A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. ports, waterways, and coastal approaches are part of a system handling more than $700 billion in merchandise annually. With the many possible threats--including transportation and detonation of weapons of mass destruction, suicide attacks against vessels, and others--in the maritime domain, awareness of such threats could give the Coast Guard advance notice to help detect, deter, interdict, and defeat them and protect the U.S. homeland and economy. GAO was asked to review the Coast Guard's efforts to achieve awareness about activity in the maritime domain. This report addresses: the extent to which the Coast Guard (1) has vessel tracking systems in place, (2) can use these systems to track vessels that may be threats, and (3) has coordinated the development and implementation of these systems. To answer these questions, GAO analyzed relevant statutes, regulations, and plans for vessel tracking systems, compared the roles of the planned systems, and interviewed appropriate officials."

This report discusses the Export-Import Bank (Ex-In Bank), the chief U.S. government agency that helps finance American exports of manufactured goods and services with the objective of contributing to the employment of U.S. workers. This report discusses the Bank's budget and related legislation, including the Omnibus Appropriations Act of 2009, signed by President Barack Obama and authorizing spending limitations for the Bank.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since September 11, 2001, Congress has provided about $808 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) for the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in addition to funding in DOD's base budget. Prior GAO reports have found DOD's reported GWOT cost data unreliable and found problems with transparency over certain costs. In response, DOD has made several changes to its cost-reporting procedures. Congress has shown interest in increasing the transparency of DOD's cost reporting and funding requests for GWOT. Under the Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations on his own initiative, GAO assessed (1) DOD's progress in improving the accuracy and reliability of its GWOT cost reporting, and (2) DOD's methodology for reporting GWOT costs by contingency operation. For this engagement, GAO analyzed GWOT cost data and applicable guidance, as well as DOD's corrective actions."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Hurricane Katrina severely tested disaster management at the federal, state, and local levels and revealed weaknesses in the basic elements--leadership, capabilities, and accountability--of preparing for, responding to, and recovering from disasters. In its 2006 work on the response to Hurricane Katrina, GAO noted that these elements needed to be strengthened. In October 2006, Congress enacted the Post-Katrina Act to address issues identified in the response to Hurricane Katrina. GAO reported in November 2008 that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had at least preliminary efforts under way to address most of the provisions, but also identified a number of areas that required further action. This statement discusses select issues within the basic elements related to (1) findings from the response to Hurricane Katrina, (2) provisions of the Post-Katrina Act, and (3) specific actions DHS and FEMA have taken to implement these provisions. GAO's comments are based on GAO products issued from February 2006 through November 2008, and selected updates in March 2009. To obtain updated information, GAO consulted program officials."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony summarizes observations regarding export promotion challenges from a range of work that GAO has conducted for Congress over the past 4 years. Congress has expressed longstanding concerns regarding several aspects of U.S. export promotion efforts, especially interagency coordination, meeting the needs of small businesses, and effectively enforcing trade agreements."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal 2008, the Department of the Interior (Interior) collected over $22 billion in royalties and other fees related to oil and gas. Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Minerals Management Service (MMS) manage federal onshore and offshore oil and gas leases, respectively. Acquiring a federal lease gives the lessee the rights to explore for and develop the oil and gas resources under the lease, including drilling wells and building pipelines that may lead to oil and gas production. This statement focuses on findings from a number of recent GAO reports on federal oil and gas management. GAO has made numerous recommendations to Interior, which the agency generally agreed with and is taking steps to address. However, two important issues remain unresolved. Specifically, GAO made one recommendation and one matter for Congressional consideration that together call for a comprehensive re-evaluation of how Interior manages federal oil and gas resources. To-date, Interior has not undertaken such a comprehensive review and until this is done, the public cannot have reasonable assurance that federal oil and gas resources are being appropriately managed for the public good."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Much offshore financial activity by individual U.S. taxpayers is not illegal, but numerous schemes have been devised to hide the true ownership of funds held offshore and income moving between the United States and offshore jurisdictions. In recent years, GAO has reported on several aspects of offshore financial activity and the tax compliance and tax administration challenges such activity raises for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). To assist the Congress in understanding these issues and to support Congress's consideration of possible legislative changes, GAO was asked to summarize its recent work describing individual offshore tax noncompliance, factors that enable offshore noncompliance, and the challenges that U.S. taxpayers' financial activity in offshore jurisdictions pose for IRS. This statement was primarily drawn from previously issued GAO products."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Although the pay gap between men and women in the U.S. workforce has narrowed since the 1980s, numerous studies have found that a disparity still exists. In 2003, we found that women in the general workforce earned, on average, 20 cents less for every dollar earned by men in 2000 when differences in work patterns, industry, occupation, marital status, and other factors were taken into account. Other research indicates that this disparity existed for federal workers as well. For example, a 1998 study showed that the pay gap between men and women in the federal workforce decreased significantly between 1976 and 1995, but in 1995 white women still earned 14 cents less for every dollar earned by white men and African-American women earned 8 cents less for every dollar earned by African-American men after available factors related to pay were taken into account. In light of concerns that a pay gap may continue to exist between men and women in the workplace, Congress asked us to examine pay disparity issues and the role the federal government has played in enforcing anti-discrimination laws. In agreement with Congressional …

This white paper describes the state of digital collections resulting from NSF funded research in biodiversity, ecology, environmental health, environmental education, and environmental resource management.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Bi-weekly student newspaper from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas that includes campus news and local news of interest to students along with advertising.

