This report discusses the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program, which was created by Title I of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (P.L. 103-322). The mission of the COPS program is to advance community policing in all jurisdictions across the United States. Legislation introduced in the 111th Congress would reauthorize the COPS program through FY2014 and reestablish COPS as a multi-grant program. This report provides an overview and analysis of issues Congress might choose to consider when taking up legislation to reauthorize the COPS program.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The decline of home prices in many parts of the country has left millions of homeowners with negative home equity, meaning that their outstanding mortgage balances exceed the current value of their homes. As we reported to you previously, a substantial proportion of borrowers with active nonprime mortgages (including subprime and Alt-A loans) had negative equity in their homes as of June 30, 2009. For example, among the 16 metropolitan areas examined, we estimated that the percentage of nonprime borrowers with negative equity ranged from about 9 percent (Denver, Colorado) to more than 90 percent (Las Vegas, Nevada). Research indicates that negative home equity substantially increases the risk of mortgage delinquency, making it an important dimension of ongoing problems in the nonprime market. To provide insight into how negative equity and loan performance among nonprime borrowers have varied by location and over time, this report examines, at the state level, the estimated proportion of nonprime borrowers with active loans that were in a negative equity position and the proportion that were seriously delinquent on their loan payments from 2006 through the end of 2009. This report is part …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Overall, orthopedic IMD admission rates were substantially higher in 2009 compared with 2003, while admission rate patterns among cardiac IMDs were mixed. Admission rates rose for each of the orthopedic IMDs in our study, with knee replacement rates growing 6.7 percent per year. The picture for inpatient cardiac IMD procedures was more mixed; admission rates for dual-chamber pacemakers decreased steadily while rates for AICDs and drug-eluting stents increased through 2006 and generally declined thereafter, in part reflecting a shift of surgeries to the outpatient setting. While the proportion of both orthopedic and cardiac IMD beneficiaries in poor or very poor health grew throughout our period of study, this trend was far more evident for cardiac IMD beneficiaries after 2007."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report presents our opinion on the financial statements of the Congressional Award Foundation (the Foundation) for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2009, and 2008. The financial statements are the responsibility of the Foundation. This report also presents the results of our consideration of the Foundation's related internal control. We identified a material internal control weakness in the Foundation's financial reporting process that resulted in material misstatements in the draft financial statements that management did not detect during the financial statement preparation and review process for fiscal year 2009. As described in our report, we identified errors during our audit and brought them to management's attention. In response, management made material adjustments (corrections) that are reflected in the accompanying financial statements. In addition, this report presents the results of our tests of the Foundation's compliance during fiscal year 2009 with selected provisions of laws and regulations. We conducted our audit pursuant to section 107 of the Congressional Award Act, as amended (2 U.S.C. 807), and in accordance with U.S. generally accepted government auditing standards."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For decades, the United States has worked toward the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, most recently under the 2003 Roadmap for Peace, which calls for an independent Palestinian state coexisting peacefully with the State of Israel. The United States had obligated more than $2.9 billion in bilateral assistance to the West Bank and Gaza focused on further developing the Palestinian economic, social services, and civil society sectors and on strengthening the processes, governance, and security-providing capacity of Palestinian Authority (PA) institutions from fiscal years 1993 through 2009. An additional $400.4 million is planned for fiscal year 2010. Since June 2007, when Hamas-a U.S. designated terrorist organization-seized control of the Gaza Strip, the United States has directed most of its assistance to the West Bank. The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is primarily responsible for administering Economic Support Fund (ESF) appropriations. Fiscal year 2008 and 2009 ESF funds support, among other things, priority needs identified in the 2007 Palestinian Reform and Development Plan, as well as humanitarian needs in Gaza following the Israeli-Hamas conflict there from December 2008 through January 2009. For fiscal years 2008 and 2009, the …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Fewer small employers claimed the Small Employer Health Insurance Tax Credit in tax year 2010 than were estimated to be eligible. While 170,300 small employers claimed it, estimates of the eligible pool by government agencies and small business advocacy groups ranged from 1.4 million to 4 million. The cost of credits claimed was $468 million. Most claims were limited to partial rather than full percentage credits (35 percent for small businesses) because of the average wage or full-time equivalent (FTE) requirements. 28,100 employers claimed the full credit percentage. In addition, 30 percent of claims had the base premium limited by the state premium average."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Air Force's maintenance depots provide critical support to ongoing operations around the world. Previously, the Department of Defense's (DOD) increased reliance on the private sector for depot maintenance support, coupled with downsizing, led to a general deterioration in the capabilities, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of the military services' depots. In March 2007, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (OUSD (AT&L)) directed each service to submit a depot maintenance strategic plan and provided direction for the content of those plans. The Air Force issued two documents in response to this direction--a Strategy and a Master Plan. GAO used qualitative content analyses to determine the extent to which the Air Force's collective plan addresses (1) key elements of a results-oriented management framework and (2) OUSD's (AT&L) direction for the plan's content."

