Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report responds to a request made by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS) that we approve the use of a statistical sampling plan for voucher prepayment examination of contract payments. While Title VII, "Fiscal Guidance," of the GAO Policy and Procedures Manual for Guidance of Federal Agencies requires prepayment examination of vouchers prior to their certification and payment, it permits the use of statistical sampling for vouchers up to $2,500. DFAS requested a waiver of the $2,500 ceiling for statistical sampling and approval of an alternative voucher prepayment examination plan that would, among other things, use statistical sampling for certain vouchers up to a maximum of $500,000 for contract payments."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "About $3.3 billion in funds were allocated to states in fiscal year 2003 for Youth, Adult, and Dislocated Worker employment and training programs under the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) of 1998. The formulas used to distribute these funds are generally the same as those used to distribute funds under the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) of 1982, although WIA target populations and program goals differ from those of JTPA. In anticipation of the reauthorization of WIA, we assessed current and proposed formulas for allocating funds to states for these programs and identify potential alternative allocation formulas. We identified various issues with the current funding formulas in our April 2003 report. For this review, we focused on three questions: (1) Are there alternative formula factors that are better aligned with current programs and are based on reliable and more current data? (2) How might changes to the current formulas affect the distribution of WIA funds among the states? (3) What are the implications of proposed program and formula changes in the House's WIA reauthorization bill (H.R. 1261) for state allocations and what are some alternatives to these …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The 95-million acre National Wildlife Refuge System contains federal lands devoted to the conservation and management of fish, wildlife, and plant resources. While the federal government owns the surface lands in the system, in many cases private parties own the subsurface mineral rights and have the legal authority to explore for and extract oil and gas. GAO was asked to determine the extent of oil and gas activity on refuges, identify the environmental effects, and assess the Fish and Wildlife Service's management and oversight of oil and gas activities."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past decade, a series of devastating and deadly wildland fires has burned millions of acres of federal forests, grasslands, and deserts each year, requiring federal and management agencies to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to fight them. GAO was asked to provide an interim update on key segments of an ongoing review of the use of geospatial information technologies in wildland fire management. Specifically, GAO was asked to provide an overview of key geospatial information technologies and their uses in different aspects of wildland fire management and to summarize key challenges to the effective use of these technologies. The final report is expected to be issued in September 2003. GAO's review focused on the five federal agencies that are primarily responsible for wildland fire management: the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service and the Department of the Interior's National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs."

The Environmental Effects Laboratory of the Engineering Science and Technology Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory performed a series of tests to further evaluate and characterize the radiological response of a ''Cricket'' radiation detection system. The Cricket, manufactured by Rad/Comm Systems Corporation of Ontario, Canada, is designed to detect radioactive material that may be contained in scrap metal. The Cricket's detection unit is designed to be mounted to the base of a grappler, allowing it to monitor material while the material is being held by the grappler tines. The Cricket was tested for background stability, energy response, spherical response, surface uniformity, angular dependence, and alarm actuation. Some of these tests were repeated from a prior test of a Cricket at the Environmental Effects Laboratory as reported in ORNL/TM-2002/94. Routine environmental tests--normal temperature and relatively humidity--were also performed as part of this testing process. Overall, the Cricket performed well during the testing process. The design of the instrument and the inherent photon energy of the radionuclides had some affect on portions of the tests but do not detract from the value-added benefits of the Cricket's detection capabilities.

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) is responsible for estimating the portion of Federal highway funds attributable to each State. The process involves use of State-reported data (gallons) and a set of estimation models when accurate State data is unavailable. To ensure that the distribution of funds is equitable, FHWA periodically reviews the estimation models. Estimation of the use of gasohol is difficult because of State differences in the definition of gasohol, inability of many States to separate and report gasohol usage from other fuel types, changes in fuel composition in nonattainment areas to address concerns over the use of certain fuel additives, and the lack of a valid State-level surrogate data set for gasohol use. Under the sponsorship of FHWA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reviewed the regression-based gasohol estimation model that has been in use for several years. Based on an analytical assessment of that model and an extensive review of potential data sets, ORNL developed an improved rule-based model. The new model uses data from Internal Revenue Service, Energy Information Administration, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Energy, ORNL, and FHWA sources. The model basically consists of three parts: (1) development of a controlled total of national gasohol usage, …

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 local option stock law election, in which a single ballot proposition combined proposals from a petition to restrain cattle with a petition to restrain horses and other animals, was valid (RQ-0027-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 a county attorney who is not subject to the Professional Prosecutors Act may maintain more than one private civil practice office (RQ-0033-GA)

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

This report discusses the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which assists the President in carrying out his budgetary duties. Its primary function is to oversee the development and implementation of the federal budget.

The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC), which includes the World Data Center (WDC) for Atmospheric Trace Gases, is the primary global change data and information analysis center of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). More than just an archive of data sets and publications, CDIAC has, since its inception in 1982, enhanced the value of its holdings through intensive quality assurance, documentation, and integration. Whereas many traditional data centers are discipline-based (for example, meteorology or oceanography), CDIAC's scope includes potentially anything and everything that would be of value to users concerned with the greenhouse effect and global climate change, including atmospheric concentrations and atmospheric emissions of carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) and other radiatively active gases; the role of the terrestrial biosphere and the oceans in the biogeochemical cycles of greenhouse gases; long-term climate trends; the effects of elevated CO{sub 2} on vegetation; and the vulnerability of coastal areas to rising sea levels.

