A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In the late 1990s, GAO found that the Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation (Farmer Mac), a federal government-sponsored enterprise, had significant assets in nonmission investments and analyzed its long-term viability. Recently, Congress asked GAO to report on Farmer Mac's (1) financial condition, (2) mission, (3) corporate governance, and (4) oversight provided by the Farm Credit Administration (FCA)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Each year federal agencies issue numerous proposed or final rules or take other regulatory actions that may potentially affect the use of private property. Some of these actions may result in the property owner being owed just compensation under the Fifth Amendment. In 1988 the President issued Executive Order 12630 on property rights to ensure that government actions affecting the use of private property are undertaken on a well-reasoned basis with due regard for the potential financial impacts imposed on the government. This testimony is based on our recent report on the compliance of the Department of Justice and four agencies--the Department of Agriculture, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of the Interior--with the executive order. (Regulatory Takings: Implementation of Executive Order on Government Actions Affecting Private Property Use, GAO-03-1015, Sept.19,2003). Specifically, GAO examined the extent to which (1)Justice has updated its guidelines for the order to reflect changes in case law and issued supplemental guidelines for the four agencies, (2) the four agencies have complied with the specific provisions of the executive order, and (3) just compensation awards have been assessed …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Each year, millions of visitors, foreign students, and immigrants come to the United States. Visitors may enter on a legal temporary basis--that is, with an authorized period of admission that expires on a specific date--either (1) with temporary visas (generally for tourism,business,or work) or, in some cases (2) as tourists or business visitors who are allowed to enter without visas. (The latter group includes Canadians and qualified visitors from 27 countries who enter under the visa waiver program.) The majority of visitors who are tracked depart on time, but others overstay. Four of the 9/11 hijackers who entered the United States with legal visas overstayed their authorized periods of admission. This has heightened attention to issues such as (1) the extent of overstaying, (2) weaknesses in our current overstay tracking system, and (3) how the tracking system weaknesses and the level of overstaying might affect domestic security."

In 2000 and 2001, the Kalispel Natural Resource Department (KNRD) continued to mitigate the wildlife habitat losses as part of the Albeni Falls Wildlife Mitigation Project. Utilizing Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) funds, the Kalispel Tribe of Indians (Tribe) purchased three projects totaling nearly 1,200 acres. The Tacoma/Trimble Wildlife Management Area is a conglomeration of properties now estimated at 1,700 acres. It is the Tribe's intent to manage these properties in cooperation and collaboration with the Pend Oreille County Public Utility District (PUD) No. 1 and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) to benefit wildlife habitats and associated species, populations, and guilds.

A novel method for determining the equation-of-state (EOS) along the release isentrope in an isochoric (constant volume) heated plasma is presented. The sensitivity of this approach is demonstrated using two different equation-of-state models for a solid density, 10 eV expanding Al plasma. Determining the material EOS data is validated to pressures near 80 Mbar, much higher than current isentropic compression experiments allow. Limitations at high temperature (T{sub e} {ge} 100 eV) due to the formation of a radiative conduction layer near the rarefaction interface are also illustrated.

One problem in similarity-based object retrieval (SBOR) is how to define and estimate the similarity between two objects. In this paper we present a shape similarity measure based on thin-plate splines, and compare its performance with several other measures used in SBOR. We evaluate the methods on both artificial and real images.

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

We explore the validity of the generalized Bekenstein bound, S<= pi M a. We define the entropy S as the logarithm of the number of states which have energy eigenvalue below M and are localized to a flat space region of width alpha. If boundary conditions that localize field modes are imposed by fiat, then the bound encounters well-known difficulties with negative Casimir energy and large species number, as well as novel problems arising only in the generalized form. In realistic systems, however, finite-size effects contribute additional energy. We study two different models for estimating such contributions. Our analysis suggests that the bound is both valid and nontrivial if interactions are properly included, so that the entropy S counts the bound states of interacting fields.

