Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "With poverty rates and unemployment on the rise, the federal system of income, employment, and family supports has become increasingly important to a growing number of Americans. Due to their higher rates of poverty, certain minority groups are more likely than their nonminority counterparts to be represented in these programs and ancillary programs that serve low-income workers and families. The health of these programs is, therefore, especially important to these groups. In addition, because African-American children are more likely than other children to be raised in single-parent households, child support enforcement and programs that promote greater paternal involvement are particularly relevant for African-American families. Due to interest in the support provided to low-income individuals, and African-Americans in particular, Congress asked us to summarize GAO reports on programs and policies supporting low-income workers and families through (1) income supports, (2) worker training, (3) programs involving fathers, and (4) care and protection of children."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Census Bureau (Bureau) is tasked with conducting an accurate count of people living in dwellings known as group quarters as part of the 2010 Census. Group quarters consist of college dormitories, prisons, nursing homes, and other facilities typically owned or managed by an entity providing housing, services, or both for the residents. During the 2000 Census, for a variety of reasons, group quarters were sometimes counted more than once, missed, or included in the wrong location. As requested, this testimony will focus on (1) the extent to which the Bureau has strengthened its procedures for counting group quarters compared to the 2000 Census, and (2) particular challenges and opportunities for an accurate group quarters count in Brooklyn. The testimony is based on previously issued and ongoing GAO work in New York and elsewhere."

The U.S. Constitution, in Article I, Section 6, authorizes compensation for Members of Congress "ascertained by law, and paid out of the Treasury of the United States." Throughout American history, Congress has relied on three different methods in adjusting salaries for Members. Standalone legislation was last used to provide increases in 1990 and 1991. It was the only method used by Congress for many years. The second method, under which annual adjustments took effect automatically unless disapproved by Congress, was established in 1975. A third method for adjusting Member pay is congressional action pursuant to recommendations from the President, based on the recommendations of the Citizens' Commission on Public Service and Compensation established in the 1989 Ethics Reform Act.

The research project focuses on the following topics: a) removal of artifacts in the Doppler spectra from the ARM cloud radars, b) development of the second generation Active Remote Sensing of Cloud Layers (ARSCL) cloud data products, and c) evaluation of ARM cloud property retrievals within the framework of the EarthCARE simulator. We continue to pursue research on areas related to radiative transfer, atmospheric heating rates and related dynamics (topics of interest to the ARM science community at this time) and to contribute on an ad-hoc basis to the science of other ARM-supported principal investigators.

Fifth chapter from "A Compendium of Reactor Technology" discussing the history and design of lead-cooled fast reactors in nine sections: Lead-cooled Fast Reactor (LFR) Development, Design Criteria and General Specifications, Neutronics, Lead Properties, Compatibility of Structural Materials with Lead, Core, Reactor System, Decay Heat Removal System, and Nuclear Island.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held February 22, 2010 in Washington D.C.This hearing includes testimony from a panel of witnesses representing governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations on coordinating reconstruction and stabilization in contingency operations.

A Demonstration tokamak (Demo) is an essential next step toward a magnetic-fusion based reactor. One based on advanced-tokamak (AT) plasmas is especially appealing because of its relative compactness. However, it will require many plasma measurements to provide the necessary signals to feed to ancillary systems to protect the device and control the plasma. This note addresses the question of how much intrusion into the blanket system will be required to allow the measurements needed to provide the information required for plasma control. All diagnostics will require, at least, the same shielding designs as planned for ITER, while having the capability to maintain their calibration through very long pulses. Much work is required to define better the measurement needs and the quantity and quality of the measurements that will have to be made, and how they can be integrated into the other tokamak structures.

Tall wind turbines, with hub heights at 80 m or above, can extract large amounts of energy from the atmosphere because they are likely to encounter higher wind speeds, but they face challenges given the complex nature of wind flow and turbulence at these heights in the boundary layer. Depending on whether the boundary layer is stable, neutral, or convective, the mean wind speed, direction, and turbulence properties may vary greatly across the tall turbine swept area (40 to 120 m AGL). This variability can cause tall turbines to produce difference amounts of power during time periods with identical hub height wind speeds. Using meteorological and power generation data from a West Coast North American wind farm over a one-year period, our study synthesizes standard wind park observations, such as wind speed from turbine nacelles and sparse meteorological tower observations, with high-resolution profiles of wind speed and turbulence from a remote sensing platform, to quantify the impact of atmospheric stability on power output. We first compare approaches to defining atmospheric stability. The standard, limited, wind farm operations enable the calculation only of a wind shear exponent ({alpha}) or turbulence intensity (I{sub U}) from cup anemometers, while the presence at this …

Radiochemistry-based techniques will be an important complement to x-ray implosion diagnostics. Simulations demonstrate the value of alpha-induced or deuteron-induced reactions as a direct measurement of static mix contamination in DT-filled ignition capsules. In this proceedings we examine to what extent neutron-induced reactions might be highly correlated with the energetically down-scattered neutron fraction which is, in turn, related to the critical quantity of fuel areal density, {rho}R. Although alpha and deuteron reactions are highly suppressed in HT/D-filled capsules, neutron-induced reactions produce robust abundances and 2% measurements of the relevant radiological ratios is achievable. We conclude that radiochemical data are strongly correlated with the down-scattered fraction and fuel areal density. Unknown physics, primarily uncertainties in the direct T-T fusion neutron cross section and, to a lesser extent, various radiochemical production cross sections are important but calibration shots can be used to reduce these errors. The primary advantage of radiochemistry remains - it is the only technique that samples down-scattered neutrons from the entire capsule during the burn. In particular radiochemistry correlated with other diagnostics can be used to minimize experimental uncertainties and thus maximize gain.

