A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) provides healthcare to millions of veterans at VA's medical centers and healthcare facilities across the country. To support veterans, VA manages a Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) program and a national contract program. Both use VA's sizeable buying power to provide VA and other federal agencies discounts on medical products and services. To cover its costs in running the FSS program, VA charges its customers a user fee. Although sales through VA's FSS and national contracts totaled almost $7 billion in fiscal year 2003, concerns have been raised about the efficiency of these contract programs. GAO was asked to determine whether the FSS and national contracts have provided medical products at favorable prices and to identify opportunities to improve purchasing practices and increase savings. GAO was also asked to determine if VA's user fee is sufficient to cover program cost."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "A successful terrorist attack on Department of Energy (DOE) sites containing the material used in nuclear weapons, called special nuclear material, could have devastating consequences for the site and its surrounding communities. Because of these risks, DOE needs an effective safeguards and security program. A key component of an effective program is the design basis threat (DBT), a classified document that identifies, among other things, the potential size and capabilities of terrorist forces. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, rendered the then-current DBT obsolete resulting in DOE issuing a new version in May 2003. GAO examined the issues that could impede the ability of DOE's Office of Energy, Science and Environment to fully meet the threat contained in the May 2003 DBT by the department's fiscal year 2006 deadline."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "About 7,500 Peace Corps volunteers currently serve in 70 countries. The administration intends to increase this number to about 14,000. Volunteers often live in areas with limited access to reliable communications, police, or medical services. As Americans, they may be viewed as relatively wealthy and, hence, good targets for crime. In this testimony, GAO summarizes findings from its 2002 report Peace Corps: Initiatives for Addressing Safety and Security Challenges Hold Promise, but Progress Should be Assessed, GAO-02-818, on (1) trends in crime against volunteers and Peace Corps' system for generating information, (2) the agency's field implementation of its safety and security framework, and (3) the underlying factors contributing to the quality of these practices."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "District of Columbia officials have reported both a current services budget gap and a more permanent structural imbalance between costs and revenue-raising capacity. They maintain that the structural imbalance largely stems from the federal government's presence and restrictions on the District's tax base. Accordingly, at various times District officials have asked the Congress for additional funds and other measures to enhance revenues. In that context, the Subcommittee has asked GAO to discuss its May 2003 report, District of Columbia: Structural Imbalance and Management Issues (GAO-03-666). This testimony addresses the key findings and concluding observations of the May 2003 report. Specifically, this testimony discusses: (1) whether, or to what extent, the District faces a structural imbalance between its revenue capacity and the cost of providing residents with average levels of public services by using a representative services approach; (2) any significant constraints on the District's revenue capacity; (3) cost conditions and management problems in key program areas; and (4) the effects of the District's fiscal situation on its ability to fund infrastructure projects and repay related debt."

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This paper reviews some of the most recent results from the CDF and D0 experiments on the searches for Standard Model and Non-Standard Model Higgs bosons, and other new phenomena at the Tevatron. Both experiments examine data from proton anti-proton collision at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV, of integrated luminosity {approx} 200 pb{sup -1} (per experiment), to search for Higgs predicted in the Standard Model and beyond Standard Model, supersymmetric particles in the Gauge Mediated Symmetry Breaking scenario, leptoquarks, and excited electrons. No signal was observed, and limits on the signatures and models are derived.

Dynamic time expansion or compression of a small amplitude input signal generated with an initial scale is performed using a nonlinear waveguide. A nonlinear waveguide having a variable refractive index is connected to a bias voltage source having a bias signal amplitude that is large relative to the input signal to vary the reflective index and concomitant speed of propagation of the nonlinear waveguide and an electrical circuit for applying the small amplitude signal and the large amplitude bias signal simultaneously to the nonlinear waveguide. The large amplitude bias signal with the input signal alters the speed of propagation of the small-amplitude signal with time in the nonlinear waveguide to expand or contract the initial time scale of the small-amplitude input signal.

Present evidence points to remarkably resilient electron temperature profiles in high-density H-mode plasmas on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), suggesting that the underlying electron thermal transport mechanisms respond in a highly nonlinear fashion to changes in the gradients. This paper uses measured plasma profiles as input to linear gyrokinetic analysis to identify candidate micro-instabilities that may be responsible for the electron thermal transport. The criteria for useful nonlinear micro-stability analyses are discussed along with necessary approximations and computational issues.

In early 2003, the Fermilab Director formed a committee (Appendix A) to examine options for the long-range future of Fermilab. Specifically, the committee was asked to respond to a charge (Appendix B), which laid out the assumptions, which were to underlie our discussions. The committee met a few times during the spring of 2003 and formulated a plan of action. It identified a number of issues that deserved attention, and a subcommittee was formed to focus on each. We agreed that in addressing these key issues, a broader participation was appropriate. The manner in which that was achieved varied from subcommittee to subcommittee to group. In some cases the expanded membership participated in all the discussions, in others, particular presentations were solicited and heard. Some subgroups met regularly over several months, others convened only for a small number of discussions. We have attempted to list participants in Appendix C. General presentations indicating the purpose of the work were given, for example at the Fermilab Users Annual Meeting. Towards the end of the summer some sense of direction developed and a series of open meetings was organized by the different subgroups. These meetings of two and more hour's duration gave the …

