Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on Medicare supplemental insurance (Medigap) premiums for standard plans that provide outpatient prescription drug coverage, focusing on: (1) a description of the benefits under the standard plans; and (2) average premiums, which reflect insurance company reporting practices as well as different state regulations."

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This publication has been superseded by GAO-01-376G, Executive Guide: Maximizing the Success of Chief Information Officers: Learning From Leading Organizations, February 2001. GAO published a guide: (1) to assist federal agencies in maximizing the success of chief information officers (CIO); and (2) to offer concrete suggestions on what agency executives can do to ensure the effectiveness of their CIO organizations."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Defense's (DOD) and the military services' management of real property assets, focusing on: (1) principle findings on DOD's strategy for management of real property and how the services determine and prioritize maintenance needs and allocate resources to them; (2) promising practices in facilities maintenance by nonmilitary entities; (3) some barriers that the services face in implementing such practices; (4) GAO's recommendations on how DOD could improve its real property management; and (5) the steps DOD has told GAO it is taking in response to GAO's testimony."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the euro, focusing on: (1) what the euro is and why Europe is moving to it now; (2) what the potential effects of the euro are on the dollar; (3) what are the potential monetary policy and exchange rate effects of the euro; (4) what are the euro's implications for U.S. trade and investment with Europe; and (5) what are the implications of the euro for international economic policymaking. GAO noted that: (1) the euro is the new currency being used by 11 of the 15 countries that are members of the European Union (EU); (2) the euro is part of an initiative known as the European Economic and Monetary Union and is designed to more closely link EU's economic policies; (3) a variety of factors will determine whether the emergence of the euro will have a significant impact on the international role of the dollar; (4) over the longer term, several analysts believe that the comparative status of the dollar and euro as international currencies may be affected by potential developments in the euro area payments …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO audited the Bureau of the Public Debt's (BPD) Schedules of Federal Debt for the fiscal years that ended September 30, 1999 and 1998."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the challenges the Department of Education faces in achieving financial management reform, focusing on: (1) Education's fiscal year (FY) 1999 financial audit results in the context of related work GAO has performed; (2) the relationship between the audit findings and the potential for waste, fraud, and abuse; and (3) the status of GAO's ongoing study of the department's grantback account."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed its recent reports on the securities industry's progress toward implementing decimal trading, focusing on the: (1) progress made to date toward converting to decimals; and (2) challenges that remain."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Coast Guard's phased-in conversion of some support officer positions, focusing on: (1) how the Coast Guard's current workforce mix compares with the workforce mix of other military services and how the workforce mix has changed since 1991; (2) how many military commissioned officer positions in administrative and support functions offer opportunities for conversion to civilian positions; and (3) what the advantages and disadvantages are of converting those military positions to civilian positions."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO issued a report on factors that limit access to vaccines for children in developing countries, focusing on: (1) shifting donor priorities; (2) inadequate infrastructure and insufficient information for decision-making; and (3) the relatively high cost of newer vaccines."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on three federal human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) programs--the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 (CARE Act), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) HIV/AIDS prevention grants, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Housing Opportunities for Persons Living With AIDS (HOPWA)--that fund prevention activities, health care, and other assistance, focusing on: (1) the characteristics of the persons who are served under the CARE Act; (2) how CARE Act, CDC prevention, and HOPWA funds are distributed to treatment, support services, housing, prevention, and program administration; (3) whether the current approach to funding under the CARE Act leads to advantages or disadvantages in particular areas; (4) whether CARE Act services are reaching rural areas; and (5) how the salaries of administrators of organizations providing HIV/AIDS services compare with the salaries of administrators of other similar nonprofit organizations."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided information on the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program's current guaranteed loan systems requirements, including statutory and regulatory changes, technological changes, and documentation changes. This document is intended for guaranteed loan program financial analysts, system accountants, and others who design, develop, implement, operate, and maintain financial management systems."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Defense's (DOD) real property maintenance and base operations fund movements, focusing on the: (1) movement of funds to and from real property maintenance and base operations during fiscal years 1994 through 1999; (2) movement of unit training funds during the same period of time; and (3) evidence indicating that unit training funds have been moved to pay for base operations and real property maintenance."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's annual reports on depot maintenance, focusing on how military departments or defense agencies: (1) used funds appropriated annually for depot-level repair and maintenance done by contractor personnel; and (2) reported on estimated funds to be used for performing depot maintenance by public and private sector personnel for fiscal years 1999-2005."

