Former Presidents: Pensions, Office Allowances, and Other Federal Benefits

[Excerpt] This report provides a legislative and cultural history of the Former Presidents Act. It details the benefits provided to former Presidents and their costs. Congress has the authority to reduce, increase, or maintain the pension and benefits provided to former Presidents of the United States. This report considers the potential effects of maintaining the FPA or amending the FPA in ways that might reduce or otherwise modify a former President’s benefits

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

The electron distribution function downstream of the solar-wind termination shock: Where are the hot electrons?

In the majority of the literature on plasma shock waves, electrons play the role of "ghost particles," since their contribution to mass and momentum flows is negligible, and they have been treated as only taking care of the electric plasma neutrality. In some more recent papers, however, electrons play a new important role in the shock dynamics and thermodynamics, especially at the solar-wind termination shock. They react on the shock electric field in a very specific way, leading to suprathermal nonequilibrium distributions of the downstream electrons, which can be represented by a kappa distribution function. In this paper, we discuss why this anticipated hot electron population has not been seen by the plasma detectors of the Voyager spacecraft downstream of the solar-wind termination shock. We show that hot nonequilibrium electrons induce a strong negative electric charge-up of any spacecraft cruising through this downstream plasma environment. This charge reduces electron fluxes at the spacecraft detectors to nondetectable intensities. Furthermore, we show that the Debye length $\lambda _{\mathrm D}^{\kappa}$ grows to values of about $\lambda _{\mathrm D}^{\kappa}/\lambda _{\mathrm D}\simeq 10^{6}$ compared to the classical value $\lambda _{\mathrm D}$ in this hot-electron environment. This unusual condition allows for the propagation of a certain type of electrostatic plasma waves that, at very large wavelengths, allow us to determine the effective temperature of the suprathermal electrons directly by means of the phase velocity of these waves. At moderate wavelengths, the electron-acoustic dispersion relation leads to nonpropagating oscillations with the ion-plasma frequency $\omega _{\mathrm p}$ , instead of the traditional electron plasma frequency.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Joint perception: gaze and beliefs about social context

The way that we look at images is influenced by social context. Previously we demonstrated this phenomenon of joint perception. If lone participants believed that an unseen other person was also looking at the images they saw, it shifted the balance of their gaze between negative and positive images. The direction of this shift depended upon whether participants thought that later they would be compared against the other person or would be collaborating with them. Here we examined whether the joint perception is caused by beliefs about shared experience (looking at the same images) or beliefs about joint action (being engaged in the same task with the images). We place our results in the context of the emerging field of joint action, and discuss their connection to notions of group emotion and situated cognition. Such findings reveal the persuasive and subtle effect of social context upon cognitive and perceptual processes

Solar heating effects on balloon-borne microthermal probes for the airborne laser program

Atmospheric optical turbulence induces phase fluctuations in a propagating electromagnetic wave. The resulting degradation in coherence limits the capability of any laser, target acquisition, or surveillance system. Past data collection methods for the parameterization of atmospheric turbulence profiles, in support of critical Theater Ballistic Missile Defense (TBM) systems, from ground level to 30 km, have depended on meteorological balloon- thermosonde systems, probes carried on the U.S. Air Force Argus aircraft, as well as radar and optical measurements. The balloon and aircraft systems measure temperature fluctuations and compute the temperature structure function, CT2 and the related index of refraction structure parameter, Cn2. It has recently become critical to explain why turbulence profiles from daytime thermosonde data consistently show a two order of magnitude increase over that taken during the night, primarily between 12-20 km. This thesis analyzed the TSI 3.8 micron platinum coated tungsten thermosonde probe used by the USAF Research Laboratory (AFRL) to quantity the magnitude of the solar heating and to investigate other heat transfer mechanisms in the probe. A model of the thin wire probe was developed to identity each of the contributions to the temperature error and its significance. Experimental measurements where collected to verify most aspects of the final model. We found that the sun induces a temperature rise in the TSI 3.8 micron fine wire probe, during the day, that can vary from near zero to 0. 175 K. It is strongly dependent on probe orientation with respect to the sun and on variations in the air flow over the probe. This then causes an apparent increase by two orders of magnitude in the daytime measurements of the optical turbulence parameters CT2 and Cn2http://archive.org/details/solarheatingeffe00richLieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Treating Homeless Opioid Dependent Patients with Buprenorphine in an Office-Based Setting

CONTEXT Although office-based opioid treatment with buprenorphine (OBOT-B) has been successfully implemented in primary care settings in the US, its use has not been reported in homeless patients. OBJECTIVE To characterize the feasibility of OBOT-B in homeless relative to housed patients. DESIGN A retrospective record review examining treatment failure, drug use, utilization of substance abuse treatment services, and intensity of clinical support by a nurse care manager (NCM) among homeless and housed patients in an OBOT-B program between August 2003 and October 2004. Treatment failure was defined as elopement before completing medication induction, discharge after medication induction due to ongoing drug use with concurrent nonadherence with intensified treatment, or discharge due to disruptive behavior. RESULTS Of 44 homeless and 41 housed patients enrolled over 12 months, homeless patients were more likely to be older, nonwhite, unemployed, infected with HIV and hepatitis C, and report a psychiatric illness. Homeless patients had fewer social supports and more chronic substance abuse histories with a 3- to 6-fold greater number of years of drug use, number of detoxification attempts and percentage with a history of methadone maintenance treatment. The proportion of subjects with treatment failure for the homeless (21%) and housed (22%) did not differ (P=.94). At 12 months, both groups had similar proportions with illicit opioid use [Odds ratio (OR), 0.9 (95% CI, 0.5–1.7) P=.8], utilization of counseling (homeless, 46%; housed, 49%; P=.95), and participation in mutual-help groups (homeless, 25%; housed, 29%; P=.96). At 12 months, 36% of the homeless group was no longer homeless. During the first month of treatment, homeless patients required more clinical support from the NCM than housed patients. CONCLUSIONS Despite homeless opioid dependent patients' social instability, greater comorbidities, and more chronic drug use, office-based opioid treatment with buprenorphine was effectively implemented in this population comparable to outcomes in housed patients with respect to treatment failure, illicit opioid use, and utilization of substance abuse treatment

Characterization of an electron conduit between bacteria and the extracellular environment

A number of species of Gram-negative bacteria can use insoluble minerals of Fe(III) and Mn(IV) as extracellular respiratory electron acceptors. In some species of Shewanella, deca-heme electron transfer proteins lie at the extracellular face of the outer membrane (OM), where they can interact with insoluble substrates. To reduce extracellular substrates, these redox proteins must be charged by the inner membrane/periplasmic electron transfer system. Here, we present a spectro-potentiometric characterization of a trans-OM icosa-heme complex, MtrCAB, and demonstrate its capacity to move electrons across a lipid bilayer after incorporation into proteoliposomes. We also show that a stable MtrAB subcomplex can assemble in the absence of MtrC; an MtrBC subcomplex is not assembled in the absence of MtrA; and MtrA is only associated to the membrane in cells when MtrB is present. We propose a model for the modular organization of the MtrCAB complex in which MtrC is an extracellular element that mediates electron transfer to extracellular substrates and MtrB is a trans-OM spanning ß-barrel protein that serves as a sheath, within which MtrA and MtrC exchange electrons. We have identified the MtrAB module in a range of bacterial phyla, suggesting that it is widely used in electron exchange with the extracellular environment

114th Congress

This report provides an overview of two The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) bills in the 114th Congress, S. 337 and H.R. 653, and provides analysis of certain FOIA-related provisions within each