Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO found (1) the financial statements are presented fairly, in all material respects, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles; (2) the Office of Financial Stability (OFS) maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control over financial reporting as of September 30, 2012; and (3) no reportable noncompliance in fiscal year 2012 with provisions of laws and regulations GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In GAO's opinion, the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) fiscal years 2012 and 2011 financial statements are fairly presented in all material respects. However, in GAO's opinion, IRS did not maintain effective internal control over financial reporting as of September 30, 2012, because of a material weakness in internal control over unpaid tax assessments. In addition, GAO found that IRS's financial management systems were not in substantial compliance with Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 (FFMIA) requirements because of the systems issues underlying the material weakness. GAO also found no reportable instances of noncompliance in fiscal year 2012 with provisions of the laws and regulations it tested."

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

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This report discusses the proposed U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA) signed November 22, 2006, which has not yet been approved by Congress. It includes an overview of the proposed CFTA and U.S.-Colombia trade, background on Colombia, issues for Congress to consider, Colombia's plan to improve labor rights, and the actions that Colombia has already taken to improve violence, labor, and human rights within the country.

The purpose of this report is to assess the performance of bi-directional knotless tissue-closure devices for use in tagging juvenile salmon. This study is part of an ongoing effort at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to reduce unwanted effects of tags and tagging procedures on the survival and behavior of juvenile salmonids, by assessing and refining suturing techniques, suture materials, and tag burdens. The objective of this study was to compare the performance of the knotless (barbed) suture, using three different suture patterns (treatments: 6-point, Wide “N”, Wide “N” Knot), to the current method of suturing (MonocrylTM monofilament, discontinuous sutures with a 2×2×2×2 knot) used in monitoring and research programs with a novel antiseptic barrier on the wound (“Second Skin”).

FSA is a screening process intended to focus a facility designer’s attention on the aspects of their facility or process design that would most benefit from application of SBD principles and practices. The process is meant to identify the most relevant guidance within the SBD tools for enhancing the safeguardability of the design. In fiscal year (FY) 2012, NNSA sponsored PNNL to evaluate the practical application of FSA by applying it to the NuScale small modular nuclear power plant. This report documents the application of the FSA process, presenting conclusions regarding its efficiency and robustness. It describes the NuScale safeguards design concept and presents functional "infrastructure" guidelines that were developed using the FSA process.

It is generally conceded that the costs associated with current practices for the mooring, anchoring, or foundation systems of Marine HydroKinetic (MHK) and Deepwater Floating Wind systems are a disproportionate portion of the total cost of an installed system. Reducing the cost of the mooring and anchoring components for MHK systems can contribute substantially to reducing the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Micropile anchors can reduce the LCOE both directly, because the anchors, associated mooring hardware and installation costs are less than conventional anchor and mooring systems, but also because micropile anchors require less extensive geotechnical surveys for confident design and proper implementation of an anchor or foundation system. This report presents the results of the development of critical elements of grouted marine micropile anchor (MMA) technology for application to MHK energy conversion systems and other ocean engineering applications that require fixing equipment to the seafloor. Specifically, this project identified grout formulations and developed designs for grout dispensing systems suitable for use in a seawater environment as a critical development need for successful implementation of practical MMA systems. The project conducted a thorough review of available information on the use of cement-based grouts in seawater. Based on this review and …

Calabazas Creek Research, Inc. developed a load capable of continuously dissipating 2 MW of RF power from gyrotrons. The input uses HE11 corrugated waveguide and a rotating launcher to uniformly disperse the power over the lossy surfaces in the load. This builds on experience with a previous load designed to dissipate 1 MW of continuous RF power. The 2 MW load uses more advanced RF dispersion to double the capability in the same size device as the 1 MW load. The new load reduces reflected power from the load to significantly less than 1 %. This eliminates requirements for a preload to capture reflected power. The program updated control electronics that provides all required interlocks for operation and measurement of peak and average power. The program developed two version of the load. The initial version used primarily anodized aluminum to reduce weight and cost. The second version used copper and stainless steel to meet specifications for the ITER reactor currently under construction in France. Tests of the new load at the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency confirmed operation of the load to a power level of 1 MW, which is the highest power currently available for testing the load. Additional tests …

