Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In early January 2003, we initiated a review of the Defense Integrated Military Human Resource System (DIMHRS) to get an understanding of the program, its goals, its present status, and the problems it is designed to resolve. During this review, we became aware that in April 2003 the Department of Defense (DOD) authorized the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) to initiate a pilot project to demonstrate its ability to develop an interim military pay system, called Forward Compatible Military Pay, before DIMHRS is fully operational. DFAS maintains that an interim system should be developed as soon as possible for two reasons: (1) the planned personnel and pay system that DOD is currently developing as part of the larger DIMHRS will be implemented later than its projected target date of December 2006 and (2) the current military pay system--the Defense Joint Military Pay System--is aging, unresponsive, and fragile and has become a major impediment to efficient and high quality customer service. It is estimated that the Forward Compatible Military Pay system could be operational by March 2006 at a design and development cost ranging from about $17 million …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Government Printing Office (GPO) has undertaken the task of transforming itself in response to pressing fiscal and other realities in the 21st century. This report focuses on actions GPO's leaders can take to advance its transformation efforts through strategic human capital management and is a part of GAO's response to a congressional request that GAO conduct a general management review of GPO that focuses on issues related to GPO's management and transformation. GAO plans to address other management topics, including strategic planning and financial management, in a series of reports that may assist GPO in its ongoing transformation efforts."

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to appropriations to departments and agencies of the state government, including conditions, limitations, rules, and procedures for allocating and expending appropriations.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to state and local government fiscal management, including various matters related to increasing administrative efficiency in state government; making related appropriations.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to contracts and grant programs related to the Texas Emissions Reduction Plan; making appropriations.

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; Constitutionality of sections 2A and 2B of article 21.74, Texas Insurance Code, which establish a "Holocaust Registry" within the Texas Department of Insurance; require certain insurers to file particular information with Department; and authorize the imposition of sanctions for failure to do so (RQ-0074-GA)

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This report includes information regarding U.S. relations and bilateral issues within Syria. External relations, Syria's role in Lebanon, and U.S. aid are among topics discussed in this report.

The PLEIADES (Picosecond Laser-Electron Inter-Action for the Dynamical Evaluation of Structures) facility has produced first light at 70 keV. This milestone offers a new opportunity to develop laser-driven, compact, tunable x-ray sources for critical applications such as diagnostics for the National Ignition Facility and time-resolved material studies. The electron beam was focused to 50 {micro}m rms, at 57 MeV, with 260 C of charge, a relative energy spread of 0.2%, and a normalized emittance of 5 mm mrad horizontally and 13 mm mrad vertically. The scattered 820-nm laser pulse had an energy of 180 mJ and a duration of 54 fs. Initial x-rays were captured with a cooled charge-coupled device using a Cesium Iodide scintillator; the peak photon energy was approximately 78 keV, with a total x-ray flux of 1.3 x 10{sup 6} photons/shot, and the observed angular distribution found to agree very well with three-dimensional codes. Simple K-edge radiography of a tantalum foil showed good agreement with the theoretical divergence-angle dependence of the x-ray energy. Optimization of the x-ray dose is currently underway, with the goal of reaching 10{sup 8} photons per shot and a peak brightness approaching 10{sup 20} photons/mm{sup 2}/mrad{sup 2}/s/0.1%bandwidth.

Scientific progress is becoming increasingly dependent of our ability to study phenomena at multiple scales and from multiple perspectives. The ability to recontextualize third party data within the semantic and syntactic framework of a given research project is increasingly seen as a primary barrier in multi-scale science. Within the Collaboratory for Multiscale Chemical Science (CMCS) project, we are developing a general-purpose informatics-based approach that emphasizes ''on-demand'' metadata creation, configurable data translations, and semantic mapping to support the rapidly increasing and continually evolving requirements for managing data, metadata, and data relationships in such projects. A concrete example of this approach is the design of the CMCS provenance subsystem. The concept of provenance varies across communities, and multiple independent applications contribute to and use provenance. In CMCS, we have developed generic tools for viewing provenance relationships and for using them to, for example, scope notifications and searches. These tools rely on a configurable concept of provenance defined in terms of other relationships. The result is a very flexible mechanism capable of tracking data provenance across many disciplines and supporting multiple uses of provenance information.

