A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) efforts to implement the Packers and Stockyards Act, focusing on: (1) the number and status of investigations conducted by the Grain Inspection, Packers and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA) in response to complaints and concerns about anticompetitive activity involving the marketing of cattle and hogs; and (2) factors that affect GIPSA's ability to investigate concerns about anticompetitive practices."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the number of federal and state court cases that invoked the Year 2000 (Y2K) Act and the characteristics of those cases."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) information technology (IT) program, focusing on VA's efforts to: (1) improve its process for selecting, controlling, and evaluating IT investments; (2) fill the chief information officer (CIO) position; (3) develop an overall strategy for reengineering its business processes; (4) complete a departmentwide integrated systems architecture; (5) track its IT expenditures; (6) implement the Veterans Health Administration's (VHA) Decision Support System and the Veterans Benefits Administration's (VBA) compensation and pension replacement project; and (7) improve the department's computer security."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed foreign assistance, focusing on the: (1) use of the Compact of Free Association funding by the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) between fiscal years 1987 and 1998; (2) progress both nations have made in advancing economic self-sufficiency; (3) role of Compact funds in supporting economic progress; and (4) extent of accountability by the two nations and the United States over Compact expenditures."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's use of withdrawn land near Hawthorne, Nevada, focusing on: (1) the status of the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) proposal to reduce the amount of withdrawn land near Hawthorne; and (2) possible approaches for addressing the use of this land."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) new rule on competitive bidding procedures. GAO noted that: (1) the rule would amend FCC's general competitive bidding rules for all auctionable services; and (2) with the exception of the rule's effective date, FCC complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) new rule on disaster assistance for victims of the Cerro Grand, New Mexico fire. GAO noted that: (1) the rule would set out the procedures for applicants to obtain assistance for injuries and property damage resulting from the Cerro Grande fire; and (2) FEMA complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO investigated alleged contracting irregularities at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), focusing on allegations that PBGC's Director of Insurance Operations, Bennie Hogan, improperly influenced the award of two contracts to Myrna Cooks."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's (PBGC) management of its contracting responsibilities, focusing on: (1) the basis for PBGC's decisions regarding the use of contractors versus government personnel to address its workloads; (2) PBGC's processes and procedures for selecting contractors; and (3) how effective PBGC has been in monitoring the performance of its contractors."

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

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

A thick flowing layer of liquid (e.g., flibe-a molten salt, or Sn{sub 80}Li{sub 20}--a liquid metal) protects the structural walls of the magnetic fusion configuration so that they can last the life of the plant even with intense 14 MeV neutron bombardment from the D-T fusion reaction, The surface temperature of the liquid rises as it passes from the inlet nozzles to the exit nozzles due to absorption of line and bremsstrahlung radiation, and neutrons. The surface temperature can be reduced by enhanced turbulent convection of hot surface liquid into the cooler interior. This surface temperature is affected by the temperature of liquid from a heat transport and energy recovery system. The evaporative flux from the wall driven by the surface temperature must also result in an acceptable impurity level in the core plasma. The shielding of the core by the edge plasma is modeled with a 2D-transport code for the DT and impurity ions; these impurity ions are either swept out to the divertor, or diffuse to the hot plasma core. An auxiliary plasma between the edge plasma and the liquid wall may further attenuate evaporating flux of atoms and molecules by ionization near the wall.

We describe a coded aperture, gamma-ray imager which uses a CsI(Na) scintillator coupled to an Hamamatsu R3292 position-sensitive photomultiplier tube (PSPMT) as the position-sensitive detector. We have modified the normal resistor divider readout of the PSPMT to allow use of nearly the full 10 cm diameter active area of the PSPMT with a single scintillator crystal one centimeter thick. This is a significant performance improvement over that obtained with the standard readout technique where the linearity and position resolution start to degrade at radii as small as 3.5 cm with a crystal 0.75 crn thick. This represents a recovery of over 60% of the PSPMT active area. The performance increase allows the construction of an imager with a field of view 20 resolution elements in diameter with useful quantum efficiency from 60-700 keV. In this paper we describe the readout technique, its implementation in a coded aperture imager and the performance of that imager.

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

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

We are developing detectors based on bulk superconducting absorbers coupled to superconducting transition edge sensors (TES) for high-resolution spectroscopy of hard X-rays and soft gamma-rays. We have achieved an energy resolution of 70 eV FWHM at 60 keV using a 1 x 1 x 0.25 mm{sup 3} Sn absorber coupled to a Mo/Cu multilayer TES with a transition temperature of 100 mK. The response of the detector is compared with a simple model using only material properties data and characteristics derived from IV-measurements. We have also manufactured detectors using superconducting absorbers with a higher stopping power, such as Pb and Ta. We present our first measurements of these detectors, including the thermalization characteristics of the bulk superconducting absorbers. The differences in performance between the detectors are discussed and an outline of the future direction of our detector development efforts is given.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on 10 federal agencies' efforts to implement National Partnership for Reinventing Government (NPR0 recommendations, focusing on the: (1) factors influencing NPR's reform efforts; (2) implementation status of NPR recommendations to the 10 agencies; and (3) effects the 10 agencies reported they achieved by implementing these recommendations."

The field of x-ray radiography is well established for doing non-destructive evaluation of a vast array of components, assemblies, and objects. While x-rays excel in many radiography applications, their effectiveness diminishes rapidly if the objects of interest are surrounded by thick, high-density materials that strongly attenuate photons. Due to the differences in interaction mechanisms, neutron radiography is highly effective in imaging details inside such objects. To obtain a high intensity neutron source suitable for neutron imaging a 9-MeV linear accelerator is being evaluated for putting a deuteron beam into a high-pressure deuterium gas cell. As a windowless aperture is needed to transport the beam into the gas cell, a low-emittance is needed to minimize losses along the high-energy beam transport (HEBT) and the end station. A description of the HEBT, the transport optics into the gas cell, and the requirements for the linac will be presented.

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

A document outlining the comprehensive communications plan crafted by Steege/Thomson Communications for the National Arts Education Consortium's Transforming Education Through the Arts Challenge. It includes a strategic framework encompassing goals, identified target audiences, potential messaging, and overarching strategies.