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

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the Subcommittees on Transportation of the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations.

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

This report describes the evaluation methods and results of a chemical safety status assessment of the process equipment at the U.S. Department of Energy Hanford Nuclear Reservation Plutonium Finishing Plant. This assessment, designated as the Plutonium Finishing Plant Residual Chemical Hazards Assessment, focused particular emphasis on the idle and inactive plant systems, though certain active areas also were examined to the extent that these were examined during a previous facility vulnerability assessment completed in 1999. The Plutonium Finishing Plant is located in the 200 West Area of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation that is situated in south central Washington State.

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

About a dozen federally supported child nutrition programs and related activities – including school meal programs and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (the WIC program) – reach over 37 million children and almost 2 million lower-income pregnant and postpartum women. Total FY2002 spending on these efforts was $15.1 billion. FY2003 spending is projected at an estimated $15.9 billion under the Agriculture Department appropriations portion (Division A) of the FY2003 Consolidated Appropriations Resolution (P.L. 108-7; H.Rept. 108-10; enacted February 20,2003). And the Administration anticipates spending $16.3 billion under its FY2004 budget.

Congress has long been concerned about whether U.S. policy advances the national interest in reducing the role of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles that could deliver them. China has taken some steps to mollify U.S. concerns about its role in weapons proliferation. Skeptics question whether China's cooperation in weapons nonproliferation has warranted President Bush's pursuit of stronger bilateral ties. This report discusses the national security problem of China's role in weapons proliferation and issues related to the U.S. policy response, including legislation, since the mid-1990s.

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

Weekly student newspaper published in Hurst, Texas and serving the Tarrant County College District that includes school news and information along with advertising.

This paper presents a summary of accomplishments at the Colonie FUSRAP Site in Fiscal Year 2002. During this period several significant milestones were achieved and have set the stage for the project to be completed in a more comprehensive manner, ahead of schedule and at a lower cost than the original Remedial Plan inherited from the Dept of Energy in 1997. Discussion of the DOE and subsequent USACE remedial plans is included along with summary level discussions of the key site infrastructure and remedial elements.

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

This Corrective Action Investigation Plan contains the U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Site Office's approach to collect the data necessary to evaluate corrective action alternatives appropriate for the closure of Corrective Action Unit (CAU) 529, Area 25 Contaminated Materials, Nevada Test Site (NTS), Nevada, under the Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order. CAU 529 consists of one Corrective Action Site (25-23-17). For the purpose of this investigation, the Corrective Action Site has been divided into nine parcels based on the separate and distinct releases. A conceptual site model was developed for each parcel to address the translocation of contaminants from each release. The results of this investigation will be used to support a defensible evaluation of corrective action alternatives in the corrective action decision document.

This report provides information about the Country Applicability of the U.S. Normal Trade Relations (Most-Favored-Nation) Status. The United States extends unlimited and permanent NTR treatment to all its trading partners.

The United States accords permanent normal-trade-relations (NTR) (formerly called most-favored-nation (MFN)) treatment to all its trading partners except four countries to which it is denied by law and 11 countries whose NTR status is temporary and subject to the conditions of Title IV of the Trade Act of 1974.

The legacy project at Lovelace Respiratory Research Institute (LRRI) was an opportunity to work with decades worth of research. LRRI was founded in 1963 to provide inhalation research using radioactive nuclides. Over the next 35 years, scientists at the institute researched the effects of radioactivity on the lungs and the effects of inhaled radiation on the body. There were two outcomes of the research. First, the studies provided valuable information regarding radiation safety and the prevention of the inhalation of radioactive material. Second, the studies created a large amount of legacy waste that is now being cleaned up. Overall, the legacy materials project at LRRI was an interesting challenge. It provided opportunities to the team of LRRI and SEC to engineer solutions to remove and release material. It involved unique ALARA engineering to minimize dose exposure to the project team. And finally, it provided an opportunity to minimize low-level radioactive waste. This paper will expand on the waste management challenges and lessons learned.

