A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Staffing companies that contract with physicians to staff hospital departments--including emergency departments--are not permitted to bill Medicare. In the Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000, Congress directed GAO to assess the program integrity implications of enrolling these companies and allowing them to bill Medicare. GAO reviewed about 2.8 million emergency department claims for 2000 from five states and assessed whether contractor physicians retained by staffing companies billed Medicare comparably to other emergency department physicians. GAO also evaluated how the lack of information on staffing companies affects efforts to assure Medicare program integrity."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In the wake of a series of recent corporate scandals and bankruptcies, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandated that GAO study the involvement of investment banks with two companies, Enron and Global Crossing. In this report, the term "investment bank" includes not only securities firms but also those bank holding companies with securities affiliated or business divisions that assist clients in obtaining funds to finance investment projects. Since the activities identified in this report are the subject of ongoing and extensive investigations and litigation by competent authorities, it is not our role to determine the propriety of any of the parties' activities. To help the Congress better understand the activities of investment banks with respect to these companies we agreed to provide publicly available information on the roles investment banks played in designing, executing, and participating in certain structured finance transactions, investment banks' and federal regulators' oversight of these transactions, and the role that the banks' research analysts played with Enron and Global Crossing."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Each year state newborn screening programs test 4 million newborns for disorders that require early detection and treatment to prevent serious illness or death. GAO was asked to provide the Congress with information on the variations among state newborn screening programs, including information on criteria considered in selecting disorders to include in state programs, education for parents and providers about newborn screening programs, and programs' expenditures and funding sources. To collect this information, GAO surveyed newborn screening programs for genetic and metabolic disorders in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. GAO was also asked to provide information on efforts by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and states to evaluate the quality of newborn screening programs, state laws and regulations that address parental consent for newborn screening, and state laws and regulations that address confidentiality issues."

Quarterly publication of the Texas Comptroller's Office regarding sales and use tax in the state of Texas, including an analysis by county, analysis by industry, and related notes.

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 Texas Department of Insurance is authorized to enforce certain provisions of the Health Maintenance Organization Act, TEX. INS. CODE ANN. ch. 20A, against physicians who are not under contract with a health maintenance organization.

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 chapter 143 of the Local Government Code, which provides civil service protection for certain municipal employees, applies to certain fire department employees.

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 an inmate in a county jail has the right to choose a medical provider and whether an inmate who refuses to use the provider designated by the sheriff's office has refused medical treatment.

This report provides appropriations of VA, HUV, and Independent Agencies for FY2003.

None

Adaptive optics can be used to correct the aberrations in the human eye caused by imperfections in the cornea and the lens and thereby, improve image quality both looking into and out of the eye. Under the auspices of the NSF Center for Adaptive Optics and the DOE Biomedical Engineering Program, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has joined together with leading vision science researchers around the country to develop and test new ophthalmic imaging systems using novel wavefront corrector technologies. Results of preliminary comparative evaluations of these technologies in initial system tests show promise for future clinical utility.

This report examines that issue as developed in customary international law and under the United Nations Charter.

During the periods from May 2000 to September 2001 and March 5 to April 10, 2002, cooling-lake surface water temperature data was collected at the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Station near Granbury, Texas. This effort was led by the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) with the assistance of plant personnel. Permission for setting up these monitoring sites was granted by TXU Energy, which owns the plant site and surrounding property including Squaw Creek reservoir where the measurements were taken. This work was done in support of SRTC's ground truth mission for the U.S. Department of Energy's Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI) satellite.

We report on the status of the MINOS long baseline neutrino experiment presently under construction at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the Soudan mine. There is growing evidence that the solar neutrino and atmospheric neutrino anomalies [1] are the result of neutrino oscillations. The MINOS experiment is a long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment designed to study the region of parameter space indicated by the SuperKamiokande atmospheric neutrino results [2]. The experiment consists of two detectors, one with a mass of 980 tons located at Fermilab (the near detector) and the other of mass 5400 tons located 731 km away in the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota (the far detector). The third component is the neutrino beam which is currently under construction at Fermilab.

During the period from September 2000 to April 2002, surface water temperature data was collected at the Turkey Point Nuclear Power Plant near Homestead, FL. This effort was led by the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) with the assistance of local plant personnel. Permission for setting up the monitoring sites was granted by Florida Power and Light, which owns the plant site. This work was done in support of SRTC's ground truth mission for the U.S. Department of Energy's Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI).

After a five year upgrade period, the CDF detector located at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider is back in operation taking high quality data with all subsystems functional. We report on the status of the CDF experiment in Run II and discuss the start-up of the Tevatron accelerator. First physics results from CDF are presented. We also discuss the prospects for B physics in RunII, in particular the measurements of B{sub S}{sup 0} flavour oscillations and CP violation in B decays.

