A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (INTELSAT)--an intergovernmental organization launched in 1964 to design, develop, and operate a commercial telecommunications satellite system--enjoyed certain privileges that domestic companies do not, including some related to taxation. Each member nation designated a Signatory to participate as an investor. The U.S. Signatory was COMSAT, a private corporation. Intelsat privatized in 2001, and its tax situation changed. In response to congressional requests for information on whether Intelsat could continue to enjoy any preferential tax treatment as a foreign corporation, GAO did this study to describe how INTELSAT and COMSAT were treated for U.S. tax purposes prior to INTELSAT'S privatization and to describe how current U.S. tax treatment for a domestically incorporated satellite company in the United States compares to current U.S. tax treatment for a foreign corporation with operations, services, and revenue in the United States."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Rural Housing Service's (RHS) Section 521 rental assistance program provides rental subsidies for about 250,000 rural tenants. Because the program has a waiting list of 80,000 eligible tenants and there are over 1.3 million rural low-income renters eligible for housing subsidies, it is important to effectively distribute resources to extend assistance to as many needy tenants as possible. Therefore, GAO was asked to assess (1) how RHS distributes rental assistance funds to properties and tenants, (2) how RHS monitors the use of rental assistance funds, and (3) whether there are sufficient internal controls in place to ensure that these funds are being effectively administered and used."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense's (DOD) Integrated Global Posture and Basing Strategy calls for a comprehensive restructuring of U.S. forces overseas. DOD's planned changes will require billions of dollars to implement at a time when DOD is supporting operations in Iraq and realigning domestic bases. As requested, GAO examined (1) the extent to which DOD has articulated a global posture strategy that has the characteristics necessary to guide its efforts and to achieve desired results and (2) the challenges that could affect DOD's implementation of its strategy and the mechanisms DOD has in place to inform Congress of its overall progress in achieving global posture goals."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Unlike state and local governments, Indian tribal governments are in general restricted to using tax-exempt bonds for activities that are an "essential government function," where "essential government function" does not include functions not customarily performed by state and local governments. This restriction has been difficult to enforce by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and increased the tax compliance burden on Indian tribal governments. GAO was asked for information on the number of facilities that state and local governments finance, construct, and operate in eight categories: (1) Rental housing, (2) Road infrastructure, (3) Parking garages and lots, (4) Community recreational facilities, (5) Golf courses, (6) Conference centers, (7) Hotel and tourist accommodations, and (8) State-owned gaming support facilities. GAO did not find a comprehensive, reliable source of the number of facilities. Instead, GAO searched and found a variety of public and private sources that had limited information on the amounts of financing provided by state and local governments in related categories."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Army is implementing 44 base realignment and closure (BRAC) recommendations to construct 125 new Armed Forces Reserve Centers (AFRC) and close 387 existing reserve components facilities. The Department of Defense (DOD) expects the new AFRCs to increase recruiting and retention and create greater efficiencies by fostering jointness and consolidating functions. GAO (1) assessed the extent DOD's cost and savings estimates to implement the recommendations have changed from BRAC Commission projections and (2) determined the extent the Army has identified potential challenges that could affect BRAC implementation and has developed a plan to address these challenges. GAO analyzed DOD's publicly available BRAC budget data and interviewed officials at Army offices, including Reserve Command, National Guard Bureau, and the National Guard in five states. This report, prepared under the Comptroller General's authority to initiate evaluations, is one of a series related to the BRAC 2005 round."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2000, the Congress passed the Open-market Reorganization for the Betterment of International Telecommunications Act (ORBIT Act) to help promote a more competitive global satellite services market. The ORBIT Act called for the full privatization of INTELSAT, a former intergovernmental organization that provided international satellite services. GAO agreed to provide federal officials' and stakeholders' views on (1) whether the privatization steps required by the ORBIT Act have been implemented and whether there were potential inconsistencies between ORBIT Act requirements and U.S. obligations made in international trade agreements; (2) whether access by global satellite companies to non-U.S. markets has improved since the enactment of the ORBIT Act and, if so, to what is this generally attributed; and (3) if any market access problems remain, what role does the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) have in addressing those problems under the ORBIT Act."