Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "People are at the heart of an organization's ability to perform its mission. Yet, a key challenge for the Department of Defense (DOD), as for many federal agencies, is to strategically manage its human capital. With about 700,000 civilian employees on its payroll, DOD is the second largest federal employer of civilians in the nation. Although downsized 38 percent between fiscal years 1989 and 2002, this workforce has taken on greater roles as a result of DOD's restructuring and transformation. DOD's proposed National Security Personnel System (NSPS) would provide for wide-ranging changes in DOD's civilian personnel pay and performance management, collective bargaining, rightsizing, and other human capital areas. The NSPS would enable DOD to develop and implement a consistent DOD-wide civilian personnel system. Given the massive size of DOD, the proposal has important precedent-setting implications for federal human capital management and OPM. This testimony provides GAO's preliminary observations on aspects of DOD's proposal to make changes to its civilian personnel system and discusses the implications of such changes for government-wide human capital reform. Past reports have contained GAO's views on what remains to be done to bring about …

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to prohibiting a motor vehicle from being equipped with certain video equipment and devices.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to bond requirements for privatized maintenance contracts.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to additional interest for default on certain secondary mortgage loans

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the recognition of foreign adoptions and the issuance of a supplementary birth certificate

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the composition of the 274th Judicial District and the jurisdiction of the 207th and 274th district courts.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the composition of the 83rd Judicial District and to the election of the district attorney for that district.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the requirement that certain contracts awarded by the Veterans' Land Board be subject to competitive bidding.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the jurisdiction of certain district courts and criminal district courts of Tarrant County.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the location where the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Court of Appeals District transacts business.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to an assessment of school-based mental health and substance abuse programs.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether a municipality that has been granted a charter for an open-enrollment charter school may issue certificates of obligation to construct facilities for the school (RQ-0029-GA)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether, under chapter 271 of the Texas Local Government Code, Galveston County may use design-build contracts and lease-purchase agreements to construct thermal energy plants for building complexes (RQ-0630-JC)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether article III, section 55 of the Texas Constitution prohibits the rebate of municipal sales taxes (RQ-0011-GA)

Previous analyses have assumed that wedge absorbers are triangularly shaped with equal angles for the two faces. In this case, to linear order, the energy loss depends only on the position in the direction of the face tilt, and is independent of the incoming angle. One can instead construct an absorber with entrance and exit faces facing rather general directions. In this case, the energy loss can depend on both the position and the angle of the particle in question. This paper demonstrates that and computes the effect to linear order.

Success in the application of the action and phase analysis to find linear errors at RHIC Interaction Regions [1] has encouraged the creation of a technique based on the action and phase analysis to find non linear errors. In this paper we show the first attempt to measure the sextupole components at RHIC interaction regions using the action and phase method. Experiments done by intentionally activating sextupoles in RHIC and in SPS [2] will also be analyzed with this method. First results have given values for the sextupole errors that at least have the same order of magnitude as the values found by an alternate technique during the RHIC 2001 run [3].

Beam induced electron multipacting may be among the main reasons for the vacuum pressure rise when circulating high intensity ion and proton beams in RHIC. Latest simulation results are benchmarked with recent experimental observations for RHIC, and compared to other general computer codes. The influence of the electron multipacting to the vacuum properties is also discussed.

As one of the most critical system for RHIC operation, the beam abort kicker system has to be highly available, reliable, and stable for the entire operating range. Along with the RHIC commission and operation, consistent efforts have been spend to cope with immediate issues as well as inherited design issues. Major design changes have been implemented to achieve the higher operating voltage, longer high voltage hold-off time, fast retriggering and redundant triggering, and improved system protection, etc. Recent system test has demonstrated for the first time that both blue ring and yellow ring beam abort systems have achieved more than 24 hours hold off time at desired operating voltage. In this paper, we report break down, thyratron reverse arcing, and to build a fast re-trigger system to reduce beam spreading in event of premature discharge.

A future muon collider or neutrino factory requires fast acceleration to minimize muon decay. We have previously described an FFAG ring that accelerated muons from 10 to 20 GeV in energy. The ring achieved its large momentum acceptance using a low-emittance lattice with a small dispersion. In this paper, we present an update on that ring. We have used design tools that more accurately represent the ring's behavior at large momentum offsets. We have also improved the dynamic aperture from the earlier design.

During the summer of 2002, eight superconducting helical spin rotators were installed into RHIC in order to control the polarization directions independently at the STAR and PHENIX experiments. Without the rotators, the orientation of polarization at the interaction points would only be vertical. With four rotators around each of the two experiments, we can rotate either or both beams from vertical into the horizontal plane through the interaction region and then back to vertical on the other side. This allows independent control for each beam with vertical, longitudinal, or radial polarization at the experiment. In this paper, we present results from the first run using the new spin rotators at PHENIX.

Deuteron and gold beams have been accelerated to a collision energy of {radical}s = 200 GeV/u in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), providing the first asymmetric-species collisions of this complex. Necessary changes for this mode of operation include new ramping software and asymmetric crossing angle geometries. This paper reviews machine performance, problem encountered and their solutions, and accomplishments during the 16 weeks of ramp-up and operations.

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Fixed target studies of small branching ratio decay processes require intense beams and smooth spills. Longitudinal structure arises through collective effects, well below the coasting beam stability threshold. These structures have been observed at the Brookhaven AGS and dependence on intensity and momentum spread measured. Measurements and amelioration techniques have been developed and will be described.

As part of a future upgrade to the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), electron cooling is foreseen to decrease ion beam emittances. Within the electron cooling section, the ''hot'' ion beam is immersed in a ''cold'' electron beam. The cooling effect is further enhanced by a solenoid field in the cooling section, which forces the electrons to spiral around the field lines with a (Larmor) radius of 10 micrometers, reducing the effective transverse temperature by orders of magnitude. Studies of the effect of solenoid field errors on electron beam temperatures are reported.