Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Last year the President established a commission to examine the future of the U.S. Postal Service (the Service). Its report, issued in July 2003, contained a proposed vision for the Service and recommendations to ensure the viability of postal services. GAO was asked to discuss (1) its perspective on the commission's report and (2) suggestions for next steps. This testimony is based on GAO's analysis of the Commission's report and prior GAO reports and testimonies."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "It has been 2 years since the attacks of September 11,2001, exposed vulnerabilities in the nation's aviation system. Since then, billions of dollars have been spent on a wide range of initiatives designed to enhance the security of commercial aviation. However, vulnerabilities in aviation security continue to exist. As a result, questions have been raised regarding the effectiveness of established initiatives in protecting commercial aircraft from threat objects, and whether additional measures are needed to further enhance security. Accordingly, GAO was asked to describe the Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) efforts to (1) measure the effectiveness of its aviation security initiatives, particularly its passenger screening program; (2) implement a risk management approach to prioritize efforts and focus resources; and (3) address key challenges to further enhance aviation security."

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

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

As the world’s largest stock exchange and a key part of the U.S. economy, the NYSE is a central focus of Congress’s oversight of financial markets. This report sets out the basic issues in NYSE governance and market structure.

The STK Bladestore is a disk subsystem consisting of ATA disks, fiber channel connectivity, and a RAID controller (LSI manufactured). There are essentially four host connections and four backend fiber connections. The host side ports are 2Gb/sec and with their advertised 400MB/sec bandwidth, the disk side ports are 1GB/sec. Our goal is to test this flavor of disk to see what the real world performance might be.

A numerical study is undertaken comparing a fifth-order version of the weighted essentially non-oscillatory numerical (WENO5) method to a modern piecewise-linear, second-order, version of Godunov's (PLMDE) method for the compressible Euler Equations. A series of one-dimensional test problems are examined beginning with classical linear problems and ending with complex shock interactions. The problems considered are: (1) linear advection of a Gaussian pulse in density, (2) Sod's shock tube problem, (3) the ''peak'' shock tube problem, (4) a version of the Shu and Osher shock entropy wave interaction and (5) the Woodward and Colella interacting shock wave problem. For each problem and method, run times, density error norms and convergence rates are reported for each method as produced from a common code test-bed. The linear problem exhibits the advertised convergence rate for both methods as well as the expected large disparity in overall error levels; WENO5 has the smaller errors and an enormous advantage in overall efficiency (in accuracy per unit CPU time). For the nonlinear problems with discontinuities, however, we generally see both first-order self-convergence of error as compared to an exact solution, or when an analytic solution is not available, a converged solution generated on an extremely fine grid. …

Zincblende half-metallic compounds such as CrAs, with large magnetic moments and high Curie temperatures, are promising materials for spintronic applications. They explore layered materials, consisting of alternating layers of zincblende half-metals, by first principles calculations, and find that superlattices of (CrAs){sub 1}(MnAs){sub 1} and (CrAs){sub 2}(MnAs){sub 2} are half-metallic with magnetic moments of 7.0{mu}{sub B} and 14.0{mu}{sub B} per unit cell, respectively. They discuss the nature of the bonding and half-metallicity in these materials and, based on the understanding acquired, develop a simple expression for the magnetic moment in such materials. They explore the range of lattice constants over which half-metallicity is manifested, and suggest corresponding substrates for growth in thin film form.

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

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

Implementation of the work program of Budget Period 2 of the East Binger Unit (''EBU'') DOE Project is progressing and nearing completion. EBU 63-2H has been drilled, completed, and brought on line. This is the second of three horizontal wells planned for this Budget Period, but based on the costs and performances to date of all new wells, could be the last. It will take some time to evaluate their impact on sweep and ultimate recovery. In addition to the drilling of new wells, the project also includes conversions of five wells from producers to injectors. Three wells were previously converted, and a fourth, EBU 37-3H, was prepared for conversion at the end of this reporting period. The fifth will require an expensive workover and will be re-evaluated. Project response to the various projects continues to be very favorable. Gas injection into the pilot area has increased from 4.0 MMscf/d prior to development to an average 7.3 MMscf/d in this reporting period, while gas production has actually decreased from 4.1 MMscf/d to 3.9 MMscf/d. The nitrogen content of produced gas has dropped from 58% to 52%. This has reduced the nitrogen recycle within the pilot area from 60% to 27%. …

The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) records proton-antiproton collisions at center of mass energy of 2.0 TeV at the Tevatron collider. A new collider run, Run II, of the Tevatron started in April 2001. Increased luminosity will result in about 1 PB of data recorded on tapes in the next two years. Currently the CDF experiment has about 260 TB of data stored on tapes. This amount includes raw and reconstructed data and their derivatives. The data storage and retrieval are managed by the CDF Data Handling (DH) system. This system has been designed to accommodate the increased demands of the Run II environment and has proven robust and reliable in providing reliable flow of data from the detector to the end user. This paper gives an overview of the CDF Run II Data Handling system which has evolved significantly over the course of this year. An outline of the future direction of the system is given.

