A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal-state unemployment insurance (UI) program relies on state trust funds to hold enough reserves to meet benefit needs during economic downturns. The sufficiency of such "forward funding" has been a policy concern for decades, particularly during the recent recession, which has caused very high unemployment rates. While the economy added jobs in March 2010, unemployment remains very high and has continued to rise in most states, suggesting that state UI programs will continue to face serious financial challenges for at least the near future. This report (1) describes the current condition of state UI trust funds, (2) highlights policies or practices that have contributed to their conditions, and (3) identifies options for improving UI forward funding in the future. To address these questions, GAO analyzed statistics from the Department of Labor, reviewed applicable laws and regulations, interviewed state UI representatives and UI experts, and synthesized GAO's and others' findings to present policy options."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For tax year 2007, nonresident alien individuals filed about 634,000 Forms 1040NR, the U.S. Nonresident Alien Income Tax Return. IRS has not developed estimates for the extent of nonresident alien tax noncompliance because it often lacks information to distinguish between nonresident aliens and other filers, and examinations can be costly and difficult since many nonresident aliens would depart the country before IRS could examine their returns. IRS's outreach and education efforts have focused on presenting information on nonresident tax issues to a variety of audiences and making information available on its Web site and in its publications. Nevertheless, some nonresidents, their employers, and paid preparers may not be aware of nonresident alien tax rules, according to representatives of groups that work with employers and nonresidents to assist them in fulfilling their tax obligations. Other filing challenges exist. For example, individuals filing Forms 1040NR cannot file electronically. Also, nonresidents in the U.S. for less than 90 days who earn over $3,000 in compensation for services paid for by a foreign employer will likely have to file Form 1040NR, even if they owe no tax. The $3,000 exemption …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter formally transmits the briefing in response to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010 (Pub. L. No. 111-84), which required GAO to submit a report on rare earth materials in the defense supply chain to the Committees on Armed Services of the Senate and House of Representatives by April 1, 2010."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) and other executive agencies increasingly deploy civilians in support of contingency operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Prior GAO reports show that the use of deployed civilians has raised questions about the potential for differences in policies on compensation and medical benefits. When these civilians are deployed and serve side by side, differences in compensation or medical benefits may become more apparent and could adversely impact morale. This statement is based on GAO's 2009 congressionally requested report, which compared agency policies and identified any issues in policy or implementation regarding (1) compensation, (2) medical benefits, and (3) identification and tracking of deployed civilians. GAO reviewed laws, policies, and guidance; interviewed responsible officials at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM); and conducted a survey of civilians deployed from the six agencies between January 1, 2006 and April 30, 2008. GAO made ten recommendations for agencies to take actions such as reviewing compensation laws and policies, establishing medical screening requirements, and creating mechanisms to assist and track deployed civilians. Seven of the agencies--including DOD-- generally agreed with these recommendations; U.S. Agency for International Development did not. …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO annually audits the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government (CFS). Congress and the President need reliable, useful, and timely financial and performance information to make sound decisions and conduct effective oversight of federal government programs and policies. The federal government began preparing the CFS 13 years ago. Over the years, certain material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting have prevented GAO from expressing an opinion on the accrual-based consolidated financial statements. Unless these weaknesses are adequately addressed, they will, among other things, continue to (1) hamper the federal government's ability to reliably report a significant portion of its assets, liabilities, costs, and other related information; and (2) affect the federal government's ability to reliably measure the full cost as well as the financial and nonfinancial performance of certain programs and activities. This testimony presents the results of GAO's audit of the CFS for fiscal year 2009 and discusses certain of the federal government's significant near- and long-term fiscal challenges."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To accomplish its mission of protecting about 9,000 federal facilities, the Federal Protective Service (FPS) currently has a budget of about $1 billion, about 1,225 full-time employees, and about 15,000 contract security guards. FPS obligated $659 million for guard services in fiscal year 2009. This testimony is based on our report issued on April 13, 2010, and discusses challenges FPS continues to face in (1) managing its guard contractors and (2) overseeing guards deployed at federal facilities, and (3) the actions FPS has taken to address these challenges. To address these objectives, GAO conducted site visits at 6 of FPS's 11 regions; interviewed FPS officials, guards, and contractors, and analyzed FPS's contract files. GAO also reviewed new contract guard program guidance issued since our July 2009 report and observed guard inspections and penetration testing done by FPS."

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.

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

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

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

During the 2009 calendar year, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) provided health physics support for the Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Transparency Program for external and internal radiation protection. LLNL also provided technical expertise related to BDMS radioactive sources and Russian radiation safety regulatory compliance. For the calendar year 2009, there were 159 person-trips that required dose monitoring of the U.S. monitors. Of the 159 person-trips, 149 person-trips were SMVs and 10 person-trips were Transparency Monitoring Office (TMO) trips. There were 4 monitoring visits by TMO monitors to facilities other than UEIE and 10 to UEIE itself. LLNL's Hazard Control Department laboratories provided the dosimetry services for the HEU Transparency monitors. In 2009, the HEU Transparency activities in Russia were conducted in a radiologically safe manner for the HEU Transparency monitors in accordance with the expectations of the HEU Transparency staff, NNSA and DOE. The HEU Transparency Program now has over fifteen years of successful experience in developing and providing health and safety support in meeting its technical objectives.

