Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report responds to certain requirements of the Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act (HRIFA) of 1998 that authorized certain Haitian nationals and their dependents to apply to adjust their status to legal permanent residence. Section 902(k) of the act requires the Comptroller General to report every 6 months on the number of Haitian nationals who have applied and been approved to adjust their status to legal permanent residence. The reports are to contain a breakdown of the number of Haitians who applied and the number who were approved as asylum applicants, parolees, children without parents, orphaned children, or abandoned children; or as the eligible dependents of these applicants, including spouses, children, and unmarried sons or daughters. Reports are to be provided until all applications have been finally adjudicated. This is our tenth report."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO performed the procedures requested by the Secretary of the Senate to assist in determining whether the Senate Office of Public Records revolving fund's reported fiscal year 2001 through 2002 receipts and disbursements and fund balances at the beginning and the end of the review period are complete and accurate. The procedures included reviewing documentation supporting the the Senate Office of Public Records revolving fund's recorded receipt and disbursement transactions for evidence that the transactions were properly authorized, recorded, and reported on the Senate Disbursing Office's monthly Statement of Funding Authorization and Expense Activity reports. In addition, we reviewed the fund balance at the beginning and end of the fiscal years under review. As a result of performing agreed-upon procedures, we identified on instance in which a cash disbursement was not forwarded to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration prior to payment. This occurred during the displacement of staff from Senate Disbursing Office as a result of the anthrax incident in the fall of 2001. Additionally, we found that the beginning and ending fund balances for fiscal years 2001 and 2002 recorded in the Senate Disbursing Office's …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Community economic development (CED) lenders serve the credit needs of nonconventional borrowers and economically distressed areas across the nation. However, little is known about this industry, its ability to tap private sources of capital, and loan performance and volume in the industry. To provide information that would be helpful in considering the role that the federal government might play in facilitating the creation of a secondary market for CED loans, GAO was asked among other items to (1) determine the barriers to more widely securitizing CED loans and (2) identify options for overcoming these barriers and the likely implications of these options."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a request from the Chairman, Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations, and the Census, House Committee on Government Reform, GAO responded to posthearing questions. At the subject hearing, GAO discussed effective patch management practices for mitigating the risks to critical information systems posed by exploits of vulnerabilities in widely used commercial software products. GAO specifically discussed the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Patch Authentication and Dissemination Capability (PADC). PADC is a service offered by DHS's Federal Computer Incident Response Center (FedCIRC) that provides federal agencies with information on trusted, authenticated patches for their specific technologies without charge."

We report the first neutron data for a single crystal Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) diamond sensor. Results are presented for 2.5, 14.1, and 14.9 MeV incident neutrons. We show that the energy resolution for 14.1 MeV neutrons is at least 2.9% (as limited by the energy spread of the incident neutrons), and perhaps as good as 0.4% (as extrapolated from high resolution {alpha} particle data). This result could be relevant to fusion neutron spectroscopy at machines like the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). We also show that our sensor has a high neutron linear attenuation coefficient, due to the high atomic density of diamond, and this could lead to applications in fission neutron detection.

Weekly student newspaper from San Antonio College in San Antonio, Texas that includes campus news along with advertising.

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

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

The Syntroleum plant is mechanically complete and currently undergoing start-up. The fuel production and demonstration plan is near completion. The study on the impact of small footprint plant (SFP) fuel on engine performance is about half-completed. Cold start testing has been completed. Preparations have been completed for testing the fuel in diesel electric generators in Alaska. Preparations are in progress for testing the fuel in bus fleets at Denali National Park and the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority. The experiments and analyses conducted during this project show that Fischer-Tropsch (FT) gas-to-liquid diesel fuel can easily be used in a diesel engine with little to no modifications. Additionally, based on the results and discussion presented, further improvements in performance and emissions can be realized by configuring the engine to take advantage of FT diesel fuel's properties. The FT fuel also shows excellent cold start properties and enabled the engine tested to start at more the ten degrees than traditional fuels would allow. This plant produced through this project will produce large amounts of FT fuel. This will allow the fuel to be tested extensively, in current, prototype, and advanced diesel engines. The fuel may also contribute to the nation's energy security. The …