A problem in developmental biology that continues to take center stage is how higher organisms generate diverse tissues and organs given the same cellular genotype. In cell and tumor biology, the key question is not the production of form, but its preservation: how do tissues and organs maintain homeostasis, and how do cells within tissues lose or overcome these controls in cancer? Undoubtedly, mechanisms that maintain tissue specificity should share features with those employed to drive formation of the tissues. However, they are unlikely to be identical. At a simplistic level, developmental pathways may be thought of as a series of extremely rapid short-term events. Each new step depends on what came before, and the outcome is the organism itself at birth. All organs, with a few notable exceptions, such as the mammary gland and the brain, 'arrive' together and are complete when the organism is born. In mice and humans, these events occur in a mere 21 days and 9 months respectively. The stability of the differentiated state and the homeostasis of the organism, on the other hand, will last 40-110 times longer. How does the organism achieve this feat? How are tissues maintained? These questions also relate fundamentally …

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

The principal objective of this project is to develop materials technology for use in ultrasupercritical (USC) plant boilers capable of operating with 760 C (1400 F), 35 MPa (5000 psi) steam. This project has established a government/industry consortium to undertake a five-year effort to evaluate and develop of advanced materials that allow the use of advanced steam cycles in coal-based power plants. These advanced cycles, with steam temperatures up to 760 C, will increase the efficiency of coal-fired boilers from an average of 35% efficiency (current domestic fleet) to 47% (HHV). This efficiency increase will enable coal-fired power plants to generate electricity at competitive rates (irrespective of fuel costs) while reducing CO{sub 2} and other fuel-related emissions by as much as 29%. Success in achieving these objectives will support a number of broader goals. First, from a national prospective, the program will identify advanced materials that will make it possible to maintain a cost-competitive, environmentally acceptable coal-based electric generation option. High sulfur coals will specifically benefit in this respect by having these advanced materials evaluated in high-sulfur coal firing conditions and from the significant reductions in waste generation inherent in the increased operational efficiency. Second, from a national prospective, the …

This Technical Progress Report provides an account of the status of the project for the demonstration of Black Liquor Gasification at Georgia-Pacific Corporation's Big Island, VA facility. The report also includes budget information and a milestone schedule. The project to be conducted by G-P is a comprehensive, complete commercial-scale demonstration that is divided into two phases. Phase I is the validation of the project scope and cost estimate. Phase II is project execution, data acquisition and reporting, and consists of procurement of major equipment, construction and start-up of the new system. Phase II also includes operation of the system for a period of time to demonstrate the safe operation and full integration of the energy and chemical recovery systems in a commercial environment. The objective of Phase I is to validate the process design and to engineer viable solutions to any technology gaps. This phase includes engineering and planning for the integration of the full-scale MTCI/StoneChem PulseEnhanced{trademark} black liquor steam-reformer chemical recovery system into G-P's operating pulp and paper mill at Big Island, Virginia. During this phase, the scope and cost estimate will be finalized to confirm the cost of the project and its integration into the existing system at …

An experimental and numerical investigation has been conducted on flow through two square ducts with a 2:1 hydraulic diameter ratio joined at a right angle. Measurements of the velocity field were acquired using a laser Doppler velocimeter at various planar locations throughout the ducts at a nominal Reynolds number of 68,000. Pressure drop measurements were taken for 3 Reynolds numbers between 46,000 and 93,000. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses were performed using STAR-CD to determine how well the experimental data could be predicted using the k-{var_epsilon}, k-{var_epsilon} RNG, k-{var_epsilon}Chen, k-{var_epsilon} quadratic, k-{omega}, and Spalart-Allmaras models. The results show that there are distinct differences in the CDF results. The standard k-{var_epsilon} model overpredicted the loss coefficient by 4% and underpredicted the exit swirl magnitude by 43%. The best predictor of the swirl decay was found to be the k-{omega} model, which adequately followed the data throughout the entire geometry and underpredicted the exit swirl by 16%. The best overall model was found to be Spalart-Allmaras, which overpredicted the loss coefficient by 2% and underpredicted the exit swirl magnitude by 40%.

XDAQ is a generic data acquisition software environment that emerged from a rich set of use-cases encountered in the CMS experiment. They cover not the deployment for multiple sub-detectors and the operation of different processing and networking equipment as well as a distributed collaboration of users with different needs. The use of the software in various application scenarios demonstrated the viability of the approach. We discuss two applications, the tracker local DAQ system for front-end commissioning and the muon chamber validation system. The description is completed by a brief overview of XDAQ.

An interesting phenomenon observed in the near-anode region of a Hall thruster is that the anode fall changes from positive to negative upon removal of the dielectric coating, which is produced on the anode surface during the normal course of Hall thruster operation. The anode fall might affect the thruster lifetime and acceleration efficiency. The effect of the anode coating on the anode fall is studied experimentally using both biased and emissive probes. Measurements of discharge current oscillations indicate that thruster operation is more stable with the coated anode.

Mechanical vibrations can detune superconducting radio frequency (SCRF) cavities unless a tuning mechanism counteracting the vibrations is present. Due to their narrow operating bandwidth and demanding mechanical structure, the 13-cell 3.9GHz SCRF cavities for the Charged Kaons at Main Injector (CKM) experiment at Fermilab are especially susceptible to this microphonic phenomena. We present early results correlating RF frequency detuning with cavity vibration measurements for CKM cavities; initial detuning compensation results with piezoelectric actuators are also presented.

