News release about DART's adjusted service schedule in observance of the New Year holiday.

News release about the collection of nonperishable foods and money by DART for Dallas-area charities.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Edward H. Vaughan. Vaughan went into the Army in January 1943. He relates a few amusing stories from his basic training days and at radio operator school. After training, Vaughan was attached to the 574th Signal Aircraft Warning Battalion. When he went overseas, he boarded trhe SS Cape Newenham (1943) and headed for New Guinea in 1944 arriving on Biak. Eventually, his unit headed for Palawan, Philippines. When the war was over, Vaughan was mustered out in a hurry because his father had had a bad heart attack and his mother sent for him. He rode a liberty ship back to San Francisco from the Philippines. When he was discharged, Vaughan elected to stay in the Army Reserve and eventually joined the Texas National Guard.

HEATS Project: The University of Minnesota is developing a solar thermochemical reactor that will efficiently produce fuel from sunlight, using solar energy to produce heat to break chemical bonds. The University of Minnesota is envisioning producing the fuel by using partial redox cycles and ceria-based reactive materials. The team will achieve unprecedented solar-to-fuel conversion efficiencies of more than 10% (where current state-of-the-art efficiency is 1%) by combined efforts and innovations in material development, and reactor design with effective heat recovery mechanisms and demonstration. This new technology will allow for the effective use of vast domestic solar resources to produce precursors to synthetic fuels that could replace gasoline.

HEATS Project: The University of Florida is developing a windowless high-temperature chemical reactor that converts concentrated solar thermal energy to syngas, which can be used to produce gasoline. The overarching project goal is lowering the cost of the solar thermochemical production of syngas for clean and synthetic hydrocarbon fuels like petroleum. The team will develop processes that rely on water and recycled CO2 as the sole feed-stock, and concentrated solar radiation as the sole energy source, to power the reactor to produce fuel efficiently. Successful large-scale deployment of this solar thermochemical fuel production could substantially improve our national and economic security by replacing imported oil with domestically produced solar fuels.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Richard Youngs. Youngs joined the Navy and was sent to gunnery school. He was then assigned to USS LST-290. Youngs describes getting sea-sick and a collision with a civilian ship in which he was injured. He was reassigned to the commissioning crew of USS LST-947. Youngs describes his duties as a coxswain including an incident where he received a speeding ticket at Pearl Harbor in his LCVP. He discusses how his ship carried equipment and troops for the invasion of Okinawa. Youngs describes coming under attack by kamikazes and a time when his gun jammed. He participated in the occupation of Japan and was discharged in May 1946.

News release about the appointment of Norma Navarro as the new vice president of commuter rail and Nevin Grinnel as the new CMO at DART.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Realistic training ranges are one of the most valued assets the military has in preparing its personnel for their missions. Realistic training requires access to areas and environments that closely match the locations where the military may face combat or complex situations. International events, changes in strategy, force structure, base closures, and population growth are increasing the challenges the military faces in training its personnel to be prepared to defend the nation. Moreover, the military services report that they have increasingly lost training range capabilities because of factors such as encroachment. To respond to these challenges and increase the sustainability of military ranges, the Department of Defense (DOD) has launched a number of efforts aimed at preserving training ranges while also minimizing adverse environmental effects of training activities. As required by section 366(a) of the Bob Stump National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003 (as amended), DOD was to submit a comprehensive plan for using existing authorities available to the department to address training constraints caused by limitations on the use of worldwide military lands, marine areas, and airspace to Congress at the same time as the …

Transcript of an oral interview with Ernest S. Clifford. Clifford enlisted in the Army Air Force in late 1942. For training, he went to Miami, South Dakota and Virginia. There, he was attached to the 45th Infantry Division to facilitate radio communications between the Air Force and the infantry. They sailed for North Africa to train for the invasion of Sicily. Clifford describes his experience on Sicily and was evacuated with several hundred Italian POWs back to North Africa, where he was reassigned to a photo reconnaissance company based in southern Italy. His job was to send coded messages from the photo lab to th eair bases where bomb groups would decide which targets to hit. When the war in Europe ended, Clifford went home on leave and was there when the war in the Pacific ended. He was discharged in September, 1945.