Alloy 22 (N06022) is the candidate material for the corrosion resistant, outer barrier of the nuclear waste container. Two of the potential corrosion degradation modes of the container are uniform corrosion and localized corrosion. A testing program at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is being carried out for Yucca Mountain to determine the susceptibility of Alloy 22 to these two forms of corrosion using long-term immersion tests. Metallic coupons were exposed to several electrolyte solutions simulating concentrated ground water from pH 3 to 10 at 60 C and 90 C. This paper summarizes results on the characteristics of the surface deposits as well as the corrosion rate of 122 coupons of Alloy 22 obtained after more than a five-year exposure. The surface deposits consisted primarily of salt components in the respective solutions. Results showed little general corrosion and the absence of localized (crevice) corrosion.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Livingston, 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.

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

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

Immobilization of the high-level nuclear waste stored at the Hanford Reservation has been complicated by the presence of soluble, lower-valent technetium species. Previous work by Schroeder and Blanchard has shown that these species cannot be removed by ion-exchange and are difficult to oxidize. The Tc-K edge XANES spectra of the species in Tanks SY-101 and SY-103 were reported by Blanchard, but they could not be assigned to any known technetium complex. We report that the XANES spectra are most likely those of Tc(I) carbonyl species, especially fac-Tc(CO){sub 3}(gluconate){sup 2-}. This is further supported by EXAFS and {sup 99}Tc-NMR studies in nonradioactive simulants of these tank wastes.

Long-term monitoring (LTM) associated with subsurface contamination sites is a key element of Long Term Stewardship and Legacy Management across the Department of Energy (DOE) complex. However, both within the DOE and elsewhere, LTM is an expensive endeavor, often exceeding the costs of the remediation phase of a clean-up project. The primary contributors to LTM costs are associated with labor. Sample collection, storage, preparation, analysis, and reporting can add a significant financial burden to project expense when extended over many years. Development of unattended, in situ monitoring networks capable of providing quantitative data satisfactory to regulatory concerns has the potential to significantly reduce LTM costs. But survival and dependable operation in a difficult environment is a common obstacle to widespread use across the DOE complex or elsewhere. Deploying almost any sensor in the subsurface for extended periods of time will expose it to chemical and microbial degradation. Over the time-scales required for in situ LTM, even the most advanced sensor systems may be rendered useless. Frequent replacement or servicing (cleaning) of sensors is expensive and labor intensive, offsetting most, if not all, of the cost savings realized with unattended, in situ sensors. To enable facile, remote monitoring of contaminants and …

The Rebuild America program was established in 1994 to accelerate the adoption of energy efficiency measures and practices in existing public facilities, commercial buildings, and multifamily housing units. More recently, the program has expanded to include new construction as well. The program encourages the formation of partnerships involving state and local governments, private businesses, and other organizations to help identify and solve problems related to energy use in buildings. Rebuild America does not directly fund actual building improvements. Instead, it provides the Rebuild Partners with the technical tools and assistance they need to plan and implement building projects and stimulates other entities to make substantial investments in energy efficiency. At the request of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory studied the Rebuild America program for the purpose of identifying key factors associated with successful operations. Substantial amounts of data were collected directly from Rebuild America partnerships concerning the results achieved by each of their individual projects, both committed and completed. In addition, data were collected from secondary sources on a limited number of factors describing partnership setting and characteristics. By combining these two data sets, we were able …

On October 08, 2001 a small felt earthquake occurred near Upper Three Runs Creek in the north central area of the Savannah River Site, South Carolina. Seven very small aftershocks followed the main event with the last one occurring March 06, 2002. All activity occurred within a small area. Further analysis of collected data indicates a correlation of this low level seismic activity with a small northwest trending structure observed in detailed gravity and magnetic data. Both single event and composite focal mechanisms were derived using local and regional stations. Results indicated predominantly dip-slip motion along a fault striking NNW at 335 degrees and dipping 41 degrees to the southwest. A 3D plot of the eight hypocenters clearly defines a fault plane nearly analogous to that obtained from the focal solutions. The Upper Three Runs series of events is another example of a separate class of earthquakes that occur within the central Piedmont and upper Coastal Plain of South Carolina. The Upper Three Runs sequence of events demonstrates that shallow intersections of structures interpreted from potential field data can be the foci for localized stress concentrations where microearthquake activity can occur. These earthquakes are attributable to small scale faults associated …