This report presents policy and oversight issues for Congress arising from maritime territorial disputes involving East Asia, East China Sea (ECS), and an additional dispute over whether China has a right under international law to regulate U.S. and other foreign military activities in its maritime Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

This report discusses section 123 of the Atomic Energy Act (AEA), the specific requirements of which must be met in order for the United States to engage in civilian nuclear cooperation with other states. The AEA also provides for exemptions to these requirements, export control licensing procedures, and criteria for terminating cooperation.

This report provides background on the evolving political, security, and humanitarian crisis in the Central African Republic (CAR), which began when a fractious rebel coalition seized control of the central government in March 2013. The report also describes U.S. policy responses and analyzes possible issues for Congress, including oversight of U.S. humanitarian assistance and support for international stabilization efforts in CAR.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The 24 agencies participating in the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative made progress towards the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) goal to close 40 percent, or 1,253 of the 3,133 total federal data centers, by the end of 2015, but OMB has not measured agencies’ progress against its other goal of $3 billion in cost savings by the end of 2015. Agencies closed 420 data centers by the end of December 2012, and have plans to close an additional 548 to reach 968 by December 2015—285 closures short of OMB’s goal. OMB has not determined agencies’ progress against its cost savings goal because, according to OMB staff, the agency has not determined a consistent and repeatable method for tracking cost savings. This lack of information makes it uncertain whether the $3 billion in savings is achievable by the end of 2015. Until OMB tracks and reports on performance measures such as cost savings, it will be limited in its ability to oversee agencies’ progress against key goals."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The 21 communities surrounding the 23 Department of Defense (DOD) installations closed in the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) round have used strategies such as forming a local redevelopment authority and seeking federal grants to deal with the closures. Some economic data for these communities are comparable to national averages, with some variation. For instance, GAO found that 52 percent (11 of 21) of communities had unemployment rates lower than the national average of 8.9 percent, although the rates ranged from a low of 6.1 percent to a high of 16.8 percent. Sixty-two percent (13 of 21) of the closure communities had real per capita income growth rates higher than the national average of 0.14 percent for the period from 2006 through 2011. Since 2005, 23 other installations have experienced population increases that have resulted in net growth of about 191,000 military and civilian personnel (a 36 percent increase), and their corresponding communities have used several strategies to accommodate this growth, including forming a regional working group composed of representatives from affected jurisdictions."

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether school district resources may be used to process the payroll deductions to fund political donations(RQ-0688-GA).

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether and to what extent depositions can be recorded solely by non-stenographic means (RQ-0993-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Authority of a commissioners court to remove salary increases for county officials at the final budget hearing, and the effect of that removal on the grievance process (RQ-0999-GA)

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This report is categorized into two categories: (I) FY2016 Budget Request and (II) General Provisions: Key Policy Issues.

Heat pump clothes dryers (HPCDs) can be as much as 50percent more energy-efficient than conventional electric resistance clothes dryers, and therefore have the potential to save substantial amounts of electricity. While not currently available in the U.S., there are manufacturers in Europe and Japan that produce units for those markets. Drawing on analysis conducted for the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) current rulemaking on amended standards for clothes dryers, this paper evaluates the cost-effectiveness of HPCDs in American homes, as well as the national impact analysis for different market share scenarios. In order to get an accurate measurement of real energy savings potential, the paper offers a new energy use calculation methodology that takes into account the most current data on clothes washer cycles, clothes dryer usage frequency, remaining moisture content, and load weight per cycle, which is very different from current test procedure values. Using the above methodology along with product cost estimates developed by DOE, the paper presents the results of a life-cycle cost analysis of the adoption of HPCDs in a representative sample of American homes. The results show that HPCDs have positive economic benefits only for households with high clothes dryer usage or for households with …

