The Workshop on Core and Sample Curation was held to discuss the best means of handling, distributing, and advertising samples and data collected during a Continental Scientific Drilling Program (CSDP) and to establish better communication between sample curators regarding common problems. It was geneerally agreed that CSDP samples should be handled, on a regional basis, by existing data systems and sample repositories judged to have adequate staff and support. Repository design, sample handling procedures, and sample accounting systems were discussed. Across North America, support for curation of geological samples was varied, but it was strongest within states or regions with well-established energy and mineral industries. A well-supported repository pays for itself through the circulation and preservation of samples and stratigraphic information. A national CSDP must have a well-established curatorial policy and system of regional repositories to circulate information and samples throughout the scientific community. Well-curated samples and data are a national resource with considerable benefits for industry and academia. Attendees agreed to form a Society of Geoscience Curators to maintain communication between curators from private, government, and university repositories and core research laboratories.

Environmental projects, issues, and programs have become increasingly important to the Westinghouse Savannah River Company (WSRC) management and the Department of Energy (DOE). A compliance-tracking system has been developed to monitor environmental requirements and commitments because they have become increasingly complex and numerous. An Environmental Data Management (EDM) steering committee was formed in October 1987 to develop computer system solutions to environmental needs. The committee`s main objective is to coordinate, within SRS divisions, the separate efforts that have been or are being developed to meet regulatory requirements and specific programmatic goals. The Environmental and Graphical Information Systems (E&GIS) Program was recently developed to establish a more formal organizational structure and enhance the coordination of geographical information systems (GIS) and environmental data management (EDM) activities at SRS. The general strategy of the program is to establish a coordination focal point for GIS and EDM activities, to provide for the integration of the several environmental and graphical information systems which exist mostly in stand-alone arrangements, and to guide the development of data management and geographical information applications in order to achieve alignment with Site computing architecture and standards. The E&GIS Program will enhance the Site`s ability to respond to data requirements in …

This article is a position statement on reproducible research in linguistics, including data citation and attribution, that represents the collective views of some 41 colleagues.

Drawing to a close after five years of funding from DOE's ASCR and BER program offices, the SciDAC-2 project called the Earth System Grid (ESG) Center for Enabling Technologies has successfully established a new capability for serving data from distributed centers. The system enables users to access, analyze, and visualize data using a globally federated collection of networks, computers and software. The ESG software - now known as the Earth System Grid Federation (ESGF) - has attracted a broad developer base and has been widely adopted so that it is now being utilized in serving the most comprehensive multi-model climate data sets in the world. The system is used to support international climate model intercomparison activities as well as high profile U.S. DOE, NOAA, NASA, and NSF projects. It currently provides more than 25,000 users access to more than half a petabyte of climate data (from models and from observations) and has enabled over a 1,000 scientific publications.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To improve aviation safety, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) plans to have in place the initial capabilities of a risk-based approach to safety oversight, known as a safety management system (SMS), by the end of fiscal year 2010. FAA is also implementing new procedures and technologies to enhance the safety, capacity, and efficiency of the national airspace system. Data are central to SMS and FAA's ability to test the impact of these changes on safety. This congressionally requested report addresses FAA's (1) current and planned use of data to oversee aviation safety, (2) access to data for monitoring aviation safety and the safety performance of various industry sectors, and (3) efforts to help ensure data quality. To perform this work, GAO reviewed 13 databases that contain data on key aviation safety events, assessed data quality controls for the databases, and interviewed agency and industry officials, as well as 10 experts in aviation safety and data."

This report documents radionuclide air emissions that result in the highest effective dose equivalent (EDE) to a member of the public, referred to as the maximally exposed individual (MEI). The report has been prepared in compliance with the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Title 40, Protection of the Environment, Part 61, National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP), Subpart H, National Emission Standards for Emissions of Radionuclides Other than Radon from Department of Energy Facilities and Washington Administrative Code (WAC) Chapter 246-247, Radiation Protection Air Emissions. The dose to the PNNL Site MEI due to routine major and minor point source emissions in 2012 from PNNL Site sources is 9E-06 mrem (9E-08 mSv) EDE. The dose from fugitive emissions (i.e., unmonitored sources) is 1E-7 mrem (1E-9 mSv) EDE. The dose from radon emissions is 2E-6 mrem (2E-08 mSv) EDE. No nonroutine emissions occurred in 2012. The total radiological dose for 2012 to the MEI from all PNNL Site radionuclide emissions, including fugitive emissions and radon, is 1E-5 mrem (1E-7 mSv) EDE, or 100,000 times smaller than the federal and state standard of 10 mrem/yr, to which the PNNL Site is in compliance.