Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) relies greatly on contractors to support its current operations and is likely to continue to depend on contractors in support of future operations. As of December 2009, DOD estimated that over 207,000 contractor personnel were supporting operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. DOD expects to increase the number of contractors as more troops deploy to Afghanistan. The use of contractors in contingencies has challenged DOD in overseeing and managing contractors. This testimony addresses (1) the challenges DOD faces when trying to provide management and oversight of contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan, and (2) the extent to which DOD has made progress in institutionalizing a department- wide approach to managing and overseeing operational contract support. Today's testimony is based on GAO's ongoing audit work in Iraq and Afghanistan, looking at planning for operational contract support and at DOD's efforts to manage and oversee contractors, as well as on recently published related GAO reports and testimonies."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Contractors provide a broad range of support to U.S. forces deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, with the number of contractors at times exceeding the number of military personnel in each country. The Department of Defense (DOD) has acknowledged shortcomings in how the role of contractors was addressed in its planning for Iraq and Afghanistan. In its report accompanying the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2009, the Senate Armed Services Committee directed GAO to assess DOD's development of contract support plans. This report examines (1) what progress DOD has made in developing operational contract support annexes for its operation plans, (2) the extent to which contract requirements are included in other sections of operation plans, and (3) DOD's progress in establishing a long-term capability to include operational contract support requirements in operation plans. GAO reviewed DOD policies, selected operation plans and annexes, and interviewed officials at the combatant commands, the Joint Staff, and Office of the Secretary of Defense."

This report begins by discussing the structure of agency travel card programs, and then discusses weaknesses in agency controls that have contributed to waste, fraud, and abuse. It then examines relevant legislation introduced or enacted in the 111th Congress, including the Government Charge Card Abuse Prevention Act of 2009 (H.R. 2189 and S. 942), and concludes with observations on the information available to Congress for oversight of agency travel card programs.

The adsorption of water on KBr thin films evaporated onto SiO2 was investigated as a function of relative humidity (RH) by ambient pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. At 30percent RH adsorbed water reaches a coverage of approximately one monolayer. As the humidity continues to increase, the coverage of water remains constant or increases very slowly until 60percent RH, followed by a rapid increase up to 100percent RH. At low RH a significant number of the Br atoms are lost due to irradiation damage. With increasing humidity solvation increases ion mobility and gives rise to a partial recovery of the Br/K ratio. Above 60percent RH the increase of the Br/K ratio accelerates. Above the deliquescence point (85percent RH), the thickness of the water layer continues to increase and reaches more than three layers near saturation. The enhancement of the Br/K ratio at this stage is roughly a factor 2.3 on a 0.5 nm KBr film, indicating a strong preferential segregation of Br ions to the surface of the thin saline solution on SiO2.

This report summarizes the activities of the INRA Water Research Consortium (IWRC) for the period beginning September 15, 2005 and ending December 16, 2010. This report compares accomplishments to project objectives, documents the activities associated with this project, and lists products developed during the course of the project. The Water Resources Research Needs Assessment team received funding from the Inland Northwest Research Alliance Water Resources Steering Committee to facilitate a structured needs assessment process that could provide a basis for future targeted research efforts to improve regional water resources management in the Inland Northwest region. The original INRA proposal specifically mentions the need to conduct a detailed assessment of the information and research needs of policy makers and water user groups during a period of increasing competition for scarce water supplies. A particular focus of this assessment would be to understand what types of research might facilitate water resource management during periods of drought. The specific goals of the Needs Assessment project were to: (1) Quickly ascertain the perceptions of diverse stakeholders in this region; (2) Condense this complex information into a format that can be shared with the INRA scientific panel, and (3) Develop of a realistic set of …

3s{sub 1/2} - 3p{sub 3/2} and 3p{sub 1/2} - 3d{sub 3/2} transitions have been studied in potassium-like W{sup 55+} through neon-like W{sup 64}+ ions at the electron-beam ion trap facility in Livermore. The wavelengths of the lines have been measured in high resolution relative to well known reference lines from oxygen and nitrogen ions. Using the high-energy SuperEBIT electron-beam ion trap and an R = 44.3 m grazing-incidence soft x-ray spectrometer, the lines were observed with a cryogenic charge-coupled device camera. The wavelength data for the sodium-like and magnesium-like tungsten lines are compared with theoretical predictions for ions along the isoelectronic sequences.

