A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report responds to two mandates for GAO under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). First, it is the latest report on the uses of and accountability for Recovery Act funds in selected states and localities. Second, it comments on recipients' reports of the jobs created and retained. The Recovery Act provided $2.1 billion for Head Start and Early Head Start, primarily to expand services. GAO addressed four questions: (1) How have Head Start and Early Head Start grantees used Recovery Act funds, including for expanding enrollment? (2) What challenges have grantees encountered in spending Recovery Act funds? (3) How has the Office of Head Start (OHS) monitored the use of Recovery Act funds? (4) How has the quality of jobs data reported by Recovery Act recipients, particularly Head Start grantees, changed over time? In this report, GAO also updates the status of open recommendations from previous bimonthly and recipient reporting reviews. To address these questions, GAO interviewed grantees, analyzed federal agency and recipient reported data, and interviewed officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Through the statewide transportation planning process, states decide how to spend federal transportation funds--almost $46 billion in fiscal year 2009. Draft legislation to reauthorize federal surface transportation legislation would, among other things, revise planning requirements to recognize states' use of rural planning organizations (RPO) and require performance measurement. As requested, GAO examined (1) states' planning activities and RPOs' satisfaction that rural needs are considered, (2) states' planning challenges, (3) the U.S. Department of Transportation's (USDOT) approach to overseeing statewide planning, and (4) states' use of performance measurement and opportunities to make statewide planning more performance based. GAO analyzed planning documents; surveyed departments of transportation in 50 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C., and 569 RPOs; interviewed officials in 6 states; and held an expert panel on performance-based planning."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Positive train control (PTC) is a communications-based train control system designed to prevent some serious train accidents. Federal law requires passenger and major freight railroads to install PTC on most major routes by the end of 2015. Railroads must address other risks by implementing other technologies. The Department of Transportation's (DOT) Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) oversees implementation of these technologies and must report to Congress in 2012 on progress in implementing PTC. As requested, this report discusses railroads' progress in developing PTC and the remaining steps to implement it, the benefits of and challenges in implementing other safety technologies, and the extent of FRA's efforts to fulfill the PTC mandate and encourage the implementation of other technologies. To conduct this work, GAO analyzed documents and interviewed FRA and rail industry officials. GAO also interviewed and surveyed rail experts."

The combined efforts of the food industry and the regulatory agencies often are credited with making the U.S. food supply among the safest in the world. Nonetheless, many food-related health issues persist. At issue is whether the current U.S. regulatory system has the resources and structural organization to protect consumers from these dangers. Also at issue is whether the federal food safety laws themselves, first enacted in the early 1900s, have kept pace with the significant changes that have occurred in the food production, processing, and marketing sectors since then.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In April 2009, President Obama announced an international initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear materials worldwide within 4 years. Nonproliferation programs administered by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) are working to secure nuclear materials in Russia and other countries. GAO assessed (1) U.S. governmentwide efforts to implement the President's 4-year nuclear material security initiative; (2) the status and challenges, if any, of NNSA's nuclear security programs in Russia; and (3) NNSA efforts to secure nuclear materials in countries other than Russia. To address these issues, GAO analyzed U.S. nuclear security strategies and plans and interviewed U.S. and Russian government officials. This report summarizes the findings of GAO's classified report on securing nuclear materials worldwide."

"The objective of this multi-university/agency partnership between Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), and Texas A&M University (TAMU) is to build on the progress made through the UTCM seed funding to produce high-quality transportation professionals from underrepresented groups through research and other real-world experiences."

