A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Small Business Administration (SBA) has been challenged in the past in developing a lender oversight capability and a loan monitoring system to facilitate its oversight. While SBA has made progress in its lender oversight program, its past efforts to develop a loan monitoring system were unsuccessful. In 2003, SBA obtained loan monitoring services from Dun & Bradstreet. GAO evaluated SBA's loan monitoring needs, how well those needs are met by the new service, and the similarities and differences for the purposes of credit risk management between SBA and private sector best practices."

Heightened biological activity was observed in February 1996in the high-nutrient low-chlorophyll (HNLC) subarctic North PacificOcean, a region that is thought to beiron-limited. Here we provideevidence supporting the hypothesis that Ocean Station Papa (OSP) in thesubarctic Pacific received a lateral supply of particulate iron from thecontinental margin off the Aleutian Islands in the winter, coincidentwith the observed biological bloom. Synchrotron X-ray analysis was usedto describe the physical form, chemistry, and depth distributions of ironin size fractionated particulate matter samples. The analysis revealsthat discrete micron-sized iron-rich hotspots are ubiquitous in the upper200m at OSP, more than 900km from the closest coast. The specifics of thechemistry and depth profiles of the Fe hot spots trace them to thecontinental margins. We thus hypothesize that iron hotspots are a markerfor the delivery of iron from the continental margin. We confirm thedelivery of continental margin iron to the open ocean using an oceangeneral circulation model with an iron-like tracer source at thecontinental margin. We suggest that iron from the continental marginstimulated a wintertime phytoplankton bloom, partially relieving the HNLCcondition.

None

This report includes information regarding issues and policy challenges with U.S.-European trade relations. Growing strains, resolving longstanding disputes, and strengthening the multilateral trading system are among topics discussed in this report.

Laboratory measurements are required to establish relationships between the physical properties of unconsolidated sediments and P- and S-wave propagation through them. Previous work has either focused on measurements of compressional wave properties at depths greater than 500 m for oil industry applications or on measurements of dynamic shear properties at pressures corresponding to depths of less than 50 m for geotechnical applications. Therefore, the effects of lithology, fluid saturation, and compaction on impedance and P- and S-wave velocities of shallow soils are largely unknown. We describe two state-of-the-art laboratory experiments. One setup allows us to measure ultrasonic P-wave velocities at very low pressures in unconsolidated sediments (up to 0.1 MPa). The other experiment allows P- and S-wave velocity measurements at low to medium pressures (up to 20 MPa). We summarize the main velocity and attenuation results on sands and sand - clay mixtures under partially saturated and fully saturated conditions in two ranges of pressures (0 - 0.1 MPa and 0.1 - 20 MPa) representative of the top few meters and the top 1 km, respectively. Under hydrostatic pressures of 0.1 to 20 MPa, our measurements demonstrate a P- and S-wave velocity-dependence in dry sands around a fourth root (0.23 …

Clipping of an article from The Dallas Morning News about a proposal to give churches that mix religious and political activity reduced fines but keep their tax-exempt status under a provision in a corporate tax bill.

Email from Joyce Schones to multiple recipients on June 8, 2004, asking members to support Kathy Bannon, who is running for the State Democratic Executive Committee as the female representative from Senate District 8.

We describe the development of an antenna-coupled bolometer array for use in a Cosmic Microwave Background polarization experiment. Prototype single pixels using double-slot dipole antennas and integrated microstrip band defining filters have been built and tested. Preliminary results of optical testing and simulations are presented. A bolometer array design based on this pixel will also be shown and future plans for application of the technology will be discussed.

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

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) Engineering requested characterization of glass samples that were taken after the second melter had been operational for about 5 months. After the new melter had been installed, the waste loading had been increased to about 38 weight percentage after a new quasicrystalline liquidus model had been implemented. The DWPF had also switched from processing with refractory Frit 200 to a more fluid Frit 320. The samples were taken after DWPF observed very rapid buildup of deposits in the upper pour spout bore and on the pour spout insert while processing the high waste loading feedstock. These samples were evaluated using various analytical techniques to determine the cause of the crystallization. The pour stream sample was homogeneous, amorphous, and representative of the feed batch from which it was derived. Chemical analysis of the pour stream sample indicated that a waste loading of 38.5 weight per cent had been achieved. The data analysis indicated that surface crystallization, induced by temperature and oxygen fugacity gradients in the pour spout, caused surface crystallization to occur in the spout and on the insert at the higher waste loadings even though there was no crystallization in the pour stream.

