Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The technology used to cast and count votes is one aspect of the multifaceted U.S. election process. GAO examined voting technology, among other things, in a series of reports that it issued in 2001 following the problems encountered in the 2000 election. In October 2002, the Congress enacted the Help America Vote Act, which, among other things, established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) to assist in the administration of federal elections. The act also established a program to provide funds to states to replace older punch card and lever machine voting equipment. As this older voting equipment has been replaced with newer electronic voting systems over the last 2 years, concerns have been raised about the vulnerabilities associated with certain electronic voting systems. Among other things, GAO's testimony focuses on attributes on which electronic voting systems can be assessed, as well as design and implementation factors affecting their performance. GAO also describes the immediate and longer term challenges confronting local jurisdictions in using any type of voting equipment, particularly electronic voting systems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995 (UMRA) was enacted to address concerns about federal statutes and rules that require state, local, and tribal governments or the private sector to expend resources to achieve legislative goals. UMRA generates information about the nature and size of potential federal mandates to assist Congress and agency decision makers in their consideration of proposed legislation and rules. However, concerns about actual or perceived federal mandates continue. To provide information and analysis regarding UMRA's implementation, GAO was asked to (1) describe the applicable procedures, definitions, and exclusions under UMRA for identifying federal mandates in statutes and rules, (2) identify statutes and final rules that contained federal mandates under UMRA, and (3) provide examples of statutes and final rules that were not identified as federal mandates, but that affected parties might perceive as "unfunded mandates," and the reasons these statutes and rules were not federal mandates under UMRA. GAO focused on statutes enacted and final rules issued in 2001 and 2002 to address the second and third objectives."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In connection with fulfilling our requirement to audit the financial statements of the U.S. government, we audited and reported on the Schedules of Federal Debt Managed by the Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD) for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2003 and 2002. As part of these audits, we performed a review of the general and application computer controls over key financial systems maintained and operated by the Federal Reserve Banks (FRB) on behalf of the Department of the Treasury's BPD. Many of the FRBs perform fiscal agent services on behalf of the U.S. government, including BPD. The debt-related services primarily consist of issuing, servicing, and redeeming Treasury securities and processing secondary market securities transfers. In fiscal year 2003, the FRBs issued about $4.1 trillion in federal debt securities to the public, redeemed about $3.8 trillion of debt held by the public, and processed about $125 billion in interest payments on debt held by the public. FRBs maintain and operate key financial applications on behalf of BPD and an array of financial and information systems to process and reconcile monies disbursed and collected on behalf of BPD."

A Small-Column Ion-Exchange (SCIX) system is being evaluated for removing cesium from the Type 2 and/or Type 3 dissolved saltcake wastes at the Savannah River Site (SRS) to ensure that the dissolved saltcake meets the waste acceptance criteria at the Saltstone Facility. Both crystalline silicotitanate (CST) and IONSIV{trademark} IE-96 zeolite were evaluated as the ion-exchange media. The accelerated alternative, using CST in the SCIX, could save as much as $3 billion in operating and storage costs and {approx}20 years in processing time compared to the current baseline. With its proven high cesium-loading capacity for the expected dissolved saltcake compositions and temperatures, CST is the preferred sorbent for SCIX. The low-cost alternative sorbent, zeolite, greatly increases the volume of sorbent required because of its much lower cesium-loading capacity. Thus, zeolite greatly increases the cost for the alternative, mainly because of the increased number of Defense Waste Processing Facility canisters required to dispose of the loaded sorbent (potentially over 7000 for zeolite, compared with <500 for CST). The models previously developed for predicting cesium loading on CST compared favorably with laboratory measurements of equilibrium distribution ratios and column loading performance using dissolved saltcake simulants. These models predict that a column of 432 …

Weekly newspaper from Mannford, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a corporate applicant is ineligible for a manufacturer’s or distributor’s license if a person holding ten percent or less of the corporation’s stock also holds, or an individual related within the first degree by consanguinity to such individual holds, shares in another licensed bingo entity (RQ-0135-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the exception for continuous employment in the general nepotism statute, Government Code chapter 573, applies to an employment relationship prohibited by section 6.05(f) of the Tax Code (RQ-0138-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Tarrant County Hospital District may expend funds to establish a self-insurance program providing liability coverage for JPS Physician Group, Inc. and its health-care-provider employees (RQ-0139-GA)

We present here the design and construction of an all niobium superconducting RF injector to generate high average current, high brightness electron beam. A 1/2 cell superconducting cavity has been designed, built, and tested. A cryostat has been built to cool the cavity to {approx}2 K. The RF system can deliver up to 500 W at 1.3 GHz to the cavity. A mode-locked Nd:YVO{sub 4} laser, operating at 266 nm with 0.15 W average power, phase locked to the RF, will irradiate a laser cleaned Nb surface at the back wall of the cavity. Description of critical components and their status are presented in the paper. Based on DC measurements, QE of up to 10{sup 4} can be expected from such cavity.

