Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Congress passed legislation creating the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 1997 to reduce the number of uninsured children in families with incomes that are too high to qualify for Medicaid. For SCHIP, the Congress appropriated $40 billion over 10 years, with funds allotted annually to the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. commonwealths and territories. States' participation in SCHIP is voluntary. States that do participate have three options in designing their SCHIP programs: expand the Medicaid program to include SCHIP-eligible children, develop a separate child health insurance program, or maintain a program that combines both of these options. Financed jointly by the states and the federal government, SCHIP offers a strong incentive for states to participate by offering a higher federal matching rate--that is, the federal government pays a larger proportion of program expenditures--than the Medicaid program. While this incentive encourages efforts to reduce the number of uninsured children through state participation in SCHIP, there have been concerns that states might inappropriately enroll Medicaid-eligible children in SCHIP and thus obtain higher federal matching funds than allowed under Medicaid. In addition, there has …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO discussed before Congress the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) management and oversight of the Packers and Stockyards Act. Within USDA, the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) is responsible for administering the Packers and Stockyards Act and investigating concerns about unfair and anticompetitive practices in the $90 billion livestock market. Prior reports issued by the USDA Office of Inspector General (OIG) and our office have identified weaknesses in GIPSA's investigation and enforcement activities, and recommended actions to address them. A more recent OIG report shows that, in several key areas, GIPSA still has not taken sufficient steps to address those recommendations. This testimony focuses on our prior work and discusses (1) factors that have affected GIPSA's ability to investigate concerns about anticompetitive practices, (2) GIPSA's actions to address our recommendations and areas where their efforts have fallen short, and (3) challenges and other issues we believe GIPSA should consider as it moves to further strengthen its capacity to address competitiveness issues."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Improper payments are a longstanding, widespread, and significant problem in the federal government. The Congress enacted the Improper Payments Information Act of 2002 (IPIA) to address this issue. Fiscal year 2005 marked the second year that federal agencies governmentwide were required to report improper payment information under IPIA. One result of IPIA has been increased visibility over improper payments by requiring federal agencies to identify programs and activities susceptible to improper payments, estimate the amount of their improper payments, and report on the amounts of improper payments and their actions to reduce them in their annual performance and accountability reports (PAR). GAO was asked to testify on the progress being made by agencies in complying with requirements of IPIA and the magnitude of improper payments. As part of the review, GAO looked at (1) the extent to which agencies have performed risk assessments, (2) the annual amount of improper payments estimated, and (3) the amount of improper payments recouped through recovery audits."

The point spread function (PSF) is an important measure of spatial resolution in CCDs for point-like objects, since it affects image quality and spectroscopic resolution. We present new data and theoretical developments for lateral charge diffusion in thick, fully-depleted charge-coupled devices (CCDs) developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Because they can be over-depleted, the LBNL devices have no field-free region and diffusion is controlled through the application of an external bias voltage. We give results for a 3512 x 3512 format, 10.5 {micro}m pixel back-illuminated p-channel CCD developed for the SuperNova/Acceleration Probe (SNAP), a proposed satellite-based experiment designed to study dark energy. The PSF was measured at substrate bias voltages between 3 V and 115 V. At a bias voltage of 115 V, we measure an rms diffusion of 3.7 {+-} 0.2 {micro}m. Lateral charge diffusion in LBNL CCDs will meet the SNAP requirements.

There are divergent results in the literature on the(in)dependence of the ion velocity distribution functions on the ioncharge states. Apparently, most time-of-flight methods of measurementsindicate independence whereas most measurements with electrostaticanalyzers state the opposite. It is shown here that this grouping iscoincidental with investigations of pulsed and continuous arcs. Allresults can be consolidated by taking ion-neutral interaction intoaccount, especially charge exchange collisions with the metal neutralsproduced by the arc itself. The velocity distribution functions areindependent of charge state when produced at cathode spots but becomecharge-state dependent when the plasma interacts withneutrals.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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

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

Letter, sticker, pamphlet, and photocopied newspaper clippings from Sandra Cisneros to Sterling Houston, prominent San Antonio playwright. She writes to praise his participation in a group reading panel sponsored by Amnesty International and other organizations. The event, "We Say No: Writers Against Torture", brought together a variety of academics and writers for one night in San Antonio Central Library. The material enclosed by Cisneros corresponds with the event.

This report includes information regarding background and the United States policy response to terrorism and national security.

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Texas Daily Newspaper Association's 2006 Bright Idea entries for work conceived in 2005. A list of newspapers and their work have been nominated for four different levels of the Bright Idea awards, Under 10,000, 10,000 to 35,000, 35,000 to 100,000 and Over 100,000.

Self-organized one- and two-dimensional arrays of nanoscale surface features ("ripples" and "dots") sometimes form spontaneously on initially flat surfaces eroded by a directed ion beam in a process called "sputter patterning". Experiments on this sputter patterning process with focused and unfocused ion beams, combined with theoretical advances, have been responsible for a number of scientific advances. Particularly noteworthy are (i) the discovery of propagative, rather than dissipative, behavior under some ion erosion conditions, permitting a pattern to be fabricated at a large length scale and propagated over large distances while maintaining, or even sharpening, the sharpest features; (ii) the first demonstration of guided self-organization of sputter patterns, along with the observation that defect density is minimized when the spacing between boundaries is near an integer times the natural spatial period; and (iii) the discovery of metastability of smooth surfaces, which contradicts the nearly universally accepted linear stability theory that predicts that any surface is linearly unstable to sinusoidal perturbations of some wave vector.

