This report examines the history and evolution of the House Committee on Ethics, including the committee's jurisdiction and investigative procedure. It does not deal with changes to federal or state criminal law or with criminal prosecutions of Members of Congress or with the specifics of disciplinary cases in the House.

This report addresses several options being considered by Congress to address the financing needs of local communities for wastewater and drinking water infrastructure projects and to decrease or close the gap between available funds and projected needs.

This report provides a basic description of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), including some of the widely discussed issues.

This report discusses the strategic significance of Guam for defense buildup and the force relocation and deployments from the U.S. mainland. It also discusses the concerns and issues for Congress, such as allies and partner, China, and legislation.

This report discusses U.S. security assistance to Taiwan, or Republic of China (ROC), including policy issues for Congress and legislation.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Social Security Administration (SSA) receives death reports from multiple sources, including state vital records agencies (states), family members, and other federal agencies to create its set of death records. In accordance with the Social Security Act (Act), SSA shares its full set of death data with certain agencies that pay federally-funded benefits, for the purpose of ensuring the accuracy of those payments. For other users of SSA's death data, SSA extracts a subset of records into a file called the Death Master File (DMF), which, to comply with the Act, excludes state-reported death data. SSA makes the DMF available via the Department of Commerce's National Technical Information Service, from which any member of the public can purchase DMF data. Certain procedures that SSA uses for collecting, verifying, and maintaining death reports could result in erroneous or untimely death information. For example, SSA does not independently verify all reports before including them in its death records. In accordance with its policy, the agency only verifies death reports for Social Security beneficiaries in order to stop benefit payments, and then, verifies only those reports from sources it …

Tanks 241-AN-102 and 241-AN-107 supernatants contain soluble Sr-90 and transuranic elements that require removal prior to vitrification to comply with the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant immobilized low-activity waste specification (WTP Contract, DE-AC27-01RV 14136, Specification 2.2.2.8, "Radionuclide Concentration Limitations") and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission provisional agreement on waste incidental to reprocessing (letter, Paperiello, C. J., "Classification of Hanford Low-Activity Tank Waste Fraction"). These two tanks have high concentrations of organics and organic complexants and are referred to as complexant concentrate tanks. A precipitation process using sodium permanganate (NaMnO{sub 4}) and strontium nitrate (Sr(NO{sub 3}){sub 2}) was developed and tested with tank waste samples to precipitate Sr-90 and transuranic elements from the supernate (PNWD-3141, Optimization of Sr/TRU Removal Conditions with Samples of AN-102 Tank Waste). Testing documented in this report was conducted to further evaluate the use of the strontium nitrate/sodium permanganate process in tank farms with a retention time of up to 12 months. Previous testing was focused on developing a process for deployment in the ultrafiltration vessels in the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant. This environment is different from tank farms in two important ways: the waste is diluted in the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant to ~5.5 …

To assist the University of Maine in demonstrating a clear pathway to project completion, PNNL has developed visualization models of the Aqua Ventus I project that accurately depict the Aqua Ventus I turbines from various points on Monhegain Island, ME and the surrounding area. With a hub height of 100 meters, the Aqua Ventus I turbines are large and may be seen from many areas on Monhegan Island, potentially disrupting important viewsheds. By developing these visualization models, which consist of actual photographs taken from Monhegan Island and the surrounding area with the Aqua Ventus I turbines superimposed within each photograph, PNNL intends to support the project’s siting and permitting process by providing the Monhegan Island community and various other stakeholders with a probable glimpse of how the Aqua Ventus I project will appear.

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