National Moment of Remembrance (3 p.m. Monday)

On December 28, 2000 Congress passed Public Law 106-579 to establish a time for Americans to pause and remember military personnel who have died in service to our country. The National Moment of Remembrance occurs at 3 p.m. each Memorial Day.

Congress also established the White House Commission on Remembrance as an independent non-partisan government agency to coordinate honoring our fallen and their families. The Commission's website provides a message about the National Moment of Remembrance with taps playing in the background and includes links to names of the fallen by war from Vietnam to the present with World War I and II to be completed soon.  Information is also available about efforts by Operation Laughter to boost our troops' morale. Included in the morale-boosting efforts is Task Force Snoopy, a flat-Stanley-like movement which involves sending a stuffed animal version of the beloved cartoon character around the world with our military units.

Collegiate Inventors Competition Deadline June 25, 2010

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the Abbott Foundation are sponsoring the 19th Annual Invent Now Collegiate Inventors Competition. Graduate and undergraduate individuals and teams will be competing for nearly $80,000 in cash prizes. Entries are judged on "originality of the idea, process or technology, and their potential value and usefulness to society."

Entry forms and more information about the competition including descriptions of past winning inventions are available from the Collegiate Inventors Competition site. The entry deadline is June 25, 2010.

Audit of U.S. Government Agencies' Open Government Plans

To explore the success of President Obama's December 8, 2009 Open Government Directive, OpenTheGovernment.org recently completed audits of U.S. Government agencies' open government plans. Receiving high marks were NASA for "inviting the public to collaborate in the development of technologies that are core to its mission" and Health and Human Services for planning to identify and publish high value data sets this year. The report also praises the Labor Department for making "significant amounts of information publicly accessible" and opening new platforms for potential internal and external collaboration, and the Department of Energy for improving on its Open Energy Information platform. However, the Department of Energy was also included in the group receiving the five lowest scores. Ranked from the best of the worst to the worst of the worst are the Department of Treasury, the Department of Defense, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Justice.

Agencies have until the end of May to revise their plans. In early June OpenTheGovernment.org will review the plans again to ascertain agencies' responses to the audits.

A full list showing how agencies' plans rank is available from http://bit.ly/OGovRank. The full audit results and links to agency evaluations are available from http://bit.ly/OGovEvals.

Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Resources

Paula Webb from the University of South Alabama has created an online bibliography of national and Alabama resources relating to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident. For information from Texas state agencies see:

• Spills - Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
• Oil Spill Prevention and Response Program - Texas General Land Office
• Spills and Clean-up - Texas Online

Deepwater Horizon Response hosts media briefings, fact sheets, graphs, and photographs to provide the latest updates about response efforts.

Green Energy Portal

On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day the Department of Energy (DOE) launched DOE Green Energy, a free online public portal "designed to ease access to green energy R&D information for use by researchers, scientists, educators, students and the general public." DOE's Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) describes the portal as follows:

The portal provides technical documents from thousands of R&D projects conducted at DOE National Laboratories and by DOE-funded awards at universities. The DOE Green Energy portal is part of the DOE Open Government Plan, which furthers the Administration's Open Government Initiative. DOE Green Energy contains both current and historical research, including bibliographic citations, technical reports and patent information on different types of renewable energy resources and energy conservation. Subject areas include but are not limited to solar, wind, bioenergy, hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal and wave power, and energy storage.

Childhood Obesity, a Threat to National Security

According to an April 20, 2010 press release, Mission Readiness, a non-profit group of more than 130 retired admirals, generals and other senior military leaders, released a report indicating that being overweight is now the leading medical reason recruits are rejected for military service. More than nine million young adults age 17 to 24 are too obese to qualify for military service. Entitled Too Fat to Fight, the report contains data analyzed by staff of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing a dramatic rise in obesity among young people since 1995. Alarmingly in the last ten years "the number of states with 40 percent or more of young adults considered to be overweight has risen from one state to 39 states." Since young people consume 40 percent of their daily calories at school, the group strongly supports efforts by Senator Lugar and Agriculture Secretary Vilsack for new legislation to improve school nutrition programs.

National Park Week, April 17-25

Celebrate National Park Week by visiting one or more of the nation's 392 National Parks for free Saturday, April 17 - Sunday, April 25, 2010. On Saturday, April 24, National Junior Ranger Day, children can take part in kid-friendly activities and earn a junior ranger patch. National parks are also hosting special events and volunteer projects on Earth Day, April 22, and throughout the week.