A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Department of Defense (DOD) installations have about 2,600 electric, water, wastewater, and natural gas utility systems valued at about $50 billion. In 1997, DOD decided that utility privatization was the preferred method for improving utility systems and services and the Congress approved legislative authority for privatizing utility systems at military installations with Public Law No. 105-85. Because of the costs and long-term implications of DOD's utility privatization program, GAO reviewed the program to determine (1) the program's status, (2) whether the services' estimates of long-term savings from utility privatization projects are reliable, (3) how DOD implements the fair market value requirement for conveyed utility systems, and (4) whether other issues impact the effectiveness of DOD's execution of the program."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Labor's Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS) administers two programs designed to assist the roughly 700,000 veterans who are unemployed in any given month. These two programs, the Disabled Veterans' Outreach Program (DVOP) and the Local Veterans' Employment Representative (LVER) program, fund employment, training, and job placement services to veterans. In 2002, Congress passed the Jobs for Veterans Act (JVA), which redefined the roles of DVOP and LVER staff and required that VETS establish a new performance accountability system. This testimony is based on GAO's ongoing work in this area and focuses on three aspects: (1) the separation of DVOP's and LVER's roles and responsibilities; (2) VETS' performance accountability system for DVOP and LVER staff; and (3) VETS' system for monitoring DVOP and LVER performance."

Protein immobilization on surfaces is of great importance in numerous applications in biology and biophysics. The key for the success of all these applications relies on the immobilization technique employed to attach the protein to the corresponding surface. Protein immobilization can be based on covalent or noncovalent interaction of the molecule with the surface. Noncovalent interactions include hydrophobic interactions, hydrogen bonding, van der Waals forces, electrostatic forces, or physical adsorption. However, since these interactions are weak, the molecules can get denatured or dislodged, thus causing loss of signal. They also result in random attachment of the protein to the surface. Site-specific covalent attachment of proteins onto surfaces, on the other hand, leads to molecules being arranged in a definite, orderly fashion and uses spacers and linkers to help minimize steric hindrances between the protein surface. This work reviews in detail some of the methods most commonly used as well as the latest developments for the site-specific covalent attachment of protein to solid surfaces.

We develop and present high order mixed finite element discretizations of the time dependent electromagnetic diffusion equations for solving eddy current problems on 3D unstructured grids. The discretizations are based on high order H(grad), H(curl) and H(div) conforming finite element spaces combined with an implicit and unconditionally stable generalized Crank-Nicholson time differencing method. We develop three separate electromagnetic diffusion formulations, namely the E (electric field), H (magnetic field) and the A-{phi} (potential) formulations. For each formulation, we also provide a consistent procedure for computing the secondary variables F (current flux density) and B (magnetic flux density), as these fields are required for the computation of electromagnetic force and heating terms. We verify the error convergence properties of each formulation via a series of numerical experiments on canonical problems with known analytic solutions. The key result is that the different formulations are equally accurate, even for the secondary variables J and B, and hence the choice of which formulation to use depends mostly upon relevance of the Natural and Essential boundary conditions to the problem of interest. In addition, we highlight issues with numerical verification of finite element methods which can lead to false conclusions on the accuracy of the methods.

Beamline 7.2 of the Advanced Light Source (ALS) at theLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) is a beam diagnostics systemthat uses the synchrotron radiation emitted by a dipole magnet. Itconsists of two branches; in the first one the x-ray portion of theradiation is used in a pinhole camera system for measuring the transverseprofile of the beam. The second branch is equipped with an x-ray beamposition monitor (BPM) and with a multipurpose port where the visible andthe far-infrared part of the radiation can be used for variousapplications such as bunch length measurements and IR coherentsynchrotron radiation experiments. The pinhole system has been operatingsuccessfully since the end of 2003. The installation of the second branchhas been completed recently and the results of its commissioning arepresented in this paper together with examples of beam measurementsperformed at BL 7.2.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Letter from WASP President Caro Bosca to the WASP Board of Directors discussing an "Action Without Meeting" question to recognize Shutsy Reynolds for her service as the organization's Stores Chairman. The last two paragraphs correct an error from the balance sheet printed in the newsletter.

Photograph of Helen W. Snapp in her Women Airforce Service Pilot dress uniform holding a miniature version of the bronze WASP memorial statue resting on the stage beside her. There is an enlarged photograph of a blimp in the background, as well as a flag and other WASPs. In addition to her normal WASP pins, Helen also sports a red, white, and blue ribbon, a WASP sticker, and carries a bronze cane.

Photograph of about forty Women Airforce Service Pilots sitting in rows of three, all wearing their WASP uniform. There is a black and white photograph of a GoodYear blimp as well as two flags behind the group.

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

This report explains what is meant by restoration, the Corps' restoration plan, and some of the issues in the debate over federal investment in this restoration.

