Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Chemicals play an important role in everyday life, but some may be harmful to human health and the environment. Chemicals are used to produce items widely used throughout society, such as cleansers and plastics as well as industrial solvents and additives. However, some chemicals, such as lead and mercury, are highly toxic at certain doses and need to be regulated because of health and safety concerns. In 1976, the Congress passed the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to authorize the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to control chemicals that pose an unreasonable risk to human health or the environment. This testimony is based on GAO's June 2005 report, Chemical Regulation: Options Exist to Improve EPA's Ability to Assess Health Risks and Manage Its Chemical Review Program (GAO-05-458). GAO's report describes EPA's efforts to (1) assess chemicals used in commerce, (2) control the use of chemicals not yet in commerce, and (3) publicly disclose information provided by chemical companies under TSCA. GAO recommended that the Congress consider providing EPA additional authorities under TSCA to improve EPA's ability to assess chemical risks, and that the EPA Administrator take several actions to …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Currently, U.S. citizens are not required to present a passport when entering the United States from countries in the Western Hemisphere. However, U.S. citizens are required to establish citizenship to a CBP officer's satisfaction. On its Web site, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) advises U.S. citizens that an officer may ask for identification documents as proof of citizenship, including birth certificates or baptismal records and a photo identification document. In 2003, we testified that CBP officers were not readily capable of identifying whether individuals seeking entry into the United States were using counterfeit identification to prove citizenship. Specifically, our agents were able to easily enter the United States from Canada and Mexico using fictitious names and counterfeit driver's licenses and birth certificates. Later in 2003 and 2004, we continued to be able to successfully enter the United States using counterfeit identification at land border crossings, but were denied entry on one occasion. Because of Congress's concerns that these weaknesses could possibly be exploited by terrorists or others involved in criminal activity, Congress requested that we assess the current status of security at the nation's borders. Specifically, Congress …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Our remarks will focus on the Architect of the Capitol's (AOC) progress in achieving selected project milestones and in managing the project's schedule since Congress's June 28, 2006, hearing on the project. As part of this discussion, we will address a number of key challenges and risks that continue to face the project, as well as actions AOC has taken or plans to take to address these risks. In addition, we will discuss the status of the project's costs and funding. Our remarks today are based on our review of schedules and financial reports for the Capitol Visitor Center (CVC) project and related records maintained by AOC and its construction management contractor, Gilbane Building Company; our observations on the progress of work at the CVC construction site; and our discussions with the CVC team (AOC and its major CVC contractors), AOC's Chief Fire Marshal, and representatives from the U.S. Capitol Police, the General Services Administration, and the Office of Compliance. We also reviewed AOC's construction management contractor's periodic schedule assessments and daily reports on the progress of interior wall and floor stonework."

A core-particle model is derived to analyze transverse orbits of test particles evolving in the presence of a core ion beam described by the KV distribution. The core beam has uniform density within an elliptical cross-section and can be applied to model both quadrupole and solenoidal focused beams in periodic or aperiodic lattices. Efficient analytical descriptions of electrostatic space-charge fields external to the beam core are derived to simplify model equations. Image charge effects are analyzed for an elliptical beam centered in a round, conducting pipe to estimate model corrections resulting from image charge nonlinearities. Transformations are employed to remove coherent utter motion associated with oscillations of the ion beam core due to rapidly varying, linear applied focusing forces. Diagnostics for particle trajectories, Poincare phase-space projections, and single-particle emittances based on these transformations better illustrate the effects of nonlinear forces acting on particles evolving outside the core. A numerical code has been written based on this model. Example applications illustrate model characteristics. The core-particle model described has recently been applied to identify physical processes leading to space-charge transport limits for an rms matched beam in a periodic quadrupole focusing channel [Lund and Chawla, Nuc. Instr. and Meth. A 561, 203 …

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

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; Conflict of interest disclosure requirements for local government offices and persons who contract with local governmental entities (RQ-0451-GA)

This report discusses the Workforce Investment Act of 1998 (WIA), P.L. 105-220, which is the nation’s chief job training legislation, authorizes several job training programs, including Youth, Adult, and Dislocated Worker Activities; and Job Corps.

