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This report discusses the enforcement of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and various penalties available for violations.

This report presents basic information about measles, its history in the United States, available treatments to prevent individuals from contracting measles, and the federal role in combating measles--from funding, to research, to the authority of the federal government in requiring mandatory childhood vaccinations.

This report provides background on the Islamic State organization, discussing its goals, operations, and affiliates, as well as analyzing related U.S. legislative and policy debates.

This report will briefly discuss the history of charitable choice provisions and the implementation of the Faith-Based Initiative which extended similar rules to certain executive agencies.

The U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 6, authorizes compensation for Members of Congress "ascertained by law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States." Throughout American history, Congress has relied on three different methods in adjusting salaries for Members. Standalone legislation was last used to provide increases in 1990 and 1991. It was the only method used by Congress for many years. The second method, under which annual adjustments took effect automatically unless disapproved by Congress, was established in 1975. A third method for adjusting Member pay is congressional action pursuant to recommendations from the President, based on the recommendations of the Citizens' Commission on Public Service and Compensation established in the 1989 Ethics Reform Act.

Congress is required by Article I, Section 6, of the Constitution to determine its own pay. Prior to 1969, Congress did so by enacting stand-alone legislation. Stand-alone legislation may still be used to raise Member pay but two other methods-including an automatic annual adjustment procedure and a commission process-are now also available. This report contains information on the pay procedure and recent adjustments. It also contains historical information on the rate of pay for Members of Congress since 1789; the adjustments projected by the Ethics Reform Act as compared to actual adjustments in Member pay; details on past legislation enacted with language prohibiting the annual pay adjustment; and Member pay in constant and current dollars since 1992.

We develop a model based on simulation and experiment that explains the behavior of solid-state laser-supported absorption fronts generated in fused silica during high intensity (up to 5GW/cm{sup 2}) laser exposure. We find that the absorption front velocity is constant in time and is nearly linear in laser intensity. Further, this model can explain the dependence of laser damage site size on these parameters. This behavior is driven principally by the temperature-activated deep sub band-gap optical absorptivity, free electron transport and thermal diffusion in defect-free silica for temperatures up to 15,000K and pressures < 15GPa. The regime of parameter space critical to this problem spans and extends that measured by other means. It serves as a platform for understanding general laser-matter interactions in dielectrics under a variety of conditions.

This report provides an overview of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil works program, including congressional authorization and appropriations. Its civil works responsibilities are principally to support navigation, reduce flood and storm damage, and protect and restore aquatic ecosystems. The report also covers the standard project development process for Corps projects and other Corps activities and authorities.

This report focuses on the political and military partnership between the United States and Japan. The U.S.-Japan alliance, forged in the U.S. occupation of Japan after its defeat in World War II, provides a platform for U.S. military readiness in Asia. Under the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security, about 53,000 U.S. troops are stationed in Japan, providing the major U.S. forward logistics base in the Asia-Pacific.

Ultra intense short pulse laser pulses incident on solid targets can generate energetic protons. In additions to their potentially important applications such as in cancer treatments and proton fast ignition, these protons are essential to understand the complex physics of intense laser plasma interaction. To better understand these laser-produced protons, we designed and constructed a novel, spatially imaging proton spectrometer that will not only provide at high-resolution the energy distribution, but also the protons angular characteristics. The information obtained from this spectrometer compliments those from other methods using radiochromic film packs, CR39 films and other protons spectrometers. The basic characterizations and example data from this diagnostics will be presented. This work was performed under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Energy by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under Contract DE-AC52-07NA27344, as part of the Cimarron project funded by LDRD-09SI11.

This report describes the proposed rule and includes a table comparing the existing regulatory language that defines "waters of the United States" with the proposed revisions.

This report examines "Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act" (WIFIA), which details a program that would provide a way to help finance water infrastructure projects. This program was included in the Water Resources Reform and Development Act of 2014 (WRRDA, P.L. 113-121). A five-year WIFIA pilot program was outlined in Title V, Subtitle C, of the legislation.

This report discusses expedited or "fast-track" legislative procedures, which are special procedures that Congress adopts to promote timely committee and floor action on a specifically defined type of bill or resolution.

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This report provides an overview of the FY2016 State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs (SFOPS) request and account-by-account funding comparisons with FY2014 actuals and FY2015 estimates.

This report briefly summarizes some of the key controversial issues of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), including select market access issues (such as on dairy and other agricultural products, autos, and textiles and apparel) as well as the level of intellectual property protection, the scope and enforcement of environment and worker rights provisions, investor-state dispute settlement, access to government procurement, and the potential inclusion of provisions on currency valuation and exchange rates. The TPP is a proposed free trade agreement (FTA) among 12 Asia-Pacific countries, which the Obama Administration casts as comprehensive, with economic and strategic significance for the United States.

