A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the structural problems that exist in the Medicare claims processing system, focusing on: (1) what the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) proposals have been designed or initiated to measure Medicare improper payments; and (2) the status of these proposals and initiatives and how will they enhance HCFA's ability to comprehensively measure improper Medicare payments and the frequency of kickbacks, false claims, and other inappropriate provider practices."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the scope and efficacy of Medicare's existing rural hospital inpatient payment policies, focusing on the major special payment provisions available to rural hospitals under the prospective payment system (PPS) and to provide information on the inpatient financial performance of these hospitals under PPS."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the use of personal watercraft and snowmobile use on federal lands, focusing on: (1) the extent to which personal watercraft and snowmobiles are used in federal units that are managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), the National Park Service (NPS), and the Forest Service; (2) the bases for agency decisions to authorize or prohibit the use of these vehicles; (3) whether restrictions exist on vehicle operations in places where their use is allowed, and how are these restrictions enforced; and (4) the extent to which federal agencies assessed the impact of such use."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Government Paperwork Elimination Act (GPEA) and how it enables citizens to interact with the federal government electronically, focusing on: (1) the status of the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) efforts to develop guidance implementing GPEA; and (2) major challenges or impediments that might affect successful GPEA implementation."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Fish and Wildlife Service's (FWS) new rule on early seasons, bag, and possession limits for certain migratory game birds. GAO noted that: (1) the rule sets the hunting season, hours, areas, and daily bag and possession limits for various listed birds and early waterfowl seasons for migratory game birds in the Contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands; and (2) FWS complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on rural housing programs, focusing on: (1) the physical condition of today's rural housing and rural households' access to affordable housing credit; (2) the rural housing programs offered by the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Rural Housing Service (RHS) and the ways in which RHS' programs have adapted to changes in the level of federal housing assistance; (3) any overlap between RHS' programs and the programs of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other federal, state, and private organizations; and (4) options for maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of the federal role in rural housing."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO evaluated the Department of the Interior's effort to acquire and develop its new Trust Asset and Accounting Management System (TAAMS), focusing on: (1) actions Interior has taken in response to GAO's previous reviews and recommendations; and (2) the business and technical risks and challenges still confronting Interior as it begins to deploy TAAMS."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Transit Administration's (FTA) oversight of major capital projects, focusing on: (1) how FTA oversees major capital projects; (2) how financial capacity assessments are used; (3) what types of benefits to grantees and FTA have resulted from FTA's project oversight activities; and (4) how these oversight activities are funded."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO determined whether the funds used for the needle exchange program in the District of Columbia complied with provisions of the Fiscal Year 2000 Appropriations Act for the District of Columbia prohibiting the use of appropriated funds for such programs."

The National Institutes of Health is the focal point of federal health research. It uses its $17.8 billion budget to support more than 50,000 scientists working at 2,000 institutions across the United States, as well as to conduct biomedical and behavioral research and research training at its own facilities.

In the October 1999 Term, the Supreme Court placed limits on the extent to which intrusions into reasonable privacy interests in a number of situations may withstand constitutional muster.

This report discusses marketing assistance loans for major crops. The debate surrounds enlarging the program to create further farm income support.

PVODE is a high-performance ordinary differential equation solver for the types of initial value problems (IVPs) that arise in large-scale computational simulations. often, one wants to compute sensitivities with respect to certain parameters in the IVP. They discuss the use of automatic differentiation (AD) to compute these sensitivities in the context of PVODE. Results on a simple test problem indicate that the use of AD-generated derivative code can reduce the time to solution over finite difference approximations.

Weekly newspaper from Sulphur Springs, 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.

Interview with Rena Fay Stone Sherman, descendant of Kerr County settlers and local business owner from Kerrville, Texas. Mrs. Sherman describes some of her family history, local history, and her two antique businesses. She also discusses her family's ranch.

