A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) uses employee benefits--that is, indirect compensation above and beyond a service member's basic pay--as a tool to recruit and retain personnel. DOD has instituted a number of benefits that reflect demographic changes in the active duty force since the draft ended and the military became an all-volunteer force in 1973. Many of these benefits address one of the most significant demographic changes--an increase in service members with family obligations. A second major demographic change in the active military has been a growing proportion of female service members. DOD has responded positively to most demographic changes by incorporating a number of family-friendly benefits; however, opportunities exist to improve current benefits in this area. In comparing the types of benefits offered by the military with those offered in the private sector, GAO did not identify significant gaps in the benefits available to military personnel. GAO did not make direct comparisons between individual military and private-sector benefits but did determine that all the core benefits offered by most private-sector firms--retirement pay, health care, life insurance, and paid time off--are offered by the military."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of the Treasury is authorized by Congress to borrow money on the credit of the United States to fund operations of the federal government. Within Treasury, the Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD) is responsible for prescribing the debt instruments, limiting and restricting the amount and composition of the debt, paying interest to investors, and accounting for the resulting debt. BPD is also responsible for issuing Treasury securities to trust funds for trust fund receipts not needed for current benefits and expenses. In connection with fulfilling its requirement to audit the U.S. government's fiscal year 2001 financial statements, GAO reviewed the general and application computer controls over key financial systems maintained and operated by BPD. BPD maintained, in all material respects, effective internal control relevant to the Schedule of Federal Debt related to financial reporting and compliance with applicable laws and regulations as of September 30, 2001. BPD's internal control, which includes the general and application controls over key BPD systems relevant to the Schedule of Federal Debt, provided reasonable assurance that misstatements, losses, or noncompliance material in relation to the Schedule of Federal Debt for …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This primer on private pensions provides information on the basic features of the private pension plan system and the federal framework that governs how private plans must operate. GAO answers questions about the types of plans that private employers may sponsor, the benefits these plans provide, and the basic requirements that govern how these plans are administered."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Federal welfare legislation passed in 1996 placed a greater emphasis on helping low-income families end dependence on government benefits by promoting job preparation and work. To reach this goal, the legislation gave states greater flexibility to design programs that use federal funds to subsidize child care for low-income families. Under the Child Care and Development Fund, this flexibility includes the freedom to largely determine which low-income families are eligible to receive child care subsidies. These maximum rates consist of two parts--a state subsidy and family co-payment. States also establish maximum reimbursement rates for child care. States reported considering market rate survey and budget and policy goals in setting maximum reimbursement rates. All states reported conducting market rate surveys in the past 2 years that obtained data on providers' fees, but 10 states reported that they did not base the reimbursement rates for child care providers on their most recent market rate surveys. In the nine communities visited, GAO calculated that hypothetical families' access to child care centers and family home providers varied widely as a result of the different subsidies and family co-payments established by each …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve Board) reviewed its policies regarding the size of the Federal Reserve Banks' combined capital surplus account to determine if opportunities exist to decrease the amount held in the account. The consolidated capital surplus account is the aggregate of separate surplus accounts held at each of the 12 Reserve Banks, and the account represents cumulative retained net earnings for the Reserve Banks--that is, cumulative net earnings not paid to the Department of the Treasury. The Reserve Banks use their capital surplus accounts to act as a cushion to absorb losses. The Financial Accounting Manual for Federal Reserve Banks says that the primary purpose of the surplus account is to provide capital to supplement paid-in capital for use in the event of loss. Selected major foreign central banks maintain accounts with functions similar to the Federal Reserve System's capital surplus account. Although their accounts are not fully comparable with the Federal Reserve System capital surplus account, the Bank of England, the Bundesbank, and the European Central Bank have capital surplus or reserve accounts in addition to their …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Clinical research is critical for the development of strategies for the prevention, diagnosis, prognosis, treatment, and cure of diseases. Clinical research has been defined as patient-oriented research, epidemiologic and behavioral studies, and outcomes research and health services research. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the principal federal agency that funds clinical research supporting individual clinical investigators, clinical trials, general and specialized clinical research centers, and clinical research training. For many years, there have been concerns that clinical research proposals are viewed less favorably than basic research during the peer review process at NIH and that clinical research has not received its fair share of NIH funding. In November 2000, the Clinical Research Enhancement Act was enacted to address some of these concerns. NIH reports that it has increased its financial support of clinical research and that spending on clinical research has kept pace with total NIH research spending. NIH has taken some steps to improve its peer review of clinical research applications. The Center for Scientific Review recently added two new peer review study sections for the review of clinical research applications--one for clinical cardiovascular …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "E-government is critical to the government's ability to effectively communicate with the public. Both Congress and current and past administrations have emphasized the importance of e-government and have put forth proposals to address the challenges associated with this issue. Earlier this year, the Senate passed S. 803, the E-government Act of 2002. To accomplish the goal of enhancing the management and promotion of e-government, S. 803 addresses many of the substantive information resource and management challenges facing the government today. Initiatives contained in this bill represent important steps in creating a government that is more efficient, effective, and focused on citizens' needs. Specifically, the bill would (1) secure the transmission of sensitive information in e-government transactions by promoting the development of electronic signatures, (2) protect individuals' privacy by requiring agencies to conduct privacy impact assessments, and (3) make government information more accessible to the public."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Over a year has passed since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, realigned national priorities. Although most of the early attention following the attacks focused on airport security, emphasis on the other modes of transportation has since grown. Addressing transit safety and security concerns is complicated by the nature and scope of transit in the United States. About 6,000 agencies provide transit services, and each workday, 14 million Americans ride on some form of transit. Transit agencies face significant challenges in making their systems secure. Certain characteristics make them both vulnerable and difficult to secure. The high ridership of some transit agencies makes them attractive targets for terrorists but also makes certain security measures, like metal detectors, impractical. Another challenge is funding identified security enhancements. Despite the formidable challenges in securing transit systems, transit agencies have taken a number of steps to improve the security of their systems. Transit agencies visited by GAO were implementing strategies to improve both safety and security prior to September 11; however, the events of September 11 elevated the importance of security-related activity. Many agencies assessed vulnerabilities, provided additional training on emergency …

