Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives granting the legislature permission to adjourn for more than three days during the period beginning on Wednesday, April 4, 2007, and ending on Tuesday, April 10, 2007.

Funeral program for MSgt. Claude E. Chew, born July 29, 1942 and died May 1, 2007. The funeral was held May 7, 2007 at Grace First Baptist Church, officiated by Dr. Walter Starks. The funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is a supercooled liquid form of natural gas. U.S. LNG imports are projected to increase to about 17 percent of natural gas supplies by 2030, from about 3 percent today. To meet this increase, energy companies have submitted 32 applications for new terminals. If a terrorist attack on an LNG tanker caused a spill, potential hazards, such as fire, asphyxiation, and explosions, could result. The Department of Energy (DOE) recently funded a study to conduct small- and large-scale experiments to refine and validate models that calculate how heat from large LNG fires would affect the public. This testimony is based on GAO's report, Maritime Security: Public Safety Consequences of a Terrorist Attack on a Tanker Carrying Liquefied Natural Gas Need Clarification (GAO-07-316). To prepare this report, GAO examined the results of six recent studies on the effects of an LNG spill and convened a panel of 19 experts to identify areas of agreement on the consequences of a terrorist attack on an LNG tanker."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has approved about $7 billion in grants to developing countries; the U.S. has contributed $1.9 billion. The State Department's Office of the Global AIDS Coordinator (OGAC) coordinates the U.S. government's overseas AIDS programs, with participation from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). In 2003, Congress directed GAO to report on the Global Fund every 2 years. This report assesses the Global Fund's (1) documentation of information used to support performance-based funding decisions, (2) progress in implementing a risk assessment model and early warning system, and (3) oversight of the performance of "local fund agents" (LFAs), which monitor grant progress in recipient countries. GAO reviewed the documentation for funding decisions and interviewed key officials."

This report briefly describes the three categories of federal programs for wildfire protection. One is to protect the federal lands managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (FS), and by the U.S. Department of the Interior, whose wildfire programs are coordinated by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). A second category assists state and local governments and communities in protecting nonfederal lands; these programs are used to reduce wildland fuels, to otherwise prepare for fire control, to contain and control wildfires, and to respond after severe wildfires have burned. A third category of federal programs supports fire research, fire facilities, and improvements in forest health. The last section of this report discusses the impact of high and rising wildfire costs.

This report describes how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Trade Organization (WTO) deal with the issue of currency manipulation.

This report discusses the political context and congressional consideration of various funding and other restrictive legislative language applying to military operations in Indochina between 1970 and 1973.It briefly mentions similar congressional actions applying to U.S. military operations in Somalia in 1993 and Kosovo in 1999.

This report discusses the Context and Incident Summaries on Data Security Breaches. Personal data security breaches are being reported with increasing regularity. A law implemented in July 2003 had increased awareness of these data security breaches.

On February 18, 2007, the Washington Post published the first in a series of articles describing problems with outpatient medical care and other services provided at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The series noted, among other things, concerns about the processes used to evaluate disability in injured military servicemembers. This report is intended as a primer to describe disability evaluation in general, including evaluations used by the Department of Defense and the Veterans Affairs administration, as well as evaluations used by the Social Security Administration and by workers' compensation program.

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Recent tax reductions reduce the effective tax rate on capital income in several different ways. Taxes on capital arise from individual taxes on dividends, interest, capital gains, and income from non-corporate businesses. This report contains data on the distribution of income by type and class, shifting the incidence of taxes, the effect of the savings response, and related information.

This report details the legal side of importation of prescription drugs as well as the sale of prescription drugs online. Updated May 7, 2007.

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Computer models are abstractions of physical reality and are routinely used for solving practical engineering problems. These models are prepared using large complex computer codes that are widely used in the industry. Patran/Thermal is such a finite element computer code that is used for solving complex heat transfer problems in the industry. Finite element models of complex problems involve making assumptions and simplifications that depend upon the complexity of the problem and upon the judgment of the analysts. The assumptions involve mesh size, solution methods, convergence criteria, material properties, boundary conditions, etc. that could vary from analyst to analyst. All of these assumptions are, in fact, candidates for a purposeful and intended effort to systematically vary each in connection with the others to determine there relative importance or expected overall effect on the modeled outcome. These kinds of models derive from the methods of statistical science and are based on the principles of experimental designs. These, as all computer models, must be validated to make sure that the output from such an abstraction represents reality [1,2]. A new nuclear material packaging design, called 9977, which is undergoing a certification design review, is used to assess the capability of the Patran/Thermal …

These results are from the continuing Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics runs on BG/L. We show analyzed thermodynamics results for 6-10k trajectories ({beta} dependent), of the 32{sup 3}{chi}8 runs with the p4rhmc v2.0 QMP{_}MPI.X (semi-optimized p4 code using qmp over mpi). These jobs had a number of omitted trajectories, due to zero size and over-sized data files. For this interim report these errors were removed from the output to save space. The results also include the output of a new ''histogram.perl'' script, used to plot the gauge action < S{sub g} >= 10*(1- < plaq >)-(1- < rect >) for three values of {beta}=3.51, 3.54, 3.57. This output will be used to determine the new {beta} values that will be run to define the critical temperature. We also show a preliminary analysis on the first 5,000 trajectories of the 32{sup 3}{chi}6 runs for the milc code, using the new su3{_}rhmc{_}susc{_}eos.3g1f.qmp-bgl2 faster RHMC algorithm.