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This is a report on Computer-based Student Financial Aid Programs under the Higher Education Act.

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The purpose of the Columbia River Component Data Compilation and Evaluation task was to compile, review, and evaluate existing information for constituents that may have been released to the Columbia River due to Hanford Site operations. Through this effort an extensive compilation of information pertaining to Hanford Site-related contaminants released to the Columbia River has been completed for almost 965 km of the river.

Contains the benefits of short wavelength ps probes for measuring plasmas.

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Femtosecond pulses from soft-x-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) [1] are ideal for directly probing matter at atomic length scales and timescales of atomic motion. An important component of understanding ultrafast phenomena of light-matter interactions is concerned with the onset of atomic motion which is impeded by the atoms inertia. This delay of structural changes will enable atomic-resolution flash-imaging [2-3] to be performed at upcoming x-ray FELs [4-5] with pulses intense enough to record the x-ray scattering from single molecules [6]. We explored this ultrafast high-intensity regime with the FLASH soft-x-ray FEL [7-8] by measuring the reflectance of nanostructured multilayer mirrors using pulses with fluences far in excess of the mirrors damage threshold. Even though the nanostructures were ultimately completely destroyed, we found that they maintained their integrity and reflectance characteristics during the 25-fs-long pulse, with no evidence for any structural changes during that time over lengths greater than 3 {angstrom}. In the recently built FLASH FEL [7], x-rays are produced from short electron pulses oscillating in a periodic magnet array, called an undulator, by the principle of self-amplification of spontaneous emission [9-10]. The laser quality of the x-ray pulses can be quantified by the peak spectral brilliance of the source, which …

As part of the ongoing international DECOVALEX project, four research teams used five different models to simulate coupled thermal, hydrological, and mechanical (THM) processes near waste emplacement drifts of geological nuclear waste repositories. The simulations were conducted for two generic repository types, one with open and the other with back-filled repository drifts, under higher and lower postclosure temperatures, respectively. In the completed first model inception phase of the project, a good agreement was achieved between the research teams in calculating THM responses for both repository types, although some disagreement in hydrological responses is currently being resolved. In particular, good agreement in the basic thermal-mechanical responses was achieved for both repository types, even though some teams used relatively simplified thermal-elastic heat-conduction models that neglected complex near-field thermal-hydrological processes. The good agreement between the complex and simplified process models indicates that the basic thermal-mechanical responses can be predicted with a relatively high confidence level.

The 4D NURBS-based Cardiac-Torso (NCAT) phantom, whichprovides a realistic model of the normal human anatomy and cardiac andrespiratory motions, is used in medical imaging research to evaluate andimprove imaging devices and techniques, especially dynamic cardiacapplications. One limitation of the phantom is that it lacks the abilityto accurately simulate altered functions of the heart that result fromcardiac pathologies such as coronary artery disease (CAD). The goal ofthis work was to enhance the 4D NCAT phantom by incorporating aphysiologically based, finite-element (FE) mechanical model of the leftventricle (LV) to simulate both normal and abnormal cardiac motions. Thegeometry of the FE mechanical model was based on gated high-resolutionx-ray multi-slice computed tomography (MSCT) data of a healthy malesubject. The myocardial wall was represented as transversely isotropichyperelastic material, with the fiber angle varying from -90 degrees atthe epicardial surface, through 0 degreesat the mid-wall, to 90 degreesat the endocardial surface. A time varying elastance model was used tosimulate fiber contraction, and physiological intraventricular systolicpressure-time curves were applied to simulate the cardiac motion over theentire cardiac cycle. To demonstrate the ability of the FE mechanicalmodel to accurately simulate the normal cardiac motion as well abnormalmotions indicative of CAD, a normal case and two pathologic cases weresimulated …

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

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This report discusses the context of India- Iran relations and also discusses the U.S interests