This report discusses the recent development in different programs administered by U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with the goal to promote agricultural exports and to provide food aid. These programs include direct export subsidies, export market development, export credit guarantees, and foreign food aid.

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

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

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This report is on The Animal Welfare Act: Background and Selected Legislation.

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

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

This report discusses the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) Program, also known as the FIRE Act grant program, which provides federal grants directly to local fire departments and Emergency Medical Services (EMS) organizations.

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

This report provides information about the Regulatory and Policy Issues Broadband over Power lines.

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

James Abijah Brooks (1855-1944) was one of the four Great Captains in Texas Ranger history, others including Bill McDonald, John Hughes, and John Rogers. Over the years historians have referred to the captain as “John” Brooks, because he tended to sign with his initials, but also because W. W. Sterling’s classic Trails and Trials of a Texas Ranger mistakenly named him as Captain John Brooks. Born and raised in Civil War-torn Kentucky, a reckless adventurer on the American and Texas frontier, and a quick-draw Texas Ranger captain who later turned in his six-shooter to serve as a county judge, Brooks’s life reflects the raucous era of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-century American West. As a Texas Ranger, Brooks participated in the high profile events of his day, from the fence-cutting wars to the El Paso prizefight, from the Conner Fight–where he lost three fingers from his left hand–to the Temple rail strike, all with a resolute demeanor and a fast gun. A shoot-out in Indian Territory nearly cost him his life and then jeopardized his career, and a lifelong bout with old Kentucky bourbon did the same. With three other distinguished Ranger captains, Brooks witnessed and helped promote the …

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

NSTX operates at low aspect ratio (R/a~1.3) and high beta (up to 40%), allowing tests of global confinement and local transport properties that have been established from higher aspect ratio devices. NSTX plasmas are heated by up to 7 MW of deuterium neutral beams with preferential electron heating as expected for ITER. Confinement scaling studies indicate a strong ΒΤ dependence, with a current dependence that is weaker than that observed at higher aspect ratio. Dimensionless scaling experiments indicate a strong increase of confinement with decreasing collisionality and a weak degradation with beta. The increase of confinement with ΒΤ is due to reduced transport in the electron channel, while the improvement with plasma current is due to reduced transport in the ion channel related to the decrease in the neoclassical transport level. Improved electron confinement has been observed in plasmas with strong reversed magnetic shear, showing the existence of an electron internal transport barrier (eITB). The development of the eITB may be associated with a reduction in the growth of microtearing modes in the plasma core. Perturbative studies show that while L-mode plasmas with reversed magnetic shear and an eITB exhibit slow changes of LΤe across the profile after the pellet …

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Future Combat System (FCS) is central to Army transformation efforts, comprising 14 integrated weapon systems and an advanced information network. In previous work, GAO found that the elements of a sound business case--firm requirements, mature technologies, a knowledge-based acquisition strategy, a realistic cost estimate, and sufficient funding--were not present. As a result, FCS is considered high risk and in need of special oversight and review. Congress has mandated that the Department of Defense (DOD) decide in early 2009 whether FCS should continue. GAO is required to review the program annually. In this report, GAO analyzes FCS development, including its requirements definition; status of critical technologies, software development, and complementary programs; soundness of its acquisition strategy related to design, production and spin-out of capabilities to current forces; and reasonableness of costs and sufficiency of funding."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the next 5 years, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) expects to invest $49 billion in the BMD system's development and fielding. MDA's strategy is to field new capabilities in 2-year blocks. In January 2006, MDA initiated its second block--Block 2006--to protect against attacks from North Korea and the Middle East. Congress requires GAO to assess MDA's progress annually. This year's report addresses MDA's progress during fiscal year 2006 and follows up on program oversight issues and the current status of MDA's quality assurance program. GAO assessed the progress of each element being developed by MDA, examined acquisition laws applicable to major acquisition programs, and reviewed the impact of implemented quality initiatives."

