Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses lifetime costs of supporting the newest generation of veterans. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) operates one of the largest health care delivery systems in the nation, providing care to a diverse population of veterans. VA operates about 150 hospitals, 130 nursing homes, and 820 outpatient clinics through 21 regional health care networks called Veterans Integrated Service Networks. VA is responsible for providing health care services to various populations--including an aging veteran population and a growing number of younger veterans returning from the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Budgeting for this vital health care mission is inherently complex. It is based on current assumptions and imperfect information, not only about program needs, but also on future economic and policy actions that may affect demand and the cost of providing these services. Adding to this complexity, VA has recognized over the years the need to plan and budget for facility modernization, and realign its real property portfolio to provide accessible, high-quality, and cost-effective access to its services. The statement today addresses VA's real property realignment efforts and VA's approach to developing budget estimates for health …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Social Security Administration's (SSA) Disability Insurance (DI) program paid almost $123 billion in benefits in fiscal year 2010 to more than 10 million workers and dependents. The program is poised to grow further as the baby boom generation ages. GAO examined (1) what is known about the extent to which SSA makes overpayments to, and recovers overpayments from, DI beneficiaries who exceed program earnings guidelines, and (2) potential DI program vulnerabilities that may contribute to overpayments to beneficiaries who have returned to work. To answer these questions, GAO reviewed work continuing disability review (work CDR) policies and procedures, interviewed SSA headquarters and processing center officials, visited 4 of 8 processing centers, and reviewed a random nongeneralizable sample of 60 CDR case files across those 4 centers (15 from each)."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As one of the largest and most complex organizations in the world, the Department of Defense (DOD) faces many challenges in resolving serious problems in its financial management and related business operations and systems. DOD is required by various statutes to (1) improve its financial management processes, controls, and systems to ensure that complete, reliable, consistent, and timely information is prepared and responsive to the financial information needs of agency management and oversight bodies, and (2) produce audited financial statements. Over the years, DOD has initiated numerous efforts to improve the department's financial management operations and achieve an unqualified (clean) opinion on the reliability of its reported financial information. These efforts have fallen short of sustained improvement in financial management or financial statement auditability. The Subcommittee has asked GAO to provide its perspective on the status of DOD's financial management weaknesses and its efforts to resolve them; the challenges DOD continues to face in improving its financial management and operations; and the status of its efforts to implement automated business systems as a critical element of DOD's Financial Improvement and Audit Readiness strategy."

Characterizations of the pedestal parameter dynamics throughout the edge localized modes(ELM) cycles are performed on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX, [M. Ono et al., Nucl. Fusion 40, 557 (2000)]). A clear buildup of the pedestal height is observed between ELMs for three di erent plasma currents, which tends to saturate prior to the onset of ELM at low and medium plasma current. Similarly, the pedestal width increases with no clear evidence of saturation during an ELM cycle. The maximum pedestal gradient increases as a function of plasma current, reaches a nominal value after the ELM crash, and remains constant until the end of the ELM cycle. The pedestal height just prior to the onset of ELM is shown to increase quadratically with plasma current. The pedestal width Δ is proportional to the square-root of the poloidal Β at the top of the pedestal. Coherent density uctuations strongly increasing at the plasma edge are observed to be maximum after the ELM crash and to decay during the rest of the ELM cycle. Finally, the pedestal parameters evolution during the ELM cycle as well as the scaling with Ip of the pedestal pressure prior to the onset ELM are found to …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the potential for overlap, duplication and fragmentation in economic development programs. In March 2011 and more recently in May 2011 we reported on potential duplication among federal economic development programs; this statement discusses this work. We are involved in ongoing work focusing on economic development programs; if they are administered efficiently and effectively, they can contribute to the well-being of our nation's economy at the least cost to taxpayers. Absent a common definition for economic development, we had previously developed a list of nine activities most often associated with economic development. These activities include planning and developing strategies for job creation and retention, developing new markets for existing products, building infrastructure by constructing roads and sewer systems to attract industry to undeveloped areas, and establishing business incubators to provide facilities for new businesses' operations. Our recent work includes information on 80 economic development programs at four agencies--the Departments of Commerce (Commerce), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and Agriculture (USDA) and the Small Business Administration (SBA). Commerce administers 11 of the 80 programs. According to the agencies, funding provided for these 80 programs in fiscal year …

