A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Climate change poses risks to many environmental and economic systems, including agriculture, infrastructure, and ecosystems. Federal law has periodically required the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to report on federal climate change funding. GAO was asked to examine (1) federal funding for climate change activities and how these activities are organized; (2) the extent to which methods for defining and reporting climate change funding are interpreted consistently across the federal government; (3) federal climate change strategic priorities, and the extent to which funding is aligned with these priorities; and (4) what options, if any, are available to better align federal climate change funding with strategic priorities. GAO analyzed OMB funding reports and responses to a Web-based questionnaire sent to federal officials, reviewed available literature, and interviewed stakeholders."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "At a time when the military is supporting ongoing operations in many places around the world, the Department of Defense (DOD) faces challenges balancing the strategic capability needs of the military services with the more immediate joint warfighting needs of the combatant commands (COCOM). Given concerns that the military service-dominated system for developing capabilities was not meeting the most essential warfighter needs, in 2003, DOD created the Joint Capabilities Integration and Development System (JCIDS) to guide the development of capabilities from a joint perspective. DOD's Joint Requirements Oversight Council (JROC) oversees JCIDS and participates in the development of joint requirements, which includes the identification and analysis and synthesis of capability gaps and the JROC's subsequent validation of capability needs through JCIDS. Following stakeholder collaboration and deliberations, the JROC makes recommendations to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who advises the Secretary of Defense about which capabilities to invest in as part of DOD's budget process. Before making investment decisions, the services consider the validated capabilities during their planning, programming, and budgeting processes and make decisions among competing investments. In the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act of …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "General aviation accounts for three-quarters of U.S. air traffic, from small propeller planes to large jets, operating among nearly 19,000 airports. While most security operations are left to private airport operators, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), provides guidance on threats and vulnerabilities. In 2004, TSA issued suggested security enhancements that airports could implement voluntarily. Unlike commercial airports, in most cases general aviation airports are not required to implement specific security measures. GAO was asked to perform onsite assessments at selected airports with general aviation operations to determine what physical security measures they have to prevent unauthorized access. With advance notice, GAO investigators overtly visited a nonrepresentative selection of 13 airports, based on TSA-determined risk factors. Three of the airports also serve commercial aviation and are therefore subject to TSA security regulations. Using TSA's voluntary recommendations and GAO investigators' security expertise, GAO determined whether certain security measures were in place. GAO also requested documentation of incidents of unauthorized access. Results of GAO's assessments cannot be projected to all general aviation airports and are not meant to imply that the …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Landmines and other explosive remnants of war cause thousands of casualties worldwide each year. Since 1993, the United States--through the Department of State's (State) Humanitarian Mine Action Program--has contributed funding to more than 80 countries, providing tens of millions of dollars annually to rid the world of landmines and other explosive remnants of war. In 2006, to address the counter-improvised explosive device (IED) threat against U.S. military forces, the Department of Defense (DOD) established the Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). Through fiscal year 2010, Congress has appropriated more than $17 billion to JIEDDO to quickly develop and field counter-IED solutions. In the committee report accompanying the House of Representatives' version of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2011, the House Armed Services Committee directed that we review the applicability of JIEDDO initiatives to humanitarian demining efforts. To respond to the requirements of this mandate, we addressed the following questions: (1) What JIEDDO-supported technologies have DOD identified that could be applicable to humanitarian demining? and (2) To what extent does coordination occur (a) within DOD and (b) between DOD and State regarding JIEDDO-supported technologies that could be …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. military depends heavily on computer networks, and potential adversaries see cyberwarfare as an opportunity to pose a significant threat at low cost---a few programmers could cripple an entire information system. The Department of Defense (DOD) created U.S. Cyber Command to counter cyber threats, and tasked the military services with providing support. GAO examined the extent to which DOD and U.S. Cyber Command have identified for the military services the (1) roles and responsibilities, (2) command and control relationships, and (3) mission requirements and capabilities to enable them to organize, train, and equip for cyberspace operations. GAO reviewed relevant plans, policies, and guidance, and interviewed key DOD and military service officials regarding cyberspace operations."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Protective Service (FPS) is a fee-funded agency in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responsible for providing physical security to over 9,000 federal facilities. In 2003 FPS transferred to DHS from the General Services Administration and for the first time was to fully recover its costs. GAO recently reported that stakeholders were concerned about FPS's ability to determine security costs, and the strategies used to address funding challenges had adverse effects on FPS. In this context, Congress directed GAO to evaluate FPS's resource levels. This report (1) analyzes FPS's fee design and proposed alternatives, and (2) examines how FPS's security fees challenge FPS and customer agency budget formulation and execution. GAO reviewed legislation and agency documentation and interviewed FPS and customer agency officials in headquarters and four FPS regions."