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This publication supersedes AIMD-98-21.2.3, Personnel-Payroll System Checklist: Systems Reviewed Under the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 (Exposure Draft), December 1997. GAO published a functional requirements document to assist: (1) agencies in implementing and monitoring their human resources and payroll systems; and (2) management and auditors in reviewing their human resources and payroll systems to determine if they substantially comply with the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996."

Technologies were investigated to determine viable processes for removing mercury from the calciner (NWCF) offgas system at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Technologies for gas phase and aqueous phase treatment were evaluated. The technologies determined are intended to meet EPA Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) requirements under the Clean Air Act and Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Currently, mercury accumulation in the calciner off-gas scrubbing system is transferred to the tank farm. These transfers lead to accumulation in the liquid heels of the tanks. The principal objective for aqueous phase mercury removal is heel mercury reduction. The system presents a challenge to traditional methods because of the presence of nitrogen oxides in the gas phase and high nitric acid in the aqueous scrubbing solution. Many old and new technologies were evaluated including sorbents and absorption in the gas phase and ion exchange, membranes/sorption, galvanic methods, and UV reduction in the aqueous phase. Process modifications and feed pre-treatment were also evaluated. Various properties of mercury and its compounds were summarized and speciation was predicted based on thermodynamics. Three systems (process modification, NOxidizer combustor, and electrochemical aqueous phase treatment) and additional technology testing were recommended.

This effort represents a contribution to the wider distributed energy resources (DER) research of the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions (CERTS, http://certs.lbl.gov) that is intended to attack and, hopefully, resolve the technical barriers to DER adoption, particularly those that are unlikely to be of high priority to individual equipment vendors. The longer term goal of the Berkeley Lab effort is to guide the wider technical research towards the key technical problems by forecasting some likely patterns of DER adoption. In sharp contrast to traditional electricity utility planning, this work takes a customer-centric approach and focuses on DER adoption decision making at, what we currently think of as, the customer level. This study reports on Berkeley Lab's second year effort (completed in Federal fiscal year 2000, FY00) of a project aimed to anticipate patterns of customer adoption of distributed energy resources (DER). Marnay, et al., 2000 describes the earlier FY99 Berkeley Lab work. The results presented herein are not intended to represent definitive economic analyses of possible DER projects by any means. The paucity of data available and the importance of excluded factors, such as environmental implications, are simply too important to make such an analysis possible at this time. …

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Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news 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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a state agency may require an employee to exhaust compensatory leave before receiving workers’ compensation benefits (RQ-0119-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Texas Department of Transportation is authorized to establish the Statewide Transportation Policy Committee and the Bicycle Advisory Committee as provided in title 43, section 1.85(a)(2) and (8) of the Texas Administrative Code (RQ-0126-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether funds allocated by section 1701.157 of the Occupations Code to local law enforcement agencies for continuing education of local law enforcement officers may be diverted to the general fund of a county or municipality (RQ-0125-JC)

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The National Ignition Facility (NIF) has completed its design phase and is well into construction. In this talk, we review the optic specification rationale, along with examples of particular specifications and measurements.

During the FY96-FY99 funding cycle we examined the uptake of aqueous strontium onto goethite, kaolinite, and amorphous silica surfaces as a function of pH, total strontium, and temperature. Our overall goal was to produce a mechanistic sorption model that can be used in reaction-transport calculations to predict the mobility and attenuation of radioactive strontium ({sup 90}Sr)in the environment. Our approach was to combine structural information derived from EXAFS analysis together with macroscopic uptake data and surface complexation models to clarify the physical and chemical structure of sorbed complexes. We chose to study these solids because of the prevalence of clays and iron hydroxides in natural systems, and because silica colloids probably form beneath leaking tanks at Hanford as caustic waste is neutralized. We have published the spectroscopic work in two papers in the Journal of Colloid and Interface Science [1, 2], and will soon submit at third manuscript to Geochemical Transactions [3] combining the sorption and spectroscopic data with a mechanistic complexation model. Early in the study we learned that strontium sorption was independent of temperature (25 to 80 C). All subsequent work was conducted at room temperature.