Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to granting the legislature permission to adjourn for more than three days during the period beginning on Wednesday, February 25, 2009, and ending on Monday, March 2, 2009.

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

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 1990, GAO has consistently designated the Department of Defense's (DOD) management of its major weapon acquisitions as a high-risk area. A broad consensus exists that weapon system problems are serious, but efforts at reform have had limited impact. Last year, GAO reported that DOD's portfolio of weapon programs experienced cost growth of $295 billion from first estimates, were delayed by an average of 21 months, and delivered fewer quantities and capabilities to the warfighter than originally planned. At a time when DOD faces increased fiscal pressures from ongoing operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the federal budget is strained by a growing number of priorities, it is critical that the department effectively manage its substantial investment in weapon system programs. Every dollar wasted or used inefficiently on acquiring weapon systems means that less money is available for the government's other important budgetary demands. This testimony describes the systemic problems that contribute to the cost, schedule, and performance problems in weapon system programs, recent actions that DOD has taken to address these problems, proposed reform legislation that the committee recently introduced, and additional steps needed to improve future …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the Department of Defense's (DOD) efforts to reduce fuel demand at its forward-deployed locations, particularly those that are not connected to local power grids. In 2008, more than 68 million gallons of fuel, on average, were supplied by DOD each month to support U.S. military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Transporting large quantities of fuel to forward-deployed locations presents an enormous logistics burden and risk. Long truck convoys moving fuel to forward-deployed locations have encountered enemy attacks, severe weather, traffic accidents, and pilferage. For example, DOD reported that in June 2008 alone, 44 trucks and 220,000 gallons of fuel were lost due to attacks or other events while delivering fuel to Bagram Air Field in Afghanistan. High fuel demand, coupled with the recent volatility of fuel prices, also have significant implications for DOD's operating costs. The fully burdened cost of fuel--that is, the total ownership cost of buying, moving, and protecting fuel in systems during combat--has been reported to be many times higher than the price of a gallon of fuel itself. While DOD's weapon systems require large amounts of fuel, the department reports that …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was created in March 2003 as part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). From fiscal year 2003 through fiscal year 2007, the average daily population of detainees in ICE custody increased by about 40 percent, with the most growth occurring since fiscal year 2005. In fiscal year 2007, ICE held over 311,000 detainees at more than 500 detention facilities. Most of these were Intergovernmental Service Agreement (IGSA) facilities--state and local jails under contract with ICE to hold detainees. Some ICE detainees received health care services from IGSA staff, IGSA contractors, or community medical providers, and other ICE detainees received health care provided or arranged by the Division of Immigration Health Services (DIHS). DIHS is mainly composed of contract employees and officers from the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) Commissioned Corps--a uniformed service of public health professionals who are part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and who provide services in different settings, including ICE detention facilities. In light of questions about the health care provided to detainees in ICE custody, Congress requested information about ICE's organizational structure and its …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of the Interior is responsible for managing much of the nation's vast natural resources. Its agencies implement an array of programs intended to protect these precious resources for future generations while also allowing certain uses of them, such as oil and gas development and recreation. In some cases, Interior is authorized to collect royalties and fees for these uses. Over the years, GAO has reported on challenges facing Interior as it implements its programs. In addition to basic program management issues, Interior faces difficult choices in balancing its many responsibilities, and in improving the condition of the nation's natural resources and the department's infrastructure, in light of the federal deficit and long-term fiscal challenges facing the nation. This testimony highlights some of the major management challenges facing Interior today. It is based on prior GAO reports."

We measure rate asymmetries for the rare decays B {yields} K{sup (*)}{ell}{sup +}{ell}{sup -}, where {ell}{sup +}{ell}{sup -} is either e{sup +}e{sup -} or {mu}{sup +}{mu}{sup -}, using a sample of 384 million B{bar B} events collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II e{sup +}e{sup -} collider. We find no evidence for direct CP or lepton-flavor asymmetries. For dilepton masses below the J/{psi} resonance, we find evidence for unexpectedly large isospin asymmetries in both B {yields} K{ell}{sup +}{ell}{sup -} and B {yields} K*{ell}{sup +}{ell}{sup -} which differ respectively by 3.2{sigma} and 2.7{sigma}, including systematic uncertainties, from the Standard Model expectations.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Recovery from major disasters is a complex undertaking that involves the combined efforts of federal, state, and local government in order to succeed. While the federal government provides a significant amount of financial and technical assistance for recovery, state and local jurisdictions work closely with federal agencies to secure and make use of those resources. This testimony describes lessons and insights that GAO has identified from review of past disasters, which may be useful to inform recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricanes Ike and Gustav, as well as disasters yet to come. These lessons come from two reports GAO recently released last fall on disaster recovery. The first draws on the experiences of communities that have recovered from previous major disasters in order to help inform recovery efforts in the wake of Hurricanes Ike and Gustav as well as the 2008 Midwest floods. The second examines the implementation of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Public Assistance grant program and identifies several actions that the Department of Homeland Security can take to improve operations of that program. These include improving information sharing and enhancing continuity and communication. …

