Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to reform of certain procedures and remedies in civil actions.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to certain insurance rates, forms, and practices; providing penalties

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the handling, settling, and use of certain claims in the insurance business; providing penalties.

This report discusses projected agricultural imports and exports for FY2003, as well as legislation that deals with federal programs in support of agricultural exports and federal aid dedicated to farms and agricultural reform.

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

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

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

The 108th Congress is considering legislation to reduce chemical facilities’ vulnerability to acts of terrorism, so as to protect critical sectors of the U.S. infrastructure and reduce risks to public health and the environment. Competing bills, S. 994 and S. 157, have been introduced into the Senate. Both would require chemical facilities to conduct vulnerability assessments and develop and implement site security plans, but the approaches of the bills differ with respect to the chemicals and facilities covered, planning requirements and mechanisms for federal and facility accountability.

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

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

This report provides a selection of materials for locating information on foreign countries and international organizations. In the general information section, it presents sources giving an overview of politics, economics, and history.

This report provides a selection of materials for locating information on foreign countries and international organizations. In the general information section, it presents sources giving an overview of politics, economics, and recent history. A specialized information section cites sources on human rights, immigration, international organizations, military strengths, terrorism, and other topics. Included are titles of some of the most frequently consulted bibliographic sources that are available for use in many libraries. Electronic information on foreign countries is also provided, via the Internet, by agencies of the federal government, international organizations, and related sources. Included is a list of foreign chanceries located in Washington, D.C.

Over the past decade, worldwide production of illicit drugs has risen dramatically: opium and marijuana production has roughly doubled and coca production tripled. Street prices of cocaine and heroin have fallen significantly in the past 20 years, reflecting increased availability. Despite apparent national political resolve to deal with the drug problem, inherent contradictions regularly appear between U.S. anti-drug policy and other national policy goals and concerns. The mix of competing domestic and international pressures and priorities has produced an ongoing series of disputes within and between the legislative and executive branches concerning U.S. international drug policy. One contentious issue has been the Congressionally-mandated certification process, an instrument designed to induce specified drug-exporting countries to prioritize or pay more attention to the fight against narcotics businesses.

The well-known spatial variation of packing fraction near the outer boundary of a pebble-bed reactor core is cited. The ramifications of this variation are explored with the MCNP computer code. It is found that the variation has negligible effects on the global reactor physics parameters extracted from the MCNP calculations for use in analysis by diffusion-theory codes, but for local reaction rates the effects of the variation are naturally important. Included is some preliminary work in using first-order perturbation theory for estimating the effect of the spatial variation of packing fraction on the core eigenvalue and the fission density distribution.

A study was installed in the Upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina, USA, that sought to examine the impact of incorporating downed slash materials into subsoil layers on soil chemical and physical properties as compared with the effect of slash materials left on the soil surface. Baseline levels of slash were estimated by establishing transects within harvested stands and estimating the quantity of down wood and stumps. An equivalent quantity of biomass and two times the baseline levels were incorporated into subsurface soil layers by a CMI RS 500B reclaimer/stabilizer. Two sites were examined which differed in soil textural composition: sandy vs. clay. Site differences had no impact on machine productivity and machine costs were estimated at $US 521 ha-1 and $US 633 ha-1 on the ''sandy'' and ''clay'' sites, respectively. The feasibility of the CM1 for biomass incorporation is low due to high unit area costs but increased machine productivity would reduce costs and improve its potential. Biomass incorporation improved carbon and nutrient content of each site, especially on the sandy site. Slash levels had an impact on nutrient content but the differences were not statistically significant. For the sandy site, improvements in soil physical properties were evident in …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Over the years, EPA has had persistent problems in managing its grants. Grants constituted one-half of the agency's annual budget, or about $4.2 billion in fiscal year 2002. EPA uses grants to implement its programs to protect human health and the environment and awards them to over 3,300 recipients, including state and local governments, tribes, universities, and nonprofit organizations. EPA's ability to efficiently and effectively accomplish its mission largely depends on how well it manages its grant resources and builds in accountability. Since 1996, GAO and EPA's Office of Inspector General have repeatedly reported on EPA's problems in managing its grants. Because these problems have persisted, in January 2003, GAO cited grants management as a major management challenge for EPA. GAO is currently reviewing EPA's efforts to improve grants management at the request of the Chairman of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and Representative Anne Northup. For this testimony GAO is reporting on results of its previously issued reports and on the grants problems EPA faces, past actions to address these problems, and recently issued EPA policies and a 5-year grants management plan to address its …

