Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Marshal Service was created by the first Congress in the Judiciary Act of 1789. U.S. Marshals were placed in each federal judicial district and were given broad authority to support the federal courts and to carry out all lawful orders issued by judges, Congress, and the President. Early duties of U.S. Marshals included taking the census, distributing presidential proclamations, protecting the borders, and making arrests. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, some responsibilities of U.S. Marshals were transferred to newly created federal agencies, including the U.S. Census Bureau, Immigration and Naturalization Service, and Federal Bureau of Investigation. Today, the primary responsibilities of U.S. Marshals include protecting federal judges and witnesses, transporting federal prisoners, apprehending federal fugitives, and managing assets seized from criminal enterprises. We obtained information on the (1) U.S. Marshals' appointment process and, for comparison, the processes used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF); Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); and Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) to select senior field supervisors; (2) experience, education and diversity of U.S. Marshalls and senior field supervisors at the ATF, DEA, and IRS-CI; (3) authority of the Director …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "DOD faces growing challenges in carrying out realistic training at installations and training ranges--land, air, and sea--because of encroachment by outside factors. These include urban growth, competition for radio frequencies or airspace, air or noise pollution, unexploded ordnance and munition components, endangered species habitat, and protected marine resources. Building on work reported on in 2002, GAO assessed (1) the impact of encroachment on training ranges, (2) DOD's efforts to document the effect on readiness and cost, and (3) DOD's progress in addressing encroachment."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Air Force is developing the F/A-22 aircraft to replace its fleet of F-15 air superiority aircraft. The F/A-22 is designed to be superior to the F-15 by being capable of flying at higher speeds for longer distances, less detectable, and able to provide the pilot with substantially improved awareness of the surrounding situation. The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998 requires us to annually assess the F/A-22 development program and determine whether the program is meeting key performance, schedule, and cost goals. We have issued six of these annual reports to Congress. We have also reported on F/A-22 production program costs over the last 3 years. Most recently, we reported on F/A-22 production and development in February and March 2003 respectively. This testimony summarizes our work on the F/A-22 program, covering performance, cost, and scheduling issues."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The District of Columbia (DC) Child and Family Services Agency (CFSA) is responsible for protecting thousands of foster care children at risk of abuse and neglect and ensuring that critical services are provided for them and their families. Representative Tom Davis, Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, asked GAO to discuss the extent to which CFSA has taken actions to address the requirements of the Adoption and Safe Families Act (ASFA) of 1997 and other selected performance criteria, adopted and implemented child protection and foster care placement policies, and enhanced its working relationship with the D.C. Family Court."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The General Services Administration (GSA) has responsibility for more than 8,000 owned and leased buildings nationwide, together encompassing about 338 million square feet of space. Understanding construction and operating costs for these buildings is important, as the increased federal budget deficit has led to intensified competition for federal resources and recent events have highlighted security needs. GAO examined (1) factors that have affected GSA's construction, leasing, and operating costs and (2) our designation of federal real property as a high-risk area."

Ecosystem CO{sub 2} exchange and atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) mixing are correlated diurnally and seasonally. Tracer transport models predict that these covariance signals produce a meridional gradient of annual mean CO{sub 2} concentration in the marine boundary layer that is half as strong as the signal produced by fossil fuel emissions. This rectifier effect has been predicted by many inversion models. However, observations to constrain the strength of the rectifier effect in nature are lacking. The fundamental objective of this project was to measure the strength of these covariance signals between ecosystem CO{sub 2} flux and ABL dynamics by employing ABL profiling systems at eddy flux tower sites. We found that (1) the observed diurnal and seasonal covariance between ecosystem CO{sub 2} fluxes and ABL turbulent mixing are strong; (2) the inversion model underestimates the diurnal and seasonal covariance; (3) the rectifier effect in the model appears to be too weak. However, these results are subject to significant uncertainties associated with the use of a point measurement to represent an area, fair weather bias among the data and instruments, and nonlinear transport processes between continental and marine boundary layers.

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

This report discusses issues regarding the Violence Against Women Office (VAWO), which was created in 1995 to address legal and policy issues concerning violence against women.

Weekly newspaper from Wylie, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Semiweekly newspaper from Seminole, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

Noble gases widely exist in nature, and except for radon, they are stable. Modern techniques can detect noble gases to relatively low concentrations and with great precision. These factors suggest that noble gases can be useful tracers for subsurface characterization. Their applications, however, require an appropriate transport model for data analyses. A new fluid property module, EOSN, was developed for TOUGH2 to simulate transport of noble gases in the subsurface. Currently any of five different noble gases (except radon) as well as CO{sub 2} can be selected, two at a time. For the two selected gas components, the Crovetto et al. (1982) model is used to calculate the Henry's law coefficients; and the Reid et al. (1987) correlation is used to calculate the gas phase diffusivities. Like most other sister modules, TOUGH2/EOSN can simulate nonisothermal multiphase flow and fully coupled transport in fractured porous media. Potential applications of the new module include, but are not limited to: (a) study of different reservoir processes such as recharge, boiling, condensation, and fracture-matrix fluid exchange; (b) characterization of reservoir geometry such as fracture spacing; and (c) analysis of CO{sub 2} sequestration.

