This report presents policy and oversight issues for Congress arising from (1) maritime territorial disputes involving China in the South China Sea (SCS) and East China Sea (ECS) and (2) an additional dispute over whether China has a right under international law to regulate U.S. and other foreign military activities in its 200-nautical-mile maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

This report describes the GI Bills enacted prior to 2008. Although participation in the programs has ended or is declining, the programs' evolution and provisions inform current policy. Included is a description of the eligibility requirements, eligible programs of education, benefit availability, and benefits. The report also provides some summary statistics, comparisons between the programs, and brief discussions of related programs.

This report provides information about the electoral college, its origins, who makes up the college today, the 2012 presidental election, and calls for the reform of the electoral college.

Report on the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which is an agency of the Department of Commerce set up to advise on domestic and international telecommunications and information policies.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), together with plant operators, has made progress in resolving three fire safety issues raised in GAO's 2008 report by implementing GAO's recommendations or taking other actions. NRC implemented the recommendation on multiple spurious operations (malfunctions caused by fire that could cause safety-related equipment to malfunction) by issuing new guidance or requiring additional modifications at the 36 plants with 57 reactors operating under deterministic regulations. NRC did not implement the recommendations to address the effectiveness of fire wraps or the extended use of interim compensatory measures plants use instead of repairing or replacing damaged safety equipment; however, NRC did take some actions, including (1) evaluating and reporting on corrective actions plants used to mitigate safety concerns associated with fire wraps and (2) developing metrics to gauge the progress of NRC's staff in resolve underlying issues related to the extended use of compensatory measures."

This report offers perspectives for Congress on the Article V Convention, opening with an overview of the provisions in Article V that established the convention procedure. The report further examines its origins at the Constitutional Convention of 1787; the history of the convention alternative, focusing on three major 20th century campaigns to convene a constitutional convention; and the role of the states in the Article V Convention process.

This report provides a brief history about the Federal Affirmative Action Law which remains a focal point of public debate as a result of legal and political developments at the federal,state and local levels.

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A key challenge for living systems is balancing utilization of multiple elemental nutrients, such as carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen, whose availability is subject to environmental fluctuations. As growth can be limited by the scarcity of any one nutrient, the rate at which each nutrient is assimilated must be sensitive not only to its own availability, but also to that of other nutrients. Remarkably, across diverse nutrient conditions, E. coli grows nearly optimally, balancing effectively the conversion of carbon into energy versus biomass. To investigate the link between the metabolism of different nutrients, we quantified metabolic responses to nutrient perturbations using LC-MS based metabolomics and built differential equation models that bridge multiple nutrient systems. We discovered that the carbonaceous substrate of nitrogen assimilation, α-ketoglutarate, directly inhibits glucose uptake and that the upstream glycolytic metabolite, fructose-1,6-bisphosphate, ultrasensitively regulates anaplerosis to allow rapid adaptation to changing carbon availability. We also showed that NADH controls the metabolic response to changing oxygen levels. Our findings support a general mechanism for nutrient integration: limitation for a nutrient other than carbon leads to build-up of the most closely related product of carbon metabolism, which in turn feedback inhibits further carbon uptake.

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Pd is known to absorb hydrogen. Molecules are normally chemisorbed at the surface in a process where the molecule breaks into two hydrogen atoms, and the protons are then absorbed into the bulk. This process consists of electron filling holes in the Pd 4d band near the Fermi energy, which due to the high density of states at the Fermi energy, is an energetically favorable process. Our aim with this project was to determine possible changes in magnetic properties with Pd nm-length-scale thick layers intercalated by magnetic materials. Before the start of this work, the literature indicated that there were several possible scenarios by which this could happen: i) the Pd will be magnetized due to a proximity effect with nearby magnetic layers, resulting in changes in the magnetization due to H2 absorption; ii) some H will be absorbed into the magnetic layers, causing a change in the magnetic exchange interactions; or iii) absorption of H2 will cause an expansion of the lattice, resulting in a magnetoelastic effect which changes the magnetic properties.

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