An integrated modeling approach was developed to investigate long-term coupled thermal, hydrological, and chemical (THC) processes that could take place around nuclear waste emplacement tunnels (drifts). The approach involves the development of process models, followed by numerical implementation and validation against field and laboratory experiments before conducting long-term predictive simulations. An outcome of this work was the refinement and validation of an existing reactive transport numerical code for applications specific to the geologic storage of nuclear waste. The model was applied to the case of the proposed high-level nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to evaluate the chemistry of waters potentially seeping into drifts and the effect of water-rock interaction on long-term hydrological behavior around the repository. At liquid saturations significantly larger than residual, no extreme pH or salinity values were predicted. Mineral precipitation around drifts consists mainly of silica with minor calcite, trace zeolites and clays. The effect of mineral precipitation on flow depends largely on initial fracture porosity, and results in negligible to significant diversion of percolation around the drift. Further analyses of model uncertainty are under way to improve confidence in model results.

High Energy Nuclear Physics (HENP) experiments such as STAR at BNL and ATLAS at CERN produce large amounts of data that are stored as files on mass storage systems in computer centers. In these files, the basic unit of data is an event. Analysis is typically performed on a selected set of events. The files containing these events have to be located, copied from mass storage systems to disks before analysis, and removed when no longer needed. These file management tasks are tedious and time consuming. Typically, all events contained in the files are read into memory before a selection is made. Since the time to read the events dominate the overall execution time, reading the unwanted event needlessly increases the analysis time. The Grid Collector is a set of software modules that works together to address these two issues. It automates the file management tasks and provides ''direct'' access to the selected events for analyses. It is currently integrated with the STAR analysis framework. The users can select events based on tags, such as, ''production date between March 10 and 20, and the number of charged tracks > 100.'' The Grid Collector locates the files containing relevant events, transfers …

The caustic precipitation of plutonium (Pu)-containing solutions has been investigated to determine whether the presence of 3:1 uranium (U):Pu in solutions stored in the H-Canyon Facility at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) would adversely impact the use of gadolinium nitrate (Gd(NO3)3) as a neutron poison. In the past, this disposition strategy has been successfully used to discard solutions containing approximately 100 kg of Pu to the SRS high level waste (HLW) system. In the current experiments, gadolinium (as Gd(NO3)3) was added to samples of a 3:1 U:Pu solution, a surrogate 3 g/L U solution, and a surrogate 3 g/L U with 1 g/L Pu solution. A series of experiments was then performed to observe and characterize the precipitate at selected pH values. Solids formed at pH 4.5 and were found to contain at least 50 percent of the U and 94 percent of the Pu, but only 6 percent of the Gd. As the pH of the solution increased (e.g., pH greater than 14 with 1.2 or 3.6 M sodium hydroxide (NaOH) excess), the precipitate contained greater than 99 percent of the Pu, U, and Gd. After the pH greater than 14 systems were undisturbed …

The BTeV silicon pixel detector contains 30 planar stations that reside inside the vacuum of the Tevatron machine close to the beam. The detector sits within the analysis magnet. The location of the detector leads to unique constraints on the mechanical support, cooling systems, RF shielding, flex-cable feedthrough, and vacuum system.The design is based on these constraints and a number of technical specifications required of the detector. The baseline design was presented at the Pixel 2002 Conference.

