Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO’s prior work has highlighted progress and challenges in various areas related to Border Patrol’s implementation of its 2004 National Strategy, which could provide insights as Border Patrol transitions to its 2012 Strategic Plan. Border Patrol officials stated that the 2012 Strategic Plan will rely on Border Patrol and federal, state, local, tribal, and international partners working together to use a risk-based approach to secure the border, and include the key elements of “Information, Integration, and Rapid Response” to achieve objectives. These elements were similar to those in the 2004 Strategy and GAO’s past work highlighted the progress and challenges the agency faced obtaining information necessary for border security; integrating security operations with partners; and mobilizing a rapid response to security threats. Border Patrol successfully used interagency forums and joint operations to counter threats, but challenges included assessing the benefits of border technology and infrastructure to, among other things, provide information on situational awareness. For example, in May 2010 GAO reported that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had not accounted for the effect of its investment in border fencing and infrastructure …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the last 8 years, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate has used its special acquisition authority to enter into 58 “other transaction” agreements. Use of the authority has declined since 2005. DHS officials said the decline is due to uncertainty about the agency’s continuing authority to enter into these agreements, among other things."

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

This report provides links to selected authoritative resources related to cybersecurity issues, including: legislation, hearings in the 112th Congress, data and statistics, and cybersecurity glossaries.

This report describes the results of studies related to the incorporation of sulfate in high level waste (HLW) borosilicate glass produced at the Savannah River Site (SRS) Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF). A group of simulated HLW glasses produced for earlier sulfate retention studies was selected for full chemical composition measurements to determine whether there is any clear link between composition and sulfate retention over the compositional region evaluated. In addition, the viscosity of several glasses was measured to support future efforts in modeling sulfate solubility as a function of predicted viscosity. The intent of these studies was to develop a better understanding of sulfate retention in borosilicate HLW glass to allow for higher loadings of sulfate containing waste. Based on the results of these and other studies, the ability to improve sulfate solubility in DWPF borosilicate glasses lies in reducing the connectivity of the glass network structure. This can be achieved, as an example, by increasing the concentration of alkali species in the glass. However, this must be balanced with other effects of reduced network connectivity, such as reduced viscosity, potentially lower chemical durability, and in the case of higher sodium and aluminum concentrations, the propensity for nepheline crystallization. …

From the 1950s through 1989, the F Area Seepage Basins at the Savannah River Site (SRS) received low level radioactive wastes resulting from processing nuclear materials. Discharges of process wastes to the F Area Seepage Basins followed by subsequent mixing processes within the basins and eventual infiltration into the subsurface resulted in contamination of the underlying vadose zone and downgradient groundwater. For simulating contaminant behavior and subsurface transport, a quantitative understanding of the interrelated discharge-mixing-infiltration system along with the resulting chemistry of fluids entering the subsurface is needed. An example of this need emerged as the F Area Seepage Basins was selected as a key case study demonstration site for the Advanced Simulation Capability for Environmental Management (ASCEM) Program. This modeling evaluation explored the importance of the wide variability in bulk wastewater chemistry as it propagated through the basins. The results are intended to generally improve and refine the conceptualization of infiltration of chemical wastes from seepage basins receiving variable waste streams and to specifically support the ASCEM case study model for the F Area Seepage Basins. Specific goals of this work included: (1) develop a technically-based 'charge-balanced' nominal source term chemistry for water infiltrating into the subsurface during basin …

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about the Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT) program including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet discusses a battery-to-grid energy distribution design as part of the "Gallium-Nitride Switch Technology for Bi-Directional Battery-to-Grid Charger Applications" project.