The difference between the effective rf voltage and the accelerating voltage required to match the rate of change of the Booster magnetic field can be used to estimate the energy loss per beam turn. Although the effective rf voltage (RFSUM) and the synchronous phase can be experimentally measured and used to calculate the accelerating voltage, the calibration of the signals during the fast change of the Booster rf frequency is difficult and appears to introduce some offset to the beam energy loss estimation. An observed linear relationship between energy loss and beam intensity is used to evaluate the offset, which is then applied to the experimental data. This approach, rather than recalibrating the signals, is simple and suitable for minimizing the error in the data.

This project sought to develop new means of creating variation in the structure of starch that accumulates in maize seeds, through manipulation of the enzyme starch synthase III (SSIII). The central hypothesis was that SSIII is responsible for construction of certain lengths of linear glucan chains within the major starch component amylopectin, and that manipulation of this enzyme could create new varieties of starch that might have novel utilities as a renewable resource. The hypothesis was proven to be true through analysis of the effects of maize du1- mutations, which affect the structure and function of SSIII. SSIII was found to be required for the formation for two distinct groups of chain lengths in maize amylopectin, specifically those containing 7-9 glucose units and those containing 37-55 glucose units. Decrease in the frequency of these chains, as compared to wild type, is accompanied by an increase in chains of 11-15 glucose units. A hypothesis consistent with these data is that one of the other SS isoforms produces chains in the range of 11-15 units, and these are then elongated by SSIII to the range of 37-55 units. In order to try to manipulate the activity of SSIII in novel ways, transgenic …

The vibrational aspects of recent disturbances at the low beta focusing quadrupoles, which caused proton beam loss at the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), are discussed. Two low beta focusing quadrupoles are supported by a girder, which is extended over the CDF collision hall pit on each side. The low beta girder has a ledge mount support at an alcove's face and two Invar rods near the opposite end. Forced response measurements were taken on the low beta girder, where the power spectral density (PSD) function was used to obtain RMS displacement. The effects of local excitation due to operating equipment and near-field excitation due to ambient ground motion caused by local traffic are examined. The discussion explores dynamic response characteristics of the low beta quadrupoles and supporting girder using beam loss as the vibrational stability criteria. This paper also presents practical problem-solving approaches for similar accelerator components.

The work performed on this program was to develop wear resistant, tough FM composite materials with efforts focused on WC-Co based FM systems. The materials were developed for use in mining industry wear applications. Components of interest were drill bit inserts for drilling blast holes. Other component applications investigated included wear plates for a variety of equipment such as pit shovels, wear surfaces for conveyors, milling media for ball milling operations, hydrocyclone cones, grader blades and dozer teeth. Cross-cutting technologies investigated included hot metal extrusion dies, drill bits for circuit board fabrication, cutting tools for cast iron and aluminum machining. An important part of the work was identification of the standard materials used in drilling applications. A materials trade study to determine those metals and ceramics used for mining applications provided guidance for the most important materials to be investigated. WC-Co and diamond combinations were shown to have the most desirable properties. Other considerations such as fabrication technique and the ability to consolidate shifted the focus away from diamond materials and toward WC-Co. Cooperating partners such as Kennametal and Kyocera assisted with supplies, evaluations of material systems, fabricated parts and suggestions for cross-cutting technology applications for FM architectures. Kennametal provided …

The growing gap between sustained and peak performance for full-scale complex scientific applications on conventional supercomputers is a major concern in high performance computing. The recently-released vector-based Cray X1 offers to bridge this gap for many demanding scientific applications. However, this unique architecture contains both data caches and multi-streaming processing units, and the optimal programming methodology is still under investigation. In this paper we investigate Cray X1 code optimization for a suite of computational kernels originally designed for superscalar processors. For our study, we select four applications from the SPLASH2 application suite (1-D FFT,Radix, Ocean, and Nbody), two kernels from the NAS benchmark suite (3-DFFT and CG), and a matrix-matrix multiplication kernel. Results show that for many cases, the addition of vectorization compiler directives results faster runtimes. However, to achieve a significant performance improvement via increased vector length, it is often necessary to restructure the program at the source level sometimes leading to algorithmic level transformations. Additionally, memory bank conflicts may result in substantial performance losses. These conflicts can often be exacerbated when optimizing code for increased vector lengths, and must be explicitly minimized. Finally, we investigate the relationship of the X1 data caches on overall performance.

