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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 20 / Tuesday, February 2, 2021 / Notices
region over the course of their operational lifetimes. The applicant proposes to release a maximum of 150
Argo floats south of 60S during the permit period. Float dimensions are 75
inches tall by 9 inches diameter, weighing approximately 65 lbs. Each float includes 19DD lithium cells, with approximately 0.198 gm of lithium. The floats would drift at 1000 m depth and come to the surface every 10 days. Their lifetime is approximately 5 years, after which the batteries would be depleted and the floats would no longer surface, but would remain in the ocean and sink to the ocean floor. The Agro floats deployed in the Southern Ocean would be part of a global array. The Argo array provides operational and research data that inform nowcast and forecast services, contributing to saving lives, avoiding property damage, and informing the public and government responses to environmental variability and change.
Dates of Permitted Activities February 1, 2021October 31, 2025.
Erika N. Davis, Program Specialist, Office of Polar Programs.
FR Doc. 202102170 Filed 2121; 8:45 am BILLING CODE 755501P

NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Agency Information Collection Activities: Comment Request; National Science Foundation Major Facilities Guide National Science Foundation.
Notice and request for comments.

AGENCY:

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ACTION:

SUMMARY: In accordance with the requirement of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, the National Science Foundation NSF is providing opportunity for public comment on revisions to the NSF Major Facilities Guide MFG.
DATES: Written comments should be received by April 5, 2021 to be assured of consideration. Comments received after that date will be considered to the extent practicable.
ADDRESSES: Written comments regarding the information collection and requests for copies of the proposed information collection request should be addressed to Suzanne Plimpton, Reports Clearance Officer, National Science Foundation, 2415 Eisenhower Ave., Rm.
W 18253, Alexandria, VA 22314, or by email to splimpto@nsf.gov.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Suzanne Plimpton on 703 2927556 or
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send email to splimpto@nsf.gov.
Individuals who use a telecommunications device for the deaf TDD may call the Federal Information Relay Service FIRS at 1800877
8339, which is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year including federal holidays.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
Title of Collection: Major Facilities Guide.
OMB Approval Number: 31450239.
Expiration Date of Approval:
September 30, 2022.
Type of Request: Intent to seek approval to extend with revision an information collection for three years.
Proposed Project: The primary purpose of this revision is to provide expectations for construction schedules for alignment with good practices, minimum competencies for project personnel, and guidance on the content of Segregation of Funding Plans and how to scale earned value management systems EVMS. The draft version of the NSF MFG is available on the NSF
website at: http www.nsf.gov/bfa/lfo/
lfo_documents.jsp.
To facilitate review, a Change Log with brief comment explanations of the changes is provided in the guide. NSF
is particularly interested in public comment on the new content provided in Section 4.3 Schedule Development, Estimating, and Analysis and in Section 4.6.6 Project Personnel and Competencies.
The National Science Foundation Act of 1950 Pub. L. 81507 set forth NSFs mission and purpose:
To promote the progress of science;
to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense.
The Act authorized and directed NSF
to initiate and support:
Basic scientific research and research fundamental to the engineering process;
Programs to strengthen scientific and engineering research potential;
Science and engineering education programs at all levels and in all the various fields of science and engineering;
Programs that provide a source of information for policy formulation; and Other activities to promote these ends.
Among Federal agencies, NSF is a leader in providing the academic community with advanced instrumentation needed to conduct state-of-the-art research and to educate the next generation of scientists, engineers, and technical workers. The knowledge generated by these tools
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sustains U.S. leadership in science and engineering S&E to drive the U.S.
economy and secure the future. NSFs responsibility is to ensure that the research and education communities have access to these resources, and to provide the support needed to utilize them optimally, and implement timely upgrades.
The scale of advanced instrumentation ranges from small research instruments to shared resources or facilities that can be used by entire communities. The demand for such instrumentation is very high, and is growing rapidly, along with the pace of discovery. For major facilities and shared infrastructure, the need is particularly high. This trend is expected to accelerate in the future as increasing numbers of researchers and educators rely on such large facilities, instruments, and databases to provide the reach to make the next intellectual leaps.
NSF currently provides support for facility construction from two accounts:
The Major Research Equipment and Facility Construction MREFC account, and the Research and Related Activities R&RA account. The MREFC account, established in FY 1995, is an agencywide capital account which provides funding for the construction stage of major facilities, roughly $100M or greater, and mid-scale projects in the range of approximately $20$100M.
Facilities are defined as shared-use infrastructure, instrumentation and equipment that are accessible to a broad community of researchers and/or educators. Facilities may be centralized or may consist of distributed installations. They may incorporate large-scale networking or computational infrastructure, multi-user instruments or networks of such instruments, or other infrastructure, instrumentation and equipment having a major impact on a broad segment of a scientific or engineering discipline. Historically, awards have been made for such diverse projects as accelerators, telescopes, research vessels and aircraft, and geographically distributed but networked sensors and instrumentation.
The growth and diversification of large facility projects require that NSF
remain attentive to the ever-changing issues and challenges inherent in their planning, construction, operation, management, and oversight. Most importantly, dedicated, competent NSF
and awardee staff are needed to manage and oversee these projects; giving the attention and oversight that good practice dictates and that proper accountability to taxpayers and Congress demands. To this end, there is
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