Embedded arms-control-sensors provide a powerful new paradigm for managing compliance with future nuclear weapons treaties, where deployed warhead numbers will be reduced to 1000 or less. The CONOPS (Concept of Operations) for use with these sensors is a practical tool with which one may help define design parameters, including size, power, resolution, communications, and physical structure. How frequently must data be acquired and must a human be present? Will such data be acquired for only stored weapons or will it be required of deployed weapons as well? Will tactical weapons be subject to such monitoring or will only strategic weapons apply? Which data will be most crucial? Will OSI's be a component of embedded sensor data management or will these sensors stand alone in their data extraction processes? The problem space is massive, but can be constrained by extrapolating to a reasonable future treaty regime and examining the bounded options this scenario poses. Arms control verification sensors, embedded within the warhead case or aeroshell, must provide sufficient but not excessively detailed data, confirming that the item is a nuclear warhead and that it is a particular warhead without revealing sensitive information. Geolocation will be provided by an intermediate transceiver used …

The analysis of preconditioners based on incomplete Cholesky factorization in which the neglected (dropped) components are orthogonal to the approximations being kept is presented. General estimate for the condition number of the preconditioned system is given which only depends on the accuracy of individual approximations. The estimate is further improved if, for instance, only the newly computed rows of the factor are modified during each approximation step. In this latter case it is further shown to be sharp. The analysis is illustrated with some existing factorizations in the context of discretized elliptic partial differential equations.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has taken some steps toward developing a conflict minerals disclosure rule, but it has not issued a final rule. For example, SEC published a proposed rule in December 2010 and has gathered and reviewed extensive input from external stakeholders through comment letters and meetings. SEC has also announced, on several occasions, new target dates for the publication of a final rule. In July 2012, SEC announced that the Commission will hold an open meeting in August 2012 to consider whether to adopt a final rule. According to SEC officials, various factors have caused delays in finalizing the rule beyond the April 2011 deadline stipulated in the act, including the intensity of input from stakeholders and the public; the amount of time required to review this input; and the need to conduct a thorough economic analysis for rule making."

This report gives a description of the activities in design, fabrication, construction, and assembling of a pumped sodium loop for the sodium compatibility studies on advanced structural materials. The work is the Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) portion of the effort on the work project entitled, 'Sodium Compatibility of Advanced Fast Reactor Materials,' and is a part of Advanced Materials Development within the Reactor Campaign. The objective of this project is to develop information on sodium corrosion compatibility of advanced materials being considered for sodium reactor applications. This report gives the status of the sodium pumped loop at Argonne National Laboratory, the specimen details, and the technical approach to evaluate the sodium compatibility of advanced structural alloys. This report is a deliverable from ANL in FY2010 (M2GAN10SF050302) under the work package G-AN10SF0503 'Sodium Compatibility of Advanced Fast Reactor Materials.' Two reports were issued in 2009 (Natesan and Meimei Li 2009, Natesan et al. 2009) which examined the thermodynamic and kinetic factors involved in the purity of liquid sodium coolant for sodium reactor applications as well as the design specifications for the ANL pumped loop for testing advanced structural materials. Available information was presented on solubility of several metallic and nonmetallic elements …

This report discusses the West African country of Mali that faces multiple overlapping crises. The country’s political leadership has been uncertain and disputed since a military coup on March 22, 2012, overthrew a democratically elected government in the capital, Bamako.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "While plan representatives GAO contacted generally stated that their hedge fund and private equity investments met expectations in recent years, a number of plans experienced losses and other challenges, such as limited liquidity and transparency. National data indicated that hedge fund and private equity investments were significantly affected by the 2008-2009 financial crisis, and plans and experts GAO contacted indicated that pension plan investments were not insulated from losses. Most of the 22 plan representatives GAO interviewed said that their hedge fund investments met expectations overall, despite, in some cases, significant losses during the financial crisis. A few plan representatives, however, expected hedge fund investments to be much more resilient in turbulent markets, and found the losses disappointing. Given the long-term nature of private equity investments, almost all of the representatives were generally satisfied with these investments over the last 5 years. Some plan representatives described significant difficulties in hedge fund and private equity investing related to limited liquidity and transparency, and the negative impact of the actions of other investors in the fund—sometimes referred to as co-investors. For example, representatives from one plan reported they …

