This report discusses the most recent developments in Kyrgyzstan, the coup and its aftermath and the implications for Russia, China and other Euroasian states.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In May 2008, the United States enacted the Consolidated Natural Resources Act (CNRA), amending the United States' Covenant with the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI) to establish federal control of CNMI immigration in 2009, with several CNMI-specific provisions affecting foreign workers and investors during a transition. CNRA requires that GAO report on implementation of federal immigration law in the CNMI. This report describes the steps federal agencies have taken to (1) secure the border in the CNMI and (2) implement CNRA with regard to workers, visitors, and investors. GAO reviewed federal laws, regulations, and agency documents; met with U.S. and CNMI officials; and observed federal operations in the CNMI."

This report examines how current revenue losses resulting from energy tax provisions compare to historical losses and provides a foundation for understanding how current energy tax policy evolved by providing a longitudinal perspective on energy tax policy and expenditures.

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This report tracks the status of ongoing legislative action and debate related to Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reauthorization. It is organized into six major program areas: aviation system finance; airport financing; FAA management and organizational issues; system capacity and safety; environmental issues; and airline industry issues. In several cases, provisions that appear in various unrelated sections of proposed legislation have been rearranged in this report in an effort to group and discuss related items in an issue-driven or programmatic context. Since this report is primarily written as a means of communicating key legislative provisions under consideration in the ongoing FAA reauthorization process, it does not go into detail regarding the specific policy issues behind these legislative proposals.

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.

Bulk single crystals of Cd1-xZnxTe (x=0.04 to x=0.2) compound semiconductor is used for room temperature radiation detection. The production of large volume of Cd1-xZnxTe with low defect density is expensive. As a result there is a growing research interest in the production of nanostructured compound semiconductors such as Cd1-xZnxTe in an electrochemical route. In this investigation, Cd1-xZnxTe ternary compound semiconductor, referred as CZT, was electrodeposited in the form of nanowires onto a TiO2 nanotubular template from propylene carbonate as the non-aqueous electrolyte, using a pulse-reverse electrodeposition process at 130 ºC. The template acted as a support in growing ordered nanowire of CZT which acts as a one dimensional conductor. Cyclic Voltammogram (CV) studies were conducted in determining the potentials for the growth of nanowires of uniform stoichiometry. The morphologies and composition of CZT were characterized by using SEM, TEM and XRD. The STEM mapping carried out on the nanowires showed the uniform distribution of Cd, Zn and Te elements. TEM image showed that the nanowires were polycrystalline in nature. The Mott-Schottky analysis carried on the nanowires showed that the nanowires were a p-type semiconductor. The carrier density, band gap and resistivity of the Cd0.9Zn0.1Te nanowires were 4.29x1013 cm-3, 1.56 eV …

This report discusses the Improper Payments Information Act (IPIA), which signed into law in 2002 requires agencies to identify each year programs and activities vulnerable to significant improper payments, to estimate the amount of overpayments or underpayments, and to report to Congress on steps being taken to reduce such payments.

The Law of Corresponding States has been demonstrated for a number of pure substances and binary mixtures, and provides evidence that the transport properties viscosity and diffusion can be determined from a molecular shape function, often taken to be a Lennard-Jones 12-6 potential, that requires two scaling parameters: a well depth {var_epsilon}{sub ij} and a collision diameter {sigma}{sub ij}, both of which depend on the interacting species i and j. We obtain estimates for {var_epsilon}{sub ij} and {sigma}{sub ij} of interacting species by finding the values that provide the best fit to viscosity data for binary mixtures, and compare these to calculated parameters using several 'combining rules' that have been suggested for determining parameter values for binary collisions from parameter values that describe collisions of like molecules. Different combining rules give different values for {sigma}{sub ij} and {var_epsilon}{sub ij} and for some mixtures the differences between these values and the best-fit parameter values are rather large. There is a curve in ({var_epsilon}{sub ij}, {sigma}{sub ij}) space such that parameter values on the curve generate a calculated viscosity in good agreement with measurements for a pure gas or a binary mixture. The various combining rules produce couples of parameters {var_epsilon}{sub ij}, …

This report briefly surveys decisions of retiring Justice John Paul Stevens in death penalty cases. Justice Stevens's position on the death penalty has undergone a thorough transformation during his tenure on the Court.

This report discusses the U.S. Navy's plan to develop and design a class of 12 next-generation ballistic missile submarines, or SSBN(X)s, as replacements for the 14 Ohio class SSBNs currently in operation. The report explores certain related issues for Congress, including the affordability of the project and its potential impact on other Navy shipbuilding programs, alternatives to the program, and which shipyard or shipyards will build the proposed ships.

