Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Medicare provided health care coverage to 40 million people age 65 and over and to qualifying disabled persons at a cost of $240 billion in fiscal year 2001. In 1990, GAO designated the program as "high risk" for fraud and abuse because of its vast size, complex structure, and program management weaknesses. GAO issued two reports in 2000 that discussed weaknesses in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) oversight of Medicare contractors' financial operations and the guidance it provides contractors in carrying out Medicare financial activities. GAO also cited CMS for deficiencies in its accounting procedures and improper payment measurement projects. GAO determined that CMS implemented corrective actions to substantially address four of the eight recommendations included in the 2000 reports and has made good progress in addressing the remaining four. Actions taken by CMS include the implementation of more in-depth internal control reviews at Medicare contractors as well as the development of an accounting procedures manual to guide its financial management staff in consistent accounting and reporting for Medicare. CMS has also tested several innovative analysis techniques for identifying improper payments. These actions have helped …

This report describes the essential elements of the cryogenic system. The cryogenic distribution system starts at the level of the linac superconducting RF cavities [1] and moves out through the cryogenic piping to the liquid helium refrigeration plant that will be used to cool the RF cavities and the undulator magnets. For this report, the cryogenic distribution system and cryogenic refrigerator includes the following elements: (1) The piping within the linac cryogenic modules will influence the heat transfer through the super-fluid helium from the outer surface of the TESLA niobium cavity and the liquid to gas interface within the horizontal header pipe where the superfluid helium boils. This piping determines the final design of the linac cryogenic module. (2) The acceptable pressure drops determine the supply and return piping dimensions. (3) The helium distribution system is determined by the need to cool down and warm up the various elements in the light source. (4) The size of the cryogenic plant is determined by the heat loads and the probable margin of error on those heat loads. Since the final heat loads are determined by the acceleration gradient in the cavities, a linac with five cryogenic modules will be compared to …

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to determining whether the procedures used to award and monitor contracts for the Child Care Program ensure that contractors provide agreed-upon services at reasonable prices, and that funds are spent in accordance with state and federal requirements.

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to the higher education authorities established by the Town of Westlake (Westlake) and the City of Cameron (Cameron), operating within the provisions of Chapter 53 of the Texas Education Code and of the Texas Non-Profit Corporation Act, and issuing tax-exempt revenue bonds to be used for educational or student housing facilities.

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to determining whether the Telecommunication Infrastructure Fund Board (Agency) is ensuring that state telecommunications grant funds are being spent in an effective and efficient manner.

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Texas Department of Insurance is authorized to examine certain nonprofit health corporations under Insurance Code articles 20A.17 and 20A.18C (RQ-0534-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Public Information Act provides for sanctions against an electricity market participant for filing with the Office of the Attorney General groundless claims of confidentiality as to its records held by the Public Utility Commission that are requested under the Act (RQ-0536-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Texas Interagency Council on Early Childhood Intervention is authorized to require local service providers to collect and submit to the Council personally identifiable information regarding children and their families, and related questions (RQ-0535-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a city official who becomes a candidate for the office of precinct chair of a political party is subject to the “resign-to-run” provision of article XI, section 11 of the Texas Constitution (RQ-0537-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Constitutionality of statute authorizing the Texas Commission of Human Rights to review the personnel policies and procedures of Texas state appellate courts for compliance with the Texas Human Rights Act (RQ-0538-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a city council may determine than its members are not eligible to serve as members of a volunteer fire department, and related questions (RQ-0539-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether section 130.908 of the Local Government Code applies when an incumbent county commissioner is not renominated to office in a primary election, and related question (RQ-0540-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Procedure for certification of foreign educators by State Board for Educator Certification.

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a business located in an enterprise zone and presently designated an "enterprise project" and allocated the maximum jobs and tax benefits may receive an additional and concurrent enterprise project designation in the same zone and receive an additional maximum job allocation and the related tax benefits.

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a county commissioners court may set the daily reimbursement rate of grand jurors' expenses at a rate different from petit jurors' expenses, and related question.

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Consequences of the defeat of a ballot proposition confirming the creation of the Southeast Trinity Groundwater Conservation District, and related questions.

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Rural Foundation created by the Seventy-seventh Texas Legislature in chapter 110 of the Health and Safety Code may finance rural programs that are not health programs.

