Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) conducts a series of Web-based surveys called Status of Forces surveys, which help enable decision makers within the Department of Defense (DOD) to (1) evaluate existing programs and policies, (2) establish baselines before implementing new programs and policies, and (3) monitor the progress of programs and policies and their effects on the total force. In recent years, we have discussed the results of these surveys in several of our reports. While we have generally found the survey results to be sufficiently reliable for the purposes of our reporting, several of our reports have discussed low response rates and the potential for bias in the survey results. Nonresponse analysis is an established practice in survey research that helps determine whether nonresponse bias (i.e., survey results that do not accurately reflect the population) might occur due to under- or overrepresentation of some respondents' views on survey questions. When nonresponse analysis is performed, survey researchers can use the results to select and adjust the statistical weighting techniques they use that help ensure that survey results accurately reflect the survey population. Because we have noted, in …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "On April 20, 2010, an oil spill of national significance in the Gulf of Mexico followed an explosion on the mobile offshore drilling unit Deepwater Horizon (the Deepwater Horizon oil spill). The Deepwater Horizon was leased by BP America Production Company (BP) as part of the Macondo project. 152 days later, on September 19, 2010, BP confirmed the completion of cementing operations to prevent further oil from spilling from the Macondo Prospect well to which the Deepwater Horizon was attached when it exploded. In order to coordinate the federal response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the National Incident Commander established the Deepwater Integrated Services Team (IST) consisting of 18 federal agencies, including the U.S. Coast Guard and the Department of Justice (DOJ). The U.S. Coast Guard's National Pollution Funds Center (NPFC) designated two BP subsidiaries--BP Exploration and Production and its guarantor, BP Corporation North America, Inc.--and five other companies as "Responsible Parties" for Deepwater Horizon oil spill related claims. Shortly after the spill, at the direction of NPFC, BP established a facility to receive and process all claims against Responsible Parties. In June 2010, as part of …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses our work regarding foreign firms with commercial interests in Iran's energy sector. In March 2010, we issued a report identifying 41 foreign firms that have commercial activity in Iran's energy sector. The report released today identifies which of the 41 foreign firms also have U.S. government contracts."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As the U.S. workforce has become increasingly diverse, many private and public sector organizations have recognized the importance of recruiting and retaining minority and women candidates for key positions. However, previous congressional hearings have raised concerns about a lack of diversity at the management level in the financial services industry, which provides services that are essential to the continued growth and economic recovery of the country. The recent financial crisis has renewed concerns about the financial services industry's commitment to workforce diversity. This testimony discusses findings from a June 2006 GAO report (GAO-06-617), February 2008 testimony (GAO-08-445T), and more recent work on diversity in the financial services industry. Specifically, GAO assesses (1) what the available data show about diversity at the management level from 1993 through 2008 and (2) steps that the industry has taken to promote workforce diversity and the challenges involved. To address the testimony's objectives, GAO analyzed data from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC); reviewed select studies; and interviewed officials from financial services firms, trade organizations, and organizations that represent minority and women professionals. To the extent possible, key statistics have been updated."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Beginning in 1993 and in subsequent legislation in 1997, 1999, and 2000, Congress established the Empowerment Zone (EZ), Enterprise Community (EC), and Renewal Community (RC) programs to reduce unemployment and generate economic growth in selected Census tracts. Urban and rural communities designated as EZs, ECs, or RCs received grants, tax incentives, or a combination of both to stimulate community development and business activity. The EZ, EC, and RC programs expired on December 31, 2009, though legislation has been introduced to extend the programs. The Community Renewal Tax Relief Act of 2000 (Public Law 106-554) mandated that GAO report to Congress by January 31, 2004; 2007; and 2010 on the EZ, EC, and RC programs and their effect on poverty, unemployment, and economic growth in designated program areas. We issued the first two mandated reports in 2004 and 2006. The purpose of this report is to make publicly available information we provided in a briefing to your staffs on January 29, 2010."

Hydraulic conductivities of volcanic and carbonate lithologic units at the Nevada Test Site were estimated from flow logs and aquifer-test data. Borehole flow and drawdown were integrated and interpreted using a radial, axisymmetric flow model, AnalyzeHOLE. This integrated approach is used because complex well completions and heterogeneous aquifers and confining units produce vertical flow in the annular space and aquifers adjacent to the wellbore. AnalyzeHOLE simulates vertical flow, in addition to horizontal flow, which accounts for converging flow toward screen ends and diverging flow toward transmissive intervals. Simulated aquifers and confining units uniformly are subdivided by depth into intervals in which the hydraulic conductivity is estimated with the Parameter ESTimation (PEST) software. Between 50 and 150 hydraulic-conductivity parameters were estimated by minimizing weighted differences between simulated and measured flow and drawdown. Transmissivity estimates from single-well or multiple-well aquifer tests were used to constrain estimates of hydraulic conductivity. The distribution of hydraulic conductivity within each lithology had a minimum variance because estimates were constrained with Tikhonov regularization. AnalyzeHOLE simulated hydraulic-conductivity estimates for lithologic units across screened and cased intervals are as much as 100 times less than those estimated using proportional flow-log analyses applied across screened intervals only. Smaller estimates of …

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held July 12, 2010 in Washington D.C.This hearing includes testimony from a panel of Department of Defense witnesses on the Department's manpower planning, strategic planning, and operational planning for operational contract support in contingency operations.

This issue has the following articles: (1) Optimizing Electron-Positron Pair Production on kJ-Class High-Intensity Lasers for the Purpose of Pair-Plasma Creation; (2) Neutron Yield Study of Direct-Drive, Low-Adiabat Cryogenic D2 Implosions on OMEGA; (3) Al 1s-2p Absorption Spectroscopy of Shock-Wave Heating and Compression in Laser-Driven Planar Foil; (4) A Measurable Lawson Criterion and Hydro-Equivalent Curves for Inertial Confinement Fusion; (5) Pulsed-THz Characterization of Hg-Based, High-Temperature Superconductors; (6) LLE's Summer High School Research Program; (7) FY08 Laser Facility Report; and (8) National Laser Users Facility and External Users Programs.