Envelope C waste includes Hanford Tank 241-AN-102, which contains high levels of organic complexants and high levels of soluble aluminum. Supporting SRTC studies of processes require the use of a simulant for AN-102 Supernate. A simulant has been developed that contains the levels of soluble transition metals observed in tank AN-102. Development of the simulant was based on the most recent characterizations of AN-102 waste. Estimating the amount of gluconate ion present in the AN-102 supernate was necessary to produce the correct soluble metals concentrations. The simulant formulation is based on the nominal composition of Tank AN-102 supernate at 9.5 molar sodium and diluted to 6.5 molar sodium concentrations.

Using the data samples collected with the CDF Run II detector during the year 2002 and early 2003, new measurements of the production cross-sections and the masses, lifetimes and branching fractions of beauty and charm hadrons are presented. New measurements of the {Lambda}{sub b} mass, lifetime, and branching fractions have greatly improved the current knowledge of bottom baryon properties and decay dynamics. the large charm signals made available by the silicon vertex track trigger have enabled the establishment of key measurements using rare charm decays that are sensitive to new physics beyond the Standard Model. The decay signals B{sub s} {yields} D{sub s}{pi} and the two body charmless decays of B{sup 0} and B{sub s} have been established. These decay channels are important milestones towards the measurement of B{sub s} mixing and direct CP violation in the B system.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Following the 1990-91 Persian Gulf War, many servicemembers experienced health problems that they attributed to their military service in the Persian Gulf. However, a lack of servicemember health and deployment data hampered subsequent investigations into the nature and causes of these illnesses. Public Law 105-85, enacted in November 1997, required the Department of Defense (DOD) to establish a system to assess the medical condition of service members before and after deployments. GAO reported on (1) the Army's and Air Force's compliance with DOD's force health protection and surveillance requirements for servicemembers deploying in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) in Central Asia and Operation Joint Guardian (OJG) in Kosovo and (2) the status of DOD efforts to correct problems related to the accuracy and completeness of databases reflecting which servicemembers were deployed to certain locations. (Defense Health Care: Quality Assurance Process Needed to Improve Force Health Protection and Surveillance (GAO-03-1041, Sept. 19, 2003)) GAO was asked to testify on its findings regarding the Army's and Air Force's compliance with DOD's force health protection and surveillance policies. For its report, GAO reviewed records for statistical samples of active duty …

Shape-memory alloys (SMA) have the potential to be used in a variety of interesting applications due to their unique properties of pseudoelasticity and the shape-memory effect. However, in order to design SMA devices efficiently, a physics-based constitutive model is required to accurately simulate the behavior of shape-memory alloys. The scope of this work is to extend the numerical capabilities of the SMA constitutive model developed by Jannetti et. al. (2003), to handle large-scale polycrystalline simulations. The constitutive model is implemented within the finite-element software ABAQUS/Standard using a user defined material subroutine, or UMAT. To improve the efficiency of the numerical simulations, so that polycrystalline specimens of shape-memory alloys can be modeled, a fully implicit algorithm has been implemented to integrate the constitutive equations. Using an implicit integration scheme increases the efficiency of the UMAT over the previously implemented explicit integration method by a factor of more than 100 for single crystal simulations.

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

Funeral program for Dorothy P. Taylor, born July 2, 1918 and died October 8, 2003. The funeral was held October 16, 2003 at Mount Zion First Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. Kenneth A. Allen. Funeral arrangements were made through the Lewis Funeral Home, and she was buried in Meadowlawn Memorial Cemetery in San Antonio, Texas.