A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Post-9/11 GI Bill was signed into law in June 2008 and provides educational assistance for veterans and members of the armed forces who served on or after September 11, 2001. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is responsible for processing claims for these new education benefits. VA concluded that its legacy systems and manual processes were insufficient to support the new benefits and, therefore, began an initiative to modernize its benefits processing capabilities. The long-term solution was to provide a fully automated end-to-end information technology (IT) system to support the delivery of benefits by December 2010. VA chose an incremental development approach, called Agile software development, which is intended to deliver functionality in short increments before the system is fully deployed. GAO was asked to (1) determine the status of VA's development and implementation of its IT system to support the implementation of education benefits identified in the Post-9/11 GI Bill and (2) evaluate the department's effectiveness in managing its IT project for this initiative."

This report provides an introduction to the legislative process on the House floor, including limitations on debate, calendars and the order of business, modes of floor consideration, senate amendments and conference reports, voting and quorum procedures, and information about a typical day on the House floor.

This report provides a brief introduction to the legislative process on the Senate floor, including filibusters and cloture, restraint and delay, scheduling legislative business, unanimous consent agreements, the daily order of business, the amending process, and quorum calls and rollcall votes.

Entitlements are programs that require payments to persons, state or local governments, or other entities if specific eligibility criteria established in the authorizing law are met. Entitlement payments are legal obligations of the federal government, and eligible beneficiaries may have legal recourse if full payment under the law is not provided. This report briefly discusses entitlements and entitlement procedures in the federal budget process.

This report briefly discusses procedures on the first day of a new Congress, specifically focusing on Senate proceedings.

Concern has grown in Congress and elsewhere about China's military modernization. The topic is an increasing factor in discussions over future required U.S. Navy capabilities. The issue for Congress addressed in this report is: How should China's military modernization be factored into decisions about U.S. Navy programs?

Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform have urged the President and Congress to pursue reform legislation. While legislative action on comprehensive reform does not appear likely during the remainder of the 111th Congress, there may be an effort to enact a measure, commonly referred to as the "DREAM Act," to enable certain unauthorized alien students to legalize their status. This report discusses the DREAM act and related issues.

This report summarizes points of order under the Congressional Budget Act of 1974, as amended, and related points of order established in the budget resolutions adopted by Congress in 2007, 2008, and 2009, as well as the Rules of the House for the 111th Congress, the Budget Enforcement Act of 1990, and the Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act of 2010. In addition, it describes how points of order are applied and the processes used for their waiver in the House and Senate.

Baselines and scorekeeping are an integral part of the federal budget process, providing lawmakers with a framework for making and enforcing budgetary decisions. The baseline serves as a benchmark for federal budget decisions. Scorekeeping is the process by which the budgetary impact of proposed and enacted budget policies is measured; it assists Congress in making and enforcing budgetary decisions. This report provides a brief explanation of baselines and scorekeeping and their uses in the federal budget process.

This report discusses whether the current food safety system has the resources, authority, and structural organization to safeguard the health of American consumers, who spend more than $1 trillion on food each year. Also at issue is whether federal food safety laws, first enacted in the early 1900s, have kept pace with the significant changes that have occurred in the food production, processing, and marketing sectors since then.

This report briefly discusses nuclear relations and cooperation between the United States and Australia, including the Atomic Energy Act and President Obama's latest renewal agreement of said Act.

For more than a decade, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) Industry Growth Forum has been the nation's premier event for early-stage clean energy investment. The forum features presentations from the most innovative, promising, and emergent clean energy companies; provocative panels led by thought leaders; and organized networking opportunities. It is the perfect venue for growing cleantech companies to present their business to a wide range of investors.

This final report for IEA Wind Task 23, Offshore Wind Energy Technology and Deployment, is made up of two separate reports, Subtask 1: Experience with Critical Deployment Issues and Subtask 2: Offshore Code Comparison Collaborative (OC3). Subtask 1 discusses ecological issues and regulation, electrical system integration, external conditions, and key conclusions for Subtask 1. Subtask 2 included here, is the larger of the two volumes and contains five chapters that cover background information and objectives of Subtask 2 and results from each of the four phases of the project.