This presentation discusses the University of North Texas (UNT) Libraries' Digital Library collection. It showcases the collections included in the UNT Digital Library, the statistics of use, and highlights the UNT Scholarly Works institutional repository.

This report discusses the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which provides a statutory framework by which government agencies may, when gathering foreign intelligence investigation, obtain authorization to conduct electronic surveillance or physical searches, utilize pen registers and trap and trace devices, or access specified business records and other tangible things. Authorization for such activities is typically obtained via a court order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), a specialized court created to act as a neutral judicial decision maker in the context of FISA.

This report provides background information and potential issues and options for Congress relating to the reauthorization of Ex-Im Bank. The scope of this report is limited to Ex-Im Bank reauthorization issues.

Sub-Saharan Africa, the world's poorest region, receives over a quarter of all U.S. bilateral foreign assistance. Aid to Africa more than quadrupled over the past decade, primarily due to sizable increases in global health spending during the Bush Administration and more measured increases in development, economic, and security assistance. The Obama Administration's FY2012 bilateral Africa aid budget request, at $7.8 billion, represents an increase of roughly 10% compared to FY2010, albeit at a more restrained growth rate than in previous years (see "The FY2012 Request by the Numbers"). FY2011 enacted levels are not yet available by region. The proposed increases are concentrated in the areas of health, governance, and agriculture.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to persons authorized to control the disposition of the remains of certain members of the United States armed forces.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the operation, powers, and duties of ship channel districts.

We introduce a probabilistic approach to the problem of counting dwarf satellites around host galaxies in databases with limited redshift information. This technique is used to investigate the occurrence of satellites with luminosities similar to the Magellanic Clouds around hosts with properties similar to the Milky Way in the object catalog of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Our analysis uses data from SDSS Data Release 7, selecting candidate Milky-Way-like hosts from the spectroscopic catalog and candidate analogs of the Magellanic Clouds from the photometric catalog. Our principal result is the probability for a Milky-Way-like galaxy to host N{sub sat} close satellites with luminosities similar to the Magellanic Clouds. We find that 81 percent of galaxies like the Milky Way have no such satellites within a radius of 150 kpc, 11 percent have one, and only 3.5 percent of hosts have two. The probabilities are robust to changes in host and satellite selection criteria, background-estimation technique, and survey depth. These results demonstrate that the Milky Way has significantly more satellites than a typical galaxy of its luminosity; this fact is useful for understanding the larger cosmological context of our home galaxy.

In this contribution we describe computational tools that permit the evaluation of multi-loop scattering amplitudes in N = 8 supergravity, in terms of amplitudes in N = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory. We also discuss the remarkable ultraviolet behavior of N = 8 supergravity, which follows from these amplitudes, and is as good as that of N = 4 super-Yang-Mills theory through at least four loops.

In this paper, we estimate the emittance growth in the LHeC recirculating Linac, the lattice design of which is presented in another paper of IPAC10 proceedings. The possible sources for emittance growth included here are: energy spread from RF acceleration in the SRF (superconducting RF) linac together with large chromatic effects from the lattice, and synchrotron radiation (SR) fluctuations in the recirculating arcs. 6-D multi-particle tracking is launched to calculate the emittance from the statistical point of view. The simulation results are also compared with a theoretical estimation.

A second-generation monolithic silicon radiation sensor has been built and characterized. This pixel detector has CMOS circuitry fabricated directly in the high-resistivity floatzone substrate. The bulk is fully depleted from bias applied to the backside diode. Within the array, PMOS pixel circuitry forms the first stage amplifiers. Full CMOS circuitry implementing further amplification as well as column and row logic is located in the periphery of the pixel array. This allows a sparse-field readout scheme where only pixels with signals above a certain threshold are readout. We describe the fabrication process, circuit design, system performance, and results of gamma-ray radiation tests.

In this paper, we present a lattice design for the Large Hadron Electron Collider (LHeC) recirculating linac. The recirculating linac consists of one roughly 3-km long linac hosting superconducting RF (SRF) accelerating cavities, two arcs and one transfer line for the recirculation. In two passes through a pulsed SRF linac the electron beam can get a maximum energy of 140 GeV. Alternatively, in the Energy Recovery Linac (ERL) option the beam passes through a CW linac four times (two passes for acceleration and two for deceleration) for a maximum energy of 60 GeV.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the authority of the Public Utility Commission of Texas to participate in a certain proceedings before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the liability of landowners for damage or injury, including liability for harm to a trespasser.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the repeal of the certification process for personnel service owners and the regulation of personnel services.