Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) regulatory process for recognizing tribes was established in 1978. The process requires groups that are petitioning for recognition to submit evidence that they meet certain criteria--basically that the petitioner has continuously existed as an Indian tribe since historic times. Critics of the process claim that it produces inconsistent decisions and takes too long. Congressional policymakers have struggled with the tribal recognition issue for over 27 years. H.R. 4933 and H.R. 5134, introduced in the 108th Congress, and H.R. 512, which was introduced last week, have focused on the timeliness of the recognition process. This testimony is based in part on GAO's report, Indian Issues: Improvements Needed in Tribal Recognition Process (GAO-02-49, November 2, 2001). Specifically, this testimony addresses (1) the timeliness of the recognition process as GAO reported in November 2001 and (2) the actions the Department of the Interior's Office of Federal Acknowledgment has taken since 2001 to improve the timeliness of the recognition process."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Concerns were raised about the system Medicare uses to determine annual changes to physician fees--the sustainable growth rate (SGR) system--when it reduced physician fees by almost 5 percent in 2002. Subsequent administrative and legislative actions modified or overrode the SGR system to avert fee declines in 2003, 2004, and 2005. However, projected fee reductions for 2006 to 2012 have raised new concerns about the SGR system. Policymakers question the appropriateness of the SGR system for updating physician fees and its effect on physicians' continued participation in the Medicare program if fees are permitted to decline. At the same time, there are concerns about the impact of increased spending on the long-term fiscal sustainability of Medicare. GAO was asked to discuss the SGR system. Specifically, this statement addresses the following: (1) how the SGR system is designed to moderate the growth in spending for physician services, (2) why physician fees are projected to decline under the SGR system, and (3) options for revising or replacing the SGR system and their implications for physician fee updates and Medicare spending. This statement is based on GAO's most recent report on the …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "At the center of any agency transformation, such as the one envisioned for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), are the people who will make it happen. Thus, strategic human capital management at DHS can help it marshal, manage, and maintain the people and skills needed to meet its critical mission. Congress provided DHS with significant flexibility to design a modern human capital management system. DHS and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have now jointly released the final regulations on DHS's new human capital system. Last year, with the release of the proposed regulations, GAO observed that many of the basic principles underlying the regulations were consistent with proven approaches to strategic human capital management and deserved serious consideration. However, some parts of the human capital system raised questions for DHS, OPM, and Congress to consider in the areas of pay and performance management, adverse actions and appeals, and labor management relations. GAO also identified multiple implementation challenges for DHS once the final regulations for the new system were issued. This testimony provides preliminary observations on selected provisions of the final regulations."

This paper extends previous results on nonlinear Schwarz preconditioning ([4]) to unstructured finite element elliptic problems exploiting now nonlocal (but small) subspaces. The non-local finite element subspaces are associated with subdomains obtained from a non-overlapping element partitioning of the original set of elements and are coarse outside the prescribed element subdomain. The coarsening is based on a modification of the agglomeration based AMGe method proposed in [8]. Then, the algebraic construction from [9] of the corresponding non-linear finite element subproblems is applied to generate the subspace based nonlinear preconditioner. The overall nonlinearly preconditioned problem is solved by an inexact Newton method. Numerical illustration is also provided.

Worldwide data on terrorist incidents between 1968 and 2004 gathered by the RAND corporation and the Oklahoma City National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism (MIPT) were assessed for patterns and trends in morbidity/mortality. Adjusted data analyzed involve a total of 19,828 events, 7,401 ''adverse'' events (each causing {ge}1 victim), and 86,568 ''casualties'' (injuries) of which 25,408 were fatal. Most terror-related adverse events, casualties and deaths involved bombs and guns. Weapon-specific patterns and terror-related risk levels in Israel (IS) have differed markedly from those of all other regions combined (OR). IS had a fatal fraction of casualties about half that of OR, but has experienced relatively constant lifetime terror-related casualty risks on the order of 0.5%--a level 2 to 3 orders of magnitude more than those experienced in OR that increased {approx}100-fold over the same period. Individual event fatality has increased steadily, the median increasing from 14 to 50%. Lorenz curves obtained indicate substantial dispersion among victim/event rates: about half of all victims were caused by the top 2.5% (or 10%) of harm-ranked events in OR (or IS). Extreme values of victim/event rates were approximated fairly well by generalized Pareto models (typically used to fit to data on forest …

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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

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Adoption of hydrogen (H{sub 2}) vehicles has been advocated for decades as an ecological ideal, capable of eliminating petroleum consumption as well as tail-pipe air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) from automobiles. Storing sufficient hydrogen fuel onboard still remains a great technological challenge, despite recent advances in lightweight automotive materials, hybrid-electric drivetrains and fuel cells enabling 60-100 mpg equivalent H{sub 2}-fueled automobiles. Future onboard hydrogen storage choices will be pivotal, with lasting strategic consequences for the eventual scale, shape, security, investment requirements, and energy intensity of the H{sub 2} refueling infrastructure, in addition to impacts on automotive design, cost, range, performance, and safety. Multiple hydrogen storage approaches have been examined and deployed onboard prototype automobiles since the 1970's. These include storing H{sub 2} as a cryogenic liquid (LH{sub 2}) at temperatures of 20-25 Kelvin, compressing room temperature H{sub 2} gas to pressures as high as 10,000 psi, and reversible chemical absorption storage within powdered metal hydrides (e.g. LaNi{sub 5}H{sub 6}, TiFeH{sub 2}, MgH{sub 2}, NaAlH{sub 4}) which evolve H{sub 2} when warmed. Each of these approaches face well-known fundamental physical limits (thermal endurance, volume, and weight, respectively). This report details preliminary experiments investigating the potential of a new approach …

