Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Hurricanes Katrina and Rita destroyed homes and displaced millions of individuals. While federal and state governments continue to respond to this disaster, GAO has identified significant control weaknesses--specifically in the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s Individuals and Households Program (IHP) and in Department of Homeland Security (DHS)'s purchase card program--resulting in significant fraud, waste, and abuse. In response to the numerous recommendations GAO made, DHS and FEMA have reported on numerous actions taken to address our recommendations. Lessons learned from GAO's prior work can serve as a framework for an effective fraud prevention system for federal and state governments as they consider spending billions more on disaster recovery. These lessons are particularly important because funding that is lost to fraud, waste, and abuse reduces the amount of money that could be delivered to victims in need. Today's testimony will (1) describe key findings from past GAO work and (2) use the results from that work and GAO's other experiences to discuss the importance of an effective fraud, waste and abuse prevention program."

A faculty recital performed at the UNT College of Music Winspear Hall.

Static dissolution tests were conducted to measure the forward dissolution rate of LRM glass at 70 C and pH(RT) 11.7 {+-} 0.1 for comparison with the rate measured with single-pass flow-through (SPFT) tests in an interlaboratory study (ILS). The static tests were conducted with monolithic specimens having known geometric surface areas, whereas the SPFT tests were conducted with crushed glass that had an uncertain specific surface area. The error in the specific surface area of the crushed glass used in the SPFT tests, which was calculated by modeling the particles as spheres, was assessed based on the difference in the forward dissolution rates measured with the two test methods. Three series of static tests were conducted at 70 C following ASTM standard test method C1220 using specimens with surfaces polished to 600, 800, and 1200 grit and a leachant solution having the same composition as that used in the ILS. Regression of the combined results of the static tests to the affinity-based glass dissolution model gives a forward rate of 1.67 g/(m{sup 2}d). The mean value of the forward rate from the SPFT tests was 1.64 g/(m{sup 2}d) with an extended uncertainty of 1.90 g/(m{sup 2}d). This indicates that the …

The objective of this work is to develop and/or apply advanced diagnostics to the understanding of aging of Pu. Advanced characterization techniques such as photoelectron and x-ray absorption spectroscopy will provide fundamental data on the electronic structure of Pu phases. These data are crucial for the validation of the electronic structure methods. The fundamental goal of this project is to narrow the parameter space for the theoretical modeling of Pu aging. The short-term goal is to perform experiments to validate electronic structure calculations of Pu. The long-term goal is to determine the effects of aging upon the electronic structure of Pu. Many of the input parameters for aging models are not directly measurable. These parameters will need to be calculated or estimated. Thus a First Principles-Approach Theory is needed, but it is unclear what terms are important in the Hamiltonian. (H{Psi} = E{Psi}) Therefore, experimental data concerning the 5f electronic structure are needed, to determine which terms in the Hamiltonian are important. The data obtained in this task are crucial for reducing the uncertainty of Task LL-01-developed models and predictions. The data impact the validation of electronic structure methods, the calculation of defect properties, the evaluation of helium diffusion, and …

X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy (XAS) and Photoelectron Spectroscopy (PES) have been performed upon highly radioactive samples, particularly Plutonium, at the Advanced Light Source in Berkeley, CA, USA. First results from alpha and delta Plutonium are reported as well as a detailed analysis of sample quality.

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This research effort is directed to determine the methods and computational infrastructure needed to save, browse, and analyze multiple petabyte databases. The data set to be generated by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope is used as a template for this research.

High quality, refractory metal, oxide coatings are required in a variety of applications such as laser optics, micro-electronic insulating layers, nano-device structures, electro-optic multilayers, sensors and corrosion barriers. A common oxide deposition technique is reactive sputtering because the kinetic mechanism vaporizes almost any solid material in vacuum. Also, the sputtered molecules have higher energies than those generated from thermal evaporation, and so the condensates are smoother and denser than those from thermally-evaporated films. In the typical sputtering system, target erosion is a factor that drives machine availability. In some situations such as nano-layered capacitors, where the device's performance characteristics depends on thick layers, target life becomes a limiting factor on the maximizing device functionality. The keen interest to increase target utilization in sputtering has been addressed in a variety of ways such as target geometry, rotating magnets, and/or shaped magnet arrays. Also, a recent sputtering system has been developed that generates a high density plasma, directs the plasma beam towards the target in a uniform fashion, and erodes the target in a uniform fashion. The purpose of this paper is to characterize and compare niobia films deposited by two types of high target utilization sputtering sources, a rotating magnetron and …

The NSLS-II storage ring will be a replacement for the existing two NSLS light sources, which although innovative when proposed, have been exceeded by modern light source designs. NSLS-II design takes a new approach toward providing users with the very bright beams after commissioning and a strategy of evolving to higher brightness beams as more ID devices are installed during its operations. This is achieved not by pushing the basic lattice to lower emittance, an approach that hits severe limits in the control of the dynamic aperture of an ever increasing non-linear lattice. Our approach is rather to reduce the natural emittance using damping wigglers, in addition to damping from the user undulator's. Details on the lattice design are presented.

