A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) plans to spend about $9.8 billion in fiscal year 2004 to provide housing for about 711,000 families of activeduty military personnel in the United States. DOD's policy for some time has been to rely on housing in the local communities and provide military-owned or privatized military housing when the communities cannot satisfy requirements. Historically, DOD has viewed private sector housing as more cost-effective. In January 2003, DOD approved a revised housing requirements determination process designed to provide a solid basis for justifying on-base family housing needs. GAO looked at whether (1) reliance on community housing remains costeffective, (2) the revised process has resulted in consistent and reliable needs assessments, and (3) DOD's top-level review of military housing construction proposals could be improved."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The concept of enterprise architecture emerged in the mid- 1980s as a means for optimizing integration and interoperability across organizations. In the early 1990s, GAO research of successful public and private sector organizations led it to identify enterprise architecture as a critical success factor for agencies that are attempting to modernize their information technology (IT) environments. Since then, GAO has repeatedly identified the lack of an enterprise architecture as a key management weakness in major modernization programs at a number of federal agencies. It has also collaborated with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the federal Chief Information Officers (CIO) Council to develop architecture guidance. In 2002, OMB began developing the Federal Enterprise Architecture (FEA), an initiative intended to guide and constrain federal agencies' enterprise architectures and IT investments. GAO was asked to testify on the status of the FEA and on the state of federal agencies' development and use of enterprise architectures."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress asked GAO to testify on the status of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) financial management reform efforts. NASA faces major challenges that if not addressed, will weaken its ability to manage its highly complex programs. NASA has been on GAO's high-risk list since 1990 because of its failure to effectively oversee its contracts and contractors, due in part to the agency's lack of accurate and reliable information on contract spending. GAO's statement focused on (1) how NASA's history of clean audit opinions served to mask the true extent of the agency's financial management difficulties; (2) the results of NASA's fiscal year 2003 financial statement audit, which are a departure from the fiscal year 2002 results; (3) NASA's effort to implement an integrated financial management system; and (4) the challenges NASA faces in reforming its financial management organization. Although GAO does not make specific recommendations in this statement, GAO previously made several recommendations to improve NASA's acquisition and implementation strategy for its financial management system. While NASA ultimately agreed to implement all of the recommendations, it disagreed with most of the findings--stating that its acquisition and …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Providing readily accessible health information on veterans and active duty military personnel is highly essential to ensuring that these individuals are given quality health care and assistance in adjudicating disability claims. Moreover, ready access to health information is consistent with the President's recently announced intention to provide electronic health records for most Americans within 10 years. In an attempt to improve the sharing of health information, the Departments of Veterans Affairs (VA) and Defense (DOD) have been working, since 1998, toward the ability to exchange electronic health records for use by veterans, military personnel, and their health care providers. In testimony before Congress last November and again this past March, GAO discussed the progress being made by the departments in this endeavor. While a measure of success has been achieved--the one-way transfer of health data from DOD to VA health care facilities--identifying the technical solution for a two-way exchange, as part of a longer term HealthePeople (Federal) initiative, has proven elusive. At Congress's request, GAO reported on its continuing review of the departments' progress toward this goal of an electronic two-way exchange of patient health records."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "One of the primary functions of any security system is the control of people moving into or out of protected areas, such as physical buildings, information systems, and our national border. Technologies called biometrics can automate the identification of people by one or more of their distinct physical or behavioral characteristics. The term biometrics covers a wide range of technologies that can be used to verify identity by measuring and analyzing human characteristics--relying on attributes of the individual instead of things the individual may have or know. Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, laws have been passed that require a more extensive use of biometric technologies in the federal government. In 2002, GAO conducted a technology assessment on the use of biometrics for border security. GAO was asked to testify about the issues that it raised in the report, the current state of the technology, and the application of biometrics to aviation security."

An Integrated Circuit (IC) readout chip with four channels arranged so as to receive input charge from the corners of the chip was designed for use with 5- to 7-mm pixel detectors. This Application Specific IC (ASIC) can be used for cold neutron imaging, for study of structural order in materials using cold neutron scattering or for particle physics experiments. The ASIC is fabricated in a 0.5-{micro}m n-well AMI process. The design of the ASIC and the test measurements made is reported. Noise measurements are also reported.

