A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For the past 2 years, the Department of Defense (DOD) has been implementing the Weapon Systems Acquisition Reform Act (Reform Act) requirements for systems engineering and developmental testing. These activities are important to DOD's ability to control acquisition costs, which increased by $135 billion over the past 2 years for 98 major defense acquisition programs. GAO was asked to determine (1) DOD's progress in implementing the Reform Act's requirements and (2) whether there are challenges at the military service level that could affect their systems engineering and developmental testing activities. To do this, GAO analyzed implementation status documents, discussed developmental testing office concerns with current and former DOD officials, and analyzed military service workforce growth plans and test range funding data.."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO has designated the Department of Defense's (DOD) management of support infrastructure as a high risk area, in part because of challenges in reducing excess infrastructure. Operating and maintaining excess facilities consumes resources that could be eliminated from DOD's budget or used for other purposes. In response to direction in House Report 111-491, GAO reviewed DOD's (1) progress toward meeting demolition program targets for fiscal years 2008 through 2013; (2) facility utilization information--a source for identifying additional excess facilities; and (3) plans for managing and disposing of excess facilities after fiscal year 2013. GAO analyzed information on excess facilities, completed demolitions, and underutilized facilities in DOD's real property inventory database; reviewed DOD's plans for demolition after the on-going program ends; and conducted site visits to selected military installations."

This report evaluates the purpose, membership, financing, and focus of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) activities. It also discusses the role of Congress in shaping U.S. policy at the IMF and concludes by addressing key issues, both legislative and oversight-related, that Congress may wish to consider, including: the role of the IMF as a lender of last resort; the adequacy of IMF resources; and the effectiveness of IMF surveillance.

Thermodynamic data are essential for understanding and evaluating geochemical processes, as by speciation-solubility calculations, reaction-path modeling, or reactive transport simulation. These data are required to evaluate both equilibrium states and the kinetic approach to such states (via the affinity term or its equivalent in commonly used rate laws). These types of calculations and the data needed to carry them out are a central feature of geochemistry in many applications, including water-rock interactions in natural systems at low and high temperatures. Such calculations are also made in engineering studies, for example studies of interactions involving man-made materials such as metal alloys and concrete. They are used in a fairly broad spectrum of repository studies where interactions take place among water, rock, and man-made materials (e.g., usage on YMP and WIPP). Waste form degradation, engineered barrier system performance, and near-field and far-field transport typically incorporate some level of thermodynamic modeling, requiring the relevant supporting data. Typical applications of thermodynamic modeling involve calculations of aqueous speciation (which is of great importance in the case of most radionuclides), solubilities of minerals and related solids, solubilities of gases, and stability relations among the various possible phases that might be present in a chemical system at …

The Advanced Energy Retrofit Guide for Retail Buildings is a component of the Department of Energy’s Advanced Energy Retrofit Guides for Existing Buildings series. The aim of the guides is to facilitate a rapid escalation in the number of energy efficiency projects in existing buildings and to enhance the quality and depth of those projects. By presenting general project planning guidance as well as financial payback metrics for the most common energy efficiency measures, these guides provide a practical roadmap to effectively planning and implementing performance improvements for existing buildings.

The purpose of this study was to design and build two versions of an underwater sound recording device. The device designed is referred to as the Underwater Sound Recorder (USR), which can be connected to one or two hydrophones or other underwater sound sensors. The URS contains a 26 dB preamplifier and a user selectable gain that permits additional amplification of input to the system from 26 dB to 46 dB. Signals within the frequency range up to 15 kHz may be recorded using the USR. Examples of USR applications are monitoring underwater processes that have the potential to create large pressure waves that could potentially harm fish or other aquatic life, such as underwater explosions or pile driving. Additional applications are recording sound generated by vessels or the vocalizations of some marine mammals, such as the calls from many species of whales.

