A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To help measure the quality of the 2000 Census and to possibly adjust for any errors, the U.S. Census Bureau (Bureau) conducted the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (A.C.E.) program. However, after obligating around $207 million for A.C.E. and its predecessor program, Integrated Coverage Measurement (I.C.M.), from fiscal years 1996 through 2001, the Bureau did not use either program to adjust the census numbers. Concerned about the amount of money the Bureau spent on I.C.M. and A.C.E. programs and what was produced in return, the subcommittee asked us to review the objectives and results of the programs, the costs of consultants, and how best to track future coverage measurement activities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The September 11 terrorist attacks and subsequent federal action had a substantial impact on businesses in both the declared disaster areas and around the nation. In the aftermath of the attacks, the Congress, among other actions, appropriated emergency supplemental funds to the Small Business Administration (SBA) to aid September 11 victims. Given the uniqueness of this disaster and changes in the program, GAO analyzed SBA's lending to September 11 victims, as well as the loan program's performance goals and measures."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Environmental problems do not respect national boundaries. These problems include (1) climate change, (2) drought and the expansion of degraded land, (3) environmental cooperation among the countries of North America, (4) illegal trade in endangered species, and (5) substances that deplete the earth's protective ozone layer. To address such problems, the United States and other nations have entered into numerous international environmental agreements. In implementing these agreements, the parties typically commit to establish domestic programs and report periodically on their progress. Developed nations like the United States may also pledge to provide funds to assist developing nations. GAO was asked to examine (1) U.S. actions to fulfill its commitments under five international agreements identified by the requesters, (2) the means used to track these actions, and (3) the results of others' evaluations of these actions for the selected agreements."

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

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

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

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with 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; Whether the appropiation of additional funds to the Texas Education Agency for payment of internal costs and fees for external management of the assets of the permanent school fund is contingent on the fund producing $150 million in excess of the Comptroller of Public Accounts' estimate in the Biennal Revenue Estimate (RQ-0582-JC)

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, in a proceeding under the Juvenile Justice Code, title 3 of the Family Code, the state may recover from a child and other nonprevailing party the cost of serving summonses under section 53.06 of the Family Code (RQ-0583-JC)

The goal of this project was to investigate the utility of parallel adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) in the simulation of laser plasma interaction (LPI). The scope of work included the development of new numerical methods and parallel implementation strategies. The primary deliverables were (1) parallel adaptive algorithms to solve a system of equations combining plasma fluid and light propagation models, (2) a research code implementing these algorithms, and (3) an analysis of the performance of parallel AMR on LPI problems. The project accomplished these objectives. New algorithms were developed for the solution of a system of equations describing LPI. These algorithms were implemented in a new research code named ALPS (Adaptive Laser Plasma Simulator) that was used to test the effectiveness of the AMR algorithms on the Laboratory's large-scale computer platforms. The details of the algorithm and the results of the numerical tests were documented in an article published in the Journal of Computational Physics [2]. A principal conclusion of this investigation is that AMR is most effective for LPI systems that are ''hydrodynamically large'', i.e., problems requiring the simulation of a large plasma volume relative to the volume occupied by the laser light. Since the plasma-only regions require less …

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This report contains an explanation of the major provisions of the Federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes. The discussion divides the Federal estate tax into three components: the gross estate, deductions from the gross estate, and computation of the tax, including allowable tax credits.

Stock analysts provide research on companies and make recommendations on their stocks. When analysts are employed by brokerage firms and provide information for the firms’ retail and institutional clients, they are called sell-side analysts. Analysts who work specifically for institutional investors like mutual and pension funds are known as buy-side analysts. Because of their widespread presence in the national media, sell-side analysts’ recommendations have become part of the public domain and they can have significant influence on stock prices. This report examines the performance of the stock analysts in the Enron case.

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.

The PRISM piecewise solution mapping procedure, in which the solution of the chemical kinetic ODE system is parameterized with quadratic polynomials, is applied to CFD simulations of H{sub 2}+air combustion. Initial cost of polynomial construction is expensive, but it is recouped as the polynomial is reused. We present two methods that help us to parameterize only in places that will ultimately have high reuse. We also implement non-orthogonal Gosset factorial designs, that reduce polynomial construction costs by a factor of two over previously used orthogonal factorial designs.

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Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) evaluated the feasibility of using the H Canyon on-line diode array spectrophotometer to measure uranium concentrations in Tank 16.7. On-line measurements will allow an increase in highly enriched uranium (HEU) production by removing delays associated with off-line measurements. The instrument must be able to measure uranium at concentrations below 1.0 g/L with an uncertainty no greater than 0.3 g/L. SRTC determined that the system has a limit of quantitation of 0.15 g/L. At concentrations of 0.5 and 1.0 g/L, the spectrometer uncertainty is 0.10 g/L. No design changes, such as an increase in flow cell path length, are required to obtain this performance. Expected levels of iron in Tank 16.7 solutions will not interfere with the measurement. The CHEMCHEK method should not be used for confirmatory analysis, as it contributes excessively to the overall uncertainty of the measurement. SRTC expects that the spectrophotometer will meet the measurement requirements for Tank 16.7.

Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) is carrying out a research program to create, prepare, and evaluate catalysts to promote Fischer-Tropsch (F-T) chemistry, specifically the reaction of hydrogen with carbon monoxide to form long-chain hydrocarbons. In addition to F-T catalysts needing high activity, it is desirable that they have high selectivity and stability with respect to both mechanical strength and aging properties. In this project, selectivity is directed toward the production of diesel fraction components and avoiding excess yields of both light hydrocarbons and heavy waxes. Shape-selective catalysts have the potential to both limit the formation of long-chain products and yet retain the active metal sites in a protected ''cage.'' This cage also restricts their loss by attrition during use in slurry-bed reactors. Experimentation has included evaluation of samples of (1) iron-based F-T catalysts prepared at Argonne National Laboratory, (2) iron-based F-T catalysts prepared by B.H. Davis of the Center of Applied Energy Research (CAER), (3) the Davis catalyst that were sized by differential gravity separation, and (4) the Davis catalyst onto which inorganic or catalytic ''shells'' were deposited. The ANL-prepared samples had a wide range of particle size and were irregular in shape. A sizeable portion of the samples provided by …

The Savannah River Site (SRS) Environmental Management (EM) nuclear material stabilization program includes the dissolution and processing of legacy materials from various DOE sites. The SRS canyon facilities were designed to dissolve and process spent nuclear fuel and targets. As the processing of typical materials is completed, unusual and exotic nuclear materials are being targeted for stabilization. These unusual materials are often difficult to dissolve using historical flowsheet conditions and require more aggressive dissolver solutions. Solids must be prevented in the dissolver to avoid expensive delays associated with the build-up of insoluble material in downstream process equipment. Moreover, it is vital to prevent precipitation of all solids, especially plutonium-bearing solids, since their presence in dissolver solutions raises criticality safety issues. To prevent precipitation of undesirable solids in aqueous process solutions, the accuracy of computer models to predict precipitate formation requires incorporation of plant specific fundamental data. These data are incorporated into a previously developed thermodynamic computer program that applies the Pitzer correlation to derive activity coefficient parameters. This improved predictive model will reduce unwanted precipitation in process solutions at DOE sites working with EM nuclear materials in aqueous solutions.

Natural gas transmission companies mark the right-of-way areas where pipelines are buried with warning signs to prevent accidental third-party damage. Nevertheless, pipelines are sometimes damaged by third-party construction equipment. A single incident can be devastating, causing death and millions of dollars of property loss. This damage would be prevented if potentially hazardous construction equipment could be detected, identified, and an alert given before the pipeline was damaged. The Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a system to solve this problem by using an optical fiber as a distributed sensor and interrogating the fiber with a custom optical time domain reflectometer. Key issues are the ability to detect encroachment and the ability to discriminate among potentially hazardous and benign encroachments. The work performed in the 4th quarter of 2002 included fine-tuning and debugging of the custom Optical Time Domain Reflectometer being constructed for data collection and analysis. It also included installation of optical fibers at the test site along an operating pipeline.

Hydrogen diffusion through Pd membranes has been measured under non-UHV conditions, i.e., the membranes are evacuated under non-UHV conditions. Despite this, the results indicate that bulk diffusion is the slow step and the diffusion constants agree with earlier workers results where UHV conditions obtained. The activation energy for H2 permeation in the dilute phase was determined from an Arrhenius plot over a series of temperatures from 423 to 503 K. The solubilities of H2 were determined over the same temperature range and from these data, the diffusion constants were determined.

This report presents advice on how to operate a building to reduce casualties from a biological or chemical attack, as well as potential changes to the building (e.g. the design of the ventilation system) that could make it more secure. It also documents the assumptions and reasoning behind the advice. The particular circumstances of any attack, such as the ventilation system design, building occupancy, agent type, source strength and location, and so on, may differ from the assumptions made here, in which case actions other than our recommendations may be required; we hope that by understanding the rationale behind the advice, building operators can modify it as required for their circumstances. The advice was prepared by members of the Airflow and Pollutant Transport Group, which is part of the Indoor Environment Department at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The group's expertise in this area includes: tracer-gas measurements of airflows in buildings (Sextro, Thatcher); design and operation of commercial building ventilation systems (Delp); modeling and analysis of airflow and tracer gas transport in large indoor spaces (Finlayson, Gadgil, Price); modeling of gas releases in multi-zone buildings (Sohn, Lorenzetti, Finlayson, Sextro); and occupational health and safety experience related to building design and …