It was hypothesized that the variations in time to solution are driven by the competing mechanisms of exploration and exploitation.This thesis explores this hypothesis by examining two contrasting problems that embody the hypothesized tradeoff between exploration and exploitation. Plus one recall store (PORS) is an optimization problem based on the idea of a simple calculator with four buttons: plus, one, store, and recall. Integer addition and store are classified as operations, and one and memory recall are classified as terminals. The goal is to arrange a fixed number of keystrokes in a way that maximizes the numerical result. PORS 15 (15 keystrokes) represents the subset of difficult PORS problems and PORS 16 (16 keystrokes) represents the subset of PORS problems that are easiest to optimize. The goal of this work is to examine the tradeoff between exploitation and exploration in graph based evolutionary algorithm (GBEA) optimization. To do this, computational experiments are used to examine how solutions evolve in PORS 15 and 16 problems when solved using GBEAs. The experiment is comprised of three components; the graphs and the population, the evolutionary algorithm rule set, and the example problems. The complete, hypercube, and cycle graphs were used for this experiment. …

This project had goals of advancing the performance capabilities of the numerical general circulation model EULAG and using it to produce a fully operational atmospheric global climate model (AGCM) that can employ either static or dynamic grid stretching for targeted phenomena. The resulting AGCM combined EULAG's advanced dynamics core with the "physics" of the NCAR Community Atmospheric Model (CAM). Effort discussed below shows how we improved model performance and tested both EULAG and the coupled CAM-EULAG in several ways to demonstrate the grid stretching and ability to simulate very well a wide range of scales, that is, multi-scale capability. We leveraged our effort through interaction with an international EULAG community that has collectively developed new features and applications of EULAG, which we exploited for our own work summarized here. Overall, the work contributed to over 40 peer-reviewed publications and over 70 conference/workshop/seminar presentations, many of them invited. 3a. EULAG Advances EULAG is a non-hydrostatic, parallel computational model for all-scale geophysical flows. EULAG's name derives from its two computational options: EULerian (flux form) or semi-LAGrangian (advective form). The model combines nonoscillatory forward-in-time (NFT) numerical algorithms with a robust elliptic Krylov solver. A signature feature of EULAG is that it is formulated …

An analysis is given of the impact of the tokamak divertor magnetic structure on the temporal and spatial divertor heat flux from edge localized modes (ELMs). Two configurations are studied: the standard divertor where the poloidal magnetic field (B{sub p}) varies linearly with distance (r) from the magnetic null and the snowflake where B{sub p} varies quadratrically with r. Both one and two-dimensional models are used to analyze the effect of the longer magnetic field length between the midplane and the divertor plate for the snowflake that causes a temporal dilation of the ELM divertor heat flux. A second effect discussed is the appearance of a broad region near the null point where the poloidal plasma beta can substantially exceed unity, especially for the snowflake configuration during the ELM; such a condition is likely to drive additional radial ELM transport.

Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy project sheet summarizing general information about the Agile Delivery of Electrical Power Technology (ADEPT) program including critical needs, innovation and advantages, impacts, and contact information. This sheet discusses advanced power electronics for LED drivers as part of the "Advanced Technologies for Integrated Power Electronics" project.

Hackensack University Medical Center's major initiative to create a cleaner healthier and safer environment for patients, employees and the community served by the medical center is built on its commitment to protect the environment and conserve precious energy resources. Since 2004 the Medical Center launched a long term campaign to temper the negative environmental impact of proposed and existing new construction at the medical center and to improve campus wide overall energy efficiency. The plan was to begin by implementing a number of innovative and eco-friendly enhancements to the Gabrellian Women's and Children's Pavilion, in construction at the time, which would lead to Certification by the US Green Building Councils Leadership & Environmental Design (LEED) program. In addition the medical center would evaluate the feasibility of implementing a photovoltaic system in the new construction (in development and planned) to provide clean pollution free electricity. The steps taken to achieve this included conducting a feasibility study complete with architectural and engineering assessments to determine the potential for implementation of a photovoltaic system on the campus and also to conduct an energy survey that would focus on determining specific opportunities and upgrades that would lead to a healthier energy efficient interior environment …