The ''Nitrogen Oxides Emission Reduction Program'' and ''Ozone Non-Attainment Program'' in the 1990 Clean Air Act provide guidelines for controlling NOx (NO and NO{sub 2}) emissions in new and existing stationary sources. NOx emissions have local (air quality), regional (acid rain), and global (ozone production) consequences. This study aids in developing the photocatalyst technology that has potential for use in abatement of NOx. The objective of the proposed project is to apply the principles of chemical engineering fundamentals--reaction kinetics, transport phenomena and thermodynamics--in the process design for a system that will utilize a photocatalytic reactor to oxidize NOx to nitric acid (HNO{sub 3}). HNO{sub 3} can be more easily trapped than NOx on adsorbent surfaces or in water. The project dealt with the engineering aspect of the gas-solid heterogeneous oxidation of NOx. The experiments were conducted in a photocatalyst wash-coated glass flow tube reactor. A mathematical model was developed based on a rigorous description of the physical and chemical processes occurring in the reactor. The mathematical model took into account (1) intrinsic reaction kinetics (i.e., true reaction rates), (2) transport phenomena that deal with the mass transfer effects in the reactor, and (3) the geometry of the reactor. The experimental …

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is preparing to upgrade the Advanced Light Source (ALS) with three superconducting dipoles (Superbends). In this paper we present the final magnet system design which incorporates R&D test results and addresses the ALS operational concerns of alignment, availability, and economy. The design incorporates conduction-cooled Nb-Ti windings and HTS current leads, epoxy-glass suspension straps, and a Gifford-McMahon cryocooler to supply steady state refrigeration. We also present the current status of fabrication and testing.

Focused on the second of 2 hypotheses that were proposed for testing that transpiration rate determines the extent to which suc accumulates in the GC wall providing a mechanism for regulating stomatal aperture size.

These valves are 1/4 inch ball valves fabricated of 316 stainless steel. Packing is TFE (standard). They are used as normally closed isolation valves for test ports in the SCHe System between the gage root valve and the pressure indicator.

The report combines two separate studies dealing with different aspects of the behavior of neptunium in oxidizing aqueous systems. The goal of both studies is to obtain a better understanding of what would control the concentration of neptunium in oxidizing groundwaters upon release from a geologic high-level waste repository. {sup 237}Np has a very long half-life, and consequently tends to appear as a component of concern in long-term dose calculations. Part A examines the formation of NpO{sub 2} [Np(IV) oxide] from aqueous Np(V) under oxidizing conditions, using elevated temperature as a means of accelerating putative slow kinetics. According to thermodynamic data, NpO{sub 2} should be the stable Np solid, even though Np is generally thought to be mainly some form of Np(V) under oxidizing conditions. The first observed precipitation of this solid from aqueous solution under any conditions is reported. This result suggests, but does not prove, that long-term very slow formation of NpO{sub 2} might be an important long-term control on neptunium migration. Even at 200{sup o}C, the kinetics can be sluggish on typical experimental time scales. Though not reported in Part A, a similar situation may exist for Pu, and NpO{sub 2} and PuO{sub 2} may potentially form …

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Efforts to model and measure absolute neutron-induced reaction cross sections have for the most part been limited by experimental techniques to neutron energies found in reactors and light-ion fusion reactions (i.e., t(d,n){alpha} etc.). This can in large part be attributed to the difficulty involved in making high-flux mono-energetic neutron beams with E{sub n} > 14 MeV. The result has been a lack of guidance for (n,xnypz{alpha}) reaction modeling for E{sub n} > 1-2 MeV. These limitations become particularly exacerbated in nuclei where structure effects (i.e., near shell closures, high deformation etc.) or fission complicates the models. The GEANIE spectrometer at LANSCE/WNR fills this gap in experimental technique by allowing for efficient measurement of neutron-induced {gamma}-ray partial cross sections over a wide range of incident neutron energies (1 < E{sub n} (MeV) < 250). GEANIE consists of 20 Compton-suppressed and 6 unsuppressed hpGe detectors located at the 60{sup o} right beam line at the LANSCE/WNR spallation source. Eleven of the GEANIE detectors are Low Energy Planar Spectrometers (LEPS) with excellent timing and energy resolution. LANSCE/WNR provides a white source of neutrons through the spallation of a tungsten target with an 800 MeV 2-5 {micro}amp beam of protons. Neutron energy is determined …

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