. This report provides background on current ICC cases and examines issues raised by the ICC's actions in Africa.

During solidification, contractions or distortions of the steel, known as “dimensional changes,” can cause the final product to vary significantly from the original pattern. Cracks in the casting that form during the late stages of solidification, called “hot tears,” occur when contractions can no longer be accommodated by residual liquid metal flow or solid metal displacement. Dimensional changes and hot tears are major problems in the steel casting industry. These occurrences are difficult to anticipate and correct using traditional foundry engineering methods. While dimensional changes are accommodated using pattern allowances, the desired dimensions are often inaccurate. Castings that form hot tears must then be scrapped or weld repaired, expending unnecessary energy. Correcting either of these problems requires a tedious trial-and-error process that may not necessarily yield accurate results. A model that predicts hot tears and dimensional changes during steel casting solidification has been successfully developed and implemented in commercial casting and stress analysis software. This model is based on a visco-plastic constitutive model with damage, where the damage begins to form when liquid feed metal is cut off to a solidifying region. The hot tear prediction is a locater for hot tear initiation sites, and not a full tear prediction: …

Heat treatment and associated processing, such as quenching, are critical during high strength steel casting production. These processes must be managed closely to prevent thermal and residual stresses that may result in distortion, cracking (particularly after machining), re-work, and weld repair. The risk of casting distortion limits aggressive quenching that can be beneficial to the process and yield an improved outcome. As a result of these distortions, adjustments must be made to the casting or pattern design, or tie bars must be added. Straightening castings after heat treatments can be both time-consuming and expensive. Residual stresses may reduce a casting’s overall service performance, possibly resulting in catastrophic failure. Stress relieving may help, but expends additional energy in the process. Casting software is very limited in predicting distortions during heat treatment, so corrective measures most often involve a tedious trial-and-error procedure. An extensive review of existing heat treatment residual stress and distortion modeling revealed that it is vital to predict the phase transformations and microstructure of the steel along with the thermal stress development during heat treatment. After reviewing the state-of-the-art in heat treatment residual stress and distortion modeling, an existing commercial code was selected because of its advanced capabilities in …

This report provides background on drug trafficking and organized crime inside Mexico: it identifies the major DTOs, and it examines how the organized crime "landscape" has been significantly altered by fragmentation.

This report discusses the Budget Control Act, which sets limits on defense spending between fiscal years 2012 and 2021 and possible measures to avoid a sequester. The current debate in Congress has centered on whether to adjust the BCA defense caps upward; move base budget spending to accounts designated for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) that are not subject to spending limits; reduce the defense spending in the Administration's request to comply with BCA revised caps; or use some combination of these approaches.

This report provides a brief overview of the war funding and the budget control act.

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This report tracks legislative changes to the Federal Employees Health Benefits (FEHB) Program. It includes brief discussions of how Congress has changed FEHB through legislative action, including restrictions on the use of federal funds; changing the formula for determining the government's share of FEHB premiums; expanding eligibility for the program; and implementing policies that affect the relationship between Medicare and FEHB.

This report provides an introduction to event data recorder (EDR) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) regulation of EDRs. The report discusses the EDR policy issues and privacy concerns.

This report presents statistics from a variety of sources on casualties sustained during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), which began on October 7, 2001, and is ongoing. OEF actions take place primarily in Afghanistan; however, OEF casualties also includes American casualties in Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, the Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen.

This report provides background information on the historical circumstances that led to the adoption of the VRA, a summary of its major provisions, and a brief discussion of the U.S. Supreme Court decision and related legislation in the 113th Congress.

This is the final report of the UCLA High Energy Physics DOE Grant No. DE-FG02- 91ER40662. This report covers the last grant project period, namely the three years beginning January 15, 2010, plus extensions through April 30, 2013. The report describes the broad range of our experimental research spanning direct dark matter detection searches using both liquid xenon (XENON) and liquid argon (DARKSIDE); present (ICARUS) and R&D for future (LBNE) neutrino physics; ultra-high-energy neutrino and cosmic ray detection (ANITA); and the highest-energy accelerator-based physics with the CMS experiment and CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. For our theory group, the report describes frontier activities including particle astrophysics and cosmology; neutrino physics; LHC interaction cross section calculations now feasible due to breakthroughs in theoretical techniques; and advances in the formal theory of supergravity.

This report seeks to assist in (1) anticipating what budget-related actions might occur within the upcoming year, and (2) staying abreast of budget actions that occur this year. It provides a general description of the recurrent types of budgetary actions, and reflects on current events that unfold in each category during 2016.

This report looks at how Congress has been proactive in helping the economy recover after the 2008-2009 recession, as well as how it can help to keep recessions at bay in the future. Issues include typical post-war recessions, insufficient pace of private spending, and the long-term debt problem.

This report focuses on the $59.65 billion requested for programs and activities funded through the State-Foreign Operations appropriations bill, which excludes some portions of the International Affairs request such as certain commissions and foreign food aid requested as part of other budget functions.

This report describes state the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) financial eligibility rules and maximum benefit amounts. The report discusses cash assistance benefit amounts for needy families that are not automatically adjusted for inflation by the states, and have lost considerable value in terms of their purchasing power over time.

This report discusses categorical eligibility and some of the issues raised by it. It first describes the three different types of categorical eligibility: traditional categorical eligibility conveyed through receipt of need-based cash assistance, and the newer "narrow" and "broad-based" categorical eligibilities conveyed via TANF "noncash" benefits. It also provides recent information on current state practices with regard to categorical eligibility. Finally, the report discusses proposals to restrict categorical eligibility.

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This report discusses the current debate over "net neutrality." While there is no single accepted definition of "net neutrality," most agree that any such definition should include the general principles that owners of the networks that compose and provide access to the Internet should not control how consumers lawfully use that network, and they should not be able to discriminate against content provider access to that network.

This report discusses the Department of Defense (DOD) policy via the Defense Utilization and Marketing Service (DRMS) for disposing of government equipment and supplies considered surplus or deemed unnecessary to the agency's currently designated mission. The report focuses on DRMS background, as well as the most recent DRMS policy modifications.

This project performed research into enhancing the MPI programming model in two ways: developing improved algorithms and implementation strategies, tested and realized in the MPICH implementation, and exploring extensions to the MPI standard to better support PetaScale and ExaScale systems.