This report provides a background of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), financial crisis and the issues for Congress.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the Department of Labor (Labor) have taken steps to implement the executive order and help agencies recruit, hire, and retain more employees with disabilities. OPM provided guidance to help agencies develop disability hiring plans and reviewed the 66 plans submitted. OPM identified deficiencies in most of the plans. For example, though 40 of 66 agencies included a process for increasing the use of a special hiring authority to increase the hiring of people with disabilities, 59 agencies did not meet all of OPM’s review criteria, and 32 agencies had not addressed plan deficiencies as of April 2012. In response to executive order reporting requirements, OPM officials said they had briefed the White House on issues related to implementation, but they did not provide information on deficiencies in all plans. While the order does not specify what information these reports should include beyond addressing progress, providing information on deficiencies would enable the White House to hold agencies accountable. OPM is still developing the mandatory training programs for officials on the employment of individuals with disabilities, as required by the executive …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has taken steps to enhance its management of the Disaster Assistance Employee (DAE) program, such as through the establishment of a credentialing program, the FEMA Qualification System (FQS); however, management controls and training could be strengthened. For example, FEMA does not monitor how the regions implement DAE policies and how DAEs implement disaster policies across regions to ensure consistency. FEMA’s Administrator noted that due to differences in how regions operate, it is problematic to deploy someone based in one region to another during a disaster. Establishing a mechanism to monitor both the regional implementation of DAE policies and procedures and DAE’s implementation of disaster policies could help provide FEMA with reasonable assurance that disaster assistance is conducted in accordance with policy and implemented consistently."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Department of Defense (DOD) officials considered current beneficiary population data, contingency operations, and most of the expected changes in troop strength when planning for the replacement medical center. However, recently announced posture changes in January 2012 have yet to be assessed for their impact on the facility. DOD estimates that the replacement medical center will provide health care for nearly 250,000 beneficiaries. A majority of those who are expected to receive health care from the center come from within a 55-mile radius of the facility. DOD officials told us that because the replacement medical center was designed for peacetime operations—with the capacity to expand to meet the needs of contingency operations—reductions in ongoing contingency operations in Afghanistan would not have an impact on facility requirements. At the time of this review, DOD officials said they were in the process of assessing proposed changes in posture to better understand their possible impact on the sizing of the replacement medical center."

None

This report highlights the issue of one-fifth of medicare patients in 2005 being readmitted to a hospital within thirty days time. These readmissions put a strain on the budget, the majority of which it is estimated may be avoidable. The report notes that Medicare as a program is working on moving around those difficulties, without reducing the quality of care.

We propose a unique, all-electron, thermodynamic density functional theory (DFT) code that directly predicts full or partial long-range order in crystalline (defected) solids and their effect on electronic properties via a first-principles mean-field theory, scales linear with number of atoms N per unit-cell [i.e. O(N), due to use of a mathematical-based screening in k-space], and addresses up to 1 million atoms using parallel architectures. Novel O(N) algorithms will be developed to permit this for an all-electron KKR Green's functional density-functional theory code.

The goal of the program is to develop 'LOW COST THIN FILM BUILDING-INTEGRATED PV SYSTEMS'. Major focus was on developing low cost solution for the commercial BIPV and rooftop PV market and meet DOE LCOE goal for the commercial market segment of 9-12 cents/kWh for 2010 and 6-8 cents/kWh for 2015. We achieved the 2010 goal and were on track to achieve the 2015 goal. The program consists of five major tasks: (1) modules; (2) inverters and BOS; (3) systems engineering and integration; (4) deployment; and (5) project management and TPP collaborative activities. We successfully crossed all stage gates and surpassed all milestones. We proudly achieved world record stable efficiencies in small area cells (12.56% for 1cm2) and large area encapsulated modules (11.3% for 800 cm2) using a triple-junction amorphous silicon/nanocrystalline silicon/nanocrystalline silicon structure, confirmed by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. We collaborated with two inverter companies, Solectria and PV Powered, and significantly reduced inverter cost. We collaborated with three universities (Syracuse University, University of Oregon, and Colorado School of Mines) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and improved understanding on nanocrystalline material properties and light trapping techniques. We jointly published 50 technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and International Conference Proceedings. …

The purpose of our program is to explore fundamental chemistry relevant to the discovery of energy efficient methods for the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen (N{sub 2}) into more value-added nitrogen-containing organic molecules. Such transformations are key for domestic energy security and the reduction of fossil fuel dependencies. With DOE support, we have synthesized families of zirconium and hafnium dinitrogen complexes with elongated and activated N-N bonds that exhibit rich N{sub 2} functionalization chemistry. Having elucidated new methods for N-H bond formation from dihydrogen, C-H bonds and Broensted acids, we have since turned our attention to N-C bond construction. These reactions are particularly important for the synthesis of amines, heterocycles and hydrazines with a range of applications in the fine and commodity chemicals industries and as fuels. One recent highlight was the discovery of a new N{sub 2} cleavage reaction upon addition of carbon monoxide which resulted in the synthesis of an important fertilizer, oxamide, from the diatomics with the two strongest bonds in chemistry. Nitrogen-carbon bonds form the backbone of many important organic molecules, especially those used in the fertilizer and pharamaceutical industries. During the past year, we have continued our work in the synthesis of hydrazines of various substitution …