An incident in an Savannah River Site (SRS) plutonium processing line (FB-Line) in 1999 highlighted the fact insoluble forms of plutonium exist at SRS that may not be readily monitored with the routine bioassay programs traditionally used at this site. To address this issue, a study was conducted in FB-Line with 21 participants for a year ending in July 2002. The purpose of the study was to examine the use of three non-traditional monitoring methods and, based on this experience, recommend a routine bioassay program that is capable of monitoring workers potentially exposed to insoluble plutonium. These non-traditional monitoring methods are personal air sampling (PAS), thermal ionization mass spectrometry (TIMS) of urine samples, and routine fecal bioassay. The main conclusions and recommendations of the study are: (1) A routine TIMS urine bioassay program, which is called the enhanced bioassay program (EBP), is recommended for workers in SRS facilities that have a reasonable potential for exposure to insoluble forms of plutonium. (2) Under certain conditions the EBP could result in onerous work restrictions. A contingency plan involving the use of PAS is recommended in this case. PAS is also recommended for workers who have had historic intakes of plutonium that interfere …

Pixel detectors proposed for the new generation of hadron collider experiments will use bump-bonding technology based on either indium or Pb/Sn solder to connect the front-end readout chips to the silicon pixel sensors. We have previously reported large-scale tests of the yield using both indium and Pb/Sn solder bump [1]. The conclusion is that both seem to be viable for pixel detectors. We have also carried out studies of various effects (e.g. storage over long period, effect of heating and cooling, and radiation) on both types of bump bonds using daisy-chained parts on a small scale [2], [3]. Overall, these tests showed little changes in the integrity of the bump connections. Nevertheless, questions still remain on the long-term reliability of the bumps due to thermal cycle effects, attachment to a substrate with a different coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), and radiation.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Improper payments are a longstanding,widespread,and significant problem in the federal government.This past April, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)estimated these payments to be about $35 billion annually for major federal benefit programs. Importantly, this estimate does not account for all federal programs and activities and considers less than half of the $2.3 trillion net cost of the federal government for fiscal year 2002. Because of its continued interest and concerns regarding financial management in the federal government, Congress asked GAO to follow-up on the implementation of the recommendations contained in our August 2002 report (GAO-02-749). Our 2002 report recommended that Chief Financial Officers Act (CFO Act) agencies take actions to minimize improper payments in their programs and activities and for OMB to assist agencies in developing methods to identify and implement those actions. OMB described our report as largely fair and accurate. It characterized the administration's current efforts to reduce erroneous payments as the most comprehensive assessment of the government's payment processes in history."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Almost half of all Americans over the age of 65 will rely on nursing home care at some point in their lives, and two in three nursing home residents have their care covered at least in part by Medicaid. Under Medicaid, states set nursing home payment rates and the federal government reimburses a share of state spending. According to the most recently available data, Medicaid nursing home expenditures exceed $43 billion, and total Medicaid spending for fiscal year 2003 is expected to double by 2012. Such projections of increased Medicaid spending come as most states are confronting their third consecutive year of fiscal pressure. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO), in fiscal year 2003, 30 states collected less revenue than they budgeted for, and 37 states reduced enacted budgets by almost $14.5 billion. In light of concerns about the adequacy of nursing home resources, GAO was asked to examine how state Medicaid programs determine nursing home payment rates and whether these payment methods or rates have changed given recent state fiscal pressures. GAO interviewed state and nursing home industry officials in 19 …

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

Since pre-industrial times, the concentrations of various aerosol types (e.g., sulfate, black carbon, and mineral dust) and several key greenhouse gases such as methane (CH{sub 4}), nitrous oxide (N{sub 2}O), and ozone (O{sub 3}), have been changing because of anthropogenic activities. Collectively, the magnitude of the climate forcing from these species is larger than that of carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) although some are positive and some are negative (see Fig. 27). The behavior and effect of these non-CO{sub 2} species is more complicated than for CO{sub 2} because they are affected by atmospheric chemistry and aerosol microphysics, so their distributions are more heterogeneous. There are also feedbacks between climate, chemistry, and aerosols that further increase the importance of chemistry and aerosols, e.g. a change in any one of stratospheric ozone, stratospheric temperature, or stratospheric dynamics will feedback on the other two. For aerosols, in addition to the direct effect of scattering and absorbing light, they act indirectly by serving as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN), leading to clouds with more (but smaller) droplets that reflect more sunlight and last longer, thus cooling the atmosphere. Aerosols and atmospheric chemistry can also have an impact through interaction with the biosphere, e.g., fertilization of …