Results on recent QCD measurements performed at the Tevatron p{bar p} Collider at {radical}s = 1.96 TeV are here reported. The inclusive jet and dijet mass cross sections are compared to NLO pQCD calculations and to Run I results. The production rates and kinematic properties of W + jets production processes are compared to ''enhanced'' LO theoretical predictions. Non-perturbative ''soft'' interactions leading to the underlying event are studied and compared to QCD Monte Carlo phenomenological models.

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

Funeral program for Sister Iola Smith Penson, born June 21, 1912 and died June 4, 2004. The funeral was held Tuesday, June 8, 2004 at Tried Stone Baptist Church, officiated by Oscar C. Jones. Funeral arrangements were made through Peter Loring Mortuary and she was buried in Meadowlawn Memorial Park in San Antonio, Texas.

This report provides background information on Federal Family Education Loan (FEEL) program consolidation loans and discusses option for redesigning consolidation loans. It provides background information on the FEEL program and on the role consolidation loans play within the program.

One of the biggest challenges in cell biology is the imaging of living cells. For this purpose, the most commonly used visualization tool is fluorescent markers. However, conventional labels, such as organic fluorescent dyes or green fluorescent proteins (GFP), lack the photostability to allow the tracking of cellular events that happen over minutes to days. In addition, they are either toxic to cells (dyes), or difficult to construct and manipulate (GFP). We report here the use of a new class of fluorescent labels, silanized CdSe/ZnS nanocrystal-peptide conjugates, for imaging the nuclei of living cells. CdSe/ZnS nanocrystals, or so called quantum dots (qdots), are extremely photostable, and have been used extensively in cellular imaging of fixed cells. Most of the studies about living cells so far have been concerned only with particle entry into the cytoplasm or the localization of receptors on the cell membrane. Specific targeting of qdots to the nucleus of living cells has not been reported in previous studies, due to the lack of a targeting mechanism and proper particle size. Here we demonstrate for the first time the construction of a CdSe/ZnS nanocrystal-peptide conjugate that carries the SV40 large T antigen nuclear localization signal (NLS), and the …

In general, the Phase Retrieval from Modulus problem is very difficult. In this report, we solve the difficult, but somewhat more tractable case in which we constrain the solution to a minimum phase reconstruction. We exploit the real-and imaginary part sufficiency properties of the Fourier and Hilbert Transforms of causal sequences to develop an algorithm for reconstructing spectral phase given only spectral modulus. The algorithm uses homeomorphic signal processing methods with the complex cepstrum. The formal problem of interest is: Given measurements of only the modulus {vert_bar}H(k){vert_bar} (no phase) of the Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) of a real, finite-length, stable, causal time domain signal h(n), compute a minimum phase reconstruction {cflx h}(n) of the signal. Then compute the phase of {cflx h}(n) using a DFT, and exploit the result as an estimate of the phase of h(n). The development of the algorithm is quite involved, but the final algorithm and its implementation are very simple. This work was motivated by a Phase Retrieval from Modulus Problem that arose in LLNL Defense Sciences Engineering Division (DSED) projects in lightning protection for buildings. The measurements are limited to modulus-only spectra from a spectrum analyzer. However, it is desired to perform system identification …

This report includes information such as background, summary, and possible reauthorization issues of the Higher Education Act.

The federal Clean Water Act (CWA) Section 303(d)(1)(A) requires each state to conduct a biennial assessment of its waters, and identify those waters that are not achieving water quality standards. The result of this assessment is called the 303(d) list. The CWA also requires states to establish a priority ranking for waters on the 303(d) list of impaired waters and to develop and implement Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs) for these waters. Over 30,000 segments of waterways have been listed as impaired by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has requested local communities to submit plans to reduce discharges by specified dates or have them developed by the EPA. An investigation of this process found that plans to reduce discharges were being developed based on a wide range of site investigation methods. The Department of Energy requested Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to develop appropriate tools to assist in improving the TMDL process. The EPA has shown support and encouragement of this effort. Our investigation found that improving the stakeholder input process would facilitate many of the TMDL processes, given the resources available to the interested and responsible parties. The first model that we have developed is a stakeholder allocation …

Ensemble concert performed at UNT College of Music Recital Hall.