A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The mission of the National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA) Nonproliferation and Verification Research and Development (R&D) Program is to conduct needs-driven research, development, testing, and evaluation of new technologies that are intended to strengthen the United States' ability to prevent and respond to nuclear, chemical, and biological attacks. In fiscal years 1998 through 2002, the Nonproliferation and Verification R&D program received an average of $218 million per year--a total of $1.2 billion. Nearly 75 percent of that total was distributed for R&D at three NNSA national laboratories. Two of the three research areas of the Nonproliferation and Verification R&D Program lack a formal process to identify users' needs, and the tools used to monitor project progress are inadequate. In terms of users, NNSA's role is to develop technologies for, and transfer them to, users in the federal government, the intelligence community, law enforcement, and others. The program requires that projects' life-cycle plans and quarterly reports contain detailed information on project time frames, milestones, users of technologies, and deliverables. Officials from federal, state, and local agencies that use the technology developed by NNSA's R&D program have found …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1998, the Health Care Financing Administration implemented a prospective payment system (PPS) for skilled nursing facility (SNF) services provided to Medicare beneficiaries. PPS is intended to control the growth in Medicare spending for skilled nursing and rehabilitative services that SNFs provide. Two years after the implementation of PPS, the mix of patients across the categories of payment groups has shifted, as determined by the patients' initial minimum data set assessments. Although the overall share of patients classified into rehabilitation payment group categories based on their initial assessments remained about the same, more patients were classified into the high and medium rehabilitation payment group categories, and fewer were initially classified into the most intensive (highest paying) and least intensive (lowest paying) rehabilitation payment group categories. Two years after PPS was implemented the majority of patients in rehabilitation payment groups received less therapy than was provided in 1999. This was true even for patients within the same rehabilitation payment group categories. Across all rehabilitation payment group categories, fewer patients received the highest amounts of therapy associated with each payment group."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Several federal programs have been developed to provide homeownership opportunities for Native Americans because private institutions have rarely supplied conventional home loans to Native Americans on trust lands. In 1992, Congress directed the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to create the Native American Veterans Direct Home Loan Program to assist veterans in purchasing, constructing and improving homes. The Native American Veterans Direct Home Loan Program has been characterized by differences in the numbers served, with native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders together receiving almost five times as many as loans as Native Americans. Several factors that apply to Native Americans, but not to native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders, may explain this difference. Long-standing barriers to lending on Native American trust lands include insufficient income and credit history, a lack of meaningful interest in land among many Native Americans, and insufficient infrastructure on trust lands. Other factors that VA can address include program limits that may be lower than housing costs for some trust lands and potential applicants' inexperience with the mortgage lending process. VA has conducted outreach but has taken limited steps to meet the assessment and …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) estimates that cleaning up contamination and hazards at thousands of properties that it formerly owned or controlled will take more than 70 years and cost as much as $20 billion. These formerly used defense sites (FUDS), which can range in size from less than an acre to many thousands of acres, are now used for parks, farms, schools, and homes. Hazards at these properties include unsafe buildings, toxic and radioactive wastes, containerized hazardous wastes, and ordnance and explosive wastes. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for identifying, investigating, and cleaning up hazards resulting from military use. GAO found that the Corps lacks a sound basis for its conclusion that 38 percent of 3,840 FUDS need no further study or cleanup action. The Corps' determinations are questionable because there is no evidence that it reviewed or obtained information that would allow it to identify all the potential hazards at the properties, or that it took sufficient steps to assess the presence of potential hazards. GAO also found that the Corps often did not notify owners of its determinations that the …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The challenges posed by homeland security exceed the capacity and authority of any one level of government. Protecting the nation against these threats calls for a truly integrated approach, bringing together the resources of all levels of government. The proposed Department of Homeland Security will clearly have a central role in efforts to enhance homeland security. The proposed consolidation of homeland security programs has the potential to reduce fragmentation, improve coordination, and clarify roles and responsibilities. Realistically, the challenges that the new department faces will clearly require substantial time and effort, and it will take additional resources to make it effective. Moreover, formation of a department should not be considered a replacement for the timely issuance of a national homeland security strategy to guide implementation of the complex mission of the department. Appropriate roles and responsibilities within and between the levels of government and with the private sector are evolving and need to be clarified. New threats are prompting a reassessment and shifting of long-standing roles and responsibilities, but these shifts are being considered on a piecemeal basis without benefit of an overarching framework and criteria to guide …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has a staff of 6,426 and collected $1.1 billion in patent and trademark fees in fiscal year 2001. As the U.S. economy depends increasingly on new innovations, the need to patent or trademark quickly the intellectual property resulting from such innovations becomes more important. Expressing concerns about USPTO's plans for the future, Congress directed USPTO to develop a 5-year plan. In February 2001, USPTO issued its first 5-year plan, called the USPTO Business Plan. Because the Director of USPTO did not believe that the Business Plan went far enough, in June 2002, USPTO produced another 5-year plan, called the 21st Century Strategic Plan. GAO found that patent activity grew substantially from 1990 through 2001. The numbers of patent applications filed and patents granted nearly doubled; the inventory of patent applications nearly tripled; patent pendency increased from slightly over 18 months to nearly 25 months, and the number of patent examiners increased by about 80 percent. Furthermore, in fiscal year 2001, both fee collections and agency funding requirements exceeded $1 billion for the first time in the agency's history. Although …