The model for the degradation of the containers for nuclear waste includes three modes of corrosion, namely general corrosion, localized corrosion and environmentally assisted cracking (EAC). The objective of the current research was to quantify the susceptibility of five nickel alloys to EAC in several environmental conditions with varying solution composition, temperature and electrochemical potential. These alloys included: Alloy 22 (N06022), Alloy C-4 (N06455), Alloy 625 (N06625), Alloy G-3 (N06985) and Alloy 825 (N08825). The susceptibility to EAC was evaluated using constant deformation (deflection) U-bend specimens in both the non-welded (wrought) and welded conditions. Results show that after more than five years exposure in the vapor and liquid phases of alkaline (pH {approx} 10) and acidic (pH {approx} 3) multi-ionic environments at 60 C and 90 C, none of the tested alloys suffered environmentally assisted cracking.

Analytical expressions for three P-wave attenuation mechanisms in sedimentary rocks are given a unified theoretical framework. Two of the models concern wave-induced flow due to heterogeneity in the elastic moduli at ''mesoscopic'' scales (scales greater than grain sizes but smaller than wavelengths). In the first model, the heterogeneity is due to lithological variations (e.g., mixtures of sands and clays) with a single fluid saturating all the pores. In the second model, a single uniform lithology is saturated in mesoscopic ''patches'' by two immiscible fluids (e.g., air and water). In the third model, the heterogeneity is at ''microscopic'' grain scales (broken grain contacts and/or micro-cracks in the grains) and the associated fluid response corresponds to ''squirt flow''. The model of squirt flow derived here reduces to proper limits as any of the fluid bulk modulus, crack porosity, and/or frequency is reduced to zero. It is shown that squirt flow is incapable of explaining the measured level of loss (10{sup -2} < Q{sup -1} < 10{sup -1}) within the seismic band of frequencies (1 to 10{sup 4} Hz); however, either of the two mesoscopic scale models easily produce enough attenuation to explain field data.

By means of a Monte Carlo code that accounts for Compton scattering and photoabsorption followed by recombination, we have investigated the radiation transfer of Ly{alpha}, He{alpha}, and recombination continua photons of H- and He-like C, N, O, and Ne produced in the photoionized atmosphere of a relativistic black hole accretion disk. We find that photoelectric opacity causes significant attenuation of photons with energies above the O VIII K-edge; that the conversion efficiencies of these photons into lower-energy lines and recombination continua are high; and that accounting for this reprocessing significantly (by factors of 21% to 105%) increases the flux of the Ly{alpha} and He{alpha} emission lines of H- and He-like C and O escaping the disk atmosphere.

Inverse bremsstrahlung absorption of the pump laser beam in a backward Raman amplifier over the round-trip light transit time through the sub-critical density plasma can more than double the electron temperature of the plasma and produce time-varying axial temperature gradients. The resulting increased Landau damping of the plasma wave and detuning of the resonance can act to stabilize the pump against unwanted amplification of Langmuir noise without disrupting nonlinear amplification of the femtosecond seed pulse. Because the heating rate increases with the charge state Z, only low-Z plasmas (hydrogen, helium, or helium-hydrogen mixtures) will maintain a low enough temperature for efficient operation.

Indirect drive ignition target simulations are described as they are used to determine target fabrication specifications. Simulations are being used to explore options for making the targets more robust, and to develop more detailed understanding of the performance of a few point designs. The current array of targets is described. A new target is described with radially dependent Cu dopant in Be. This target has significantly looser specifications for high-mode perturbations than previous targets. Current estimates of size limitations for fill tubes, holes, and isolated defect are discussed. Recent 3D simulations are described.