Given the cost and lead-times involved in high-energy proton radiography, it is prudent to model proposed radiographic experiments to see if the images predicted would return useful information. We recently modified our raytracing transmission radiography modeling code HADES to perform simplified Monte Carlo simulations of the transport of protons in a proton radiography beamline. Beamline objects include the initial diffuser, vacuum magnetic fields, windows, angle-selecting collimators, and objects described as distorted 2D (planar or cylindrical) meshes or as distorted 3D hexahedral meshes. We present an overview of the algorithms used for the modeling and code timings for simulations through typical 2D and 3D meshes. We next calculate expected changes in image blur as scattering materials are placed upstream and downstream of a resolution test object (a 3 mm thick sheet of tantalum, into which 0.4 mm wide slits have been cut), and as the current supplied to the focusing magnets is varied. We compare and contrast the resulting simulations with the results of measurements obtained at the 800 MeV Los Alamos LANSCE Line-C proton radiography facility.

This report first analyzes the authority of Congress to pass a law of this nature, as well as how a court could analyze this provision in light of a constitutional challenge based on various provisions of the Fifth and Tenth Amendments. Finally, this report discusses whether the exceptions to the individual responsibility requirement to purchase health insurance satisfy First Amendment freedom of religion protections.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Given record budget deficits and continuing fiscal pressures, the federal government must seek to deliver results more efficiently. The prior Administration sought to improve efficiency under the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) by requiring programs to have at least one efficiency measure and procedures for improving efficiency, and show annual efficiency gains. The current administration has also emphasized efficiency in some initiatives. GAO was asked to examine (1) the types of PART efficiency measures and the extent to which they included typical elements of an efficiency measure; (2) the extent to which selected programs showed gains and how they used efficiency measures for decision making; (3) the challenges selected programs faced in developing and using efficiency measures; and (4) other strategies that can be used to improve efficiency. GAO analyzed the 36 efficiency measures in 21 selected programs in 5 agencies and a generalizable sample from the other 1,355 measures governmentwide, reviewed documents and interviewed officials from selected programs, reviewed literature on efficiency, and interviewed experts."

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

The Dante is an 18 channel X-ray filtered diode array which records the spectrally and temporally resolved radiation flux from various targets (e.g. hohlraums, etc.) at X-ray energies between 50 eV to 10 keV. It is a main diagnostics installed on the OMEGA laser facility at the Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester. The absolute flux is determined from the photometric calibration of the X-ray diodes, filters and mirrors and an unfold algorithm. Understanding the errors on this absolute measurement is critical for understanding hohlraum energetic physics. We present a new method for quantifying the uncertainties on the determined flux using a Monte-Carlo parameter variation technique. This technique combines the uncertainties in both the unfold algorithm and the error from the absolute calibration of each channel into a one sigma Gaussian error function. One thousand test voltage sets are created using these error functions and processed by the unfold algorithm to produce individual spectra and fluxes. Statistical methods are applied to the resultant set of fluxes to estimate error bars on the measurements.

Proceedings of the House of Representatives of Texas for the seventy-first day of the Regular session of the 82nd Legislature documenting legislation, reports, discussions, votes, and points-of-order.

The objective of this report is to document the findings from a series of proof-of-concept tests performed by Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) R and D Engineering, for the DOE Packaging Certification Program to determine if a viable radio link could be established from within the stainless steel confines of several drum-style DOE certified Type B radioactive materials packagings. Two in-hand, off-the-shelf radio systems were tested. The first system was a Wi-Fi Librestream Onsight{trademark} camera with a Fortress ES820 Access Point and the second was the On-Ramp Wireless Ultra-Link Processing{trademark} (ULP) radio system. These radio systems were tested within the Model 9975 and 9978 Type B packagings at the SRNL. This report documents the test methods and results. A path forward will also be recommended.

This report will track and describe actions taken by the administration and congress to provide FY2013 appropriations for CJS accounts.

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We report the discovery of Very High Energy (VHE; >100 GeV) gamma-ray emission from the source 1FGL J2001.1+4351, (RA 20 01 13.5, dec 43 53 02.8, J2000), which is positionally consistent with the location of the flat spectrum radio source MG4 J200112+4352 (RA 20 01 12.9, dec 43 52 52.8, J2000). The VHE detection is based on a 1.5 hour-long observation performed on July 16th in stereoscopic mode with the two 17m diameter imaging Cherenkov telescopes on La Palma, Canary Islands, Spain. The preliminary analysis of the MAGIC data using the standard cuts optimized for soft energy spectra sources yields a detection of 125 gamma-rays above 90 GeV, corresponding to a pre-trail statistical significance of 7.6 standard deviations. The observed flux is estimated to be {approx}20% of the Crab nebula flux above 100 GeV. Earlier MAGIC observations indicated a substantially lower flux; hence indicating that the source is variable on a few days timescale.

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This report describes and analyzes measures that Members of the 112th Congress have enacted or proposed in response to particular issues pertaining to small business contracting and subcontracting.

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