Recommended 2{beta}(2{nu}) half-life values and their systematics were analyzed in the framework of a simple empirical approach. T{sub 1/2}{sup 2{nu}} {approx} 1/E{sup 8} trend has been observed for {sup 128,130}Te recommended values. This trend was used to predict T{sub 1/2}{sup 2{nu}} for all isotopes of interest. Current results were compared with other theoretical and experimental works.

Advanced Radiographic Capability (ARC) project at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is designed to produce energetic, ultrafast x-rays in the range of 70-100 keV for backlighting NIF targets. The chirped pulse amplification (CPA) laser system will deliver kilo-Joule pulses at an adjustable pulse duration from 1 ps to 50 ps. System complexity requires sophisticated simulation and modeling tools for design, performance prediction, and comprehension of experimental results. We provide a brief overview of ARC, present our main modeling tools, and describe important performance predictions. The laser system (Fig. 1) consists of an all-fiber front end, including chirped-fiber Bragg grating (CFBG) stretchers. The beam after the final fiber amplifier is split into two apertures and spatially shaped. The split beam first seeds a regenerative amplifier and is then amplified in a multi-pass Nd:glass amplifier. Next, the preamplified chirped pulse is split in time into four identical replicas and injected into one NIF Quad. At the output of the NIF beamline, each of the eight amplified pulses is compressed in an individual, folded, four-grating compressor. Compressor grating pairs have slightly different groove densities to enable compact folding geometry and eliminate adjacent beam cross-talk. Pulse duration is adjustable with a small, rack-mounted compressor …

This study investigates nitrate contamination of a deep municipal drinking water production well in Ripon, CA to demonstrate the utility of natural groundwater tracers in constraining the sources and transport of nitrate to deep aquifers in the Central Valley. The goal of the study was to investigate the origin (source) of elevated nitrate and the potential for the deep aquifer to attenuate anthropogenic nitrate. The site is ideal for such an investigation. The production well is screened from 165-325 feet below ground surface and a number of nearby shallow and deep monitoring wells were available for sampling. Furthermore, potential sources of nitrate contamination to the well had been identified, including a fertilizer supply plant located approximately 1000 feet to the east and local almond groves. A variety of natural isotopic and dissolved gas tracers including {sup 3}H-{sup 3}He groundwater age and the isotopic composition of nitrate are applied to identify nitrate sources and to characterize nitrate transport. An advanced method for sampling production wells is employed to help identify contaminant contributions from specific screen intervals. Nitrate transport: Groundwater nitrate at this field site is not being actively denitrified. Groundwater parameters indicate oxic conditions, the dissolved gas data shows no evidence …

April report of the U.S. Congressional Oversight Panel describing their activities and findings regarding the state of the U.S. Treasury's mitigation programs in addition to an overview of the economy and housing markets.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Closing the nuclear fuel cycle requires reprocessing spent fuel to recover the long-lived components that still have useful energy content while immobilizing the remnant waste fission products in stable forms. At the genesis of this project, next generation spent fuel reprocessing methods were being developed as part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Fuel Cycle Initiative. One of these processes was focused on solvent extraction schemes to isolate cesium (Cs) and strontium (Sr) from spent nuclear fuel. Isolating these isotopes for short-term decay storage eases the design requirements for long-term repository disposal; a significant amount of the radiation and decay heat in fission product waste comes from Cs-137 and Sr-90. For the purposes of this project, the Fission Product Extraction (FPEX) process is being considered to be the baseline extraction method. The objective of this project was to evaluate the nature and behavior of candidate materials for cesium and strontium immobilization; this will include assessments with minor additions of yttrium, barium, and rubidium in these materials. More specifically, the proposed research achieved the following objectives (as stated in the original proposal): (1) Synthesize simulated storage ceramics for Cs and Sr using an existing labscale steam reformer at Purdue University. …

We propose a simple, well grounded classification technique which is suited for group classification on brain fMRI data sets that have high dimensionality, small number of subjects, high noise level, high subject variability, imperfect registration and capture subtle cognitive effects. We propose threshold-split region as a new feature selection method and majority voteas the classification technique. Our method does not require a predefined set of regions of interest. We use average acros ssessions, only one feature perexperimental condition, feature independence assumption, and simple classifiers. The seeming counter-intuitive approach of using a simple design is supported by signal processing and statistical theory. Experimental results in two block design data sets that capture brain function under distinct monetary rewards for cocaine addicted and control subjects, show that our method exhibits increased generalization accuracy compared to commonly used feature selection and classification techniques.

Photograph of WASP Helen Snapp in blue standing on a blue plane, taken at the 2010 Sun 'N' Fun event in Florida.

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

Public and private funding for end-use energy efficiency actions is expected to increase significantly in the United States over the next decade. For example, Barbose et al (2009) estimate that spending on ratepayer-funded energy efficiency programs in the U.S. could increase from $3.1 billion in 2008 to $7.5 and 12.4 billion by 2020 under their medium and high scenarios. This increase in spending could yield annual electric energy savings ranging from 0.58% - 0.93% of total U.S. retail sales in 2020, up from 0.34% of retail sales in 2008. Interest in and support for energy efficiency has broadened among national and state policymakers. Prominent examples include {approx}$18 billion in new funding for energy efficiency programs (e.g., State Energy Program, Weatherization, and Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants) in the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Increased funding for energy efficiency should result in more benefits as well as more scrutiny of these results. As energy efficiency becomes a more prominent component of the U.S. national energy strategy and policies, assessing the effectiveness and energy saving impacts of energy efficiency programs is likely to become increasingly important for policymakers and private and public funders of efficiency actions. Thus, it is …

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