Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States Postal Service (USPS) is in financial crisis. It also has the world's largest civilian fleet, with many of its delivery vehicles reaching the end of their expected 24- year operational lives. USPS is subject to certain legislative requirements governing the federal fleet, including a requirement that 75 percent of USPS's vehicle acquisitions be capable of operating on an alternative fuel other than gasoline. This testimony addresses (1) USPS's financial condition; (2) USPS's delivery fleet profile, including how USPS has responded to alternative fuel vehicle requirements and its experiences with these vehicles; (3) trade-offs of USPS's approach for addressing its delivery fleet needs; and (4) options to fund a major acquisition of delivery vehicles. This testimony is primarily based on GAO-11-386, which is being released today. For that report, GAO analyzed USPS data, visited USPS facilities, and interviewed USPS and other officials. GAO recommended in that report that USPS should develop a strategy for addressing its delivery fleet needs that considers the effects of likely operational changes, legislative fleet requirements, and other factors. USPS agreed with the recommendation. For this testimony, GAO also drew upon past …

To address the challenges facing the U.S. intelligence community in the 21st century, congressional and executive branch initiatives have sought to improve coordination among the different agencies and to encourage better analysis. In December 2004, the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act (P.L. 108-458) was signed, providing for a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with substantial authorities to manage the national intelligence effort. The legislation also established a separate Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.

This report examines formal interagency collaborative arrangements and activities, which are intended to enhance joint efforts and cooperation among independent federal agencies with shared responsibilities and overlapping jurisdictions.

The environmental, social, and political conditions in Haiti have long prompted congressional interest in U.S. policy on Haitian migrants, particularly those attempting to reach the United States by boat. While some observers assert that such arrivals by Haitians are a breach in border security, others maintain that these Haitians are asylum seekers following a decades old practice of Haitians coming by boat without legal immigration documents. Migrant interdiction and mandatory detention are key components of U.S. policy toward Haitian migrants, but human rights advocates express concern that Haitians are not afforded the same treatment as other asylum seekers.

This report discusses the current state of Bahrain, which has undergone substantial political reforms since the late 1990s, but which still suffers from tension between the Shiite majority and the Sunni-led government. This report focuses particularly on Bahrain's relationship with Iran and Bahrain's relationship with the United States.

This report discusses the political climate, development challenges and reform in Nigeria. The report also deliberates the social issues and security concerns of Nigeria. In addition, other issues are considered as Congress provides oversight for over $600 million in U.S. foreign assistance programs to Nigeria.

This CRS report highlights spending trends and key policy initiatives in the President's February budget and April Framework, and in the House-passed budget resolution, for the six functional categories of the federal budget that comprise the human resources "superfunction." The six human resources functions (and their function codes) are education, training, employment, and social services, health, Medicare, income security, social security, veterans benefits and services.

Restrictions on travel to Cuba have been a key and often contentious component in U.S. efforts to isolate the communist government of Fidel Castro for much of the past 40 years. Under the Bush Administration, enforcement of U.S. restrictions on Cuba travel has increased, and restrictions on travel and on private remittances to Cuba have been tightened. Several legislative initiatives have been introduced in the 109th Congress that would ease restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba. These bills would, among other things, lift overall restrictions on travel to Cuba, lift the overall embargo, and ease restrictions on exporting agricultural commodities to Cuba.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the admissibility of certain hearsay statements of a child in hearings on an application for a protective order.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the operation by the Department of Agriculture of programs for rural economic development and the marketing and promotion of agricultural and other products grown, processed, or produced in this state.

The process of recovering the waste in storage tanks at the Savannah River Site (SRS) typically requires mixing the contents of the tank to ensure uniformity of the discharge stream. Mixing is accomplished with one to four dual-nozzle slurry pumps located within the tank liquid. For the work, a Tank 48 simulation model with a maximum of four slurry pumps in operation has been developed to estimate flow patterns for efficient solid mixing. The modeling calculations were performed by using two modeling approaches. One approach is a single-phase Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model to evaluate the flow patterns and qualitative mixing behaviors for a range of different modeling conditions since the model was previously benchmarked against the test results. The other is a two-phase CFD model to estimate solid concentrations in a quantitative way by solving the Eulerian governing equations for the continuous fluid and discrete solid phases over the entire fluid domain of Tank 48. The two-phase results should be considered as the preliminary scoping calculations since the model was not validated against the test results yet. A series of sensitivity calculations for different numbers of pumps and operating conditions has been performed to provide operational guidance for solids …

The request made by FVB asked for advice and analysis regarding the value of recapturing the braking energy of trains operating on electric light rail transit systems. A specific request was to evaluate the concept of generating hydrogen by electrolysis. The hydrogen would, in turn, power fuel cells that could supply electric energy back into the system for train propulsion or, possibly, also to the grid. To allow quantitative assessment of the potential resource, analysis focused on operations of the SoundTransit light rail system in Seattle, Washington. An initial finding was that the full cycle efficiency of producing hydrogen as the medium for capturing and reusing train braking energy was quite low (< 20%) and, therefore, not likely to be economically attractive. As flywheel energy storage is commercially available, the balance of the analysis focused the feasibility of using this alternative on the SoundTransit system. It was found that an investment in a flywheel with a 25-kWh capacity of the type manufactured by Beacon Power Corporation (BPC) would show a positive 20-year net present value (NPV) based on the current frequency of train service. The economic attractiveness of this option would increase initially if green energy subsidies or rebates were …

In this paper we compare two models with central Au-Au collisions at sqrtsNN=200 GeV. The first model is a minijet model which assumes that around ~50 minijets are produced in back-to-back pairs and have an altered fragmentation functions. It is also assumed that the fragments are transparent and escape the collision zone and are detected. The second model is a glasma flux tube model which leads to flux tubes on the surface of a radial expanding fireball driven by interacting flux tubes near the center of the fireball through plasma instabilities. This internal fireball becomes an opaque hydro fluid which pushes the surface flux tubes outward. Around ~12 surfaceflux tubes remain and fragment with ~1/2 the produced particles escaping the collision zone and are detected. Both models can reproduce two particle angular correlations in the different pt1 pt2 bins. We also compare the two models for three additional effects: meson baryon ratios; the long range nearside correlation called the ridge; and the so-called mach cone effect when applied to three particle angular correlations.

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Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the issuance of "Choose Life" license plates and the creation of the Choose Life account in the general revenue fund.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the composition and use of money in the rural water assistance fund.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate congratulating the Honorable Jack Pope on the occasion of his 98th birthday.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the disposal of demolition waste from abandoned or nuisance buildings in certain areas.

Hanford Tank Farms Waste Certification Flow Loop Phase IV: PulseEcho Sensor Evaluation

This project focused on the variability of clouds that is present across a wide range of scales ranging from the synoptic to the millimeter. In particular, there is substantial variability in cloud properties at scales smaller than the grid spacing of models used to make climate projections (GCMs) and weather forecasts. These models represent clouds and other small-scale processes with parameterizations that describe how those processes respond to and feed back on the largescale state of the atmosphere.

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Funeral program for Dorothy L. Hardaway Hopkins McClinton, M.Ed., born January 4, 1925 and died May 10, 2011. The funeral was held May 17, 2011 at St. Paul United Methodist Church, officiated by Rev. Dr. Marcus A.L. Freeman, III. Funeral arrangements were made through All Peoples' Funeral Home and she was buried in Sunset Memorial Park in San Antonio, Texas.