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO was mandated to assess the effectiveness of defense agency performance contracts as management tools. As agreed, GAO also reviewed other tools (performance plans and balanced scorecards) and focused on three defense agencies--the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and the Department of Defense Education Activity (DODEA). GAO addressed (1) the extent that the defense agencies initially used performance contracts, including whether this tool addressed attributes associated with results-oriented management; (2) defense agencies' efforts to implement performance plans using lessons learned from the initial contracts; and (3) the extent DOD established mechanisms to share lessons learned. GAO reviewed the content of these tools, but not the actual or reported performance. DISA has not yet finalized its scorecard, thus this report discusses only DISA's plans for its scorecard."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Army expects significant personnel growth, more than 50 percent in some cases, at 18 domestic bases through 2011 because of the effect of implementing base realignment and closure (BRAC), overseas force rebasing, and force modularity actions. This growth creates the need for additional support infrastructure at these bases and in nearby communities. Military construction costs of over $17 billion are expected for new personnel, and communities will incur infrastructure costs as well. GAO prepared this report under the Comptroller General's authority to conduct evaluations on his own initiative. It addresses (1) the challenges and associated risks the Army faces in providing for timely infrastructure support at its gaining installations and (2) how communities are planning and funding for infrastructure to support incoming personnel and their families. GAO analyzed personnel restationing numbers, discussed planning efforts with Army and community officials, and visited nine of the larger gaining bases and nearby communities."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Food aid cargo must generally be carried on U.S.-flag ships under requirements set by the cargo preference program. Two groups of carriers compete for this cargo: (1) those that participate in the Maritime Security Program and receive an annual government subsidy--generally liners operating on scheduled routes and (2) those that do not--generally carriers operating on a charter basis. Congress directed GAO to study (1) how the cargo preference and Maritime Security programs are designed and who participates;(2) the nature and extent of MSF and non-MSF carrier participation and competition in the food aid program; and (3) how a tonnage limitation on bagged preference cargo for MSF vessels could affect MSF, other U.S.-flag ships, the cargo preference food aid program, and the ports servicing these ships."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reported in October 2002 that the visa process needed to be strengthened as an antiterrorism tool and recommended that the Secretary of State, in consultation with appropriate agencies, (1) develop a clear policy on the role of national security in the visa process, (2) create more comprehensive guidance on how consular officers should screen against potential terrorists, (3) fundamentally reassess staffing requirements, and (4) revamp and expand consular training. This report examines State's and other agencies' progress in implementing changes to the visa process since 2002, in the areas of policy and guidance; consular resources, including staffing and training; and information sharing."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. aerospace industry's wide-ranging activities--including commercial aviation, national security, and space exploration--make it critical to the economic health and strategic strength of our nation. However, the industry faces challenges, such as a national air traffic management system that, in its present form, cannot handle expected increases in demand; an aging aerospace workforce; and an increasingly competitive global market. In response to these and other challenges, Congress established the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry in 2001 to recommend potential actions by the federal government and others to support a robust aerospace industry in the 21st century. In 2002, the Commission made recommendations to address these challenges. This report discusses (1) the extent to which federal agencies have addressed selected Commission recommendations and (2) the challenges that remain in addressing the recommendations. Based on the opinions of former Commissioners and GAO research, GAO selected recommendations dealing with the national airspace system, space policy, government-wide management structure, international issues, the aerospace workforce, and research and development. This report is based on reviews of agency documents, literature, and interviews with aerospace experts and officials …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Treasury Department, on behalf of the Customs Service, requested Office of Personnel Management (OPM) approval for Schedule A appointment authority for 10 positions for oversight policy and direction of sensitive law enforcement activities. Treasury's request stated that "due to the sensitive nature of the operations, these positions require a unique blend of special characteristics, skills and abilities that cannot be announced to the general public, and for which it is not practical to examine." According to OPM officials, no detailed criteria are applied when OPM considers such requests. OPM approved the request primarily because Treasury argued that the positions were sensitive in nature, involved law enforcement activities, and were impracticable to advertise and examine for. In using the Schedule A authority between September 1998 and January 2001, Customs made nine appointments to various positions. GAO found that circumstances surrounding five of the nine appointments can give the appearance of inconsistency in the application of the Schedule A appointment authority or possible