Sampling and analysis were conducted on April 16-19, 2012, as specified in the Sampling and Analysis Plan for U.S. Department of Energy Office Of Legacy Management Sites (LMS/PLN/S04351, continually updated). Duplicate samples were collected from locations SA1-1-H, HMH-5R, SA3-4-H, SA1-2-H, Pond W of GZ, and SA5-4-4. One trip blank was collected during this sampling event.

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Report examining how Congress has been proactive in helping the economy recover after the 2008-2009 recession, as well as how it can help to keep recessions at bay in the future.

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Subsurface radionuclide and metal contaminants throughout the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) complex pose one of DOE’s greatest challenges for long-term stewardship. One promising stabilization mechanism for divalent ions, such as the short-lived radionuclide 90Sr, is co-precipitation in calcite. We have previously found that that nutrient addition can stimulate microbial ureolytic activity that this activity accelerates calcite precipitation and co-precipitation of Sr, and that higher calcite precipitation rates can result in increased Sr partitioning. We have conducted integrated field, laboratory, and computational research to evaluate the relationships between ureolysis and calcite precipitation rates and trace metal partitioning under environmentally relevant conditions, and investigated the coupling between flow/flux manipulations and precipitate distribution. A field experimental campaign conducted at the Integrated Field Research Challenge (IFRC) site located at Rifle, CO was based on a continuous recirculation design; water extracted from a down-gradient well was amended with urea and molasses (a carbon and electron donor) and re-injected into an up-gradient well. The goal of the recirculation design and simultaneous injection of urea and molasses was to uniformly accelerate the hydrolysis of urea and calcite precipitation over the entire inter-wellbore zone. The urea-molasses recirculation phase lasted, with brief interruptions for geophysical surveys, for 12 …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2010, the 55 highest-expenditure Part B drugs represented $16.9 billion in spending, or about 85 percent of all Medicare spending on Part B drugs, which totaled $19.5 billion. The number of Medicare beneficiaries who received each of these drugs varied from 15.2 million receiving the influenza vaccines to 660 hemophilia A patients receiving a group of biologicals known collectively as factor viii recombinant, which had the largest average annual cost per beneficiary--$217,000. Our analysis showed that most of the 55 drugs increased in expenditures, prices, and average annual cost per beneficiary from 2008 to 2010. The 5 drugs with the largest increase in Medicare expenditures over this time period also had the largest increase in the number of beneficiaries receiving each drug. Four of the 10 drugs which showed the greatest increase in expenditures were also among the 10 drugs showing the greatest price increases."

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "All seven of the agencies in GAO's review--U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Federal Bureau of Prisons, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and Transportation Security Administration--have written policies supporting an employee's ability to earn and use compensatory time off for religious observances. GAO identified several similarities in agency policies and supporting documents in the categories of: (1) employee eligibility, (2) applicability across geographic locations, (3) schedule planning, and (4) implementation. These similarities generally support greater flexibility for employees to seek compensatory time off for religious observances. For example, all agencies have policies that apply to all occupational groups of the agencies' geographical locations and facilities, regardless of a facility's size or the number of employees who work there. In most cases, officials said the agencies followed existing federal rules when developing policies and that they wanted to provide their employees with additional scheduling flexibility. However, IRS introduced additional controls to monitor excessive accumulation of unused compensatory time off for religious observances based on findings by IRS's Inspector General."

