This report focuses on that portion of the 9/11 Commission recommendation that urges Congress to consider the model of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE). It provides an outline of the history, structure, and powers of the JCAE and analyzes a number of issues that might be considered by policymakers as they weigh the suitability of the JCAE as a possible model when crafting congressional oversight mechanisms for intelligence.

Nonconventional wells, which include horizontal, deviated, multilateral and ''smart'' wells, offer great potential for the efficient management of oil and gas reservoirs. These wells are able to contact larger regions of the reservoir than conventional wells and can also be used to target isolated hydrocarbon accumulations. The use of nonconventional wells instrumented with downhole inflow control devices allows for even greater flexibility in production. Because nonconventional wells can be very expensive to drill, complete and instrument, it is important to be able to optimize their deployment, which requires the accurate prediction of their performance. However, predictions of nonconventional well performance are often inaccurate. This is likely due to inadequacies in some of the reservoir engineering and reservoir simulation tools used to model and optimize nonconventional well performance. A number of new issues arise in the modeling and optimization of nonconventional wells. For example, the optimal use of downhole inflow control devices has not been addressed for practical problems. In addition, the impact of geological and engineering uncertainty (e.g., valve reliability) has not been previously considered. In order to model and optimize nonconventional wells in different settings, it is essential that the tools be implemented into a general reservoir simulator. This …

A chapter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 1981, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been working to modernize its aging air traffic control (ATC) system. Individual projects have suffered cost increases, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls of large proportions, leading GAO to designate the program a high-risk information technology initiative in 1995. Because the program remains a high risk initiative, GAO was requested to assess FAA's progress in several information technology management areas. This report, one in a series responding to that request, has two objectives: (1) to evaluate FAA's capabilities for developing and acquiring software and systems on its ATC modernization program and (2) to assess the actions FAA has under way to improve these capabilities."

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma 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.

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

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

This report consists of bureau of land management wilderness review issues.

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

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress has continuing interest in commercial activities in U.S. public schools. These include product sales, advertising, market research, and the commercial use of personal data about students (such as names, addresses, and telephone numbers) by schools. To update information about commercial activities in schools, Congress asked us to answer the following questions: (1) Since 2000, what statutes and regulations have states enacted and proposed to govern commercial activities in schools? (2) To what extent have districts developed policies implementing amended provisions of the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) in the No Child Left Behind Act on the use of student data for commercial purposes? (3) What guidance has the Department of Education (Education) disseminated? To answer these questions, we researched state laws, surveyed a national sample of school districts, analyzed policies provided by districts, interviewed officials at Education, and examined its guidance. In addition, we updated findings from the districts we visited in 2000."

COUP-TFII is a central nuclear hormone receptor that tightly regulates the expression of numerous target lipid metabolism genes in vertebrates. However, it remains unclear how COUP-TFII itself is transcriptionally controlled since studies with its promoter and upstream region fail to recapitulate the genes liver expression. In an attempt to identify liver enhancers in the vicinity of COUP-TFII, we employed a comparative genomic approach. Initial comparisons between humans and mice of the 3,470kb gene poor region surrounding COUP-TFII revealed 2,023 conserved non-coding elements. To prioritize a subset of these elements for functional studies, we performed further genomic comparisons with the orthologous pufferfish (Fugu rubripes) locus and uncovered two anciently conserved non-coding sequences (CNS) upstream of COUP-TFII (CNS-62kb and CNS-66kb). Testing these two elements using reporter constructs in liver (HepG2) cells revealed that CNS-66kb, but not CNS-62kb, yielded robust in vitro enhancer activity. In addition, an in vivo reporter assay using naked DNA transfer with CNS-66kb linked to luciferase displayed strong reproducible liver expression in adult mice, further supporting its role as a liver enhancer. Together, these studies further support the utility of comparative genomics to uncover gene regulatory sequences based on evolutionary conservation and provide the substrates to better understand the …

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

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

We present a block-structured adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) method for computing solutions to Poisson's equation in two and three dimensions. It is based on a conservative, finite-volume formulation of the classical Mehrstellen methods. This is combined with finite volume AMR discretizations to obtain a method that is fourth-order accurate in solution error, and with easily verifiable solvability conditions for Neumann and periodic boundary conditions.

