Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Drug compounding--the process of mixing, combining, or altering ingredients--is an important part of the practice of pharmacy because there is a need for medications tailored to individual patient needs. Several recent compounding cases that resulted in serious illness and deaths have raised concern about oversight to ensure the safety and quality of compounded drugs. These concerns have raised questions about what states--which regulate the practice of pharmacy--and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are doing to oversee drug compounding. GAO was asked to examine (1) the actions taken or proposed by states and national pharmacy organizations that may affect state oversight of drug compounding, and (2) federal authority and enforcement power regarding compounded drugs. This testimony is based on discussions with the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP) and a GAO review of four states: Missouri, North Carolina, Vermont, and Wyoming. GAO also interviewed and reviewed documents from pharmacist organizations, FDA, and others involved in the practice of pharmacy or drug compounding."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Business-owned life insurance is held by employers on the lives of their employees, and the employer is the beneficiary of these policies. Unless prohibited by state law, businesses can retain ownership of these policies regardless of whether the employment relationship has ended. Generally, business-owned life insurance is permanent, lasting for the life of the employee and accumulating cash value as it provides coverage. Attractive features of business-owned life insurance, which are common to all permanent life insurance, generally include both tax-free accumulation of earnings on the policies' cash value and tax-free receipt of the death benefit. To address concerns that businesses were abusing their ability to deduct interest expenses on loans taken against the value of their policies, Congress passed legislation to limit this practice, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of Justice pursued litigation against some businesses. But concerns have remained regarding employers' ability to benefit from insuring their employees' lives. This testimony provides some preliminary information from ongoing GAO work on (1) the uses and prevalence of business-owned life insurance and (2) federal and state regulatory requirements for and oversight of business-owned life insurance."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "On October 21, 2001, the U.S. Postal Service closed its Brentwood mail processing facility after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that an employee there had contracted inhalation anthrax, an often-fatal form of the disease. On October 21 and 22, two other Brentwood employees died of inhalation anthrax. The contamination was linked to a letter that passed through the facility on or about October 12, before being opened in the office of Senator Daschle in the Hart Senate Office Building on October 15. The Hart Building was closed the next day. The Brentwood facility has since been decontaminated and will soon reopen. This testimony, which is based on ongoing work, provides GAO's preliminary observations on the decisions made in closing the facility and problems experienced in communicating with employees, as well as lessons learned from the experience."

this report provides information about The Economics of the Federal Budget Deficit where measuring fiscal policy is done using structural or standardized-employment, budget.

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

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

Weekly Jewish newspaper from Fort Worth, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

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

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

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

Rafinesque's big-eared bat (Corynorhinus rafinesquii), an insectivorous mammal indigenous to the southern United States, has long been referred to as one of the least known bats in North America. Although there has been a moderate increase in the number of peer-reviewed articles published on this species in the past 6 years, the basic ecology and status of Rafinesque's big-eared bat remains largely obscure. Prior to 1996, when the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) discontinued the list of Candidate Species, Rafinesque's big-eared bat was listed as a Federal Category 2 Candidate species. Currently, Rafinesque's big-eared bat is recognized as a ''species of special concern'' across most of its range but receives no legal protection. Nonetheless, the USFWS and numerous state agencies remain concerned about this species. Further biological research and field study are needed to resolve the conservation status of this taxona. In response to the paucity of information regarding the status and distribution of Rafinesque's big-eared bat, statewide survey of highway bridges used as roost sites was conducted.

The recycle of plutonium from refractory residues is a necessary activity for the nuclear weapon production complex. Traditionally, high-fired plutonium oxide (PuO2) was leached from the residue matrix using a nitric acid/fluoride dissolving flowsheet. The recovery operations were time consuming and often required multiple contacts with fresh dissolving solution to reduce the plutonium concentration to levels where residual solids could be discarded. Due to these drawbacks, the development of an efficient process for the recovery of plutonium from refractory materials is desirable. To address this need, a pretreatment process was developed. The development program utilized a series of small-scale experiments to optimize processing conditions for the fusion process and demonstrate the plutonium recovery efficiency using ceramic materials developed as potential long-term storage forms for PuO2 and an incinerator ash from the Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (Rocky Flats) as te st materials.