This presentation reported on the technology choices and progress manufacturing and testing the injector and accelerator of the 250 MeV ultra-compact Compton Scattering gamma-ray Source under development at LLNL for homeland security applications. This paper summarizes the status of various facets of current accelerator activities at LLNL. The major components for the X-band test station have been designed, fabricated, and await installation. The XL-4 klystron has been delivered, and will shortly be dressed and installed in the ScandiNova modulator. High power testing of the klystron into RF loads will follow, including adjustment of the modulator for the klystron load as necessary. Assembly of RF transport, test station supports, and accelerator components will follow. Commissioning will focus on processing the RF gun to full operating power, which corresponds to 200 MV/m peak electric field on the cathode surface. Single bunch benchmarking of the Mark 1 design will provide confidence that this first structure operates as designed, and will serve as a solid starting point for subsequent changes, such as a removable photocathode, and the use of various cathode materials for enhanced quantum efficiency. Charge scaling experiments will follow, partly to confirm predictions, as well as to identify important causes of emittance …

In this project, we proposed to develop laser based mid-infrared lasers as a potentially robust and reliable source of ultrafast pulses in the mid-infrared region of the spectrum, and to apply this light source to generating bright, coherent, femtosecond-to-attosecond x-ray beams.

A task was undertaken to determine primarily the permeation behavior of various glove compounds from four manufacturers. As part of the basic characterization task, the opportunity to obtain additional mechanical and thermal properties presented itself. Consequently, a total of fifteen gloves were characterized for permeation, Thermogravimetric Analysis, Puncture Resistance, Tensile Properties and Dynamic Mechanical Analysis. Detailed reports were written for each characterization technique used. This report contains the summary of the results.

In the post-NOvA era, the protons are directly transported from the Booster ring to the Recycler ring rather than the Main Injector. For Mu2e and g-2 project, the Debuncher ring will be modified into a Delivery ring to deliver the protons to both Mu2e and g-2 experiments. Therefore, it requires the transport of protons from the Recycler Ring to the Delivery ring. A new transfer line from the Recycler ring to the P1 beamline will be constructed to transport proton beam from the Recycler Ring to existing Antiproton Source beamlines. This new beamline provides a way to deliver 8 GeV kinetic energy protons from the Booster to the Delivery ring, via the Recycler, using existing beam transport lines, and without the need for new civil construction. This paper presents the Conceptual Design of this new beamline.

The renormalization scale uncertainty can be eliminated by the Principle of Maximum Conformality (PMC) in a systematic scheme-independent way. Applying the PMC for the t{bar t}-pair hadroproduction at the NNLO level, we have found that the total cross-sections {sigma}{sub t{bar t}} at both the Tevatron and LHC remain almost unchanged when taking very disparate initial scales {mu}{sub R}{sup init} equal to m{sub t}, 10 m{sub t}, 20 m{sub t} and {radical}s, which is consistent with renormalization group invariance. As an important new application, we apply PMC scale-setting to study the top-quark forward-backward asymmetry. We observe that the more convergent perturbative series after PMC scale-setting leads to a more accurate top-quark forward-backward asymmetry. The resulting PMC prediction on the asymmetry is also free from the initial renormalization scale-dependence. Because the NLO PMC scale has a dip behavior for the (q{bar q})-channel at small subprocess collision energies, the importance of this channel to the asymmetry is increased. We observe that the asymmetries A{sub FB}{sup t{bar t}} and A{sub FB}{sup p{bar p}} at the Tevatron will be increased by 42% in comparison to the previous estimates obtained by using conventional scale-setting; i.e. we obtain A{sub FB}{sup t{bar t}PMC} {approx_equal} 12.5% and A{sub FB}{sup …

UV curing is a green technology that is largely underutilized because UV radiation sources like Hg Lamps are unreliable and difficult to use. High Power UV LEDs are now efficient enough to replace Hg Lamps, and offer significantly improved performance relative to Hg Lamps. In this study, a modular, scalable high power UV LED curing system was designed and tested, performing well in industrial coating evaluations. In order to achieve mechanical form factors similar to commercial Hg Lamp systems, a new patent pending design was employed enabling high irradiance at long working distances. While high power UV LEDs are currently only available at longer UVA wavelengths, rapid progress on UVC LEDs and the development of new formulations designed specifically for use with UV LED sources will converge to drive more rapid adoption of UV curing technology. An assessment of the environmental impact of replacing Hg Lamp systems with UV LED systems was performed. Since UV curing is used in only a small portion of the industrial printing, painting and coating markets, the ease of use of UV LED systems should increase the use of UV curing technology. Even a small penetration of the significant number of industrial applications still using …