A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States has advocated reforms of United Nations (UN) management for many years. In October 2006, GAO reported that UN management reforms were progressing slowly and that many were still awaiting review by the General Assembly. For this review, GAO was asked to (1) determine the progress of UN management reform initiatives in five key areas--ethics, oversight, procurement, management operations of the Secretariat, and review of programs and activities (known as mandates)--and (2) identify factors that have slowed the pace of reform efforts. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed documents relating to UN management reform and interviewed U.S. and UN officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2006, outlays for Medicaid were about $324 billion; about $185 billion was paid by the federal government. Because GAO previously identified abusive and criminal activity associated with government contractors owing billions of dollars in federal taxes, the subcommittee requested GAO expand our work to Medicaid providers. GAO was asked to (1) determine if Medicaid providers have unpaid federal taxes, and if so, the magnitude of such debts; (2) identify examples of Medicaid providers that have engaged in abusive or criminal activities; and (3) determine whether the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the states prevent health care providers with tax problems from enrolling in Medicaid or participating in the continuous levy program to pay federal tax debts. To perform this work, GAO analyzed tax data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Medicaid data from seven selected states based on magnitude of Medicaid payments and geography. GAO also performed additional investigative activities."

This month's issue has the following articles: (1) The Edward Teller Centennial--Commentary by George H. Miller; (2) Edward Teller's Century: Celebrating the Man and His Vision--Colleagues at the Laboratory remember Edward Teller, cofounder of Lawrence Livermore, adviser to U.S. presidents, and physicist extraordinaire, on the 100th anniversary of his birth; (3) Quark Theory and Today's Supercomputers: It's a Match--Thanks to the power of BlueGene/L, Livermore has become an epicenter for theoretical advances in particle physics; and (4) The Role of Dentin in Tooth Fracture--Studies on tooth dentin show that its mechanical properties degrade with age.

The initiative will enable the COG Biopathology Center (Biospecimen Repository), the Molecular Genetics Laboratory and other participating reference laboratories to upload large data sets to the eRDES. The capability streamlines data currency and accuracy allowing the centers to export data from local systems and import the defined data to the eRDES. The process will aid in the best practices which have been defined by the Office of Biorepository and Biospecimen Research (OBBR) and the Group Banking Committee (GBC). The initiative allows for batch import and export, a data validation process and reporting mechanism, and a model for other labs to incorporate. All objectives are complete. The solutions provided and the defined process eliminates dual data entry resulting in data consistency. The audit trail capabilities allow for complete tracking of the data exchange between laboratories and the Statistical Data Center (SDC). The impact is directly on time and efforts. In return, the process will save money and improve the data utilized by the COG. Ongoing efforts include implementing new technologies to further enhance the current solutions and process currently in place. Web Services and Reporting Services are technologies that have become industry standards and will allow for further harmonization with caBIG …

In order to understand how high performance computing (HPC) programs are developed, a series of experiments, using students in graduate level HPC classes and various research centers, were conducted at various locations in the US. In this report, we discuss this research, give some of the early results of those experiments, and describe a web-based Experiment Manager we are developing that allows us to run studies more easily and consistently at universities and laboratories, allowing us to generate results that more accurately reflect the process of building HPC programs.

Immobilized organometallic catalysts, in principle, can give high rates and selectivities like homogeneous catalysts with the ease of separation enjoyed by heterogeneous catalysts. However, the science of immobilized organometallics has not been developed because the field lies at the interface between the homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysis communities. By assembling an interdisciplinary research team that can probe all aspects of immobilized organometallic catalyst design, the entire reacting system can be considered, where the transition metal complex, the complex-support interface and the properties of the support can all be considered simultaneously from both experimental and theoretical points of view. Researchers at Georgia Tech and the University of Virginia are studying the fundamental principles that can be used to understand and design future classes of immobilized organometallic catalysts. In the framework of the overall collaborative project with Georgia Tech, our work focused on (a) the X-ray absorption spectroscopy of an immobilized Pd-SCS-O complex (b) the mode of metal leaching from supported Pd catalysts during Heck catalysis and (c) the mode of deactivation of Jacobsen’s Co-salen catalysts during the hydrolytic kinetic resolution of terminal epoxides. Catalysts containing supported Pd pincer complexes, functionalized supports containing mercapto and amine groups, and oligomeric Co-salen catalysts were synthesized …

The interstitial liquid in the double-shell tank 241-AY-101 settled solids layer is below the hydroxide chemistry control limit required by HNF-SD-WM-TSR-006, Tank Farms Technical Safety Requirements, Administrative Control 5.16, 'Corrosion Mitigation Controls'. Operating tanks outside of the specification may increase the propensity corrosion of the carbon steel wall. This report is concerned with generalized electrochemical corrosion mechanism that may occur at specific loci. All cyclic potentiodynamic polarization scans exhibited a negative hysteresis, scan reversing at lower current density, indicating that there was no pitting propensity. The general electrochemical corrosion rates ranged from 4.4E-02 to 1.5E-03 mpy with the first round of coupons, while the second round yielded corrosion rates of 2.5E-03 to 2.9E-02 mpy.

This report presents information on federal programs targeted to unemployed workers specifically, but does not attempt to discuss means-tested programs.

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This report is on Amtrak: Budget and Reauthorization.

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The Geo-Heat Center (GHC) staff provided responses to 1442 technical support requests during the contract period (April 1, 2006 to September 30, 2007), which were six quarters under this contract. Our website, consisting of 1900 files, also contributes to our technical assistance activity. Downloaded files were 1,889,323 (3,448 per day) from our website, the total number of users was 1,365,258 (2,491 per day), and the total number of hits were 6,008,500 (10,064 per day). The GHC staff attended 60 workshops, short course and professional meeting and made 29 technical presentations. The staff also prepared and mailed out 2,000 copies of each of five issues of the GHC Quaterly Bulletin which contained 26 articles. We also mailed out approximately 5,000 papers and publications to interested individuals and organizations.

This report shows the distribution of House seats based on the 2000 census for 435 seats and for 437 seats as specified in the proposal. The report also examines the impact of using the 2006 estimated population to allocate the 437 seats, including the single seat provided to the District.

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This report describes the Federal Reservoir and Species Management of Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) Drought.

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The Tile Calorimeter is one of the main hadronic calorimeters to be used in the ATLAS experiment at CERN [1,2]. It is a steel/scintillator sampling calorimeter which is built by stacking 64 segments in azimuth and 3 separate cylinders to provide a total structure whose length is approximately 12m and whose diameter is a little over 8.4m. It has a total weight of about 2630 metric tons. Important features of this calorimeter are: A minimum gap (1.5mm) between modules in azimuth; Pockets in the structure to hold the scintillator tiles; Recessed channels at the edges of the module into which the readout fibers will sit; and Holes in the structure through which a radioactive source will pass. The mechanical structure for one of the 3 calorimeter sections, the Extended Barrel (EBA) was constructed at Argonne. A schematic of the calorimeter sampling structure and the layout of one of the 64 segments, termed a module, are shown in figure 1. Each module comprises mechanically of a precision machined, structural girder to which 10 submodules are bolted. One of these submodules, the ITC, has a customized shape to accommodate services for other detector elements. Each submodule weighs 850Kg and the assembled mechanical …

Annual financial report for the Texas State Office of Risk Management during fiscal year 2007 including balance sheets for revenues, expenditures, and various funds, with associated notes.