During the period from February 2001 to August 2002, paved-surface (tarmac) temperatures were collected at the Dahlgren Naval Surface Warfare Center. This effort was led by the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC), with the assistance of base personnel, as part of SRTC's ground truth mission for the U.S. Department of Energy's Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI) satellite.

During the period from May 2000 to September 2001, ocean surface water temperature data was collected at the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station near Plymouth, MA. This effort was led by the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) with the assistance of a local sub-contractor, Marine BioControl Corporation of Sandwich, MA. Permission for setting up the monitoring system was granted by Energy Corporation, which owns the plant site. This work was done in support of SRTC's ground truth mission for the U.S. Department of Energy's Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI) satellite.

During the period from March 2000 to September 2002, surface water temperature data was collected at the H. B. Robinson Plant near Hartsville, SC. This effort was led by the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) with the assistance of local plant personnel. Permission for setting up the monitoring sites was granted by Carolina Power and Light, which owns the plant site. This work was done in support of SRTC's ground truth mission for the U.S. Department of Energy's Multispectral Thermal Imager (MTI).

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) covers approximately 890 square miles and includes 12 public water systems that must be evaluated for Source water protection purposes under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Because of its size and location, six watersheds and five aquifers could potentially affect the INEEL's drinking water sources. Based on a preliminary evaluation of the available information, it was determined that the Big Lost River, Birch Creek, and Little Lost River Watersheds and the eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer needed to be assessed. These watersheds were delineated using the United States Geologic Survey's Hydrological Unit scheme. Well capture zones were originally estimated using the RESSQC module of the Environmental Protection Agency's Well Head Protection Area model, and the initial modeling assumptions and results were checked by running several scenarios using Modflow modeling. After a technical review, the resulting capture zones were expanded to account for the uncertainties associated with changing groundwater flow directions, a this vadose zone, and other data uncertainties. Finally, all well capture zones at a given facility were merged to a single wellhead protection area at each facility. A contaminant source inventory was conducted, and the results were integrated with the well …

A platinum-lined, flowing autoclave facility was used to investigate the solubility behavior of nickel(II) oxide (NiO) in deoxygenated ammonium and sodium hydroxide solutions between 21 and 315 C. Solubilities were found to vary between 0.4 and 400 nanomolal (nm). The measured nickel ion solubilities were interpreted via a Ni(II) ion hydroxo- and amino-complexing model and thermodynamic functions for these equilibria were obtained from a least-squares analysis of the data. Two solid phase transformations were observed: at temperatures below 149 C, the activity of Ni(II) ions in aqueous solution was controlled by a hydrous Ni(II) oxide (theophrastite) solid phase rather than anhydrous NiO (bunsenite); above 247 C, Ni(II) activities were controlled by cubic rather than rhombohedral bunsenite.

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

Thomsen's anisotropy parameters for weak elastic and poroelastic anisotropy are now commonly used in exploration, and can be conveniently expressed in terms of the layer averages of Backus. Although there are five effective shear moduli for any layered VTI medium, only one effective shear modulus for the layered system contains all the dependence of pore fluids on the elastic or poroelastic constants that can be observed in vertically polarized shear waves in VTI media. The effects of the pore fluids on this effective shear modulus can be substantial when the medium behaves in an undrained fashion, as might be expected at higher frequencies such a sonic and ultrasonic for well-logging or laboratory experiments, or at seismic frequencies for lower permeability regions of reservoirs.

This talk summarizes work by the ATLAS Collaboration at the CERN Large Hadron Collider on the search SUSY particles and Higgs bosons and on possible measurements of their properties.

A series of analyses were performed to assess the structural response of spent nuclear fuel dry casks subjected to various handling and on-site transfer events. The results of these analyses are being used by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to perform a probabilistic risk assessment (PRA). Although the PRA study is being performed for a specific nuclear plant, the PRA study is also intended to provide a framework for a general methodology that could also be applied to other dry cask systems at other nuclear plants. The dry cask system consists of a transfer cask, used for handling and moving the multi-purpose canister (MPC) that contains the fuel, and a storage cask, used to store the MPC and fuel on a concrete pad at the site. This paper describes the analyses of the casks for two loading events. The first loading consists of dropping the transfer cask while it is lowered by a crane to a concrete floor at ground elevation. The second loading consists of dropping the storage cask while it is being transferred to the concrete storage pad outdoors. Three dimensional finite element models of the transfer cask and storage cask, containing the MPC and fuel, were utilized …