This report shows in tabular form how much the Administration requested and how much Congress appropriated for U.S. payments to the multilateral development banks (MDBs) since 2000. It also provides a brief description of the MDBs and the ways they fund their operations. It will be updated periodically as annual appropriation figures are known.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "CMS has commissioned three studies to evaluate the QIS-based survey process but does not routinely monitor the extent to which the objectives established for the QIS are being met. The first two studies, completed in 2006 and 2007, were commissioned to determine whether the new survey process could be used in real-world settings and whether the QIS was helping the agency meet several of the objectives established for the process. The studies’ findings suggested that surveyors could use the survey process and recommended changes intended to help improve the QIS. CMS officials reported taking steps to address the studies’ findings and recommendations. In 2009, CMS commissioned a third study that was completed in 2011 and identified aspects of the QIS process that could affect the consistency with which surveyors identify quality problems. For example, the study found that during resident interviews, surveyors did not consistently probe for further information when provided with incomplete responses to interview questions. However, CMS does not have the means to routinely monitor the extent to which the QIS is helping improve the survey process as intended. Such routine, ongoing monitoring would …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to invest billions in the coming years in science and exploration space fl ight initiatives. The scientifi c and technical complexities inherent in NASA's mission create great challenges in managing its projects and controlling costs. In the past, NASA has had diffi culty meeting cost, schedule, and performance objectives for many of its projects. The need to effectively manage projects will gain even more importance as NASA seeks to manage its wide-ranging portfolio in an increasingly constrained fi scal environment. This report provides an independent assessment of selected NASA projects. In conducting this work, GAO compared projects against best practice criteria for system development including attainment of knowledge on technologies and design. GAO also identifi ed other programmatic challenges that were contributing factors in cost and schedule growth of the projects reviewed. The projects assessed are considered major acquisitions by NASA--each with a life-cycle cost of over $250 million. No recommendations are provided in this report; however, GAO has reported extensively and made recommendations on NASA acquisition management in the past. GAO has designated NASA's acquisition management as …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In a series of reviews, GAO found that OPM’s retirement modernization efforts were hindered by weaknesses in key management practices that are essential to successful IT modernization projects. For example, in 2005, GAO made recommendations to address weaknesses in the following areas:"

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report presents the Government Accountability Office's (GAO) Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2012. In the spirit of the Government Performance and Results Act, this annual plan informs the Congress and the American people about what we expect to accomplish on their behalf in the coming fiscal year. It sets forth our plan to make progress toward achieving our strategic goals for serving the Congress and the American people. This framework not only shows the relationship between our strategic goals and strategic objectives, but also show major themes that could potentially affect our work."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Agencies across the government are increasingly reliant on contractors to execute their missions. With hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars at stake, the government needs strong controls to provide reasonable assurance that these contract funds are not being lost to improper payments (fraud and errors), waste, and mismanagement. Effective contract oversight, which includes effective internal controls throughout the contracting process, is essential to protecting government and taxpayer interests. Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government provides the overall framework for internal control, which includes the control environment, risk assessment, control activities, information and communication, and monitoring. Contract auditing is a control mechanism intended to provide those responsible for government procurement with financial information and advice relating to contractual matters and the effectiveness, efficiency, and economy of contractors' operations. Today's testimony describes the (1) contracting cycle and related internal controls, (2) Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) and its role in performing contract audits for the Department of Defense (DOD) and other federal agencies, and (3) risks associated with ineffective contract controls and auditing. GAO's testimony is based on prior reports and testimonies, as listed at the end of …

This report provides a background to the National Defense Authorization Act for FY2012, the Authorization to use Military Force act, and the President's power to detain "enemy combatants." It then gives a brief introduction to the law of war pertinent to the detention of different categories of individuals and an overview of U.S. practice during wartime to detain persons deemed dangerous to national security. It concludes by discussion Congress's role in prescribing rules for wartime detention as well as legislative proposals in the 112th Congress to address the detention of U.S. persons.

This report first analyzes the authority of Congress to enact the minimum essential coverage requirement contained in Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), as well as how a court might analyze this provision if challenged based on various provisions of the Fifth and Tenth Amendments. This report discusses whether there must be exceptions to a requirement to purchase health insurance based on First Amendment freedom of religion, and finally, discusses some of the legal challenges to this federal requirement.

This report provides an overview of long-term care (LTC) and an explanation of the nation’s complex financing system of public and private payers. It also describes some of the major challenges facing Congress as it contemplates LTC reform and whether and how to include LTC in health reform legislation.