The developmental increase in structural complexity in multicellular life forms depends on local, often non-periodic differences in gene expression. These depend on a network of gene-gene interactions coded within the organismal genome. To better understand how genomic information generates complex expression patterns, I have modeled the pattern forming behavior of small artificial genomes in virtual blastoderm embryos. I varied several basic properties of these genomic signaling networks, such as the number of genes, the distributions of positive (inductive) and negative (repressive) interactions, and the strengths of gene-gene interactions, and analyzed their effects on developmental pattern formation. The results show how even simple genomes can generate complex non-periodic patterns under suitable conditions. They also show how the frequency of complex patterns depended on the numbers and relative arrangements of positive and negative interactions. For example, negative co-regulation of signaling pathway components increased the likelihood of (complex) patterns relative to differential negative regulation of the pathway components. Interestingly, neither quantitative differences either in strengths of signaling interactions nor multiple response thresholds to signal concentration (as in morphogen gradients) were essential for formation of multiple, spatially unique cell types. Thus, with combinatorial code of gene regulation and hierarchical signaling interactions, it is theoretically …

This report summarizes the feasibility of providing spinning reserves from packaged through the wall air conditioning (PTAC) units. Spinning reserves, together with non-spinning reserves, compose the contingency reserves; the essential resources that the power system operator uses to restore the generation and load balance and maintain bulk power system reliability in the event of a major generation or transmission outage. Spinning reserves are the fastest responding and most expensive reserves. Many responsive load technologies could (and we hope will) be used to provide spinning reserve. It is also easier for many loads (including air conditioning loads) to provide the relatively shorter and less frequent interruptions required to respond to contingencies than it is for them to reduce consumption for an entire peak period. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is conducting research on obtaining spinning reserve from large pumping loads and from residential and small commercial thermostat controlled heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) units. The technology selected for this project, Digi-Log's retrofit PTAC controller, offers significant advantages. To evaluate the availability of spinning reserve capacity from responsive heating and air conditioning loads, ORNL obtained data from a number of units operating over a year at a motel in the TVA …

Boron-neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is an experimental radiation treatment modality used for highly malignant tumor treatments. Prior to irradiation with low energetic neutrons, a 10B compound is located selectively in the tumor cells. The effect of the treatment is based on the high LET radiation released in the {sup 10}B(n,{alpha}){sup 7}Li reaction with thermal neutrons. BNCT has been used experimentally for brain tumor and melanoma treatments. Lately applications of other severe tumor type treatments have been introduced. Results have shown that liver tumors can also be treated by BNCT. At Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, various compact neutron generators based on D-D or D-T fusion reactions are being developed. The earlier theoretical studies of the D-D or D-T fusion reaction based neutron generators have shown that the optimal moderator and reflector configuration for brain tumor BNCT can be created. In this work, the applicability of 2.5 MeV neutrons for liver tumor BNCT application was studied. The optimal neutron energy for external liver treatments is not known. Neutron beams of different energies (1eV < E < 100 keV) were simulated and the dose distribution in the liver was calculated with the MCNP simulation code. In order to obtain the optimal neutron energy …

Private sector commercial office buildings are challenging environments for energy efficiency projects. This challenge is related to the complexity of business environments that involve ownership, operation, and tenant relationships. This research project was developed to examine the environment for building operations and identify causes of inefficient use of energy related to technical and organizational issues. This paper discusses a second-generation Information Monitoring and Diagnostic System (IMDS) installed at a leased office building in Sacramento, California. The underlying principle of this project is that high quality building performance data can help show where energy is being used and how buildings systems actually perform. Such data are an important first step toward improving building energy efficiency. This project has demonstrated that the IMDS is valuable to the building operators at the Sacramento site. The building operators not only accept the technology, but it has become the core of their day-to-day building control concepts. One objective of this project was to evaluate the costs and benefits of the IMDS. The system cost about $0.70 per square foot, which includes the design, hardware, software, and installation, which is about 30% less than the previous IMDS in San Francisco. A number of operational problems have …

Prior to final dispositioning of Savannah River Site (SRS) residual depleted uranium (DU) following reactor irradiation the amount of contamination from other radionuclides must be determined. The Nonproliferation Technology Section (NTS) was requested by the SRS Nuclear Materials Management Division (NMMD) to analyze a number of samples in the SRTC/NTS clean labs. The requested analytes were Am-241, Np-237, Ra-226, Cs-137, I-129, Tc-99, Sr-90 and the plutonium isotopes from 238 through 242. The NTS routinely analyzes all types of samples for trace plutonium by mass spectrometry. The other analytes are routinely analyzed only in environmental samples. This report documents the analytical data and the analysis methods developed and used for these analyses. All requested analytes were determined to be less than one tenth of the waste acceptance criteria in all samples analyzed.

Semiweekly newspaper from Levelland, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Yoakum, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This report is an Overview of the effects on Institutional operations, the Legislative process, and future Planning related to House of Representatives Information Technology Management issues.

We present a model for materials undergoing diffusionless structural changes including martensitic phase transformation and twinning, with the phase transformations involving large volume changes. Within a given material element, structural changes induce mass fraction rates between the constituents in the material. Deformation results from both these structural changes and elasto-viscoplastic deformation of the constituents themselves.