The 'acceleration' of land-secured assessments allows municipalities to declare the entire value (not just the late payments) of a property owner's outstanding balance payable if a default occurs. State laws vary on whether acceleration is required, permitted, or prohibited. Acceleration can be attractive to bond investors because it strips out non-performing assessments, and may avoid delays in debt service payments to investors. The risk that non-acceleration will negatively impact bond investors is a particular issue in states without a process for rapidly resolving defaults. However, acceleration may also increase the risk to mortgage holders, as the full amount of the outstanding assessment becomes due and traditionally has priority over other lien holders. Acceleration also places a greater burden on the property owner.

Anaerobic Digestion technology may help to address two congressional concerns that have some measure of independence: Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction and Energy Generation.

Superconducting excitations - Bogoliubov quasiparticles - are the quantum mechanical mixture of negatively charged electron (-e) and positively charged hole (+e). We propose a new observable for Angular Resolved Photoemission Spectroscopy (ARPES) studies that is the manifestation of the particle-hole entanglement of the superconducting quasiparticles. We call this observable a Bogoliubov angle. This angle measures the relative weight of particle and hole amplitude in the superconducting (Bogoliubov) quasiparticle. We show how this quantity can be measured by comparing the ratio of spectral intensities at positive and negative energies.

This report provides a short overview of Canada's political scene, its economic conditions, and its recent security and foreign policy, focusing particularly on issues that may be relevant to U.S. policymakers. This brief country survey is followed by several summaries of current bilateral issues in the political, trade, and environmental arenas. The report is updated annually.

This report focuses on EPA's potential actions regardin regulation of Greenhouse gasses emissions from mobile sources under Title II of the Clean Air Act.

This report provides information about the Insurance and Tax Issues of Corporate Owned Life Insurance (COLI).These policies are distinct and separate from typical from group life policies offered to many employees.

A central issue on high-T{sub c} superconductivity is the nature of the normal-state gap (pseudogap) in the underdoped regime and its relationship with superconductivity. Despite persistent efforts, theoretical ideas for the pseudogap evolve around fluctuating superconductivity, competing order and spectral weight suppression due to many-body effects. Recently, while some experiments in the superconducting state indicate a distinction between the superconducting gap and pseudogap, others in the normal state, either by extrapolation from high-temperature data or directly from La{sub 1.875}Ba{sub 0.125}CuO{sub 4} (LBCO-1/8) at low temperature, suggest the ground-state pseudogap is a single gap of d-wave form. Here we report angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) data from LBCO-1/8, collected with improved experimental conditions, that reveal the ground-state pseudogap has a pronounced deviation from the simple d-wave form. It contains two distinct components: a d-wave component within an extended region around the node and the other abruptly enhanced close to the antinode, pointing to a dual nature of the pseudogap in this failed high-T{sub c} superconductor which involves a possible precursor pairing energy scale around the node and another of different but unknown origin near the antinode.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "On March 23, 2010, we issued a report entitled Firms Reported in Open Sources as Having Commercial Activity in Iran's Oil, Gas, and Petrochemical Sectors. Based on open sources, we identified 41 foreign firms as having commercial activity in these vital sectors of Iran's economy from 2005 to 2009. As you requested, this report identifies which of the 41 firms in our March 2010 report had contracts with the United States government from fiscal years 2005 to 2009. Our March 2010 report and this report are intended to support congressional consideration of U.S. sanctions against Iran, including proposed legislation to expand the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA)."

The Static X-ray Imager (SXI) at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a pinhole camera using a CCD detector to obtain images of hohlraum wall x-ray drive illumination patterns seen through the laser entrance hole (LEH). Carefully chosen filters combined with the CCD response allows recording images in the x-ray range of 3 to 5 keV with 60 {micro}m spatial resolution. The routines used to obtain the apparent size of the backlit LEH, and the location and intensity of beam spots are discussed and compared to predictions. A new soft x-ray channel centered at 870 eV (near the x-ray peak of a 300 eV temperature ignition hohlraum) is discussed.

Recent scanning tunneling microscopy studies have shown that local nanoscale pairing inhomogenities are correlated with interstitial oxygen dopants in Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}CaCu{sub 2}O{sub 8+{delta}}. Combining electrostatic and cluster calculations, in this paper the impact of a dopant on the local Madelung and charge transfer energies, magnetic exchange J, Zhang-Rice mobility, and interactions with the lattice is investigated. It is found that electrostatic modifications locally increases the charge transfer energy and slightly suppresses J. It is further shown that coupling to c-axis phonons is strongly modified near the dopant. The combined effects of electrostatic modifications and coupling to the lattice yield broadened spectral features, reduced charge gap energies, and a sizable local increase of J. This implies a strong local interplay between antiferromagnetism, polarons, and superconducting pairing.