favoritism toward former political employees. OPM reviews agencies' use of appointment authorities, including Schedule A and other excepted appointments, every four to five years. …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (DOE), the largest civilian contracting agency in the federal government, relies primarily on contractors to operate its sites and carry out its diverse missions, such as maintaining the nuclear weapons stockpile, cleaning up radioactive and hazardous wastes, and performing research. Although federal law generally requires federal agencies to use competition in selecting a contractor, until the mid-1990s, DOE contracts for the management and operation of its sites generally fit within an exception that allowed for the use of noncompetitive procedures. Since 1996, DOE has made progress toward implementing contract reform initiative in three key areas--developing alternative contracting approaches, increasing competition, and using performance-based contracts. However, DOE continues to encounter challenges in implementing these initiatives. Although DOE has made strides in implementing contract reform initiatives, it is difficult to determine whether contractors' performance has improved because objective performance information is scarce. Over the past 8 years, DOE has primarily gauged progress by measuring its implementation of the reforms, such as the number of contracts competed each year, and by reviewing individual contract performance incentives. DOE faces a fundamental challenge to ensuring the effectiveness …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Immunizations are considered one of the leading public health achievements of the 20th century. Mandatory immunization programs have eradicated polio and smallpox in the United States and reduced the number of deaths from several childhood diseases, such as measles, to near zero. A consistent supply of many different vaccines is needed to support this effort. Recent childhood vaccine shortages have prompted federal authorities to recommend deferring some immunizations and have caused states to reduce immunization requirements. At the state and local levels, 49 state immunization programs reported rationing one or more vaccines. Shortages have also prompted most states to waive or change immunization requirements for school and day care programs so that children who have not received all mandatory immunizations could enroll. Many factors contributed to recent vaccine shortages, and while these have largely been resolved, the potential exists for future shortages. On the supply side, some manufacturers had production problems, causing them to fall below their expected output, while others discontinued making some vaccines altogether. On the demand side, one manufacturer could not keep pace with the greater-than-expected demand for a new recommended vaccine. Federal …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Postal Reorganization Act of 1970 requires the Postal Service to pay wages comparable to those of the private sector. It also requires the Service to provide adequate and reasonable pay differences between clerks and carriers and their supervisors, such as postmasters, although the act does not specify what constitutes adequate and reasonable differences. Furthermore, the act requires the Service to consult with supervisor and postmaster organizations when planning and developing pay policies and other programs affecting their members. Since the mid-1970s, two postmaster organizations have voiced concerns that adequate and reasonable pay differences do not exist between postmasters and the clerks and carriers they supervise. Recently, the organizations took their concerns to Congress. The resulting Postmasters' Fairness and Rights Act would make substantive changes in the way postmasters' pay is determined. Most postmasters are now paid under the Service's Executive and Administrative Schedule (EAS), which is the salary schedule that applies to nearly all supervisory and management employees. Generally, postmaster pay consists of basic pay; pay-for-performance; lump-sum merit awards; and supplemental pay, such as overtime. In 1996, the Service lowered the minimum basic pay of …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Title IV of the Higher Education Act (HEA), as first adopted in 1965, authorizes federal grant and loan programs, providing a total of $53 billion in assistance to 8.1 million students in fiscal year 1999. The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 allowed eligible taxpayers to reduce their tax liability by receiving up to $1,500 HOPE or $1,000 Lifetime Learning tax credit for tuition and course-related fees paid. The 2001 Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act created a new tax deduction for tuition expenses and expanded many existing higher education tax provisions. The federal investment in providing student assistance through the tax code has risen sharply from $.0056 billion in 1996 to $7.6 billion in 2002--more than 80 percent of which is comprised of HOPE and Lifetime Learning tax expenditures. GAO reviewed title IV aid programs and higher education tax provisions designed to assist students and families, to help Congress prepare for the reauthorization of HEA. GAO found that, in the 1999-2000 academic year, the Lifetime Learning and HOPE tax credits provided an estimated 4 in 10 undergraduate students with benefits that equaled a varying share …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on data sharing among federally funded benefit and loan programs, focusing on: (1) the data that selected benefit and loan programs use to verify self-reported, eligibility-related information; (2) whether additional data sharing with federal, state, and local governments, or private entities, could avoid some improper payments; and (3) the legal or other barriers to enhanced data sharing."

The Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP) is a single, highly integrated technical program for maintaining the surety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The SSP uses past nuclear test data along with current and future non-nuclear test data, computational modeling and simulation, and experimental facilities to advance understanding of nuclear weapons. It includes stockpile surveillance, experimental research, development and engineering programs, and an appropriately scaled production capability to support stockpile requirements. This integrated national program requires the continued use of current facilities and programs along with new experimental facilities and computational enhancements to support these programs. The Advanced Simulation and Computing Program (ASC)1 is a cornerstone of the SSP, providing simulation capabilities and computational resources to support the annual stockpile assessment and certification, to study advanced nuclear-weapons design and manufacturing processes, to analyze accident scenarios and weapons aging, and to provide the tools to enable Stockpile Life Extension Programs (SLEPs) and the resolution of Significant Finding Investigations (SFIs). This requires a balanced resource, including technical staff, hardware, simulation software, and computer science solutions. In its first decade, the ASC strategy focused on demonstrating simulation capabilities of unprecedented scale in three spatial dimensions. In its second decade, ASC is focused on …

The last sentence of the second paragraph of the Executive Summary on page ix incorrectly states the period for repair. Cracks or areas of settling exceeding the 15 centimeters (6 inches) deep that extend 1.0 meter (3 feet) or more on the cover will be evaluated and repaired within 60 days of detection. The second sentence of the third paragraph of the Executive Summary on page ix incorrectly states the month that cover repair was performed while omitting the discovery of additional settling, which was repaired during the originally-stated repair month. The corrected sentence (with additional sentences added for clarification) reads, 'This area of settling on the cover was repaired in October 2006. Additional cracking was observed during the October 2006 repair that exceeded the action level and was repaired in December 2006.' The last sentence of the fourth bullet of Section 2.2 on page 5 incorrectly states the period for repair. Cracks or areas of settling exceeding the compliance criterion will be evaluated and repaired within 60 days. A repair event was omitted from Section 3.4 on page 13, which should be included as Subsection 3.4.1, 'October 26-30, 2006, Repairs'. The subtext included with this subsection should read, 'During …

The long-term goal of this research is to understand the role(s) and molecular mechanisms of programmed cell death (PCD) in the controlling plant growth, development and responses to biotic and abiotic stress. We developed a genetic selection scheme to identify A. thaliana FB1-resistant (fbr) mutants as a way to find genes involved in PCD (Stone et al., 2000; Stone et al., 2005; Khan and Stone, 2008). The disrupted gene in fbr6 (AtSPL14) responsible for the FB1-insensitivity and plant architecture phenotypes encodes a plant-specific SBP DNA-binding domain transcriptional regulator (Stone et al., 2005; Liang et al., 2008). This research plan is designed to fill gaps in the knowledge about the role of SPL14 in plant growth and development. The work is being guided by three objectives aimed at determining the pathways in which SPL14 functions to modulate PCD and/or plant development: (1) determine how SPL14 functions in plant development, (2) identify target genes that are directly regulated by SPL14, and (3) identify SPL14 modifications and interacting proteins. We made significant progress during the funding period. Briefly, some major accomplishments are highlighted below: (1) To identify potential AtSPL14 target genes, we identified a consensus DNA binding site for the AtSPL14 SBP DNA-binding …

This report discusses projected agricultural imports and exports for FY2002, as well as legislation that deals with federal programs in support of agricultural exports and federal aid dedicated to farms and agricultural reform.

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We performed Monte Carlo calculations of the neutron and gamma ray spectra and neutron and gamma dose rates outside the shielding of the UF{sub 6} mass flowmeter. The UF{sub 6} mass flowmeter and the UF{sub 6} mass flowmeter are the two main components of the Blend Down Monitoring System (BDMS) equipment. The BDMS equipment is designed to continuously monitor the UF{sub 6} enrichment and mass flow rates in processing pipes at uranium facilities. The UF{sub 6} mass flowmeter incorporates four {sup 252}Cf neutron sources, surrounded by a polyethylene shielding block. The uranium fission products generated by the {sup 252}Cf neutrons are detected down the pipe, thus confirming the UF{sub 6} mass flow rate. The dose calculations used both U.S. and Russian gamma and neutron fluence-to-dose conversion coefficients. The purpose of these calculations was to facilitate proper interpretation of the neutron dose rate measurements from rem meters (e.g., rem balls) outside of BDMS shielding. An accurate determination of the dose rate is particular interest in that it enables dose rates to be compared with the applicable regulatory limit. The calculations show that neutrons outside of BDMS shielding are significantly reduced in energy, i.e., the spectrum is shifted (i.e., moderated) towards lower …

This report offers an overview of the availability of intellectual property rights for plants, focusing upon the seed industry. It initially offers an introduction to seed innovation. The report then reviews the three intellectual property regimes applicable to plant innovation: utility patents, plant patents and plant variety protection certificates. It then details a 2001 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court, J.E.M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc., which held that sexually reproducing plants may be subject to utility patents.