Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress asked GAO to estimate the state allocations that would likely occur if an across-the-board percentage point increase in the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) replaced Section 5001 of the proposed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, while maintaining the same funding level that the Congressional Budget Office estimated for this section. This correspondence responds to your request for state-by-state, quarter-by-quarter estimates of the Medicaid funding states would receive with such an across-the-board increase."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses GAO's work on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), under which the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) has the authority to purchase and insure up to $700 billion in troubled assets held by financial institutions through the Office of Financial Stability (OFS). As you know, Treasury was granted this authority in response to the financial crisis that has threatened the stability of the U.S. banking system and the solvency of numerous financial institutions. The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act (the act) that authorized TARP on October 3, 2008, requires GAO to report at least every 60 days on findings resulting from our oversight of the status of actions taken under the program. This testimony is based on our January 30, 2009, report, which is the second under the act's mandate, covers the actions taken as part of TARP through January 23, 2009, and follows up on the nine recommendations we made in our December 2008 report. Our oversight work under the act is ongoing, and our next report will be issued by March 31, 2009. Like the report, this testimony focuses on (1) the nature and …

We report solar cells based on highly confined nanocrystals of the ternary compound PbSxSe1-x. Crystalline, monodisperse alloyed nanocrystals are obtained using a one-pot, hot injection reaction. Rutherford back scattering and energy filtered transmission electron microscopy suggest that the S and Se anions are uniformly distributed in the alloy nanoparticles. Photovoltaic devices made using ternary nanoparticles are more efficient than either pure PbS or pure PbSe based nanocrystal devices.

Recent advances in the ability to generate extremes of pressure and temperature in dynamic experiments and to probe the response of materials has motivated the need for special materials optimized for those conditions as well as a need for a much deeper understanding of the behavior of materials subjected to high pressure and/or temperature. Of particular importance is the understanding of rate effects at the extremely high rates encountered in those experiments, especially with the next generation of laser drives such as at the National Ignition Facility. Here we use large-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the high-rate deformation of nanocrystalline tantalum to investigate the processes associated with plastic deformation for strains up to 100%. We use initial atomic configurations that were produced through simulations of solidification in the work of Streitz et al [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, (2006) 225701]. These 3D polycrystalline systems have typical grain sizes of 10-20 nm. We also study a rapidly quenched liquid (amorphous solid) tantalum. We apply a constant volume (isochoric), constant temperature (isothermal) shear deformation over a range of strain rates, and compute the resulting stress-strain curves to large strains for both uniaxial and biaxial compression. We study the rate dependence and identify …

Fermilab has long had the world's most intense antiproton source. Despite this, the opportunities for medium-energy antiproton physics at Fermilab have been limited in the past and - with the antiproton source now exclusively dedicated to serving the needs of the Tevatron Collider - are currently nonexistent. The anticipated shutdown of the Tevatron in 2010 presents the opportunity for a world-leading medium-energy antiproton program. We summarize the current status of the Fermilab antiproton facility and review some physics topics for which the experiment we propose could make the world's best measurements. Among these, the ones with the clearest potential for high impact and visibility are in the area of charm mixing and CP violation. Continued running of the Antiproton Source following the shutdown of the Tevatron is thus one of the simplest ways that Fermilab can restore a degree of breadth to its future research program. The impact on the rest of the program will be minor. We request a small amount of effort over the coming months in order to assess these issues in more detail.

This report examines the economics the budget deficit. Topics include recent budgetary history, the differences made by deficits and surpluses, and fiscal policy.

This report discusses the current political state of Afghanistan, as well as the Afghan government. This report also discusses Afghanistan's relationship with the United States, particularly U.S. efforts to urge President Hamid Karzai to address corruption within the Afghan government.

This report presents an overview of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), a voluntary program that provides technical and financial assistance to eligible agricultural producers who wish to implement soil and water conservation practices. The purpose of EQIP is to promote agriculture production, forestry management, and environmental quality as compatible goals, and to optimize environmental benefits. The report also discusses select issues for Congress regarding tighter budget constraints that could potentially reduce funding levels for EQIP and a continuing backlog of unfunded applications. A change in income limitations along with a new waiver created in the 2008 farm bill could also raise issues for the program. EQIP will also continue to face challenges in measuring environmental and program accomplishments.