Determination of application times-to-solution for large-scale clustered computers continues to be a difficult problem in high-end computing, which will only become more challenging as multi-core consumer machines become more prevalent in the market. Both researchers and consumers of these multi-core systems desire reasonable estimates of how long their programs will take to run (time-to-solution, or TTS), and how many resources will be consumed in the execution. Currently there are few methods of determining these values, and those that do exist are either overly simplistic in their assumptions or require great amounts of effort to parameterize and understand. One previously untried method is queuing network modeling (QNM), which is easy to parameterize and solve, and produces results that typically fall within 10 to 30% of the actual TTS for our test cases. Using characteristics of the computer network (bandwidth, latency) and communication patterns (number of messages, message length, time spent in communication), the QNM model of the NAS-PB CG application was applied to MCR and ALC, supercomputers at LLNL, and the Keck Cluster at USF, with average errors of 2.41%, 3.61%, and -10.73%, respectively, compared to the actual TTS observed. While additional work is necessary to improve the predictive capabilities of …

Bioremediation of metals and radionuclides has had manyfield tests, demonstrations, and full-scale implementations in recentyears. Field research in this area has occurred for many different metalsand radionuclides using a wide array of strategies. These strategies canbe generally characterized in six major categories: biotransformation,bioaccumulation/bisorption, biodegradation of chelators, volatilization,treatment trains, and natural attenuation. For all field applicationsthere are a number of critical biogeochemical issues that most beaddressed for the successful field application. Monitoring andcharacterization parameters that are enabling to bioremediation of metalsand radionuclides are presented here. For each of the strategies a casestudy is presented to demonstrate a field application that uses thisstrategy.

A strong effect of a moderately elevated surface temperature on net carbon deposition and deuterium co-deposition in the DIII-D divertor was observed under detached conditions. A DiMES sample with a gap 2 mm wide and 18 mm deep was exposed to lower-single-null (LSN) L-mode plasmas first at room temperature, and then at 200 C. At the elevated temperature, deuterium co-deposition in the gap was reduced by an order of magnitude. At the plasma-facing surface of the heated sample net carbon erosion was measured at a rate of 3 nm/s, whereas without heating net deposition is normally observed under detachment. In a related experiment three sets of molybdenum mirrors recessed 2 cm below the divertor floor were exposed to identical LSN ELMy H-mode discharges. The first set of mirrors exposed at ambient temperature exhibited net carbon deposition at a rate of up to 3.7 nm/s and suffered a significant drop in reflectivity. In contrast, two other mirror sets exposed at elevated temperatures between 90 C and 175 C exhibited practically no carbon deposition.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree

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

The Earned Income Tax Credit began in 1975 as a temporary program to return a portion of the Social Security taxes paid by lower-income taxpayers, and was made permanent in 1978. In the 1990s, the program because a major component of federal efforts to reduce poverty, and is now the largest anti-poverty entitlement program. This report contains information on eligibility for the program, credit amount, participation, interaction with other tax provisions, issues, compliance, and more as related to the Earned Income Tax Credit.

The accidental overfilling of waste liquid from tank BX-102 at the Hanford Site in 1951 put about 10 metric tons of U(VI) into the vadose zone. In order to understand the dominant geochemical reactions and transport processes occurred during the initial infiltration and help understand current spatial distribution, we simulated the waste liquid spilling event in laboratory sediment columns using synthesized metal waste solution. We found that, as the plume propagating through sediments, pH decreased greatly (as much as 4 units) at the moving plume front. Infiltration flow rates strongly affect U behavior. Slower flow rates resulted in higher sediment-associated U concentrations, and higher flow rates ({ge} 5 cm/day) permitted practically unretarded U transport. Therefore, given the very high K{sub sat} of most of Hanford formation, the low permeability zones within the sediment could have been most important in retaining high concentrations of U during initial release into the vadose zone. Massive amount of colloids, including U-colloids, formed at the plume fronts. Total U concentrations (aqueous and colloid) within plume fronts exceeded the source concentration by up to 5-fold. Uranium colloid formation and accumulation at the neutralized plume front could be one mechanism responsible for highly heterogeneous U distribution observed …