News release about a commemorative plaque placed at DART's Hatcher Station in honor of Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson for her support in securing the $700 million federal grant for the construction of DART's Green Line.

Interview with Diane Ragsdale, former Dallas city council member and activist. Ragsdale discusses her early life and how she got started in activism, as well as her career with the Dallas city council and local government.

Transcript of an oral interview with Robert A. Heym. When Heym finished high school in 1943 he went into the Army Air Force. He was in pilot training in Arkansas, but was caught doing dangerous aerial stunts and was washed out and sent to radio school in South Dakota. Upon completing that, he was assigned to a B-24 crew as a radio operator in Topeka, Kansas before heading overseas in April, 1944. Heym describes a few missions, being attacked by German fighters, fellow crewmembers getting killed and crash landing. Heym was attached to the 450th Bomb Group in the 15th Air Force and was stationed in Manduria, Italy. In June, 1945 Heym came home aboard the USS Wakefield (AP-21). He was discharged and attended the University of Detroit after the war using his G.I. Bill.

This report offers a menu of 18 different, yet complementary, preferred practices and policies. The best practices cover all phases of the wind energy development process - from the policies that allow for wind development, to the sustainable operation of a wind project, to the best practices for decommissioning a spent turbine - including applications for offshore wind. Each best practice describes the opportunities and challenges (pros and cons), and offers a case example that illustrates how that best practice is being utilized by a particular jurisdiction or wind project. The practices described in this publication were selected by a diverse group of interests from the Great Lakes Wind Collaborative that included environmental groups, industry, academia, and federal, state and local government regulators. The practices were identified through a year-long process that included a literature review, online survey and interviews with individuals from the public, private and non-profit sectors. Optimally, a suite of these best practices would be applied in an appropriate combination to fit the conditions of a particular wind project or a set of wind projects within a given locality or region.

