This report looks at Kuwait's relationships with its neighbors in the Persian Gulf, and its own political system which has been in turmoil since 2006.

Report that summarizes major immigration reform provisions of S. 744, as passed by the Senate.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO's simulation found that under the current Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA) program, the median wage replacement rate--the percentage of take-home pay replaced by FECA--for total-disability beneficiaries was 88 percent for U.S. Postal Service (USPS) beneficiaries and 80 percent for non-USPS beneficiaries in 2010. GAO also found that proposals to set initial FECA benefits at a single compensation rate would reduce these replacement rates by 3 to 4 percentage points under the 70-percent option and 7 to 8 percentage points under the 66-2/3 percent option. Beneficiaries with dependents would receive reduced FECA benefits under both options. The decreases in wage replacement rates were due to the greater proportion of beneficiaries who had a dependent--over 70 percent of both USPS and non-USPS beneficiaries."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2011, two agencies--the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Justice (Justice) --separately administered 12 fragmented but minimally overlapping programs that directed funds toward elder justice, with low risk of duplication. Specifically, because more than one federal agency administers these programs, GAO found that these grant programs are fragmented. Further, GAO found that overlap across the 12 programs was minimal because the programs varied with respect to (1) funding mechanisms and recipients, (2) elder abuse victims targeted, (3) service providers, and (4) activities conducted. For example, a few of these programs provided formula grants to all states and most dispersed discretionary grants to a limited number of recipients. Programs that supported victims of elder abuse generally assisted all types of victims, but some also focused on certain subgroups, such as older women. Some programs that assisted service providers also targeted specific subgroups, such as judges and court personnel. In addition, elder justice programs supported a wide range of activities. For example, one HHS program provided public education to help identify and prevent elder abuse, while a Justice program trained law enforcement officers …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented two types of manual medical reviews (MMR)--reviews of preapproval requests and reviews of claims submitted without preapproval--for all outpatient therapy services that were above a $3,700 per-beneficiary threshold provided during the last 3 months of 2012. However, CMS did not issue complete guidance on how to process preapproval requests before the implementation of the MMR process in October 2012, and the Medicare Administrative Contractors (MAC) that conducted the MMRs were unable to fully automate systems for tracking preapproval requests in the time allotted. CMS required the MACs to manually review preapproval requests within 10 business days of receipt of all supporting documentation to determine whether the services were medically necessary, and to automatically approve any requests they were unable to review within that time frame. CMS officials told GAO that the purpose of the preapproval process was to protect beneficiaries from being liable for payment for nonaffirmed services by giving the provider and beneficiary guidance as to whether Medicare would pay for the requested services. If a provider delivered services without submitting a preapproval request, the MACs …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Three long-standing major impediments prevented GAO from expressing an opinion on the U.S. government's 2012 accrual-based consolidated financial statements: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense (DOD), (2) the federal government's inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal entities, and (3) the federal government's ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements. Also, GAO was prevented from expressing opinions on the 2012 social insurance-related statements because of significant uncertainties primarily related to the achievement of projected reductions in Medicare cost growth reflected in the statements."

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Appropriate photodetectors are a major challenge for liquid xenon technology as proposed by the next generation of double beta decay, solar neutrino, and dark matter searches. The primary photon signal is tiny and in the hard ultraviolet, the installation is cryogenic, and the sensors themselves must not introduce background. Hybrid photodiodes (HPDs) provide an easy substitute for a conventional PMT with the added advantages of low radioactivity, better area coverage, and single photoelectron counting. A computer-controlled test setup capable of characterizing optical properties of ultraviolet photodetectors was installed. It was used to compare photomultiplier tubes, silicon photomultipliers, avalanche photodiodes, and a novel-design custom HPD developed by the DEP company under this proposal.

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This is a report on the MIT High Gradient Accelerator Research program which has included: Operation of the 17 GHz, 25 MeV MIT/Haimson Research Corp. electron accelerator at MIT, the highest frequency, stand-alone accelerator in the world; collaboration with members of the US High Gradient Collaboration, including the design and test of novel structures at SLAC at 11.4 GHz; the design, construction and testing of photonic bandgap structures, including metallic and dielectric structures; the investigation of the wakefields in novel structures; and the training of the next generation of graduate students and postdoctoral associates in accelerator physics.

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Eulerian hydrodynamical simulations are a powerful and popular tool for modeling fluids in astrophysical systems. In this work, we critically examine recent claims that these methods violate Galilean invariance of the Euler equations. We demonstrate that Eulerian hydrohynamics methods do converge to a Galilean-invariant solution,provided a well-defined convergent solutions exists. Specifically, we show that numerical diffusion, resulting from diffusion-like terms in the discretized hydrodynamical equations solved by Eulerian methods, accounts for the effects previously identified as evidence for the Galilean non-inveriance of these methods. These velocity-dependent diffusive terms lead to different results for different bulk velocities when the spatial resolution of the simulation is kept fixed, but their effect become negligible as the resolution of the simulation is increased to obtain a converged solution. In particular, we find that Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities develop properly in realistic Eulerian calculations regardless of the bulk velocity provided the problem is simulated with sufficient resolution (a factor of 2-4 increase compared to the case without bulk flows for realistic velocities). Our results reiterate that high-resolution Eulerian methods can perform well and obtain a convergent solution, even in the presence of highly supersonic bulk flows.

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This report is categorized into three categories: (I) Background on the Doctrines of Constitutional and Prudential Standing, (II) Clapper v. Amnesty International, and (III) Future of Litigation Challenging the Foreign Surveillance Practices.

This report describes IDA(Individual Development Accounts) programs funded by two major federal grants.

This study evaluates the removal of mercury from wastewater using chemical reduction and air stripping using a full-scale treatment system at the Savannah River Site. The existing water treatment system utilizes air stripping as the unit operation to remove organic compounds from groundwater that also contains mercury (C ~ 250 ng/L). The baseline air stripping process was ineffective in removing mercury and the water exceeded a proposed limit of 51 ng/L. To test an enhancement to the existing treatment modality a continuous dose of reducing agent was injected for 6-hours at the inlet of the air stripper. This action resulted in the chemical reduction of mercury to Hg(0), a species that is removable with the existing unit operation. During the injection period a 94% decrease in concentration was observed and the effluent satisfied proposed limits. The process was optimized over a 2-day period by sequentially evaluating dose rates ranging from 0.64X to 297X stoichiometry. A minimum dose of 16X stoichiometry was necessary to initiate the reduction reaction that facilitated the mercury removal. Competing electron acceptors likely inhibited the reaction at the lower 1 doses, which prevented removal by air stripping. These results indicate that chemical reduction coupled with air stripping …

Proceedings of the House of Representatives of Texas for the third day of the Second Called session of the 83rd Legislature documenting legislation, reports, discussions, votes, and points-of-order.

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