Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "We have prepared this report in response to concerns about whether large companies are receiving federal contracts intended for small businesses. We reviewed awards to five large companies to determine (1) how contracts awarded to the companies were reported in Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), (2) why federal contract officials reported the contracts as small business awards, and (3) what actions are being taken to address any identified problems."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) collects health insurance payments, known as third-party collections, for veterans' health care conditions it treats that are not a result of injuries or illnesses incurred or aggravated during military service. In September 1999, VA adopted a new fee schedule, called "reasonable charges," that it anticipated would increase revenues from third-party collections. In January 2003, GAO reported on VA's third-party collection efforts and problems in collections operations for fiscal year 2002 as well as VA's initiatives to improve collections (VA Health Care: Third-Party Collections Rising as VA Continues to Address Problems in Its Collections Operations, (GAO-03-145, Jan. 31, 2003)). GAO was asked to discuss its findings and update third-party collection amounts and agency plans to improve collections."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "According to information in the Federal Procurement Data System (FPDS), in fiscal year 2001, small businesses received approximately 23 percent of federal contract dollars awarded. However, concerns have been raised that large companies are receiving federal contracts intended for small businesses."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "SARS has infected relatively few people nationwide, but it has raised concerns about preparedness for large-scale infectious disease outbreaks. The initial response to an outbreak occurs in local agencies and hospitals, with support from state and federal agencies, and can involve disease surveillance, epidemiologic investigation, health care delivery, and quarantine management. Officials have learned lessons applicable to preparedness for such outbreaks from experiences with other major public health threats. GAO was asked to examine the preparedness of state and local public health agencies and hospitals for responding to a large-scale infectious disease outbreak and the relationship of federal and state planning for an influenza pandemic to preparedness for emerging infectious diseases. This testimony is based on Bioterrorism: Preparedness Varied across State and Local Jurisdictions, GAO-03-373 (Apr. 7, 2003); findings from a GAO survey on hospital emergency room capacity (in Hospital Emergency Departments: Crowded Conditions Vary among Hospitals and Communities, GAO-03-460 (Mar. 14, 2003)) and on hospital emergency preparedness; and information updating Influenza Pandemic: Plan Needed for Federal and State Response, GAO-01-4 (Oct. 27, 2000)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Taxpayers' willingness to voluntarily comply with tax laws depends in part on their confidence that friends, neighbors, and business competitors are paying their fair share of taxes. The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) programs to ensure compliance and to collect delinquent taxes are viewed by many as critical for maintaining the public's confidence in our tax system. Congress asked GAO to present information on trends in IRS's compliance and collection programs and to discuss issues related to IRS's efforts to increase staffing for these programs. GAO was also asked to discuss IRS's plans to launch new initiatives to reduce noncompliance with the Earned Income Tax Credit (EIC) and to use private collection agencies to assist in collecting delinquent taxes."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "By the end of 2002, more than 40 million people worldwide were living with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), with 5 million newly infected that year. HIV/AIDS, along with tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, causes nearly 6 million deaths per year and untold human suffering. Established in January 2002, the Global Fund (the Fund) aims to rapidly disburse grants to augment existing spending on the prevention and treatment of these three diseases while maintaining sufficient oversight of financial transactions and program effectiveness. As of April 1, 2003, the United States had pledged $1.65 billion to the Fund and is expected to remain its single largest donor. In this study, GAO was asked to assess (1) the Fund's progress in developing governance structures; (2) the systems that the Fund has developed for ensuring financial accountability, monitoring and evaluating grant projects, and procuring goods and services; (3) the Fund's efforts to raise money; and (4) its grant-making process. In responding to our draft report, the Fund, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development agreed with our findings."

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.

This report discusses the proposed levels of revenue reduction in the President’s budget and the congressional budget resolution for FY2004, the features of the budget reconciliation process, the inclusion of revenue reconciliation directives in the FY2004 budget resolution, and selected procedural issues pertaining to the consideration of the resultant reconciliation legislation.

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

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.

Many parallel applications require periodic redistribution of workloads and associated data. In a distributed memory computer, this redistribution can be difficult if limited memory is available for receiving messages. We propose a model for optimizing the exchange of messages under such circumstances which we call the minimum phase remapping problem. We first show that the problem is NP-Complete, and then analyze several methodologies for addressing it. First, we show how the problem can be phrased as an instance of multi-commodity flow. Next, we study a continuous approximation to the problem. We show that this continuous approximation has a solution which requires at most two more phases than the optimal discrete solution, but the question of how to consistently obtain a good discrete solution from the continuous problem remains open. We also devise simple and practical approximation algorithm for the problem with a bound of 1.5 times the optimal number of phases. We also present an empirical study of variations of our algorithms which indicate that our approaches are quite practical.

