A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2005, GAO added the Department of Defense's (DOD) approach to business transformation to its high-risk list because (1) DOD's improvement efforts were fragmented, (2) DOD lacked an integrated and enterprisewide business transformation plan, and (3) DOD had not designated a senior official at the right level with the right authority to be responsible for overall business transformation efforts. This report assesses (1) the progress DOD has made in setting up a management framework for overall business transformation efforts and (2) the challenges DOD faces in maintaining and ensuring the success of those efforts. GAO conducted this work under the Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations under his own initiative. In conducting its work, GAO compared DOD's actions to key practices of successful transformations."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Extraordinary recent flood events raise serious questions about the solvency of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The NFIP is largely implemented by private insurance companies that sell and service policies and adjust claims under the Write Your Own (WYO) Program. This report, prepared under the authority of the Comptroller General, examines (1) how much FEMA paid the WYO companies in recent years for operating costs and how FEMA determined payment amounts; (2) how FEMA's approach to determining operating costs assures that payments are reasonable estimates of companies' expenses; and (3) how FEMA assures that financial and management controls are in place for the WYO program and operate as intended. To do these assessments, GAO interviewed FEMA and insurance officials, and analyzed statutes, regulations, payment data, methodologies, and audits of WYO companies."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has relied on special operations forces to conduct military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq and to perform other tasks such as training foreign military forces. To meet the demand for these forces, DOD established a Marine Corps service component under the U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) to integrate Marine Corps forces. Under the authority of the Comptroller General, GAO assessed the extent to which (1) the Marine Corps special operations command has identified its force structure requirements, (2) the Marine Corps has developed a strategic human capital approach to manage personnel in its special operations command, and (3) USSOCOM has determined whether Marine Corps training programs are preparing its forces for assigned missions. GAO performed its work with the Marine Corps and USSOCOM and analyzed DOD plans for this new command."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA) focused national attention on improving schools so that all students reach academic proficiency by 2014. In the 2006- 2007 school year, about 4,500 of the 54,000 Title I schools failed to make adequate yearly progress (AYP) for 4 or more years. Schools that miss AYP for 4 years are identified for corrective action, and after 6 years, they must be restructured. GAO examined (1) the characteristics of Title I schools in corrective action and restructuring; (2) the actions that schools in corrective action and restructuring implemented; (3) the assistance those schools received from districts and states; and (4) how Education supports states in their efforts to assist these schools. GAO administered two Web-based surveys to a nationwide sample of schools in corrective action and restructuring status and conducted site visits to five states."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The General Services Administration (GSA) issues different types of delegations, whereby agencies may request authority to perform certain real property activities, such as leasing space and maintaining property. Effective management of the program is critical to ensuring that federal dollars are well spent and adequate workspace is provided. GAO was asked to determine (1) what real property authority GSA has delegated to its tenant agencies, (2) what policies GSA used to manage delegated authority, and (3) reasons the tenant agencies requested delegated authority. GAO reviewed the law, federal regulations, and GSA policies relating to six types of delegated authority and interviewed GSA officials and officials from six select tenant agencies. GAO analyzed GSA data on delegations issued from fiscal years 1996 to 2006."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and World Trade Center (WTC) collapse blanketed Lower Manhattan in dust from building debris. In response, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) conducted an indoor clean and test program from 2002 to 2003. In 2003, EPA's Inspector General (IG) recommended improvements to the program and identified lessons learned for EPA's preparedness for future disasters. In 2004, EPA formed an expert panel to, among other goals, guide EPA in developing a second voluntary program; EPA announced this program in 2006. As requested, GAO's report primarily addresses EPA's second program, including the (1) extent to which EPA incorporated IG and expert panel member recommendations and input; (2) factors, if any, limiting the expert panel's ability to meet its goals; (3) completeness of information EPA provided to the public; (4) way EPA estimated resources for the program; and (5) extent to which EPA has acted upon lessons learned regarding indoor contamination from disasters."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) asked Congress for $73.2 billion in fiscal year 2007 for research, development, testing, and evaluation (RDT&E). DOD organized this request using program element (PE) codes, which are designed to convey key information about the budget request. DOD also provides documents called budget exhibits detailing the activities for which funds are being requested. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 mandated that GAO examine the program elements and budget exhibits. GAO assessed (1) whether the RDT&E program element code structure and the associated budget exhibits provide accurate, consistent, complete, and clear information, and (2) what factors contribute to any problems found. In conducting this review GAO analyzed all of the fiscal year 2007 program element codes and 47 budget exhibits. GAO also interviewed key DOD officials."

The RESRAD-OFFSITE code is an extension of the RESRAD (onsite) code, which has been widely used for calculating doses and risks from exposure to radioactively contaminated soils. The development of RESRAD-OFFSITE started more than 10 years ago, but new models and methodologies have been developed, tested, and incorporated since then. Some of the new models have been benchmarked against other independently developed (international) models. The databases used have also expanded to include all the radionuclides (more than 830) contained in the International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) 38 database. This manual provides detailed information on the design and application of the RESRAD-OFFSITE code. It describes in detail the new models used in the code, such as the three-dimensional dispersion groundwater flow and radionuclide transport model, the Gaussian plume model for atmospheric dispersion, and the deposition model used to estimate the accumulation of radionuclides in offsite locations and in foods. Potential exposure pathways and exposure scenarios that can be modeled by the RESRAD-OFFSITE code are also discussed. A user's guide is included in Appendix A of this manual. The default parameter values and parameter distributions are presented in Appendix B, along with a discussion on the statistical distributions for probabilistic analysis. …