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 "The federal government has numerous programs designed to improve Americans' financial literacy, some of which are targeted at helping consumers determine whether and when to purchase a home, how to manage a mortgage, and how to deal with setbacks that could limit their ability to make timely mortgage payments. However, as we have reported, little is known about the effectiveness of specific strategies for improving financial literacy. In the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA), Congress created a pilot program to provide grants to providers of financial education and counseling services to prospective homebuyers. Pursuant to HERA, the goals of this education and counseling include increasing the knowledge and decision-making capabilities of prospective homebuyers, identifying successful methods resulting in positive behavioral change for financial empowerment, and educating prospective homebuyers about options for building savings. HERA also mandated that we submit a report to Congress evaluating this grant program, which was later named the Financial Education and Counseling (FEC) Pilot Program. Accordingly, the objectives of this report are to describe (1) the characteristics of the organizations providing services under the FEC program and how they were selected, …

In this short report, I will provide an early warning about potential changes to the standard atomic weight values for the twenty mononuclidic and the so-called pseudo-mononuclidic ({sup 232}Th and {sup 231}Pa) chemical elements due to the estimated changes in the mass values to be published in the next Atomic Mass Tables within the next two years. There have been many new measurements of atomic masses, since the last published Atomic Mass Table. The Atomic Mass Data Center has released an unpublished version of the present status of the atomic mass values as a private communication. We can not update the Standard Atomic Weight Table at this time based on these unpublished values but we can anticipate how many changes are probably going to be expected in the next few years on the basis of the forthcoming publication of the Atomic Mass Table. I will briefly discuss the procedures that the Atomic Weights Commission used in deriving the recommended Standard Atomic Weight values and their uncertainties from the atomic mass values. I will also discuss some concern raised about a proposed change in the definition of the mole. The definition of the mole is now connected directly to the mass …

This report provides a brief history of the laws, regulations, and lawsuits related to the wolf's protected status.

One of ITER goals is to demonstrate feasibility of continuous operations using non-inductive current drive. Two main candidates have been identified for advanced operations: the long duration, high neutron fluency hybrid scenario and the steady state scenario, both operating at a plasma current lower than the reference ELMy scenario [1][2] to minimize the required current drive. The steady state scenario targets plasmas with current 7-10 MA in the flat-top, 50% of which will be provided by the self-generated, pressure-driven bootstrap current. It has been estimated that, in order to obtain a fusion gain Q > 5 at a current of 9 MA, it should be ΒN > 2.5 and H > 1.5 [3]. This implies the presence of an Internal Transport Barrier (ITB). This work discusses how the stability of steady state scenarios with ITBs is affected by the external heating sources and by perturbations of the equilibrium profiles.

Written for congressional staff, this report identifies and provides details on how to obtain official government sources of information on the legislative process and the rules and procedure of the House and Senate. References to selected CRS products are also provided, as well as a listing of selected titles for supplementary reading.

It is difficult to track to the location of a melted core in a GE BWR with Mark I containment during a beyond-design-basis accident. The Cooper Nuclear Station provided a baseline of normal material distributions and shielding configurations for the GE BWR with Mark I containment. Starting with source terms for a design-basis accident, methods and remote observation points were investigated to allow tracking of a melted core during a beyond-design-basis accident. The design of the GE BWR with Mark-I containment highlights an amazing poverty of expectations regarding a common mode failure of all reactor core cooling systems resulting in a beyond-design-basis accident from the simple loss of electric power. This design is shown in Figure 1. The station blackout accident scenario has been consistently identified as the leading contributor to calculated probabilities for core damage. While NRC-approved models and calculations provide guidance for indirect methods to assess core damage during a beyond-design-basis loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA), there appears to be no established method to track the location of the core directly should the LOCA include a degree of fuel melt. We came to the conclusion that - starting with detailed calculations which estimate the release and movement of gaseous and …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Individuals applying for health insurance are often denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act appropriated $5 billion to create a temporary pool--known as the Pre- Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) program--to provide access to insurance for such individuals until new protections take effect in 2014. Twenty-seven states opted to run their own PCIPs, while 23 states and the District of Columbia opted to let the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) run the PCIPs for their residents. Initial projections of total enrollment varied from 200,000 to 375,000, and questions have been raised about funding, implementation, and oversight of this new program. GAO examined (1) PCIP features, premiums, and criteria for demonstrating a pre-existing condition, (2) trends in PCIP enrollment and spending, including administrative costs, and (3) federal oversight activities. GAO reviewed PCIP benefits and rates; interviewed officials from selected state PCIPs, HHS, and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which assists HHS in administering aspects of the federally run PCIP; analyzed data provided by HHS and OPM; and examined contracts and interagency agreements. In its comments, HHS emphasized …