This report reviews the laws and regulations affecting leasing of federal lands for exploration and production of oil, natural gas, and coal, as well as the permits that lessees must obtain in order to explore for and produce these resources.

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This Letter describes the current most precise measurement of the WZ production cross section as well as limits on anomalous WWZ couplings at a center-of-mass energy of 1.96 TeV in proton-antiproton collisions. The WZ candidates are reconstructed from decays containing three charged leptons and missing energy from a neutrino, where the charged leptons are either electrons or muons. Using data collected by the CDF II detector (7.1 fb{sup -1} of integrated luminosity), 64 candidate events are observed with the expected background contributing 8 {+-} 1 events. The measured total cross section {sigma}(p{bar p} {yields} WZ) = 3.93{sub -0.53}{sup +0.60}(stat){sub -0.46}{sup +0.59}(syst) pb is in good agreement with the standard model prediction of 3.50 {+-} 0.21. The same sample is used to set limits on anomalous WWZ couplings.

Wind Powering America shares best practices and lessons learned on the Wind Powering America website. This postcard is an outreach tool that provides a brief description of the success stories as well as the URL.

The Higgs boson is the only elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model (SM) that has neither been confirmed nor refuted. The CDF collaboration has performed SM Higgs searches in many channels using p{bar p} collisions at a centre-of-mass energy {radical}s = 1.96 TeV. We present the latest combined Higgs boson search at CDF. Since the previous year's combination, the sensitivity is increased through the addition of new channels, the improvement of existing channels and the addition of new data samples. We also use the latest parton distribution functions and gg {yields} H theoretical cross sections when modelling the signal event yields. Using integrated luminosities of up to 8.2 fb{sup -1}, we observe a good agreement between data and the background prediction. Since we do not see a Higgs boson excess, we set 95% CL upper limits on the Higgs boson cross section in the range between 100 and 200 GeV/c{sup 2}, with 5 GeV/c{sup 2} increments. The observed (expected) limits for a 115 and a 165 GeV/c{sup 2} Higgs boson are 1.55 (1.49) and 0.75 (0.79) x SM, respectively. Since last year, the Higgs boson excluded range by CDF is extended to 156.5 - 173.7 and 100 - 104.5 …

Parton luminosities are convenient for estimating how the physics potential of Large Hadron Collider experiments depends on the energy of the proton beams. I quantify the advantage of increasing the beam energy from 3.5 TeV to 4 TeV. I present parton luminosities, ratios of parton luminosities, and contours of fixed parton luminosity for gg, u {bar d}, qq, and gq interactions over the energy range relevant to the Large Hadron Collider, along with example analyses for specific processes. This note extends the analysis presented in Ref. [1]. Full-size figures are available as pdf files at lutece.fnal.gov/PartonLum11/.

Energy efficiency purchasing specifications for federal procurements of commercial central air conditioners.

Effective implementation of the Safeguards-by-Design (SBD) approach can help meet the challenges of global nuclear energy growth, by designing facilities that have improved safeguardability and reduced safeguards-related life cycle costs. The ultimate goal of SBD is to implement effective and efficient safeguards that reduce the burden to both the facility operator and the International Atomic Energy Agency. Since 2008, the National Nuclear Security Administration's Next Generation Safeguards Initiative's Safeguards By Design Project has initiated multiple studies and workshops with industry and regulatory stakeholders, including the IAEA, to develop relevant documents to support the implementation of SBD. These 'Good Practices Guides' describe facility and process design features that will facilitate implementation of effective nuclear material safeguards starting in the earliest phases of design through to final design. These guides, which are in their final editorial stages, start at a high level and then narrow down to specific nuclear fuel cycle facilities such as Light Water Reactors, Generation III/IV Reactors, High Temperature Gas Cooled Reactors, and Gas Centrifuge Enrichment Plants. Most recently, NGSI has begun development of a facility safeguardability assessment toolkit to assist the designer. This paper will review the current status of these efforts, provide some examples of these documents, …

An important aspect of such offshore testing of a wind turbine floating platform is electrical loading of the wind turbine generator. An option of interconnecting the floating wind turbine with the onshore grid via submarine power cable is limited by many factors such as costs and associated environmental aspects (i.e., an expensive and lengthy sea floor study is needed for cable routing, burial, etc). It appears to be a more cost effective solution to implement a standalone grid simulator on a floating platform itself for electrical loading of the test wind turbine. Such a grid simulator must create a stable fault-resilient voltage and frequency bus (a micro grid) for continuous operation of the test wind turbine. In this report, several electrical topologies for an offshore grid simulator were analyzed and modeled.

