A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Policymakers and researchers have focused on improving the quality of our nation's 3 million teachers to raise the achievement of students in key academic areas, such as reading and mathematics. Given the importance of teacher quality to student achievement and the key role federal and state governments play in supporting teacher quality, GAO's objectives included examining (1) the extent that the U.S. Department of Education (Education) funds and coordinates teacher quality programs, (2) studies that Education conducts on teacher quality and how it provides and coordinates research-related assistance to states and school districts, and (3) challenges to collaboration within states and how Education helps address those challenges. GAO interviewed experts and Education officials, administered surveys to officials at state educational agencies and state agencies for higher education in the fall of 2008, and conducted site visits to three states."

This report analyzes and discusses Iran's 2009 presidential election, particularly the campaigns of reformist candidate Mir Hussein Musavi and incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Allegations of vote rigging and election fraud have led to protests by supporters of candidate Musavi and have provoked international attention. This report also discusses the Obama Administration's reaction to the election results. This report also discusses briefly the current relationship between the U.S. and Iran, as well as U.S. concerns regarding Iran, such as Iran's efforts at building a nuclear weapons program.

On June 22, 2009, two transit trains in Washington, DC, collided, resulting in nine deaths and dozens of injuries. It was the worst crash in the history of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's rail transit system. This crash has raised questions about the safety of rail transit and the government's role in ensuring that safety. Nationwide, rail transit is considered one of the safest modes of transportation. This report discusses the State Safety Oversight Program, which went into effect in 1997 and mandates that states are responsible for the safety of the rail transit systems within their borders. This report also explores several issues that Federal Transit Administration (FTA) representatives have discussed in regards to improving the Safety Oversight Program.

Published reports have suggested that in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Pentagon has expanded its counter-terrorism intelligence activities as part of what the Bush Administration termed the global war on terror. This report discusses the Department of Defense's (DOD) various counter-terrorist intelligence activities, whether or not they constitute classification as "covert action," and the challenge of clarifying the roles and responsibilities of various intelligence activities with regard to clandestine activities. This report examines the statutory procedures governing covert action and associated questions to consider.

This report discusses the efforts currently underway to improve coordination and encourage better analysis amongst the various agencies within the U.S. Intelligence Community, especially with regard to the ongoing and prominent issue of international terrorism. In particular, this report addresses the false intelligence regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the current efforts in Iraq and Iran in general.

Many potential chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) terrorism agents lack available countermeasures. In 2003, President Bush proposed Project BioShield to address this need. The Project BioShield Act became law in July 2004. This report discusses the three main provisions of Project BioShield, funding for Project BioShield, and additional measures that Congress has considered since Project BioShield's implementation to further encourage CBRN countermeasure development.

Recent policies have sought to contain damages spilling over from housing and financial markets to the broader economy, including monetary policy, which is the responsibility of the Federal Reserve, and fiscal policy, including a tax cut in February 2008 of $150 billion and two extensions of unemployment compensation in June and November of 2008. This report discusses this problem as well as certain interventional measures that the government has taken and is considering taking to combat it, including various fiscal stimulus packages.

In October 2007, the United States and Mexico announced the Mérida Initiative, a three-year program of U.S. assistance to Mexico and Central America to combat drug trafficking, gangs, and organized crime. This report provides an overview and discussion of the funding provided for Mérida, and presents several issues that Congress may consider as it oversees implementation of the Initiative and shapes its future direction.

The Google Book Search Library Project, announced in December 2004, raised important questions about infringing reproduction and fair use under copyright law. Google planned to digitize, index, and display "snippets" of print books in the collections of five major libraries without the permission of the books' copyright holders, if any. Google's proposed reproduction and display of copyrighted books was not authorized by the rights holders, who alleged that the Google Library Project infringed their copyrights. This report provides background on the Library Project, legal issues raised by digitization and indexing projects, and the proposed settlement.

This report describes the consequences of foreclosure on homeowners, outlines recent foreclosure prevention plans implemented by the government and private organizations, and discusses the challenges associated with foreclosure prevention.

We show that there exists an exponentially large discretuum of vacua in G{sub 2}-compactifications of M-theory without flux. In M-theory-inspired G{sub 2}-MSSM, quantities relevant for particle physics remain virtually insensitive to large variations of the vacuum energy across the landscape. The purely non-perturbative vacua form a special subset of a more general class of vacua containing fractional Chern-Simons contributions. The cosmological constant can be dynamically neutralized via a chain of transitions interpolated by fractional gauge instantons describing spontaneous nucleation of M2-brane domain walls. Each transition is generically accompanied by a gauge symmetry breaking in some sector of the theory. In particular, the visible sector GUT symmetry breaking can likewise be triggered by a spontaneous nucleation of an M2-brane.

The tidal freshwater monitoring (TFM) project reported herein is part of the research, monitoring, and evaluation effort developed by the Action Agencies (Bonneville Power Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers [USACE], and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation) in response to obligations arising from the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a result of operation of the Federal Columbia River Power System. The project is being performed under the auspices of the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Columbia Basin Fish and Wildlife Program (Project No. 2005-001-00). The research is a collaborative effort among the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, the National Marine Fisheries Service, and the University of Washington. The overarching goal of the TFM project is to bridge the gap in knowledge between tidal freshwater habitats and the early life history attributes of migrating salmon. The research questions include: In what types of habitats within the tidal freshwater area of the Columbia River are juvenile salmon found, when are they present, and under what environmental conditions? What is the ecological contribution of shallow (0-5 m) tidal freshwater habitats to the recovery of ESA-listed salmon in the Columbia River basin? Field data collection for the …

This report consists of cartoon network LP v. CSC holdings Inc with remote-storage digital video recorders and copyright law. It further discusses about Time-Shifting Technologies and litigation.

In developing a 70 megapascal (MPa) fueling infrastructure, it is critical to ensure that a vehicle equipped with a lower service pressure fuel tank is never filled from a 70 MPa fueling source. Filling of a lower service pressure vehicle at a 70 MPa fueling source is likely to result in a catastrophic event with severe injuries or fatalities. The Hydrogen Safety Panel recommends that DOE undertake a two‐step process to address this issue: 1. Perform an independent risk analysis of a 70MPa dispenser filling a lower pressure vehicle tank and develop different approaches for prevention and mitigation to meet an acceptable level of safety. Cost effectiveness, reliability, advantages and disadvantages are among the factors that should be evaluated for each approach considered. 2. Until such time as this analysis is complete and any recommended actions implemented, communicate the potential risk to responsible parties and strongly encourage those parties to add a secondary layer of protection to the existing system of mechanically non‐interchangeable nozzles/receptacles. This will reduce the probability of a pressure mismatch during this developmental phase for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles and infrastructure. This step can be reassessed after further analysis is completed and the need and effectiveness of …