Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In March 2002, GAO testified on the Department of Defense's (DOD) financial management problems and key elements necessary for successful reform. Although the underlying conditions remain fundamentally unchanged, within the past 2 years DOD has begun a number of initiatives intended to address previously reported problems and transform its business operations. The Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, Senate Committee on Armed Services, asked GAO to provide a current status report on DOD's progress to date and suggestions for improvement. Specifically, GAO was asked to provide (1) an overview of the impact of financial and related business weaknesses on DOD operations, (2) the underlying causes of DOD business transformation challenges, and (3) the status of DOD reform efforts. In addition, GAO reiterates the key elements to successful reform: (1) an integrated business transformation strategy, (2) sustained leadership and resource control, (3) clear lines of responsibility and accountability, (4) results-oriented performance, (5) appropriate incentives and consequences, (6) an enterprise architecture to guide reform efforts, and (7) effective monitoring and oversight. GAO also offers two suggestions for legislative consideration which are intended to improve the likelihood of meaningful, broad-based financial …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The structure of the budget process can help ensure that budget decision makers are presented with the information and choices for timely and informed decisionmaking. GAO's long-term budget simulations show that, absent substantive entitlement reform and/or dramatic changes in tax and spending policies, we will face large, escalating, and persistent deficits. A budget process incorporating new metrics and mechanisms that better signal the long-term commitments and promises made by the government will help concentrate decision makers' efforts on long-term sustainability."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Both the Presidential Commission on the U.S. Postal Service and GAO's past work have reported that universal postal service is at risk and that reform is needed to minimize the risk of a significant taxpayer bailout or dramatic postal rate increases. The administration has also supported comprehensive postal reform. Recent congressional hearings have highlighted broad consensus on the need for postal reform among diverse stakeholders that include the Postal Service, postal employee organizations, the mailing industry, and Postal Service competitors. GAO has also testified in detail about the need for postal reform. In light of these developments, GAO was asked to briefly summarize the need for postal reform and elements that should be addressed by postal reform legislation. This statement for the record is based on prior GAO reports and testimonies."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Passenger and freight rail services are important links in the nation's transportation system. Terrorist attacks on passenger and/or freight rail services have the potential to cause widespread injury, loss of life, and economic disruption. The recent terrorist attack in Spain illustrates that rail systems, like all modes of transportation, are targets for attacks. GAO was asked to summarize the results of its recent reports on transportation security that examined (1) challenges in securing passenger and freight rail systems, (2) actions rail stakeholders have taken to enhance passenger and freight rail systems, and (3) future actions that could further enhance rail security."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks precipitated a shift in how the FBI uses its investigative resources to prevent future terrorist incidents. The attacks led to the FBI's commitment to reorganize and transform itself. Today's testimony discusses the FBI's progress in carrying out its transformation process. Specifically, it addresses FBI's (1) progress in developing a comprehensive transformation plan; (2) efforts to update its strategic plan; (3) development of a strategic human capital plan; (4) information technology management leadership and practices; and (5) realignment of staff resources to priority areas and the impact of the realignments on the FBI's drug and other criminal investigation programs."

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: Implementing section 1602.267 of the Occupations Code, which establishes a one-year shampoo apprentice permit (RQ-0118-GA)

This report provides appropriations of Foreign Operations, Export Financing, and Related Programs for FY2004.

The presence of strong nonlinear absorption has been observed in laser modified fused silica. Intensity-dependent transmission measurements using 355-nm, 532-nm and 1,064-nm laser pulses were performed in pristine polished regions in fused silica substrates and in locations that were exposed to dielectric breakdown. The experimental results suggest that multi-photon absorption is considerably stronger in the modified regions compared to pristine sites and is strongly dependent on the excitation wavelength.

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We present a simple superfield Lagrangian for massive supergravity. It comprises the minimal supergravity Lagrangian with interactions as well as mass terms for the metric superfield and the chiral compensator. This is the natural generalization of the Fierz-Pauli Lagrangian for massive gravity which comprises mass terms for the metric and its trace. We show that the on-shell bosonic and fermionic fields are degenerate and have the appropriate spins: 2, 3/2, 3/2 and 1. We then study this interacting Lagrangian using goldstone superfields. We find that achiral multiplet of goldstones gets a kinetic term through mixing, just as the scalar goldstone does in the non-supersymmetric case. This produces Planck scale (Mpl) interactions with matter and all the discontinuities and unitarity bounds associated with massive gravity. In particular, the scale of strong coupling is (Mpl m^4)^1/5, where m is the multiplet's mass. Next, we consider applications of massive supergravity to deconstruction. We estimate various quantum effects which generate non-local operators in theory space. As an example, we show that the single massive supergravity multiplet in a 2-site model can serve the function of an extra dimension in anomaly mediation.

Femtosecond laser ablation of silicon in air was studied and compared with nanosecond laser ablation at ultraviolet wavelength (266 nm). Laser ablation efficiency was studied by measuring crater depth as a function of pulse number. For the same number of laser pulses, the fs-ablated crater was about two times deeper than the ns-crater. The temperature and electron number density of the pulsed laser-induced plasma were determined from spectroscopic measurements. The electron number density and temperature of fs-pulse plasmas decreased faster than ns-pulse plasmas due to different energy deposition mechanisms. Images of the laser-induced plasma were obtained with femtosecond time-resolved laser shadowgraph imaging. Plasma expansion in both the perpendicular and the lateral directions to the laser beam were compared for femtosecond and nanosecond laser ablation.