This technical memorandum is intended to provide readers with information that may be useful in understanding the purposes, performance, and outcomes of the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Weatherization Assistance Program (Weatherization). Weatherization has been in operation for over thirty years and is the nation's largest single residential energy efficiency program. Its primary purpose, established by law, is 'to increase the energy efficiency of dwellings owned or occupied by low-income persons, reduce their total residential energy expenditures, and improve their health and safety, especially low-income persons who are particularly vulnerable such as the elderly, the handicapped, and children.' The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act PL111-5 (ARRA), passed and signed into law in February 2009, committed $5 Billion over two years to an expanded Weatherization Assistance Program. This has created substantial interest in the program, the population it serves, the energy and cost savings it produces, and its cost-effectiveness. This memorandum is intended to address the need for this kind of information. Statistically valid answers to many of the questions surrounding Weatherization and its performance require comprehensive evaluation of the program. DOE is undertaking precisely this kind of independent evaluation in order to ascertain program effectiveness and to improve its performance. Results …

This report will examine the legal issues raised by wellness programs, including discussions of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) nondiscrimination rules, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), other employment discrimination laws such as the Age Discrimination in Employment Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as Medicaid and applicable tax code provisions.

Over the last decade there has been significant progress in developing the concepts and technologies needed to produce, capture, accelerate and collide high intensity beams of muons. At present, a high-luminosity multi-TeV muon collider presents a viable option for the next generation of lepton-lepton collider, which is believed to be needed to fully explore high energy physics in the era following the LHC discoveries. This paper briefly reviews the status of the accelerator R&D, addresses the question of the feasibility of a Muon Collider, what needs to be done to prove it and presents projected timeline of the project.

The observed increase in global mean surface temperature (GMST) over the industrial era is less than 40% of that expected from observed increases in long-lived greenhouse gases together with the best-estimate equilibrium climate sensitivity given by the 2007 Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Possible reasons for this warming discrepancy are systematically examined here. The warming discrepancy is found to be due mainly to some combination of two factors: the IPCC best estimate of climate sensitivity being too high and/or the greenhouse gas forcing being partially offset by forcing by increased concentrations of atmospheric aerosols; the increase in global heat content due to thermal disequilibrium accounts for less than 25% of the discrepancy, and cooling by natural temperature variation can account for only about 15%. Current uncertainty in climate sensitivity is shown to preclude determining the amount of future fossil fuel CO2 emissions that would be compatible with any chosen maximum allowable increase in GMST; even the sign of such allowable future emissions is unconstrained. Resolving this situation by empirical determination of Earth’s climate sensitivity from the historical record over the industrial period or through use of climate models whose accuracy is evaluated by their performance over …

This report develops innovative and efficient methodologies and practical procedures to determine the wide-area security region of a power system, which take into consideration all types of system constraints including thermal, voltage, voltage stability, transient and potentially oscillatory stability limits in the system. The approach expands the idea of transmission system nomograms to a multidimensional case, involving multiple system limits and parameters such as transmission path constraints, zonal generation or load, etc., considered concurrently. The security region boundary is represented using its piecewise approximation with the help of linear inequalities (so called hyperplanes) in a multi-dimensional space, consisting of system parameters that are critical for security analyses. The goal of this approximation is to find a minimum set of hyperplanes that describe the boundary with a given accuracy. Methodologies are also developed to use the security hyperplanes, pre-calculated offline, to determine system security margins in real-time system operations, to identify weak elements in the system, and to calculate key contributing factors and sensitivities to determine the best system controls in real time and to assist in developing remedial actions and transmission system enhancements offline . A prototype program that automates the simulation procedures used to build the set of security …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO and others have shown that successful organizations use strategic workforce planning to help meet present and future mission requirements. Although agency approaches to strategic workforce planning can vary depending on needs and mission, GAO and the Office of Personnel Management have identified six leading principles that workforce planning should address. The Appropriations Committees directed GAO to review workforce planning at the Department of the Interior (Interior), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. GAO examined (1) workforce planning processes used at each agency, (2) the extent to which these processes incorporate the six principles, and (3) how, if at all, the agencies link workforce planning with the annual budget allocation processes. GAO reviewed agencies' workforce plans, strategic plans, and budget documents and interviewed human resources, planning, and budget officials."

