A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. has devoted an increasing proportion of its economy and federal budget to the provision of health care services, but high levels of spending do not guarantee good care. Policymakers, health practitioners, and others have implemented numerous health care interventions that make discrete changes in the organization of health care services in order to enhance the value of health care--that is, improve the quality of care while reducing costs. Examples include programs to reduce bloodstream infections and to coordinate patient care following hospital discharges. This report (1) examines the availability of evidence on the effect of selected interventions on quality of care and costs; (2) identifies key dimensions for assessing the strength of such evidence; and (3) examines factors that can facilitate the implementation and replication of health care interventions. GAO identified a broad and diverse set of health care interventions using published and unpublished sources. For 127 of those interventions, GAO analyzed responses to a questionnaire that it sent to persons knowledgeable about available information on the effect of that particular intervention on quality of care and costs. GAO's questionnaire also asked respondents to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Cyclone Nargis hit Burma's impoverished Irrawaddy Delta on May 2, 2008, leaving nearly 140,000 people dead or missing and severely affecting about 2.4 million others, according to the UN. The Burmese military government initially blocked most access to the affected region; however, amid international pressure, it slowly began allowing international aid workers entry into the region. Since 1997, the United States has imposed sanctions to prohibit, among other things, the exportation of financial services to Burma and transactions with Burmese officials. In response to a congressional mandate, GAO (1) described the assistance UN and U.S. agencies have provided in response to Cyclone Nargis, (2) assessed USAID actions to help ensure funds are used as intended and do not benefit sanctioned entities, and (3) described the challenges responders experienced and the lessons learned. GAO reviewed financial and program documents; interviewed U.S., UN, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) officials; and traveled to Thailand and Burma."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Mutual funds are one of the most widely held investment products by Americans and advertising is one method by which investors may obtain information on funds. The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires GAO to conduct a review of mutual fund advertising, focusing on the advertising of past performance information. This report examines (1) what is known about the impact of fund advertisements on investors, (2) the extent to which performance information is included in advertisements, and (3) the regulatory requirements for fund advertisements and how they are administered and enforced. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed existing and proposed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) rules, conducted a literature review of studies related to mutual fund advertising's impact on investors, and reviewed a random sample of 300 fund advertisements. GAO also met with regulators, fund companies, academics, and industry and investor protection groups."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Dissatisfaction with the federal tax system has led to a debate about U.S. tax reform, including proposals for a national consumption tax. One type of proposed consumption tax is a value-added tax (VAT), widely used around the world. A VAT is levied on the difference between a business's sales and its purchases of goods and services. Typically, a business calculates the tax due on its sales, subtracts a credit for taxes paid on its purchases, and remits the difference to the government. While the economic and distributional effects of a U.S. VAT type tax have been studied, GAO issued a report in 2008 that looked at lessons learned from VAT administration in Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. These countries provided a range of VAT designs from relatively simple to more complex. This statement, which is based on the 2008 report, focuses on (1) the effect VAT design choices, such as exemptions and enforcement mechanisms, have on compliance, administrative costs, and compliance burden; (2) Canada's experience with administering a VAT in conjunction with several different subnational consumption tax arrangements; and (3) the experience that some …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Increasing computer interconnectivity, such as the growth of the Internet, has revolutionized the way our government, our nation, and much of the world communicate and conduct business. However, this widespread interconnectivity poses significant risks to the government's and the nation's computer systems, and to the critical infrastructures they support. These critical infrastructures include systems and assets--both physical and virtual--that are essential to the nation's security, economic prosperity, and public health, such as financial institutions, telecommunications networks, and energy production and transmission facilities. Because most of these infrastructures are owned by the private sector, establishing effective public-private partnerships is essential to securing them from pervasive cyber-based threats. Federal law and policy call for federal entities, such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to work with private-sector partners to enhance the physical and cyber security of these critical infrastructures. GAO is providing a statement describing (1) cyber threats facing cyber-reliant critical infrastructures; (2) recent actions the federal government has taken, in partnership with the private sector, to identify and protect cyber-reliant critical infrastructures; and (3) ongoing challenges to protecting these infrastructures. In preparing this statement, GAO relied on its …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To assess quality of life and identify areas for improvement, the Air Force conducts periodic surveys of its airmen. Recent surveys indicted that many of them were not satisfied with the quality, variety, and availability of food at Air Force bases. As a result, the Air Force implemented an initiative in 2010--the Food Transformation Initiative--to improve on-base food services. The Air Force piloted the initiative at six installations with a $10.3 million contract awarded in August 2010 and plans to eventually expand the initiative to other installations in the United States. The Senate and House Armed Services Committees directed GAO to undertake a comprehensive review of the initiative. GAO reviewed (1) the initiative's objectives and performance measures, (2) implementation progress, (3) the initiative's impact on food service workers at the pilot installations, and (4) alternative approaches the Air Force considered. GAO reviewed documentation on the initiative, interviewed Air Force and contractor officials, and visited four of the six pilot installations."