At the request of Savannah River Nuclear Solutions (SRNS) management, a review team composed of experts in atmospheric transport modeling for environmental radiation dose assessment convened at the Savannah River Site (SRS) on August 29-30, 2011. Several issues were presented at the meeting for discussion. This is a short summary that is organized in accordance with the primary issues discussed, which is not necessarily a chronological record. Issues include: SRS Meteorological Data and its Use in MACCS2; Deposition Velocities for Particles; Deposition Velocities for Tritium; MACCS2 Dispersion Coefficients; Use of Low Surface Roughness in Open Areas; Adequacy of Meteorological Tower and Instrumentation; Displacement Height; and Validity of MACCS2 Calculations at Close-in Distances. A longer report will be issued at a later date that expands upon these topics and recommendations.

The MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR is a large array of ultra-low background high-purity germanium detectors, enriched in 76Ge, designed to search for zero-neutrino double-beta decay (0{nu}{beta}{beta}). The DEMONSTRATOR will utilize 76Ge from Russia. The first one-gram sample was received from the supplier for analysis on April 24, 2011. The second one-gram sample was received from the supplier for analysis on July 12, 2011. The third sample, which came from the first large shipment of germanium from the vendor, was received from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on September 13, 2011. The Environmental Molecular Sciences facility, a DOE user facility at PNNL, was used to make the required isotopic and chemical purity measurements that are essential to the quality assurance for the MAJORANA DEMONSTRATOR. The results of these analyses are reported here. The isotopic composition of a sample of natural germanium was also measured twice. Differences in the result between these two measurements led to a re-measurement of the second 76Ge sample.

The study's official title is 'ISO Study of Operational Requirements and Market Impacts at 33% Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS).' The stated objectives are twofold: (1) identifying operational requirements and resource options to reliably operate the ISO-controlled grid under a 33% RPS in 2020; and (2) inform market, planning, and policy/regulatory decisions by the ISO, state agencies, market participants, and other stakeholders. The first of these objectives requires the hourly estimates of integration requirements, measured in terms of operational ramp, load following and regulation capacity and ramp rates, as well as additional capacity to resolve operational violations. It also involves consideration of other variables that affect the results, such as the impact of different mixes of renewable technologies, and the impact of forecasting error and variability. The second objective entails supporting the CPUC to identify long-term procurement planning needs, costs, and options, as well as informing other decisions made by the CPUC and state agencies. For the ISO itself this includes informing state-wide transmission planning needs for renewables up to a 33% RPS, and informing design of wholesale markets for energy and ancillary services to facilitate provision of integration capacities. The study is designed in two phases. The first (current) phase …

Email from Richard J. Weaver to Mike Anglin discussing the information gathered for a Dallas Way project.

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

Within the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Technology Innovation and Development, the Office of Waste Processing manages a research and development program related to the treatment and disposition of radioactive waste. At the Savannah River (South Carolina) and Hanford (Washington) Sites, approximately 90 million gallons of waste are distributed among 226 storage tanks (grouped or collocated in 'tank farms'). This waste may be considered to contain mixed and stratified high activity and low activity constituent waste liquids, salts and sludges that are collectively managed as high level waste (HLW). A large majority of these wastes and associated facilities are unique to the DOE, meaning many of the programs to treat these materials are 'first-of-a-kind' and unprecedented in scope and complexity. As a result, the technologies required to disposition these wastes must be developed from basic principles, or require significant re-engineering to adapt to DOE's specific applications. Of particular interest recently, the development of In-tank or At-Tank separation processes have the potential to treat waste with high returns on financial investment. The primary objective associated with In-Tank or At-Tank separation processes is to accelerate waste processing. Insertion of the technologies will (1) maximize available tank space to efficiently support …

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) reviews the human factors engineering (HFE) programs of applicants for nuclear power plant construction permits, operating licenses, standard design certifications, and combined operating licenses. The purpose of these safety reviews is to help ensure that personnel performance and reliability are appropriately supported. Detailed design review procedures and guidance for the evaluations is provided in three key documents: the Standard Review Plan (NUREG-0800), the HFE Program Review Model (NUREG-0711), and the Human-System Interface Design Review Guidelines (NUREG-0700). These documents were last revised in 2007, 2004 and 2002, respectively. The NRC is committed to the periodic update and improvement of the guidance to ensure that it remains a state-of-the-art design evaluation tool. To this end, the NRC is updating its guidance to stay current with recent research on human performance, advances in HFE methods and tools, and new technology being employed in plant and control room design. This paper describes the role of HFE guidelines in the safety review process and the content of the key HFE guidelines used. Then we will present the methodology used to develop HFE guidance and update these documents, and describe the current status of the update program.

