Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The General Services Administration (GSA) began its Metropolitan Area Acquisition (MAA) program in 1997 to achieve immediate, substantial, and sustained price reductions for local voice and selected data communications services in selected metropolitan areas. As of June 2001, GSA has awarded 37 MAA contracts for 20 metropolitan areas. The transition from existing GSA contracts to the MAA contracts is still underway. This correspondence answers congressional questions about GAO's June 2001 testimony on MAA implementation issues."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spent about $1.9 billion--or about 10 percent of its health care budget--to provide nursing home care to veterans in fiscal year 2000. VA will likely see increasing demand for nursing home care during the next decade. The number of veterans age 85 and older is expected to triple--from 422,000 veterans in 2000 to nearly 1.3 million in 2010. Among the very old, the prevalence of chronic health conditions and disabilities increases markedly. In addition, VA is required to provide long-term care to some veterans, which may further increase veterans' demand for nursing home care. Almost 73 percent of VA's nursing home care in fiscal year 2000 went to VA's 134 nursing homes; the rest went to state-owned and operated veterans' nursing homes (15 percent) or to community nursing homes under local or national contract to VA (12 percent). VA generally requires its medical center staff to conduct annual inspections of state veterans' homes and community nursing homes; it also requires monthly staff visits to veterans in community nursing homes. However, VA plans to change its oversight of community nursing homes, …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The United Nations (U.N.) and its affiliated entities face the dual challenge of attracting and retaining staff who meet the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity while maintaining the international character of the organizations by ensuring equitable geographic balance in the workforce. Nevertheless, U.N. organizations have made slow progress in addressing U.S. concerns about underrepresentation, and, except for the U.N. secretariat in New York, the organizations with representation targets that GAO studied have not achieved equitable employment of Americans since 1992. Although the U.N. organizations are ultimately responsible for achieving fair geographic balance among its member countries, the State Department, in coordination with other U.S. agencies, plays a role in ensuring that the United States is fairly represented. U.N. organizations have not fully developed long-range workforce planning strategies, and neither State nor the U.N. agencies have formal recruiting and hiring action plans to improve U.S. representation in the U.N. system. Without these measures, the United States' ability to even maintain the number of Americans employed in the United Nations could be hampered."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Through the impartial and independent investigation of citizens' complaints, federal ombudsmen provide the public with an informal and accessible avenue of redress. Ombudsmen help federal agencies be more responsive to persons who believe that their concerns have not been dealt with fully or fairly through normal problem-solving channels. A national hazardous waste ombudsman was established at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1984. In recent years, that ombudsman has increasingly investigated citizen complaints referred by Members of Congress. As the number and significance of the ombudsman's investigations have increased, so have questions about the adequacy of available resources and whether other impediments exist to fulfilling the ombudsman's responsibilities. This report (1) compares the national ombudsman's operations with professional standards for independence and other factors and (2) determines the relative roles and responsibilities of EPA's national and regional ombudsmen. GAO found that key aspects of EPA's national hazardous waste ombudsman differ from professional standards for ombudsmen who deal with inquiries from the public. For example, an effective ombudsman must have independence from any person who may be the subject of a complaint or inquiry. However, EPA's national …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) alliance achieved the goals of Operation Allied Force--Yugoslavian forces were removed from Kosovo; refugees returned; and a peacekeeping force was put in place, with no allied combat fatalities. Through it all, the NATO allies stayed united and learned much about working together as a combat force. These achievements did not come easily, however, and the departures from accepted U.S. military doctrine were troubling for many U.S. military commanders and planners. The Department of Defense (DOD) has tried to address these and other issues by changing its doctrine. Nevertheless, GAO has two observations on the nature of conducting military operations in a multinational environment. First, the challenges of dealing with the constraints of working within a multinational environment may not be completely resolved through the development of new joint multinational operations doctrine and revisions to joint and service doctrine. These revisions to doctrine are likely to be unable to provide conclusive solutions to these issues because each multinational operation will differ according to the nations that participate and the extent of their interests. Second, future multinational operations, particularly those in which …

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When completed, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL) National Ignition Facility (NIF) will be the world's largest laser with experimental capabilities applicable to stockpile stewardship, energy research, science and astrophysics. As construction of the conventional facilities nears completion, operations supporting the installation of specialized laser equipment have come online. Playing a critical role in the precision cleaning of mechanical parts from the NIF beamline are three pieces of aqueous cleaning equipment. Housed in the Optics Assembly Building (OAB), adjacent to NIF's laser bay, are the large mechanical parts gross cleaner (LMPGC), the large mechanical parts precision cleaner (LMPPC), and the small mechanical parts gross and precision cleaner (SMPGPC). These aqueous units, designed and built by Sonic Systems, Inc., of Newtown, Pennsylvania, not only accommodate parts that vary greatly in size, weight, geometry, surface finish and material, but also produce cleaned parts that meet the stringent NIF cleanliness standards (MIL-STD-1246C Level 83 for particles and A/10 for non-volatile residue). Each unit was designed with extensive water- and energy-conserving features, and the technology used minimizes hazardous waste generation associated with solvent wipe cleaning, the traditional method for cleaning laser mechanical components. The LMPGC provides preliminary gross cleaning for large mechanical parts. Collection, filtration …

Weekly newspaper from Sulphur Springs, 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.