A publication issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd- Frank Act) is intended, among other things, to reform residential mortgage lending and securitization practices that contributed to the recent financial crisis. The act provides some liability protection for lenders originating mortgages that meet nine specified criteria, as applicable, associated with a borrower's ability to repay ("qualified mortgages"). The act also requires securitizers of mortgages not meeting separate criteria associated with lower default risk to retain at least 5 percent of the credit risk, though federal rulemaking agencies may vary this amount. The act directed GAO to assess the effect of mortgage-related provisions on the availability and affordability of mortgage credit and to issue a report by July 2011, but federal agencies are still developing implementing regulations. This report discusses the potential impact of the act's (1) qualified mortgage criteria, (2) credit risk retention requirement, and (3) provisions concerning homeownership counseling and regulation of high-cost loans."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Pakistan is central to U.S. efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat al Qaeda and deny its resurgence in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. The United States has sought to secure these interests through counterterrorism and counterinsurgency cooperation, as well as through a long-term partnership anchored, in part, by increased civilian and military assistance. Since fiscal year 2002, the U.S. government has provided the Pakistani government almost $21 billion in assistance and reimbursements toward these goals. However, al Qaeda and other terrorists and violent extremists continue to promote instability and use safe havens in Pakistan's western border region to plan and train for attacks against U.S. interests. At the same time, the United States continues to be concerned with the ongoing effect of A. Q. Khan's illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya. To address these and other concerns, in October 2009, Congress enacted the Enhanced Partnership with Pakistan Act of 2009, which, among other things, limits certain security-related assistance to Pakistan each fiscal year from 2011 through 2014. Before the United States can provide security-related assistance to Pakistan in each of those fiscal years, the Secretary …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter formally discusses a congressional request to review the Department of Homeland Security's framework for securing critical infrastructure and key resources (CIKR), and subsequent agency comments. As such, this correspondence provides information on: (1) how DHS coordinates with CIKR stakeholders to identify overlaps and gaps in CIKR security activities across all sectors, (2) how DHS addresses these potential overlaps in CIKR security activities, and (3) how DHS addresses CIKR security gaps. To conduct this work, among other things, we selected a non-random sample of nine sectors with a mix of regulations related to security to obtain stakeholders views on working with DHS to identify and address overlaps and gaps in CIKR activities; reviewed applicable laws and regulations, DHS documents such as the National Infrastructure Protection Plan, and pertinent GAO reports; and interviewed DHS officials in the Office of Infrastructure Protection (IP) in the National Protection and Programs Directorate and officials representing the sectors we selected. While the results of these efforts are not generalizable to all CIKR sectors, stakeholders, and activities, they provided valuable insights into CIKR partner perspectives across a range of CIKR."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "One of the areas included in our recent report on potential duplication among federal programs was economic development. If economic development programs are administered efficiently and effectively, they can contribute to the well-being of our nation's economy at the least cost to taxpayers. Absent a common definition for economic development, we had previously developed a list of nine activities most often associated with economic development. These activities include planning and developing strategies for job creation and retention, developing new markets for existing products, building infrastructure by constructing roads and sewer systems to attract industry to undeveloped areas, and establishing business incubators to provide facilities for new businesses' operations, among others. Our recent work included information on 80 economic development programs at four agencies--the Departments of Commerce (Commerce), Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Agriculture (USDA), and the Small Business Administration (SBA). This work examined (1) the potential for overlap in the design of the programs, (2) the extent to which the four agencies collaborate to achieve common goals, and (3) the extent to which the agencies have developed measures to determine the programs' effectiveness. According to the agencies, funding …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), is the Department of Defense's (DOD) most costly and ambitious aircraft acquisition, seeking to simultaneously develop and field three aircraft variants for the Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, and eight international partners. The JSF is critical for recapitalizing tactical air forces and will require a long-term commitment to very large annual funding outlays. The estimated total investment cost is currently about $385 billion to develop and procure 2,457 aircraft. Because of a history of relatively poor cost and schedule outcomes, defense leadership over the past 15 months has directed a comprehensive restructuring of the JSF program that is continuing. This testimony draws substantially from our extensive body of work on the JSF including our April 2011 report, the latest annual review mandated in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Pub. L. No. 111-84 244 (2009). This testimony discusses (1) program cost and schedule changes and their implications on affordability; (2) progress made during 2010; (3) design and manufacturing maturity; and (4) test plans and progress. GAO's work included analyses of a wide range …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report documents information that we presented to Congress on March 31, 2011, in response to a congressional request that we examine the extent to which federal funding is used to support public radio. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) was established pursuant to the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 and receives federal payments through the annual appropriations process. CPB distributes the federal payments it receives in accordance with a statutory formula. Under this formula, the majority of each annual federal payment must be distributed to public broadcasting television and radio stations and program producers, such as National Public Radio (NPR), typically in the form of grants. This report addresses the following questions: (1) What are the missions of CPB, NPR, and local public radio stations? (2) What are the processes through which CPB receives federal payments and disburses them to grantees? and (3) What are NPR's sources of revenue, both federal and nonfederal?."

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with William Shirley. Shirley joined the Marine Corps in 1943. He was sent to diesel school and then to the Pacific to serve with the 1st Marine Air Wing. Shirley traveled with his radar until to an island off Okinawa to detect incoming aircraft. He spent 6 months in China at the end of the war. Shirley left the Marines when he returned to the US, but rejoined after 6 months. He went on to serve in Korea and describes in detail landing at Pusan and advancing north. Shirley describes the conditions that the Marines faced throughout the conflict.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Howard Hollinger. Hollinger joined the Coast Guard in 1941. He completed Radio School and High-Frequency Direction Finder training. Hollinger traveled to the Aleutian Islands, and was stationed at a High-Frequency Direction Finder station on a Navy base in Kodiak, Alaska. He tracked Navy planes that took off from Attu to bomb the Kuril Islands. Hollinger returned to the US and received a discharge around late 1945.

Minutes for the March 19, 2011 TXSSAR meeting, held by the McKinney chapter.

Document containing photographs and event information for a joint meeting with the TXSSAR Ambassador Fletcher Warren chapter and the TSDAR Captain Charles Croxall chapter in Fairlie, Texas.

Minutes for the February 19, 2011 joint SAR/DAR meeting, held by the Ambassador Fletcher Warren TXSSAR chapter and the Captain Charles Croxall DAR chapter.