A conceptual design has been completed for a 10MW superconducting direct drive wind turbine generator employing low temperature superconductors for the field winding. Key technology building blocks from the GE Wind and GE Healthcare businesses have been transferred across to the design of this concept machine. Wherever possible, conventional technology and production techniques have been used in order to support the case for commercialization of such a machine. Appendices A and B provide further details of the layout of the machine and the complete specification table for the concept design. Phase 1 of the program has allowed us to understand the trade-offs between the various sub-systems of such a generator and its integration with a wind turbine. A Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and a Technology Readiness Level (TRL) analysis have been completed resulting in the identification of high risk components within the design. The design has been analyzed from a commercial and economic point of view and Cost of Energy (COE) calculations have been carried out with the potential to reduce COE by up to 18% when compared with a permanent magnet direct drive 5MW baseline machine, resulting in a potential COE of 0.075 $/kWh. Finally, a top-level …

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.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The number of people in the United States exposed to significant airport noise has steadily declined from roughly 7 million people in 1975 to about 309,000 today. This change reflects large decreases in the size of areas that are exposed to significant airport noise and is primarily due to improvements in aircraft technology."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 2003, the Departments of Justice (Justice) and the Treasury (Treasury) have taken some steps to explore coordinating forfeiture program efforts, including sharing a website for posting notifications and pursuing a contract for seizure efforts abroad. However, limited progress has been made to consolidate the management of their assets. According to department officials, when Congress established the Treasury Forfeiture Fund in 1992, it recognized the differences in the programs' missions, which warranted creating separate programs, and this encouraged independent operational decisions that eventually created differences between the programs. There are some differences between the programs, but both departments seize similar assets such as vehicles. Nevertheless, the departments have not assessed the feasibility of consolidation, including whether such efforts would be cost-effective, and continue to duplicate efforts by separately managing and disposing of their seized and forfeited property. Specifically, Justice and Treasury maintain four separate information technology (IT) asset tracking systems, which perform similar functions to support their respective asset forfeiture program activities. In addition, both departments procure separate national contracts for the management of real property and they separately store assets seized under each program that …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and its business lines and offices are in different stages of their implementation of Safety Management Systems (SMS). FAA finalized its agency-wide implementation plan in April 2012, and the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) has completed its SMS implementation, but other FAA SMS efforts are in the early stages. FAA business lines, such as the Aviation Safety Organization (AVS) and the Office of Airports (ARP), have SMS guidance and plans largely in place and have begun to integrate related practices into their operations, but many implementation tasks remain incomplete, and officials and experts project that full SMS implementation could take many years."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Justice’s Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) 9.5 percent population growth from fiscal years 2006 through 2011 exceeded the 7 percent increase in its rated capacity, and BOP projects continued population growth. Growth was most concentrated among male inmates, and in 2011, 48 percent of the inmates BOP housed were sentenced for drugs. From fiscal years 2006 through 2011, BOP increased its rated capacity by about 8,300 beds as a result of opening 5 new facilities and closing 4 minimum security camps, but because of the population expansion, crowding (or population in excess of rated capacity) increased from 36 to 39 percent. In 2011 crowding was most severe (55 percent) in highest security facilities. BOP’s 2020 long-range capacity plan projects continued growth in the federal prison population from fiscal years 2012 through 2020, with systemwide crowding exceeding 45 percent through 2018."

Annual budget, work plan, projected productivity, and performance report for the Capital Area Council of Goverments (CAPCOG) for fiscal year 2013. It covers budget resolutions, budget summary, budget charts, regional services, administrative services, Homeland Security, and personnel and salary schedules.

X-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) are expensive instruments with the accelerator holding the largest portion of the cost of the entire facility. Using a high-energy gain dielecric wakefield accelerator (DWA) instead of the conventional accelerator may reduce the facility size and, significantly, its cost. We show that a collinear dielectric wakefield accelerator can, in principle, accelerate low charge and high peak current electron bunches to a few GeV energy with up to 100-kHz bunch repetition rate. Several such accelerators can share the same tunnel and cw superconducting lilac (operating with a few-MHz bunch repetition rate), whose sole purpose is feeding the DWAs with wake producing low-energy, high-charge electron bunches with the desired periodicity. Then, ten or more x-ray FELs can operate independently, each using its own linac. In this paper, we present an initial case study of a single-stage 850-GHz DWA based on a quartz tube with a ~100-MV/m loaded gradient sufficient to accelerate a 50-pC main electron beam to 2.4 GeV at a 100-kHz bunch repetition rate in just under 30 meters. While the accelerated electron beam has a large energy chirp, show that FEL gain can be maintained by appropriately tapering the undulator, although other schemes may be possible.