This is the third Quarterly Technical Report for DOE Cooperative Agreement No: DE-FC26-00NT40753. The goal of the project is to develop cost effective analysis tools and techniques for demonstrating and evaluating low NOx control strategies and their possible impact on boiler performance for firing US coals. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) is providing cofunding for this program. This program contains multiple tasks and good progress is being made on all fronts. A Rich Reagent Injection (RRI) design has been developed for a cyclone fired utility boiler in which a field test of RRI will be performed later this year. Initial evaluations of RRI for PC fired boilers have been performed. Calibration tests have been developed for a corrosion probe to monitor waterwall wastage. Preliminary tests have been performed for a soot model within a boiler simulation program. Shakedown tests have been completed for test equipment and procedures that will be used to measure soot generation in a pilot scale test furnace. In addition, an initial set of controlled experiments for ammonia adsorption onto fly ash in the presence of sulfur have been performed that indicates the sulfur does enhance ammonia uptake.

The Gordon Research Conference on Organometallic Chemistry was held at Salve Regina University, Newport, Rhode Island, July 22-27, 2001. The conference had 133 participants. The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field, coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, and included US and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. Emphasis was place on current unpublished research and discussion of the future target areas in this field. There was a conscious effort to stimulate lively discussion about the key issues in the field today. Time for formal presentations was limited in the interest of group discussions; poster sessions were held.

A model for predicting choice of alternative fuel and among alternative vehicle technologies for light-duty motor vehicles is derived. The nested multinomial logit (NML) mathematical framework is used. Calibration of the model is based on information in the existing literature and deduction based on assuming a small number of key parameters, such as the value of time and discount rates. A spreadsheet model has been developed for calibration and preliminary testing of the model.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "During the last several years, senior Navy officials have testified before Congress on the effects of shortages in training resources on the readiness of aviation units. This report examines one of these resources--ordnance for air-to-ground training--to assess the potential for enhancing Navy and Marine Corps tactical aviation unit readiness by improving training ordnance management. The availability of Navy and Marine training ordnance depends on an accurate requirements determination process, a procurement program that supports identified needs, and an allocation process that puts the right amount of ordnance where it is needed for training. The Navy program has problems with all three of these elements. Neither the Navy nor Marine Corps provides request data that reflect the training needs identified in its training instruction. Although both services have linked their ordnance requirements to readiness in their training instructions, neither services' request indicates that its instruction serves as the basis for identifying its needs. GAO believes each service has the knowledge and ability to develop more accurate and justifiable training ordnance requirements. Training ordnance shortages limit the amount of training and exercises aircrews can carry out and reportedly …

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

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

The monitoring of nuclear explosions on a global basis requires accurate event locations. As an example, a typical size used for an on-site inspection search area is 1,000 square kilometers or approximately 17 km accuracy, assuming a circular area. This level of accuracy is a significant challenge for small events that are recorded using a sparse regional network. In such cases, the travel time of seismic energy is strongly affected by crustal and upper mantle heterogeneity and large biases can result. This can lead to large systematic errors in location and, more importantly, to invalid error bounds associated with location estimates. Calibration data and methods are being developed and integrated to correct for these biases. Our research over the last few years has shown that one of the most effective approaches to generate path corrections is the hybrid technique that combine both regionalized models with three-dimensional empirical travel-time corrections. We implement a rigorous and comprehensive uncertainty framework for these hybrid approaches. Qualitative and quantitative validations are presented in the form of single component consistency checks, sensitivity analysis, robustness measures, outlier testing along with end-to-end testing of confidence measures. We focus on screening and validating both empirical and model based calibrations …

Understanding numerical errors in long calculations is a very subtle science and is critical to understanding the reliability of the final answer. We will carefully examine the accumulation of numerical errors over time and discuss how these can lead to reliability estimates. The primary focus will be on a newly uncovered understanding of mode resolution which is at the heart of all numerical computations.

LLNL identification research is focused on the problem of correctly discriminating small-magnitude explosions from a background of earthquakes, mining tremors, and other events. The goal is to reduce the variance within the population of each type of event, while increasing the separation between the explosions and the other event types. We address this problem for both broad categories of seismic waves: body waves and surface waves. First, we map out the effects of propagation and source size in advance so that they can be accounted for and removed from observed events. This can dramatically reduce the population variance. Second, we try to optimize the measurement process to improve the separation between population types. For body waves we focus on the identification power of the short-period regional phases Pn, Pg, Sn and Lg, which can often be detected down to very small magnitudes. Many studies have shown that particular ratios of these phases, such as 6-to 8-Hz Pn/Lg, can effectively discriminate between closely located explosions and earthquakes. To extend this discrimination power over broad areas, we use our revised Magnitude and Distance Amplitude Correction (MDAC2) procedure. This joint source and path model fits the observed spectra and removes magnitude and distance …

The technique of using a nsec pulse to preform and ionize the plasma followed by a psec pulse to heat the plasma has enabled low-Z nickel-like ions to achieve saturated output when driven by small lasers with less than ten joules of energy. We model experiments done using the COMET laser at LLNL and the P 102 laser at Limeil to produce Ni-like Pd and Ag lasers. The COMET experiments use a 2 J, 600 ps prepulse followed 700 psec later by a 6 J, 6 psec drive pulse in a 1.6 cm long line focus. The P102 experiments used a somewhat larger energy and were able to use different combinations of frequency doubled light for both the prepulse and short pulse drive. The LASNEX code is used to calculate the hydrodynamic evolution of the plasma and provide the temperatures and densities to the CRETIN code, which then does the kinetics calculations to determine the gain. The temporal and spatial evolution of the plasmas are studied both with and without radiation transport included to understand the role of the self photopumping process on the gain of the Ni-like 4f {yields} 4d laser lines as well as the gain of the …