The dimensionality (D) of manifolds of active chemical composition space has been measured using three different approaches: the Hausdorff geometrical binning method, Principal Component Analysis, and the Grassberger-Procaccia cumulative distribution method. A series of artificial manifolds is also generated using a Monte Carlo approach to discern the advantages and limitations of the three methods. Dimensionality is quantified for different levels of turbulent intensity in a simulation of the interactions of a 2D premixed hydrogen flame with a localized region of turbulence superimposed over the cold region upstream of the flame front. The simulations are conducted using an adaptive mesh refinement code for low Mach number reacting flows. By treating the N{sub s} species and temperature of the local thermo-chemical state as a point in multi-dimensional chemical composition space, a snapshot of a flame region is mapped into chemical composition space to generate the manifold associated with the 2-D flame system. An increase in D was observed with increasing turbulent intensity for all three methods. Although each method provides useful information, the Grassberger-Procaccia method is subject to fewer artifacts than the other two thereby providing the most reliable quantification of D.

Prior reservoir simulation and laboratory studies have suggested that injecting carbon dioxide into mature natural gas reservoirs for carbon sequestration with enhanced gas recovery (CSEGR) is technically feasible. Reservoir simulations show that the high density of carbon dioxide can be exploited to favor displacement of methane with limited gas mixing by injecting carbon dioxide in low regions of a reservoir while producing from higher regions in the reservoir. Economic sensitivity analysis of a prototypical CSEGR application at a large depleting gas field in California shows that the largest expense will be for carbon dioxide capture, purification, compression, and transport to the field. Other incremental costs for CSEGR include: (1) new or reconditioned wells for carbon dioxide injection, methane production, and monitoring; (2) carbon dioxide distribution within the field; and, (3) separation facilities to handle eventual carbon dioxide contamination of the methane. Economic feasibility is most sensitive to wellhead methane price, carbon dioxide supply costs, and the ratio of carbon dioxide injected to incremental methane produced. Our analysis suggests that CSEGR may be economically feasible at carbon dioxide supply costs of up to $4 to $12/t ($0.20 to $0.63/Mcf). Although this analysis is based on a particular gas field, the approach …

This document describes an evaluation of the baseline and two alternative disposition paths for the final disposition of the calcine wastes stored at the Idaho Nuclear Technology and Engineering Center at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. The pathways are evaluated against a prescribed set of criteria and a recommendation is made for the path forward.

We employ a novel, ultrafast terahertz probe to investigatethe dynamical interplay of optically-induced excitons and unboundelectron-hole pairs in GaAs quantum wells. Resonant creation ofheavy-hole excitons induces a new low-energy oscillator linked totransitions between the internal exciton degrees of freedom. The timeresolved terahertz optical conductivity is found to be a probe wellsuited for studies of fundamental processes such as formation, relaxationand ionization of excitons.

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

This report considers the constitutionality of federal tort reform legislation, such as the products liability and medical malpractice reform proposals that have been introduced for the last several Congresses.

This report considers the constitutionality of federal tort reform legislation, such as the products liability and medical malpractice reform proposals that have been introduced for the last several Congresses.

Long-pulse, high-beta scenarios have been established on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). Beta(sub)t(always equal to 2{mu}(sub)0{center_dot}<P>/B{sup 2}(sub)t0) {approx} 35% has been achieved during transient discharges. The machine improvements that lead to these results, including error field reduction and high-temperature bakeout of plasma-facing components are described. The highest Beta(sub)t plasmas have high triangularity (delta = 0.8) and elongation (k = 2.0) at low-aspect ratio A always equal to R/a = 1.4. The strong shaping permits large values of normalized current, I(sub)N(always equal to I(sub)p /(aB(sub)t0)) approximately equal to 6 while maintaining moderate values of q(sub)95 = 4. Long-pulse discharges up to 1 sec in duration have been achieved with substantial bootstrap current. The total noninductive current drive can be as high as 60%, comprised of 50% bootstrap current and {approx}10% neutral-beam current drive. The confinement enhancement factor H89P is in excess of 2.7. Beta(sub)N * H(sub)89P approximately or greater than 15 has been maintained for 8 * tau(sub)E {approx} 1.6 * tau(sub)CR, where tau(sub)CR is the relaxation time of the first radial moment of the toroidal current density. The ion temperature for these plasmas is significantly higher than that predicted by neoclassical theory.

This report provides information about the Human Resources Management of Homeland Security. It discusses the provisions of P.L. 107-296 as they relate to human resources management. It does not discuss provisions of the law that relate to labor-management relations and collective bargaining.