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Attempts to resolve the Cyprus problem and reunify the island have undergone various levels of negotiation for over 45 years. Talks between Greek and Turkish Cypriot leaders have thus far failed to reach a mutually agreed settlement leaving the country with a solution for unification far from being achieved and raising the specter of a possible permanent separation. This report provides a brief overview of the early history of the negotiations, a more detailed review of the negotiations since 2008, and a description of some of the issues involved in the talks. A side issue involving trade between the European Union and Turkish Cyprus is also addressed.

This report discusses policy issues regarding military-to-military (mil-to-mil) contacts with the People's Republic of China (PRC) and provides a record of major contacts and crises since 1993.

Multilayer coated blazed gratings with high groove density are the best candidates for use in high resolution EUV and soft x-ray spectroscopy. Theoretical analysis shows that such a grating can be potentially optimized for high dispersion and spectral resolution in a desired high diffraction order without significant loss of diffraction efficiency. In order to realize this potential, the grating fabrication process should provide a perfect triangular groove profile and an extremely smooth surface of the blazed facets. Here we report on recent progress achieved at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) in fabrication of high quality multilayer coated blazed gratings. The blazed gratings were fabricated using scanning beam interference lithography followed by wet anisotropic etching of silicon. A 200 nm period grating coated with a Mo/Si multilayer composed with 30 bi-layers demonstrated an absolute efficiency of 37.6percent in the 3rd diffraction order at 13.6 nm wavelength. The groove profile of the grating was thoroughly characterized with atomic force microscopy before and after the multilayer deposition. The obtained metrology data were used for simulation of the grating efficiency with the vector electromagnetic PCGrate-6.1 code. The simulations showed that smoothing of the grating profile during the multilayer deposition is the main reason for …

Powered operation of Cryomodule 1 (CM-1) at the Fermilab SRF Beam Test Facility began in late 2010. Since then a series of tests first on the eight individual cavities and then the full cryomodule have been performed. We report on the results of these tests and lessons learned which will have an impact on future module testing at Fermilab. Since November 2010 Cryomodule 1 has been operating at 2 Kelvin. After evaluating each of the eight cavities while individually powered, the entire module has recently been powered and peak operation determined as shown in Figure 4. Several more weeks of measurements are planned before the module is warmed up, removed and replaced with Cryomodule 2 now under assembly at Fermilab.

Weekly newspaper from Emory, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses our past work examining the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) progress and efforts in planning, developing, and deploying its global nuclear detection architecture (GNDA). The overall mission of the GNDA is to use an integrated system of radiation detection equipment and interdiction activities to combat nuclear smuggling in foreign countries, at the U.S. border, and inside the United States. Terrorists smuggling nuclear or radiological material into the United States could use these materials to make an improvised nuclear device or a radiological dispersal device (also called a "dirty bomb"). The detonation of a nuclear device in an urban setting could cause hundreds of thousands of deaths and devastate buildings and physical infrastructure for miles. While not as damaging, a radiological dispersal device could nonetheless cause hundreds of millions of dollars in socioeconomic costs as a large part of a city would have to be evacuated--and possibly remain inaccessible--until an extensive radiological decontamination effort was completed. Accordingly, the GNDA remains our country's principal strategy in protecting the homeland from the consequences of nuclear terrorism. The GNDA is a multi-departmental effort coordinated by DHS's Domestic Nuclear Detection …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses issues related to possible changes to the Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA) program, a topic that we have reported on in the past. At the end of chargeback year 2010, the FECA program, administered by the Department of Labor (Labor) had paid more than $1.88 billion in wage-loss compensation, impairment, and death benefits, and another $898.1 million for medical and rehabilitation services and supplies. Currently, FECA benefits are paid to federal employees who are unable to work because of injuries sustained while performing their federal duties, including those who are at or older than retirement age. Concerns have been raised that federal employees on FECA receive benefits that could be more generous than under the traditional federal retirement system and that the program may have unintended incentives for beneficiaries to remain on the FECA program beyond the traditional retirement age. Over the past 30 years, there have been various proposals to change the FECA program to address this concern. Recent policy proposals to change the way FECA is administered for older beneficiaries share characteristics with past proposals we have discussed in prior work. In August …