Radioactive material packages used for transportation of plutonium-bearing materials often contain multiple O-ring seals for containment. Packages such as the Model 9975 are also being used for interim storage of Pu-bearing materials at the Savannah River Site (SRS). One of the seal materials used in such packages is Viton{reg_sign} GLT fluoroelastomer. The aging behavior of containment vessel O-rings based on Viton{reg_sign} GLT at long-term containment term storage conditions is being characterized to assess its performance in such applications. This paper summarizes the program and test results to date.

Executive Summary A woman in the early 1700s who became one of Europe’s leading interpreters of mathematics and a poor bookbinder who became one of the giants of nineteenth-century science are just two of the pioneers whose stories NOVA explored in Einstein’s Big Idea. This two-hour documentary premiered on PBS in October 2005 and is based on the best-selling book by David Bodanis, E=mc2: A Biography of the World’s Most Famous Equation. The film and book chronicle the scientific challenges and discoveries leading up to Einstein’s startling conclusion that mass and energy are one, related by the formula E = mc2.

Dredging of the Columbia River navigation channel has raised concerns about dredging-related impacts on Dungeness crabs (Cancer magister) in the estuary, mouth of the estuary, and nearshore ocean areas adjacent to the Columbia River. The Portland District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers engaged the Marine Sciences Laboratory (MSL) of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to review the state of knowledge and conduct studies concerning impacts on Dungeness crabs resulting from disposal during the Columbia River Channel Improvement Project and annual maintenance dredging in the mouth of the Columbia River. The present study concerns potential effects on Dungeness crabs from dredged material disposal specific to the mouth of the Columbia River.

The analysis of actinides in animal tissue samples is very important for environmental monitoring. There is a need to measure actinide isotopes with very low detection limits in animal tissue samples, including fish, deer, hogs, beef and shellfish. A new, rapid actinide separation method has been developed and implemented that allows the measurement of plutonium, neptunium, uranium, americium, curium and strontium isotopes in large animal tissue samples (100-200 g) with high chemical recoveries and effective removal of matrix interferences. This method uses stacked TEVA Resin{reg_sign}, TRU Resin{reg_sign} and DGA-Resin{reg_sign} cartridges from Eichrom Technologies (Darien, IL, USA) that allows the rapid separation of plutonium (Pu), neptunium (Np), uranium (U), americium (Am), and curium (Cm) using a single multi-stage column combined with alpha spectrometry. Sr-90 is collected on Sr Resin{reg_sign} from Eichrom Technologies (Darien, IL, USA). After acid digestion and furnace heating of the animal tissue samples, the actinides and Sr-89/90 are separated using column extraction chromatography. This method has been shown to be effective over a wide range of animal tissue matrices. By using vacuum box cartridge technology with rapid flow rates, sample preparation time is minimized.

Annual maintenance of the Columbia River navigation channel requires the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) to dredge sediment from the river and dispose of the sediment in coastal areas at the mouth of the Columbia River. Some of these disposal areas can be as shallow as 12 m deep in waters off the coastal beaches, and dredged material disposal activities have therefore raised concerns of impacts to local razor clam (Siliqua patula) populations that are prevalent in the area. The Corps’ Portland District requested that the Marine Sciences Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory conduct laboratory experiments to evaluate the potential impacts of burial by dredged material to razor clams during disposal. Prior modeling of disposal events indicates three stresses that could have an impact on benthic invertebrates: convective descent and bottom encounter (compression forces due to bottom impact), dynamic collapse and spreading (surge as material washes over the bottom), and mounding (burial by material). Because the razor clam is infaunal, the effects of the first two components should be minimal, because the clams should be protected by substrate that is not eroded in the event and by the clams’ rapid digging capabilities. The …

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Recent developments for mixing and CP violation in the D0 and Bs systems are reviewed, including (i) the recently emerging evidence for D0-D0bar mixing and the interpretations of the measurements; (ii) the theoretical status of the calculations of Delta(Gamma_D) and Delta(m_D); (iii) some implications of the measurement of Bs mixing for new physics.

The lightest isotope of Bh known was produced in the new {sup 209}Bi({sup 52}Cr,n){sup 260}Bh reaction at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's 88-Inch Cyclotron. Positive identification was made by observation of eight correlated alpha particle decay chains in the focal plane detector of the Berkeley Gas-Filled Separator. {sup 260}Bh decays with a 35{sub -9}{sup +19} ms half-life by alpha particle emission mainly by a group at 10.16 MeV. The measured cross section of 59{sub -20}{sup +29} pb is approximately a factor of four larger than compared to recent model predictions. The influences of the N = 152 and Z = 108 shells on alpha decay properties are discussed.