A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Grand Coulee Dam was constructed on the Columbia River in northeastern Washington State from 1933 to 1942. The reservoir behind the dam covers land on the Colville Reservation along the Columbia River and land on the adjacent Spokane Reservation along both the Columbia and Spokane rivers. Under a 1940 act, the federal government paid $63,000 and $4,700 to the Colville and Spokane tribes, respectively, for the land used for the dam and reservoir. Subsequently, the Colville tribes pursued additional claims for their lost fisheries and for "water power values" and in 1994 were awarded a lump sum payment of $53 million and, beginning in 1996, annual payments that have ranged between $14 million to $21 million. The Spokane tribe is currently pursuing similar claims. S. 1438, introduced in July 2003, is a proposed legislative settlement for the Spokane tribe's claims. While settlement proposals introduced in the 106th and 107th Congresses directed the settlement costs to be split between Bonneville and the Treasury, S. 1438 provides that the settlement be paid entirely from the Treasury. This statement for the record addresses the (1) impact of …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The General Services Administration's (GSA) Federal Supply Service (FSS) and Federal Technology Service (FTS) play an important role in assisting agencies procure a wide range of products and services. Over the past several years, FSS and FTS purchases have significantly increased, with IT products and services being the primary source of this growth. In April 2002, we identified overlap in FSS' and FTS' IT procurement programs. A management consultant similarly found overlaps in FTS' and FSS' IT sales and marketing functions and contract offerings. To enhance FSS and FTS operational efficiency and effectiveness--in both its IT and non-IT business lines--GSA has undertaken a performance improvement initiative. This testimony focuses on GSA's actions to implement its initiative. It also discusses the importance of enhancing GSA's ability to help agencies strategically purchase products and services."

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

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.

This paper examines current trends in Positron Emission Mammography (PEM) instrumentation and the performance tradeoffs inherent in them. The most common geometry is a pair of parallel planes of detector modules. They subtend a larger solid angle around the breast than conventional PET cameras, and so have both higher efficiency and lower cost. Extensions to this geometry include encircling the breast, measuring the depth of interaction (DOI), and dual-modality imaging (PEM and x-ray mammography, as well as PEM and x-ray guided biopsy). The ultimate utility of PEM may not be decided by instrument performance, but by biological and medical factors, such as the patient to patient variation in radiotracer uptake or the as yet undetermined role of PEM in breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.

The initial density and electron temperature at the surface of a ferroelectric plasma source were deduced from floating probe measurements in an expanding plasma. The method exploits negative charging of the floating probe capacitance by fast flows before the expanding plasma reaches the probe. The temporal profiles of the plasma density can be obtained from the voltage traces of the discharge of the charged probe capacitance by the ion current from the expanding plasma. The temporal profiles of the plasma density, at two different distances from the surface of the ferroelectric plasma source, could be further fitted by using the density profiles for the expanding plasma. This gives the initial values of the plasma density and electron temperature at the surface. The method could be useful for any pulsed discharge, which is accompanied by considerable electromagnetic noise, if the initial plasma parameters might be deduced from measurements in expanding plasma.

Ohio University, in collaboration with CONSOL Energy, Advanced Technology Systems, Inc (ATS) and Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. (AER) as subcontractors, is evaluating the impact of emissions from coal-fired power plants in the Ohio River Valley region as they relate to the transport and deposition of mercury, arsenic, and associated fine particulate matter. This evaluation will involve two interrelated areas of effort: ambient air monitoring and regional-scale modeling analysis. The scope of work for the ambient air monitoring will include the deployment of a surface air monitoring (SAM) station in southeastern Ohio. The SAM station will contain sampling equipment to collect and measure mercury (including speciated forms of mercury and wet and dry deposited mercury), arsenic, particulate matter (PM) mass, PM composition, and gaseous criteria pollutants (CO, NO{sub x}, SO{sub 2}, O{sub 3}, etc.). Laboratory analysis of time-integrated samples will be used to obtain chemical speciation of ambient PM composition and mercury in precipitation. Near-real-time measurements will be used to measure the ambient concentrations of PM mass and all gaseous species including Hg{sup 0} and RGM. Approximately of 18 months of field data will be collected at the SAM site to validate the proposed regional model simulations for episodic and …

The project summarized in this report dealt with an evaluation of new microwave applicator ideas for paper preheating and drying. The technical basis for success in this project is the fact that Industrial Microwave Systems has recently identified certain previously unrecognized wave guide ''design variables'' and hardware implementation concepts that can be employed to greatly improve the uniformity of microwave energy distribution for continuous flow processes. Two applicator concepts were ultimately evaluated, a Cross-Machine Direction (CD) oriented applicator and a Machine Direction (MD) oriented applicator. The economic basis for success is the result of several factors. Since 1985, the capital expenditure required for an industrial microwave applicator system has decreased by a factor of four. The maintenance costs have decreased by a factor of 10 and the life expectancy of the magnetron has increased by more than a factor of four to in excess of 8,000 hours (nearly one year at 24 hours/day operation).