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Values for the dry deposition velocity of airborne particles were estimated with the GENII Version 2.10 computer code for the Savannah River site using assumptions about surface roughness parameters and particle size and density. Use of the GENII code is recommended by the U.S. Department of Energy for this purpose. Meteorological conditions evaluated include atmospheric stability classes D, E, and F and wind speeds of 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 3.0 m/s. Local surface roughness values ranging from 0.03 to 2 meters were evaluated. Particles with mass mean diameters of 1, 5, and 10 microns and densities of 1, 3, and 5 g/cm3 were evaluated.

Density functional theory (DFT) and ab initio thermodynamics are applied in order to investigate the most stable surface and subsurface terminations of Mo{sub 2}C(001) as a function of chemical potential and in the presence of syngas. The Mo-terminated (001) surface is then used as a model surface to evaluate the thermochemistry and energetic barriers for key elementary steps in syngas reactions. Adsorption energy scaling relations and Broensted-Evans-Polanyi relationships are established and used to place Mo{sub 2}C into the context of transition metal surfaces. The results indicate that the surface termination is a complex function of reaction conditions and kinetics. It is predicted that the surface will be covered by either C{sub 2}H{sub 2} or O depending on conditions. Comparisons to transition metals indicate that the Mo-terminated Mo{sub 2}C(001) surface exhibits carbon reactivity similar to transition metals such as Ru and Ir, but is significantly more reactive towards oxygen.

Transition metal oxides (TMOs) are an ideal arena for the study of electronic correlations because the s-electrons of the transition metal ions are removed and transferred to oxygen ions, and hence the strongly correlated d-electrons determine their physical properties such as electrical transport, magnetism, optical response, thermal conductivity, and superconductivity. These electron correlations prohibit the double occupancy of metal sites and induce a local entanglement of charge, spin, and orbital degrees of freedom. This gives rise to a variety of phenomena, e.g., Mott insulators, various charge/spin/orbital orderings, metal-insulator transitions, multiferroics, and superconductivity. In recent years, there has been a burst of activity to manipulate these phenomena, as well as create new ones, using oxide heterostructures. Most fundamental to understanding the physical properties of TMOs is the concept of symmetry of the order parameter. As Landau recognized, the essence of phase transitions is the change of the symmetry. For example, ferromagnetic ordering breaks the rotational symmetry in spin space, i.e., the ordered phase has lower symmetry than the Hamiltonian of the system. There are three most important symmetries to be considered here. (i) Spatial inversion (I), defined as r {yields} -r. In the case of an insulator, breaking this symmetry can …

Annual financial report of the Employees Retirement System of Texas documenting income, expenditures, and other relevant financial information for fiscal year 2012.

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Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Some compliance activities for the export of controlled items under State and Commerce licenses differ from compliance activities under country-based license exemptions, but enforcement activities are generally the same. Compliance activities provide information for exporters, licensing officials, and enforcement agencies to help assess the validity of export transactions, identify potential violations, or prevent violations before they occur. Of the seven compliance activities we identified, three differ for licensed exports compared with country-based license exemptions. These activities are (1) license application review, (2) vetting parties to transactions, and (3) compliance program reviews (recordkeeping). In contrast to these compliance activities, the other four compliance and three enforcement activities, such as inspection of exports, investigations, and punitive actions for violations, are generally the same for both licensed exports and country-based, license-exempt exports."

The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), also called the Lighting II, is a new strike fighter being procured in different versions by the Air Force, Marine Corps, and Navy. The F-35 program is the Department of Defense's (DOD's) largest weapon procurement program in terms of total estimated acquisition cost. This report details the Obama Administration's proposed FY2010 defense budget requests for F-35 program funding and outlines the issues that Congress must consider when deciding whether to approve, reject, or modify the administration's funding requests.