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

Recent advances in the development and practical implementation of the Lattice-Boltzmann (LB) method as applied to computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have spurred much interest. A simple literature search of this area yielded well over 200 articles published in the open literature since 1997. The key advantage of the LB method is the time-accurate simulation of complex flow phenomena that are intractable with traditional methods. Analysis of flow in a parallel confined jet (PCJ) has been performed using the commercial LB-based CFD code PowerFLOW (Exa Corporation, Lexington, MA, USA). Results are compared to both experimental data and numerical results given in the literature, and it was observed that PowerFLOW does very well in accurately emulating the PJC experimental data as compared to Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes schemes. In addition, the inherently transient nature of the LB method allowed the analysis of time-dependent aspects of jet flows (e.g., flapping).

A review of strange particle production in heavy ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies is presented. The particle yields and ratios from SPS and RHIC are discussed in view of the newest developments in understanding collision dynamics, and in view of their role in the search for a quark gluon plasma. A strangeness enhancement, most notably observed in CERN Pb-beam results, shows a remarkable two fold global enhancement with a much larger effect seen in the case of multistrange baryons. Hadronic models did fail to explain this pattern. At RHIC energy strangeness assumes a different role, since temperatures are higher and the central rapidity region almost baryon-free. An intriguing question: ''Did RHIC change the way we understand strangeness production in heavy ion collisions ?'' is discussed.

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This database tool provides a structured approach to recording design decisions that impact a facility's design intent in areas such as energy efficiency.Owners and de signers alike can plan, monitor and verify that a facility's design intent is being met during each stage of the design process. Additionally, the Tool gives commissioning agents, facility operators and future owners and renovators an understanding of how the building and its subsystems are intended to operate, and thus track and benchmark performance.

Direct comparison measurements were made between various prime/storm window combinations and a well-weatherstripped, single-hung replacement window with a low-E selective glazing. Measurements were made using an accurate outdoor calorimetric facility with the windows facing north. The doublehung prime window was made intentionally leaky. Nevertheless, heat flows due to air infiltration were found to be small, and performance of the prime/storm combinations was approximately what would be expected from calculations that neglect air infiltration. Prime/low-E storm window combinations performed very similarly to the replacement window. Interestingly, solar heat gain was not negligible, even in north-facing orientation.

The purposes of this work were to demonstrate the evaporation of AZ-102 supernate, demonstrate the vitrification of the evaporated concentrate in a crucible melt, and to demonstrate acceptance of the resulting glass by analysis (chemical and radionuclides) and durability testing.

Gauge theories on q-deformed spaces are constructed using covariant derivatives. For this purpose a ''vielbein'' is introduced, which transforms under gauge transformations. The non-Abelian case is treated by establishing a connection to gauge theories on commutative spaces, i.e. by a Seiberg-Witten map. As an example we consider the Manin plane. Remarks are made concerning the relation between covariant coordinates and covariant derivatives.

The A0 Photo-Injector is an electron accelerator located in the AZero high bay area of Fermilab. A pulsed laser system generates electron bunches by the photo-electric effect when hitting a photo-cathode in a 1.5-cell, 1.3 GHz RF gun. A 9-cell, 1.3 GHz superconducting resonant cavity then accelerates the electrons to 15 MeV. The 10 ps time resolved waveform of the laser pulses is transferred to the electron bunches. This report is focused on the first hardware component of this accelerator, the Photo-cathode Preparation System. The reason for its existence is in the nature of the photo-electric material film used: Cs{sub 2}Te (Cesium Telluride), a very reactive compound that once coated on the cathode requires that it be transported and used in ultra high vacuum (UHV), i.e. < 10{sup -9} Torr.

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A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

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

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

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

We present new results from studies in progress on physics at a two-photon collider. We report on the sensitivity to top squark parameters of MSSM Higgs boson production in two-photon collisions; Higgs boson decay to two photons; radion production in models of warped extra dimensions; chargino pair production; sensitivity to the trilinear Higgs boson coupling; charged Higgs boson pair production; and we discuss the backgrounds produced by resolved photon-photon interactions.

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

A weekly student newspaper from the Rice University in Houston, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.