This document provides information on the distribution of monthly sales tax revenues to local governments.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not know the total amount its components invest in research and development (R&D) and does not have policies and guidance for defining R&D and overseeing R&D resources across the department. According to DHS, its Science & Technology Directorate (S&T), Domestic Nuclear Detection Office (DNDO), and U. S. Coast Guard are the only components that conduct R&D and, according to GAO’s analysis, these are the only components that report budget authority, obligations, or outlays for R&D activities to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) as part of the budget process. However, GAO identified an additional $255 million in R&D obligations by other DHS components. For example, S&T reported receiving $50 million in reimbursements from other DHS components to conduct R&D. Further, 10 components obligated $55 million for R&D contracts to third parties and $151 million to Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories for R&D-related projects, but these were not reported as R&D to OMB. According to DHS, it is difficult to identify all R&D investments across the department because DHS does not have a department wide policy defining R&D …

This report seeks to clarify why one group of individuals with disabilities may be eligible for benefits under Veteran's Disability Compensation (VDC), but ineligible for benefits under Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) (and vice versa), through a description and comparison of several distinguishing characteristics of the SSDI and VDC programs. This report concludes with a discussion of the challenges facing the administration of both programs, including processing delays for pending claims and appeals.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and other agencies have taken steps to carry out leadership and organizational responsibilities as called for by the E-Government Act. Specifically, OMB's Office of Electronic Government has issued key guidance for agencies on complying with the requirements of the act and coordinated annual reporting to Congress on agency compliance with the act. In addition, the Federal Chief Information Officers Council has taken actions, such as publicizing best practices and recommendations for more efficient use of information technology and assisting in the implementation of the act's requirements. Further, executive branch agencies have made significant progress in carrying out leadership responsibilities under the act, including designating officials with responsibility for ensuring compliance with the act, issuing internal policy and guidance, and developing performance measures. However, while OMB and agencies have reported annually on their compliance with the act as required, OMB did not always require agencies to report on all of the act's provisions and has not been explicit in communicating to Congress provisions that it is not reporting on and the reasons why. For example, from fiscal year 2006 to …

In this project we studied both natural photosynthetic antenna complexes and various artificial systems (e.g. chlorophyll (Chl) trefoils) using high resolution hole-burning (HB) spectroscopy and excitonic calculations. Results obtained provided more insight into the electronic (excitonic) structure, inhomogeneity, electron-phonon coupling strength, vibrational frequencies, and excitation energy (or electron) transfer (EET) processes in several antennas and reaction centers. For example, our recent work provided important constraints and parameters for more advanced excitonic calculations of CP43, CP47, and PSII core complexes. Improved theoretical description of HB spectra for various model systems offers new insight into the excitonic structure and composition of low-energy absorption traps in very several antenna protein complexes and reaction centers. We anticipate that better understanding of HB spectra obtained for various photosynthetic complexes and their simultaneous fits with other optical spectra (i.e. absorption, emission, and circular dichroism spectra) provides more insight into the underlying electronic structures of these important biological systems. Our recent progress provides a necessary framework for probing the electronic structure of these systems via Hole Burning Spectroscopy. For example, we have shown that the theoretical description of non-resonant holes is more restrictive (in terms of possible site energies) than those of absorption and emission spectra. We …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "During fiscal years 2004-2011, the President received governors’ requests for 629 disaster declarations and approved 539, or 86 percent, of which the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported 71 percent were for severe storms. For these 539 declarations, FEMA obligated $80.3 billion, or an average 31, 2012. Almost half of the obligations were for Hurricane Katrina; excluding obligations for Hurricane Katrina, FEMA obligated $40.6 billion, or an average of about $5 billion a year. As of January 31, 2012, FEMA anticipated that when all 539 declarations are closed, total DRF obligations will be about $91.5 billion."