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Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a county sheriff is authorized to enter into a contract to house federal prisoners or to accept and dispose of federal surplus property (RQ-0181-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Determining the applicable deadline for a municipality and a county to complete their certified subdivision regulation agreement as required in section 242.0015, Local Government Code (RQ-0182-GA)

We show that a simple plane wave analysis can be used even under tight focusing conditions to predict the dependence of third-harmonic generation on the polarization state of the incident beam. Exploiting this fact, we then show that circularly polarized beams may be used to spatially characterize the beam focus and temporally characterize ultrashort pulses in high numerical aperture systems by experimentally demonstrating, for the first time, novel collinear, background-free, third-harmonic intensity autocorrelations in time and space in a high numerical aperture microscope. We also discuss the possibility of using third harmonic generation with circularly polarized beams for background-free collinear frequency resolved optical gating.

We analyze results of 15 global climate simulations contributed to the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP). Focusing on the western U.S., we consider both present climate simulations and predicted responses to increasing atmospheric CO{sub 2}. The models vary in their ability to predict the present climate. Over the western U.S., a few models produce a seasonal cycle for spatially-averaged temperature and/or precipitation in good agreement with observational data. Other models tend to overpredict precipitation in the winter or exaggerate the amplitude of the seasonal cycle of temperature. The models also differ in their ability to reproduce the spatial patterns of temperature and precipitation in the U.S. Considering the monthly mean precipitation responses to doubled atmospheric CO{sub 2}, averaged over the western U.S., we find some models predict increases while others predict decreases. The predicted temperature response, on the other hand, is invariably positive over this region; however, for each month, the range of values given by the different models is large compared to the mean model response. We look for possible relationships between the models' temperature and precipitation responses to doubled CO{sub 2} concentration and their ability to simulate some aspects of the present climate. We find that these relationships …

Many applications of scientific computing rely on computations on sparse matrices, thus the design of efficient implementations of sparse matrix kernels is crucial for the overall efficiency of these applications. Due to the high compute-to-memory ratio and irregular memory access patterns, the performance of sparse matrix kernels is often far away from the peak performance on a modern processor. Alternative data structures have been proposed, which split the original matrix A into A{sub d} and A{sub s}, so that A{sub d} contains all dense blocks of a specified size in the matrix, and A{sub s} contains the remaining entries. This enables the use of dense matrix kernels on the entries of A{sub d} producing better memory performance. In this work, we study the problem of finding a maximum number of non overlapping rectangular dense blocks in a sparse matrix, which has not been studied in the sparse matrix community. We show that the maximum non overlapping dense blocks problem is NP-complete by using a reduction from the maximum independent set problem on cubic planar graphs. We also propose a 2/3-approximation algorithm for 2 times 2 blocks that runs in linear time in the number of nonzeros in the matrix. We …

The first observations of electron-proton coupling effect for coasting beams and for long-bunch beams were made at the earliest proton storage rings at the Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics (BINP) in the mid-60's [1]. The effect was mainly a form of the two-stream instability. This phenomenon reappeared at the CERN ISR in the early 70's, where it was accompanied by an intense vacuum pressure rise. When the ISR was operated in bunched-beam mode while testing aluminum vacuum chambers, a resonant effect was observed in which the electron traversal time across the chamber was comparable to the bunch spacing [2]. This effect (''beam-induced multipacting''), being resonant in nature, is a dramatic manifestation of an electron cloud sharing the vacuum chamber with a positively-charged beam. An electron-cloud-induced instability has been observed since the mid-80's at the PSR (LANL) [3]; in this case, there is a strong transverse instability accompanied by fast beam losses when the beam current exceeds a certain threshold. The effect was observed for the first time for a positron beam in the early 90's at the Photon Factory (PF) at KEK, where the most prominent manifestation was a coupled-bunch instability that was absent when the machine was operated with …

A high-speed, non-invasive velocity diagnostic has been developed for measuring plasma rotation. The Doppler shift is determined by employing two detectors that view line emission from the identical volume of plasma. Each detector views through an interference filter having a passband that varies linearly with wavelength. One detector views the plasma through a filter whose passband has a negative slope and the second detector views through one with a positive slope. Because each channel views the same volume of plasma, the ratio of the amplitudes is not sensitive to variations in plasma emission. With suitable knowledge of the filter characteristics and the relative gain, the Doppler shift is readily obtained in real time from the ratio of two channels without needing a low throughput spectrometer. The systematic errors--arising from temperature drifts, stability, and frequency response of the detectors and amplifiers, interference filter linearity, and ability to thoroughly homogenize the light from the fiber bundle--can be characterized well enough to obtain velocity data with + or - 1 km/sec with a time resolution of 0.3 msec.

The purpose of this design calculation is to estimate radiation doses received by personnel working in the Fuel Handling Facility (FHF) of the Monitored Geological Repository (MGR). The FHF is a surface facility supporting waste handling operations i.e. receive transportation casks, transfer wastes, prepare waste packages, and ship out loaded waste packages and empty casks. The specific scope of work contained in this calculation covers both collective doses and individual worker group doses on an annual basis, and includes the contributions due to external and internal radiation. The results are also limited to normal operations only. Results of this calculation will be used to support the FHF design and License Application.

