• Funding in the FY-2011 Defense authorization and appropriations bills to support basic research at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory of a wide-area neutron detector for identifying nuclear materials in shipping and other containers, under development at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Duration: October 1, 2009 to March 31, 2011

General Issues: Defense, Energy/Nuclear

Spending: about $10,000 (But it's complicated. Here's why.)

It can be tricky to figure out how much an organization spent on a particular lobbying engagement. The law only requires lobbyists to report the amount they were paid for federal lobbying each quarter rounded to the nearest $10,000—and if it's less than $3,000 in a given quarter (or less than $13,000 for organizations with in-house lobbyists), they don't have to disclose it at all. Plus, some organizations include spending that doesn’t belong in the report—for instance, money spent lobbying state governments or other legal work.

Agencies lobbied since 2009: Senate