This report provides background on the Google Library Project, legal issues raised by digitization and indexing projects, and the proposed settlement between Google and rights holders.

Preliminary testing has shown that Western Research Institute's (WRI) Tank Bottom Recovery and Remediation (TaBoRR{reg_sign}) technology shows promise for heavy oil upgrading. Approximately 70 to 75 wt% of a Canadian Cold Lake bitumen feed was converted to a partially upgraded overhead product that could be transported directly by pipeline or blended with the parent bitumen to produce transportable crude. TaBoRR{reg_sign} was originally developed to remediate tank bottom wastes by producing a distillate product and solid waste. TaBoRR{reg_sign}'s processing steps include breaking a water-oil emulsion, recovering a light hydrocarbon fraction by distillation in a stripper unit, and pyrolyzing the residua reducing it to additional overhead and a benign coke for disposal. Cold Lake bitumen was tested in WRI's bench-scale equipment to evaluate the potential use of TaBoRR{reg_sign} technology for heavy oil upgrading to produce a stable, partially (or fully) upgraded product that will allow diluent-reduced or diluent-free transportation of bitumen or ultra-heavy crudes to market. Runs were conducted at temperatures of low, intermediate and high severity in the stripper to produce stripper overhead and bottoms. The bottoms from each of these runs were processed further in a 6-inch screw pyrolyzer to produce pyrolyzer overhead for blending with the corresponding stripper overheads. …

The Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) is a voluntary program that provides technical and financial assistance to eligible agricultural producers who wish to implement soil and water conservation practices. The purpose of EQIP is to promote agriculture production, forestry management, and environmental quality as compatible goals, and to optimize environmental benefits.

This report discusses the current political and social climate of Iraq, specifically in regards to the influence of the U.S. military presence over recent years. This report addresses planned and possible future efforts under the Obama Administration, including the scheduled gradual troops withdrawal.

In its second session, the 110th Congress enacted legislation that "operationalizes" the Department of State and other federal agencies for S&R efforts by authorizing the creation of federal civilian "response" units, as well as the creation of a volunteer S&R civilian reserve force. This report provides background on these issues and discusses proposals and tracks related legislative action.

This report gives a brief overview of the evolution of the U.S. Supreme Court's interpretation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment in regards to sectarian schools at all levels. It analyzes the categories of aid that have been addressed by the Court and also explains which categories have been held to be constitutionally permissible or impermissible, both at the elementary and secondary school level and at the college level. The report also briefly discusses H.R. 1 of the 111th Congress, economic stimulus legislation that includes provisions that would provide assistance to institutions of higher education for modernization, renovation, and repair of facilities.

This report provides a primer on recent developments, the federal role in flood policy, and the limitations of levees and dams. It also discusses lessons from the 2008 Midwest flood compared to the 1993 flood, and the evolution of U.S. flood policy. It pays particular attention to the role of Congress and federal agencies and programs, and the available tools for addressing the nation's flood challenge.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

This report provides an overview of U.S. relations with Vietnam, including policy issues, the economic and political situation in Vietnam, and a list of pertinent legislation.

MOLAR is a multi-institution research effort that concentrates on adaptive, reliable,and efficient operating and runtime system solutions for ultra-scale high-end scientific computing on the next generation of supercomputers. This research addresses the challenges outlined by the FAST-OS - forum to address scalable technology for runtime and operating systems --- and HECRTF --- high-end computing revitalization task force --- activities by providing a modular Linux and adaptable runtime support for high-end computing operating and runtime systems. The MOLAR research has the following goals to address these issues. (1) Create a modular and configurable Linux system that allows customized changes based on the requirements of the applications, runtime systems, and cluster management software. (2) Build runtime systems that leverage the OS modularity and configurability to improve efficiency, reliability, scalability, ease-of-use, and provide support to legacy and promising programming models. (3) Advance computer reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) management systems to work cooperatively with the OS/R to identify and preemptively resolve system issues. (4) Explore the use of advanced monitoring and adaptation to improve application performance and predictability of system interruptions. The overall goal of the research conducted at NCSU is to develop scalable algorithms for high-availability without single points of failure and …