Over a 10 year operating period, the CMS Hadron Calorimeter (HCAL) detector will be exposed to radiation fields of approximately 1 kRad of total ionizing dose (TID) and a neutron fluence of 4E11 n/cm{sup 2}. All front-end electronics must be qualified to survive this radiation environment with no degradation in performance. In addition, digital components in this environment can experience single-event upset (SEU) and single-event latchup (SEL). A measurement of these single-event effects (SEE) for all components is necessary in order to understand the level that will be encountered. System level studies of the performance of the front-end boards in a 200 MeV proton beam are presented. Limits on the latch-up immunity along with the expected SEU rate for the full front-end system have been measured. The first results from studies of the performance of the two Fermilab custom-designed chips in a radiation environment also are shown.

The successful operation of the National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) machine will require producing plasma configurations with good flux surfaces, with a minimum volume of the plasma lost to magnetic islands or stochastic regions. The project goal is to achieve good flux surfaces over 90% of the plasma volume. NCSX is a three period device designed to be operated with iota ranging from {approx}0.4 on axis to {approx}0.7 at the edge. The field errors of most concern are those that are resonant with 3/5 and 3/6 modes (for symmetry preserving field errors) and the 1/2 and 2/3 modes (for symmetry breaking field errors). In addition to losses inherent in the physics configuration itself, there will be losses from field errors arising from coil construction and assembly errors. Some of these losses can be recovered through the use of trim coils or correction coils. The impact of coil tolerances on plasma surface quality is evaluated herein for the NCSX design. The methods used in this evaluation are discussed. The ability of the NCSX trim coils to correct for field errors is also examined. The results are used to set coils tolerances for the various coil systems.

A parallel adaptive low Mach number model is used to study an experimental lean premixed turbulent methane V-flame that is stabilized on a rod spanning the exit plane of a circular nozzle. The fuel is turbulent due to an upstream perforated-plate, and the resulting flame extends downstream of the rod. We present three-dimensional time-dependent simulations of this configuration. The computations incorporate detailed reaction chemistry and transport using a dynamically adaptive block-structured grid algorithm and a time-split integration procedure. Flow field and flame surface statistics are gathered from the experiment and are compared to the computed results.

We report the progress made in assessing the potential of compact, quasi-axisymmetric stellarators as power-producing reactors. Using an aspect ratio A=4.5 configuration derived from NCSX and optimized with respect to the quasi-axisymmetry and MHD stability in the linear regime as an example, we show that a reactor of 1 GW(e) maybe realizable with a major radius *8 m. This is significantly smaller than the designs of stellarator reactors attempted before. We further show the design of modular coils and discuss the optimization of coil aspect ratios in order to accommodate the blanket for tritium breeding and radiation shielding for coil protection. In addition, we discuss the effects of coil aspect ratio on the peak magnetic field in the coils.

The fundamental conclusion that we draw from this analysis is that one should not to base itself blindly on forecasts prices of natural gas when one compare contracts at price fixes with producers of renewable energy with contracts at variable prices with promoters power stations with gas. Indeed, forecasts of the prices of gas do not succeed not to enter the associated costs with the covering of the risk, that they are connected to the negative pressure against the cover, with the CAPM, with costs of transaction or with unspecified combination of three. Thus, insofar as price stability to length term is developed, better way of comparing the two choices would be to have recourse to the data on the prices in the long term natural gas, and not with forecasts of the prices. During three last years at least, the use of these prices in the long term would have besides license to correct a methodological error who, obviously, seem to have supported unduly, and of relatively important way, power stations with natural gas compared to their competitors of renewable energies.

The Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMRs) for July, August and September, 2003, were prepared and submitted to the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC). Discussions were held during July with our environmental consulting firm (TVG Environmental) and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) about the groundwater testing program for the CFFF. Both TVG and TDEC advised that we continue with the semiannual sampling schedule for at least the next 6 months to a year. A relatively new category titled Site-Specific Impaired Classification is being considered for the CFFF, but the documentation requirements are expected to be extensive and expensive. The next sampling event will be contracted for in November 2003. In addition to regular monthly report to TDEC, a regional inspector from TDEC came by to inspect the CFFF for compliance with the water discharge permit. He took a short tour of the facility and subsequently issued a statement that the CFFF was in compliance with the permit. TVG Environmental, Inc. of Nashville was requested to provide a cost quote to perform the next scheduled groundwater sampling event for the CFFF. They quoted the same per-event cost as the two previous sampling events. TVG was awarded the contract …