Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In summary, 1,964 hospitals and 45,962 professionals were awarded a total of approximately $2.7 billion in Medicaid EHR incentive payments for 2011. These 1,964 hospitals, which represented 39 percent of the 5,013 eligible hospitals, were awarded a total of $1.7 billion in Medicaid EHR incentive payments for 2011. While the amount of Medicaid EHR incentive payments awarded to each hospital ranged from $7,528 to $7.2 million, the median payment amount was $613,512. Participation rates, as well as total payments, were higher for hospitals in the Medicaid EHR program when compared to the Medicare EHR program, though the median payment amount in the Medicaid EHR program was less than half as large. About 50 percent of hospitals accounted for about 80 percent of the total amount of Medicaid incentive payments awarded to hospitals. Among hospitals awarded a Medicaid EHR incentive payment for 2011, we found that"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Mileage-based user fee initiatives in the United States and abroad show that such fees can lead to more equitable and efficient use of roadways by charging drivers based on their actual road use and by providing pricing incentives to reduce road use. Mileage fees for passenger vehicles, however, continue to face significant public concerns related to privacy as well as cost challenges. Privacy concerns are particularly acute when Global Positioning System (GPS) units are used to track the location of passenger vehicles. Reliable cost estimates for mileage fee systems are not available, but implementing a system to collect fees from 230 million U.S. passenger vehicles is likely to greatly exceed the costs of collecting fuel taxes. Commercial truck user fee systems in Germany and New Zealand have achieved substantial revenues and benefits such as reduced road damage and emissions with fewer privacy concerns, but ensuring compliance in a cost effective manner presents trade-offs. Few commercial truck mileage fee pilots have been conducted in the United States, but efforts in two states suggest such fees pose fewer privacy and cost challenges than passenger vehicle fees."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Incorporated under Alaska state law, regional Alaska Native corporations share fundamental characteristics, although they have chosen a variety of governance practices. Like other Alaska corporations, the regional corporations are subject to the state's corporate laws (with limited exceptions) and are run by an elected board of directors. Nevertheless, each regional corporation has chosen its own organization and governance approach in terms of board operations, executive and board compensation, board elections, and shareholder involvement."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The six federal veterans' employment and training programs offer similar employment services, but largely target different groups. Among these programs, the Department of Labor's (Labor) Disabled Veterans' Outreach Program has the greatest potential for overlap with other veterans' programs and Labor's employment programs for the general population. Federal law governing the Disabled Veterans' Outreach Program makes all veterans who meet the broad definition of "eligible veteran" eligible for its services, but gives disabled veterans and economically and educationally disadvantaged veterans the highest priority for services. However, Labor's guidance does not provide states--who administer the program using federal funds--criteria for prioritizing services. The law also generally requires that program staff provide participants with intensive services (e.g., individual employment plans), but Labor's data indicate that nationally 28 percent of participants received such services in 2011. In explaining this statistic, Labor officials said one possible explanation was that staff are enrolling people who do not need intensive services. Labor said it plans to develop guidance on prioritizing services, and it also has a six-state pilot to improve monitoring, but neither of these efforts has been completed."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has recently created three new programs to help military spouses obtain employment: (1) the Military Spouse Career Advancement Accounts (MyCAA) tuition assistance program, (2) the Military Spouse Employment Partnership (MSEP), which connects military spouses with employers, (3) and the Military Spouse Career Center, consisting of a call center and a website for military spouses to obtain counseling and information. DOD's goals for these programs are to reduce unemployment among military spouses and close their wage gap with civilian spouses. Aside from these new programs, military spouses can also use employment assistance programs that the military services have long operated on DOD installations. However, GAO's site visits and interviews indicate that there may be gaps in coordination across the various programs that result in confusion for military spouses. Currently, DOD does not have guidance describing its overall strategy and how all of its programs should coordinate to help military spouses obtain employment, but DOD is in the process of developing such guidance."

Report from the Texas House Committee on State Affairs describing the group's goals, activities, accomplishments, and other information, for review by the 83rd Texas Legislature.

