A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Stakeholders GAO contacted and information reviewed by GAO identified the following three major changes that have recently affected the domestic petroleum refining industry:"

This report provides an estimate of the initial impact of the changing oil prices on the nation's merchandise trade balance.

This report provides a brief overview that describes the most common ways legislation is considered on the House floor, the types of questions most likely to be voted on, and the opportunities for legislative debate that are most frequently used by Members.

This report presents policy and oversight issues for Congress arising from maritime territorial disputes involving China in the South China Sea (SCS), East China Sea (ECS), and an additional dispute over whether China has a right under international law to regulate U.S. and other foreign military activities in its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

This report presents a profile of the membership of the 113th Congress (2013-2014). Statistical information is included on selected characteristics of Members, including data on party affiliation, average age, occupation, education, length of congressional service, religious affiliation, gender, ethnicity, foreign births, and military service.

This report provides synthesis of key issues regarding nuclear energy and discusses basics facts and statistics, as well as major nuclear energy issues.

This report looks at the history and current need for a Ground Combat Vehicle (GCV) program. The report discusses potential issues for Congress include the role and need for the GCV in a downsized Army that will likely have fewer heavy brigade combat teams (HBCTs).

This proposal is concerned with applications of Monte Carlo to problems in physics and chemistry where rare events degrade the performance of standard Monte Carlo. One class of problems is concerned with computation of various aspects of the equilibrium behavior of some Markov process via time averages. The problem to be overcome is that rare events interfere with the efficient sampling of all relevant parts of phase space. A second class concerns sampling transitions between two or more stable attractors. Here, rare events do not interfere with the sampling of all relevant parts of phase space, but make Monte Carlo inefficient because of the very large number of samples required to obtain variance comparable to the quantity estimated. The project uses large deviation methods for the mathematical analyses of various Monte Carlo techniques, and in particular for algorithmic analysis and design. This is done in the context of relevant application areas, mainly from chemistry and biology.