As the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Solar Energy Technologies Program prepares to initiate a new cost-shared research and development (R&D) effort on photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing, it is useful to review the experience to date with consortia focused on PV R&D, manufacturing, and testing. Analysts gathered information for this report by conducting interviews and accessing Web sites of 14 U.S. consortia and four European consortia, each with...

The coastal-change and glaciological mapping project has five primary objectives, listed as follows: to determine coastline changes that have occurred during the past three decades, or longer where additional information exists; to establish an accurate baseline series of1:1,000,000-scale maps (fig. 1) that defines, from the analysis of Landsat and other satellite images, the glaciological characteristics (for example, floating ice, grounded ice,...

Reducing aviation noise is important to the efficient operation and expansion of the National Airspace System because community opposition to aviation noise is a major obstacle to airport and runway development. Such development is needed to help address congestion and meet the nation's rapidly growing demand for air travel. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have the primary federal...

Over the past decade, per capita consumption of bottled water in the United States has more than doubled. With this increase have come several concerns in recent years about the safety, quality, and environmental impacts of bottled water. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates bottled water under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act as a food and is responsible for ensuring that domestic and imported bottled water is safe and truthfully...