This report provides information about the Threat Assessments on High Altitude Electromagnetic Pulse (HEMP) and High Power Microwave (HPM) Devices that can overload at distant numerous systems.

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

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) mission is to promote the safe, orderly, and expeditious flow of air traffic in the United States airspace system, commonly referred to as the National Airspace System (NAS). To maintain its ability to effectively carry out this mission FAA embarked, in 1981,on a multi-billion dollar effort to modernize its aging air traffic control (ATC) system, the principle technology component of the NAS. Yet the NAS modernization has continued to be plagued by cost increases, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls. To gain insight into how FAA is meeting its management challenges, congressional requesters asked GAO to evaluate FAA's processes for making IT investment management decisions. The objectives of this review included (1) evaluating FAA's capabilities for managing its IT investments and (2) determining what plans, if any, the agency might have for improving these capabilities."

This report summarizes several key technology policy issues such as Internet privacy, broadband internet access, electronic commerce, spam, internet's domain name system, and e-government.

This report gives an overview of key technology policy issues of internet affecting its use and growth.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21) authorized the Job Access and Reverse Commute (JARC) program to increase the transportation options of low-income workers. The act created JARC, in part because, as the act states, two-thirds of all new jobs were located in the suburbs, while three-fourths of welfare recipients lived in rural areas or central cities, and even in metropolitan areas with excellent public transportation systems, less than half of the jobs were accessible by transit. Under JARC, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) provides grants to transit agencies, local human service agencies, and others to fill gaps in transportation services for welfare recipients and other low-income individuals. Both houses of Congress have approved separate legislation to reauthorize surface transportation programs including JARC. TEA-21 also required us to provide regular updates on the status of JARC. This letter addresses (1) changes in program funding since fiscal year 1999 and the possible effects of further changes proposed in bills to reauthorize JARC, (2) the possible effects of proposed legislative changes to program coordination requirements, and (3) FTA's 2003 evaluation of the program and plans for future evaluations."

The Leak Path Factor (LPF) for a nonreactor nuclear facility is a critical component for the evaluation of the source term used to evaluate the on-site and off-site consequences when an accident produces aerosols containing radioactive powders that propagate through the facility and finally to the outside environment. The Leak Path Factor is defined as the fraction of the airborne radioactive particulate material that is in the respirable size range within the building that escapes via available pathways to the outside environment. This paper presents a methodology to evaluate the LPF for various accident conditions (e.g., seismic event, fire) that could take place in a nonreactor nuclear facility using MELCOR computer code. The methodology presented could enable analysts to efficiently model facilities to assess the magnitude of the LPF by evaluating its various components.

We review the physics of nuclear matter at high energy density and the experimental search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The data obtained in the first three years of the RHIC physics program provide several lines of evidence that a novel state of matter has been created in the most violent, head-on collisions of Au nuclei at {radical}s = 200 GeV. Jet quenching and global measurements show that the initial energy density of the strongly interacting medium generated in the collision is about two orders of magnitude larger than that of cold nuclear matter, well above the critical density for the deconfinement phase transition predicted by lattice QCD. The observed collective flow patterns imply that the system thermalizes early in its evolution, with the dynamics of its expansion consistent with ideal hydrodynamic flow based on a Quark-Gluon Plasma equation of state.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Last year, employer-sponsored group health plans (EGHP) were responsible for most of the nearly $183 million in outstanding Medicare secondary payer (MSP) debt. MSP debts arise when Medicare inadvertently pays for services that are subsequently determined to be the financial responsibility of another. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administers Medicare with the assistance of about 50 contractors that, as part of their duties, are required to recover MSP debt. GAO was asked to determine whether Medicare contractors are appropriately recovering MSP debt. GAO (1) assessed the cost-effectiveness of the current debt recovery system and (2) identified CMS's plans to enhance the recovery process. GAO analyzed workload and budget information and assessed plans to develop a new debt recovery system--the Recovery Management and Accounting System (ReMAS)."