A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Because of the significance of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collections to federal receipts and, in turn, to the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government, which GAO is required to audit, and Congress's interest in financial management at IRS, GAO audits IRS's financial statements annually to determine whether (1) the financial statements IRS prepares are reliable, (2) IRS management maintained effective internal controls, and (3) IRS complies with selected provisions of significant laws and regulations and its financial systems comply with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 (FFMIA)."

A chapter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "There has been growing activity and interest in developing a system of key national indicators that would provide an independent, trusted, reliable, widely available, and usable source of information. Such a system would facilitate fact-based assessments of the position and progress of the United States, on both an absolute and relative basis. This interest emerges from the following perspectives. The nation's complex challenges and decisions require more sophisticated information resources than are now available. Large investments have been made in indicators on a variety of topics ranging from health and education to the economy and the environment that could be aggregated and disseminated in ways to better inform the nation. The United States does not have a national system that assembles key information on economic, environmental, and social and cultural issues. Congressional and other leaders recognized that they could benefit from the experiences of others who have already developed and implemented such key indicator systems. GAO was asked to conduct a study on: (1) The state of the practice in these systems in the United States and around the world, (2) Lessons learned and implications for …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) operates a $2.3 billion nursing home program that provides or pays for veterans' care in three settings: VA nursing homes, community nursing homes, and state veterans' nursing homes. The Veterans Millennium Health Care and Benefits Act (Millennium Act) of 1999 and VA policy require that VA provide nursing home care to veterans with a certain eligibility. Congress has expressed a need for additional data to conduct oversight of VA's nursing home program. Specifically, for all VA nursing home settings in fiscal year 2003, GAO was asked to report on (1) VA spending to provide or pay for nursing home care, (2) VA workload provided or paid for, (3) the percentage of nursing home care that is long and short stay, and (4) the percentage of veterans receiving care required by the Millennium Act or VA policy."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the global war on terrorism have triggered the largest activation of National Guard forces since World War II. As of June 2004, over one-half of the National Guard's 457,000 personnel had been activated for overseas warfighting or domestic homeland security missions in federal and state active duty roles. In addition to increased usage, the Guard has also experienced long deployments and high demand for personnel with specific skills, such as military police. The high pace of operations and the Guard's expanded role since September 11 have raised concerns about whether the Guard is capable of successfully performing its multiple missions within existing and expected resource levels, especially given the challenges it faces in meeting future requirements. GAO was asked to assess the extent to which the Guard is: (1) adapting to meet warfighting requirements in the post-September 11 security environment and (2) supporting immediate and emerging homeland security needs."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal intelligence agencies have reported that in the past, terrorists have considered using general aviation aircraft (all aviation other than commercial and military) for terrorist acts, and that the September 11th terrorists learned to fly at general aviation flight schools. The questions GAO answered regarding the status of general aviation security included (1) What actions has the federal government taken to identify and assess threats to, and vulnerabilities of, general aviation; and communicate that information to stakeholders? (2) What steps has the federal government taken to strengthen general aviation security, and what, if any, challenges does the government face; and (3) What steps have non-federal stakeholders taken to enhance the security of general aviation?"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy has traditionally maintained overseas presence by deploying ships for 6 months. Rotating crews aboard ships that remain deployed for longer periods is an alternative the Navy could pursue to increase the utilization of ships. Senior Navy officials have also cited crew rotations as a way to reduce part of the Navy's plans for a larger force structure and reportedly free billions of dollars for other priorities. On its own initiative, GAO examined the Navy's efforts to evaluate and implement several rotational crewing options and the impacts of ship maintenance on extended rotational crewing deployments."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This document presents the results of a recent GAO survey of human capital issues at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In March and April 2004, we conducted a follow-up to our 2001 human capital survey of SEC attorneys, accountants, and examiners to benchmark their views after the agency had implemented pay parity and work-life programs. 2001 SEC survey respondents were overwhelmingly dissatisfied with pay and identified other nonpay issues as warranting SEC management's attention. The 2004 survey generally covered the same issue areas that we addressed in the 2001 survey, including (1) compensation, (2) overall job satisfaction, (3) work-life balance, (4) supervision and management, (5) performance appraisal and incentive system, (6) opportunities for advancement, (7) organizational structure and support, (8) communication within divisions and offices, and (9) training."

BRAC 2005 Intelligence Joint Cross-Service Group Meeting Minutes of November 10, 2004. The document is redacted and includes the IJCSG Principals Meeting brief (PowerPoint slides).

As part of continuing compliance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) requires the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to provide any change in information since the most recent compliance application. This requirement is identified in Title 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Section 194.4(b)(4), which states: “No later than six months after the administrator issues a certification, and at least annually thereafter, the Department shall report to the Administrator, in writing, any changes in conditions or activities pertaining to the disposal system that were not required to be reported by paragraph (b)(3) of this section and that differ from information contained in the most recent compliance application.” In meeting the requirement, the DOE provides an annual report of all changes applicable under the above requirement each November. This annual report informs the EPA of changes to information in the most recent compliance application, or for this report the 1996 Compliance Certification Application (CCA). Significant planned changes must be reported to the EPA prior to implementation by the DOE. In addition, Title 40 CFR, Section 194.4(b)(3) requires that significant unplanned changes be reported to the EPA within 24 hours or ten days, depending on the severity of the activity or condition. …