None

This six-month work is focused mainly on the properties of novel magnetic intermetallics. In the first project, we synthesized several 2:17 intermetallic compounds, namely Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 15}Si{sub 2}, Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 15}Al{sub 2}2, Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 15}SiAl and Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 15}SiMn, as well as several 1:12 intermetallic compounds, such as NdFe{sub 10}Si{sub 2}, NdFe{sub 10}Al{sub 2}, NdFe{sub 10}SiAl and NdFe{sub 10}MnAl. In the second project, seven compositions of Nd{sub x}Fe{sub 100-x-y}B{sub y} ribbons were prepared by a melt spinning method with Nd and B content increasing from 7.3 and 3.6 to 11 and 6, respectively. The alloys were annealed under optimized conditions to obtain a composite material consisting of the hard magnetic Nd{sub 2}Fe{sub 14}B and soft magnetic {alpha}-Fe phases, typical of a spring magnet structure. In the third project, intermetallic compounds of the type Zr{sub 1}Cr{sub 1}Fe{sub 1}T{sub 0.8} with T=Al, Co and Fe were subjected to hydrogenation. In the fourth project, we performed three crucial experiments. In the first experiment, we subjected a mixture of Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4} and Fe(80-20 wt%) to mechanochemical activation by high-energy ball milling, for time periods ranging from 0.5 to 14 hours. In the second experiment, we ball-milled Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4}:Co{sup 2+} (x=0.1) for time …

We study the time evolution of the beam current in the Fermilab Recycler Ring due to abrupt physical processes (single coulomb scattering, nuclear scattering) that cause sudden loss of beam, and diffusive processes (multiple coulomb scattering, lattice dependence, etc.) which cause emittance growth. This emittance growth combined with finite aperture of the beam pipe will lead to eventual loss of most beam. We develop a fitting technique to the time evolution of beam current to estimate emittance growth. Finally we compare the directly measured growth with the fitted value.

Stray electrons can be introduced in positive-charge accelerators for heavy ion fusion (or other applications) as a result of ionization of ambient gas or gas released from walls due to halo-ion impact, or as a result of secondary-electron emission. Electron accumulation is impacted by the ion beam potential, accelerating fields, multipole magnetic fields used for beam focus, and the pulse duration. We highlight the distinguishing features of heavy-ion accelerators as they relate to stray-electron issues, and present first results from a sequence of simulations to characterize the electron cloud that follows from realistic ion distributions. Also, we present ion simulations with prescribed random electron distributions, undertaken to begin to quantify the effects of electrons on ion beam quality.

This final report discusses major accomplishments of a 3-year project under the DOE's NEER Program. The project has developed innovative and automated algorithms, codes, and tools for solving the discrete ordinates particle transport method efficiently in parallel environments. Using a number of benchmark and real-life problems, the performance and accuracy of the new algorithms have been measured and analyzed.

A university laboratory experiment for the US Department of Energy magnetic fusion research program required a simulant for liquid lithium. The simulant choices were narrowed to liquid gallium and galinstan (Ga-In-Sn) alloy. Safety information on liquid gallium and galinstan were compiled, and the choice was made to use galinstan. A laboratory safety walkthrough was performed in the fall of 2002 to support the galinstan experiment. The experiment has been operating successfully since early 2002.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "By the end of 2002, more than 40 million people worldwide were living with human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), with 5 million newly infected that year. HIV/AIDS, along with tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, causes nearly 6 million deaths per year and untold human suffering. Established in January 2002, the Global Fund (the Fund) aims to rapidly disburse grants to augment existing spending on the prevention and treatment of these three diseases while maintaining sufficient oversight of financial transactions and program effectiveness. As of April 1, 2003, the United States had pledged $1.65 billion to the Fund and is expected to remain its single largest donor. In this study, GAO was asked to assess (1) the Fund's progress in developing governance structures; (2) the systems that the Fund has developed for ensuring financial accountability, monitoring and evaluating grant projects, and procuring goods and services; (3) the Fund's efforts to raise money; and (4) its grant-making process. In responding to our draft report, the Fund, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of State, and the U.S. Agency for International Development agreed with our findings."

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.