Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In February 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) received the largest budget increase in the history of the agency. The increased funding was designed to better position SEC to address serious issues identified in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and to better enable SEC to address numerous operational and human capital management challenges discussed in the GAO report entitled SEC Operations: Increased Workload Creates Challenges (GAO-02-302). To help ensure that SEC spends its budgetary resources in an efficient and effective manner, GAO was asked to review the SEC's efforts to address the issues raised in the 2002 report and to report on how SEC intends to utilize its new budgetary resources. GAO's final report on these matters is expected to be completed this Fall. This testimony provides requested information on the status of SEC's current spending plan and preliminary observations on SEC's strategic and human capital planning efforts."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), along with other components of the Department of the Treasury, collects and distributes excise tax receipts to government trust funds. As the nation's tax collector, IRS plays a critical role in this process. Consequently, trust funds and their administrators depend on IRS to have sound procedures and controls over this process to ensure that excise taxes are appropriately distributed. This report is a follow-up to two reports we recently issued discussing procedures we performed to assist the Department of Transportation's Office of Inspector General (Transportation IG) in ascertaining whether the net excise tax collections and excise tax certifications reported by IRS for the fiscal year ended September 30, 2002, were supported by underlying records. The agreed-upon procedures, along with our audit of IRS's fiscal year 2002 financial statements, provided a sufficient basis to assist the Transportation IG in forming an opinion on the departmentwide financial statements and the financial statements of the trust funds administered by the department, including the Highway Trust Fund and the Airport and Airway Trust Fund."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The potential losses that the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), through its single-employer insurance program, might face from the termination of underfunded plans have been a longstanding concern of the Congress and GAO. In 1990, as part of our effort to call attention to high-risk areas in the federal government, we noted that weaknesses in the single-employer insurance program's financial condition threatened PBGC's longterm viability. We stated that minimum funding rules still did not ensure that plan sponsors would contribute enough for terminating plans to have sufficient assets to cover all promised benefits. In 1992, we also reported that PBGC had weaknesses in its internal controls and financial systems that placed the entire agency, and not just the single employer program, at risk. Three years later, we reported that legislation enacted in 1994 had strengthened PBGC's program weaknesses and that we believed improvements had been significant enough for us to remove the agency's high-risk designation. However, given the potential for significant changes in the program's position, we continued to monitor the situation. Early this year, PBGC's single-employer pension insurance program reported a $3.6 billion accumulated deficit …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the Air Force's report on the planned lease of 100 Boeing 767 aircraft modified for aerial refueling. These aircraft would be known by a new designation, KC-767A. Section 8159 of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for fiscal year 2002 authorizes the Air Force to lease up to 100 KC-767A aircraft. We received the report required by section 8159 when it was sent to the Congress on July 10. We subsequently received a briefing from the Air Force and some of the data needed to review the draft lease and lease versus purchase analysis. However, we were permitted to read the lease for the first time on July 18 but were not allowed to make a copy and so have not had time to fully review and analyze the terms of the draft lease. As a result, this testimony today will be based on very preliminary work. It will (1) describe the condition of the current aerial refueling fleet, (2) summarize the proposed lease as presented in the Air Force's recent report, (3) present our preliminary observations on the Air Force lease report, and (4) …

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

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This report summarizes the various state laws concerning breastfeeding. The primary legal issues concern: 1) the ability of working mothers to breastfeed their children and/or to express milk during working hours; and 2) the nursing and/or expression of milk in public or semi-public places such as restaurants, public transportation facilities, and other locations where the public is present.

The Asian Technology Information Program (ATIP) conducted a seven-month Asian science and technology information program for the Office:of Energy Research (ER), U.S: Department of Energy (DOE.) The seven-month program consists of 1) monitoring, analyzing, and dissemiuating science and technology trends and developments associated with Asian high performance computing and communications (HPC), networking, and associated topics, 2) access to ATIP's annual series of Asian S&T reports for ER and HPC related personnel and, 3) supporting DOE and ER designated visits to Asia to study and assess Asian HPC.

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.

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

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

Foster Wheeler Power Group, Inc. is working under US Department of Energy contract No. DE-FC26-00NT40972 to develop a partial gasification module (PGM) that represents a critical element of several potential coal-fired Vision 21 plants. When utilized for electrical power generation, these plants will operate with efficiencies greater than 60% and produce near zero emissions of traditional stack gas pollutants. The new process partially gasifies coal at elevated pressure producing a coal-derived syngas and a char residue. The syngas can be used to fuel the most advanced power producing equipment such as solid oxide fuel cells or gas turbines, or processed to produce clean liquid fuels or chemicals for industrial users. The char residue is not wasted; it can also be used to generate electricity by fueling boilers that drive the most advanced ultra-supercritical pressure steam turbines. The amount of syngas and char produced by the PGM can be tailored to fit the production objectives of the overall plant, i.e., power generation, clean liquid fuel production, chemicals production, etc. Hence, PGM is a robust building bock that offers all the advantages of coal gasification but in a more user-friendly form; it is also fuel flexible in that it can use alternative …