In the 1949 Report of the Atomic Weights Commission, a series of new elements were added to the Atomic Weights Table. Since these elements had been produced in the laboratory and were not discovered in nature, the atomic weight value of these artificial products would depend upon the production method. Since atomic weight is a property of an element as it occurs in nature, it would be incorrect to assign an atomic weight value to that element. As a result of that discussion, the Commission decided to provide only the mass number of the most stable (or longest-lived) known isotope as the number to be associated with these entries in the Atomic Weights Table. As a function of time, the mass number associated with various elements has changed as longer-lived isotopes of a particular element has been found in nature, or as improved half-life values of an element's isotopes might cause a shift in the longest-lived isotope from one mass to another. In the 1957 Report of the Atomic Weights Commission, it was decided to discontinue the listing of the mass number in the Atomic Weights Table on the grounds that the kind of information supplied by the mass number …

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Previous researchers have developed correlations between oxide electronegativity and oxide basicity. The present paper revises those correlations using a newer method of calculating electronegativity of the oxygen anion. Basicity is expressed using the Smith {alpha} parameter scale. A linear relation was found between the oxide electronegativity and the Smith {alpha} parameter, with an R{sup 2} of 0.92. An example application of this new correlation to the durability of high-level nuclear waste glass is demonstrated. The durability of waste glass was found to be directly proportional to the quantity and basicity of the oxides of tetrahedrally coordinated network forming ions.

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Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Traffic fatalities and fatality rates have substantially decreased over the last 10 years, yet far too many people continue to be killed or injured on the nation's roadways. In addition, auto safety defect recalls are on the rise. On average, about 70 percent of vehicles subject to a recall are fixed, leaving the remainder to continue posing risks to vehicle owners, passengers, and pedestrians. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) administers programs that provide grants to states to improve traffic safety and oversees the identification and remedy of vehicle and equipment defects that could pose an unreasonable risk to safety. The upcoming reauthorization of surface transportation programs affords Congress an opportunity to strengthen these grant programs in several ways and to address gaps GAO identified in NHTSA's auto recall process. This statement addresses (1) NHTSA's progress in improving oversight and performance measurement for traffic safety grant programs, (2) NHTSA's oversight of the auto safety defect process, and (3) issues for Congress to consider in reauthorizing funding for traffic and vehicle safety programs. This statement is based primarily on reports GAO has issued since enactment of the Safe, …

The Two-Column Aerosol Project (TCAP) field campaign will provide a detailed set of observations with which to (1) perform radiative and cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) closure studies, (2) evaluate a new retrieval algorithm for aerosol optical depth (AOD) in the presence of clouds using passive remote sensing, (3) extend a previously developed technique to investigate aerosol indirect effects, and (4) evaluate the performance of a detailed regional-scale model and a more parameterized global-scale model in simulating particle activation and AOD associated with the aging of anthropogenic aerosols. To meet these science objectives, the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Climate Research Facility will deploy the ARM Mobile Facility (AMF) and the Mobile Aerosol Observing System (MAOS) on Cape Cod, Massachusetts, for a 12-month period starting in the summer of 2012 in order to quantify aerosol properties, radiation, and cloud characteristics at a location subject to both clear and cloudy conditions, and clean and polluted conditions. These observations will be supplemented by two aircraft intensive observation periods (IOPs), one in the summer and a second in the winter. Each IOP will deploy one, and possibly two, aircraft depending on available resources. The first aircraft will be equipped with a suite of in situ …

A document pertaining to the Lead and Copper Rule which is a drinking water regulation that requires monitoring and treatment technique to control lead and copper corrosion in drinking water systems.