We measure the deflagration behavior of energetic materials at extreme conditions (up to 520K and 1 GPa) in the LLNL High Pressure Strand Burner, thereby obtaining reaction rate data for prediction of violence of thermal explosions. The apparatus provides both temporal pressure history and flame time-of-arrival information during deflagration, allowing direct calculation of deflagration rate as a function of pressure. Samples may be heated before testing. Here we report the deflagration behavior of several HMX-based explosives at pressures of 10-600 MPa and temperatures of 300-460 K. We find that formulation details are very important to overall deflagration behavior. Formulations with high binder content (>15 wt%) deflagrate smoothly over the entire pressure range regardless of particle size, with a larger particle size distribution leading to a slower reaction. The deflagration follows a power law function with the pressure exponent being unity. Formulations with lower binder content ({le} 10% or less by weight) show physical deconsolidation at pressures over 100-200 MPA, with transition to a rapid erratic deflagration 10-100 times faster. High temperatures have a relatively minor effect on the deflagration rate until the HMX {beta} {yields} {delta} phase transition occurs, after which the deflagration rate increases by more than a factor …

A predictive framework for supersymmetry at the TeV scale is presented, which incorporates the Ciafaloni-Pomarol mechanism for the dynamical determination of the \mu parameter of the MSSM. It is replaced by (\lambda S), where S is a singlet field, and the axion becomes a heavy pseudoscalar, G, by adding a mass, m_G, by hand. The explicit breaking of Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is assumed to be sufficiently weak at the TeV scale that the only observable consequence is the mass m_G. Three models for the explicit PQ breaking are given; but the utility of this framework is that the predictions for all physics at the electroweak scale are independent of the particular model for PQ breaking. Our framework leads to a theory similar to the MSSM, except that \mu is predicted by the Ciafaloni-Pomarol relation, and there are light, weakly-coupled states in the spectrum. The production and cascade decay of superpartners at colliders occurs as in the MSSM, except that there is one extra stage of the cascade chain, with the next-to-LSP decaying to its"superpartner" and \tilde{s}, dramatically altering the collider signatures for supersymmetry. The framework is compatible with terrestrial experiments and astrophysical observations for a wide range of m_G and<s>. …

Four new Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) groundwater monitoring wells were installed at the single-shell tank farm Waste Management Area (WMA) C in fiscal year 2003 to fulfill commitments for well installations proposed in the draft Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order milestone M-24-00. Well 299-E27-22, installed upgradient, was drilled through the entire uppermost unconfined aquifer to the basalt and wells 299-E27-4, 299-E27-21 and 299-E27-23 were drilled approximately 40 feet into the uppermost unconfined aquifer and installed downgradient of the WMA. Specific objectives for these wells include monitoring the impact, if any, that potential releases from inside the WMA may have on current groundwater conditions (i.e., improved network coverage) and differentiating upgradient groundwater contamination from contaminants released at the WMA. This report supplies the information obtained during drilling, characterization, and installation of the four new groundwater monitoring wells. This document also provides a compilation of hydrogeologic and well construction information obtained during drilling, well development, aquifer testing, and sample collection/analysis activities.

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

A solid-state laser system that produces a 1MHz pulse train of 800 pulses with 18 {micro}J per pulse at {lambda} = 263.5 nm has been developed to meet the requirements of the TESLA Test Facility (TTF) at Fermilab and in operation since 1998.[1,2] Besides the production of high charges, high brightness electron beams, the need for high bunch charge stability requires that each laser pulse in the pulse train must have the same energy, and the energy per laser pulse should not vary significantly from shot to shot. This motivates the stability analysis of the laser system for the TTF photoinjector.

Ophir Corporation was awarded a contract by the U. S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory under the Project Title ''Airborne, Optical Remote Sensing of Methane and Ethane for Natural Gas Pipeline Leak Detection'' on October 14, 2002. The third six-month technical report contains a summary of the progress made towards finalizing the design and assembling the airborne, remote methane and ethane sensor. The vendor has been chosen and is on contract to develop the light source with the appropriate linewidth and spectral shape to best utilize the Ophir gas correlation software. Ophir has expanded upon the target reflectance testing begun in the previous performance period by replacing the experimental receiving optics with the proposed airborne large aperture telescope, which is theoretically capable of capturing many times more signal return. The data gathered from these tests has shown the importance of optimizing the fiber optic receiving fiber to the receiving optic and has helped Ophir to optimize the design of the gas cells and narrowband optical filters. Finally, Ophir will discuss remaining project issues that may impact the success of the project.

