This report discusses projected agricultural imports and exports for FY2006, as well as legislation that deals with federal programs in support of agricultural exports and federal aid dedicated to farms and agricultural reform.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Thin wire analysis was applied to curved wire segments in [1], but a special procedure was needed to evaluate the self and near-self terms. The procedure involved associating the singular behavior with a straight segment tangent to the curved source segment, permitting use of algorithms for straight wires. Recently, a procedure that avoids the singularity extraction for straight wires was presented in [2-4]. In this paper, the approach in [4] is applied to curved (or higher-order) wires using a procedure similar to that used in [1] for singularity extraction. Here, the straight tangent segment is used to determine the quadrature rules to be used on the curved segment. The result is a formulation that allows for a general mixture of higher-order basis functions [5] and higher-order wire segments.

This report discusses the ongoing debate about whether or not to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for energy development, specifically the North Slope of Alaska for petroleum exploration and development. This report discusses the arguments for and against such development, especially with regard to environmental impacts.

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

This report provides a quantitative framework for policy considerations dealing with U.S. trade with China. It provides basic data and analysis of China’s international trade with the United States and other countries. Since Chinese data differ considerably from those of its trading partners (because of how entrepot trade through Hong Kong is counted), data from both PRC sources and those of its trading partners are presented. Charts showing import trends by sector for the United States highlight China’s growing market shares in many industries and also show import shares for Japan, Canada, Mexico, the European Union, and the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN ).

This report provides an overview of selected topics which the 109th Congress may address in its examination of telecommunications issues. The issues included in this report cover: broadband Internet regulation and access; broadcast indecency; digital television transition; Federal Communications Commission structure and reform; intercarrier compensation; media ownership rules; municipal deployment of broadband; public safety communications, the “savings clause” and monopoly issues; spectrum auctions; and universal service fund reform.

This report, which will be updated regularly, examines issues in U.S.-Cuban relations and tracks legislative initiatives on Cuba in the 109th Congress. The 109th Congress will likely continue an active interest in Cuba concerning human rights, debate over economic sanctions (especially on travel), food and agricultural exports to Cuba, terrorism issues, Radio and TV Marti, bilateral anti-drug cooperation, and migration issues.

News release about adjustments to DART's bus and On-Call services.

The potential for generation of gases in transuranic (TRU) waste by microbial activity, chemical interactions, corrosion, and radiolysis was addressed in the Argonne National Laboratory-West (ANL-West) Gas-Generation Experiments (GGE). Data was collected over several years by simulating the conditions in the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) after the eventual intrusion of brine into the repository. Fourteen test containers with various actual TRU waste immersed in representative brine were inoculated with WIPP-relevant microbes, pressurized with inert gases, and kept in an inert-atmosphere environment for several years to provide estimates of the gas-generation rates that will be used in computer models for future WIPP Performance Assessments. Modest temperature variations occurred during the long-term ANL-West experiments. Although the experiment temperatures always remained well within the experiment specifications, the small temperature variation was observed to affect the test container pressure far more than had been anticipated. In fact, the pressure variations were so large, and seemingly erratic, that it was impossible to discern whether the data was even valid and whether the long-term pressure trend was increasing, decreasing, or constant. The result was that no useful estimates of gas-generation rates could be deduced from the pressure data. Several initial attempts were made to quantify …

Solo recital presented at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree

None

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Progress Report Date: 01/23/06 (report delayed due to Hurricane Katrina) Report of results to date: The goals of this 3-year project are to: (1) update and successfully deploy our present immunosensors at DOE sites; (2) devise immunosensor-based assays for Pb(II), Hg(II), chelators, and/or Cr(III) in surface and groundwater; and (3) develop new technologies in antibody engineering that will enhance this immunosensor program. Note: Work on this project was temporarily disrupted when Hurricane Katrina shut down the University on August 29, 2005. While most of the reagents stored in our refrigerators and freezers were destroyed, all of our hybridoma cell lines were saved because they had been stored in liquid nitrogen. We set up new tissue culture reactors with the hybridomas that synthesize the anti-uranium antibodies, and are purifying new monoclonal antibodies from these culture supernatants. Both the in-line and the field-portable sensor were rescued from our labs in New Orleans in early October, and we continued experiments with these sensors in the temporary laboratory we set up in Hammond, LA at Southeastern Louisiana University.

A flier advertising the FOCUS Bible Study hosted on the UNT campus. It includes a description of the group and its purpose as well as the time and location for each study meeting. There isa contact email and also a bible verse at the bottom, Matthew 16:24.

