A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The extent to which the federal and state governments regulate the death care industry—funeral homes, cemeteries, crematories, pre-need funeral plans, and third party sales of funeral goods—varies, as does the extent to which regulation has changed since GAO last reported on the regulation of the death care industry in 2003. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) continues to annually conduct undercover shopping at various funeral homes to test compliance with the Funeral Rule. Of the over 2,400 funeral homes that the FTC shopped since 1996, the FTC reported an overall compliance rate of about 85 percent. With respect to state regulation, consistent with GAO’s findings in 2003, the way in which states regulate the industry varies across industry segments and states. Also, the extent to which state regulators reported that they had specific rules or regulations for each industry segment in both 2003 and 2011 varied. Most consistent across states in both years was reporting that there were specific rules or regulations for funeral homes (94 and 95 percent in 2003 and 2011, respectively). In contrast, 77 percent of state regulators of cemeteries reported that their states …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "What GAO Found"

This report provides a comprehensive list of existing laws and pending legislation containing conditions, limitations, and reporting requirements for U.S. foreign assistance to Pakistan. It will track the debate on this topic and resulting changes.

This report discusses the reasons that Iran is considered a threat to U.S. security, including Iran's nuclear program, involvement with terrorist organizations, and involvement with neighboring countries' local governments. The report also discusses ways which the U.S. hopes to modify Iran's behavior with sanctions, and the effectiveness of these sanctions.

India, which has not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and does not have International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards on all of its nuclear material, exploded a “peaceful” nuclear device in 1974, convincing the world of the need for greater restrictions on nuclear trade. The United States created the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) as a direct response to India's test, halted nuclear exports to India a few years later, and worked to convince other states to do the same. India tested nuclear weapons again in 1998. However, President Bush announced July 18, 2005, he would “work to achieve full civil nuclear energy cooperation with India” and would “also seek agreement from Congress to adjust U.S. laws and policies,” in the context of a broader partnership with India. The Obama Administration has continued with the Bush Administration's policy regarding civil nuclear cooperation with India. According to a November 8, 2010, White House fact sheet, the United States “intends to support India's full membership” in the NSG, as well as other multilateral export control regimes.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the use of the term “Nationally Certified School Psychologist” by a Licensed Specialist in School Psychology is a violation of the Psychologists’ Licensing Act (RQ-0947-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a member of the El Paso County Ethics Commission who is a practicing attorney or former judge may be appointed to serve as the review officer of a preliminary screening committee (RQ-0978-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Jurisdiction of the Texas State Cemetary over a state highway, the majority of which is located within the boundaries of the Cemetary (RQ-0979-GA)

The idea of building power conversion systems around Power Electronic Building Blocks (PEBBs) was initiated by the U.S. Office of Naval Research in the mid 1990s. A PEBB-based design approach is advantageous in terms of power density, modularity, reliability, and serviceability. It is obvious that this approach has much appeal for pulsed power conversion including the International Linear Collider (ILC) klystron modulator application. A hierarchical control architecture has the inherent capability to support the integration of PEBBs. This has already been successfully demonstrated in a number of industrial applications in the recent past. This paper outlines the underlying concepts of a hierarchical control architecture for a PEBB-based Marx-topology ILC klystron modulator. The control in PEBB-based power conversion systems can be functionally partitioned into (three) hierarchical layers; system layer, application layer, and PEBB layer. This has been adopted here. Based on such a hierarchical partition, the interfaces are clearly identified and defined and, consequently, are easily characterised. A conceptual design of the hardware manager, executing low-level hardware oriented tasks, is detailed. In addition, the idea of prognostics is briefly discussed.

Our current state-of-the-art X-ray diffraction experiments are primarily sensitive to the position of the uranium atom. While the uranium - low-Z element bond (such as U-H or U-F) changes under pressure and temperature the X-ray diffraction investigations do not reveal information about the bonding or the stoichiometry. Questions that can be answered by Raman spectroscopy are (i) whether the bonding strength changes under pressure, as observed by either blue- or red-shifted peaks of the Raman active bands in the spectrum and (ii) whether the low-Z element will eventually be liberated and leave the host lattice, i.e. do the fluorine, oxygen, or hydrogen atoms form dimers after breaking the bond to the uranium atom. Therefore Raman spectra were also collected in the range where those decomposition products would appear. Raman is particularly well suited to these types of investigations due to its sensitivity to trace amounts of materials. One challenge for Raman investigations of the uranium compounds is that they are opaque to visible light. They absorb the incoming radiation and quickly heat up to the point of decomposition. This has been dealt with in the past by keeping the incoming laser power to very low levels on the tens of …

Transportation is vital to the U.S. economy and society. As such, U.S. Presidents have repeatedly stated that the nation needs to reduce dependence on petroleum, especially for the highway transportation sector. Throughout history, highway transportation fuel transitions have been completed successfully both in United States and abroad. Other attempts have failed, as described in Appendix A: Historical Highway Fuel Transitions. Planning for a transition is critical because the changes can affect our nation's ability to compete in the world market. A transition will take many years to complete. While it is tempting to make quick decisions about the new fuel(s) of choice, it is preferable and necessary to analyze all the pertinent criteria to ensure that correct decisions are made. Doing so will reduce the number of changes in highway fuel(s). Obviously, changes may become necessary because of occurrences such as significant technology breakthroughs or major world events. With any and all of the possible transitions to new fuel(s), the total replacement of gasoline and diesel fuels is not expected. These conventional fuels are envisioned to coexist with the new fuel(s) for decades, while the revised fuel and vehicle infrastructures are implemented. The transition process must analyze the needs of …

Radiochemical analysis of post-shot debris inside the National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber can help determine various diagnostic parameters associated with the implosion efficiency of the fusion capsule. This capability is limited by the amount of target isotope that can be loaded inside the capsule ablator without affecting performance and the collection efficiency of the capsule debris after implosion. Prior to designing a collection system, the chemical nature and distribution of the debris inside the chamber must be determined and analysis methods developed. The focus of our current work has been on determining the elemental composition and distribution of debris on various blast shields and witness plates that were exposed to the chamber during ignition shots that occurred in 2009. These passive collection plates were used to develop both non-destructive and chemical analysis techniques to determine debris composition and melt depth at various shot energy profiles. A summary of these data will be presented along with our current strategy for the 2011 campaign.

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