A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects domestic and foreign establishments where U.S.-marketed medical devices are manufactured to assess compliance with FDA's quality system requirements for ensuring good manufacturing practices and other applicable requirements. The Medical Device User Fee and Modernization Act of 2002 (MDUFMA) required FDA to accredit organizations to inspect certain establishments where devices that are marketed in both the United States and other countries are manufactured. This report includes information that MDUFMA requires GAO to provide on (1) the number of organizations that sought accreditation, the number that were accredited, and reasons for denial of accreditation and (2) the number of inspections conducted by accredited organizations. It also includes information about factors that could influence manufacturers' interest in voluntarily requesting and paying for an inspection by an accredited organization. GAO examined FDA documents, interviewed FDA officials, and obtained information from FDA on the number of inspections conducted from March 11, 2004--when FDA first cleared an accredited organization to conduct independent inspections--through October 31, 2006. GAO also interviewed affected entities, including accredited organizations and medical device manufacturers."

This report contains an explanation of the major provisions of the federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes. The discussion divides the federal estate tax into three components: the gross estate, deductions from the gross estate, and computation of the tax, including allowable tax credits. The federal estate tax is computed through a series of adjustments and modifications of a tax base known as the "gross estate." Certain allowable deductions reduce the gross estate to the "taxable estate," to which is then added the total of all lifetime taxable gifts made by the decedent. The tax rates are applied and, after reduction for certain allowable credits, the amount of tax owed by the estate is reached.

Remarkable scientific progress has been demonstrated toward the creation of a low cost (“printable”) solar cell technology by the interdisciplinary group at UC Santa Barbara. Multi-layer architectures were implemented with clean interfaces were demonstrated; the various interfaces are sharp; there is no evidence of inter-layer mixing. This is indeed remarkable since each of these layers was processed from solution. The use of “Processing Additives” such as the alkanedithiols was demonstrated to increase the power conversion efficiency of BHJ solar cells by a factor of two. Equally important, the mechanism by which these Processing Additives function has been identified.

None

This report is about the background of Stabilization Force(SFOR) and peace stabilization duties handed over to a European Union force(EUFOR).

This report is intended to provide information about the direct assistance for education expenses provided through the federal income tax system, thereby placing HEA student aid programs in a broader context.

This fact sheet details changes in the committee system contained in H. Res. 5, the rules of the House for the 107th Congress, adopted by the House January 3, 2001. This contains information on changes in the committee structure, committee procedure, and committee staff.

This report discusses House and Senate rules and guidelines, laws, and regulations affecting congressional casework, as well as the role of caseworkers.

None

For some time there has been a growing sense of urgency to develop and deploy effective missile defenses against a range of long and short range ballistic missile threats. Although many might believe this to be relative new to U.S. national security objectives, such interest has been ongoing since the 1960s, and many current technologies being investigated date their start to the early 1980s. This effort has been challenging technically and politically controversial. Some $110 billion has been spent since the mid-1980s; Congress appropriated $9.3 billion in FY2006. Many observers expect that the 110th Congress will review the current technology and BMD test program in 2007. This report provides a brief overview of U.S. efforts to date.

None

This report provides the details related to Salary adjustments of Federal white-collar employees for the Fiscal Year 2005

This report provides an overview of the current issues on homosexuals and U.S. military policy. It also discusses about recruiting, JROTC, ROTC and campus Policies.

This report provides a brief summary of the Fair Credit Reporting Act provisions in question, as well as an analysis of the recent Supreme Court decision and an overview of recently enacted legislation.

This report provides background information on defense-related environmental programs, analyzes key implementations issues, and examines final versions of legislation to authorize and appropriate funding for these activities for FY2004.

The National Security threats that we face today and, in turn, the National Security . requirements, are more diverse and complex than they were during the Cold-War from 1945-1990. During that period, and bolstered by the experiences of World Wars I and II, US National Security policy was focused on the stabilization of post WW II country boundaries and containment of the Soviet block and China. The result was the bipolar world in which the nuclear and conventional forces of the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies ensured a measure of political stability through a military stalemate of world wide proportions. The practical result was that large scale changes in national borders were unlikely, but internal conflict within countries, and local conflicts between neighboring countries could still occur, albeit with participation from one or both of the Superpower camps. US National Security Policy was designed primarily for stabilization of the bipolar world on the military front and for competition with the Soviet Union and China on economic and political fronts. The collapse of the Soviet Union changed the global picture. The bipolar world and its military stalemate appear to be gone for the moment and the threat …

None

This report will examine the similarities and differences in the IDEA, Section 504, and ADA coverage of education including the implications of the ADA Amendments Act of 2008.

None

None

None

The W-band Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Cloud Radar (WACR) systems are zenith pointing Doppler radars that probe the extent and composition of clouds at 95.04 GHz. The main purpose of this radar is to determine cloud boundaries (e.g., cloud bottoms and tops). This radar reports estimates for the first three spectra moments for each range gate up to 15 km. The 0th moment is reflectivity, the 1st moment is radial velocity, and the 2nd moment is spectral width. Also available are the raw spectra files. Unlike the millimeter wavelength cloud radar (MMCR), the WACR does not use pulse coding and operates in only copolarization and cross-polarization modes.

This report summarizes a study of possible neutron detection technologies for performing prompt (n,2n) measurements on radioactive targets of the type that could be made at the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA). The report recommends conducting further research on high-pressure {sup 3}He gas scintillators as it is the best candidate technology. These detectors meet the requirements of a fast response time (fall times around 5-10 ns), gamma ray suppression, (all gamma rays below about 900 keV can be easily discriminated against), and can be easily configured into a 4{pi} array. The one requirement that these detectors fall short is efficiency, but less than a factor of 10 improvement is needed. The possibility of pulse shape discrimination should also be explored for these detectors as this would help to distinguish gamma rays above 900 keV from neutrons. In addition to R&D work on these detectors, Monte Carlo simulations and target development are also recommended areas of further study.

We study the effect of flux-induced isometry gauging of the scalar manifold in N = 2 heterotic string compactification with gauge fluxes. We show that a vanishing theorem by Witten provides the protection mechanism. The other ungauged isometries in hyper moduli space could also be protected, depending on the gauge bundle structure. We also discuss the related issue in IIB setting.