This report focuses on the United States' relationship with Iran and how the Obama Administration is handling prior administrations' economic sanctions against Iran. The Obama Administration's policy approach toward Iran has contrasted with the Bush Administration's by attempting to couple the imposition of sanctions to an active and direct U.S. effort to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear issue.

This report provides background information and potential issues for Congress on the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), a relatively inexpensive Navy surface combatant equipped with modular "plug-and-fight" mission packages. The Navy's proposed FY2012 budget requests funding for the procurement of four LCSs. Current issues for Congress concerning the LCS program include changes or potential changes to the composition of LCS mission modules announced by the Navy in January 2011, the combat survivability of the LCS, and hull cracking on LCS-1. Congress's decisions on the LCS program could affect Navy capabilities and funding requirements, and the shipbuilding industrial base.

Methylation of CpG islands within the DNA promoter regions is one mechanism that leads to aberrant gene expression in cancer. In particular, the abnormal methylation of CpG islands may silence associated genes. Therefore, using high-throughput microarrays to measure CpG island methylation will lead to better understanding of tumor pathobiology and progression, while revealing potentially new biomarkers. We have examined a recently developed high-throughput technology for measuring genome-wide methylation patterns called mTACL. Here, we propose a computational pipeline for integrating gene expression and CpG island methylation profles to identify epigenetically regulated genes for a panel of 45 breast cancer cell lines, which is widely used in the Integrative Cancer Biology Program (ICBP). The pipeline (i) reduces the dimensionality of the methylation data, (ii) associates the reduced methylation data with gene expression data, and (iii) ranks methylation-expression associations according to their epigenetic regulation. Dimensionality reduction is performed in two steps: (i) methylation sites are grouped across the genome to identify regions of interest, and (ii) methylation profles are clustered within each region. Associations between the clustered methylation and the gene expression data sets generate candidate matches within a fxed neighborhood around each gene. Finally, the methylation-expression associations are ranked through a logistic …

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A statement of record issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Securing the nation's borders from illegal entry of aliens and contraband, including terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, continues to be a major challenge. In November 2005, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced the launch of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI)--a multiyear, multibillion dollar program aimed at securing U.S. borders and reducing illegal immigration. Within DHS, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) provides agents and officers to support SBI. As requested, this statement summarizes (1) the findings and recommendations of GAO's reports on SBI's technology, known as SBInet (including such things as cameras and radars), and DHS's recent actions on SBInet; and (2) the findings and recommendations of GAO's reports on tactical infrastructure, such as fencing, and the extent to which CBP has deployed tactical infrastructure and assessed its operational impact. This statement is based on products issued from 2007 through 2010, with selected updates as of April 2010. To conduct these updates, GAO reviewed program schedules, status reports and funding and interviewed DHS officials."

This report examines the structure and operations of the major components of the Federal Reserve System and provides an overview of congressional oversight activities. In addition, the report discusses the provisions of one of the pending pieces of legislation (S. 3217, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act of 2010) that would affect the structure and operations of the System.

The 111th Congress is considering legislation (S. 707 and H.R. 1722) to foster the development of telework in executive agencies of the federal government. Legislation to augment telework in executive agencies of the federal government is currently pending in the 111th Congress. S. 707, the Telework Enhancement Act of 2009, and H.R. 1722, the Telework Improvements Act of 2010, were introduced on March 25, 2009, by Senator Daniel Akaka and Representative John Sarbanes, respectively. This report presents a side-by-side comparison of the provisions of S. 707, as reported, and H.R. 1722, as ordered to be reported.

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 the Texas Youth Commission to require certain juveniles to register as sex offenders(RQ-0760-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 district clerk may accept assignment of a defendant's cash bail bond refund as payment of the defendant's fins and costs(RQ-0773-GA).

This report provides historical background of the Council, including the role of the previous Commission. It discusses the Council's current mandate and structure, as well as U.S. policy and congressional actions.

This report presents statistics regarding U.S. military casualties in the active Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF, Afghanistan), as well as operations that have ended: Operation New Dawn (OND, Iraq) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF, Iraq). It includes statistics on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), amputations, evacuations, and the demographics of casualties. Some of these statistics are publicly available at the Department of Defense's (DOD's) website; others have been obtained through contact with experts at the DOD.