A report directed at improving the specification of surface parameters such as insolation, soil moisture, and surface heat capacity.

This collaborative proposal addressed key issues in understanding the Earth’s climate system, as highlighted by the U.S. Climate Science Program. The research focused on documenting past climatic changes and on assessing future climatic changes based on suites of global and regional climate models. Geographically, our emphasis was on the mountainous regions of the world, with a particular focus on the Neotropics of Central America and the Hawaiian Islands. Mountain regions are zones where large variations in ecosystems occur due to the strong climate zonation forced by the topography. These areas are particularly susceptible to changes in critical ecological thresholds, and we conducted studies of changes in phonological indicators based on various climatic thresholds.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held April 19, 2010 in Washington, D.C. This hearing includes testimony from two panels of witnesses representing governmental agencies and contractors on improving the federal government's oversight on service contracts in Southwest Asia operations.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held February 22, 2010 in Washington D.C.This hearing includes testimony from a panel of witnesses representing governmental agencies and non-governmental organizations on coordinating reconstruction and stabilization in contingency operations.

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.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held July 26,2010 in Washington, D.C. This hearing includes testimony from three panels of witnesses representing government agencies, contractors and subcontractors on transparency and accountability challenges associated with subcontracting.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held June 18, 2010 in Washington, D.C. This hearing includes testimony from a panel of academics, consultants, and think-tanks on the proper role and oversight of security contractors in Southwest Asia.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held June 21, 2010 in Washington D.C. This hearing includes testimony from two panels of witnesses representing government agencies and private security firms on America's use of private security contractors in Iraq.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held March 1, 2010 in Washington, D.C. This hearing includes testimony from the U.S.Departments of Defense and State, and from the U.S. Agency for International Development on coordinating reconstruction and stabilization in Contingency Operations.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held March 29, 2010 in Washington, D.C.. This hearing includes testimony from governmental agencies and contractors on the return of 100,000 contractor employees in Iraq as the United States reduces its military forces there.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held May 24, 2010. This hearing includes testimony from two panels representing governmental agencies and criminal investigative organizations on issues that confront law-enforcement officials in a contingency environment and the work of USAID, the DoD and DoS since the 2009 hearing.

Transcript of a public hearing held by the Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq & Afghanistan held September 16, 2010. This hearing includes testimony from two panels of government and academic witnesses on whether the Department of Defense has made adequate plans to improve the federal acquisition workforce.

Report detailing statistics related to college admission tests (SAT and ACT) for the class of 2009 in Texas public schools.

Summary describing the work completed at Centro de Investigación Cientifica y de Educación Superior de Ensenada (CICESE) for 'Direct Observations of Ocean Currents over the Western Slope in the Gulf of Mexico.' It includes background information on the project funding and sponsorship, goals, methodology, and findings.

This is a report on climate changes effect on planning the implementation of hydroelectric power infrastructures.

The Flooding Predictor™ is a patented advanced control technology proven in research at the Separations Research Program, University of Texas at Austin, to increase distillation column throughput by over 6%, while also increasing energy efficiency by 10%. The research was conducted under a U. S. Department of Energy Cooperative Agreement awarded to George Dzyacky of 2ndpoint, LLC. The Flooding Predictor™ works by detecting the incipient flood point and controlling the column closer to its actual hydraulic limit than historical practices have allowed. Further, the technology uses existing column instrumentation, meaning no additional refining infrastructure is required. Refiners often push distillation columns to maximize throughput, improve separation, or simply to achieve day-to-day optimization. Attempting to achieve such operating objectives is a tricky undertaking that can result in flooding. Operators and advanced control strategies alike rely on the conventional use of delta-pressure instrumentation to approximate the column’s approach to flood. But column delta-pressure is more an inference of the column’s approach to flood than it is an actual measurement of it. As a consequence, delta pressure limits are established conservatively in order to operate in a regime where the column is never expected to flood. As a result, there is much “left …

A final report made to the US Forest Service that addresses savannah restoration research findings from research conducted at the Savannah River Site in South Carolina.

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 …

A report providing summary data on the correctional population of those on probation or parole, and those incarcerated in prison during the year 2009.

A security study performed by Grant Thornton LLP for the Texas Lottery Commission to evaluate security measures established by management to support the integrity and security of the Texas Lottery's operations, gaming services and instant and on-line ticket productions.

Medicine Lake Volcano is a Quaternary shield volcano located in a tectonically complex and active zone at the transition between the Basin and Range Province and the Cascade Range of the Pacific Province. The volcano is topped by a 7x12 km elliptical depression surrounded by a discontinuous constructional ring of basaltic to rhyolitic lava flows. This thesis explores the possibility that the depression may have formed due to regional extension (rift basin) or dextral shear (pull-apart basin) rather than through caldera collapse and examines the relationship between regional tectonics and localized volcanism. Existing data consisting of temperature and magnetotelluric surveys, alteration mineral studies, and core logging were compiled and supplemented with additional core logging, field observations, and fault striae studies in paleomagnetically oriented core samples. These results were then synthesized with regional fault data from existing maps and databases. Faulting patterns near the caldera, extension directions derived from fault striae P and T axes, and three-dimensional temperature and alteration mineral models are consistent with slip across arcuate ring faults related to magma chamber deflation during flank eruptions and/or a pyroclastic eruption at about 180 ka. These results are not consistent with a rift or pull-apart basin. Limited subsidence can be …

Data was taken with the NASA ER-2 aircraft with the Cloud Radar System and other instruments in conjunction with the DOE ARM CLASIC field campaign. The flights were near the SGP site in north Central Oklahoma and targeted small developing convection. The CRS is a 94 GHz nadir pointing Doppler radar. Also on board the ER-2 was the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL). Seven science flights were conducted but the weather conditions did not cooperate in that there was neither developing convection, or there was heavy rain.

A report which provides a historical analysis of the marginal production of gas in the Gulf of Mexico.

Metric for Quarter 4: Report results of implementation of composite parameterization in single-column model (SCM) to explore the dependency of drizzle formation on aerosol properties. To better represent VOCALS conditions during a test flight, the Liu-Duam-McGraw (LDM) drizzle parameterization is implemented in the high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, as well as in the single-column Community Atmosphere Model (CAM), to explore this dependency.