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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The Fermilab computing farms grew substantially in 2001 and 2002. This reflected primarily the CDF and D0 computing demand increase as run 2 began and the two detectors and the accelerator performed steadily better, leading to more data and a greater demand for reconstruction computing. In addition, the ''fixed-target'' farms evolved away from the old model of direct tape input and output to a system that uses Enstore and dcache (network-based) as the I/O mechanism. This was part of a more general trend away from a large server used for all of the I/O and many common services and many workers to a model with many smaller systems serving as I/O systems with distributed disk storage. Other major technological achievements include the use of dfarm, a disk caching mechanism, throughout the farms, the upgrades of FBSNG, NGOP for monitoring the farms systems, and generally a more sophisticated management of the machines that constitute these farms. The growth in systems was quite substantial, from a total of 314 dual PCs in early 2001 to 649 duals in early 2003. This does not include the farms that were purchased for CDF and D0 analysis--the CAF and the CAB, nor does it include …

We were funded by ASR to use data collected during ISDAC and TWP-ICE to evaluate models with a variety of temporal and spatial scales, to evaluate ground-based remote sensing retrievals and to develop cloud parameterizations with the end goal of improving the modeling of cloud processes and properties and their impact on atmospheric radiation. In particular, we proposed to: 1) Calculate distributions of microphysical properties observed in arctic stratus during ISDAC for initializing and evaluating LES and GCMs, and for developing parameterizations of effective particle sizes, mean fall velocities, and mean single-scattering properties for such models; 2) Improve representations of particle sizes, fall velocities and scattering properties for tropical and arctic cirrus using TWP-ICE, ISDAC and M-PACE data, and to determine the contributions that small ice crystals, with maximum dimensions D less than 50 μm, make to mass and radiative properties; 3) Study fundamental interactions between clouds and radiation by improving representations of small quasi-spherical particles and their scattering properties. We were additionally funded 1-year by ASR to use RACORO data to develop an integrated product of cloud microphysical properties. We accomplished all of our goals.

The idea of replacing our current income tax system with a "flat-rate tax" is receiving renewed congressional interest. This report contains information on recent developments regarding flat-rate taxes, the relationship between income and consumption, international comparisons, other fundamental tax reforms, and descriptions of selected proposals.

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

Meningiomas are common tumors of the central nervous system, however, the mechanisms under lying their pathogenesis are largely undefined. Two members of the Protein 4.1 super family, the neuro fibromatosis 2 (NF2) gene product (merlin/schwannomin) and Protein 4.1B have been implicated as meningioma tumor suppressors. In this report, we demonstrate that another Protein 4.1 family member, Protein 4.1R, also functions as a meningioma tumor suppressor. Based on the assignment of the Protein 4.1R gene to chromosome 1p32-36, a common region of deletion observed in meningiomas, we analyzed Protein 4.1R expression in meningioma cell lines and surgical tumor specimens. We observed loss of Protein 4.1R protein expression in two meningioma cell lines (IOMM-Lee, CH157-MN) by Western blotting as well as in 6 of 15 sporadic meningioma as by immuno histo chemistry (IHC). Analysis of a subset of these sporadic meningiomas by fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) with a Protein 4.1R specific probe demonstrated 100 percent concordance with the IHC results. In support of a meningioma tumor suppressor function, over expression of Protein 4.1R resulted in suppression of IOMM-Lee and CH157MN cell proliferation. Similar to the Protein 4.1B and merlin meningioma tumor suppressors, Protein 4.1R localization in the membrane fraction increased significantly …

This report provides a guide to Internet Sources the Immigration. This report identifies selected WWW sites from the internet about immigration topics in the United States.