This report provides a brief overview of Brazil's case against the U.S. cotton program, the evolution and current status of the case, and the potential role for congress.

This report discusses about Farm Commodity Proposals in the FY2010 Budget and Farms with $500,000 of Sales.

The report list contribution details and fee details with ActBlue.

An invoice from Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus to ActBlue of $75.00 on March 17, 2009.

A report for the Texas Stonewall Democratic Caucus from their account with ActBlue. The report lists contribution summary of committee's contributions and fundraisers.

Deposit summary of $72.03 made on March 18, 2009.

In this four-year project (including one-year extension), the project director and his research team built a shock-wave-plasma apparatus to study shock wave dynamics in glow discharge plasmas in nitrogen and argon at medium pressure (1–20 Torr), carried out various plasma and shock diagnostics and measurements that lead to increased understanding of the shock wave acceleration phenomena in plasmas. The measurements clearly show that in the steady-state dc glow discharge plasma, at fixed gas pressure the shock wave velocity increases, its amplitude decreases, and the shock wave disperses non-linearly as a function of the plasma current. In the pulsed discharge plasma, at fixed gas pressure the shock wave dispersion width and velocity increase as a function of the delay between the switch-on of the plasma and shock-launch. In the afterglow plasma, at fixed gas pressure the shock wave dispersion width and velocity decrease as a function of the delay between the plasma switch-off and shock-launch. These changes are found to be opposite and reversing towards the room temperature value which is the initial condition for plasma ignition case. The observed shock wave properties in both igniting and afterglow plasmas correlate well with the inferred temperature changes in the two plasmas.

The objective of this work is to develop dense ceramic membranes for separating hydrogen from other gaseous components in a nongalvanic mode, i.e., without using an external power supply or electrical circuitry. The goal of this project is to develop dense hydrogen transport membranes (HTMs) that nongalvanically (i.e., without electrodes or external power supply) separate hydrogen from gas mixtures at commercially significant fluxes under industrially relevant operating conditions. HTMs will be used to separate hydrogen from gas mixtures such as the product streams from coal gasification, methane partial oxidation, and water-gas shift reactions. Potential ancillary uses of HTMs include dehydrogenation and olefin production, as well as hydrogen recovery in petroleum refineries and ammonia synthesis plants, the largest current users of deliberately produced hydrogen. This report describes progress that was made during Fy 2008 on the development of HTM materials.

Anwelt Heritage Apartments, LLC redeveloped a 120-year old mill complex into a mixed-use development in a lower-income neighborhood in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. Construction included 84 residential apartments rented as affordable housing to persons aged 62 and older. The Department of Energy (“DOE”) award was used as an essential component of financing the project to include the design and installation of a 200 ton geothermal system for space heating and cooling.

Individual raw data streams from instrumentation at the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) Program Climate Research Facility (ACRF) fixed and mobile sites are collected and sent to the Data Management Facility (DMF) at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) for processing in near real-time. Raw and processed data are then sent daily to the ACRF Archive, where they are made available to users. For each instrument, we calculate the ratio of the actual number of data records received daily at the Archive to the expected number of data records. The results are tabulated by (1) individual data stream, site, and month for the current year and (2) site and fiscal year (FY) dating back to 1998.

Dynamics in the excited ethylene cation C{sub 2}H{sub 4}{sup +} lead to isomerization to the ethylidene configuration (HC-CH{sub 3}){sup +}, which is predicted to be a transient configuration for electronic relaxation. With an intense femtosecond EUV (extreme ultraviolet) pump pulse to populate the excited state, and an NIR (near infrared) probe pulse to produce the fragments CH{sup +} and CH{sub 3}{sup +} (which provides a direct signature of ethylidene), we measure optimum fragment yields at a probe delay of 80 fs. Also, an H{sub 2}-stretch transient configuration, yielding H{sub 2}{sup +} upon probing, is found to succeed the ethylidene configuration. We find that a simple single- or double-decay model does not match the data, and we present a modified model (introduction of an isomerization delay of 50 {+-} 25 fs) that does provide agreement.

The Defense Waste Processing Facility at the Savannah River Site processes high-level radioactive waste from the processing of nuclear materials that contains dissolved and precipitated metals and radionuclides. Vitrification of this waste into borosilicate glass for ultimate disposal at a geologic repository involves chemically modifying the waste to make it compatible with the glass melter system. Pretreatment steps include removal of excess aluminum by dissolution and washing, and processing with formic and nitric acids to: (1) adjust the reduction-oxidation (redox) potential in the glass melter to reduce radionuclide volatility and improve melt rate; (2) adjust feed rheology; and (3) reduce by steam stripping the amount of mercury that must be processed in the melter. Elimination of formic acid pretreatment has been proposed to eliminate the production of hydrogen in the pretreatment systems; alternative reductants would be used to control redox. However, elimination of formic acid would result in significantly more mercury in the melter feed; the current specification is no more than 0.45 wt%, while the maximum expected prior to pretreatment is about 2.5 wt%. An engineering study has been undertaken to estimate the effects of eliminating mercury removal on the melter offgas system performance. A homogeneous gas-phase oxidation model …