The objective of this project is to develop novel non-precious metal electrocatalysts for oxygen reduction reaction (ORR), and demonstrate the potential of the catalysts to perform at least as good as conventional Pt catalysts currently in use in polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) with a cost at least 50 % less than a target of 0.2 g (Pt loading)/peak kW and with durability > 2,000 h operation with less than 10 % power degradation. A novel nitrogen-modified carbon-based catalyst was obtained by modifying carbon black with nitrogen-containing organic precursor in the absence of transition metal precursor. The catalyst shows the onset potential of approximately 0.76 V (NHE) for ORR and the amount of H2O2 of approximately 3% at 0.5 V (NHE). Furthermore, a carbon composite catalyst was achieved through the high-temperature pyrolysis of the precursors of transition metal (Co and Fe) and nitrogen supported on the nitrogen-modified carbon-based catalyst, followed by chemical post-treatment. This catalyst showed an onset potential for ORR as high as 0.87 V (NHE), and generated less than 1 % of H2O2. The PEM fuel cell exhibited a current density of 2.3 A cm-2 at 0.2 V for a catalyst loading of 6.0 mg cm-2. No …

This report discusses the energy appropriations in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA, P.L. 111-5). It includes background information, a summary of provisions, and detailed explanations of the relevant appropriations and tax provisions.

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

This report provides a feasibility study for the heating of Tribal buildings using woody biomass. The study was conducted for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Reservation in western Montana. S&K Holding Company and TP Roche Company completed the study and worked together to provide the final report. This project was funded by the DOE's Tribal Energy Program.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

Funeral program for Willie Mae Hopkins, born March 20, 1935 and died February 26, 2009. The funeral was held March 3, 2009 at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. Andrew Wilson. Funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and she was buried in Meadowlawn Memorial Park in San Antonio, Texas.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) at the Savannah River Site vitrifies radioactive High Level Waste (HLW) for repository internment. The process consists of three major steps: waste pretreatment, vitrification, and canister decontamination/sealing. HLW consists of insoluble metal hydroxides (primarily iron, aluminum, calcium, magnesium, manganese, and uranium) and soluble sodium salts (carbonate, hydroxide, nitrite, nitrate, and sulfate). The pretreatment process in the Chemical Processing Cell (CPC) consists of two process tanks, the Sludge Receipt and Adjustment Tank (SRAT) and the Slurry Mix Evaporator (SME) as well as a melter feed tank. During SRAT processing, nitric and formic acids are added to the sludge to lower pH, destroy nitrite and carbonate ions, and reduce mercury and manganese. During the SME cycle, glass formers are added, and the batch is concentrated to the final solids target prior to vitrification. During these processes, hydrogen can be produced by catalytic decomposition of excess formic acid. The waste contains silver, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, and mercury, but silver and palladium have been shown to be insignificant factors in catalytic hydrogen generation during the DWPF process. A full factorial experimental design was developed to ensure that the existence of statistically significant two-way interactions could be determined without …

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A highly efficient DC to DC converter has been developed for low-voltage high-current solid oxide fuel cells. The newly developed 'V6' converter resembles what has been done in internal combustion engine that split into multiple cylinders to increase the output capacity without having to increase individual cell size and to smooth out the torque with interleaving operation. The development was started with topology overview to ensure that all the DC to DC converter circuits were included in the study. Efficiency models for different circuit topologies were established, and computer simulations were performed to determine the best candidate converter circuit. Through design optimization including topology selection, device selection, magnetic component design, thermal design, and digital controller design, a bench prototype rated 5-kW, with 20 to 50V input and 200/400V output was fabricated and tested. Efficiency goal of 97% was proven achievable through hardware experiment. This DC to DC converter was then modified in the later stage to converter 35 to 63 V input and 13.8 V output for automotive charging applications. The complete prototype was tested at Delphi with their solid oxide fuel cell test stand to verify the performance of the modified DC to DC converter. The output was tested …

This report is an overview of the Medicare Advantage (MA) program, an alternative way for Medicare beneficiaries to receive covered benefits, and includes legislative history and analysis of recent trends.

We previously showed that the expression of troponin T1 (Tnnt 1) was induced in the central nervous system (CNS) of adultmice 30 min after treatment with ketamine, a glutamate N-methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) receptor antagonist. We hypothesized that Tnnt 1 expression may be an early molecular biomarker of stress response in the CNS of mice. To further evaluate this hypothesis, we investigated the regional expression of Tnnt 1 in the mouse brain using RNA in situ hybridization 4 h after systemic exposure to interferon-a (IFN-a) and gamma ionizing radiation, both of which have be associated with wide ranges of neuropsychiatric complications. Adult B6C3F1 male mice were treated with either human IFN-a (a single i.p. injection at 1 x 105 IU/kg) or whole body gamma-radiation (10 cGy or 2 Gy). Patterns of Tnnt 1 transcript expression were compared in various CNS regions after IFN-a, radiation and ketamine treatments (previous study). Tnnt 1 expression was consistently induced in pyramidal neurons of cerebral cortex and hippocampus after all treatment regimens including 10 cGy of ionizing radiation. Regional expression of Tnnt 1 was induced in Purkinje cells of cerebellum after ionizing radiation and ketamine treatment; but not after IFN-a treatment. None of the three treatments …

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