A hardware hash sorter for the Fermilab BTeV Level 1 trigger system will be presented. The has sorter examines track-segment data before the data are sent to a system comprised of 2500 Level 1 processors, and rearranges the data into bins based on the slope of track segments. They have found that by using the rearranged data, processing time is significantly reduced allowing the total number of processors required for the Level 1 trigger system to be reduced. The hash sorter can be implemented in an FPGA that is already included as part of the design of the trigger system. Hash sorting has potential applications in a broad area in trigger and DAQ systems. It is a simple O(n) process and is suitable for FPGA implementation. Several implementation strategies will also be discussed in this document.

The pixel detector proposed for the BTeV experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron will use bump-bonding technology based on either Indium or Pb/Sn solder to connect the front-end readout chips to the silicon pixel sensors. We have studied the strength of the bumps by visual inspection of the bumps bonding silicon sensor modules to dummy chips made out of glass. The studies were done before and after thermal cycles, exposed to intense irradiation, and with the assemblies glued to a graphite substrate. We have also carried out studies on effects of temperature changes on both types of bump bonds by observing the responses of single-chip pixel detectors to an Sr{sup 90} source. We report the results from these studies and our plan to measure the effect of cryogenic temperatures on the bumps.

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

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

Precision spindles used for diamond turning and other applications requiring low error motion generally require a drive system that ideally applies a pure torque to the rotating spindle. Frequently a frameless motor, that is, one without its own bearings, is directly coupled to the spindle to make a compact and simple system having high resonant frequencies. Although in addition to delivering drive torque, asymmetries in the motor cause it to generate disturbance loads (forces and moments) which influence the spindle error motion of the directly coupled system. This paper describes the tests and results for a particular frameless, brushless DC motor that was originally developed for military and space applications requiring very low torque ripple. Because the construction of the motor should also lead to very low disturbance loads, it was selected for use on a new diamond turning and grinding machine under developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The level of influence for this motor-spindle combination is expected to be of order one nanometer for radial and axial error motion.

Only the simplest monopole scattering behavior has usually been treated in previous time-reversal analyses. A new application of time-reversal processing of wave scattering data permits characterization of scatterers by analyzing the number and nature of the singular functions (or eigenfunctions) associated with individual scatterers when they have multiple contributions from monopole, dipole and/or quadrupole scattering terms. We discuss acoustic, elastic, and electromagnetic scattering problems for low frequencies (ka < 1, k being the wavenumber and a the radius of the scatterer). Specific examples for electromagnetic scattering from one of a number of small conducting spheres show that each sphere can have up to six distinct time-reversal eigenfunctions associated with it.

We have measured the equation of state (EoS) of osmium to 75 GPa under hydrostatic conditions at room temperature using angle dispersive x-ray diffraction. A least-squares fit of the data using a third order Birch-Murnaghan EoS yields K{sub 0} = 411 {+-} 6 GPa and K'{sub 0} = 4.0 {+-} 0.2, showing osmium is in fact more compressible than diamond. Most importantly, we have documented an anomaly in the compressibility at 20.3 GPa associated with a large discontinuity in the first pressure derivative of the c/a ratio. This discontinuity likely arises from the collapse of the small hole-ellipsoid in the Fermi surface near the L point. There has been much interest in the possibility of a Lifshitz [1] or electronic topological transition (ETT) in zinc at high-pressure near 10 GPa. Interestingly, while the experimental data remain somewhat ambiguous [2-5], most simulations suggest the ETT exists in this pressure range [6-8]. Recently, Steinle-Neumann et al. [8] have shown that the transition arises from changes in the band structure near the high-symmetry point K where three bands cross the Fermi surface upon compression. Thus one might expect that other hcp metals should exhibit similar phenomena. The hcp 4d and 5d transition elements …

This report considers the problem of how best to evaluate the stability (i.e., sampling reliability) of Monte Carlo outputs obtained for two Yucca Mountain Project (YMP) modeling components, namely, outputs for the Saturated Zone (SZ) model, and for the Total System Performance Assessment (TSPA) model. One approach considered is the one that has been employed to date, namely, the application of Monte Carlo methods. Also considered in this context are potential improvements that might be obtained by the additional use of a Monte Carlo ''quitting rule'', such as that defined by Woo (1991), to select the number of Monte Carlo sample runs to perform. By the Monte Carlo approach, each output-value sample (realization) is calculated as a function of a sample-value vector of stochastic realizations, each of which in turn corresponds to a value of a corresponding distributed input variable. Abstractions from the SZ model and the Biosphere model are both used as input to the TSPA model. Sets of stochastic realizations required for SZ and TSPA abstractions ''expensive'' to generate, so the practical issue addressed by a ''quitting rule'' is how to determine what number of realizations is ''enough'' for the purpose of characterizing sampling error in the Monte …

This report outlines the agency's organization, project development process, civil works appropriations, and evolution of its responsibilities.