A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) fiscal year 2000 annual performance plan, focusing on whether CFTC complied with the requirements of the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993."

A briefing report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the implementation of Japanese insurance agreements, as well as U.S. government monitoring and enforcement efforts, focusing on the: (1) size of the Japanese insurance market; (2) U.S. insurance company presence in and concerns regarding this market; and (3) business, regulatory, and other events that have affected the Japanese insurance market in the 1990s."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO followed up on its report on the Air Force's F-22 engineering and manufacturing development (EMD) program, focusing on whether: (1) the Air Force is likely to complete the EMD program without exceeding the cost limitation established by the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1998; and (2) GAO had access to sufficient information to make informed judgments on matters covered by this report."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) efforts to address the year 2000 computing problem, focusing on: (1) FAA's progress to date; (2) the agency's self-reported data showing that much remains to be done; (3) challenges FAA faces in ensuring that its internal systems will work; (4) risks associated with external organizations--focusing specifically on airports and international entities; and (5) the critical need for business continuity and contingency plans that identify how aviation operations will continue should systems fail."

Greeting card from Rose to Sterling Houston, prominent San Antonio playwright. She is happy about a visit paid to her by one of Houston's friends. She is sick but sure that she will be back in good health within about four weeks. The front of the card has been printed with a photograph of an elaborate floral arrangement inside a wicker basket.

A crane lowers the top of the municipal water tower originally built in 1923.

A crane removing the top half of the tank of the municipal water tower. The tower was erected in 1923 and held 50,000 gallons of water.

The crane is in place to dismantle the minicipal water tower. Originally purchased October 15, 1923 for $5,650 from Pittsburgh - Des Moines Steel Co. Dallas, TX. Held 50,000 gallons of water.

The vector potential, magnetic field and stored energy of a quadrupole magnet array are derived. Each magnet within the array is a current sheet with a current density proportional to the azimuthal angle 2{theta} and the longitudinal periodicity (2m-1){pi}/L. Individual quadrupoles within the array are oriented in a way that maximizes the field gradient The array does not have to be of equal spacing and can be of a finite size, however when the array is equally spaced and is of infinite size the solution can be simplified. We note that whereas, in a single quadrupole magnet with a current density proportional to cos2{theta} the gradient is pure, such purity is not preserved in a quadrupole array.

Research notes from an interview with Ken Jorns where Jorns discloses information about upcoming plans and ideas for AIDS fundraising.

Current performance assessment calculations show that technetium (Tc) and neptunium (Np) will deliver the major fraction of the radiation dose to the accessible environment from the potential Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. Therefore, materials that can immobilize or delay the transport of Tc or Np (getters) are being considered for addition to either the waste-package or the backfill adjacent to the waste-package. Of the two radionuclides, Tc presents the greater challenge in identifying a suitable getter material. This report identifies several materials that warrant further consideration for immobilizing and/or sorbing Tc as additives to the backfill, and recommends active carbon and an inorganic oxide for initial testing. Other materials, such as zero valent iron, might be useful as getters if they were placed in the waste package itself, a subject that merits further investigation.

Bandpass filtering has been applied recently in two widely different seismic applications: S.R. Taylor and A.A. Velasco in their source-path amplitude-correction (SPAC) algorithm and N.K. Yacoub in his maximum spectral energy algorithm for picking teleseismic P-wave arrival times. Though the displacement spectrum is the intermediate product in both cases, the filters and scaling corrections used to estimate it are entirely different. They tested both and found that the scaling used by Taylor and Velasco worked in all cases tested whereas Yacoub's did not. They also found that bandpass filtering as implemented by Taylor and Velasco does not work satisfactorily; however, the Gaussian filter used by Yacoub does work. The bandpass filter of Taylor and Velasco works satisfactorily when the results are centered in the band; however, a comb filter with the same number of poles and zeros as the bandpass used by Taylor and Velasco works better than the bandpass filter.

During the course of experiments involving high explosives, (HE), alignment lasers are often employed where the laser beam impinges upon a metal encased HE sample or on the bare HE itself during manned operations. While most alignment lasers are of low enough power so as not to be of concern, safety questions arise when considering the maximum credible power output of the laser in a failure mode, or when multiple laser spots are focused onto the experiment simultaneously. Safety questions also arise when the focused laser spot size becomes very small, on the order of 100 {micro}m or less. This paper addresses these concerns by describing a methodology for determining safety margins for laser impingement on metal encased HE as well as one for bare HE. A variety of explosives encased in Al, Cu, Ta and stainless steel were tested using the first of these techniques. Additional experiments were performed using the second method where the laser beam was focused directly on eight different samples of pressed-powder HE.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the Army's plans to allocate its end strength to meet the force structure requirements of its combat and support forces, focusing on: (1) comparing the Army's 1996 and 1998 reviews to determine if there were changes in the Army's risk of not having sufficient forces to implement the national military strategy; and (2) assessing the Army's potential for mitigating risk by reallocating its existing end strength."

We discuss early cosmology in theories where the fundamental Planck mass is close to the TeV scale. In such theories the standard model fields are localized to a (3 + 1)-dimensional wall with n new transverse sub-millimeter sized spatial dimensions. The topics touched upon include: early inflation that occurs while the size of the new dimensions are still small, the spectrum and magnitude of density perturbations, the post-inflation era of contraction of our world while the internal dimensions evolve to their final ''large'' radius, and the production of gravitons in the bulk during these two eras. The radion moduli problem is also discussed.

The coupling of a Compton-suppressed Ge (CSGe) detector array to a recoil separator has seen limited use in the past due to the low efficiency for measuring recoil--{gamma} ray coincidences (< 0.1%). With the building of new generation recoil separators and gamma-ray arrays, a substantial increase in detection efficiency has been achieved. This allows for the opportunity to measure excited states in nuclei with cross-sections below 100 nb. In this paper, results from the coupling of a modest array of CSGe detectors (AYE-Ball) and a current generation Ge array (Gammasphere) with a recoil separator (FMA) will be presented.

The structure of a collisionless scrape-off-layer (SOL) plasma in tokamak reactors is being studied to define the electron distribution function and the corresponding sheath potential between the divertor plate and the edge plasma. The collisionless model is shown to be valid during the thermal phase of a plasma disruption, as well as during the newly desired low-recycling normal phase of operation with low-density, high-temperature, edge plasma conditions. An analytical solution is developed by solving the Fokker-Planck equation for electron distribution and balance in the SOL. The solution is in good agreement with numerical studies using Monte-Carlo methods. The analytical solutions provide an insight to the role of different physical and geometrical processes in a collisionless SOL during disruptions and during the enhanced phase of normal operation over a wide range of parameters.

Funeral program for Ida Nell Bates Duncan, born August 29, 1926. The funeral was held March 15, 1999 at Friendship Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. R. L. Archield. The funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and she was buried in Meadowlawn Memorial Park in San Antonio, Texas.

Funeral program for Mr. Thomas T. (Carney) Eggleston, Sr., born June 21, 1918 and died March 1999. The funeral was held March 15, 1999 at Friendship Baptist Church, officiated by Reverend R. L. Archield, Sr. Funeral arrangements were made through Sutton-Sutton Mortuary, Inc. and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

Semi-monthly newspaper from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

This report examines the subsidies that families might receive under the Child Care and Development Fund(CCDF) and the Dependent care tax credit(DCTC) and the subsequent out-of-pocket costs they might bear, depending on their income and the state in which they live.

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

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

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