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

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

Weekly newspaper from Archer City, 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.

Numerical simulations of transport and isotope fractionation provide a method to quantitatively interpret vadose zone pore water stable isotope depth profiles based on soil properties, climatic conditions, and infiltration. We incorporate the temperature-dependent equilibration of stable isotopic species between water and water vapor, and their differing diffusive transport properties into the thermodynamic database of the reactive transport code TOUGHREACT. These simulations are used to illustrate the evolution of stable isotope profiles in semiarid regions where recharge during wet seasons disturbs the drying profile traditionally associated with vadose zone pore waters. Alternating wet and dry seasons lead to annual fluctuations in moisture content, capillary pressure, and stable isotope compositions in the vadose zone. Periodic infiltration models capture the effects of seasonal increases in precipitation and predict stable isotope profiles that are distinct from those observed under drying (zero infiltration) conditions. After infiltration, evaporation causes a shift to higher 18O and D values, which are preserved in the deeper pore waters. The magnitude of the isotopic composition shift preserved in deep vadose zone pore waters varies inversely with the rate of infiltration.

This procedure provides instructions for assembling the following contact-handled (CH) packaging payloads: - Drum payload assembly - Standard Waste Box (SWB) assembly - Ten-Drum Overpack (TDOP) In addition, this procedure also provides operating instructions for the TRUPACT-II CH waste packaging. This document also provides instructions for performing ICV and OCV preshipment leakage rate tests on the following packaging seals, using a nondestructive helium (He) leak test: - ICV upper main O-ring seal - ICV outer vent port plug O-ring seal - OCV upper main O-ring seal - OCV vent port plug O-ring seal.

We present the runtime comparison of the two versions of Super LU{_}DIST, using up to 128 processors of the IBM SP at NERSC. One version provides the global input interface, and another provides the distributed input interface. The comparison includes the total runtime of the solver with both 32-bit and 64-bit addressing modes, the time breakdown for different phases of the solver. We also present an in-depth comparison off our sparse matrix-vector multiplication methods in the context of iterative refinement. Finally, we describe our Fortran 90 interface that enhances the usability of the software.

The binding sites of sequence specific transcription factors are an important and relatively well-understood class of functional non-coding DNAs. Although a wide variety of experimental and computational methods have been developed to characterize transcription factor binding sites, they remain difficult to identify. Comparison of non-coding DNA from related species has shown considerable promise in identifying these functional non-coding sequences, even though relatively little is known about their evolution. Here we analyze the genome sequences of the budding yeasts Saccharomyces cerevisiae, S. bayanus, S. paradoxus and S. mikataeto study the evolution of transcription factor binding sites. As expected, we find that both experimentally characterized and computationally predicted binding sites evolve slower than surrounding sequence, consistent with the hypothesis that they are under purifying selection. We also observe position-specific variation in the rate of evolution within binding sites. We find that the position-specific rate of evolution is positively correlated with degeneracy among binding sites within S. cerevisiae. We test theoretical predictions for the rate of evolution at positions where the base frequencies deviate from background due to purifying selection and find reasonable agreement with the observed rates of evolution. Finally, we show how the evolutionary characteristics of real binding motifs can be …

A series of characterization and dissolution studies has been performed to define flowsheet conditions for the dissolution of uranium oxide materials in dissolvers. The samples selected for analysis were uranium oxide materials. The selection of these uranium oxide materials for characterization and dissolution studies was based on high enriched uranium content and trace levels of plutonium. Test results from the characterization study identified ferric oxide (Fe2O3) and iron/chromium/nickel (Fe/Cr/Ni) particles as impurities along with the tri-uranium oxide (U3O8) and uranium trioxide (UO3). The weight percent uranium in this material was found to vary depending on the impurity content. The trace impurity plutonium appears to be associated with the Fe/Cr/Ni particles. A small amount of absorbed moisture and waters of hydration is present. Most of the uranium oxides easily dissolved in low-molar nitric acid solutions without fluoride within one to two hours at solution temperature s between 60-80 degrees C. A small amount of residue remained following this dissolution step. To assure complete dissolution of uranium from these oxide materials, an additional dissolution step at 90 degrees C to boiling for at least one to two hours has been suggested. Only trace amounts of iron associated with Fe2O3 and Fe/Cr/Ni particles …

This program aims at improving the efficiency of advanced natural-gas reciprocating engines (ANGRE) by reducing piston/ring assembly friction without major adverse effects on engine performance, such as increased oil consumption and emissions. A detailed set of piston/ring dynamic and friction models have been developed and applied that illustrated the fundamental relationships between design parameters and friction losses. Various low-friction strategies and concepts have been explored, and engine experiments will validate these concepts. An iterative process of experimentation, simulation and analysis, will be followed with the goal of demonstrating a complete optimized low-friction engine system. As planned, MIT has developed guidelines for an initial set of low-friction piston-ring-pack designs. Current recommendations focus on subtle top-piston-ring and oil-control-ring characteristics. A full-scale Waukesha F18 engine has been installed at Colorado State University and testing of the baseline configuration is in progress. Components for the first design iteration are being procured. Subsequent work includes examining the friction and engine performance data and extending the analyses to other areas to evaluate opportunities for further friction improvement and the impact on oil consumption/emission and wear, towards demonstrating an optimized reduced-friction engine system.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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