Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Among the tribes that responded to our survey (109), none reported that they were exercising TLOA’s new sentencing authority, and, in open-ended responses, many tribes (86 of 90, or 96 percent) reported challenges to exercising this authority due to funding limitations. Tribes were relatively evenly split among those that reported that they have plans to exercise the new authority (36 of 101, or 36 percent); that they did not know the tribe’s plans to exercise the new authority (34 of 101, or 34 percent) because, for instance, the tribal council has not yet made a decision; and that they did not have plans to do so (31 of 101, or 31 percent). In addition, 64 percent of selected tribes (70 of 109) reported implementing at least half of the requirements necessary for exercising the new sentencing authority, but reported challenges in implementing other requirements. Specifically, these tribes most frequently reported implementing the requirement to maintain a record of the criminal proceeding, and least frequently reported providing the defendant a licensed defense attorney. For example, 8 tribes that described challenges to exercising the new sentencing authority reported challenges with …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to experts, agency officials, and specialists, much is known about the use of chemical dispersants on the surface of the water, but gaps remain in several research areas. For example, experts generally agreed that there is a basic understanding of the processes that influence where and how oil travels through the water, but that more research was needed to quantify the actual rate at which dispersants biodegrade. In addition, all the experts GAO spoke with said that little is known about the application and effects of dispersants applied subsurface, noting that specific environmental conditions, such as higher pressures, may influence dispersants’ effectiveness. Knowledge about the use and effectiveness of dispersants in the Arctic is also limited, with less research conducted on dispersant use there than in temperate or tropical climates. For example, one expert noted that more research is needed on biodegradation rates for oil in the Arctic because the cold temperature may slow the process down."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Historically, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) oversight of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority’s (FINRA) programs and operations varied, with some programs and operations receiving regular oversight and others receiving limited or no oversight. Through its inspection process, SEC conducted routine and special inspections of various aspects of FINRA regulatory programs, including examinations, surveillance, and enforcement programs. SEC has also conducted routine inspections of FINRA’s advertising and arbitration programs but not as frequently as it had planned. SEC has also regularly reviewed FINRA proposed rule changes that are subject to SEC approval to determine consistency with the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 and related rules and regulations. However, neither SEC nor FINRA conducts retrospective reviews of FINRA’s rules. GAO and others have reported on the usefulness of retrospective reviews as they allow agencies to assess the effectiveness of their rules, and some federal financial regulators, including SEC, have begun pursuing plans to conduct retrospective reviews of their rules in light of a recent executive order that encourages independent regulatory agencies to do so. By not conducting these reviews, FINRA may be missing an opportunity to systematically …

Guidance issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Government Accountability Office is responsible for, among other things, assisting the Congress in its oversight of the federal government, including agencies’ stewardship of public funds. To use public funds effectively, the government must meet the demands of today’s changing world by employing effective management practices and processes, including the measurement of government program performance. In addition, legislators, government officials, and the public want to know whether government programs are achieving their goals and what their costs are."

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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This report focuses on the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). The VHA is primarily a direct service provider of primary care, specialized care, and related medical and social support services to veterans through the nation's largest integrated health care system.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Authority of Type A general-law municipality with a population of less than 900,000 to enact an ordinance setting either a 300-foot "Alcohol-Free School Zone" or a 1,000-foot zone around a school in which the sale of of alcoholic beverages for off-premises consumption would be prohibited (RQ-1028-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether, in determining the market value of a residence homestead, a chief appraiser is required to consider the value of previously sold foreclosed residential property (RQ-1029-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether a mental health professional is required by chapter 261, Family Code, to report abuse or neglect that occurred during the childhood of a now-adult patient (RQ-1030-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the Angleton-Danbury Hospital District is authorized to sell a hospital facility to a third party and lease care for the District's needy residents (RQ-1033-GA)

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The presence of microbunching instabilities due to the compression of high-brightness electron beams at existing and future x-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) results in restrictions on the attainable lasing performance and renders beam imaging with optical transition radiation impossible. The instability can be suppressed by introducing additional energy spread, i.e., heating the electron beam, as demonstrated by the successful operation of the laser heater system at the Linac Coherent Light Source. The increased energy spread is typically tolerable for self-amplified spontaneous emission FELs but limits the effectiveness of advanced FEL schemes such as seeding. In this paper, we present a reversible electron beam heating system based on two transverse deflecting radio-frequency structures (TDSs) upstream and downstream of a magnetic bunch compressor chicane. The additional energy spread is introduced in the first TDS, which suppresses the microbunching instability, and then is eliminated in the second TDS. We show the feasibility of the microbunching gain suppression based on calculations and simulations including the effects of coherent synchrotron radiation. Acceptable electron beam and radio-frequency jitter are identified, and inherent options for diagnostics and on-line monitoring of the electron beam's longitudinal phase space are discussed.

The purpose of the Operational Testing and Evaluation (OT&E) phases of the project is to prepare for turnover of the Megaports System supplied by U.S. Department of Energy/National Nuclear Security Administration (DOE/NNSA)—located at the Export Lanes of the Port of Lazaro Cardenas, Mexico—to the Government of Mexico (GOM).