Volume II of the ''Site Environmental Report for 2003'' is provided by Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a supplemental appendix to Volume I, which contains the body of the report. Volume II contains the environmental monitoring and sampling data used to generate summary results of routine and nonroutine activities at the Laboratory (except for groundwater sampling data, which may be found in the reports referred to in Chapter 6). Volume I summarizes the results from analyses of the data. For completeness, results from sample collections beginning or ending in calendar year (CY) 2003 are included in this volume but samples representing CY 2002 data are not used in summary results reported in Volume I. (For example, although Ambient Air samples collected on January 6, 2003, are presented in Volume II, they represent December 2002 data and are not included in Tables 4-6 and 4-7 in Volume I.) When appropriate, sampling results are reported in both conventional and International System of Units (SI). For some results, the rounding procedure used in data reporting may result in apparent differences between the numbers reported in SI and conventional units. For example, stack air results reported as < 1.1 Bq/m{sup 3} are …

The purpose of this revision of the System Description Document (SDD) is to establish requirements that drive the design of the electrical power system and their bases to allow the design effort to proceed to License Application. This SDD is a living document that will be revised at strategic points as the design matures over time. This SDD identifies the requirements and describes the system design as they exist at this time, with emphasis on those attributes of the design provided to meet the requirements. This SDD has been developed to be an engineering tool for design control. Accordingly, the primary audience are design engineers. This type of SDD leads and follows the design process. It leads the design process with regard to the flow down of upper tier requirements onto the system. Knowledge of these requirements is essential to performing the design process. This SDD follows the design with regard to the description of the system. The description provided in the SDD is a reflection of the results of the design process to date. Functional and operational requirements applicable to this system are obtained from ''Project Functional and Operational Requirements'' (F&OR) (Siddoway, 2003). Other requirements to support the design …

The Fermilab Tevatron Collider is currently the most copious source of b-hadrons, thanks to the large b{bar b} production cross-section in 1.96 TeV p{bar p} collisions. Recent detector upgrades allow for a wide range of CP violation and flavor-mixing measurements that are fully competitive (direct asymmetries in self-tagging modes) or complementary (asymmetries of B{sub s} and b-baryons decays) with B-factories. In this paper we review some recent CP violation results from the D0 and CDF II Collaborations and we discuss the prospects for future measurements.

An horizontal advanced tensiometer is described that allows the monitoring of the water pressure of soil positions, particularly beneath objects or materials that inhibit the use of previous monitoring wells. The tensiometer includes a porous cup, a pressure transducer (with an attached gasket device), an adaptive chamber, at least one outer guide tube which allows access to the desired horizontal position, a transducer wire, a data logger and preferably an inner guide tube and a specialized joint which provides pressure on the inner guide tube to maintain the seal between the gasket of the transducer and the adaptive chamber.

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

Human analysts are often unable to meet time constraints on analysis and interpretation of large volumes of remotely sensed imagery. To address this problem, the Image Content Engine (ICE) system currently under development is organized into an off-line component for automated extraction of image features followed by user-interactive components for content detection and content-based query processing. The extracted features are vectors that represent attributes of three entities, namely image tiles, image regions and shapes, or suspected matches to models of objects. ICE allows users to interactively specify decision thresholds so that content (consisting of entities whose features satisfy decision criteria) can be detected. ICE presents detected content to users as a prioritized series of thumbnail images. Users can either accept the detection results or specify a new set of decision thresholds. Once accepted, ICE stores the detected content in database tables and semantic graphs. Users can interactively query the tables and graphs for locations at which prescribed relationships between detected content exist. New queries can be submitted repeatedly until a satisfactory series of prioritized thumbnail image cues is produced. Examples are provided to demonstrate how ICE can be used to assist users in quickly finding prescribed collections of entities (both …

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has been performing accountability measurements of plutonium (Pu) -bearing items with the 30-gallon drum neutron multiplicity counter (NMC) since August 1998. A previous paper focused on the LLNL experience with Pu-bearing oxide and metal items. This paper expands on the LLNL experience with Pu-bearing salts containing low masses of Pu. All Pu-bearing salts used in this study were measured using calorimetry and gamma isotopic analyses (Cal/Iso) as well as the 30-gallon drum NMC. The Cal/Iso values were treated as being the true measure of Pu content because of the inherent high accuracy of the Cal/Iso technique, even at low masses of Pu, when measured over a sufficient period of time. Unfortunately, the long time period required to achieve high accuracy from Cal/Iso can impact other required accountability measurements. The 30-gallon drum NMC is a much quicker system for making accountability measurements of a Pu-bearing salt and might be a desirable tradeoff. The accuracy of 30-gallon drum NMC measurements of Pu-bearing salts, relative to that of Cal/Iso, is presented in relation to the mass range and alpha associated with each item. Conclusions drawn from the use of the 30-gallon drum NMC for accountability measurements of salts …

An archaeological excavation was conducted at the site of proposed groundwater monitoring well 199-K-131 in support of the 100-KR-4 Pump-and-Treat Project between June 2 and 3, 2004. Excavations confirmed that there were no intact cultural deposits at the proposed well location. This report was prepared to document the findings of the test excavation.

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This report discusses the relationships between drug trafficking and terrorism and analyzes some of the policy implications of those relationships for anti-drug policy. This report also addresses issues relating to the formulation and execution of drug control policy in the context of its implications for terrorism.

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

This article presents near-infrared spectroscopic measurements of the Hβ region for a sample of 29 luminous high-redshift quasars.