The E906/SeaQuest spectrometer is designed to measure high energy muons produced in the forward direction by interactions of the 120 GeV Main Injector proton beam with a variety of targets. The spectrometer consists of two dipole magnets (both of which deflect charged particles in the horizontal plane) and a collection of tracking detectors. The first spectrometer magnet (FMAG) is a solid iron magnet. This magnet serves as a beam dump as well as a muon analysis magnet. A series of MARS15 simulations were done by Nikolai Mokhov to verify and guide the design of concrete shielding around FMAG and the target area immediately upstream of FMAG. The result of the fourth and last round of simulations is summarized here. This was a high statistics simulation that required approximately 48 cpu-weeks of computing time on the APC Energy Deposition Group cluster. The MARS15 simulation used a model of FMAG and its surroundings. The model includes air gaps in the concrete shielding, the largest of which are required because of the geometry of the saddle coils. A small volume surrounding the beam line just upstream of the magnet is filled with borated polyethylene. The borated polyethylene extends into the air gap necessitated …

This report summarizes radiological monitoring performed on samples from specific groundwater monitoring wells associated with the Industrial Wastewater Reuse Permit for the Materials and Fuels Complex Industrial Waste Ditch and Industrial Waste Pond (No.LA-000160-01). The radiological monitoring was performed to fulfill Department of Energy requirements under the Atomic Energy Act.

This report describes conditions, as required by the state of Idaho Industrial Wastewater Reuse Permit (LA 000161 01, Modification B), for the wastewater land application site at the Idaho National Laboratory Site's Advanced Test Reactor Complex Cold Waste Pond from November 1, 2010 through October 31, 2011. The report contains the following information: Facility and system description Permit required effluent monitoring data and loading rates Groundwater monitoring data Status of compliance activities Noncompliance and other issues Discussion of the facility's environmental impacts During the 2011 permit year, approximately 166 million gallons of wastewater were discharged to the Cold Waste Pond. This is well below the maximum annual permit limit of 375 million gallons. As shown by the groundwater sampling data, sulfate and total dissolved solids concentrations are highest near the Cold Waste Pond and decrease rapidly as the distance from the Cold Waste Pond increases. Although concentrations of sulfate and total dissolved solids are elevated near the Cold Waste Pond, both parameters were below the Ground Water Quality Rule Secondary Constituent Standards in the down gradient monitoring wells.

Through the New Mexico Small Business Assistance Program, Sandia National Laboratories worked with Sentient Business Systems, Inc. to develop and test a novel photovoltaic (PV) arc-fault detection system. The system operates by pairing translucent polymeric fiber optic sensors with electrical circuitry so that any external abrasion to the system or internal heating causes the fiber optic connection to fail or detectably degrade. A periodic pulse of light is sent through the optical path using a transmitter-receiver pair. If the receiver does not detect the pulse, an alarm is sounded and the PV system can be de-energized. This technology has the unique ability to prognostically determine impending failures to the electrical system in two ways: (a) the optical connection is severed prior to physical abrasion or cutting of PV DC electrical conductors, and (b) the polymeric fiber optic cable melts via Joule heating before an arc-fault is established through corrosion. Three arc-faults were created in different configurations found in PV systems with the integrated fiber optic system to determine the feasibility of the technology. In each case, the fiber optic cable was broken and the system annunciated the fault.

In order to meet future regulatory requirements, the Next Generation Nuclear Plant (NGNP) Project must fully establish and validate the mechanistic modular high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HTGR) source term. This is not possible at this stage in the project, as significant uncertainties in the final design remain unresolved. In the interim, however, there is a need to establish an approximate characterization of the source term. The NGNP team developed a simplified parametric model to establish mechanistic source term estimates for a set of proposed HTGR configurations.

Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) is regarded as a center for unbiased expertise in testing and evaluation of geophysical sensors and instrumentation for ground-based nuclear explosion monitoring (GNEM) systems. This project will sustain and enhance our component evaluation capabilities. In addition, new sensor technologies that could greatly improve national monitoring system performance will be sought and characterized. This work directly impacts the Ground-based Nuclear Explosion Monitoring mission by verifying that the performance of monitoring station sensors and instrumentation is characterized and suitable to the mission. It enables the operational monitoring agency to deploy instruments of known capability and to have confidence in operational success. This effort will ensure that our evaluation capabilities are maintained for future use.