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

The degradation of organic matter by microorganisms provides a source of electrical potential or so-called 'self potential' (SP) that can be measured by using a voltmeter. During this process electrons are being produced as a waste-product and bacterial cells have to dispose of these to allow for the complete biodegradation of organic matter. Especially in anaerobic microbial communities, exo-cellular electron transfer is the most important driving force behind this process and organisms have developed different, but also similar, ways to transfer electrons to other microorganisms. Recently, it has been postulated that direct electron transfer from cell-to-cell is actually done by 'hard-wired' microorganisms. This shuttling of electrons is most likely done by certain c-type cytochromes that form the functional part of electrically conductive nanowires. In this study we investigated if nanowires can explain the geoelectrical (self potential and spectral induced polarization) signals observed at some biostimulated environments such as DOE sites. The objectives of our project are to: (1) investigate any temporal changes in the geophysical signatures (Self Potential (SP) and Induced Polarization (IP)) associated with nanowires of the bacterium Shewanella oneidensis MR-1, wild type and mtrc/omcA deletion mutant, (2) demonstrate that mutant strains of bacteria that produce nonconductive nanowires do …

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The Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) has completed the independent verification survey of the Building 3550 Slab. The results of this effort are provided. The objective of this verification survey is to provide independent review and field assessment of remediation actions conducted by Safety and Ecology Corporation (SEC) to document that the final radiological condition of the slab meets the release guidelines. Verification survey activities on the Building 3550 Slab that included scans, measurements, and the collection of smears. Scans for alpha, alpha plus beta, and gamma activity identified several areas that were investigated.

The parent phases of the Fe-arsenide superconductors harbor an antiferromagnetic ground state. Significantly, the Neel transition is either preceded or accompanied by a structural transition that breaks the four fold symmetry of the high-temperature lattice. Borrowing language from the field of soft condensed matter physics, this broken discrete rotational symmetry is widely referred to as an Ising nematic phase transition. Understanding the origin of this effect is a key component of a complete theoretical description of the occurrence of superconductivity in this family of compounds, motivating both theoretical and experimental investigation of the nematic transition and the associated in-plane anisotropy. Here we review recent experimental progress in determining the intrinsic in-plane electronic anisotropy as revealed by resistivity, reflectivity and ARPES measurements of detwinned single crystals of underdoped Fe arsenide superconductors in the '122' family of compounds.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Jack Frank. Frank joined the Navy in January 1943 and received basic training at Sampson. After yeoman training and amphibious duty at Little Creek, he was sent to Dartmouth to commission an LCT flotilla. From there he was deployed to England for the invasion of Normandy. His landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day was delayed by several hours due to weather, and when he approached the Easy Red Sector in LCT(6)-542, his flotilla launched and lost several tanks in the high waves. Operating under heavy fire, Frank made several supply trips to the beach. The day after it was secured, there was a memorial service held, complete with an organist. Frank spent the rest of the war stationed in England, where he played trumpet with a local big band while on liberty. He was sent home in August 1945 after the military learned that his father had died; however, it was a mix-up with a different Jack Frank whose father had died, so Frank simply enjoyed a nice visit home. He was stationed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard until his discharge in April 1946.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Jack Frank. Frank joined the Navy in January 1943 and received basic training at Sampson. After yeoman training and amphibious duty at Little Creek, he was sent to Dartmouth to commission an LCT flotilla. From there he was deployed to England for the invasion of Normandy. His landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day was delayed by several hours due to weather, and when he approached the Easy Red Sector in LCT(6)-542, his flotilla launched and lost several tanks in the high waves. Operating under heavy fire, Frank made several supply trips to the beach. The day after it was secured, there was a memorial service held, complete with an organist. Frank spent the rest of the war stationed in England, where he played trumpet with a local big band while on liberty. He was sent home in August 1945 after the military learned that his father had died; however, it was a mix-up with a different Jack Frank whose father had died, so Frank simply enjoyed a nice visit home. He was stationed at the Philadelphia Navy Yard until his discharge in April 1946.

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

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

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