A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank Act) required GAO to report on the relative independence, effectiveness, and expertise of the inspectors general (IG) established by the IG Act of 1978, as amended (IG Act), including IGs appointed by the President with Senate confirmation and those appointed by their agency heads in designated federal entities (DFE). GAO was also required to report on the effect that provisions in the Dodd-Frank Act have on IG independence. The objectives of this report are to provide information as reported by the IGs on (1) the implementation of provisions intended to enhance their independence in the IG Reform Act of 2008 (Reform Act), the IG Act, and the Dodd-Frank Act; (2) their measures of effectiveness, including oversight of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) funds; and (3) their expertise and qualifications in areas specified by the IG Act. GAO relied primarily on responses to its survey received from 62 IGs established by the IG Act. GAO also obtained information from the President's fiscal year 2011 budget, the IGs' annual report to the President for …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Composite materials, made by combining materials such as carbon fibers with epoxy, have been used in airplane components for decades. Although composites are lighter and stronger than most metals, their increasing use in commercial airplane structures such as the fuselage and wings has raised safety concerns. Boeing's 787 is the first mostly composite large commercial transport airplane to undergo the certification process. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) certify new airplane designs and evaluate the airworthiness of novel features--like composite structures--against existing safety standards, which are often based on the performance of metallic airplanes. In August 2011, FAA and EASA certified the 787, which is expected to enter commercial service in the fall of 2011. GAO was asked to review FAA's and EASA's certification processes and FAA's oversight of the composite airplanes once they enter service. GAO examined how FAA and EASA assessed the use of composite materials in the Boeing 787 fuselage and wings, and the extent to which FAA has addressed safety-related concerns associated with the repair and maintenance of composite airplanes. GAO reviewed certification documentation, conducted a …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Sexual harassment is a form of unlawful discrimination that can jeopardize the military's combat readiness and mission accomplishment by weakening interpersonal bonds and eroding unit cohesion. GAO was asked to examine the most current available data on sexual harassment in the military and to assess the Department of Defense's (DOD) efforts to address this issue. GAO evaluated the extent to which DOD (1) has developed and implemented policies and programs to help prevent and address incidents of sexual harassment involving servicemembers, (2) has visibility over the occurrence of sexual harassment involving servicemembers, and (3) provides oversight of its policies and programs for addressing incidents of sexual harassment. To conduct this review, GAO analyzed DOD and service policies and DOD's available sexual harassment complaint data. GAO also conducted small-group discussions and administered a nongeneralizable survey during site visits to six military installations."

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Bi-weekly student newspaper from Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

This report gives an overview of current intelligence issues of interest to the 112th Congress. It includes background and analysis including most recent development, ongoing Congressional concerns, specific issues for the 112th Congress, and a summary of related legislation from the 109th through the 112th Congresses.

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

This report discusses the CDBG program, which administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is the federal government’s largest and most widely available source of financial assistance to support state and local government-directed neighborhood revitalization, housing rehabilitation, and economic development activities.

The authors present time-resolved synchrotron x-ray diffraction to probe the {var_epsilon}-{delta} phase transition of iron during pulse-laser heating in a diamond anvil cell. The system utilizes a monochromatic synchrotron x-ray beam, a two-dimensional pixel array x-ray detector and a dual beam, double side laser-heating system. Multiple frames of the diffraction images are obtained in real-time every 22 ms over 500 ms of the entire pulse heating period. The results show the structural evolution of iron phases at 17 GPa, resulting in thermal expansion coefficient 1/V({Delta}V/{Delta}T){sub p} = 7.1 * 10{sup -6}/K for {var_epsilon}-Fe and 2.4 * 10{sup -5}/K for {gamma}-Fe, as well as the evidence for metastability of {gamma}-Fe at low temperatures below the {var_epsilon}-{gamma} phase boundary.