In early October 2006, the Liquid Waste Organization (LWO) began to consider decanting Tank 40 at the end of Sludge Batch 3 (SB3) processing and transferring the aqueous phase from the decant to Tank 51. This transfer would be done to remove water added to Tank 40 by a slurry pump bearing water leak. Tank 40 decant water would be used to decrease Tank 51 yield stress and facilitate a transfer of Tank 51 to Tank 40. The projected composition of Sludge Batch 4 (SB4) was adjusted by LWO to reflect the impact of the Tank 40 decant leading to new projected compositions for SB4, designated as the 10-04-06 and the 10-10-06 compositions. A comparison between these SB4 compositions and those provided in June 2006 indicated that the new compositions are slightly higher in Al2O3, Fe2O3, and U3O8 and slightly lower in SiO2. The most dramatic change, however, is the new projection's Na2O concentration, which is more than 4.5 wt% lower than the June 2006 projection. This is a significant change due to the frit development team's approach of aligning the Na2O concentration in a candidate frit to the Na2O content of the sludge. Questions surfaced regarding the applicability of …

As the first hadron accelerator and collider consisting of two independent superconducting rings RHIC has operated with a wide range of beam energies and particle species. Machine operation and performance will be reviewed that includes high luminosity gold-on-gold and copper-on-copper collisions at design beam energy (100 GeVh), asymmetric deuteron-on-gold collisions as well as high energy polarized proton-proton collisions (100 GeV on 100 GeV) with beam polarization of up to 65%. Plans for future upgrades of RHIC will also be discussed.

This report documents all activity of the University of Miami Industrial Assessment Center (MIIAC) grant awarded by the United States Department of Energy (USDOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Industrial Technology Program (ITP). This grant was coordinated through a collaborative effort with the Center for Advanced Energy Systems (CAES) located at Rutgers University in New Jersey (www.caes.rutgers.edu) which acted as the program’s Field Manager. The grant’s duration included fiscal years 2003-2006 (September 2002 – August 2006), and operated under the direction of Dr. Shihab Asfour, Director (MIIAC). MIIAC’s main goal was to provide energy assessments for local manufacturing firms. Energy consumption, productivity enhancement, and waste management were the focus of each assessment. Energy savings, cost savings, implementation costs, and simple payback periods were quantified using scientific methodologies and techniques. Over the four-year period of the grant, the total number of industrial assessments conducted was 91, resulting in 604 assessment recommendations and the following savings: 73,519,747 kWh, 435,722 MMBTU, and $10,024,453 in cost savings. A total of 16 undergraduate and graduate students were trained on energy assessment. Companies in over 40 different zip codes were assessed.

The China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) is an accelerator-based high-power project currently in preparation under the direction of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). The complex is based on an H- linear accelerator, a rapid cycling proton synchrotron accelerating the beam to 1.6 GeV, a solid tungsten target station, and five initial instruments for spallation neutron applications. The facility will operate at 25 Hz repetition rate with a phase-I beam power of about 120 kW. The major challenge is to build a robust and reliable user's facility with upgrade potential at a fractional of ''world standard'' cost.

Wakefields defining beam stability affect also the beam optics and beam properties in high current machines. In this paper we present observations and analysis of the optical effects in the PEP-II SLAC B-factory, which has the record in achievement of high electron and positron currents. We study the synchronous phase and the bunch length variation along the train of bunches, overall bunch lengthening and effects of the wakes on the tune and on the Twiss parameters. This analysis is being used in upgrades of PEP-II and may be applied to future B-factories and damping rings for Linear Colliders.

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

This report provides an overview of the Dispute Settlement in the World Trade Organization. Dispute resolution in the World Trade Organization is carried out under the WTO dispute settlement understanding whose rules apply to virtually all WTO agreements.

This report presents the results of an analysis of the amount of retirement savings that households might be able to accumulate by age 65 under a number of different scenarios. The analysis shows how varying the age at which households begin to save for retirement, the percentage of their earnings that they save, and the rate of return on investment can affect the amount of retirement savings the household will accumulate.

This report provides background and discusses constitutional provisions allocating war powers between Congress and the President.

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This report provides information about the History, Selection Criteria, and Revenue Potential of Commemorative Postage Stamps. The Commemorative stamp program contributed an estimated $225.9million in retained revenues for the USPS in the fiscal year 2005.

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This report describes arms control and nonproliferation efforts by presidential administrations form 1972-2007.