This report identifies and examines historical issues related to the Article V Convention, which allows amendments to be added to the Constitution via Congressional vote or votes by the people.

This report looks at ways that prescription drug monitoring programs (PDMPs), which maintain statewide electronic databases of prescriptions dispensed for controlled substances, can help to deter prescription drug misuse.

This report provides a brief overview of the higher education tax benefits that are currently available to students and their families. The report contrasts higher education tax benefits with traditional student aid, presents a brief history of higher education tax policy over the past 60 years, summarizes key features of the available tax benefits, and provides JCT estimates of revenue losses resulting from individual tax provisions.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO found that the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) could not demonstrate how the projects that it reported to Congress met the provisions of the 2008 directive because of three weaknesses. First, USAID documents—specifically, the list of projects the agency submitted to Congress— linked only $3.8 million of the $14.8 million in assistance (26 percent) directly to the Ninewa plain region. Second, USAID documents generally did not show whether the projects included minority groups among the beneficiaries of the assistance and specifically whether $8 million of assistance was provided for internally displaced families. Third, USAID officials and documents did not demonstrate that the agency used unobligated prior year Economic Support Fund (ESF) funds to initiate projects in response to the 2008 directive."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The termination of the six defined benefit plans the Delphi Corporation (Delphi) sponsored, and the provision of benefit protections to some Delphi employees but not others, culminated from a complex series of events involving Delphi, the General Motors Corporation (GM), various unions, the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC). When Delphi spun off from GM in 1999, three unions secured an agreement that GM would provide a retirement benefit supplement (referred to as "top-ups") for their members should their pension plans be frozen or terminated and they were to suffer a resulting loss in pension benefits. These three unions were: (1) the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW); (2) the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers, AFL-CIO (IUE); and (3) the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). No other Delphi employees had a similar agreement to receive a top-up, including salaried workers and hourly workers belonging to other unions. Over the course of events that unfolded over the next decade, the agreements with these three unions ultimately were preserved through the resolution …

This report describes the contents of the 2012 Farm Bill, cost reducing measures in the Farm Bill, and the implications of both of these. Specifically, the report focuses on SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) which is a cost saving measure that addresses how certain deductions from income will be calculated.

This report discusses the Agriculture appropriations bill—formally known as the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, which provides funding for the following agencies: the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

The Hanford double-shell tank (DST) system provides the staging location for waste that will be transferred to the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). Specific WTP acceptance criteria for waste feed delivery describe the physical and chemical characteristics of the waste that must be met before the waste is transferred from the DSTs to the WTP. One of the more challenging requirements relates to the sampling and characterization of the undissolved solids (UDS) in a waste feed DST because the waste contains solid particles that settle and their concentration and relative proportion can change during the transfer of the waste in individual batches. A key uncertainty in the waste feed delivery system is the potential variation in UDS transferred in individual batches in comparison to an initial sample used for evaluating the acceptance criteria. To address this uncertainty, a number of small-scale mixing tests have been conducted as part of Washington River Protection Solutions' Small Scale Mixing Demonstration (SSMD) project to determine the performance of the DST mixing and sampling systems. A series of these tests have used a five-part simulant composed of particles of different size and density and designed to be equal or more challenging than …

In support of Savannah River Site (SRS) tank closure efforts, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) conducted Real Waste Testing (RWT) to evaluate Enhanced Chemical Cleaning (ECC), an alternative to the baseline 8 wt% oxalic acid (OA) chemical cleaning technology for tank sludge heel removal. ECC utilizes a more dilute OA solution (2 wt%) and an oxalate destruction technology using ozonolysis with or without the application of ultraviolet (UV) light. SRNL conducted tests of the ECC process using actual SRS waste material from Tanks 5F and 12H. The previous phase of testing involved testing of all phases of the ECC process (sludge dissolution, OA decomposition, product evaporation, and deposition tank storage) but did not involve the use of UV light in OA decomposition. The new phase of testing documented in this report focused on the use of UV light to assist OA decomposition, but involved only the OA decomposition and deposition tank portions of the process. Compared with the previous testing at analogous conditions without UV light, OA decomposition with the use of UV light generally reduced time required to reach the target of <100 mg/L oxalate. This effect was the most pronounced during the initial part of the decomposition …

An air-transport Type A Fissile radioactive shipping package for the transport of special form uranium sources has been developed by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) for the Department of Homeland Security. The Package model number is HS99 for Homeland Security Model 99. This paper presents the major design features of the HS99 and highlights engineered materials necessary for meeting the design requirements for this light-weight Type AF packaging. A discussion is provided demonstrating how the HS99 complies with the regulatory safety requirements of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The paper summarizes the results of structural testing to specified in 10 CFR 71 for Normal Conditions of Transport and Hypothetical Accident Conditions events. Planned and proposed future missions for this packaging are also addressed.

Ballard Material Products (BMP) performed a pre-design technical and cost analysis of state of the art production technologies feasible for high volume GDL manufacturing. Based upon criteria that also included environmental health and safety, customer quality requirements, and future needs, BMP selected technologies that can be integrated into its current manufacturing process. These selections included Many-At-A-Time (MAAT) coating and continuous mixing technologies, as well as various on-line process control tools. These processes have allowed BMP to produce high performance GDLs at lower cost for near-term markets, as well as to define the inputs needed to develop a conceptual Greenfield facility to meet the cost targets for automotive volumes of 500,000 vehicles per year.

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High temperature alloys are reviewed, focusing on current superalloys and their coatings. The synthesis, characerization, and oxidation performance of a NiAl–TiB{sub 2} composite are explained. A novel coating process for Mo–Ni–Al alloys for improved oxidation performance is examined. The cyclic oxidation performance of coated and uncoated Mo–Ni–Al alloys is discussed.

A 4.2 GS/sec. beam excitation system with accelerator synchronization and power stages is described. The system is capable of playing unique samples (32 samples/bunch) for 15,000 turns on selected bunch(es) in the SPS in syn- chronism with the injection and acceleration cycle. The purpose of the system is to excite internal modes of single-bunch vertical motion, and study the bunch dynamics in the presence of developing Electron cloud or TMCI effects. The system includes a synchronized master oscillator, SPS timing functions, an FPGA based arbitrary waveform generator, 4.2 GS/sec. D/A system and four 80W 20-1000 MHz amplifiers driving a tapered stripline pickup/kicker. A software GUI allows specification of various modulation signals, selection of bunches and turns to excite, while a remote control interface allows simple control/monitoring of the RF power stages located in the tunnel. The successful use of this system for SPS MD measurements in 2011 is a vital proof-of-principle for wideband feedback using similar functions to correct the beam motion.

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Optimisation of blade type x-ray beam position monitors (XBPM) was performed for NSLS-II undulator IVU20. Blade material, con and #64257;guration and operation principle was analysed in order to improve XBPM performance. Optimisation is based on calculation of the XBPM signal spatial distribution. Along with standard photoemission type XBPM a Diamond Detector Blades (DDB) were analysed as blades for XBPMs. DDB XBPMs can help to overcome drawbacks of the photoemission blade XBPMs.