Results of tests of drum-type RAM packages employing conventional clamp-ring closures have caused concern within the DOE Complex over the Department of Transportation 6M Specification Package. To clarify these issues, the Savannah River Site's Radioactive Material Packaging Technology Group was commissioned to conduct a series of tests to determine the response of the clamp-ring closure to the regulatory Hypothetical Accident Condition drop tests, for packages at maximum allowable weight, 640 lb. Additionally, three enhanced closure designs were also tested: the Clamshell, plywood disk reinforcement, and J-Clip. The results of the tests showed that the standard closure was unable to retain its lid for both Center-of-Gravity-Over-Corner and Shallow-Angle cases, for the standard package, at its maximum allowed weight. Similar results were found for packages dropped from a reduced height. The Clamshell design provided the best performance of the enhanced closures.

To increase the Tevatron luminosity, Fermilab is developing a high-energy electron cooling system [1] to cool 8.9-GeV/c antiprotons in the Recycler ring. The schematic layout of the Recycler Electron Cooling (REC) system is shown in Figure 1. Cooling of antiprotons requires a round electron beam with a small angular spread propagating through a cooling section with a kinetic energy of 4.3 MeV. To confine the electron beam tightly and to keep its transverse angles below 10{sup -4} rad, the cooling section will be immersed into a solenoidal field of 50-150G. As part of the R&D effort, a cooling section prototype consisting of 9 modules (90% of the total length of a future section) was assembled and measured. This paper describes the technique of measuring and adjusting the magnetic field quality in the cooling section and presents preliminary results of solenoid prototype field measurements. The design of the cooling section solenoid is discussed in Chapter 2. Chapter 3 describes details of a dedicated measurement system, capable of measuring small transverse field components, while the system's measurement errors are analyzed in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 contains measured field distributions of individual elements of the cooling section as well as an evaluation of …

Research on the Spherical Torus (or Spherical Tokamak) is being pursued to explore the scientific benefits of modifying the field line structure from that in more moderate aspect-ratio devices, such as the conventional tokamak. The Spherical Tours (ST) experiments are being conducted in various U.S. research facilities including the MA-class National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) at Princeton, and three medium-size ST research facilities: Pegasus at University of Wisconsin, HIT-II at University of Washington, and CDX-U at Princeton. In the context of the fusion energy development path being formulated in the U.S., an ST-based Component Test Facility (CTF) and, ultimately a Demo device, are being discussed. For these, it is essential to develop high-performance, steady-state operational scenarios. The relevant scientific issues are energy confinement, MHD stability at high beta (B), noninductive sustainment, ohmic-solenoid-free start-up, and power and particle handling. In the confinement area, the NSTX experiments have shown that the confinement can be up to 50% better than the ITER-98-pby2 H-mode scaling, consistent with the requirements for an ST-based CTF and Demo. In NSTX, CTF-relevant average toroidal beta values bT of up to 35% with the near unity central betaT have been obtained. NSTX will be exploring advanced regimes where bT …

Weekly newspaper from Stamford, 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 some advertising.

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

This study examines the effects of burning and granivory on the reproductive success of the rare plant Amsinckia grandiflora (Boraginaceae). Fire is often used in California grasslands as a means of exotic species control, but the indirect effects of these controls on the reproductive ecology of a native plants are rarely assessed. The interaction of fire with granivory of A. grandiflora seeds was examined in California grasslands over five years (1998-2002). In 1998 and 1999, both burned and unburned plots had bird-exclusion (netted) and no-exclusion (open) treatments. Predation rates were high (51-99%) and final predation rates did not differ among treatments. In 2000, granivory rates in the unburned, open plots were lower than in previous years (14%), and rodent trapping yielded only a single animal. Low granivory rates were observed in 2001 for unburned, open plots (47%). In 2001, burned/open plots experienced significantly more granivory (87%) than either burned/netted plots (37%) or unburned/open plots (47%). In 2002, every seed was taken from burned, open plots. Granivory was highly variable, ranging from 4% to 100% per plot over a three-week period. Nearly all plots were discovered (>10% predation) by granivores in all trials in all years. When data from all treatments …