FACET (Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests) is a new User Facility at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The first User Run started in spring 2012 with 20 GeV, 3 nC electron beams. The facility is designed to provide short (20 {micro}m) bunches and small (20 {micro}m wide) spot sizes, producing uniquely high power beams. FACET supports studies from many fields but in particular those of Plasma Wakefield Acceleration and Dielectric Wakefield Acceleration. The creation of drive and witness bunches and shaped bunch profiles is possible with 'Notch' Collimation. FACET is also a source of THz radiation for material studies. Positrons will be available at FACET in future user runs. We present the User Facility and the available tools and opportunities for future experiments.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From fiscal years 2005 through 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) human capital strategies contributed to reductions in the vacancy rate for all positions in the Counterterrorism Division (CTD) from 26 percent to 6 percent. Most vacancies were caused by transfers to other parts of the FBI. While overall vacancies declined, trends in vacancies varied by position. For example, vacancies for special agents and professional staff generally decreased each year while vacancies for intelligence analysts varied during the same time period."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Stakeholders—health care industry groups and experts in antitrust law—had different perspectives on the adequacy of three key aspects of antitrust guidance for health care provider collaboration. First, stakeholders’ perspectives differed on the sufficiency of guidance on clinical integration, which involves integrating clinical activities across providers in a collaborative arrangement. Clinical integration is one way for a collaborative arrangement to satisfy the requirement that the arrangement demonstrate the potential to yield significant benefits, such as reduced costs or improved quality, in order to be able to jointly negotiate prices. Five of the six experts and one of the four industry groups said that agency guidance was sufficient, while one expert and two industry groups asserted that agency guidance on clinical integration was inadequate. Second, stakeholders’ perspectives differed as to whether the agencies should permit greater use of exclusive collaborative arrangements, which restrict the ability of providers within a collaborative arrangement to contract with other arrangements or health plans. The use of exclusive arrangements has the potential to improve or reduce competition, depending on the circumstances. Four of the experts said that the agencies’ guidance on exclusive arrangements was reasonable, …

This report provides a brief history and overview of the aims of these statutes: the Railway Labor Act (RLA) enacted in 1926, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and the Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute (FSLMRS). It also discusses key statutory provisions for each statute.

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Design, validate at prototype level, and then demonstrate a full size, 800 MWht Thermal Energy Storage (TES) system based on Phase Changing Material (PCM) TES modules with round trip efficiency in excess of 93%. The PCM TES module would be the building block of a TES system which can be deployed at costs inline with the DOE benchmark of 2020. The development of a reliable, unsophisticated, modular, and scalable TES system designed to be massmanufactured utilizing advanced automated fabrication and assembly processes and field installed in the most cost-effective configuration could facilitate the attainment of a Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) of $.07/kWh by 2015. It was believed that the DOE targets can be attained by finding the best combinationTES module size, its optimal integration in the power cycle, and readily available PCM. Work under this project ultimately focused on the development and performance evaluation of a 100kWht prototype heat exchanger. The design utilizes a commercially available heat exchanger product to create a unique latent heat PCM storage module. The novel ideal associated with this technology is the inclusion of an agitation mechanism that is activated during the discharge process to improve heat transfer. The prototype unit did not meet …

This report examines the financial implications of experimental flows conducted at the Glen Canyon Dam (GCD) in water year 2011. It is the third report in a series examining financial implications of experimental flows conducted since the Record of Decision (ROD) was adopted in February 1997 (Reclamation 1996). A report released in January 2011 examined water years 1997 to 2005 (Veselka et al. 2011), and a report released in August 2011 examined water years 2006 to 2010 (Poch et al. 2011). An experimental release may have either a positive or negative impact on the financial value of energy production. This study estimates the financial costs of experimental releases, identifies the main factors that contribute to these costs, and compares the interdependencies among these factors. An integrated set of tools was used to compute the financial impacts of the experimental releases by simulating the operation of the GCD under two scenarios, namely, (1) a baseline scenario that assumes both that operations comply with the ROD operating criteria and the experimental releases that actually took place during the study period, and (2) a 'without experiments' scenario that is identical to the baseline scenario of operations that comply with the GCD ROD, except …

This report provides an overview of the U.S. balance of payments, an explanation of the broader role of capital flows in the U.S. economy, an explanation of how the country finances its trade deficit or a trade surplus, and the implications for Congress and the country of the large inflows of capital from abroad.