A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa, the State Department has done much to improve physical security at overseas posts. However, most overseas diplomatic office facilities still do not meet the security standards State developed to protect these sites from terrorist attacks and other dangers. To correct this problem, State in 1999 embarked on an estimated $21 billion embassy construction program. The program's key objective is to provide secure, safe, and functional compounds for employees overseas--in most cases by building replacement facilities. In 2001, State's Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO)--which manages the program--began instituting reforms in its structure and operations to meet the challenges of the embassy construction program. This report discusses (1) OBO's mechanisms for more effectively managing the embassy construction program and (2) the status of and challenges facing the program. We received comments from State, which said that the report is a fair and accurate representation overall of the Department's overseas construction process."

The current war with Iraq, international interventions in Afghanistan, and the continuous and seemingly insolvable problems in the Middle East emphasize the importance of supporting stable, healthy countries throughout the Middle East and South and Central Asia. The political alliances and foreign aid promulgated by the Cold War have been seriously strained, creating a more uncertain and unstable international environment. We must stay engaged with this part of the world. New partnerships must be forged. Central Asia represents a mix of political systems - from totalitarian rule to nascent democracy; of economic resources from natural to human; and of cultures from ancient to modern - making it of strategic importance to U. S. national and economic security. The U.S. must remain committed and proactively engaged in the region to promote open and democratic societies attractive to outside investment and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and extremist groups. The U.S is admired for its science and technology and its flexibility in innovation and applying S&T to solve problems. The inherent value that S&T can contribute to advancing U.S. policy goals is the underlying assumption of this report. Science and technology and their applications have much to contribute …

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

With the Nation's coal-burning utilities facing the possibility of tighter controls on mercury pollutants, the U.S. Department of Energy is funding projects that could offer power plant operators better ways to reduce these emissions at much lower costs. Mercury is known to have toxic effects on the nervous system of humans and wildlife. Although it exists only in trace amounts in coal, mercury is released when coal burns and can accumulate on land and in water. In water, bacteria transform the metal into methylmercury, the most hazardous form of the metal. Methylmercury can collect in fish and marine mammals in concentrations hundreds of thousands times higher than the levels in surrounding waters. One of the goals of DOE is to develop technologies by 2005 that will be capable of cutting mercury emissions 50 to 70 percent at well under one-half of today's costs. ADA Environmental Solutions (ADA-ES) is managing a project to test mercury control technologies at full scale at four different power plants from 2000-2003. The ADA-ES project is focused on those power plants that are not equipped with wet flue gas desulfurization systems. ADA-ES has developed a portable system that will be tested at four different utility power …

The removal of recalcitrant sulfur species, dibenzothiophene and its derivatives, from automotive fuels is an integral component in the development of cleaner burning and more efficient automobile engines. Oxidative desulfurization (ODS) wherein the dibenzothiophene derivative is converted to its corresponding sulfoxide and sulfone is an attractive approach to sulfur removal because the oxidized species are easily extracted or precipitated and filtered from the hydrocarbon phase. Fe-TAML{reg_sign} activators of hydrogen peroxide (TAML is Tetra-Amido-Macrocyclic-Ligand) catalytically convert dibenzothiophene and its derivatives rapidly and effectively at moderate temperatures (50-60 C) and ambient pressure to the corresponding sulfoxides and sulfones. The oxidation process can be performed in both aqueous systems containing alcohols such as methanol, ethanol, or t-butanol, and in a two-phase hydrocarbon/aqueous system containing tert-butanol or acetonitrile. In the biphasic system, essentially complete conversion of the DBT to its oxidized products can be achieved using slightly longer reaction times than in homogeneous solution. Among the key features of the technology are the mild reaction conditions, the very high selectivity where no over oxidation of the sulfur compounds occurs, the near stoichiometric use of hydrogen peroxide, the apparent lack of degradation of sensitive fuel components, and the ease of separation of oxidized products.