Daily newspaper from Sweetwater, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Astronomical or optical guide stars are either natural or artificial point sources located above the Earth's atmosphere. When imaged from ground-based telescopes, they are distorted by atmospheric effects. Knowing the guide star is a point source, the atmospheric distortions may be estimated and, deconvolved or mitigated in subsequent imagery. Extending the guide star concept to wave-based measurement systems to include acoustic, seismo-acoustic, ultrasonic, and radar, a strong artificial scatterer (either acoustic or electromagnetic) may be buried or inserted, or a pre-existing or natural sub-surface point scatterer may be identified, imaged, and used as a guide star to determine properties of the sub-surface volume. That is, a data collection is performed on the guide star and the sub-surface environment reconstructed or imaged using an optimizer assuming the guide star is a point scatterer. The optimization parameters are the transceiver height and bulk sub-surface background refractive index. Once identified, the refractive index may be used in subsequent reconstructions of sub-surface measurements. The wave-base guide star description presented in this document is for a multimonostatic ground penetrating radar (GPR) but is applicable to acoustic, seismo-acoustic, and ultrasonic measurement systems operating in multimonostatic, multistatic, multibistatic, etc., modes.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is operational and conducting experiments at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The NIF is the world's largest and most energetic laser experimental facility with 192 beams capable of delivering 1.8 megajoules of 500-terawatt ultraviolet laser energy, over 60 times more energy than any previous laser system. The NIF can create temperatures of more than 100 million degrees and pressures more than 100 billion times Earth's atmospheric pressure. These conditions, similar to those at the center of the sun, have never been created in the laboratory and will allow scientists to probe the physics of planetary interiors, supernovae, black holes, and other phenomena. The NIF's laser beams are designed to compress fusion targets to the conditions required for thermonuclear burn, liberating more energy than is required to initiate the fusion reactions. Experiments on the NIF are focusing on demonstrating fusion ignition and burn via inertial confinement fusion (ICF). The ignition program is conducted via the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) - a partnership among LLNL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, University of Rochester Laboratory for Laser Energetics, and General Atomics. The NIC program has also established collaborations with the Atomic Weapons Establishment in the …

A primary justification for the establishment of energy efficiency standards for home appliances is the existence of information deficiencies and externalities in the market for appliances. For example, when a long-term homeowner purchases a new gas-fired water heater, she will maximize the value of her purchase by comparing the life-cycle cost of ownership of available units, including both total installed cost - purchase price plus installation costs - and operating cost in the calculus. Choice of the appliance with the lowest life-cycle costs leads to the most economically efficient balance between capital cost and fuel cost. However, if the purchaser's expected period of ownership is shorter than the useful life of the appliance, or the purchaser does not pay for the fuel used by the appliance, as is often the case with rental property, fuel cost will be external to her costs, biasing her decision toward spending less on fuel efficiency and resulting in the purchase of an appliance with greater than optimal fuel usage. By imposing an efficiency standard on appliances, less efficient appliances are made unavailable, precluding less efficient purchases and reducing fuel usage. The reduction in fuel demanded by residential users affects the total demand for such …

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This report gives an overview of Guinea and discusses the background information and relations with the United States

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This report describes the causes, costs, and current status of inflation.

Multilayer coated blazed gratings with high groove density are the most promising candidate for ultra-high resolution soft x-ray spectroscopy. They combine the ability of blazed gratings to concentrate almost all diffraction energy in a desired high diffraction order with high reflectance soft x-ray multilayers. However in order to realize this potential, the grating fabrication process should provide a near perfect groove profile with an extremely smooth surface of the blazed facets. Here we report on successful fabrication and testing of ultra-dense saw-tooth substrates with 5,000 and 10,000 lines/mm.