Results are presented from experiments relating to magnetic field generation and current amplification in the SSPX spheromak. The SSPX spheromak plasma is driven by DC coaxial helicity injection using a 2MJ capacitor bank. Peak toroidal plasma currents of up to 0.7MA and peak edge poloidal fields of 0.3T are produced; lower current discharges can be sustained up to 3.5msec. When edge magnetic fluctuations are reduced below 1% by driving the plasma near threshold, it is possible to produce plasmas with Te > 150eV, <{beta}{sub e}>-4% and core {chi}{sub e} {approx} 30m{sup 2}/s. Helicity balance for these plasmas suggests that sheath dissipation can be significant, pointing to the importance of maximizing the voltage on the coaxial injector. For most operational modes we find a stiff relationship between peak spheromak field and injector current, and little correlation with plasma temperature, which suggests that other processes than ohmic dissipation may limit field amplification. However, slowing spheromak buildup by limiting the initial current pulse increases the ratio of toroidal current to injected current and points to new operating regimes with more favorable current amplification.

A photon collider interaction region has the possibility of expanding the physics reach of a future TeV scale electron-positron collider. A survey of ongoing efforts to design the required lasers and optics to create a photon collider is presented in this paper.

Official publication of the Clean Cities Network and the Alternative Fuels Data Center featuring LPG Around the World, AFVs in National Parks, and Federal and State news.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF), currently under construction at the University of California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, is a stadium-sized facility containing a 192-beam, 1.8-Megajoule, 500-Terawatt, 351-nm laser system and a 10-meter diameter target chamber with room for nearly 100 experimental diagnostics. NIF is being built by the National Nuclear Security Administration and when completed will be the world's largest laser experimental system, providing a national center to study inertial confinement fusion and the physics of matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. NIF will provide 192 energetic laser beams that will compress small fusion targets to conditions where they will ignite and burn, liberating more energy than is required to initiate the fusion reactions. NIF experiments will allow the study of physical processes at temperatures approaching 100 million K and 100 billion times atmospheric pressure. These conditions exist naturally only in the interior of stars and in nuclear weapons explosions. In the course of designing the world's most energetic laser system, a number of significant technology breakthroughs have been achieved. Research is also underway to develop a shorter pulse capability on NIF for very high power and extreme electromagnetic field research and applications. We discuss here the technology challenges …

The aim of these studies continues to be the investigation into the molecular mechanisms that underlie the virulence process in Yersinia pestis. In particular, the focus of this work centers on the identification of novel genes and pathways responsible for the pathogenic properties of this organism. In spite of more than four decades of intense investigation in this field, the dilemma as to what makes Y. pestis such a virulent and lethal pathogen remains unanswered. The method being employed makes use microarray technology (DNA chip) that enables the examination of the global activities of the whole complement of genes in this pathogen. Two primary resources available to the investigators (one directly obtained from a separate CBNP-funded project) make these studies possible: (1) Whole genome comparisons of the genes in Y. pestis and its near neighbors with attenuated or non pathogenic characteristics, and (2) the ability to duplicate in vitro, conditions that mimic the infection process of this pathogen. This year we have extended our studies from the original work of characterizing the global transcriptional regulation in Y. pestis triggered during temperature transition from 26 C to 37 C (roughly conditions found in the flea vector and the mammalian host, respectively) …

This report does not constitute a blueprint for every office involved in grants and projects activity, nor does it present in-depth information about all aspects of staff activity in this area.

We report on recent improvements made to our 1 MV accelerator mass spectrometry system that is dedicated to {sup 14}C quantification of biochemical samples. Increased vacuum pumping capacity near the high voltage terminal has resulted in a 2-fold reduction of system backgrounds to 0.04 amol {sup 14}C/mg carbon. Carbon ion transmission through the accelerator has also improved a few percent. We have also developed tritium measurement capability on this spectrometer. The {sup 3}H/{sup 1}H isotopic ratio of a milligram-sized processed tap water sample has been measured at 4 {+-} 1 x 10{sup -16} (430 {+-} 110 {micro}Bq/mg H). Measurement throughput for a typical biochemical {sup 3}H sample is estimated to be {approx}10 minutes/sample.