The ALS, a third-generation synchrotron light source at Berkeley Lab, has been operating for almost a decade and is generating forefront science by exploiting the high brightness of a third-generation source in three areas: (1) high resolving power for spectroscopy; (2) high spatial resolution for microscopy and spectromicroscopy; and (3) high coherence for experiments such as speckle. However, the ALS was one of the first third-generation machines to be designed, and accelerator and insertion-device technology have significantly changed since its conception. As a result, its performance will inevitably be outstripped by newer, more advanced sources. To remain competitive and then set a new standard, the performance of the ALS, in particular its brightness, must be enhanced. Substantial improvements in brightness and current have always been feasible in principle, but they incur the penalty of a much reduced lifetime, which is totally unacceptable to our users. Significant brightness improvements can be realized in the core soft x-ray region by going to top-off operation, where injection would be quasi-continuous and the lifetime objections disappear. In top-off mode with higher average current, a reduced vertical emittance and beta function, and small-gap permanent-magnet or superconducting insertion devices, one to two orders of magnitude improvement …

Plasma simulations are often rendered challenging by the disparity of scales in time and in space which must be resolved. When these disparities are in distinctive zones of the simulation domain, a method which has proven to be effective in other areas (e.g. fluid dynamics simulations) is the mesh refinement technique. We briefly discuss the challenges posed by coupling this technique with plasma Particle-In-Cell simulations, and present examples of application in Heavy Ion Fusion and related fields which illustrate the effectiveness of the approach. We also report on the status of a collaboration under way at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory between the Applied Numerical Algorithms Group (ANAG) and the Heavy Ion Fusion group to upgrade ANAG's mesh refinement library Chombo to include the tools needed by Particle-In-Cell simulation codes.

High-Level Waste (HLW) is a waste associated with the dissolution of spent nuclear fuel for the recovery of weapons-grade material. It is the priority problem for the U.S. Department of Energy's Environmental Management Program. Current HLW treatment processes at the Savannah River Site (Aiken, SC) include the use of monosodium titanate. The local structural speciation of sorbed U varied with loading but not for Sr. Sorbed Sr exhibited specific adsorption as partially-hydrated species whereas sorbed U exhibited specific adsorption as monomeric and dimeric U(VI)-carbonate complexes. Sorption proved site specific. These differences in site specificity and sorption mechanism may account for the difficulties associated with predicting Sr and U loading and removal kinetics using MST.

In 2001 the Tevatron run II began, after a five year period of significant upgrade of the accelerator itself and of the experiments CDF and D0. After a detector commissioning run, the CDF experiment is now taking high quality data with all subsystems functional. We report in this talk the first preliminary CDF results on top quark and W/Z boson properties, based on run II data. The top quark, discovered in 1995 at the Tevatron, has proven to be a very interesting particle. Its properties allow to perform stringent tests of the Standard Model (SM) and to search for new physics through a deviation from SM predictions. We give here some expectations of what Tevatron run II will ultimately provide to our understanding of matter.

A time-domain pure-state polarization analysis method is used to characterize surface waves traversing California parallel to the plate boundary. The method is applied to data recorded at four broadband stations in California from twenty-six large, shallow earthquakes which occurred since 1988, yielding polarization parameters such as the ellipticity, Euler angles, instantaneous periods, and wave incident azimuths. The earthquakes are located along the circum-Pacific margin and the ray paths cluster into two groups, with great-circle paths connecting stations MHC and PAS or CMB and GSC. The first path (MHC-PAS) is in the vicinity of the San Andreas Fault System (SAFS), and the second (CMB-GSC) traverses the Sierra Nevada Batholith parallel to and east of the SAFS. Both Rayleigh and Love wave data show refractions due to lateral velocity heterogeneities under the path, indicating that accurate phase velocity and attenuation analysis requires array measurements. The Rayleigh waves are strongly affected by low velocity anomalies beneath Central California, with ray paths bending eastward as waves travel toward the south, while Love waves are less affected, providing observables to constrain the depth extent of the anomalies. Strong lateral gradients in the lithospheric structure between the continent and the ocean are the likely cause of …

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

Funeral program for Patricia Ann Roberts Gist, born August 2, 1948 and died October 29, 2003. The funeral was held November 4, 2003 at East St. Paul U M C, officiated by Maurice Washington. The funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and she was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

Funeral program for Edith M. Raglin, born July 29, 1927 and died November 4, 2003. The funeral was held Monday, November 10, 2003 at Coliseum Park Baptist Church, officiated by Dr. Howard Anderson. Funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and she was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