Due to the accelerated cleanup at the Savannah River Site (SRS), efforts are underway to increase the glass melt rate and hence the high level waste processing throughput at the SRS Defense Waste Processing Plant Facility (DWPF). One of the proposed process/equipment improvements is a glass air-lift pump. The use of a glass air-lift pump to increase melt rate in the DWPF Melter has been investigated via several techniques including lab scale testing on various melters. The final test before implementation in DWPF was a long-term life cycle test (several months in duration) on a full size pump. The air-lift pump was successfully tested and no major problems were found. Based on this test a unit was designed and fabricated for DWPF and was installed in the DWPF Melter in February 2004.

The MARS code is under continuous development and has recently undergone substantial improvements that further increase its reliability and predictive power in numerous shielding, accelerator, detector and space applications. The major developments and new features of the MARS15 (2004) version described in this paper concern an extended list of elementary particles and arbitrary heavy ions and their interaction cross-sections, inclusive and exclusive nuclear event generators, module for modeling particle electromagnetic interactions, enhanced geometry and histograming options, improved MAD-MARS Beam Line Builder, enhanced Graphical-User Interface, and an MPI-based parallelization of the code.

The objectives of this test were: determine the optimum filter operating parameters to maximize filter flux; determine whether the mean filter flux across the dewatering cycle matches or exceeds the plant design throughput; dewater the feed sample to 20 wt percentage insoluble solids; wash the sample to determine which species are removed during the washing process; provide filtrate to the ion exchange test program; the project flowsheet for the separation of LAW entrained solids assumes the entrained solids slurry from ultrafiltration contains 20 wt percentage insoluble solids by weight. These tests must therefore confirm that the slurry rheology is compatible with this requirement. No solids must pass into the ultrafiltration permeate; and after the filtration stage is complete, the rig will be chemically cleaned to determine if the clean water flux can be returned to pre-operation (clean) levels.

Using the PARMILA code running under PC-WINDOWS, the present performance of the Fermilab Drift Tube Linac has been analyzed in the light of new demands on the Linac/Booster complex (the Proton Source). The Fermilab Drift Tube Linac (DTL) was designed in the sixties as a proton linac with a final energy of 200 MeV and a peak current of 100mA. In the seventies, in order to enable multi-turn charge exchange injection into the Booster, the ion source was replaced by an H- source with a peak beam current of 25mA. Since then the peak beam current was steadily increased up to 55mA. In the early nineties, part of the drift tube structure was replaced with a side-coupled cavity structure in order to increase the final energy to 400 MeV. The original and still primary purpose of the linac is to serve as the injector for the Booster. As an added benefit, the Neutron Therapy Facility (NTF) was built in the middle seventies. It uses 66MeV protons from the Linac to produce neutrons for medical purposes. The Linac/Booster complex was designed to run at a fundamental cycling rate of 15Hz, but beam is accelerated on every cycle only when NTF is …

The MARS15 Monte Carlo code capabilities to deal with time-consuming deep penetration shielding problems and other computationally tough tasks in accelerator, detector and shielding applications, have been enhanced by a parallel processing option. It has been developed, implemented and tested on the Fermilab Accelerator Division Linux cluster and network of Sun workstations. The code uses MPI. It is scalable and demonstrates good performance. The general architecture of the code, specific uses of message passing, and effects of a scheduling on the performance and fault tolerance are described.

A key parameter governing the performance and life-time of a Hot Fractured Rock (HFR) reservoir is the effective heat transfer area between the fracture network and the matrix rock. We report on numerical modeling studies into the feasibility of using tracer tests for estimating heat transfer area. More specifically, we discuss simulation results of a new HFR characterization method which uses surface-sorbing tracers for which the adsorbed tracer mass is proportional to the fracture surface area per unit volume. Sorption in the rock matrix is treated with the conventional formulation in which tracer adsorption is volume-based. A slug of solute tracer migrating along a fracture is subject to diffusion across the fracture walls into the adjacent rock matrix. Such diffusion removes some of the tracer from the fluid in the fractures, reducing and retarding the peak in the breakthrough curve (BTC) of the tracer. After the slug has passed the concentration gradient reverses, causing back-diffusion from the rock matrix into the fracture, and giving rise to a long tail in the BTC of the solute. These effects become stronger for larger fracture-matrix interface area, potentially providing a means for estimating this area. Previous field tests and modeling studies have demonstrated …

Fermilab is developing a high-energy electron cooling system to cool 8.9-GeV/c antiprotons in the Recycler ring [1]. Cooling of antiprotons requires a round electron beam with a small angular spread propagating through 20-m long cooling section with a kinetic energy of 4.3 MeV. To confine the electron beam tightly and to keep its transverse angles below 0.1 mrad, the cooling section will be immersed into a solenoidal field of 50-150G. This paper describes the technique of measuring and adjusting the magnetic field quality in the cooling section and presents preliminary results of beam quality measurements in the cooler prototype.

In order to meet the challenges of new accelerator and space projects and further improve modeling of radiation effects in microscopic objects, heavy-ion interaction and transport physics have been recently incorporated into the MARS15 Monte Carlo code. A brief description of new modules is given in comparison with experimental data.