A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "After widespread unlawful trading practices surfaced in the mutual fund industry in late 2003, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), through its Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations (OCIE), took steps intended to revise its examination process to better identify and focus its resources on those activities representing the highest risk to investors. More recently, some registrants raised concerns about the lack of communication from SEC examiners about the status of and results of examinations. This report (1) describes OCIE's revisions after 2003 to the examination approach for investment companies and investment advisers; (2) discusses OCIE's compliance with its examination exit procedures; and (3) describes reforms OCIE implemented since January 2006 to enhance, among other things, communication with registrants. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed OCIE examination data; planning documents and guidance; interviewed OCIE officials; and gathered views of registrants."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "An influenza pandemic is a real and significant potential threat facing the United States and the world. Pandemics occur when a novel virus emerges that can easily be transmitted among humans who have little immunity. In 2005, the Homeland Security Council (HSC) issued a National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza and, in 2006, an Implementation Plan. Congress and others are concerned about the federal government's preparedness to lead a response to an influenza pandemic. This report assesses how clearly federal leadership roles and responsibilities are defined and the extent to which the Strategy and Plan address six characteristics of an effective national strategy. To do this, GAO analyzed key emergency and pandemic-specific plans, interviewed agency officials, and compared the Strategy and Plan with the six characteristics GAO identified."

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a 192-beam Nd:glass laser facility being constructed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to conduct research in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and high energy density (HED) science. When completed, NIF will produce 1.8 MJ, 500 TW of ultraviolet light, making it the world's largest and highest-energy laser system. The NIF is poised to become the world's preeminent facility for conducting ICF and fusion energy research and for studying matter at extreme densities and temperatures.

High-contrast adaptive optics systems, such as those needed to image extrasolar planets, are known to require excellent wavefront control and diffraction suppression. At the Laboratory for Adaptive Optics on the Extreme Adaptive Optics testbed, we have already demonstrated wavefront control of better than 1 nm rms within controllable spatial frequencies. Corresponding contrast measurements, however, are limited by amplitude variations, including those introduced by the micro-electrical-mechanical-systems (MEMS) deformable mirror. Results from experimental measurements and wave optic simulations of amplitude variations on the ExAO testbed are presented. We find systematic intensity variations of about 2% rms, and intensity variations with the MEMS to be 6%. Some errors are introduced by phase and amplitude mixing because the MEMS is not conjugate to the pupil, but independent measurements of MEMS reflectivity suggest that some error is introduced by small non-uniformities in the reflectivity.

The beam delivery system for the linear collider focuses beams to nanometer sizes at its interaction point, collimates the beam halo to provide acceptable background in the detector and has a provision for state-of-the art beam instrumentation in order to reach the ILCs physics goals. This paper describes the design details and status of the baseline configuration considered for the reference design and also lists alternatives.

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Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified 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: Authority of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission or the City of Corsicana to regulate a business establishment that permits the possession and consumption of alcoholic beverages on a “BYOB” basis (RQ-0568-GA)

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 a district attorney may accept donations of funds (RQ-0571-GA)

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: Eligibility for a manufacturer’s or distributor’s license under the Bingo Enabling Act, chapter 2001 of the Occupations Code (RQ-0573-GA)

This report is organized in four parts. First, it provides an overview of the importance of honey bee pollination to U.S. agricultural production, especially specialty crops. Second, it describes the extent and symptoms of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and how it differs from previous honey bee colony losses. Third, it discusses some of the reasons why scientists believe honey bee colonies are being affected by CCD. Fourth, it discusses various policy options and subsequent action that Congress could consider in this area.

The Rare Isotope Science Assessment Committee (RISAC) was convened by the National Research Council in response to an informal request from the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Physics and the White House Office of Management and Budget. The charge to the committee is to examine and assess the broader scientific and international contexts of a U.S.-based rare-isotope facility. The committee met for the first time on December 16-17, 2005, in Washington, DC, and held three subsequent meetings. The committee’s final report was publicly released in unedited, prepublication form on Friday, December 8, 2006. The report was published in full-color by the National Academies Press in April 2007. Copies of the report were distributed to key decision makers and stakeholders around the world.

Simulations were completed to determine the energy deposition of an ILC bunch using FLUKA, Geant4 and EGS4 to a set of different spoiler designs. These shower simulations were used as inputs to thermal and mechanical studies using ANSYS. This paper presents a proposal to optimize the material choice and mechanical design of ILC spoilers jaws using ATF and benchmark the energy deposition simulations and the ANSYS studies giving the researchers valuable data which will help achieve a definitive ILC spoiler design.

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Yucca Mountain has been proposed by the U.S. Department of Energy as the nation’s long-term, permanent geologic repository for spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive waste. The potential repository would be located in Yucca Mountain’s unsaturated zone (UZ), which acts as a critical natural barrier delaying arrival of radionuclides to the water table. Since radionuclide transport in groundwater can pose serious threats to human health and the environment, it is important to understand how much and how fast water and radionuclides travel through the UZ to groundwater. The UZ system consists of multiple hydrogeologic units whose hydraulic and geochemical properties exhibit systematic and random spatial variation, or heterogeneity, at multiple scales. Predictions of radionuclide transport under such complicated conditions are uncertain, and the uncertainty complicates decision making and risk analysis. This project aims at using geostatistical and stochastic methods to assess uncertainty of unsaturated flow and radionuclide transport in the UZ at Yucca Mountain. Focus of this study is parameter uncertainty of hydraulic and transport properties of the UZ. The parametric uncertainty arises since limited parameter measurements are unable to deterministically describe spatial variability of the parameters. In this project, matrix porosity, permeability and sorption coefficient of the reactive tracer …

An interaction region with head-on collisions is considered as an alternative to the baseline ILC configuration. Progress in the final focus optics design includes engineered large bore superconducting final doublet magnets and their 3D magnetic integration in the detector solenoids. Progress on the beam separation optics is based on technical designs of electrostatic separator and special extraction quadrupoles. The spent beam extraction is realized by a staged collimation scheme relying on realistic collimators.

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Funeral program for Harold James Tennell, born July 7, 1940 and died August 7, 2007. The funeral was held August 14, 2007 at F. E. Lewis Memorial Chapel, officiated by Rev. Maurice Washington. Funeral arrangements were made through the Lewis Funeral Home.

Funeral program for Brother George Louis Miller, born September 10, 1933 and died August 5, 2007. The funeral was held August 14, 2007 at New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church, officiated by Dr. Paul D. Stevens. Funeral arrangements were made through Carter-Taylor-Williams Mortuary and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.

This report tracks the Children's Health Reauthorization of Act of 2007 in both the Senate and the House, while also providing a summary of the bill. The report lists each title of the bill. what they do, and their implications. The report also examines costs by analyzing the immediate outlay and future outlay, starting at 28.6 billion and potentially increasing to 35.2 billion over time.

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This report provides an overview of the motions to instruct conferees as a congressional budget resolution.

This report provides short description of the major provisions contained in H.R. 3162.