Cyberspace-the globally interconnected information infrastructure that includes the Internet, telecommunications networks, computer systems, and industrial control systems-is rich in opportunities to improve the lives of people around the world. Assuring continued growth and innovation in cyberspace requires that the public has a well-founded sense of trust in the environment. Increasingly frequent malware attacks and financial and intellectual-property thefts must be addressed in order to sustain public trust in cyberspace but address real threats to national security.

There is broad scientific consensus that rapid changes in global climate are altering ice and snow cover and affecting Arctic ecosystems, indigenous societies, and natural resources. Research is needed to increase fundamental understanding of these challenges and inform development of sound, sciencebased solutions. The Interagency Arctic Research Policy Committee (IARPC) is charged with developing five-year plans for Federally sponsored research in the Arctic region. For 2013 to 2017, the IARPC, which consists of representatives from 14 Federal agencies, departments, and offices, has...

Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Work within the intersecting disciplines at the core of nanotechnology innovation-including physical, life, and social sciences and engineering-has revealed the potential of nanomaterials and nanoscale processes to collect and store energy, reinforce materials, sense contaminants, enable life-saving drugs, and shrink and accelerate computational devices in both incremental and paradigm-shifting ways. Further, nanotechnology has...

The Task Force was chartered to study federal IdM over a six-month period, with a broad range of representation from different government missions, and was given three primary tasks: Provide an assessment of the current state of IdM in the U.S. government; Develop a vision for how IdM should operate in the future; Develop first-step recommendations on how to advance toward this vision. The Task Force undertook two overlapping approaches to determine the current state of IdM in the U.S. government, a detailed assessment of publicly available Privacy Impact Assessments and an OMB-issued survey...

The discrete fields of privacy and biometrics each have a rich history and an exciting, robust, present day status. Both disciplines are dynamic and multimodal. The current state of each is ever-changing and accelerating, and presents both promise and questions regarding its impact on individuals and societies. Much has been written on each topic, covering a breadth of issues and depth of details. Every day, new stories appear of new applications and new theories of both privacy and biometrics. In an effort to complement and support the vibrant growth of both fields, this paper seeks to...

The Nation's economic competitiveness and prosperity in the coming decades will depend critically upon the pace of American innovation. Recognizing the importance of advanced materials in supporting an innovation-driven U.S. manufacturing sector, President Barack Obama introduced the Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) in June 2011 with this aim: discover, develop, manufacture, and deploy advanced materials twice as fast, at a fraction of the cost. This ambitious goal is within reach. Research conducted in the early 2000s demonstrated that a systems level approach to material design,...

Human industrial, transportation, and agricultural activities have caused global atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) to increase from a pre-industrial average of 280 parts per million (ppm) to the current value of approximately 400 ppm (IPCC AR5 2013). Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are now higher than experienced on Earth for more than 800,000 years (Luthi et al. 2008), and the rate of CO2 release into the atmosphere is likely unprecedented in Earth history (Kump et al. 2009; Honisch et al. 2012). Ocean carbonate chemistry is a natural buffering system, but this buffering...

Automated Fingerprint Identification System (AFIS) interoperability will support public safety throughout the United States by ensuring local law enforcement agencies are better able to coordinate their investigative fingerprinting efforts. The Federal Government has a critical role to play in implementing standards needed to achieve interoperability, developing an overarching national connectivity strategy and infrastructure, and supporting State and local agencies in building connections across jurisdictions. This report describes the current state of latent AFIS interoperability and...