Young people these days are very concerned about the environment. There is also a great deal of interest in using technology to improve energy efficiency. Many physics students share these concerns and would like to find ways to use their scientific and quantitative skills to help overcome the environmental challenges that the world faces. This may be particularly true for female students. Showing physics students how they can contribute to environmental and energy solutions while doing scientific research which excites them is expected to attract more physicists to work on these very important problems and to retain more of the best and the brightest in physical science. This is a major thrust of the 'Gathering Storm' report, the 'American Competitiveness Initiative' report, and several other studies. With these concerns in mind, the American Physical Society (APS) and more specifically, the newly formed APS Topical Group on Energy Research and Applications (GERA), organized and conducted a one-day workshop for graduate students and post docs highlighting the contributions that physics-related research can make to meeting the nation's energy needs in environmentally friendly ways. A workshop program committee was formed and met four times by conference call to determine session topics and to …

When maintained under hydrate-stable conditions, methane hydrate in laboratory samples is often considered a stable and immobile solid material. Currently, there do not appear to be any studies in which the long-term redistribution of hydrates in sediments has been investigated in the laboratory. These observations are important because if the location of hydrate in a sample were to change over time (e.g. by dissociating at one location and reforming at another), the properties of the sample that depend on hydrate saturation and pore space occupancy would also change. Observations of hydrate redistribution under stable conditions are also important in understanding natural hydrate deposits, as these may also change over time. The processes by which solid hydrate can move include dissociation, hydrate-former and water migration in the gas and liquid phases, and hydrate formation. Chemical potential gradients induced by temperature, pressure, and pore water or host sediment chemistry can drive these processes. A series of tests were performed on a formerly natural methane-hydrate-bearing core sample from the BPX-DOE-USGS Mount Elbert Gas Hydrate Stratigraphic Test Well, in order to observe hydrate formation and morphology within this natural sediment, and changes over time using X-ray computed tomography (CT). Long-term observations (over several weeks) …

Aligned Co wires grown on Pt(997) under ultra-high vacuum conditions have been capped successfully by the epitaxial growth of Au monolayers (ML) at room temperature. The samples were kept under vacuum except when transferring between apparatus or when making some of the measurements. No degradation of the Co wires was detected during the measurements. The magneto-optic response of the system was measured using X-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) at the Co L{sub 2,3} edge and reflection anisotropy spectroscopy (RAS) at near normal incidence, which is sensitive to the normal component of the out-of-plane magnetization via the Kerr effect (MOKE). Capping the wires significantly impacts their magnetic properties. Comparison of the magneto-optic response of the system at X-ray and optical energies reveals small differences that are attributed to the induced moment in the Pt substrate and Au capping layer not picked up by the element specific XMCD measurements. The sensitivity of RAS-MOKE is sufficient to allow the determination of the easy axis direction of the capped wires to within a few degrees. The results for a 6-atom-wide Co wire sample, capped with 6 ML of Au, are consistent with the capped wires possessing perpendicular magnetization.

Most interesting materials in nature are heterogeneous, so it is useful to have analytical techniques with spatial resolution sufficient to resolve these heterogeneities.This article presents the basics of X-ray photon-in/photon-out chemical imaging. This family of methods allows one to derive images reflectingthe chemical state of a given element in a complex sample, at micron or deep sub-micron scale. X-ray chemical imaging is relatively non-destructiveand element-selective, and requires minimal sample preparation. The article presents the basic concepts and some considerations of data takingand data analysis, along with some examples.

In 2007, we began to explore alternative x-ray sources for application to refraction-enhanced (phase contrast) x-ray radiography of cryogenic NIF ignition capsules containing frozen deuterium-tritium (D-T) ice layers. These radiographs are currently obtained using Kevex microfocus tubes as backlights, and for these sources the x-ray source size is approximately 5 {micro}m. As part of this exploration, we obtained refraction-enhanced radiographs of empty plastic capsules using the Janus laser facility at LLNL, demonstrating that even large ({approx} 100 {micro}m) sources can be utilized in refraction-enhanced radiography provided the source/sample distance is sufficiently large, and provided the final x-ray detector has sufficient spatial resolution. Essentially, in the current geometry, we rely on a small source to provide spatial resolution and on the source/sample distance to provide refraction contrast, but an equally useful alternative geometry is to use a large source and rely on fine detector spatial resolution to provide spatial resolution and on the sample/detector distance to provide refraction contrast.

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