Semiweekly newspaper from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas that includes local, national, and campus news along with advertising.

Roster of WASP members attending the reunion. The roster lists each attendee's first and last name, class affiliation, the first name of the attendee's spouse, the number of people attending the reunion, and the number attending the dinner.

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

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

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This paper addresses the applicability of the linear sorption model to the complex wastes of the Hanford Site.

Enhanced field emission (EFE) presents the main impediment to higher acceleration gradients in superconducting niobium (Nb) radiofrequency cavities for particle accelerators. The strength, number and sources of EFE sites strongly depend on surface preparation and handling. The main objective of this thesis project is to systematically investigate the sources of EFE from Nb, to evaluate the best available surface preparation techniques with respect to resulting field emission, and to establish an optimized process to minimize or eliminate EFE. To achieve these goals, a scanning field emission microscope (SFEM) was designed and built as an extension to an existing commercial scanning electron microscope (SEM). In the SFEM chamber of ultra high vacuum, a sample is moved laterally in a raster pattern under a high voltage anode tip for EFE detection and localization. The sample is then transferred under vacuum to the SEM chamber equipped with an energy-dispersive x-ray spectrometer for individual emitting site characterization. Compared to other systems built for similar purposes, this apparatus has low cost and maintenance, high operational flexibility, considerably bigger scan area, as well as reliable performance. EFE sources from planar Nb have been studied after various surface preparation, including chemical etching and electropolishing, combined with ultrasonic …

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

Semi-weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Seminole, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

Hot Gas Filtration (HGF) is defined as the dry scrubbing of gaseous process effluent above 250 degrees. The potential applications for this technology can be found in Atmospheric Pollution Control (APC) and In-Line Equipment Protection (ILETP). In recent years novel rigid refractory filter media have emerged with several advantages over conventional fabric bag filters and other particulate arrestment systems e.g. electrostatic precipitators. A study has been made of the effect of a wide range of operational conditions, including gas volume and velocity, temperature, particle size distribution, and organic/moisture content, in real process situations on filter elements performance and life expectancy.

