Report that discusses the rationale behind the passage of P.L. 96-517, its provisions, and implementation of the law.

None

Report regarding the ways the United States Congress has explored to stimulate technological advancement in the private sector.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has taken some relatively recent steps to enhance strategic workforce planning across the department. These steps are generally consistent with leading principles, but the department has not yet implemented an effective oversight approach for monitoring and evaluating components' progress. Specifically, recent steps DHS has taken to develop and implement strategic workforce planning efforts are consistent with the leading principles GAO has reported that include involving management and stakeholders, identifying skills and competencies, developing strategies to fill gaps, and building capability through training. For example, the department demonstrated stakeholder involvement by including component-level stakeholders in the development of the DHS Workforce Strategy. Though DHS has taken steps to implement strategic workforce planning, recent internal audits, as well as GAO's previous work, identified challenges related to workforce planning at the component level that could impair the continued implementation of recently initiated strategic workforce planning efforts. For example, GAO reported in July 2009 that the Federal Protective Service's (FPS) workforce planning was limited because FPS headquarters did not collect data on its workforce's knowledge, skills, and abilities and subsequently could not determine optimal …

None

None

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO's simulations continue to illustrate that the federal government is on an unsustainable long-term fiscal path. In both the Baseline Extended and Alternative simulations, debt held by the public grows as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) over the long term. While the timing and pace of growth varies depending on the assumptions used, neither set of assumptions achieves a sustainable path. In the Baseline Extended simulation, which assumes current law, including the discretionary spending limits and other spending reductions contained in the Budget Control Act (BCA) of 2011 and expiration of certain tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, debt as a share of GDP declines in the short term before turning up again. In the Alternative simulation, in which these laws are assumed to not take full effect, federal debt as a share of GDP grows throughout the period. Discretionary spending limits alone do not address the fundamental imbalance between estimated revenue and spending, which is driven largely by the aging of the population and rising health care costs. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) slows the growth of health care …

Plasmas with internal transport barriers (ITBs) are a potential and attractive route to steady-state operation in ITER. These plasmas exhibit radially localized regions of improved con nement with steep pressure gradients in the plasma core, which drive large bootstrap current and generate hollow current pro les and negative shear. This work examines the formation and sustainment of ITBs in ITER with electron cyclotron heating and current drive. It is shown that, with a trade-o of the power delivered to the equatorial and to the upper launcher, the sustainment of steady-state ITBs can be demonstrated in ITER with the baseline heating con guration.

Report that covers legislative activity in the past and present regarding private-sector technological development. It also looks at the future of Congressional action towards mandated specific technology development.

Report from the Texas House Committee on Economic and Small Business Development describing the group's goals, activities, accomplishments, and other information, for review by the 83rd Texas Legislature.

Report from the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence describing the group's goals, activities, accomplishments, and other information, for review by the 83rd Texas Legislature.

Report from the Texas Senate Higher Education Committee describing the group's goals, activities, accomplishments, and other information, for review by the 83rd Texas Legislature.

None

This report provides a detailed introduction to the federal budget process, including both the presidential and congressional budget process, sequestration, and numerous forms of budgetary legislation.

None

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has provided significantly more time and money to the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) than previously planned and expressed high confidence in the project's new baselines. Its current cost estimate reflects some features of best practices for developing reliable and credible estimates. For example, the estimate substantially meets one of four cost characteristics--comprehensive--that GAO looks for in a reliable cost estimate, in part because all life cycle costs were included. The estimate, however, only partially met the other three characteristics--well documented, accurate, and credible--which detracts from its reliability. For example, the estimate's accuracy, and therefore the confidence level assigned to the estimate, was lessened by the summary schedule used for the joint cost and schedule risk analysis because it did not provide enough detail to determine how risks were applied to critical project activities. The estimate's credibility was also lessened because officials did not perform a sensitivity analysis that would have identified key drivers of costs, such as workforce size. Program officials believe that it would have been difficult to fully address all best practice characteristics. GAO believes there …

The goal of this project was to establish the physical properties of Ly{alpha}#11;emitting galaxies from redshifts of 2 to 3 in order to better calibrate the use of LAEs as probes of the large scale structure of the universe for upcoming dark energy experiments, such as the Hobby Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). We have obtained narrow-band imaging of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South (ECDF-S) in two different narrow-band #12;filters centered at Ly{alpha}#11; at z=2.1 and 3.1. The resulting of samples of LAEs were used to determine the LAE luminosity function, equivalent width distribution and clustering properties (bias) of LAEs at these redshifts. While the results from the ECDF-S appear robust, they are based on a single field. To explore the effects of cosmic variance and galaxy environment on the physical properties of LAEs, we have also obtained narrow-band data at both redshifts (z = 2:1 and 3:1) in three additional #12;fields (SDSS 1030+-05, the Extended Hubble Deep Field South, and CW 1255+01). The narrow-band imaging data has been reduced and LAE catalogs are being generated. We have calculated preliminary luminosity functions, equivalent width distributions, and clustering properties. We have also obtained follow-up spectroscopy in the optical (using …

None

None

Report that examines the current status of state fiscal conditions and the role of federal assistance in state budgets. It begins with a brief overview of state budgeting procedures and then provides budgetary data comparing state fiscal conditions in FY2008 to FY2010.

Report that looks at the workings, and pros and cons, of a system established by Congress to facilitate the transfer of technology research and development (R&D) funding to the private sector and state and local governments.

None

Evaporation and crystallization are key thermal separation processes for concentrating and purifying inorganic and organic products with energy consumption over 1,000 trillion Btu/yr. This project focused on a challenging task of recovering low-temperature latent heat that can have a paradigm shift in the way thermal process units will be designed and operated to achieve high-energy efficiency and significantly reduce the carbon footprint as well as water footprint. Moreover, this project has evaluated the technical merits of waste-heat powered thermal heat pumps for recovery of latent heat from distillation, multi-effect evaporation (MEE), and crystallization processes and recycling into the process. The Project Team has estimated the potential energy, economics and environmental benefits with the focus on reduction in CO2 emissions that can be realized by 2020, assuming successful development and commercialization of the technology being developed. Specifically, with aggressive industry-wide applications of heat recovery and recycling with absorption heat pumps, energy savings of about 26.7 trillion Btu/yr have been estimated for distillation process. The direct environmental benefits of this project are the reduced emissions of combustible products. The estimated major reduction in environmental pollutants in the distillation processes is in CO2 emission equivalent to 3.5 billion lbs/year. Energy consumption associated with …

Organic photovoltaic (OPV) technology is an attractive solar-electric conversion paradigm due to the promise of low cost roll-to-roll production and amenability to flexible substrates. Power conversion efficiency (PCE) exceeding 7% has recently been achieved. OPV cells suffer from low charge carrier mobilities of polymers, leading to recombination losses, higher series resistances and lower fill-factors. Thus, it is imperative to develop fabrication methodologies that can enable efficient optical absorption in films thinner than optical absorption length. Active layers conformally deposited on light-trapping, microscale textured, grating-type surfaces is one possible approach to achieve this objective. In this study, 40% theoretical increase in photonic absorption over flat OPVs is shown for devices with textured geometry by the simulation results. For verifying this theoretical result and improving the efficiency of OPVs by light trapping, OPVs were fabricated on grating-type textured substrates possessing t pitch and -coat PV active-layer on these textured substrates led to over filling of the valleys and shunts at the crest, which severely affected the performance of the resultant PV devices. Thus, it is established that although the optical design is important for OPV performance but the potential of light trapping can only be effectively tapped if the textures are amenable …