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Congressional Research Service (CRS) report entailing information about current legislation in regards to school choice. Topics include, legislation, proposals in the 107th Congress, tax subsidies, block grants, etc..

This report provides information related to U.S. farm disaster assistance.

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This report provides an overview of Federal Research and Development funding for FY2003.

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Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

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 Worker's Compensation Commission rule requiring that written communications be sent to both a claimant and the claimant's attorney creates an exception to Rule 4.02(a) of the Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct, which prohibits an attorney from communicating with a person who is represented by counsel.

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 any action is required of the Court Reporters Certification Board in the implementation of section 57.021(d) of the Government Code.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) has made progress in improving its overall management of information technology, including centralization of information technology functions, programs, and funding under the department-level chief information officer (CIO). The department has also made progress in developing an enterprise architecture, improving information security, and managing important information systems initiatives being pursued by the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) and the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). GAO reviewed (1) whether VA's proposed business and enabling functions provide the management tools necessary to start the process for implementing VA's enterprise architecture; (2) how veterans have benefited from the VETSNET Program; (3) what must be done to assure successful implementation of the Federal Health Information Exchange (FHIE); and (4) whether VA can realistically implement HealtheVet-Vista by the end of 2005. GAO found that the Federal CIO's Council's guidance on enterprise architecture advises organizations to develop a set of controls to help them successfully manage the process of creating, changing, and using an enterprise architecture. Although the enterprise business functions and key enabling functions are essential components of the architecture that VA is developing, they cannot be considered a primary …

The Department of Energy (DOE) National Environmental Research Park at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is composed of second-growth forest stands characteristic of much of the eastern deciduous forest of the Ridge and Valley Province of Tennessee. Human use of natural ecosystems in this region has facilitated the establishment of at least 167 nonnative, invasive plant species on the Research Park. Our objective was to assess the distribution, abundance, impact, and potential for control of the 18 most abundant invasive species on the Research Park. In 2000, field surveys were conducted of 16 management areas on the Research Park (14 Natural Areas, 1 Reference Area, and Walker Branch Watershed) and the Research Park as a whole to acquire qualitative and quantitative data on the distribution and abundance of these taxa. Data from the surveys were used to rank the relative importance of these species using the ''Alien Plant Ranking System, Version 5.1'' developed by the U.S. Geological Survey. Microstegium (Microstegium vimineum) was ranked highest, or most problematic, for the entire Research Park because of its potential impact on natural systems, its tendency to become a management problem, and how difficult it is to control. Microstegium was present in 12 of the 16 …

To effectively clean up many contaminated sites there is a need for information on heterogeneities at scales ranging from one centimeter to tens of meters, as these features can alter contaminant transport significantly. At the Department of Energy's Hanford, Washington site heterogeneities of interest can range from localized phenomena such as silt or gravel lenses, fractures, clastic dikes, to large-scale lithologic discontinuities. In the vadose zone it is critical to understand the parameters controlling flow. These features have been suspected of leading to funneling and fingering, additional physical mechanisms that could alter and possibly accelerate the transport of contaminants to underlying groundwater. For example, it has been observed from the studies to date that over relatively short distances there are heterogeneities in the physical structure of the porous medium and structural differences between repacked soil cores and the field site from which the materials initially came (Raymond and Shdo, 1966). Analysis of cores taken from the vadose zone (i.e., soil surface to water table) has been useful in identifying localized zones of contamination. Unfortunately, these analyses are sparse (limited to a few boreholes) and extremely expensive. The high levels of radioactivity at many of the contaminated sites increase drilling and …

A novel, segmented, multi-gap, pressurized gas ionization chamber is being developed for optimization of the luminosity of the LHC. The ionization chambers are to be installed in the front quadrupole and zero degree neutral particle absorbers in the high luminosity IRs and sample the energy deposited near the maxima of the hadronic/electromagnetic showers in these absorbers. The ionization chambers are instrumented with low noise, fast, pulse shaping electronics to be capable of resolving individual bunch crossings at 40 MHz. In this paper we report the initial results of our second test of this instrumentation in an SPS external proton beam. Single 300 GeV protons are used to simulate the hadronic/electromagnetic shower produced by the forward collision products from the interaction regions of the LHC. The capability of instrumentations to measure the luminosity of individual bunches in a 40 MHz bunch train is demonstrated.

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A method for producing oxidation-resistant austenitic alloys for use at temperatures below 800 C. comprising of: providing an alloy comprising, by weight %: 14-18% chromium, 15-18% nickel, 1-3% manganese, 1-2% molybdenum, 2-4% silicon, 0% aluminum and the balance being iron; heating the alloy to 800 C. for between 175-250 hours prior to use in order to form a continuous silicon oxide film and another oxide film. The method provides a means of producing stainless steels with superior oxidation resistance at temperatures above 700 C. at a low cost

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

A tutorial introduction is given to some important physics and current challenges in laser plasma interactions. The topics are chosen to illustrate a few of John Dawson's many pioneering contributions to the physics and modeling of plasmas. In each case, a current frontier is also briefly discussed, including the .53{micro}m option for laser fusion, kinetic inflation of instability levels, and new regimes accessed with ultra-high power lasers.

We present updated results on time-dependent CP-violating asymmetries in neutral B decays to several CP eigenstates containing charmonium. In the Standard Model, the amplitude of these asymmetries is proportional to sin2{beta}. We measure sin2{beta} = 0.741 {+-} 0.067 (stat) {+-} 0.034 (syst) from a data sample of about 88 million {Lambda}(4S) {yields} B{bar B} decays collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy B Factory at SLAC. We have also measured CP-violating asymmetries in open charm, and penguin modes sensitive to sin2{beta}, which provide important consistency tests of the Standard Model.

An induction linac is used by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to perform radiographic testing at the Flash X-ray Radiography facility. Emittance characterization is important since x-ray spot size impacts the resolution of shadow-graphs. Due to the long pulse length, high current, and beam energy, emittance measurement using Optical Transition Radiation is an attractive alternative for reasons that will be described in the text. The utility of OTR-based emittance measurement has been well demonstrated for both RF and induction linacs. We describe the time-resolved emittance characterization of an induction linac electron beam. We have refined the optical collection system for the induction linac application, and have demonstrated a new technique for probing the divergence of a subset of the beam profile. The experimental apparatus, data reduction, and conclusions will be presented. Additionally, a new scheme for characterizing the correlation between beam divergence and spatial coordinates within the beam profile will be described.

Daily newspaper from Sapulpa, 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.

Student newspaper of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma that includes national, local, and campus news along with advertising.

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

Student newspaper from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas that includes news and information of interest to the college community along with advertising.