The LLNL Bioassay Laboratory recently purchased a Perkin-Elmer DRCe ICP-MS (DRCe) to replace the existing Perkin-Elmer Elan 6000 ICP-MS (Elan 6000) used for the analysis of {sup 238}U in urine bioassay samples. In accordance with section 5.7.2 of DOE-STD-1112-98, 'The Department of Energy Laboratory Accreditation Program for Radiobioassay', this document demonstrates that the DRCe is technically equivalent to the Elan 6000. This paper documents: (1) Minor changes made in the procedure to improve the sensitivity; (2) Detection limits for the Elan 6000 and the DRCe; (3) Determination of the measurement uncertainty for the DRCe; and (4) Comparison of results from the DRCe versus the Elan 6000. A 1 mL aliquot of the sample is transferred to an auto sampler tube. Nitric acid and {sup 233}U (used as an internal standard) are added to the samples and the samples are digested in a microwave oven. The digested samples are diluted to 10 mL with deionized water and the {sup 238}U concentration is determined by ICP-MS. The ICP-MS is calibrated with a series of {sup 238}U standards. {sup 233}U is used as an internal standard to correct for suppression of the signal due to the sample matrix. The Elan 6000 is run …

Throughout fifty-three years of operations, an estimated 792,000 Ci (29,300 TBq) of tritium have been released to the atmosphere at the Livermore site of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL); about 75% was tritium gas (HT) primarily from the accidental releases of 1965 and 1970. Routine emissions contributed slightly more than 100,000 Ci (3,700 TBq) HT and about 75,000 Ci (2,800 TBq) tritiated water vapor (HTO) to the total. A Tritium Dose Reconstruction was undertaken to estimate both the annual doses to the public for each year of LLNL operations and the doses from the few accidental releases. Some of the dose calculations were new, and the others could be compared with those calculated by LLNL. Annual doses (means and 95% confidence intervals) to the potentially most exposed member of the public were calculated for all years using the same model and the same assumptions. Predicted tritium concentrations in air were compared with observed mean annual concentrations at one location from 1973 onwards. Doses predicted from annual emissions were compared with those reported in the past by LLNL. The highest annual mean dose predicted from routine emissions was 34 {micro}Sv (3.4 mrem) in 1957; its upper confidence limit, based on very …

This report provides information about Health Insurance where people buy insurance to protect themselves against the possibility of financial loss in the future. Americans obtain insurance in different settings and a variety of methods.

The objectives of research activities in particle theory are predicting the production cross section and decay branching fractions of Higgs bosons and new particles at hadron colliders, developing techniques and computer software to discover these particles and to measure their properties, and searching for new phenomena and new interactions at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The results of our project could lead to the discovery of Higgs bosons, new particles, and signatures for new physics, or we will be able to set meaningful limits on important parameters in particle physics. We investigated the the prospects for the discovery at the CERN Large Hadron Collider of Higgs bosons and supersymmetric particles. Promising results are found for the CP-odd pseudoscalar ($A^0$) and the heavier CP-even scalar ($H^0$) Higgs bosons with masses up to 800 GeV. Furthermore, we study properties of the lightest neutralino ($\chi^0$) and calculate its cosmological relic density in a supersymmetric $U(1)'$ model as well as the muon anomalous magnetic moment $a_\mu = (g_\mu - 2)/2$ in a supersymmetric $U(1)'$ model. We found that there are regions of the parameter space that can explain the experimental deviation of $a_\mu$ from the Standard Model calculation and yield …

Weak and irregular boreal winter MJO in the NCAR CAM3 corresponds to very low CAPE background, which is caused by easy-to-occur and over-dominant deep convection indicating the deep convective scheme uses either too low CAPE threshold as triggering function or too large consumption rate of CAPE to close the scheme. Raising the CAPE threshold from default 70 J/kg to ten times large only enhances the CAPE background while fails to noticeably improve the wind mean state and the MJO. However, lengthening the CAPE lapse time from one to eight hours significantly improved the background in CAPE and winds, and salient features of the MJO. Variances, dominant periods and zonal wave numbers, power spectra and coherent propagating structure in winds and convection associated with MJO are ameliorated and comparable to the observations. Lengthening the CAPE lapse time to eight hours reduces dramatically the cloud base mass flux, which prevents effectively the deep convection from occurring prematurely. In this case, partitioning of deep to shallow convection in MJO active area is about 5:4.5 compared to over 9:0.5 in the control run. Latent heat is significantly enhanced below 600 hPa over the central Indian Ocean and the western Pacific. Such partitioning of deep …

This report provides proposed legislation in the 110th Congress related to creating Government Sponsored Enterprise (GSE )affordable housing funds.

This report presents various governmental and nongovernmental estimates of Iraqi civilian fatalities. The Department of Defense (DOD) regularly updates total U.S. military death and wounded statistics from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), as reflected in CRS Report RS21578, Iraq: Summary of U.S. Casualties. However, no Iraqi or U.S. government office regularly releases statistics on Iraqi civilian deaths.

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This report provides information about the Environmental Impacts of Airport Operations, Maintenance, and Expansion and in order to address these concerns, airports may be required to implement projects that would minimize the environmental impact.

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