Report from the Texas House Committee on General Investigating & Ethics describing the group's goals, activities, accomplishments, and other information, for review by the 83rd Texas Legislature.

This report is a chart of the maximum fines and terms of imprisonment that may be imposed as a consequence of conviction for violation of the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and other drug supply and drug demand related laws.

This report presents data estimating since 1986 the number of unauthorized aliens who have been living in the United States.

This report discusses existing visa programs for temporary lower-skilled workers, including regulatory changes since 2008. It covers legislative efforts to reform current programs and to create new guest workers visas. It further identifies and explores key policy considerations to help inform congressional action on guest worker programs.

This report provides an overview of the intelligence identities protection act.

This report highlights certain non-criminal regulatory requirements of the Controlled Substances Act(CSA).

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The principal objectives of this work were to investigate the effects of processing simulated Hanford HLW at the estimated maximum concentrations of nitrates and oxalates and to identify strategies to mitigate any processing issues resulting from high concentrations of nitrates and oxalates. This report provides results for a series of tests that were performed on the DM10 melter system with simulated C-106/AY-102 HLW. The tests employed simulated HLW feeds containing variable amounts of nitrates and waste organic compounds corresponding to maximum concentrations proj ected for Hanford HLW streams in order to determine their effects on glass production rate, processing characteristics, glass redox conditions, melt pool foaming, and the tendency to form secondary phases. Such melter tests provide information on key process factors such as feed processing behavior, dynamic effects during processing, processing rates, off-gas amounts and compositions, foaming control, etc., that cannot be reliably obtained from crucible melts.

In this report, we present the research efforts made by our group at UCLA in the SciDAC project “Simulations of turbulent flows with strong shocks and density variations”. We use shock-fitting methodologies as an alternative to shock-capturing schemes for the problems where a well defined shock is present. In past five years, we have focused on development of high-order shock-fitting Navier-Stokes solvers for perfect gas flow and thermochemical non-equilibrium flow and simulation of shock-turbulence interaction physics for very strong shocks. Such simulation has not been possible before because the limitation of conventional shock capturing methods. The limitation of shock Mach number is removed by using our high-order shock-fitting scheme. With the help of DOE and TeraGrid/XSEDE super computing resources, we have obtained new results which show new trends of turbulence statistics behind the shock which were not known before. Moreover, we are also developing tools to consider multi-species non-equilibrium flows. The main results are in three areas: (1) development of high-order shock-fitting scheme for perfect gas flow, (2) Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) of interaction of realistic turbulence with moderate to very strong shocks using super computing resources, and (3) development and implementation of models for computation of mutli-species non-quilibrium flows …

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The present report describes the first steps in the development of a glass property-composition database for WTP LAW and HL W glasses that includes all of the data that were used in the development of the WTP baseline models and all of the data collected subsequently as part of WTP enhancement studies perfonned for ORP. The data were reviewed to identifY some of the more significant gaps in the composition space that will need to be filled to support waste processing at Hanford. The WTP baseline models have been evaluated against the new data in terms of range of validity and prediction perfonnance.

Savannah River Remediation (SRR) is evaluating an alternate flowsheet for the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) using glycolic acid as a reductant. An important aspect of the development of the glycolic acid flowsheet is determining if glycolate has any detrimental downstream impacts. Testing was performed to determine if there is any impact to the strontium and actinide sorption by monosodium titanate (MST) and modified monosodium titanate (mMST) or if there is an impact to the cesium removal, phase separation, or coalescer performance at the Modular Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction Processing Unit (MCU). Sorption testing was performed using both MST and modified MST (mMST) in the presence of 5000 and 10,000 ppm (mass basis) glycolate. 10,000 ppm is the estimated bounding concentration expected in the DWPF recycle stream based on DWPF melter flammable gas model results. The presence of glycolate was found to slow the removal of Sr and Pu by MST, while increasing the removal rate of Np. Results indicate that the impact is a kinetic effect, and the overall capacity of the material is not affected. There was no measurable effect on U removal at either glycolate concentration. The slower removal rates for Sr and Pu at 5000 and 10,000 …

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