In November of 2008, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the North Slope Borough (NSB) committed funding to develop a drilling plan to test the presence of hydrates in the producing formation of at least one of the Barrow Gas Fields, and to develop a production surveillance plan to monitor the behavior of hydrates as dissociation occurs. This drilling and surveillance plan was supported by earlier studies in Phase 1 of the project, including hydrate stability zone modeling, material balance modeling, and full-field history-matched reservoir simulation, all of which support the presence of methane hydrate in association with the Barrow Gas Fields. This Phase 2 of the project, conducted over the past twelve months focused on selecting an optimal location for a hydrate test well; design of a logistics, drilling, completion and testing plan; and estimating costs for the activities. As originally proposed, the project was anticipated to benefit from industry activity in northwest Alaska, with opportunities to share equipment, personnel, services and mobilization and demobilization costs with one of the then-active exploration operators. The activity level dropped off, and this benefit evaporated, although plans for drilling of development wells in the BGF's matured, offering significant synergies and cost savings …

We study the universality of the transverse momentum dependent parton distributions at small-x, by comparing the initial/final state interaction effects in dijet-correlation in pA collisions with that in deep inelastic lepton nucleus scattering. We demonstrate the non-universality by an explicit calculation in a particular model where the multiple gauge boson exchange contributions are summed up to all orders. We furthercomment on the implications of our results on the theoretical interpretation of di-hadron correlation in dA collisions in terms of the saturation phenomena in deep inelastic lepton nucleus scattering.

This report discusses The National Commission on Children and Disasters whose purpose is to assess the needs of children in the preparation for, response to, and recovery from natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters.

This report highlights several reasons for the expansion of the federal government; discuss a few definitions of oversight; spotlight three essential purposes of oversight; comment upon a few oversight laws and rules; review several important oversight techniques; and identify several incentives and disincentives to the conduct of congressional oversight. The report concludes with summary observations.

This report describes Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) assistance for the repair and reconstruction of disaster-damaged highways and bridges or catastrophic failures (such as a bridge collapse).

This report discusses historical, current, and projected discretionary spending trends. It also describes how current discretionary spending trends reflect national priorities. Discretionary spending is provided in, and controlled by, annual appropriations acts, which fund many of the routine activities commonly associated with such federal government functions as running executive branch agencies, congressional offices and agencies, and international operations of the government.

This report discusses legislation enacted by the 111th Congress to address funding, operations, and benefit appeal procedures within the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veteran Claims (CAVC).

This report discusses the Technology Innovation Program (TIP) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which is designed "to support, promote, and accelerate innovation in the United States through high-risk, high-reward research in areas of critical national need," according to the authorizing legislation. Grants are provided to small and medium-sized firms for individual projects or joint ventures with other research organizations.

This report examines recent political and economic developments in Costa Rica as well as issues in U.S.-Costa Rica relations.

This report presents a summary of trade negotiations and the proposed U.S.-Panama free trade agreement (FTA). The proposed U.S.-Panama FTA is a comprehensive agreement. Some 88% of U.S. commercial and industrial exports would become duty-free upon implementation, with remaining tariffs phased out over a 10-year period.

This report provides information on the Lisbon Treaty and possible U.S.-EU implications that may be of interest to the 112th Congress.

CgWind is a high-fidelity large eddy simulation (LES) tool designed to meet the modeling needs of wind turbine and wind park engineers. This tool combines several advanced computational technologies in order to model accurately the complex and dynamic nature of wind energy applications. The composite grid approach provides high-quality structured grids for the efficient implementation of high-order accurate discretizations of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. Composite grids also provide a natural mechanism for modeling bodies in relative motion and complex geometry. Advanced algorithms such as matrix-free multigrid, compact discretizations and approximate factorization will allow CgWind to perform highly resolved calculations efficiently on a wide class of computing resources. Also in development are nonlinear LES subgrid-scale models required to simulate the many interacting scales present in large wind turbine applications. This paper outlines our approach, the current status of CgWind and future development plans.

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

Broad Funding Opportunity Announcement Project: FloDesign Wind Turbine’s innovative wind turbine, inspired by the design of jet engines, could deliver 300% more power than existing wind turbines of the same rotor diameter by extracting more energy over a larger area. FloDesign Wind Turbine’s unique shrouded design expands the wind capture area, and the mixing vortex downstream allows more energy to flow through the rotor without stalling the turbine. The unique rotor and shrouded design also provide significant opportunity for mass production and simplified assembly, enabling mid-scale turbines (approximately 100 kW) to produce power at a cost that is comparable to larger-scale conventional turbines.

Despite recent advances in named entity extraction technologies, state-of-the-art extraction tools achieve insufficient accuracy rates for practical use in many operational settings. However, they are not generally prone to the same types of error, suggesting that substantial improvements may be achieved via appropriate combinations of existing tools, provided their behavior can be accurately characterized and quantified. In this paper, we present an inference methodology for the aggregation of named entity extraction technologies that is founded upon a black-box analysis of their respective error processes. This method has been shown to produce statistically significant improvements in extraction relative to standard performance metrics and to mitigate the weak performance of entity extractors operating under suboptimal conditions. Moreover, this approach provides a framework for quantifying uncertainty and has demonstrated the ability to reconstruct the truth when majority voting fails.