A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies with a budget of at least $100 million for research and development (R&D) conducted by others must participate in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. SBIR has four purposes: meet federal R&D needs; stimulate technological innovation; increase commercialization (e.g., sales) of innovations based on federal R&D; and encourage participation in innovation by small businesses owned by disadvantaged individuals and women. The Small Business Administration (SBA) oversees the efforts of participating agencies, which make awards to small businesses using SBIR funds. Congress directed SBA to develop a database with commercialization data for government use in evaluating the program. GAO was asked to determine (1) how agencies have addressed SBIR's purposes and (2) the extent of data available to evaluate progress in increasing commercialization. GAO analyzed program documents and interviewed officials at SBA and five agencies that accounted for about 96 percent of SBIR awards."

This report traces the origin and development of the State Partnership Program (SPP), which is a Department of Defense (DOD) security cooperation program run by the National Guard; summarizes its unique aspects; and outlines its statutory basis, funding mechanisms, organization, and activities. It details recent legislative and executive branch actions. It also explores issues that may merit congressional attention and provides options for policymakers who may be interested in modifying the program.

Increasing violence perpetrated by drug trafficking organizations and other criminal groups is threatening citizen security and governance in Mexico. Escalating violence has increased U.S. concerns about stability in Mexico, a key political and economic ally, and about the possibility of violence spilling over into the United States. In recent years, U.S.-Mexican security cooperation has increased significantly, largely as a result of the development and implementation of the Mérida Initiative, a counterdrug and anticrime assistance package for Mexico and Central America that was first proposed in October 2007. This report looks at the funding and Congressional oversight for this Initiative.

The primary objective of this research was to advance the prediction of solute transport between the Uranium contaminated Hanford aquifer and the Columbia River at the Hanford 300 Area by improving understanding of how fluctuations in river stage, combined with subsurface heterogeneity, impart spatiotemporal complexity to solute exchange along the Columbia River corridor. Our work explored the use of continuous waterborne electrical imaging (CWEI), in conjunction with fiber-optic distributed temperature sensor (FO-DTS) and time-lapse resistivity monitoring, to improve the conceptual model for how groundwater/surface water exchange regulates uranium transport. We also investigated how resistivity and induced polarization can be used to generate spatially rich estimates of the variation in depth to the Hanford-Ringold (H-R) contact between the river and the 300 Area Integrated Field Research Challenge (IFRC) site. Inversion of the CWEI datasets (a data rich survey containing ~60,000 measurements) provided predictions of the distributions of electrical resistivity and polarizability, from which the spatial complexity of the primary hydrogeologic units along the river corridor was reconstructed. Variation in the depth to the interface between the overlying coarse-grained, high permeability Hanford Formation and the underlying finer-grained, less permeable Ringold Formation, an important contact that limits vertical migration of contaminants, has been …

The purpose of this report is to outline the toxic metal characterization and decontamination efforts in Area 6, Building 914. This includes the initial building inspection, the hotspot sampling, results/findings, building cleanup, and the verification sampling. Building 914 is a steel light frame building that was constructed in 1992. It is about 16,454 square feet, and five employees are assigned to this building. According to the building's floor plan blueprints, it could be inferred that this building was once a Wiremen/Lineman shop. In 2002-2004, the National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office embarked on a broad characterization of beryllium (Be) surface concentrations throughout the North Las Vegas Facility, the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), and ancillary facilities like the Special Technologies Laboratory, Remote Sensing Laboratory, etc. Building 914 was part of this characterization. The results of the 2002 study illustrated that the metal housekeeping limits were within acceptable limits and from a Be standpoint, the building was determined to be fit for occupancy. On March 2, 2011, based on a request from Building 914 users, National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec) Industrial Hygiene (IH) collected bulk samples from the southwest corner of Building 914 at heights above 6 feet where black …

When processing High Level Waste (HLW) glass, the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) cannot wait until the melt or waste glass has been made to assess its acceptability, since by then no further changes to the glass composition and acceptability are possible. Therefore, the acceptability decision is made on the upstream feed stream, rather than on the downstream melt or glass product. This strategy is known as 'feed forward statistical process control.' The DWPF depends on chemical analysis of the feed streams from the Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank (SRAT) and the Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) where the frit plus adjusted sludge from the SRAT are mixed. The SME is the last vessel in which any chemical adjustments or frit additions can be made. Once the analyses of the SME product are deemed acceptable, the SME product is transferred to the Melter Feed Tank (MFT) and onto the melter. The SRAT and SME analyses have been analyzed by the DWPF laboratory using a 'Cold Chemical' method but this dissolution did not adequately dissolve all the elemental components. A new dissolution method which fuses the SRAT or SME product with cesium nitrate (CsNO{sub 3}), germanium (IV) oxide (GeO{sub 2}) and cesium …

'The Hanford double-shell tank (DST) system provides the staging location for waste feed delivery to the Hanford Tank Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant (WTP). Hall (2008) includes WTP acceptance criteria that describe physical and chemical characteristics of the waste that must be certified as acceptable before the waste is transferred from the DSTs to the WTP. One of the more challenging requirements relates to the sampling and characterization of the undissolved solids (UDS) in a waste feed DST. The objectives of Washington River Protection Solutions' (WRPS) Small Scale Mixing Demonstration (SSMD) project are to understand and demonstrate the DST sampling and batch transfer performance at multiple scales using slurry simulants comprised of UDS particles and liquid (Townson 2009). The SSMD project utilizes geometrically scaled DST feed tanks to generate mixing, sampling, and transfer test data. In Phase 2 of the testing, RPP-49740, the 5-part simulant defined in RPP-48358 was used as the waste slurry simulant. The Phase 2 test data are being used to estimate the expected performance of the prototypic systems in the full-scale DSTs. As such, understanding of the how the small-scale systems as well as the simulant relate to the full-scale DSTs and actual waste is required. …

This comprehensive Natural Resource Management Plan (NRMP) for Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) was built on the successful foundation of the Wildlife Management Plan for BNL, which it replaces. This update to the 2003 plan continues to build on successes and efforts to better understand the ecosystems and natural resources found on the BNL site. The plan establishes the basis for managing the varied natural resources located on the 5,265 acre BNL site, setting goals and actions to achieve those goals. The planning of this document is based on the knowledge and expertise gained over the past 10 years by the Natural Resources management staff at BNL in concert with local natural resource agencies including the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Long Island Pine Barrens Joint Planning and Policy Commission, The Nature Conservancy, and others. The development of this plan is an attempt at sound ecological management that not only benefits BNL's ecosystems but also benefits the greater Pine Barrens habitats in which BNL is situated. This plan applies equally to the Upton Ecological and Research Reserve (Upton Reserve). Any difference in management between the larger BNL area and the Upton Reserve are noted in the text. The purpose …

This report provides an overview on the foreign and security policy on the European Union.

This report discusses Desalination processes that generally treat seawater or brackish water to produce a stream of freshwater, and a separate, saltier stream of water that has to be disposed.

This report identifies online sources for maps of Iraq, including government. library, and organizational websites.

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