Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on how .50 caliber semiautomatic rifles have been used in domestic and international criminal activity."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in conjunction with the states, ensures the cost-effectiveness of projects funded under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed matters related to deceptive mail marketing practices, focusing on the extent and nature of consumers' problems with deceptive mail and the initiatives various federal agencies and other organizations have made to address deceptive mail problems and educate consumers."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Defense Reform Initiative (DRI), focusing on: (1) the types of performance measures used to track progress toward achieving DRI program goals; (2) opportunities to add or improve on existing performance measures; and (3) performance measurement limitations."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in conjunction with the states, ensures the cost-effectiveness of projects funded under the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, focusing on: (1) the approaches FEMA and the states use to ensure that program grants are targeted to cost-effective mitigation projects; and (2) whether the approaches ensure that the mitigation measures are cost-effective."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) efforts to safeguard Medicare payments, focusing on: (1) how Medicare program safeguard activities have changed from fiscal years (FY) 1995 to 1999 and what changes are planned for FY 2000; (2) HCFA's actions to better manage its program safeguard activities, which respond to key findings from GAO's previous audit reports and those of the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG); and (3) the initial effects of the Medicare Integrity Program (MIP) on controlling Medicare fraud and abuse, including the adequacy of HCFA's data for measuring the effectiveness of its program safeguard activities."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the need to revamp the federal food safety system, focusing on: (1) an overview of GAO's work on the problems resulting from the fragmented food safety system; and (2) where in the federal government food safety inspection responsibilities should reside."

This report summarizes the current legislative status of the bill, its scope, major issues, funding levels, and related legislative activity.

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

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Seminole, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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

Typed notes of a telephone conversation between Dennis Vercher and Aaron Kampfe, International Gay & Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA) President, on United Airline's decision to offer domestic partner benefits.

An independent foreign affairs agency supporting U.S. foreign policy and national interests abroad, USIA conducts international educational and cultural exchanges, broadcasting, and information programs.

The investigation of a complex system is often performed using computer generated response data supplemented by system and component test results where possible. Analysts rely on an efficient use of limited experimental resources to test the physical system, evaluate the models and to assure (to the extent possible) that the models accurately simulate the system order investigation. The general problem considered here is one where only a restricted number of system simulations (or physical tests) can be performed to provide additional data necessary to accomplish the project objectives. The levels of variables used for defining input scenarios, for setting system parameters and for initializing other experimental options must be selected in an efficient way. The use of computer algorithms to support experimental design in complex problems has been a topic of recent research in the areas of statistics and engineering. This paper describes a resampling based approach to form dating this design. An example is provided illustrating in two dimensions how the algorithm works and indicating its potential on larger problems. The results show that the proposed approach has characteristics desirable of an algorithmic approach on the simple examples. Further experimentation is needed to evaluate its performance on larger problems.

The authors study the low-temperature in-plane magnetoresistance of tunnel-coupled quasi-one-dimensional quantum wires. The wires are defined by two pairs of mutually aligned split gates on opposite sides of a {le} 1 micron thick AlGaAs/GaAs double quantum well heterostructure, allowing independent control of the width of each quantum well. In the ballistic regime, when both wires are defined and the field is perpendicular to the current, a large resistance peak at {approximately}6 Tesla is observed with a strong gate voltage dependence. The data is consistent with a counting model whereby the number of subbands crossing the Fermi level changes with field due to the formation of an anticrossing in each pair of 1D subbands.

The Statistics and Human Factors Department at SNL has evolved as the Labs' mission has evolved from engineering designs for the non-nuclear parts of nuclear weapons, including the safety and security components, to a multi-program lab focusing on national security. Twenty years ago their client base was the engineers, scientists, and managers of the nuclear weapon stockpile program, at Sandia and other facilities within the DOE complex. Client relationships developed over years of association. Components and systems were assigned to statisticians so that they could develop a knowledge base in that area. Because of the many different component types and system designs in the stockpile, they typically juggled five or six statistical projects at a time. project participation other than statistical consulting was limited. They rarely had the time to lead project teams, and any skills or inclinations in that direction were often undeveloped. This paper describes a (hit-or-miss) selection of some early and recent efforts. This paper also presents their self-assessment metrics and their external assessment metrics. These metrics were selected to track the business aspects of the department; they are systematic (not hit-or-miss). These two types of histories should allow them to judge whether we're doing the right …

Methods are discussed for computing the sensitivity of field variables to changes in material properties and initial/boundary condition parameters for heat transfer problems. The method we focus on is termed the ''Sensitivity Equation Method'' (SEM). It involves deriving field equations for sensitivity coefficients by differentiating the original field equations with respect to the parameters of interest and numerically solving the resulting sensitivity field equations. Uncertainty in the model parameters are then propagated through the computational model using results derived from first-order perturbation theory; this technique is identical to the methodology typically used to propagate experimental uncertainty. Numerical results are presented for the design of an experiment to estimate the thermal conductivity of stainless steel using transient temperature measurements made on prototypical hardware of a companion contact conductance experiment. Comments are made relative to extending the SEM to conjugate heat transfer problems.

Back contact solar cells hold significant promise for increased performance in photovoltaics for the near future. Two major advantages which these cells possess are a lack of grid shading loss and coplanar interconnection. Front contacted cells can have up to 10% shading loss when using screen printed metal grids. A front contact cell must also use solder connections which run from the front of one cell to the back of the next for series interconnection. This procedure is more difficult to automate than the case of co-planar contacts. The back contact cell design is not a recent concept. The earliest silicon solar cell developed by Bell Labs was a back contact device. There have been many design modifications to the basic concept over the years. To name a few, there is the Interdigitated Back Contact (IBC) cell, the Stanford Point contact solar cell, the Emitter Wrap Through (EWT), and its many variations. A number of these design concepts have demonstrated high efficiency. The SunPower back contact solar cell holds the efficiency record for silicon concentrator cells. The challenge is to produce a high efficiency cell at low cost using high throughput techniques. This has yet to be achieved with a …

The food ingestion consequences of an accidental release, scenario 1-RD-2.35, are evaluated for H-Separations. The sizes of land areas requiring the protective action of food interdiction are calculated. The consequences of the release are evaluated with the HOTSPOT model and an EXCEL spreadsheet.

This FFA Annual Progress Report has been developed to summarize the information for activities performed during the Fiscal Year 1998 (October 1, 1997, to September 30, 1998) and activities planned for Fiscal Year 1999 by U.S. EPA, SCDHEC, and SRS at those units and areas identified for remediation in the Agreement.

The optical gain spectra for compressive-strained and lattice-matched GaInNAs/GaAs quantum wells are computed using a microscopic laser theory. From these spectra, the peak gain and carrier radiative decay rate as functions of carrier density are determined. These dependences allow the study of lasing threshold current density for different GAInNAs/GaAs laser structures.

This document contains the current list of environmental permits and related documentation for TWRS facilities and activities.

CDF has recently published [1] a search for Higgs bosons produced in association with vector bosons in 91 ± 7 pb^-1 of Run I data. Observations are consistent with background expectation. 95% confidence level upper limits are set as a function of the Higgs mass on {sigma}(p{anti p} {yields} H⁰ V )·{beta}, with {beta} the branching ratio of the Higgs decays to b{anti b} and V = W; Z. The sensitivity of the search is limited by statistics to a cross section approximately two orders of magnitude larger than the predicted cross section for standard model Higgs production. In this paper we extrapolate the results from [1] to the next Tevatron Run II where we hope for an approximately twenty-fold increase in the total integrated luminosity as well as a significant improvement in the total acceptances.