The Catastrophe Obligation Guarantee Act, introduced in Congress in 2009, would authorize the federal government to provide committed loan guarantees to qualified state catastrophe-insurance programs. Proponents argue that lower-cost catastrophe insurance could reduce federal disaster-assistance expenditures. This report estimates the law's potential effects in California.

This report addresses the conceptual basis, design, and implementation of the National Environmental Performance Track program. The voluntary program sought to encourage facilities to improve their environmental performance and provide a more collaborative relationship between facilities and regulators. While the program had mixed success, EPA should continue to seek out new approaches to complement and enhance traditional regulatory approaches.

In theory, financial professionals are relatively distinct: A broker-dealer conducts transactions in securities on behalf of itself and others; and an investment adviser provides advice to others regarding securities. Different laws regulate each type of professional, but boundaries have blurred. This report examines current business practices and investor understanding of each type.This report examines current practices and investor understanding of broker-dealers, and investment advisers - two distinct types of financial professionals whose boundaries have blurred in recent decades.

Identifies and assesses obstacles to disposing of excess Army lands that contain unexploded ordnance, and identifies innovative options for the disposal of these lands; In the ongoing Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process, lands containing unexploded ordnance (UXO) left over from military training have proved particularly difficult and costly to transfer to new users. With a few exceptions, little progress has been made in transferring these lands. This monograph chronicles both the issues that facilitated the transfer of UXO-contaminated lands and those that slowed the transfer, and it offers options for expediting the transfer of these lands.

Insights and information from a study of twelve human tissue repositories; Case studies of twelve existing human biospecimen repositories performed to evaluate their utility for genomics- and proteomics-based cancer research and to identify 3best practices2 in collection, processing, annotation, storage, privacy, ethical concerns, informed consent, business plans, operations, intellectual property rights, public relations, marketing, and education that would be useful in designing a national biospecimen network.