This report briefly examines renewed tensions between tech companies and the government regarding encryption "back doors" and how quickly-advancing technologies could impact law enforcement investigations.

The constituents of the current profile have been computed for a wide range of high-performance plasmas in NSTX [M. Ono, et al., Nuclear Fusion 40, 557 (2000)]; these include cases designed to maximize the non-inductive fraction, pulse length, toroidal-β, or stored energy. In the absence of low-frequency MHD activity, good agreement is found between the reconstructed current profile and that predicted by summing the independently calculated inductive, pressure-driven, and neutral beam currents, without the need to invoke any anomalous beam ion diffusion. Exceptions occur, for instance, when there are toroidal Alfven eigenmode avalanches or coupled m/n=1/1+2/1 kink-tearing modes. In these cases, the addition of a spatially and temporally dependent fast ion diffusivity can reduce the core beam current drive, restoring agreement between the reconstructed profile and the summed constituents, as well as bringing better agreement between the simulated and measured neutron emission rate. An upper bound on the fast ion diffusivity of ~0.5-1 m2/sec is found in “MHD-free” discharges, based on the neutron emission, time rate of change of the neutron signal when a neutral beam is stepped, and reconstructed on-axis current density.

Electricity generation relies heavily on water resources and their availability. To examine the interdependence of energy and water in the electricity context, the impacts of a severe drought to assess the risk posed by drought to electricity generation within the western and Texas interconnections has been examined. The historical drought patterns in the western United States were analyzed, and the risk posed by drought to electricity generation within the region was evaluated. The results of this effort will be used to develop scenarios for medium- and long-term transmission modeling and planning efforts by the Western Electricity Coordination Council (WECC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT). The study was performed in response to a request developed by the Western Governors Association in conjunction with the transmission modeling teams at the participating interconnections. It is part of a U.S. Department of Energy-sponsored, national laboratory-led research effort to develop tools related to the interdependency of energy and water as part of a larger interconnection-wide transmission planning project funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This study accomplished three main objectives. It provided a thorough literature review of recent studies of drought and the potential implications for electricity generation. It analyzed …

The 2011 Gordon Research Conference on Radiation and Climate will present cutting-edge research on outstanding issues in climate change, particularly those in which the interactions between clouds, aerosols, and precipitation play a major role. The Conference will feature a broad range of topics, including grand challenges in atmospheric radiation and climate, cloud and water vapor feedbacks, aerosol-cloud-precipitation-climate interactions across scales, new approaches for remote sensing and in-situ observations of clouds, aerosols and precipitation, and multi-scale modeling challenges. The invited speakers will present the most important recent advances and future challenges in these areas. The Conference will bring together a collection of leading investigators who are at the forefront of their field, and will provide opportunities for scientists, especially junior scientists and graduate students, to present their work in poster format and exchange ideas with leaders in the field. The collegial atmosphere of this Conference, with programmed discussion sessions as well as opportunities for informal gatherings in the afternoons and evenings, provides an avenue for scientists from different disciplines to brainstorm and promotes cross-disciplinary collaborations in the various research areas represented.

The performance and cost of compressed hydrogen storage tank systems has been assessed and compared to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) 2010, 2015, and ultimate targets for automotive applications. The on-board performance and high-volume manufacturing cost were determined for compressed hydrogen tanks with design pressures of 350 bar ({approx}5000 psi) and 700 bar ({approx}10,000 psi) capable of storing 5.6 kg of usable hydrogen. The off-board performance and cost of delivering compressed hydrogen was determined for hydrogen produced by central steam methane reforming (SMR). The main conclusions of the assessment are that the 350-bar compressed storage system has the potential to meet the 2010 and 2015 targets for system gravimetric capacity but will not likely meet any of the system targets for volumetric capacity or cost, given our base case assumptions. The 700-bar compressed storage system has the potential to meet only the 2010 target for system gravimetric capacity and is not likely to meet any of the system targets for volumetric capacity or cost, despite the fact that its volumetric capacity is much higher than that of the 350-bar system. Both the 350-bar and 700-bar systems come close to meeting the Well-to-Tank (WTT) efficiency target, but fall short by …

The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), an independent federal government agency, is the official export credit agency of the United States. It helps finance American exports of manufactured goods and services, with the objective of contributing to the employment of U.S. workers, primarily in circumstances when alternative financing is not available. Ex-Im Bank also may assist U.S. exporters to meet foreign, officially sponsored, export credit competition. Ex-Im Bank's main programs are direct loans, loan guarantees, working capital guarantees, and export credit insurance. Ex-Im Bank transactions are backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. The Bank operates under a renewable charter, the Export-Import Bank Act of 1945, which requires that all of the Bank's financing have a reasonable assurance of repayment and directs the Bank to supplement, and to not compete with, private capital.