SDFM The Business of Defense
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The National Security Agency has launched two new digital communications efforts. Both are designed to educate prospective employees on career opportunities with NSA. It\'s part of an overall push to recruit workers to support NSA\'s cyber security initiatives. NSA officials anticipate this year will see the agency\'s largest hiring effort of cybersecurity workers to date. They\'ve targeted communications tools they hope will appeal to today\'s tech-savvy generation. The NSA Career Links Smartphone application is available for download through the iTunes platform. Career Links delivers real-time job updates directly to a user\'s iPhone. This includes information about available jobs, career fairs, and Agency news. NSA is also employing Smartphone tagging on many of its printed recruitment advertisements. Users with Smartphones equipped with Android or other operating systems can scan the tags and launch a video related to the ad.
January 23, 2011 -
Military aircraft are typically burdened with miles of heavily shielded copper wire cables that connect many types of components. The cabling is often heavy, yet fragile, subject to deterioration, as well as expensive. More modern aircraft employ multimode digital fiber-optic cables. A network program created by DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency - aims to replace current aircraft wiring with a single-mode fiber-optic network, where each fiber can carry multiple digital and analog signals. The program will develop prototype photonic transmitters and receivers - and will support advanced electronic warfare, radar and communications systems. Such systems have the potential to save the Defense Department billions of dollars over the lifecycle of an aircraft fleet. Prototype digital transmitters are designed to support tuning over 32 wavelength channels, each carrying 10 gigabit-per-second data rates.
January 23, 2011 -
The Internal Revenue Service has opened its 21st season of electronic filing. The agency has sent reminders to taxpayers saying e-file remains the best way to get fast refunds and ensure accurate tax returns, particularly following several changes in the tax law. A number of tax deductions and credits for were extended for 2011 and 2012. To date, the IRS says it\'s processed over one-billion returns through e-files. In 2010, nearly 100 million people - or 70-percent of taxpayers - used IRS e-file. IRS commissioners anticipate that more tax return preparers will be using e-file this year. They anticipate starting to process tax returns impacted by December\'s tax law changes by mid-February. Even with the delay, the IRS says e-file remains the fastest option. It will take less than two weeks to process an e-filed return, but as many as four to six weeks to process a paper return.
January 23, 2011 -
The Federal Career Intern Program (FCIP) has been eliminated. What comes next and how will it affect those already in the program? These questions and more are answered on this week\'s FEDtalk. January 21, 2011
January 21, 2011 -
Was Chinese Premiers Hu Jintao in the dark on their stealth fighter? Earlier this month during a visit from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a very public demonstration of the plane took place and Mr. Hu appeared to be unaware of it. But was he? Some military officials have raised the specter of a divide between the Hu and military, but observers suggest that it was probably a part of an orchestrated power play --complete with plausible deniability for the Chinese leader considering the big meeting with President Obama was coming up.
January 21, 2011 -
For the first time in seven years suicides among active duty soldiers dropped, but according to the Army the dip was supplanted by a stark rise in suicides in the National Guard and Reserve ranks. The Associated Press reports Army Vice Chiefof Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said those victims, \"are often geographically separated, removed from the support network provided by military installations.\" Chiarelli said. \"They lack the ready camaraderie of fellow soldiers and the daily oversight and hands-on assistance from members of the chain of command.
January 21, 2011 -
How will a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan impact the Afghan war? A U.S. military outpost in Afghanistan is very close to the epicenter of the quake, but there have been no reports of significant damage. A Pakistani government spokesman said there was minimal loss of life and property damage. Considering that many insurgents hide in the mountains around the area where the quake took place, NATO coalition troops are watching the situation to see if any movement or changes in behavior by the militants result from the quake.
January 21, 2011 -
Bryan Lowry President, AFGE Council of Prison Locals Former Rep. Bob Edgar (D-Pa.) President & CEO, Common Cause
January 19, 2011 -
January 25th, 2011 at 11AM Administration\'s aim to fundamentally change how the Federal Government purchases and uses IT. One of the biggest goals is to reduce the number of Federal data centers by at least 40 percent by 2015.
January 17, 2011 -
January 17th and January 18th, 2011 \"For more than three decades, Paradis has worked to improve national food and nutrition programs and she will now be able to hit the ground running to enhance how these programs are delivered to the American people,\" said Vilsack.
January 17, 2011 -
An Iowa State University associate professor and associate of the Department of Energy\'s Ames Laboratory has been working with polymers that repair themselves when they crack. He\'s worked with polymers made from vegetable oils. Now - he\'s working to combine the two technologies. Michael Kessler is researching and developing biorenewable polymers that are capable of healing themselves as they degrade and crack. He says - if successful, the research will provide biorenewable alternatives to petroleum-based resins, which he says could have a huge economic and environmental impacts. The technology has evolved into a system that embeds catalysts and microcapsules containing a liquid healing agent inside the polymer. As cracks develop, they rupture the microcapsules and release the healing agent.
January 17, 2011 -
To help mark the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, officials with the National Archive and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, have unveiled the nation\'s largest online digitized presidential archive. It provides unprecedented global access to the most important papers, records, photographs and recordings of President John F. Kennedy\'s thousand days in office - making them accessible without traveling to the Kennedy Library in Boston. The Digital Archive includes over 200,000 pages, 300 reels of audio tape containing over 12-hundred recordings of telephone conversations, speeches and meetings, 300 museum artifacts, 72 reels of moving images and 15-hundred photos. It\'s now available to teachers, students, scholars, and others through the website jfklibrary-dot-org.
January 17, 2011 -
NASA\'s Kepler mission has confirmed the discovery of its first rocky planet, named Kepler-10-b. It\'s 1-point-four times the size of Earth, making it the smallest planet ever discovered outside our solar system. Team leaders at NASA\'a Ames Research Center in California say it\'s also the first solid evidence of a rocky planet orbiting a star other than our sun. The size of the exoplanet can be derived from periodic dips in brightness. Kepler\'s ultra-precise photometer measures the tiny decrease in a star\'s brightness that happen when a planet crosses in front of it. The distance between the planet and the star is calculated by measuring the time between successive dips as the planet orbits the star. As a result of the analysis, that star orbited by the planet - Kepler-10 - is now one of the most well-characterized planet-hosting stars in the universe.
January 17, 2011 -
Obama administration is going to shut down problematic \"virtual fence\" designed to guard parts of the U.S. border with Mexico. The project, being run by Boeing Co involving video cameras, radar, sensors and other technologies was supposed to catch smugglers trying to cross the porous border. Bennie Thompson, the senior Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee said, \"The SBInet program has been a grave and expensive disappointment since its inception.\"
January 17, 2011 -
The Ivory coast is in serious turmoil. Forces loyal to Laurent Gbagbo began attacking and burning U.N. vehicles in yesterday as tensions rise between Gbagbo and those who say he lost the election to Alassane Ouattra. The United Nations says Ouattara won the vote, but Gbagbo, who came to power in 2000, has rejected the U.N.-certified tally. There are reports of atrocities. A U.N. human rights officials says there are reports of mass graves around the capital of Abidjan.
January 17, 2011