The Federal Workforce: Characteristics and Trends

Understanding the characteristics and trends of the federal workforce is important because, among other things, agencies accomplish their missions via that workforce. Total personnel costs (direct compensation and benefits) for all federal employees (civilian and military, current employees and retirees) were estimated at more than $523 billion in 2008, and civilian personnel costs in the executive branch alone were estimated at about$194 billion. Three cabinet departments — the Departments of Defense (DOD), Veterans Affairs (DVA), and Homeland Security (DHS) — accounted for almost 60% of the nearly 1.9 million executive branch civilian employees in 2008. The duty stations for more than 35% of these employees were in four states (California, Virginia, Texas, and Maryland) and the District of Columbia, and DOD was the top federal employer in 35 states. DOD also employed more than 90% of federal civilian employees in foreign countries, and was the top federal employer in U.S. territories. The federal workforce grew by more than 120,000 employees between 2000 (the low point during the last 10 years) and 2008, with the growth concentrated in homeland security-related agencies and DVA. Civilian employment in other agencies (including DOD and most independent agencies) declined during the last 10 years. The number of blue-collar and clerical federal jobs declined between 1998 and 2008, but the number of professional and administrative jobs increased during this period. The percentage of the federal workforce that was made up of minorities also increased, but the percentage that was women remained almost constant. Although women and minorities represented an increasing portion of the growing professional and administrative groups, the representation of women and minorities in the Senior Executive Service was less than their presence in the overall workforce. The federal workforce was somewhat older in 2008 than it was in 1998, but the average length of service declined from 15.2 years in 1998 to 14.7 years in 2008. The number of white-collar employees in the General Schedule (GS) pay system declined during the last 10 years, while the number of employees in agency-specific pay systems (primarily at DOD and DHS) increased dramatically (from less than 1% of the workforce in 1998 to 16% in 2008). If these trends continue, the GS system will cover less than half of the federal civilian workforce by the year 2020. The average salary of the workforce was $69,061 in 2008, but average salaries varied substantially between and within federal agencies and pay systems. Although the federal workforce has grown somewhat in recent years, a 2006 study estimated that the “hidden” federal workforce of contractors and grantees grew by more than 50% between 1999 and 2005, when it reportedly included more than 10.5 million jobs in 2005. That figure is more than twice as large as the combined total of all three branches of government, the U.S. Postal Service, the intelligence agencies, the armed forces, and the Ready Reserve. This report will be updated when September 2008 data for the federal workforce become available

Space-suit carbon dioxide absorption system: A concept

Partial pressure of carbon dioxide within a space suit is maintained at safe levels by regenerating carbon dioxide with potassium hydroxide solution on board spacecraft or by portable units

Instrument calibrates low gas-rate flowmeters

Electronically measuring the transit time of a soap bubble carried by the gas stream between two fixed points in a burette calibrates flowmeters used for measuring low gas-flow rates

Ground state of high-density matter

It is shown that if an upper bound to the false vacuum energy of the electroweak Higgs potential is satisfied, the true ground state of high-density matter is not nuclear matter, or even strange-quark matter, but rather a non-topological soliton where the electroweak symmetry is exact and the fermions are massless. This possibility is examined in the standard SU(3) sub C tensor product SU(2) sub L tensor product U(1) sub Y model. The bound to the false vacuum energy is satisfied only for a narrow range of the Higgs boson masses in the minimal electroweak model (within about 10 eV of its minimum allowed value of 6.6 GeV) and a somewhat wider range for electroweak models with a non-minimal Higgs sector

Constraints on string networks with junctions

We consider the constraints on string networks with junctions in which the strings may all be different, as may be found for example in a network of $(p,q)$ cosmic superstrings. We concentrate on three aspects of junction dynamics. First we consider the propagation of small amplitude waves across a static three-string junction. Then, generalizing our earlier work, we determine the kinematic constraints on two colliding strings with different tensions. As before, the important conclusion is that strings do not always reconnect with a third string; they can pass straight through one another (or in the case of non-abelian strings become stuck in an X configuration), the constraint depending on the angle at which the strings meet, on their relative velocity, and on the ratios of the string tensions. For example, if the two colliding strings have equal tensions, then for ultra-relativistic initial velocities they pass through one another. However, if their tensions are sufficiently different they can reconnect. Finally, we consider the global properties of junctions and strings in a network. Assuming that, in a network, the incoming waves at a junction are independently randomly distributed, we determine the r.m.s. velocities of strings and calculate the average speed at which a junction moves along each of the three strings from which it is formed. Our findings suggest that junction dynamics may be such as to preferentially remove the heavy strings from the network leaving a network of predominantly light strings. Furthermore the r.m.s. velocity of strings in a network with junctions is smaller than 1/\sqrt{2}, the result for conventional Nambu-Goto strings without junctions in Minkowski spacetime.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures. Version to appear in PRD. (2 new references and slightly extended discussion in section VII

Reheating and gravitino production in braneworld inflation

We consider the constraints that can be imposed on a wide class of Inflation models in modified gravity scenarios in which the Friedmann equation is modified by the inclusion of $\rho^2$ terms, where $\rho$ is the total energy density. In particular we obtain the reheating temperature and gravitino abundance associated with the end of inflation. Whereas models of chaotic inflation and natural inflation can easily avoid the conventional gravitino overproduction problem, we show that supersymmetric hybrid inflation models (driven by both F and D-terms) do not work in the $\rho^2$ dominated era. We also study inflation driven by exponetial potentials in this modified background, and show that the gravitino production is suppressed enough to avoid there being a problem, although other conditions severely constrain these models.Comment: 24page

Heir Property in the African American Community: From Promised Lands to Problem Lands

Abstract African American landowners have been reluctant to take advantage of intergenerational succession laws which provide for an orderly transfer of property from one generation to the next. This reluctance has led to a prevalence of heir property. Heir property is created when a person dies intestate. Heir property has created an impediment to wealth accumulation and has contributed to African American land loss in America. Partition actions are a byproduct of heir property which has operated to accelerate the loss of real property in the African American community. The Uniform Partition of Heir Property Act provides for procedural safeguards that would allow for cotenants of heir property to buy out other heirs and provide more discernable notices of partition actions. These factors will likely militate against the precipitous loss of African American lands due to partition lawsuits initiated because of heir property. Keywords: Heir Property, Partition, Land Loss, Interstate Successio

Management by objectives: a model for the local Wesleyan Church

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/ecommonsatsdissertations/1020/thumbnail.jp

Charles Alexander Eastman (Ohiyesa)

Because Charles Eastman’s best known book is his earliest, Indian Boyhood (1902), and because that autobiography and its sequel, From the Deep Woods to Civilization (1916), have been most often used as sources for studies of the cultural transition of the Sioux, the literary value of those and of Eastman’s later books has gone largely unexamined. Eastman subtitled the 1916 volume The Autobiography of an Indian, but one cannot therefore assume that the conventions of European-American autobiography control Eastman’s work