The Earned Income Tax Credit began in 1975 as a temporary program to return a portion of the Social Security taxes paid by lower-income taxpayers, and was made permanent in 1978. In the 1990s, the program because a major component of federal efforts to reduce poverty, and is now the largest anti-poverty entitlement program. This report contains information on eligibility for the program, credit amount, participation, interaction with other tax provisions, issues, compliance, and more as related to the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The Department of Energy - Savannah River (DOE-SR) previously provided direction to Savannah River Remediation (SRR) to maintain fissile concentration in glass below 897 g/m{sup 3}. In support of the guidance, the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) provided a technical basis and a supporting Microsoft{reg_sign} Excel{reg_sign} spreadsheet for the evaluation of fissile loading in Sludge Batch 5 glass based on the Fe concentration in glass as determined by the measurements from the Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) acceptability analysis. SRR has since requested that SRNL provide the necessary information to allow SRR to update the Excel spreadsheet so that it may be used to maintain fissile concentration in glass below 897 g/m{sup 3} during the processing of Sludge Batch 6 (SB6). One of the primary inputs into the fissile loading spreadsheet includes a bounding density for SB6-based glasses. Based on the measured density data of select SB6 variability study glasses, SRNL recommends that SRR utilize the 99/99 Upper Tolerance Limit (UTL) density value at 38% WL (2.823 g/cm{sup 3}) as a bounding density for SB6 glasses to assess the fissile concentration in this glass system. That is, the 2.823 g/cm{sup 3} is recommended as a key (and fixed) input into the …

The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) commitment to assuring the health and safety of its workers includes the conduct of epidemiologic surveillance activities that provide an early warning system for health problems among workers. The Illness and Injury Surveillance Program monitors illnesses and health conditions that result in an absence of workdays, occupational injuries and illnesses, and disabilities and deaths among current workers.

Urbanization is reshaping China's economy, society, and energy system. Between 1990 and 2008 China added more than 300 million new urban residents, bringing the total urbanization rate to 46%. The ongoing population shift is spurring energy demand for new construction, as well as additional residential use with the replacement of rural biomass by urban commercial energy services. This project developed a modeling tool to quantify the full energy consequences of a particular form of urban residential development in order to identify energy- and carbon-efficient modes of neighborhood-level development and help mitigate resource and environmental implications of swelling cities. LBNL developed an integrated modeling tool that combines process-based lifecycle assessment with agent-based building operational energy use, personal transport, and consumption modeling. The lifecycle assessment approach was used to quantify energy and carbon emissions embodied in building materials production, construction, maintenance, and demolition. To provide more comprehensive analysis, LBNL developed an agent-based model as described below. The model was applied to LuJing, a residential development in Jinan, Shandong Province, to provide a case study and model proof of concept. This study produced results data that are unique by virtue of their scale, scope and type. Whereas most existing literature focuses on building-, …

5098-SR-03-0 FINAL REPORT- INDEPENDENT VERIFICATION SURVEY OF THE HIGH FLUX BEAM REACTOR DECOMMISSIONING PROJECT OUTSIDE AREAS, BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY

Implementation and adoption of efficient end-use technologies have proven to be one of the key measures for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout the industries. In many cases, implementing energy efficiency measures is among one of the most cost effective investments that the industry could make in improving efficiency and productivity while reducing CO2 emissions. Over the years, there have been incentives to use resources and energy in a cleaner and more efficient way to create industries that are sustainable and more productive. With the working of energy programs and policies on GHG inventory and regulation, understanding and managing the costs associated with mitigation measures for GHG reductions is very important for the industry and policy makers around the world. Successful implementation of emerging technologies not only can help advance productivities and competitiveness but also can play a significant role in mitigation efforts by saving energy. Providing evaluation and estimation of the costs and energy savings potential of emerging technologies is the focus of our work in this project. The overall goal of the project is to identify and select emerging and under-utilized energy-efficient technologies and practices as they are important to reduce energy consumption in industry while maintaining economic …

Implementation and adoption of efficient end-use technologies have proven to be one of the key measures for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions throughout the industries. In many cases, implementing energy efficiency measures is among one of the most cost effective investments that the industry could make in improving efficiency and productivity while reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Over the years, there have been incentives to use resources and energy in a cleaner and more efficient way to create industries that are sustainable and more productive. With the working of energy programs and policies on GHG inventory and regulation, understanding and managing the costs associated with mitigation measures for GHG reductions is very important for the industry and policy makers around the world and in California. Successful implementation of applicable emerging technologies not only may help advance productivities, improve environmental impacts, or enhance industrial competitiveness, but also can play a significant role in climate-mitigation efforts by saving energy and reducing the associated GHG emissions. Developing new information on costs and savings benefits of energy efficient emerging technologies applicable in California market is important for policy makers as well as the industries. Therefore, provision of timely evaluation and estimation of the costs …

The aim of this paper is to outline a plan for developing and validating a Proactive Protective Intelligence approach that prevents targeted violence through the analysis and assessment of threats overtly or covertly expressed in abnormal communications to USSS protectees.