After strontium/transuranics removal by precipitation followed by cesium/technetium removal by ion exchange, remaining low activity waste in the Hanford River Protection Project Waste Treatment Plant is to be concentrated by evaporation prior to being mixed with glass formers and vitrified. To provide a technical basis to permit the waste treatment facility, a relatively organic-rich Hanford Tank 241-AN-107 waste simulant was spiked with 14 target volatile, semi-volatile and pesticide compounds, and evaporated under vacuum in a bench-scale natural circulation evaporator fitted with an industrial stack off-gas sampler at the Savannah River Technology Center. An evaporator material balance for the target organics was calculated by combining liquid stream mass and analytical data with off-gas emissions estimates obtained using EPA SW-846 Methods. Volatile and light semi-volatile organic compounds in the waste simulant were found to largely exit through the condenser vent, while heavier semi-volatiles and pesticides generally remain in the evaporator concentrate. An OLI Environmental Simulation Program evaporator model successfully predicted operating conditions and the experimental distribution of the fed target organics exiting in the concentrate, condensate and off-gas streams with the exception of a few semi-volatile and pesticide compounds. Comparison with Henry's Law predictions suggests the OLI ESP model is constrained by …

The chemistry to manufacture high purity GeF{sub 4} and WF{sub 6} for use in the semiconductor industry using Starmet's new fluorine extraction technology has been developed. Production of GeF{sub 4} was established using a tube-style reactor system where conversion yields as high as 98.1% were attained for the reaction between and GeO{sub 2}. Collection of the fluoride gas improved to 97.7% when the reactor sweep gas contained a small fraction of dry air (10-12 vol%) along with helium. The lab-synthesized product was shown to contain the least amount of infrared active and elemental impurities when compared with a reference material certified at 99.99% purity. Analysis of the ''as-produced'' gas using ICP-MS showed that uranium could not be detected at a detection limit of 0.019ppm-wt. A process to make WF{sub 6} from WO{sub 2}, and UF{sub 4}, produced a WOF{sub 4} intermediate, which proved difficult to convert to tungsten hexafluoride using titanium fluoride as a fluorinating agent.

A demonstration of Fluidized Bed Steam Reforming (FBSR) was recently completed on a Hanford Low Activity Waste (LAW) simulant. This technology produced stable mineral phases (feldspathoids) when co-fired with clay. The mineral phases are cage structured and were determined to retain anions as well as cations such as Re (simulant for Tc) in the mineral cages. The FBSR mineral waste form exhibited incongruent leaching characteristics during Product Consistency Testing (PCT or ASTM C1285). FBSR mineral waste forms are EPA regulatory compliant at the Universal Treatment Standard (UTS) making delisting an attractive option for this waste form.

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

Funeral program for Mr. Jack Wilbert De Vaughn, Sr., born September 11, 1930 and died October 18, 2003. The funeral was held October 23, 2003 at Jacob's Chapel United Methodist Church, officiated by Rev. Howard Mims. The funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

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

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

Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) is an isotope ratio mass spectrometer that quantifies low levels of rare isotopes with half-lives between 10 and 10{sup 8} years. Typical sensitivities are 10{sup 6} atoms in a milligram-sized sample. AMS was originally developed for use in the geosciences as a tool to carbon date archaeological artifacts, but has applications in many fields. In the biosciences, the extreme sensitivity of AMS is used to trace nutrients, toxins and therapeutics in humans and animals using less than {micro}g/kg doses containing between 1-100 nCi of {sup 14}C. This sensitivity is used to reduce sample size, reduce chemical exposures to environmental or physiological levels, reduce radiation exposures to subjects, and/or reduce radioactive (and ''mixed'') waste. Compared to decay counting, AMS provides for a much higher measurement throughput for low activity samples. For example, a milligram-sized sample containing 1 dpm of {sup 14}C can be measured to 3% precision in several seconds. That same sample would require approximately 1 week of decay counting to obtain similar precision.

An improved version of the focusing magnet for a Heavy Ion Fusion (HIF) accelerator was designed, built and tested in 2002-2003. This quadrupole has higher focusing power and lower error field than the previous version of the focusing quadrupoles successfully built and tested in 2001. We discuss the features of the new design, selected fabrication issues and test results.

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This article examines the achievable Strehl ratio when a finite-bit correction to an aberrated wave-front is implemented. The phase-conjugate-engine (PCE) used to measure the aberrated wavefront consists of a quadrature interferometric wave-front sensor, a liquid-crystal spatial-light-modulator and computer hardware/software to calculate and apply the correction. A finite-bit approximation to the conjugate phase is calculated and applied to the spatial light modulator to remove the aberrations from the optical beam. The experimentally determined Strehl ratio of the corrected beam is compared with analytical expressions for the expected Strehl ratio and shown to be in good agreement with those predictions.

This report summarizes the general provisions of the District of Columbia Appropriations Act for FY2003 and the District of Columbia Appropriations Act for FY2004. This report only briefly summarizes proposed FY2004 funding recommendations for the District.