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Hardware and software co-design is becoming increasingly important due to complexities in supercomputing architectures. Simulating applications before there is access to the real hardware can assist machine architects in making better design decisions that can optimize application performance. At the same time, the application and runtime can be optimized and tuned beforehand. BigSim is a simulation-based performance prediction framework designed for these purposes. It can be used to perform packet-level network simulations of parallel applications using existing parallel machines. In this paper, we demonstrate the utility of BigSim in analyzing and optimizing parallel application performance for future systems based on the PERCS network. We present simulation studies using benchmarks and real applications expected to run on future supercomputers. Future petascale systems will have more than 100,000 cores, and we present simulations at that scale.

This document identifies the feed composition of a Hanford AP tank farm simulant for rotary microfiltration testing. The composition is based on an Hanford Tank Waste Operations Simulator (HTWOS) model run in combination with Tank Waste Information Network (TWINS) data and mineralogical studies of actual waste solids. The feed simulant is intended to be used in test runs at SRNL. The simulant will be prepared in two parts: (1) A supernate, composed of water-soluble salts and (2) The undissolved (actually, undissolvable) solids. Test slurries with distinct solids concentrations (e.g., 0.5, 5 and 10 wt%) are then prepared as needed. The base for the composition of supernate and solids is the modeled feed sequence for a deployment scenario of the Supplemental Pretreatment units within AP-farm. These units comprise a filtration part, the RMF, and a Cesium-removal part, a Small Column Ion Exchange. The primary use of this simulant is for filtration testing - however, in case that it is also used for ion-exchange tests, the amount of Cs-137 that would need to be added is available in Table 1 and Attachment 3. A modified model run (MMR-049) of the Hanford Tank Waste Operations Simulator (HTWOS) system plan 6 case 3 was …

Lecture given Monday, September 19, 2011, 10:00 AM at Abilene Christian University: "How do we help people who seem stuck, without hurting them? These three sessions will introduce the DRAWN coaching model, which combines spiritual direction and coaching best practices. Participants will gain skill and insight in eductive leadership."

Lecture given Monday, September 19, 2011, 4:00 PM at Abilene Christian University: "The lack of church relevance is evident as preachers stare at audiences of apathetic pew dwellers enduring safe sermons. Come hear why glitzy building and worship renovations will not reach this generation. Learn how slam poetry can inspire action on social issues."

Lecture given Monday, September 19, 2011, 4:00 PM at Abilene Christian University: "International Justice Mission is a Christian human rights agency answering Isaiah's call to seek justice by securing rescue and recovery for victims of sex trafficking, slavery, and other violent oppression. Join this class to learn and to be mobilized for action."

Lecture given Monday, September 19, 2011, 9:00 AM at Abilene Christian University: "We do not need arms to serve in the Kingdom of God. God does not use us because of what we do or do not have. God strengthens our reliance on Him and uses us as we are."

Lecture given Monday, September 19, 2011, 9:00 AM at Abilene Christian University: "Enthusiasm, excitement and sheer over-joy are not traits of the past only, but are prominent elements of the modern day believer. Because of the magnificent tactics of God, we get to live in the here and wow!"

Lecture given Monday, September 19, 2011, 9:00 AM at Abilene Christian University: "Have you ever felt hopeless and discouraged? Elijah's disappointment with God, and Paul's disillusionment with friends, reminds us of life's low points. Discover how God can turn disappointment into hope and disillusionment into confidence"

Lecture given Monday, September 19, 2011, 10:00 AM at Abilene Christian University: "Presented the opportunity to serve in church leadership, elder nominees face a pivotal moment filled with questions. Rather than leaving these individuals to maneuver the process alone, learn how to provide information and care to help nominees decide."