The ultracold atoms and plasmas research group at Rice University uses a combination of atomic and plasma physics techniques to create neutral plasmas that are orders of magnitude colder than have ever been studied before. Through this work, we probe the basic plasma physics of this exotic regime. During the past year, the major components of a new experiment were completed. We demonstrated a powerful new diagnostic, optical imaging of the plasma, which led to a paper that was published in Physical Review Letters. (Figure A, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 143001 (2004)) This was the central feature of my DOE Junior Faculty Award proposal. DOE funding has been used to support one postdoctoral researcher, multiple graduate students, the principle investigator, apparatus construction, and normal laboratory expenses.

On July 8, 2004, L&S Engineering, Inc. submitted a technical assistance request to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to help estimate the potential energy savings and cost effectiveness of the solar energy and daylighting design alternatives for Richland High School Renovation Project in Richland, WA. L&S Engineering expected PNNL to evaluate the potential energy savings and energy cost savings, the probable installation costs, incentives or grants to reduce the installed costs and simple payback for the following alternative measures: (1) Daylighting in New Gym; (2) Solar Photovoltaics; (3) Solar Domestic Hot Water Pre-Heat; and (4) Solar Outside Air Pre-Heat Following are the findings of the energy savings and cost-effectiveness analysis of above alternative energy saving technologies.

This paper summarizes the intermediate lessons learned from the analyses of the risk management problems in three technological endeavors. These problems are: the absence of a structure for rewarding successful project risk management; the need for an ever-more accurate economic measure of risk; and the difficulty of transferring risks to contract-bound independent outsourcing entity. This paper also describes recent advancement towards providing answers to these challenges and future research endeavors in this field.

The variations of the normalized quasilinear particle and energy fluxes with artificial changes in the density and temperature gradients, as well as the variations of the linear growth rates and real frequencies, for ion temperature gradient and trapped-electron modes, are calculated. The quasilinear fluxes are normalized to the total energy flux, summed over all species. Here, realistic cases for tokamaks and spherical torii are considered which have two impurity species. For situations where there are substantial changes in the normalized fluxes, the ''diffusive approximation,'' in which the normalized fluxes are taken to be linear in the gradients, is seen to be inaccurate. Even in the case of small artificial changes in density or temperature gradients, changes in the fluxes of different species (''off-diagonal'') generally are significant, or even dominant, compared to those for the same species (''diagonal'').

A survey of the dependence of power balance on input power, shape, and plasma current was conducted for neutral-beam-heated plasmas in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). Measurements of heat to the divertor strike plates and divertor and core radiation were taken over a wide range of plasma conditions. The different conditions were obtained by inducing a L-mode to H-mode transition, changing the divertor configuration [lower single null (LSN) vs. double-null (DND)] and conducting a NBI power scan in H-mode. 60-70% of the net input power is accounted for in the LSN discharges with 20% of power lost as fast ions, 30-45% incident on the divertor plates, up to 10% radiated in the core, and about 12% radiated in the divertor. In contrast, the power accountability in DND is 85-90%. A comparison of DND and LSN data show that the remaining power in the LSN is likely to be directed to the upper divertor

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

This report discusses S. 113, a bill to extend the coverage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act ("FISA") to non-U.S. persons who engage in international terrorism or activities in preparation for terrorist acts, without a showing of membership in or affiliation with an international terrorist group.

This report lists hundreds of instances in which the United States has used its armed forces abroad in situations of military conflict or potential conflict or for other than normal peacetime purposes.

A gap analysis was conducted comparing the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS) with the international standard ISO 14001 Environmental Management System and with Department of Energy (DOE) Order 450.1. This analysis was accomplished as part of LLNL's assessment of the impacts of adopting DOE Order 450.1 and comprises a portion of its continuous improvement efforts under ISMS.

This report discusses the Doha Development Agenda (DDA). The DDA sets up the focus on curbing trade-distorting domestic support, reducing trade barriers, and getting rid of export subsidies. Moreover, the report details the deadlines that come with the DDA.

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

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Walter Buczek. Buczek joined the Army in 1943 and was stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington. He completed Automotive Transport School, repairing trucks. During his schooling he was assigned as a mechanical instructor. In June of 1945 he traveled to Hawaii, then landed on Ie Shima, Okinawa in July. Buczek served with the 1631st Engineer Construction Battalion. He worked with heavy equipment on road construction and building airfields through the spring of 1946. He returned to the US and was discharged in March of 1946.

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

As in previous workshops dealing with electron-cloud effects (KEK, July 1997; Santa Fe, February 2000; KEK, September 2001; CERN, April 2002), the focus of this workshop was broad, covering all aspects of the phenomena. The work presented at ECLOUD04 represented a significant advance relative to ECLOUD02 (CERN, April 2002). The systematic experimental program being carried out at the SPS for many years now, in preparation for LHC operation, keeps yielding valuable information particularly concerning surface conditioning by the beam. Clear evidence for an electron-cloud effect at RHIC was presented, although direct detection of electrons in the cold regions remains to be achieved. With the clear establishment of electron-cloud effects at the PSR, other high-intensity hadron machines are studying the effect either experimentally or by simulations, or both. In particular, ORNL personnel are paying special attention to the phenomenon as the fabrication of the SNS storage ring vacuum chamber is being completed. Electron effects are being investigated at ISIS (RAL), and at the HCX experiment for heavy-ion fusion drivers (LBNL). On the simulation front, there has been significant progress towards extending simulation techniques to three dimensions, towards more realistic description of machine lattice elements, and towards self-consistency (in which both the …

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