Argonne National Laboratory is developing an electrometallurgical treatment for spent nuclear fuels. The initial demonstration of this process is being conducted on U-Zr and U-Pu-Zr alloy fuel elements irradiated in the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II). The electrometallurgical treatment process extracts usable uranium from irradiated fuel elements and places residual fission products, actinides, process Zr, and cladding hulls (small segments of tubing) into two waste forms--a ceramic and a metal alloy. The metal waste form will contain the cladding hulls, Zr, and noble metal fission products, and it will be disposed of in a geologic repository. As a result, the expected composition of the waste form will need to be well understood. This report deals with the condition of the cladding, which will make up a large fraction of the metal waste form, after irradiation in EBR-II and before insertion into the electrorefiner. Specifically, it looks at layers that can be found on the inner surface of the cladding due to in-reactor interactions between the alloy fuel and the stainless steel cladding that occurs after the fuel has swelled and contacted the cladding. Many detailed examinations of fuel elements irradiated in EBR-II have been completed and are discussed in the context …

Funeral program for Mr. Harold Jeffery, born September 19, 1921 and died January 17, 2006. The funeral was held Monday, January 23, 2006 at F. E. Lewis Memorial Chapel, officiated by Rev. Howard Mims. Funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and he was buried in San Jose Burial Park in San Antonio, Texas.

FY2004 progress summary and FY2005 program plan statement of work and deliverables for development of high average power diode-pumped solid state lasers, and complementary technologies for applications in energy and defense.

Due to the recent explosion of interest in studying the electromagnetic behavior of large (truncated) periodic structures such as phased arrays, frequency-selective surfaces, and metamaterials, there has been a renewed interest in efficiently modeling such structures. Since straightforward numerical analyses of large, finite structures (i.e., explicitly meshing and computing interactions between all mesh elements of the entire structure) involve significant memory storage and computation times, much effort is currently being expended on developing techniques that minimize the high demand on computer resources. One such technique that belongs to the class of fast solvers for large periodic structures is the GIFFT algorithm (Green's function interpolation and FFT), which is first discussed in [1]. This method is a modification of the adaptive integral method (AIM) [2], a technique based on the projection of subdomain basis functions onto a rectangular grid. Like the methods presented in [3]-[4], the GIFFT algorithm is an extension of the AIM method in that it uses basis-function projections onto a rectangular grid through Lagrange interpolating polynomials. The use of a rectangular grid results in a matrix-vector product that is convolutional in form and can thus be evaluated using FFTs. Although our method differs from [3]-[6] in various respects, …

Gamma ray spectrometers are an important tool in the characterization of radioactive waste. Important requirements for gamma ray spectrometers used in this application include good energy resolution, high detection efficiency, compact size, light weight, portability, and low power requirements. None of the available spectrometers satisfy all of these requirements. The goal of the Phase I research was to investigate lanthanum halide and related scintillators for nuclear waste clean-up. LaBr3:Ce remains a very promising scintillator with high light yield and fast response. CeBr3 is attractive because it is very similar to LaBr3:Ce in terms of scintillation properties and also has the advantage of much lower self-radioactivity, which may be important in some applications. CeBr3 also shows slightly higher light yield at higher temperatures than LaBr3 and may be easier to produce with high uniformity in large volume since it does not require any dopants. Among the mixed lanthanum halides, the light yield of LaBrxI3-x:Ce is lower and the difference in crystal structure of the binaries (LaBr3 and LaI3) makes it difficult to grow high quality crystals of the ternary as the iodine concentration is increased. On the other hand, LaBrxCl3-x:Ce provides excellent performance. Its light output is high and it provides …

Student newspaper from St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas that includes news and information of interest to the college community along with advertising.

Micro-array experiments identified a number of Thermobifida fusca genes which were upregulated by growth on cellulose or plant biomass. Five of these genes were cloned, overexpressed in E. coli and the expressed proteins were purified and characterized. These were a xyloglucanase,a 1-3,beta glucanase, a family 18 hydrolase and twocellulose binding proteins that contained no catalytic domains. The catalyic domain of the family 74 endoxyloglucanase with a C-terminal, cellulose binding module was crystalized and its 3-dimensional structure was determined by X-ray crystallography.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to one report, at the end of 2004, some 70 million U.S. adults logged on to access the Internet during a typical day. As public use of the Internet grew from the mid-1990s onward, Internet access became a potential target for state and local taxation. In 1998, Congress imposed a moratorium temporarily preventing state and local governments from imposing new taxes on Internet access. Existing state and local taxes were grandfathered. In amending the moratorium in 2004, Congress required GAO to study its impact on state and local government revenues. This report's objectives are to determine the scope of the moratorium and its impact, if any, on state and local revenues. For this report, GAO reviewed the moratorium's language, its legislative history, and associated legal issues; examined studies of revenue impact; interviewed people knowledgeable about access services; and collected information about eight case study states not intended to be representative of other states. GAO chose the states considering such factors as whether they had taxes grandfathered for different forms of access services and covered different urban and rural parts of the country."

The Hydrological Synthesis special section presentssynthesis topics that have the potential to revolutionize hydrologicalsciences in a manner needed to meet critical water challenges that we nowface. The special section also highlights topics that are important andexciting enough to compel researchers to engage in collaborativesynthesis activities. This introductory paper provides a brief overviewof nine papers that are included in this special section, which discussthe synthesis of tools, data, concepts, theories, or approaches acrossdisciplines and scales. The wide range of topics that are exploredinclude groundwater quality, river restoration, water management,nitrogen cycling, and Earth surface dynamics. Collectively, the specialsection papers illustrate that the challenge to deal effectively withcomplex water problems is not purely a scientific, technological, orsocioeconomic one; it is instead a complex, 21st century problem thatrequires coordinated synthesis.