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Using ion implantation followed by pulsed-laser melting (PLM), we have synthesized ferromagnetic films of Ga{sub 1-x}Mn{sub x}As. Ion-channeling experiments reveal that these films are single crystalline and have high Mn substitutionality while variable temperature resistivity measurements reveal the strong Mn-hole interactions characteristic of carrier-mediated ferromagnetism in homogeneous DMS's. We have observed Curie temperatures (T{sub C}'s) of approximately 80 K for films with substitutional Mn concentrations of x=0.04. The use of n-type counter doping as a means of increasing Mn substitutionality and T{sub c} is explored by co-implantation of Mn and Te into GaAs. In Ga{sub 1-x}Mn{sub x}P samples synthesized using our technique, the implanted layer regrows as an epitaxial single crystal capped by a highly defective surface layer. These samples display ferromagnetism with T{sub c} {approx} 23 K.

New experimental and analytical tools for characterizing various types of forming-induced surface roughening have been developed and used to study the evolution of surface roughening in 6000 series aluminum sheets in the T4 condition. Particular attention was focused on the evolution of the ''diamond defect,'' which often requires a subsequent mechanical surface treatment to achieve an acceptable surface finish. Testing was primarily done in plane strain tension and samples evaluated at various strain levels up to and including the forming limit. Characterization techniques included optical and scanning electron microscopy, white light phase shift interferometry, and orientation imaging microscopy. Roughening patterns were observed to communicate through the sheet thickness, e.g., peaks on one side correspond to peaks on the other; valleys to valleys. At the grain or grain cluster scale, roughening was found to be governed by the Schmid rather than the Taylor factor.

We demonstrate the mutual passivation of electrically active group IV donors and isovalent N atoms in the GaN{sub x}As{sub 1-x} alloy system. This phenomenon occurs through the formation of a donor-nitrogen bond in the nearest neighbor IV{sub Ga}-N{sub As} pairs. In Si doped GaInN{sub 0.017}As{sub 0.983} the electron concentration starts to decrease rapidly at an annealing temperature of 700 C from {approx} 3 x 10{sup 19}cm{sup -3} in the as-grown state to less than 10{sup 16}cm{sup -3} after an annealing at 900 C for 10 s. At the same time annealing of this sample at 950 C increases the gap by about 35 meV, corresponding to a reduction of the concentration of the active N atoms by an amount very close to the total Si concentration. We also show that the formation of Si{sub Ga}-N{sub As} pairs is controlled by the diffusion of Si via Ga vacancies to the nearest N{sub As} site. The general nature of this mutual passivation effect is confirmed by our study of Ge doped GaN{sub x}As{sub 1-x} layers formed by N and Ge co-implantation in GaAs followed by pulsed laser melting.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Many federal agencies in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area have their own police forces to ensure the security and safety of the persons and property within and surrounding federal buildings. In the executive branch, for example, the Secret Service has over 1,000 uniformed officers protecting the White House, the Treasury Building, and other facilities used by the Executive Office of the President. The Interior Department's Park Police consists of more than 400 officers protecting parks and monuments in the area. The Pentagon Force Protection Agency has recently increased its force to over 400 officers. Even the Health and Human Services Department maintains a small police force on the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. In addition, there are federal uniformed police forces in both the Legislative and Judicial Branches of the federal government. We have continued to examine the transformation of 22 agencies with an estimated 160,000 civilian employees into the Department of Homeland Security."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Dietary supplements containing ephedra have been associated with serious health-related adverse events, including heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and deaths. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulates dietary supplements under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA). Reports of adverse events have been received by FDA and others, including Metabolife International, the manufacturer of a dietary supplement containing ephedra, Metabolife 356. Because of concerns surrounding the safety of dietary supplements containing ephedra, GAO was asked to discuss and update some of the findings from its prior work on ephedra, including its examination of Metabolife International's records of health-related calls from consumers of Metabolife 356. Specifically, GAO examined (1) FDA's analysis of the adverse event reports it received for dietary supplements containing ephedra, (2) how the adverse events reported in the health-related call records collected by Metabolife International illustrate the health risks of dietary supplements containing ephedra, and (3) FDA's actions in the oversight of dietary supplements containing ephedra."

Weekly newspaper from Holliday, 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.

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In typical diagnostic applications, intense ion beams are intercepted by a conducting plate associated with devices used to measure beam phase-space projections. This results in the transverse space-charge field near the plate being shorted out, rendering simple envelope models with constant space-charge strength inaccurate. Here we develop corrected envelope models based on analytical calculations to account for this effect on the space-charge term of the envelope equations, thereby removing a systematic source of error in the equations and enabling more accurate comparisons with experiment. For common intense beam parameters, we find that the correction occurs primarily in the envelope angles and that the effect can be large enough to degrade precision beam matching. Results are verified with 3D self-consistent PIC simulations based on intense beam experiments associated with driver developments for Heavy-Ion Fusion.

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