Determining the concentration of gallium in plutonium metal is imperative in manufacturing nuclear weapons. X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is an effective method used to quantify the gallium content in plutonium; however, the sample and specimen preparation methods currently employed could be improved from a time and safety standpoint. Recently, a dried residue specimen preparation method was developed as an alternative to the established aqueous approach. The method currently certified to prepare plutonium for gallium analysis by XRF involves dissolving the sample and removing the plutonium with ion exchange chromatography. The gallium remaining in solution is then analyzed. This method has been thoroughly developed, and relative accuracy and precision values less than 1% can be achieved. However, this process is time consuming, and the specimen solution is radioactive due to the presence of residual plutonium and trace americium. Thus, an alternate process was developed to avoid these issues in which the plutonium solution is cast in {mu}L spots on Mylar XRF film, dried, and sealed inside a sample cell for analysis. This specimen preparation method is considerably faster and also safer than the solution process. Previous studies have demonstrated that a very linear calibration can be obtained from dried residue standards. In …

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

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

Weekly student newspaper published in Hurst, Texas and serving the Tarrant County College District that includes school news and information along with advertising.

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

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

Daily newspaper from Perry, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This report provides information on the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Circular A-76, “Performance of Commercial Activities,” and the impact of a related reform initiative, the Federal Activities Inventory Reform Act (FAIR) of 1998, within the Department of Defense. The Circular defines federal policy for determining whether recurring commercial activities should be outsourced to commercial sources, Governmental facilities, or through inter-service support agreements. The FAIR Act creates statutory reporting requirements for federal executive agencies, by requiring Federal executive agencies to identify activities “not inherently governmental” and consider outsourcing through managed competitions. However, FAIR does not require that agencies contract out these activities.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The District of Columbia has historically faced many challenges due to its unique circumstances and role as the nation's capital. After several years of struggling with financial crises and insolvency in the early 1990s, the District has significantly improved its financial condition by achieving five consecutive balanced budgets, an upgraded bond rating, and unqualified or "clean" opinions on its financial statements. More recently, however, District officials have asserted that the District faces a fiscal structural imbalance as a result of several factors, some stemming from the federal government's presence in the city, the absence of a state to provide funding for the state-like services provided by the District, and restrictions on the District's tax base. The District argues that it faces a fiscal structural imbalance between revenues and its expenditures that undermines its capacity to meet its current responsibilities. In contrast with a cyclical fiscal imbalance caused by temporary economic downturns, the District suggests that its imbalance is longer term and more fundamental and, therefore, structural in nature. The District's estimated measures of fiscal structural imbalance are based on the continuation of current budget policy over …

The U.S. government has {approx}500,000 metric tons (MT) of surplus depleted uranium (DU) in various chemical forms stored at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sites across the United States. This DU, most of which is DU hexafluoride (DUF{sub 6}) resulting from uranium enrichment operations, is the largest amount of nuclear material in DOE's inventory. On July 6, 1999, DOE issued the ''Final Plan for the Conversion of Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride as required by Public Law 105-204'', in which DOE committed to develop a ''Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride Materials Use Roadmap'' in order to establish a strategy for the products resulting from conversion of DUF{sub 6} to a stable form. This report meets the commitment in the Final Plan by providing a comprehensive roadmap that DOE will use to guide any future research and development activities for the materials associated with its DUF{sub 6} inventory. The Roadmap supports the decision presented in the ''Record of Decision for Long-Term Management and Use of Depleted Uranium Hexafluoride'', namely to begin conversion of the DUF{sub 6} inventory as soon as possible, either to uranium oxide, uranium metal, or a combination of both, while allowing for future uses of as much of this inventory as possible. …

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The rapid, Alfvenic, time scale of erupting solar-prominences has been an enigma ever since they where first identified. Investigators have proposed a variety of different mechanisms in an effort to account for the abrupt reconfiguration observed. No one mechanism clearly stands out as the single cause of these explosive events. Recent analysis has demonstrated that field lines in the solar atmosphere are metastable to ballooning type instabilities. It has been found previously that in ideal MHD plasmas marginally unstable ballooning modes inevitably become ''explosive'' evolving towards a finite time singularity via a nonlinear 3D instability called ''Nonlinear Magnetohydrodynamic Detonation.'' Thus, this mechanism is a good candidate to explain explosive events observed in the solar atmosphere of our star or in others.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Ten years ago, to coordinate the activities of the various federal agencies involved in export promotion and to ensure better delivery of services to potential exporters, Congress established the interagency Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee (TPCC) under the Export Enhancement Act of 1992. Among other things, the act required the committee to develop a governmentwide strategic plan that (1) establishes priorities for federal activities in support of U.S. export activities and (2) proposes the annual, united federal trade promotion budget that supports the plan. TPCC's annual national export strategies identify broad priorities for promoting U.S. trade, but they do not discuss agencies' specific goals or assess progress made. In its initial strategies, the committee identified 10 regionally dispersed priority markets for future trade promotion efforts, but it did not discuss agencies' specific goals or report later on progress made in increasing exports to these markets. Shifting to a regional approach 3 years later in its 1997 strategy, the committee identified Central and Eastern Europe as a region where U.S. government assistance to U.S. exporters would be important in increasing market share. Again the strategy did not discuss …

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This report gives an overview of the issues related to fruits and vegetables. The contents include federal activities and programs, farm bill issues, trade issues.

This report discusses the Issues for Congress on Fruits and Vegetables.The primary law that exclusively serves the produce industry is the perishable agriculture commodities act in the 1930(PACA).

In the past 50 years, fusion R&D programs have made enormous technical progress. Projected billion-dollar scale research facilities are designed to approach net energy production. In this century, scientific and engineering progress must continue until the economics of fusion power plants improves sufficiently to win large scale private funding in competition with fission and non-nuclear energy systems. This economic advantage must be sustained: trillion dollar investments will be required to build enough fusion power plants to generate ten percent of the world's energy. For Inertial Fusion Energy, multi-billion dollar driver costs must be reduced by up to an order of magnitude, to a small fraction of the total cost of the power plant. Major cost reductions could be achieved via substantial improvements in target performance-both higher gain and reduced ignition energy. Large target performance improvements may be feasible through a combination of design innovations, e.g., ''fast ignition,'' propagation down density gradients, and compression of fusion fuel with a combination of driver and chemical energy. The assumptions that limit projected performance of fusion targets should be carefully examined. The National Ignition Facility will enable development and testing of revolutionary targets designed to make possible economically competitive fusion power plants.

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Levelland, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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

Weekly newspaper from Mannford, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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