Current e-commerce systems support online shopping based on electronic product catalogs. The major issues associated with catalog-based commerce systems are: difficulty in distinguishing one retailer from another, complex navigation with confusing links, and a lack of personalized service. This paper reports an intelligent solution to address these issues. Our solution will provide a more personalized sales experience through the use of a transaction-based knowledge model that includes both the rules used for reasoning as well as the corresponding actions. Based on this solution, we have developed an intelligent electronic sales platform that is supported by a framework which provides the desired personalization as well as extensibility and customization capabilities. This paper reports our design and development of this system and application examples.

The magnetic properties of epitaxial Fe films on GaAs in the range of the first few monolayers have been the subject of a considerable number of investigations in recent years. The absence of magnetic signatures at room temperature has been attributed to the existence of a magnetic ''dead'' layer as well as superparamagnetism. By examining the temperature dependence of the magnetic linear dichroism of the Fe core level photoelectrons, we found that these ''non-ferromagnetic'' layers had in fact a Curie temperature, T{sub c}, substantially lower than room temperature, e.g., a T{sub c} of about 240K for thin films of a nominal thickness of 0.9 nm. The values of Curie temperature were sensitive to the initial GaAs substrate conditions and the thickness of the Fe over-layer with a layer of thickness of 1.25 nm showing a T{sub c} above room temperature. The data suggest that the ultrathin Fe films on GaAs(001) are ferromagnetic, although a weaker exchange interaction in the films lead to a substantial reduction in Curie temperature.

Plastic bonded explosives (PBX) generally consist of 85 - 95 % by weight energetic material, such as HMX, and 5 - 15 % polymeric binder. Understanding of the structure and morphology at elevated temperatures and pressures is important for predicting of PBX behavior in accident scenarios. The crystallographic behavior of pure HMX has been measured as functions of temperature and grain size. The investigation is extended to the high temperature behavior of PBX 9501 (95% HMX, 2.5 % Estane, 2.5 % BDNPA/F). The results show that the HMX {beta}-phase to {delta}-phase transition in PBX 9501 is similar to that in neat HMX. However, in the presence of the PBX 9501 binder, {delta}-phase HMX readily converts back to {beta}-phase during cooling. Using the same temperature profile, the conversion rate decreases for each subsequent heating and cooling cycle. As observed in earlier experiments, no reverse conversion is observed without the polymer binder. It is proposed that the reversion of {delta}-phase to {beta}-phase is due to changes in the surface molecular potential caused by the influence of the polymer binder on the surface molecules of the {delta}-phase. Upon thermal cycling, the polymer binder segregates from the HMX particles and thus reduces the influence …

Measurements of core and valence electronic states of single crystals of the rare earth transition metal Zintl phases Yb{sub 14}MnSb{sub 11} and Yb{sub 14}ZnSb{sub 11} were performed using the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy station of Beamline 7 at the Advanced Light Source. Sample surfaces of Yb{sub 14}MnSb{sub 11} and Yb{sub 14}ZnSb{sub 11} were measured as received, after Ar{sup +} ion bombardment, and after cleaving in situ. Detailed analysis of the clean Mn and Zn analog sample surfaces reveal a significant contribution of both Yb{sup 3+} and Yb{sup 2+} 4f states in the valence band region for the Zn analog and no contribution of Yb{sup 3+} states to the valence band for the Mn analog. This result is predicted for the Zn analog by Zintl counting rules, and single crystal X-ray diffraction studies presented here also support the mixed valency of Yb for Yb{sub 14}ZnSb{sub 11}. Further detailed analysis of the core and valence band structure of both Yb{sub 14}MnSb{sub 11} and Yb{sub 14}ZnSb{sub 11} will be presented.

Thanks to the rapid increase of computing power in recent years, simulations of plasmas and particle beams based on direct solution of the Vlasov equation on a multi-dimensional phase-space grid are becoming attractive as an alternative to Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations. Their strength lies essentially in the fact that they are noiseless and that all parts of phase space, including the tail of the distribution, are equally well resolved. Their major drawback is that, for inhomogeneous systems, many of the grid points (where no particles are present) are wasted. This is especially the case for beam simulations where the beam moves rapidly through the phase space (due to varying alternating-gradient focusing forces, for example). This inefficiency has made such Vlasov simulations unsuitable for those cases.

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