As a polysaccharide-encrusting component, lignin is critical to cell wall integrity and plant growth but also hinders recovery of cellulose fibers during the wood pulping process. To improve pulping efficiency, it is highly desirable to genetically modify lignin content and/or structure in pulpwood species to maximize pulp yields with minimal energy consumption and environmental impact. This project aimed to genetically augment the syringyl-to-guaiacyl lignin ratio in low-lignin transgenic aspen in order to produce trees with reduced lignin content, more reactive lignin structures and increased cellulose content. Transgenic aspen trees with reduced lignin content have already been achieved, prior to the start of this project, by antisense downregulation of a 4-coumarate:coenzyme A ligase gene (Hu et al., 1999 Nature Biotechnol 17: 808- 812). The primary objective of this study was to genetically augment syringyl lignin biosynthesis in these low-lignin trees in order to enhance lignin reactivity during chemical pulping. To accomplish this, both aspen and sweetgum genes encoding coniferaldehyde 5-hydroxylase (Osakabe et al., 1999 PNAS 96: 8955-8960) were targeted for over-expression in wildtype or low-lignin aspen under control of either a constitutive or a xylem-specific promoter. A second objective for this project was to develop reliable and cost-effective methods, such as …

Weekly newspaper from Mannford, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with 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; Whether the state owns Republic Square in the City of Austin, and if so, whether only the legislature may act to convey a state interest in the property (RQ-0225-GA)

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

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Bulk damage sites in frequency conversion crystals scatter and/or absorb laser light leading to interference and downstream intensification .We find that laser induced bulk damage sites in DKDP exhibit a 'shell' of structurally and/or chemically modified material surrounding a central core as indicated by SEM and optical micrographs and micro Raman spectral maps. We hypothesize that the modified material has been shock wave densified and estimate the amount of densification and its effect on scattering. A simple model indicates that densification of several percent is likely and that the scattering cross section may be larger than the geometric area of the inner core by an order of magnitude.

This report focuses on the amendment procedure of the house committee markup.

The Optical Sciences Laser (OSL) Upgrade facility, described in last year's proceedings, is a kJ-class, large aperture (100cm{sup 2}) laser system that can accommodate prototype optical components for large-scale inertial confinement fusion lasers. High-energy operation of such lasers is often limited by damage to the optical components. Recent experiments on the OSL Upgrade facility using fused silica components at 4 J/cm{sup 2} (351-nm, 3-ns) have created output surface and bulk damage sites that have been correlated to phase objects in the bulk of the material. Optical Path Difference (OPD) measurements of the phase defects indicate the probability of laser-induced damage is strongly dependent on OPD.

This report addresses the controversial issues surrounding the E-rate program's implementation and subsequent legislative measures introduced to address these issues. An additional issue, concern that minors may gain access to "inappropriate" material through the Internet has also had an impact on the E-rate program.

We present a natural solution to the strong CP problem in the context of split fermions. By assuming CP is spontaneously broken in the bulk, a weak CKM phase is created in the standard model due to a twisting in flavor space of the bulk fermion wavefunctions. But the strong CP phase remains zero, being essentially protected by parity in the bulk and CP on the branes. As always in models of spontaneous CP breaking, radiative corrections to theta bar from the standard model are tiny, but even higher dimension operators are not that dangerous. The twisting phenomenon was recently shown to be generic, and not to interfere with the way that split fermions naturally weaves small numbers into the standard model. It follows that out approach to strong CP is compatible with flavor, and we sketch a comprehensive model. We also look at deconstructed version of this setup which provides a viable 4D model of spontaneous CP breaking which is not in the Nelson-Barr class.

The goals of the first six months of this project were to lay the foundations for both the SiC front-end optical chip fabrication as well as the free-space laser beam interferometer designs and preliminary tests. In addition, a Phase I goal was to design and experimentally build the high temperature and pressure infrastructure and test systems that will be used in the next 6 months for proposed sensor experimentation and data processing. All these goals have been achieved and are described in detail in the report. Both design process and diagrams for the mechanical elements as well as the optical systems are provided. In addition, photographs of the fabricated SiC optical chips, the high temperature & pressure test chamber instrument, the optical interferometer, the SiC sample chip holder, and signal processing data are provided. The design and experimentation results are summarized to give positive conclusions on the proposed novel high temperature optical sensor technology. The goals of the second six months of this project were to conduct high temperature sensing tests using the test chamber and optical sensing instrument designs developed in the first part of the project. In addition, a Phase I goal was to develop the basic processing …

At the U.S. Department of Energy Savannah River Site, complex environmental models were required to analyze the performance of a suite of radionuclides, including decay chains consisting of multiple radionuclides. To facilitate preparation of the model for each radionuclide a sophisticated protocol was established to link a database containing material information with a template. The protocol consists of data and special commands in the template, control information in the database and key selection information in the database. A preprocessor program reads a template, incorporates the appropriate information from the database and generates the final model. In effect, the database/template protocol forms a command language. That command language typically allows the user to perform multiple independent analyses merely by setting environmental variables to identify the nuclides to be analyzed and having the template reference those environmental variables. The environmental variables ca n be set by a batch or script that serves as a shell to analyze each radionuclide in a separate subdirectory (if desired) and to conduct any preprocessing and postprocessing functions. The user has complete control to generate the database and how it interacts with the template. This protocol was valuable for analyzing multiple radionuclides for a single disposal unit. …