In order to integrate a failsafe system and to improve the cleaning intensity a new cleaning method was recently developed, the CPP (coupled pressure pulse) cleaning (Heidenreich et al. 2001). For the CPP method the cleaning system is directly coupled with the filter candles. One feature of this new technique is that the cleaning gas pressure exceeds the system pressure only by 0.05 to 0.1 MPa, whereas in case of conventional jet pulse systems two times the system pressure (at least 0.6 MPa) is standard. The key advantage of the coupled pressure pulse cleaning is that a safety filter for each filter candle can be integrated in the clean gas side of the filter. Thus, a candle failure is not longer a serious problem. The integrated safety filter enables the operation of the filter system also in case a filter candle breaks. This increases the availability of the filter and prevents an unscheduled costly shut-down of the system. In this paper the design of the ceramic filter wit h the failsafe system and the CPP cleaning will be described. The new developed safety filter elements, their pressure drop and their filtration and clogging behavior will be shown. Tests of single …

The goal of this research is to improve the performance of moving bed granular filters for gas cleaning at high temperatures and pressures. A second goal of the research is to optimize the performances of both solids and gas filtering processes through appropriate use of granular bed materials, particle sizes, feed rates etc. in a factorial study. These goals are directed toward applications of advanced coal-fired power cycles under development by the U.S. Department of Energy including pressurized fluidized bed combustion and integrated gasification/combined cycles based on gas turbines and fuel cells. Only results for particulate gas cleaning are reported here.

Metal filter elements as the fail safety filter are fabricated by the methods using cold isostatic pressure (compress method) and binder (binder method) to form the filter element and tested in a experimental and bench units. The fail safety filter on the filtration system is mounted additionally in order to intercept the particle leak when the main filter element is broken. So it should have two contrary functions of a high permeability and being plugged easily. The filter element having high porosity and high plugging property was fabricated by the bind method. It has the porosity more than 50%, showed very small pressure drop less than 10mmH2O at the face velocity of 0.15m/s, and plugged within 5 minutes with the inhibition of the particle leak larger than 4 {micro}m. The test result of corrosion tendency in IGCC gas stream at 500 C shows SUS310L material is very reasonable among SUS310, SUS316, Inconel 600, and Hastelloy X.

Coal is a main source of primary energy for power generation and it will remain indispensable in the future. In order to increase the efficiency and to meet environmental challenges new advanced coal-fired power systems were developed starting in the beginning of the 1990s. One of these efficient and clean technologies is the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) process.

The main purpose of developing high temperature gas cleaning technologies are to clean the gas under high temperature in order to be cost effective and to improve energy efficiency. Moving granular bed filters are technically and economically applicable for high temperature cleaning system because of low cost, possible to keep operation at a constant pressure drop, simple structure, easy in operation and maintenance, no high risk internals, and more tolerant to process thermal flow. Energy and Resource Laboratories, Taiwan Industrial Technology Research Institute (ERL/ITRI) has been developing a moving granular bed filter (MGBF) for BIGCC(Biomass Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) high temperature gas cleanup. The filter granules move downwards directed by louver-like guide plates and the hot gases penetrate the MGBF horizontally. Filtration mechanisms include collection of the dust cake over the bed media surface and deep bed filtration. Stagnant zones of filter granules combining with the dusts always exist along the louver walls. Such stagnant zones often corrode the louver-like guide plates, increase the system pressure drop and decrease the total reaction efficiency that may endanger MGBF operation. Series louver and inert structure research that modify the granular flow pattern have been designed to eliminate the formation of these stagnant …