This is an end-of-year report for a project funded by the National Nuclear Security Administration's Office of Nuclear Safeguards (NA-241). The goal of this project is to investigate the feasibility of using Neutron Resonance Transmission Analysis (NRTA) to assay plutonium in commercial light-water-reactor spent fuel. This project is part of a larger research effort within the Next-Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI) to evaluate methods for assaying plutonium in spent fuel, the Plutonium Assay Challenge. The first-year goals for this project were modest and included: 1) developing a zero-order MCNP model for the NRTA technique, simulating data results presented in the literature, 2) completing a preliminary set of studies investigating important design and performance characteristics for the NRTA measurement technique, and 3) documentation of this work in an end of the year report (this report). Research teams at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), and at several universities are also working to investigate plutonium assay methods for spent-fuel safeguards. While the NRTA technique is well proven in the scientific literature for assaying individual spent fuel pins, it is a newcomer to the current NGSI efforts studying Pu assay method techniques having just started …

This report is associated with the project of Implementation of Building Energy Codes in China (55793). The report aims to give Chinese audience a brief introduction on training and public information activities of building energy codes in the U.S. The report contains four sections: Section One is about the development history and implementation of building energy codes in the U.S. Section Two is about the organizations of training and public information activities, mainly focused on ASHRAE, ICC, federal and state government. Policy implication, which is Section Three, addresses the role of federal government and on-line training and public information activities in promoting training and public information (the current China training system lacks strong support of central government and on-line training activities). Conclusions are made in Section Four. This report will be uploaded to an upcoming Chinese website which is devoted to provide first-time free on-line training and public information of building energy codes in China.

This paper presents an overview of the variable characteristics of solar power, as well as the accompanying grid dynamic performance and operational economics for a system with significant solar generation. The paper will show results of economic operational simulations of a very high solar generation future for the western half of the United States.

While advances in manufacturing enable the fabrication of integrated circuits containing tens-to-hundreds of millions of devices, the time-sensitive modeling and simulation necessary to design these circuits poses a significant computational challenge. This is especially true for mixed-signal integrated circuits where detailed performance analyses are necessary for the individual analog/digital circuit components as well as the full system. When the integrated circuit has millions of devices, performing a full system simulation is practically infeasible using currently available Electrical Design Automation (EDA) tools. The principal reason for this is the time required for the nonlinear solver to compute the solutions of large linearized systems during the simulation of these circuits. The research presented in this report aims to address the computational difficulties introduced by these large linearized systems by using Model Order Reduction (MOR) to (i) generate specialized preconditioners that accelerate the computation of the linear system solution and (ii) reduce the overall dynamical system size. MOR techniques attempt to produce macromodels that capture the desired input-output behavior of larger dynamical systems and enable substantial speedups in simulation time. Several MOR techniques that have been developed under the LDRD on 'Solution Methods for Very Highly Integrated Circuits' will be presented in this …

This investigation is focused on refining an in situ technology for vadose zone remediation of uranium by the addition of ammonia (NH3) gas. Objectives are to: a) refine the technique of ammonia gas treatment of low water content sediments to minimize uranium mobility by changing uranium surface phases (or coat surface phases), b) identify the geochemical changes in uranium surface phases during ammonia gas treatment, c) identify broader geochemical changes that occur in sediment during ammonia gas treatment, and d) predict and test injection of ammonia gas for intermediate-scale systems to identify process interactions that occur at a larger scale and could impact field scale implementation.Overall, NH3 gas treatment of low-water content sediments appears quite effective at decreasing aqueous, adsorbed uranium concentrations. The NH3 gas treatment is also fairly effective for decreasing the mobility of U-carbonate coprecipitates, but shows mixed success for U present in Na-boltwoodite. There are some changes in U-carbonate surface phases that were identified by surface phase analysis, but no changes observed for Na-boltwoodite. It is likely that dissolution of sediment minerals (predominantly montmorillonite, muscovite, kaolinite) under the alkaline conditions created and subsequent precipitation as the pH returns to natural conditions coat some of the uranium surface …

In this report, we present the results of an analytical cost/benefit study of residential smart appliances from a utility/grid perspective in support of a joint stakeholder petition to the ENERGY STAR program within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Department of Energy (DOE). The goal of the petition is in part to provide appliance manufacturers incentives to hasten the production of smart appliances. The underlying hypothesis is that smart appliances can play a critical role in addressing some of the societal challenges, such as anthropogenic global warming, associated with increased electricity demand, and facilitate increased penetration of renewable sources of power. The appliances we consider include refrigerator/freezers, clothes washers, clothes dryers, room air-conditioners, and dishwashers. The petition requests the recognition that providing an appliance with smart grid capability, i.e., products that meet the definition of a smart appliance, is at least equivalent to a corresponding five percent in operational machine efficiencies. It is then expected that given sufficient incentives and value propositions, and suitable automation capabilities built into smart appliances, residential consumers will be adopting these smart appliances and will be willing participants in addressing the aforementioned societal challenges by more effectively managing their home electricity consumption. The analytical model …