The main objective of this project was to develop, validate and apply remote sensing methods to retrieve vertical profiles of precipitation over the DOE ARM CART sites using currently available remote sensors. While the ARM Program invested very heavily into developments of remote sensing methods and instruments for water vapor and non-precipitating cloud parameter retrievals, precipitation retrievals and studies lagged behind. Precipitation, however, is a crucial part of the water cycle, and without detailed information on rainfall and snowfall, significant improvements in the atmospheric models of different scales (i.e., one of the ARM Program's main goals) is difficult to achieve. Characterization of the vertical atmospheric column above the CART sites is also incomplete without detailed precipitation information, so developments of remote sensing methods for retrievals of parameters in precipitating cloud condition was essential. Providing modelers with retrieval results was also one of the key objectives of this research project.

This report discusses the financial assistance for constructing municipal sewage treatment plants and certain other types of water quality improvement projects. It also points out Titles II and VI ---Municipal Wastewater Treatment Construction.

Imaging x-ray crystal spectrometer #2;XCS#3; arrays are being developed as a US-ITER activity for Doppler measurement of Ti and v profiles of impurities #2;(W, Kr, and Fe)#3; with ~#4;7 cm (a/30)#3; and 10-100 ms resolution in ITER. The imaging XCS, modeled after a prototype instrument on Alcator C-Mod, uses a spherically bent crystal and 2D x-ray detectors to achieve high spectral resolving power (E / dE >#2;6000)#3; horizontally and spatial imaging vertically. Two arrays will measure Ti and both poloidal and toroidal rotation velocity profiles. The measurement of many spatial chords permits tomographic inversion for the inference of local parameters. The instrument design, predictions of performance, and results from C-Mod are presented.

This report is designed to assist Members of Congress as they consider the costs and benefits of the U.S.-South Korean Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA.) It examines the provisions of the KORUS FTA in the context of the overall U.S.-South Korean economic relationship, U.S. objectives, and South Korean objectives.

In recent years, major outbreaks of foodborne illnesses, product recalls, and reports about unsafe food imports have caused some to question the adequacy of the U.S. food safety system. Stakeholders appear to agree that an optimal system should encompass a comprehensive, preventive approach to food safety, focusing on those foods and points in the food system that pose the greatest public health risks, starting at the point of production - that is, on farms and ranches. This report discusses differing opinions on this topic, as well as related legislation.

This report examines recent congressional interest in the security of wastewater utilities, and whether or not to include water utilities in chemical plant security regulations implemented by Department of Homeland Security. Damage to or destruction of the nation's water supply and water quality infrastructure by terrorist attack or natural disaster could disrupt the delivery of vital human services in this country, threatening public health and the environment, or possibly causing loss of life. Interest in such problems has increased greatly since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States.

The Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act has two basic aims: to regulate intentional ocean disposal of materials, and to authorize related research. Permit and enforcement provisions of the law are often referred to as the Ocean Dumping Act. The basic provisions of the act have remained virtually unchanged since 1972, when it was enacted to establish a comprehensive waste management system to regulate disposal or dumping of all materials into marine waters that are within U.S. jurisdiction, although a number of new authorities have been added. This report presents a summary of the law.

5098-SR-05-0 PROJECT-SPECIFIC TYPE A VERIFICATION FOR THE HIGH FLUX BEAM REACTOR UNDERGROUND UTILITIES REMOVAL PHASE 3 TRENCH 1 BROOKHAVEN NATIONAL LABORATORY