The authors introduce a class of damage models on regular lattices with isotropic interactions between the broken cells of the lattice. Quasistatic fiber bundles are an example. The interactions are assumed to be weak, in the sense that the stress perturbation from a broken cell is much smaller than the mean stress in the system. The system starts intact with a surface-energy threshold required to break any cell sampled from an uncorrelated quenched-disorder distribution. The evolution of this heterogeneous system is ruled by Griffith's principle which states that a cell breaks when the release in potential (elastic) energy in the system exceeds the surface-energy barrier necessary to break the cell. By direct integration over all possible realizations of the quenched disorder, they obtain the probability distribution of each damage configuration at any level of the imposed external deformation. They demonstrate an isomorphism between the distributions so obtained and standard generalized Ising models, in which the coupling constants and effective temperature in the Ising model are functions of the nature of the quenched-disorder distribution and the extent of accumulated damage. In particular, they show that damage models with global load sharing are isomorphic to standard percolation theory, that damage models with …

To illustrate the campaign to understand heavy quarkonium systems, the author focuses on a puzzling new state, X(3872) {yields} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} J/{psi}. Studying the influence of open-charm channels on charmonium properties leads us to propose a new charmonium spectroscopy: additional discrete charmonium levels that can be discovered as narrow resonances of charmed and anticharmed mesons. I recall some expectations for a new spectroscopy of mesons with beauty and charm, the B{sub c} (b{bar c}) system. Throughout, I call attention to open issues for theory and experiment.

A novel X-ray technique was used, exploiting synchrotron radiation at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, to investigate the growth stresses in {alpha}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}. In-situ measurements of Debye-Scherrer diffraction patterns from the scale were recorded during oxidation and cooling, and the elliptical distortion of the diffraction rings was analyzed to yield the in-plane strain. Fe-28Al, Fe-40Al, Fe-40Al-0.2Hf, Fe-20Cr-10Al and Ni-50Al (at. %) were studied. Data were acquired in air at temperatures between 950-1100 C and during cool down. In all cases, the steady stage growth strain was relatively low (<0.1%) and was either tensile or compressive depending on the alloy. A higher tensile strain often existed during the initial oxidation period when transition alumina was present. Thermal stresses imposed on NiAl by reducing the sample temperature to 950 C for a period of time showed noticeable stress relaxation by creep. Different degrees of relaxation were also found during cooling depending on alloy composition and scale microstructure. On all Fe-based alloys, the first formed {alpha}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} was highly textured with the degree of texture decreasing with further oxidation. The relationships between stress development, scale wrinkling, oxide phase changes, and the effect of reactive element addition on growth …

Several high field Nb{sub 3}Sn magnets of different design are under development for future particle accelerators. The high levels of stored energy in these magnets and the high current densities in the conductor can cause high peak temperatures during a quench. The thermal gradients generated in the epoxy-impregnated magnet coils during the fast temperature rise can result in high thermo-mechanical stresses. Considering the sensitivity of Nb{sub 3}Sn to strain and epoxy cracks, it is important to define a maximum acceptable temperature in the coils during a quench which does not cause degradation of the magnet performance. A program was launched at Fermilab to study the effects of thermo-mechanical stress in Nb{sub 3}Sn coils, supported by experiments and by analysis. In collaboration with LBNL, a sub-scaled magnet was built and instrumented to measure the effect of the thermo-mechanical shock during magnet quenches. The magnet consisted of two racetrack coils, assembled in a common coil configuration with a small gap in between. During the test, the magnet reached the maximum field of {approx} 11 T at the short sample current of 9100 A. Temperature excursions up to 400 K did not diminish the magnet quench performance; only after temperature excursions over 430 …

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Official statement issued by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States describing preliminary findings regarding the diplomatic efforts to deal with the danger posed by Islamic extremist terrorism before the September 11 attacks on the United States.

Official statement issued by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States describing preliminary findings regarding the use of America's armed forces in countering terrorism before the 9/11 attacks.

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

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The new class of diode-pumped alkali vapor lasers (DPALs) offers high efficiency cw laser radiation at near-infrared wavelengths: cesium 895 nm, rubidium 795 nm, and potassium 770 nm. The working physical principles of DPALs will be presented. Initial 795 nm Rb and 895 nm Cs laser experiments performed using a titanium sapphire laser as a surrogate pump source demonstrated DPAL slope power conversion efficiencies in the 50-70% range, in excellent agreement with device models utilizing only literature spectroscopic and kinetic data. Using these benchmarked models for Rb and Cs, optimized DPALs with optical-optical efficiencies >60%, and electrical efficiencies of 25-30% are projected. DPAL device architectures for near-diffraction-limited power scaling into the high kilowatt power regime from a single aperture will be described. DPAL wavelengths of operation offer ideal matches to silicon and gallium arsenide based photovoltaic power conversion cells for efficient power beaming.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Robert Carey. Carey joined the Marine Corps in an officer candidate class in November of 1942. In July of 1943 he was transferred to the Navy V-12 Program, completing midshipman and landing craft school. He was stationed aboard the USS Venango (AKA-82) beginning June of 1944. In the spring of 1945 they transported cargo for the impending assault on Okinawa, carrying troops, landing craft vehicles and gear of the Army’s 82nd Signal Construction Battalion. Carey was aboard when they participated in the Battle of Okinawa, returning to the US in November of 1945. He was discharged in March of 1946.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Ralph Byler. Byler joined the Army in early 1941. He served as the Commanding Officer of the 965th Field Artillery Battalion, in the European Theater, during the Invasion of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge, where he was wounded. Byler was discharged in March of 1946.

Recording of the eighth public hearing held by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States on March 23, 2004 at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington, D.C. The two-day hearing investigated the formulation and conduct of U.S. counterterrorism policy, with particular emphasis on the period from the August 1998 embassy bombings to September 11, 2001. In addition to witness testimony, four staff statements were delivered during the course of the proceedings. This section includes the staff statement on diplomacy, in addition to the panel on counterterrorism policy with testimony from Madeline K. Albright.