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It is shown that, in a finite beta plasma, there may exist sheath driven modes whose amplitude decreases exponentially with the distance from the divertor plate. The modes are sensitive to the radial tilt of the divertor plate. The short-wavelength branch of the instability, with the cross-field wavelength Dof order of a few ion gyroradii, is present in the case of a ''positive'' tilt of the divertor plate, whereas the long-wavelength branch, with D of order of 10 or so gyroradii is unstable for the opposite sign of the tilt. The parallel e-folding length becomes less than the distance from the plate to the X point (thereby making the mode insensitive to the processes near the X-point and the upper scrape-off layer) at the plasma betas exceeding (2-3) {center_dot} 10{sup -4}. A detailed analysis of the dispersion relations is provided. The features of the modes that can be used for their experimental identification are discussed. It is pointed out that the analog of these modes may also exist in linear plasma devices with shaped end electrodes.

(1,2-naphtho)(1,8-naphtho)thioindigo (PNT) has been synthesized following a simple Friedel-Crafts route and its photochemical properties in toluene and PMMA characterized. PNT is a photochromic molecule capable of reversible photoisomerization between a yellow form (cis-PNT, {lambda}{sub max} = 484 nm) and a purple form (trans-PNT, {lambda}{sub max} = 595 nm). The stable purple form converts to the yellow form with a trans-PNT to cis-PNT conversion quantum yield of 0.027 in toluene and 0.062 in PMMA. The unstable yellow form exhibits a cis-PNT to trans-PNT quantum efficiency of conversion of 0.27-0.85 in toluene and 0.17-0.68 PMMA, with highest conversion efficiency occurring in the vicinity of its {lambda}{sub max} of 484 nm. Trans-PNT has a strong fluorescence quantum yield, 0.14 (toluene) and 0.16 (PMMA). For samples prepared photochemically in the cis-PNT form, slow thermal relaxation to the trans form occurs in the dark, with a half life of about 17 hours in toluene (25 C) and even slower, 168 hours, in PMMA. The property of photoswitching between fluorescent and non-fluorescent forms makes this material a candidate for many applications in imaging and data storage. An anomalous excitation profile for the fluorescence from trans-PNT, showing a dip at {approx}600 nm, is an agreement with the …

The primary purposes of this project were to (1) improve and validate the LLNL/IMPACT atmospheric chemistry and aerosol transport model, (2) experimentally analyze size- and time-resolved aerosol measurements taken during spring 2001 in Northern California, and (3) understand the origin of dust impacting Northern California. Under this project, we (1) more than doubled the resolution of the LLNL-IMPACT global atmospheric chemistry and aerosol model (to 1 x 1 degree), (2) added an interactive dust emission algorithm to the IMPACT model in order to simulate observed events, (3) added detailed microphysics to the IMPACT model to calculate the size-distribution of aerosols in terms of mass, (4) analyzed the aerosol mass and elemental composition of the size- and time-resolved aerosol measurements made by our UC Davis collaborators, and (5) determined that the majority of the observed soil dust is from intercontinental transport across the Pacific. A detailed report on this project is in the attached document ''Impact of Long-Range Dust Transport on Northern California in Spring 2002'' (UCRL-TR-209597), except for the addition of aerosol microphysics, which is covered in the attached document ''Implementation of the Missing Aerosol Physics into LLNL IMPACT'' (UCRL-TR-209568). In addition to the technical results, this project has (1) …

A record of the list of special awards presented at the Texas Daily Newspaper Association meetings. The record is categorized by the year the award was given, the name of the special award, how the award looked when being presented, the recipients of the awards and the purpose of it.

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

We designed and fabricated mixing devices that will help us elucidate the mechanisms of protein folding through measurements of folding reaction rates. These devices can be used in studying of other biological systems and are compatible with various spectroscopic observation methods. The project involved development of fabrication processes and setup of a laboratory for assembly and characterization of microfluidic devices, as well as measurements of protein folding kinetics. We produced three variants of the mixer: (1) The ultra fast mixer for Foerster Resonance Energy Transfer measurements (described by Anal. Chem. Article UCRL-JRNL-206676) and MicroTAS Conference Proceedings article (UCRL-JC-153057 ) included in the report; (2) The ultra fast mixer for UV measurements (described by the poster presented at MicroTAS conference (UCRL-POST-207476) included in the report); and (3) The mixer for single molecule measurements (described by the Science article UCRL-JC-153057) included in the report. In these mixers, the channels are narrow, ranging from a few to hundreds of {micro}m, so that the flow is laminar and all of the mixing is achieved through diffusion. Our goal is to develop robust microfluidic mixer with at least 100 times lower consumption rate, shorter dead time and time resolution than commercially available mixers that would …

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

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

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

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

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