As high-performance computing approaches exascale, the existing I/O system design is having trouble keeping pace in both performance and scalability. We propose to address this challenge by adopting database principles and techniques in parallel I/O systems. First, we propose to adopt an array data model because many scientific applications represent their data in arrays. This strategy follows a cardinal principle from database research, which separates the logical view from the physical layout of data. This high-level data model gives the underlying implementation more freedom to optimize the physical layout and to choose the most effective way of accessing the data. For example, knowing that a set of write operations is working on a single multi-dimensional array makes it possible to keep the subarrays in a log structure during the write operations and reassemble them later into another physical layout as resources permit. While maintaining the high-level view, the storage system could compress the user data to reduce the physical storage requirement, collocate data records that are frequently used together, or replicate data to increase availability and fault-tolerance. Additionally, the system could generate secondary data structures such as database indexes and summary statistics. We expect the proposed Scientific Data Services approach …

The three-year project GPS-TTBP resulted in over 152 publications and 135 presentations. This summary focuses on the scientific progress made by the project team. A major focus of the project was on the physics intrinsic rotation in tokamaks. Progress included the first ever flux driven study of net intrinsic spin-up, mediated by boundary effects (in collaboration with CPES), detailed studies of the microphysics origins of the Rice scaling, comparative studies of symmetry breaking mechanisms, a pioneering study of intrinsic torque driven by trapped electron modes, and studies of intrinsic rotation generation as a thermodynamic engine. Validation studies were performed with C-Mod, DIII-D and CSDX. This work resulted in very successful completion of the FY2010 Theory Milestone Activity for OFES, and several prominent papers of the 2008 and 2010 IAEA Conferences. A second major focus was on the relation between zonal flow formation and transport non-locality. This culminated in the discovery of the ExB staircase - a conceptually new phenomenon. This also makes useful interdisciplinary contact with the physics of the PV staircase, well-known in oceans and atmospheres. A third topic where progress was made was in the simulation and theory of turbulence spreading. This work, now well cited, is important …

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Ramping events, or rapid changes of wind speed and wind direction over a short period of time, present challenges to power grid operators in regions with significant penetrations of wind energy in the power grid portfolio. Improved predictions of wind power availability require adequate predictions of the timing of ramping events. For the ramping event investigated here, the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model was run at three horizontal resolutions in 'mesoscale' mode: 8100m, 2700m, and 900m. Two Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) schemes, the Yonsei University (YSU) and Mellor-Yamada-Janjic (MYJ) schemes, were run at each resolution as well. Simulations were not 'tuned' with nuanced choices of vertical resolution or tuning parameters so that these simulations may be considered 'out-of-the-box' tests of a numerical weather prediction code. Simulations are compared with sodar observations during a wind ramping event at a 'West Coast North America' wind farm. Despite differences in the boundary-layer schemes, no significant differences were observed in the abilities of the schemes to capture the timing of the ramping event. As collaborators have identified, the boundary conditions of these simulations probably dominate the physics of the simulations. They suggest that future investigations into characterization of ramping events employ ensembles of …

This document provides a detailed study of cost and materials that could be used to shield the detector material of the international Tonne-scale germanium neutrinoless double-beta decay experiment from hadronic particles from cosmic ray showers at the Earth's surface. This work was motivated by the need for a shield that minimizes activation of the enriched germanium during storage; in particular, when the detector material is being worked on at the detector manufacturer's facility. This work considers two options for shielding the detector material from cosmic ray particles. One option is to use a pre-existing structure already located near the detector manufacturer, such as Canberra Industries in Meriden, Connecticut. The other option is to build a shield onsite at a detector manufacturer's site. This paper presents a cost and efficiency analysis of such construction.

Meeting minutes of the Dallas Way meeting on September 21st including project matters discussed and members in attendance.

Weekly newspaper from Yoakum, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Student newspaper from St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas that includes campus news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Cuero, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Interview with John Fullinwider, who was a teacher and activist in Dallas. Fullinwider discusses growing up in Dallas, his work as an activist in both Austin and Dallas, his time as a teacher, and what he hopes for the future generations of students who want to make change happen.

Part two of an interview with Peter Johnson, who was an activist in Dallas. Johnson discusses his work, including the Operation Breadbasket food drives and hunger manifesto, protests, and the AAMAN program, which ran citizen-led investigations of drug dealers and buyers.

Daily newspaper from Sweetwater, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state, and campus news along with advertising.

Progress in research during this year elucidated the physics of precession resonance and its interaction with radial scattering to form phase space density granulations. Momentum theorems for drift wave-zonal flow systems involving precession resonance were derived. These are directly generalizable to energetic particle modes. A novel nonlinear, subcritical growth mechanism was identified, which has now been verified by simulation. These results strengthen the foundation of our understanding of transport in burning plasmas