In the course of this project the Ohio State University group led by the PI, Professor Ulrich Heinz, developed a comprehensive theoretical picture of the dynamical evolution of ultra-relativistic heavy-ion collisions and of the numerous experimental observables that can be used to diagnose the evolving and short-lived hot and dense fireball created in such collisions. Starting from a qualitative understanding of the main features based on earlier research during the last decade of the twentieth century on collisions at lower energies, the group exploited newly developed theoretical tools and the stream of new high-quality data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory (which started operations in the summer of the year 2000) to arrive at an increasingly quantitative description of the experimentally observed phenomena. Work done at Ohio State University (OSU) was instrumental in the discovery during the years 2001-2003 that quark-gluon plasma (QGP) created in nuclear collisions at RHIC behaves like an almost perfect liquid with minimal viscosity. The tool of relativistic fluid dynamics for viscous liquids developed at OSU in the years 2005-2007 opened the possibility to quantitatively determine the value of the QGP viscosity empirically from experimental measurements of the collective flow patterns established …

An investigation was conducted to evaluate the radionuclide inventory within the Lower Three Runs (LTR) Integrator Operable Unit (IOU) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Savannah River Site (SRS). The scope of this effort included the analysis of previously existing sampling and analysis data as well as additional streambed and floodplain sampling and analysis data acquired to delineate horizontal and vertical distributions of the radionuclide as part of the ongoing SRS environmental restoration program, and specifically for the LTR IOU program. While cesium-137 (Cs-137) is the most significant and abundant radionuclide associated with the LTR IOU it is not the only radionuclide, hence the scope included evaluating all radionuclides present and includes an evaluation of inventory uncertainty for use in sensitivity and uncertainty analyses. The scope involved evaluation of the radionuclide inventory in the P-Reactor and RReactor cooling water effluent canal systems, PAR Pond (including Pond C) and the floodplain and stream sediment sections of LTR between the PAR Pond Dam and the Savannah River. The approach taken was to examine all of the available Sediment and Sediment/Soil analysis data available along the P- and R-Reactor cooling water re-circulation canal system, the ponds situated along those canal reaches and …

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 there is a conflict between two provisions of the Transportation Code that permit judges and peace officers to omit their residence address from their drivers' licenses, and a provision of the Tax Code that requires the submission of proof of the residence address of an applicant for a homestead exemption (RQ-1060-GA).

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This report discusses that framework and proposals to amend more than 30 acts of Congress that are part of or relevant to it.

This report provides information about the U.S. Restrictions on Travel and Remittances on Cuba. Restriction on travel to Cuba has been a key and often contentious component in the U.S.

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This report provides information about The Budget Control Act of 2011. It mainly focuses on the Budgetary Effects of Proposals to Replace the FY2013 Sequester.

This report will review the federal government's constitutional authority to enact the federal criminal prohibition on marijuana.

This project focused on a molecular and biochemical characterization of the protein methyltransferases responsible for methylation of the LS and SS in Rubisco, and the associated functional consequences accompanying these modifications. Our results provided some of the most informative structural and mechanistic understandings of SET domain protein methyltransferases. These results also positioned us to provide the first unambiguous assignment of the kinetic reaction mechanism for SET-domain protein methyltransferases, and to design and engineer an alternative substrate for Rubisco LSMT, enabling substrate specificity and functional significance studies. We demonstrated that the minimal substrate recognized by Rubisco LSMT is free lysine as well as monomethyllysine, an observation corroborated both by structural analyses as well as enzymatic activity and subsequent product distribution analyses. Ternary complexes between Rubisco LSMT and free lysine compared to complexes with monomethyllysine demonstrated that the structural basis for multiple methyl group additions is a consequence of hydrogen-bond driven spatial shifts in the amino group of Lys-14, which maintains the direct in-line geometry necessary for SN2 nucleophilic attack. The structural observations are also consistent with the previous proposal that the multiplicity of methyl group additions takes place through a processive mechanism, with successive methyl group additions to an enzyme protein …

This Congressional Research Report for Congress details elections, political transitions, government disputes and general human rights issues pertaining to Iraq.