This fact sheet describes NREL's accomplishments in advancing spillover materials for hydrogen storage and improving the reproducible synthesis, long-term durability, and material costs of hydrogen storage materials. Work was performed by NREL's Chemical and Materials Science Center.

The inverted metamorphic multijunction (IMM) solar cell is an exercise in efficient innovation - literally, as the technology boasted the highest demonstrated efficiency for converting sunlight into electrical energy at its debut in 2005. Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) inverted the conventional photovoltaic (PV) structure to revolutionary effect, achieving solar conversion efficiencies of 33.8% and 40.8% under one-sun and concentrated conditions, respectively.

X-ray momentum coupling coefficients, C{sub M}, were determined by measuring stress waveforms in planetary materials subjected to impulsive radiation loading from the Sandia National Laboratories Z-machine. Results from the velocity interferometry (VISAR) diagnostic provided limited equation-of-state data as well. Targets were iron and stone meteorites, magnesium rich olivine (dunite) solid and powder ({approx}5--300 {mu}m), and Si, Al, and Fe calibration targets. All samples were {approx}1 mm thick and, except for Si, backed by LiF single-crystal windows. The x-ray spectrum included a combination of thermal radiation (blackbody 170--237 eV) and line emissions from the pinch material (Cu, Ni, Al, or stainless steel). Target fluences 0.4--1.7 kJ/cm{sup 2} at intensities 43--260 GW/cm{sup 2} produced front surface plasma pressures 2.6--12.4 GPa. Stress waves driven into the samples were attenuating due to the short ({approx}5 ns) duration of the drive pulse. Attenuating wave impulse is constant allowing accurate C{sub M} measurements provided mechanical impedance mismatch between samples and the window are known. Impedance-corrected C{sub M} determined from rear-surface motion was 1.9--3.1 x 10{sup -5} s/m for stony meteorites, 2.7 and 0.5 x 10{sup -5} s/m for solid and powdered dunite, 0.8--1.4 x 10{sup -5}.

This document completes the requirements of Milestone 1-2, PNNL Draft Literature Review, discussed in the scope of work outlined in the EM-31 Support Project task plan WP-2.3.6-2010-1. The focus of task WP 2.3.6 is to improve the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) understanding of filtration operations for high-level waste (HLW) to enhance filtration and cleaning efficiencies, thereby increasing process throughput and reducing the sodium demand (through acid neutralization). Developing the processes for fulfilling the cleaning/backpulsing requirements will result in more efficient operations for both the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP) and the Savannah River Site (SRS), thereby increasing throughput by limiting cleaning cycles. The purpose of this document is to summarize Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s (PNNL’s) literature review of historical filtration testing at the laboratory and of testing found in peer-reviewed journals. Eventually, the contents of this document will be merged with a literature review by SRS to produce a summary report for DOE of the results of previous filtration testing at the laboratories and the types of testing that still need to be completed to address the questions about improved filtration performance at WTP and SRS. To this end, this report presents 1) a review of …

This report examines the role of rare earth metals and other materials in the clean energy economy. It was prepared by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) based on data collected and research performed during 2010. Its main conclusions include: (a) Several clean energy technologies -- including wind turbines, electric vehicles, photovoltaic cells and fluorescent lighting -- use materials at risk of supply disruptions in the short term. Those risks will generally decrease in the medium and long term. (b) Clean energy technologies currently constitute about 20 percent of global consumption of critical materials. As clean energy technologies are deployed more widely in the decades ahead, their share of global consumption of critical materials will likely grow. (c) Of the materials analyzed, five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium), as well as indium, are assessed as most critical in the short term. For this purpose, 'criticality' is a measure that combines importance to the clean energy economy and risk of supply disruption. (d) Sound policies and strategic investments can reduce the risk of supply disruptions, especially in the medium and long term. (e) Data with respect to many of the issues considered in this report are sparse. …