This report reviews Argentina's financial crisis, the bond exchanges of 2005 and 2010, ongoing litigation, prospects for a final solution, related U.S. legislation, and broader policy issues. These include lessons on the effectiveness and cost of Argentina's default strategy, the ability to force sovereigns to meet their debt obligations, and ways to avoid future defaults like Argentina's.

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Proceedings of the Senate of Texas for the eleventh day of the regular session of the 83rd Legislature documenting legislation, reports, discussions, votes, and points-of-order.

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This report provides an analysis of flood risk management, summarizes major challenges facing the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), and outlines key reforms enacted in the Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012. The report identifies and presents some key remaining flood management issues for congressional consideration, and concludes with a discussion of policy options for the future financial management of flood hazards in the United States.

News release documenting Texas monthly sales tax revenue for February 2013 with a general summary and table of local sales tax allocations.

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This report will examine the relevant legal authorities that may be asserted to address disproportionate impacts that result from how an agency implements environmental regulations, including the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and various environmental and conservation statutes. It will discuss administrative efforts to address "environmental justice," a term used by some advocates to refer to the distribution of environmental quality across various demographic groups, including the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Plan EJ 2014. It will also analyze the use of these authorities to prevent such impacts and the likelihood of success for future challenges under each legal theory.

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This report documents the technical basis for determining that stabilizing highpurity PuO{sub 2} derived from oxalate precipitation at the SRS HB-Line facility at a minimum of 625 {degree}C for at least four hours in an oxidizing atmosphere is equivalent to stabilizing at a minimum of 950 {degree}C for at least two hours as regards meeting the objectives of stabilization defined by DOE-STD-3013 if the material is handled in a way to prevent excessive absorption of water.

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On July 31-August 2 of 2012, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) held a workshop entitled Grand Challenges of Advanced Computing for Energy Innovation. This workshop built on three earlier workshops that clearly identified the potential for the Department and its national laboratories to enable energy innovation. The specific goal of the workshop was to identify the key challenges that the nation must overcome to apply the full benefit of taxpayer-funded advanced computing technologies to U.S. energy innovation in the ways that the country produces, moves, stores, and uses energy. Perhaps more importantly, the workshop also developed a set of recommendations to help the Department overcome those challenges. These recommendations provide an action plan for what the Department can do in the coming years to improve the nation’s energy future.

Proceedings of the Senate of Texas for the twenty-third day of the Regular session of the 83rd Legislature documenting legislation, reports, discussions, votes, and points-of-order.

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The DOE theory group grew from 2009-2012 from a single investigator, Lawrence Krauss, the PI on the grant, to include 3 faculty (with the addition of Maulik Parikh and Tanmay Vachaspati), and a postdoc covered by the grant, as well as partial support for a graduate student. The group has explored issues ranging from gravity and quantum field theory to topological defects, energy conditions in general relativity, primordial magnetic fields, neutrino astrophysics, quantum phases, gravitational waves from the early universe, dark matter detection schemes, signatures for dark matter at the LHC, and indirect astrophysical signatures for dark matter. In addition, we have run active international workshops each year, as well as a regular visitor program. As well, the PI's outreach activities, including popular books and articles, and columns for newspapers and magazines, as well as television and radio appearances have helped raise the profile of high energy physics internationally. The postdocs supported by the grant, James Dent and Roman Buniy have moved on successfully to a faculty positions in Louisiana and California.

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In this paper, surrogate models are iteratively built using polynomial chaos expansion (PCE) and detailed numerical simulations of a carbon sequestration system. Output variables from a numerical simulator are approximated as polynomial functions of uncertain parameters. Once generated, PCE representations can be used in place of the numerical simulator and often decrease simulation times by several orders of magnitude. However, PCE models are expensive to derive unless the number of terms in the expansion is moderate, which requires a relatively small number of uncertain variables and a low degree of expansion. To cope with this limitation, instead of using a classical full expansion at each step of an iterative PCE construction method, we introduce a mixed-integer programming (MIP) formulation to identify the best subset of basis terms in the expansion. This approach makes it possible to keep the number of terms small in the expansion. Monte Carlo (MC) simulation is then performed by substituting the values of the uncertain parameters into the closed-form polynomial functions. Based on the results of MC simulation, the uncertainties of injecting CO{sub 2} underground are quantified for a saline aquifer. Moreover, based on the PCE model, we formulate an optimization problem to determine the optimal …

This report summarizes congressional authorization and appropriations processes for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It also discusses agency activities under general authorities.

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Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "State environmental agencies use federal grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, in addition to their own funds, to help implement and enforce the nation's environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Under this approach the states have an important role as partners and co-regulators, and, among other things, issue and enforce permits, carry out inspections, and monitor and collect data. EPA provides grants, known as categorical grants, to states to assist in implementing water, air, waste, and other programs that carry out federal environmental requirements."

This report examines human rights issues in the People's Republic of China (PRC), including ongoing rights abuses, legal reforms, and the development of civil society.

Document detailing the proceedings of the Senate of Texas for the fifty-third day of the Regular session of the 83rd Legislature including legislation, reports, discussions, votes, and points-of-order.