Testimony 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 Ballistic Missile Defense System's (BMDS) 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. GAO's March 2007 report addressed MDA's progress during fiscal year 2006 and followed 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."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is implementing three tax system changes during the 2007 filing season that potentially could impact compliance by taxpayers as well as IRS's service to taxpayers. These changes are (1) the telephone excise tax refund (TETR), which can be requested by all individuals and entities that paid the excise tax regardless of whether they have an obligation to file a tax return, (2) the option to deposit refunds into up to three accounts, hereafter referred to as the split refund option, and (3) the extension of some tax provisions that had expired, hereafter referred to as the extender provisions. Because the 2007 filing season may be complicated by these changes, the Senate Committee on Finance asked GAO to determine the effects of these changes on compliance and taxpayer service including (1) the number of individuals or entities affected by these changes, (2) how the changes were expected to affect compliance and the results of compliance activities to date, and (3) the impact of the changes on returns processing and taxpayer service. GAO analyzed IRS documents and data from IRS databases and interviewed …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As people age, their physical, visual, and cognitive abilities may decline, making it more difficult for them to drive safely. Older drivers are also more likely to suffer injuries or die in crashes than drivers in other age groups. These safety issues will increase in significance because older adults represent the fastest-growing U.S. population segment. GAO examined (1) what the federal government has done to promote practices to make roads safer for older drivers and the extent to which states have implemented those practices, (2) the extent to which states assess the fitness of older drivers and what support the federal government has provided, and (3) what initiatives selected states have implemented to improve the safety of older drivers. To conduct this study, GAO surveyed 51 state departments of transportation (DOT), visited six states, and interviewed federal transportation officials."

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This is the companion product to GAO-07-413. This document presents selected results of GAO's survey of the departments of transportation (DOT) in 50 states and the District of Columbia to obtain information on the extent to which states have implemented practices to make roads safer for older drivers. The questions in our survey were posed to obtain information on the extent to which states have incorporated Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) recommendations to design roads with features to enhance safety for older drivers, reasons for state DOTs rejecting FHWA recommendations, the proportion of practitioners that have been trained in state DOTs to implement FHWA recommendations, and the extent to which states have developed plans and programmed projects for older driver safety. The survey was e-mailed to DOT officials in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and we obtained a response from each of the survey recipients. We do not include responses for all survey questions. Specifically, this document does not include narrative responses that we received. Additionally, this document does not contain responses to questions 4 and 6 because many states did not answer these …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In light of the pressing need for rental housing affordable to low-income households and concerns that the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) may not be committed to maintaining its Section 8 project-based housing stock--a key source of such housing--Congress directed GAO to assess HUD's efforts to preserve its project-based housing and recommend ways to improve these efforts. This report discusses (1) patterns in the volume and characteristics of HUD's Section 8 project-based properties; (2) tools and incentives that are available to encourage property owners to stay in the program; and (3) the views of property owners, managers, and industry representatives on HUD's preservation efforts. To address these issues, GAO analyzed HUD data, reviewed pertinent legislation and regulations, and interviewed HUD officials and industry representatives."

Homologous recombination (HR) repairs chromosome damage and is indispensable for tumor suppression in humans. RAD51 mediates the DNA strand pairing step in HR. RAD51AP1 (RAD51 Associated Protein 1) is a RAD51-interacting protein whose function has remained elusive. Knockdown of RAD51AP1 in human cells by RNA interference engenders sensitivity to different types of genotoxic stress. Moreover, RAD51AP1-depleted cells are impaired for the recombinational repair of a DNA double-strand break and exhibit chromatid breaks both spontaneously and upon DNA damaging treatment. Purified RAD51AP1 binds dsDNA and RAD51, and it greatly stimulates the RAD51-mediated D-loop reaction. Biochemical and cytological results show that RAD51AP1 functions at a step subsequent to the assembly of the RAD51-ssDNA nucleoprotein filament. Our findings provide the first evidence that RAD51AP1 helps maintain genomic integrity via RAD51 recombinase enhancement.

We have developed a nucleic acid-based assay that is rapid, sensitive, specific, and can be used for the simultaneous detection of 5 common human respiratory pathogens including influenza A, influenza B, parainfluenza type 1 and 3, respiratory syncytial virus, and adenovirus group B, C, and E. Typically, diagnosis on an un-extracted clinical sample can be provided in less than 3 hours, including sample collection, preparation, and processing, as well as data analysis. Such a multiplexed panel would enable rapid broad-spectrum pathogen testing on nasal swabs, and therefore allow implementation of infection control measures, and timely administration of antiviral therapies. This article presents a summary of the assay performance in terms of sensitivity and specificity. Limits of detection are provided for each targeted respiratory pathogen, and result comparisons are performed on clinical samples, our goal being to compare the sensitivity and specificity of the multiplexed assay to the combination of immunofluorescence and shell vial culture currently implemented at the UCDMC hospital. Overall, the use of the multiplexed RT-PCR assay reduced the rate of false negatives by 4% and reduced the rate of false positives by up to 10%. The assay correctly identified 99.3% of the clinical negatives, 97% of adenovirus, 95% …

The theory of the strong nuclear force, Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), can be numerically simulated from first principles on massively-parallel supercomputers using the method of Lattice Gauge Theory. We describe the special programming requirements of lattice QCD (LQCD) as well as the optimal supercomputer hardware architectures that it suggests. We demonstrate these methods on the BlueGene massively-parallel supercomputer and argue that LQCD and the BlueGene architecture are a natural match. This can be traced to the simple fact that LQCD is a regular lattice discretization of space into lattice sites while the BlueGene supercomputer is a discretization of space into compute nodes, and that both are constrained by requirements of locality. This simple relation is both technologically important and theoretically intriguing. The main result of this paper is the speedup of LQCD using up to 131,072 CPUs on the largest BlueGene/L supercomputer. The speedup is perfect with sustained performance of about 20% of peak. This corresponds to a maximum of 70.5 sustained TFlop/s. At these speeds LQCD and BlueGene are poised to produce the next generation of strong interaction physics theoretical results.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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

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

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to honoring Emma Jean Schulle on her retirement as the Caldwell County district clerk.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to recognizing March 28, 2007, as Paris/Lamar County Day at the State Capitol.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to recognizing March 27 and 28, 2007, as Longview/Gregg County Days at the State Capitol.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to commending the Together Rx Access card program and participating pharmaceutical companies for their efforts to help uninsured Texans get prescription medication at reduced rates.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to in memory of David Lee Crowson of Longview.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to congratulating Homer L. Thornton, Jr., of Paris, Texas, on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

Single-sided program for the gateway marker dedication ceremony in Cleveland, Texas. The heading "Discover Cleveland" is at the top of the program, right above an illustration of the gateway marker. According to the program, the creation of the gateway marker was a 2006 project of the "Keep Cleveland Beautiful Organization." On April 11, 2007, at 10 a.m. the ceremony was held at the site of the marker, Highway 59 South at Washington Avenue.

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This report discusses a plan announced by EPA in January 2005, called the Air Compliance Agreement, that would produce air quality monitoring data on animal agriculture emissions from a small number of farms, while at the same time protecting all participants (including farms where no monitoring takes place) through a “safe harbor” from liability under certain provisions of federal environmental laws.

The 2001 recession was unusually mild and brief by historical standards. At 120 months, the expansion that preceded it had been the longest in U.S. history. Is this a coincidence? A body of research concludes that it is not. This report discusses several theories for what caused this phenomenon.

This report is about new directions from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the 110th Congress.

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