NMR spectroscopy conveys information about chemical structure through ppm-scale shifts of the resonance frequency depending on the chemical environment. In order to observe these small shifts, magnets with highly homogeneous magnetic field B{sub 0} are used. The high cost and large size of these magnets are a consequence of the requirement for high homogeneity. In this contribution we introduce a new method for recording high-resolution NMR spectra from samples in inhomogeneous B{sub 0}, opening up the possibility of exploiting magnets of lower homogeneity and cost. Instead of using the traditional B{sub 0} ''shim coils'', adiabatic radiofrequency (RF) pulse sequences and modulated B{sub 0} gradients generated by coils in the probe are used to produce ''shim pulses''. A great deal of work has been devoted to finding methods for retrieving chemical shift information even when B{sub 0} is inhomogeneous. One class of methods relies on zero- or multiple quantum coherences which evolve independently of B{sub 0}. These methods are inherently two-dimensional and the high-resolution information is obtained indirectly. In order to minimize experimental time it is desirable to acquire a high-resolution spectrum directly just as for traditional NMR in homogeneous fields. A further advantage with direct acquisition is that modification of …

Currently the sales of clothes washers in China consist ofseveral general varieties. Some use more energy (with or withoutincluding hot water energy use) and some use more water. Both energy andwater are in short supply in China. This poses the question - how do youtrade off water versus energy in establishing efficiency standards? Thispaper discusses how China dealt with this situation and how itestablished minimum efficiency standards for clothes washers.

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: Constable’s authority in the county outside of the constable’s own precinct; permissible scope of interlock agreements concerning law enforcement (RQ-0136-GA)

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: Whether a county may lease airport land without engaging in competitive bidding (RQ-0137-GA)

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.

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

Despite suppression of {rho}{sub i}-scale turbulent fluctuations, electron thermal transport remains anomalous in NSTX. For this reason, a microwave scattering system will be deployed to directly observe the w and k spectra of {rho}{sub e}-scale turbulent fluctuations and characterize the effect on electron thermal transport. The scattering system will employ a Gaussian probe beam produced by a high power 280 GHz microwave source. A five-channel heterodyne detection system will measure radial turbulent spectra in the range |k{sub r}| = 0-20 cm{sup -1}. Inboard and outboard launch configurations cover most of the normalized minor radius. Improved spatial localization of measurements is achieved with low aspect ratio and high magnetic shear configurations. This paper will address the global design of the scattering system, such as choice of frequency, size, launching system, and detection system.

We present analytic, high-beta ({beta} {approx} O(1)), helical equilibrium solutions for a class of helical axis configurations having large helical aspect ratio, with the helix assumed to be tightly wound. The solutions develop a narrow boundary layer of strongly compressed flux, similar to that previously found in high beta tokamak equilibrium solutions. The boundary layer is associated with a strong localized current which prevents the equilibrium from having zero net current.

We present a new approach for shape metamorphism, which is a process of gradually changing a source shape (known) through intermediate shapes (unknown) into a target shape (known). The problem, when represented with implicit scalar function, is under-constrained, and regularization is needed. Using the p-Laplacian equation (PLE), we generalize a series of regularization terms based on the gradient of the implicit function, and we show that the present methods lack additional constraints for a more stable solution. The novelty of our approach is in the deployment of a new regularization term when p --> infinity which leads to the infinite Laplacian equation (ILE). We show that ILE minimizes the supremum of the gradient and prove that it is optimal for metamorphism since intermediate solutions are equally distributed along their normal direction. Applications of the proposed algorithm for 2D and 3D objects are demonstrated.

Complete mitochondrial genomic sequences are reported from 12 members in the four families of the reptile group Amphisbaenia. Analysis of 11,946 aligned nucleotide positions (5,797 informative) produces a robust phylogenetic hypothesis. The family Rhineuridae is basal and Bipedidae is the sister taxon to the Amphisbaenidae plus Trogonophidae. Amphisbaenian reptiles are surprisingly old, predating the breakup of Pangaea 200 million years before present, because successive basal taxa (Rhineuridae and Bipedidae) are situated in tectonic regions of Laurasia and nested taxa (Amphisbaenidae and Trogonophidae) are found in Gondwanan regions. Thorough sampling within the Bipedidae shows that it is not tectonic movement of Baja California away from the Mexican mainland that is primary in isolating Bipes species, but rather that primary vicariance occurred between northern and southern groups. Amphisbaenian families show parallel reduction in number of limbs and Bipes species exhibit parallel reduction in number of digits. A measure is developed for comparing the phylogenetic information content of various genes. A synapomorphic trait defining the Bipedidae is a shift from the typical vertebrate mitochondrial gene arrangement to the derived state of trnE and nad6. In addition, a tandem duplication of trnT and trnP is observed in B. biporus with a pattern of pseudogene …