Radioactive supernate, salt, and/or sludge wastes (i.e., high level wastes) are confined in 49 underground storage tanks at the Savannah River Site (SRS). The waste is transported between tanks within and between the F and H area tank farms and other facilities on site via underground and a limited number of aboveground transfer lines. The Department of Energy - Savannah River Operations Office (DOE-SR) performed a comprehensive assessment of the structural integrity program for the Tank Farm waste transfer system at the SRS. This document addresses the following issues raised during the DOE assessment: (1) Inspections of failed or replaced transfer lines indicated that the wall thickness of some core and jacket piping is less than nominal; (2) No corrosion allowance is utilized in the transfer line structural qualification calculations. No basis for neglecting corrosion was provided in the calculations; (3) Wall loss due to erosion is not addressed in the transfer line structural qualification calculations; and (4) No basis is provided for neglecting intergranular stress corrosion cracking in the transfer line structural qualification calculations. The common theme in most of these issues is the need to assess the potential for occurrence of material degradation of the transfer line piping. …

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The Image Content Engine (ICE) is a framework of software and underlying mathematical and physical models that enable scientists and analysts to extract features from Terabytes of imagery and search the extracted features for content relevant to their problem domain. The ICE team has developed a set of tools for feature extraction and analysis of image data, primarily based on the image content. The scale and volume of imagery that must be searched presents a formidable computation and data bandwidth challenge, and a search of moderate to large scale imagery quickly becomes intractable without exploiting high degrees of data parallelism in the feature extraction engine. In this paper we describe the software and hardware architecture developed to build a data parallel processing engine for ICE. We discuss our highly tunable parallel process and job scheduling subsystem, remote procedure invocation, parallel I/O strategy, and our experience in running ICE on a 16 node, 32 processing element (CPU) Linux Cluster. We present performance and benchmark results, and describe how we obtain excellent speedup for the imagery searches in our test-bed prototype.

The microenvironment surrounding cells influences gene expression, such that a cell's behavior is largely determined by its interactions with the extracellular matrix, neighboring cells, and soluble cues released locally or by distant tissues. We describe the essential role of context and organ structure in directing mammary gland development and differentiated function, and in determining response to oncogenic insults including mutations. We expand on the concept of 'dynamic reciprocity' to present an integrated view of development, cancer, and aging, and posit that genes are like piano keys: while essential, it is the context that makes the music.

This paper addresses the issue of production of charm orbottom quarks in association with a high pT process in hadron hadroncollision. These quarks can be produced either as part of the hardscattering process or as a remnant from the structure functions. Thelatter sums terms of the type (alpha_s log(pT/mq))n. If structurefunctions of charm or bottom quarks are used together with a hard processwhich also allows production of these quarks double counting occurs. Thispaper describes the correct procedure and provides two examples of itsimplimentation in single top and Drell-Yan at the LHC.

The M6.0 2004 Parkfield and M7.0 1989 Loma Prietastrike-slip earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault (SAF) were preceded byseismicity peaks occurring several months prior to the main events.Earthquakes directly within the SAF zone were intentionally excluded fromthe analysis because they manifest stress-release processes rather thanstress accumulation. The observed increase in seismicity is interpretedas a signature of the increasing stress level in the surrounding crust,whereas the peaks and the subsequent decrease in seismicity areattributed to damage-induced softening processes. Furthermore, in bothcases there is a distinctive zone of low seismic activity that surroundsthe epicentral region in the pre-event period. The increase of seismicityin the crust surrounding a potential future event and the development ofa low-seismicity epicentral zone can be regarded as promising precursoryinformation that could help signal the arrival of large earthquakes. TheGutenberg-Richter relationship (GRR) should allow extrapolation ofseismicity changes down to seismic noise level magnitudes. Thishypothesis is verified by comparison of seismic noise at 80 Hz with theParkfield M4 1993-1994 series, where noise peaks 5 months before theseries to about twice the background level.

A review of the data collected during ultrasonic inspection of the Type I high level waste tanks has been completed. The data was analyzed for relevance to the possibility of vapor space corrosion and liquid/air interface corrosion. The review of the Type I tank UT inspection data has confirmed that the vapor space general corrosion is not an unusually aggressive phenomena and correlates well with predicted corrosion rates for steel exposed to bulk solution. The corrosion rates are seen to decrease with time as expected. The review of the temperature data did not reveal any obvious correlations between high temperatures and the occurrences of leaks. The complex nature of temperature-humidity interaction, particularly with respect to vapor corrosion requires further understanding to infer any correlation. The review of the waste level data also did not reveal any obvious correlations.

We report the discovery of a galaxy cluster at z = 1.41. ISCS J143809+341419 was found in the Spitzer/IRAC Shallow Survey of the Bootes field in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey carried out by IRAC. The cluster candidate was initially identified as a high density region of objects with photometric redshifts in the range 1.3 < z < 1.5. Optical spectroscopy of a limited number of objects in the region shows that 5 galaxies within a {approx}120 arcsec diameter region lie at z = 1.41 {+-} 0.01. Most of these member galaxies have broad-band colors consistent with the expected spectral energy distribution of a passively-evolving elliptical galaxy formed at high redshift. The redshift of ISCS J143809+341419 is the highest currently known for a spectroscopically-confirmed cluster of galaxies.

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