Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For years, in addition to experiencing challenges in making disability claims decisions more quickly and reducing its claims backlog, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has faced challenges in improving the accuracy and consistency of its decisions. GAO was asked to discuss issues surrounding VA's Systematic Technical Accuracy Review (STAR) program, a disability compensation and pension quality assurance program, and possible ways, if any, this program could be improved. This statement focuses on actions VA has taken; including those in response to past GAO recommendations, to (1) address identified weaknesses with STAR and (2) improve efforts to monitor the consistency of claims decisions. This statement is based on GAO's prior work, which examined several aspects of STAR, as well as VA's consistency review activities, and on updated information GAO obtained from VA on quality assurance issues that GAO and VA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) have identified. GAO also reviewed VA's OIG March 2009 report on STAR. GAO is not making any new recommendations."

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

Most interesting materials in nature are heterogeneous, so it is useful to have analytical techniques with spatial resolution sufficient to resolve these heterogeneities.This article presents the basics of X-ray photon-in/photon-out chemical imaging. This family of methods allows one to derive images reflectingthe chemical state of a given element in a complex sample, at micron or deep sub-micron scale. X-ray chemical imaging is relatively non-destructiveand element-selective, and requires minimal sample preparation. The article presents the basic concepts and some considerations of data takingand data analysis, along with some examples.

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