This month's issue has the following articles: (1) Energetic Materials Research Finds an Enduring Home and Mission - Commentary by Bruce T. Goodwin; (2) A Home for Energetic Materials and Their Experts - The Energetic Materials Center has become the National Nuclear Security Administration's go-to facility for high explosives formulation, testing, and expertise; (3) A Spectra-Tacular Sight - Scientists use spectrographic techniques and a high-powered telescope to study the atmospheric composition of exoplanets; (4) Seismic Data Pinpoint Fractures for Geothermal Energy - Livermore researchers are developing advanced microseismic analysis techniques to understand what happens beneath Earth's surface, where hot rock can provide an energy source; and (5) Employees Keep Up with the Times - The Laboratory's Education Assistance Program helps its workforce stay productive, skilled, and dynamic.

Destructive and non-destructive examinations have been performed on specified components of shipping package 9975-03431. For those attributes that were also measured during the field surveillance, no significant changes were observed. All observations and test results met identified criteria, or were collected for information and trending purposes. Except for modest corrosion of the lead shield (which is typical of these packages following several years service), no evidence of a degraded condition was found in this package. The Savannah River Site (SRS) stores packages containing plutonium (Pu) materials in the KArea Complex (KAC). The Pu materials are packaged per the DOE 3013 Standard and stored within Model 9975 shipping packages in KAC. The KAC facility DSA (Document Safety Analysis) credits the Model 9975 package to perform several safety functions, including criticality prevention, impact resistance, containment, and fire resistance to ensure the plutonium materials remain in a safe configuration during normal and accident conditions. The Model 9975 package is expected to perform its safety function for at least 12 years from initial packaging. The DSA recognizes the degradation potential for the materials of package construction over time in the KAC storage environment and requires an assessment of materials performance to validate the assumptions …

Experimental results are reported for test beam acceleration and deflection in a two-channel, cm-scale, rectangular dielectric-lined wakefield accelerator structure energized by a 14-MeV drive beam. The dominant waveguide mode of the structure is at {approx}30 GHz, and the structure is configured to exhibit a high transformer ratio ({approx}12:1). Accelerated bunches in the narrow secondary channel of the structure are continuously energized via Cherenkov radiation that is emitted by a drive bunch moving in the wider primary channel. Observed energy gains and losses, transverse deflections, and changes in the test bunch charge distribution compare favorably with predictions of theory.

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A low emittance upgrade is planned for SPEAR3. As the first phase, the emittance is reduced from 10nm to 7nm without additional magnets. A further upgrade with even lower emittance will require a damping wiggler. There is a smaller dynamic aperture for the lower emittance optics due to a stronger nonlinearity. Elegant based Multi-Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA) is used to maximize the dynamic aperture. Both the dynamic aperture and beam lifetime are optimized simultaneously. Various configurations of the sextupole magnets have been studied in order to find the best configuration. The betatron tune also can be optimized to minimize resonance effects. The optimized dynamic aperture increases more than 15% from the nominal case and the lifetime increases from 14 hours to 17 hours. It is important that the increase of the dynamic aperture is mainly in the beam injection direction. Therefore the injection efficiency will benefit from this improvement.

The PNNL lab homes (http://labhomes.pnnl.gov/ ) are two manufactured homes recently installed immediately south of the 6th Street Warehouse on the PNNL Richland, WA campus that will serve as a project test bed for DOE, PNNL and its research partners who aim to achieve highly energy efficient and grid-responsive homes. The PNNL Lab Homes project is the first of its kind in the Pacific Northwest region. The Energy & Environment Directorate at PNNL, working with multiple sponsors, will use the identical 1,500 square-foot homes for experiments focused on reducing energy use and peak demand. Research and demonstration primarily will focus on retrofit technologies, and the homes will offer a unique, side-by-side ability to test and compare new ideas and approaches that are applicable to site-built as well as manufactured homes. The test plan has the following objectives: • To define a retrofit solution packages for moderate to cold climates that can be cost effectively deployed in the Pacific NW to save 50% of the energy needs of a typical home while enhancing the comfort and indoor air quality. The retrofit strategies would also lower the peak demands on the grid. • To leverage the unique opportunity in the lab homes …

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

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

Experiments show that inter-granular and intra-granular gas bubbles have different growth kinetics which results in heterogeneous gas bubble microstructures in irradiated nuclear fuels. A science-based model predicting the heterogeneous microstructure evolution kinetics is desired, which enables one to study the effect of thermodynamic and kinetic properties of the system on gas bubble microstructure evolution kinetics and morphology, improve the understanding of the formation mechanisms of heterogeneous gas bubble microstructure, and provide the microstructure to macroscale approaches to study their impact on thermo-mechanical properties such as thermo-conductivity, gas release, volume swelling, and cracking. In our previous report 'Mesoscale Benchmark Demonstration, Problem 1: Mesoscale Simulations of Intra-granular Fission Gas Bubbles in UO2 under Post-irradiation Thermal Annealing', we developed a phase-field model to simulate the intra-granular gas bubble evolution in a single crystal during post-irradiation thermal annealing. In this work, we enhanced the model by incorporating thermodynamic and kinetic properties at grain boundaries, which can be obtained from atomistic simulations, to simulate fission gas bubble growth kinetics in polycrystalline UO2 fuels. The model takes into account of gas atom and vacancy diffusion, vacancy trapping and emission at defects, gas atom absorption and resolution at gas bubbles, internal pressure in gas bubbles, elastic interaction …