Allozyme variation is examined in eight populations of Trapelus from the Caspian-Aral Basin of the former USSR. Thirty-one loci (15 variable) exhibit remarkably low levels of genetic variation with only a Nei's genetic distance of 0.117 across 2500 km. An isolated population on the European side of the Caspian Sea is found to phenetically cluster inside the Asian populations examined, suggesting that it should not be considered taxonomically distinct.

Since 1996, excess CO{sub 2} from the Sleipner natural gas field has been sequestered and injected underground into a porous saline aquifer 1000 m below the seafloor. In 2002, we carried out a high precision micro-gravity survey on the seafloor in order to monitor the injected CO{sub 2}. A repeatability of 5 {micro}Gal in the station averages was observed. This is considerably better than pre-survey expectations. These data will serve as the baseline for time-lapse gravity monitoring of the Sleipner CO{sub 2} injection site. A repeat survey has been scheduled for the summer of 2005. This report covers 9/19/03 to 3/18/04. During this time, significant advancement in the 3-D gravity forward modeling code was made. Testing of the numerical accuracy of the code was undertaken using both a sheet of mass and a frustum of a cone for test cases. These were chosen because of our ability to do an analytic calculation of gravity for comparison. Tests were also done to determine the feasibility of using point mass approximations rather than cuboids for the forward modeling code. After determining that the point mass approximation is sufficient (and over six times faster computationally), several CO{sub 2} models were constructed and the …

This project had 3 objectives: (1) to determine the kinetic factors governing inclusion removal from liquid steels at a slag metal interface; (2) to develop a methodology to enable steels of less than 1 ppm total oxygen to be produced with an average inclusion diameter of less than 5 {micro}m; and, (3) to determine the slag-metal interface conditions necessary for ultra clean steels. In objectives 1, and 3, the major finding was that dissolution rates of solid particles in slags were found to be significant in both ladle and tundish slags and must be included in a model to predict steel cleanliness. The work towards objective 2 indicated that liquid steel temperature was a very significant factor in our understanding of clean steel potential and that undercooled steels equilibrated with low oxygen potential inert gases have the potential to be significantly cleaner than current steels. Other work indicated that solidification front velocity could be used to push particles to produce clean steels and that reoxidation must be severely curtailed to allow the potential for clean steels to be realized.

Squamate reptiles serve as model systems for evolutionary studies of a variety of morphological and behavioral traits, and phylogeny is crucial to many generalizations derived from such studies. Specifically, the traditional dichotomy between Iguania and Scleroglossa has been correlated with major evolutionary shifts within Squamata. We present a molecular phylogenetic study of squamates using DNA sequence data from the nuclear genes RAG-1 and c-mos and the mitochondrial ND2 region, sampling all major clades and most major subclades. Monophyly of Iguania, Anguimorpha, and almost all currently recognized squamate families is strongly supported. However, monophyly is rejected for Scleroglossa, Varanoidea, and several other higher taxa, and Iguania is highly nested within Squamata. Limblessness evolved independently in snakes, dibamids, and amphisbaenians, suggesting widespread morphological convergence or parallelism in limbless, burrowing forms. Amphisbaenians are the sister group of lacertids, and snakes are grouped with iguanians and anguimorphs. Dibamids diverged early in squamate evolutionary history. Xantusiidae is the sister taxon of Cordylidae. Studies of functional tongue morphology and feeding mode have found significant differences between Scleroglossa and Iguania, and our finding of a nonmonophyletic Scleroglossa and a highly nested Iguania suggest that similar states evolved separately in Sphenodon and Iguania, and that jaw prehension is …

This report provides data that will be used to formulate the stabilizing grout and includes experimental results for Tc-99 stabilization by two reagents, (1) ground granulated blast furnace slag (GGBFS) and (2) surface treated hydroxyapatite (HA). One or both of these reagents are being considered by CH2M HILL for incorporation in the binder portion (matrix portion without sand) of the stabilizing grout. The technical basis for identifying the grout ingredient(s) for stabilizing technetium (Tc-99) will be provided by researchers at the Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) in a subsequent report.

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