FEMA’s Public Assistance Grant Program: Background and Considerations for Congress

[Excerpt] The Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5121 et seq., henceforth the Stafford Act) confers upon the President a broad set of authorities “to alleviate the suffering and damage” of affected tribal, state, and local governments, as well as individual citizens, from disasters. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been given the responsibility of administering almost all of the President’s Stafford Act authorities through other law, a series of Executive Orders, and a DHS delegation. FEMA has established the Public Assistance (PA) Grant Program by combining the authority of multiple sections of the Stafford Act. The PA Program provides financial grant assistance to states, tribes, and local communities both in the response to and recovery from significant disasters. Between FY2000-FY2013, the PA Program has provided $52.6 billion in grant assistance to help communities pay for an array of eligible response and recovery activities, including debris removal, emergency protective measures, and the repair, replacement, or restoration of disaster-damaged, publicly owned facilities and the facilities of certain private nonprofit (PNP) organizations. The authorities of the PA Program were most recently significantly amended by the Sandy Recovery Improvement Act (Division B of P.L. 113- 2, the Disaster Relief Appropriations Act, 2013; henceforth SRIA). For a brief legislative history of PA Program authorities, see Appendix A. This report provides background on key elements of the PA Program, such as the eligibility of applicants, the types of assistance available, and the methods FEMA uses for awarding grant assistance. Summary analysis of federal obligations for PA Program assistance is also provided along important variables, such as the distribution of federal obligations across the PA Program eligible categories of work assistance. The report concludes with discussion of several policy issues that Congress may wish to consider when evaluating the PA Program in the future, including considerations of significant prospective changes to the PA Program and the role of the PA Program in the context of other federal agency disaster assistance authorities

Mind The Gap: And 2 Other Mysteries

Mind the Gap, a novel, concerns a murder that occurs in London in 2001. Eight students from a university, accompanied by two faculty members, take a theatrical tour of London and Stratford, during which they see and discuss twelve plays. But their tour is ruined when one member of the group is murdered. The two other mysteries in Mind the Gap and 2 Other Mysteries, The Value of Books and Midtown Detectives, are relatively brief -- longer than short stories, but decidedly shorter than novels. They both present intriguing tales of suspense, and both are written in styles that contrast markedly with the style of Mind the Gap. Content Provided by Syndetics.https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/bookshelf/1052/thumbnail.jp

Jared Brown

Interview located at http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/oral_hist/42/https://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/oralhistory_gallery/1076/thumbnail.jp

Development of a lab-scale auger reactor for biomass fast pyrolysis and process optimization using response surface methodology

A lab-scale biomass fast pyrolysis system was designed and constructed based on an auger reactor concept. The design features two intermeshing augers that mix biomass with a heated bulk solid material that serves as a heat transfer medium. A literature review, engineering design process, and shake-down testing procedure was included as part of the system development. A response surface methodology was carried out by performing 30 experiments based on a four factor, five level central composite design to evaluate and optimize the system. The factors investigated were: (1) heat carrier inlet temperature, (2) heat carrier mass feed rate, (3) rotational speed of the reactor augers, and (4) volumetric flow rate of nitrogen used as a carrier gas. Red oak (Quercus Rubra L.) was used as the biomass feedstock, and S-280 cast steel shot was used as a heat carrier. Gravimetric methods were used to determine the mass yields of the fast pyrolysis products. Linear regression methods were used to develop statistically significant quadratic models to estimate and investigate the bio-oil and biochar yield. The optimal conditions that were found to maximize bio-oil yield and minimize biochar yield are high nitrogen flow rates (3.5 sL/min), high heat carrier temperatures (625yC), high auger speeds (63 RPM) and high heat carrier feed rates (18 kg/hr). The produced bio-oil, biochar and gas samples were subjected to multiple analytical tests to characterize the physical properties and chemical composition. These included determination of bio-oil moisture content, solid particulate matter, water insoluble content, higher heating value, viscosity, total acid number, proximate and ultimate analyses and GC/MS characterization. Statistically significant linear regression models were developed to predict the yield of gaseous carbon monoxide, the hydrogen content, moisture content and water-insoluble content of the bio-oil, and the vapor reaction temperature at the reactor outlet. A significant result is that with increasing bio-oil yield, the oxygen to carbon ratio and the hydrogen to carbon ratio of the wet bio-oil both decrease, largely due to a reduction in water content. The auger type reactor is currently less researched than other systems, and the results from this study suggest the design is well suited for fast pyrolysis processing. The reactor as designed and operated is able to achieve high liquid yields (greater than 70%-wt.), and produces bio-oil and biochar products that are physically and chemically similar to products from other fast pyrolysis reactors

Jared Brown

Emeritus Professor, School of Theater Arts Jared Brown was director of School of Theater Arts from 1989-1999 and taught full time at IWU from 1989-2002. Dr. Brown still teaches at IWU occasionally today

The Polarizing Effect of Arousal on Negotiation

In this research, we examined the impact of physiological arousal on negotiation outcomes. Conventional wisdom and the prescriptive literature suggest that arousal should be minimized given its negative effect on negotiations, whereas prior research on misattribution of arousal suggests that arousal might polarize outcomes, either negatively or positively. In two experiments, we manipulated arousal and measured its effect on subjective and objective negotiation outcomes. Our results support the polarization effect. When participants had negative prior attitudes toward negotiation, arousal had a detrimental effect on outcomes, whereas when participants had positive prior attitudes toward negotiation, arousal had a beneficial effect on outcomes. These effects occurred because of the construal of arousal as negative or positive affect, respectively. Our findings have important implications not only for negotiation, but also for research on misattribution of arousal, which previously has focused on the target of evaluation, in contrast to the current research, which focused on the critical role of the perceiver