A decade ago, it was shown that a wide class of scalar-tensor theories can pass very restrictive weak field tests of gravity and yet exhibit non-perturbative strong field deviations away from General Relativity. This phenomenon was called 'Spontaneous Scalarization' and causes the (Einstein frame) scalar field inside a neutron star to rapidly become inhomogeneous once the star's mass increases above some critical value. For a star whose mass is below the threshold, the field is instead nearly uniform (a state which minimizes the star's energy) and the configuration is similar to the General Relativity one. Here, we show that the spontaneous scalarization phenomenon is linked to another strong field effect: a spontaneous violation of the weak energy condition.

A new experimental apparatus has been developed for performing compression deformation experiments on high-purity Mo single crystals. These experiments provide data that can validate 3-D dislocation dynamics (DD) simulations. The experiments are performed under conditions that allow unconstrained deformation; thus, a relatively uniform state of axial stress is maintained during deformation. In the following sections, we describe the new experimental apparatus and our results from experiments performed at ambient temperature at a strain rate of s{sup -1}. Validation criteria based on the Mo experiments may include comparing the stress-strain response using 3-D strain information, the predicted slip-system yield, and work-hardening behavior.

We have cross-correlated MACHO LMC Cepheids with 2MASS Second Incremental Release Catalog. The resulting database is considerably larger than the set of OGLE Cepheids in the LMC bar, and has significantly better areal coverage, allowing more accurate determination of LMC geometry. Random-phase correction is applied to 2MASS J, H, and Ks magnitudes, using the knowledge of V-band light curve and the ephemeris of 2MASS observations, to produce mean magnitudes. The improvement of phase-corrected PL relations over random-phase PL relations is clearly demonstrated. Reddening is estimated for each star individually, further improving the accuracy of the method. The orientation parameters of the LMC are derived by a Maximum Likelihood approach which solves for viewing angles and PL coefficients simultaneously, providing an unbiased estimation. The results of the analysis are used to place limits on warping of the LMC disk. Implications for the microlensing optical depth are also discussed.

Depth profiles of {sup 1}H and {sup 2}D in rapidly-grown KD{sub 2x}H{sub 2(1-x)}PO{sub 4} (DKDP) single crystals are studied by elastic recoil detection analysis. Results show that, at ambient conditions, deuteration in the first {approx} 500 nm from the sample surface significantly decreases within the first several days after D{sub 2}O surface polishing. This effect is attributed to the deuterium-hydrogen exchange. The effective diffusion coefficient of this process is strongly dependent on both the degree of deuteration and sample growth conditions. Physical mechanisms of the D/H exchange are discussed.

This report provides information about the Fishery, Aquaculture, and Marine Mammal Legislation in the 108th Congress. fish and marine are important resources in the open ocean and nearshore coastal areas.

This article discusses three-coordinate Au(I) phosphine complexes.

Photograph of a Red-tailed Hawk, in the Nature Center, at Beavers Bend State Park.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Large fires can be blamed for some polluted air. In addition to ash and smoke, fires release carbon monoxide into the atmosphere as they burn. This false-color image shows the atmospheric column of carbon monoxide, with yellow and red indicating high levels of pollution. (The gray areas show where no data were taken, likely due to cloud cover.) The data were taken by the Measurements Of Pollution In The Troposphere (MOPITT) instrument aboard NASA's Terra satellite for the period October 26-31, 2003.

This document contains positions papers of a policy forum for weather and highways developed by the Atmospheric Policy Program American Meteorological Society in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with additional support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this document (Panel 2), panelists discuss strategies to respond to weather and climate information. There are many opportunities to improve the highway system through an inclusive approach, taking into account the strengths of the research community, the private sector and the state and federal practitioners. As a first step, the weather community must better understand the mission and expectations of the highway manager and the highway manager must be able to understand the limitations and near term improvements of the weather community.

This document contains positions papers of a policy forum for weather and highways developed by the Atmospheric Policy Program American Meteorological Society in coordination with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) with additional support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). In this document (Panel 3), panelists discuss policy issues affecting the use of weather information in managing the U.S. Highway System.