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

The effects of tritium on the fracture toughness properties of Type 304L and Type 21-6-9 stainless steel weldments were measured. Weldments were tritium-charged-and-aged and then tested in order to measure the effect of the increasing decay helium content on toughness. The results were compared to uncharged and hydrogen-charged samples. For unexposed weldments having 8-12 volume percent retained delta ferrite, fracture toughness was higher than base metal toughness. At higher levels of weld ferrite, the fracture toughness decreased to values below that of the base metal. Hydrogen-charged and tritium-charged weldments had lower toughness values than similarly charged base metals and toughness decreased further with increasing weld ferrite content. The effect of decay helium content was inconclusive because of tritium off-gassing losses during handling, storage and testing. Fracture modes were dominated by the dimpled rupture process in unexposed weldments. In hydrogen and tritium-exposed weldments, the fracture modes depended on the weld ferrite content. At high ferrite contents, hydrogen-induced transgranular fracture of the weld ferrite phase was observed.

We report laboratory studies of the role played by multiple-electron capture (MEC) in solar wind induced cometary X-ray emission. Collisions of Ne{sup 10+} with He, Ne, Ar, CO, and CO{sub 2} have been investigated by means of the traditional singles X-ray spectroscopy in addition to the triple-coincidence measurements of X-rays, scattered projectile, and target recoil ions for the atomic targets. The coincidence measurements enable the reduction of the singles X-ray spectra into partial spectra originating in single-electron capture (SEC) and MEC collisions. The measurements provide unequivocal evidence for a significant role played by MEC, and strongly suggest that models based solely on SEC are bound to yield erroneous conclusions on the solar wind composition and velocities and on cometary atmospheres. The experimental relative importance of MEC collisions is compared with molecular classical-over-the-barrier model (MCBM), classical trajectory Monte Carlo (CTMC), and multi-channel Landau-Zener (MCLZ), calculations which can qualitatively reproduce the experimental trends.

Photograph of eight Women Airforce Service Pilots attending a WASP reunion. All are wearing name tags and either their military dress uniform or a more casual navy pants suit decorated with various military pins. Helen W. Snapp--who is holding a small statue in her hands--and two other WASPs stand posed around a WASP memorial statue, gaze focused off camera, while other talk among themselves.

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.

The focus of this program at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) is to develop the next generation of designer diamond anvils that can perform simultaneous joule heating and temperature profile measurements in a diamond anvil cell. A series of tungsten-rhenium thermocouples will be fabricated onto to the anvil and encapsulated by a chemical vapor deposited diamond layer to allow for a complete temperature profile measurement across the anvil. The tip of the diamond anvil will be engineered to reduce the thermal conductivity so that the tungsten-heating coils can be deposited on top of this layer. Several different approaches will be investigated to engineer the tip of the diamond anvil for reduction in thermal conductivity (a) isotopic mixture of 12C and 13C in the diamond layer, (b) doping of diamond with impurities (nitrogen and/or boron), and (c) growing diamond in a higher concentration of methane in hydrogen plasma. Under this academic alliance with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), PI and his graduate students will use the lithographic and diamond polishing facility at LLNL. This proposed next generation of designer diamond anvils will allow multi-tasking capability with the ability to measure electrical, magnetic, structural and thermal data on actinide materials …

Colloidal nanocrystals are nanometer-sized, solution-grown inorganic particles stabilized by a layer of surfactants attached to their surface. The inorganic cores exhibit useful properties controlled by composition as well as size and shape, while the surfactant coating ensures that these structures are easy to fabricate and process. It is this combination of features that makes colloidal nanocrystals attractive and promising building blocks for advanced materials and devices. But their full potential can only be exploited if we achieve exquisite control over their composition, size, shape, crystal structure and surface properties. Here we review what is known about nanocrystal growth and outline strategies for controlling it.

A procedure and software have been developed to transform the area distribution of the residual surface heights available from the measurement with the Micromap interferometric microscope into a two-dimensional (2D) power spectral density (PSD) distribution of the surface height. The procedure incorporates correction of one of the spectral distortions of the PSD measurement. The distortion appears as a shape difference between the tangential and sagittal PSD spectra deduced from the 2D PSD distribution for an isotropic surface. A detailed investigation of the origin of the anisotropy was performed, and a mathematical model was developed and used to correct the distortion. The correction employs a modulation transfer function (MTF) of the detector deduced analytically based on an experimentally confirmed assumption about the origin of the anisotropy due to the asymmetry of the read-out process of the instrument's CCD camera. The correction function has only one free parameter, the effective width of the gate-shaped apparatus function which is the same for both directions. The value of the parameter, equal to 1.35 pixels, was found while measuring the 2D PSD distribution of the instrument self-noise, independent of spatial frequency. The effectiveness of the developed procedure is demonstrated with a number of PSD measurements …

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

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