A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In March 1999, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) implemented a telephone help line--1-800-MEDICARE--to provide information about program eligibility, enrollment, and benefits. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) directed GAO to examine several issues related to this 24-hour help line and the customer service representatives (CSRs) who staff it. In this report, GAO evaluated (1) the accuracy of the information the help line provides, (2) the training given to CSRs, and (3) CMS's efforts to monitor the accuracy of information provided through the help line."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The use of managed care within Medicaid, a joint federal-state program that finances health insurance for certain low-income families with children and individuals who are aged or disabled, increased significantly during the 1990s. By 2003, 59 percent of Medicaid beneficiaries were enrolled in managed care, compared with less than 10 percent in 1991. Medicaid managed care, under which states make prospective payments to managed care plans to provide or arrange for all services for enrollees, attempts to ensure the provision of appropriate health care services in a cost-efficient manner. However, because plans are paid a fixed amount regardless of the number of services they provide, managed care programs require safeguards against the incentive for some plans to underserve enrollees, such as by limiting enrollees' access to care. Access is also affected by other factors, such as physician location and willingness to participate in managed care plans. Safeguards to ensure enrollees have access to care could include requiring plans to maintain provider networks that provide enrollees with sufficient geographic access to providers or requiring managed care plans to develop and monitor certain quality indicators, such as enrollee satisfaction surveys …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Health care providers are concerned about the quality of Medicare guidance issued by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Specifically, they have reported that (1) they receive unclear guidance on program requirements and (2) because policies and procedures change frequently, they may rely on obsolete guidance, resulting in billing errors. Some government agencies issue advisory opinions in response to specific questions from requesters. These opinions permit agencies to apply law and regulation to a particular set of facts and provide requesters with specific guidance. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 directed GAO to determine the appropriateness and feasibility of establishing in the Secretary of Health and Human Services authority to issue legally binding advisory opinions to interpret Medicare regulations. GAO (1) identified factors relevant in establishing an advisory opinion process and (2) assessed the role such a process could play in clarifying program requirements. GAO examined four federal agencies' advisory opinion processes and interviewed officials from organizations representing Medicare stakeholders to learn how such a process might address their …

Email letter-head from Caro Bosca that includes all the email addresses the unattached message was sent to.

Weekly newspaper from Mannford, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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.

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 constitutional authorization of video lottery terminals on Indian tribal lands would permit Indian tribal lands would permit Indian tribes to offer casino gambling in Texas (RQ-0214-GA)

Photograph of a man at a restaurant packing fried chicken into a yellow cardboard box. Several other cardboard boxes are visible in front of the man and three other employees are partially shown standing behind him.

Photograph of a man at a restaurant serving fried chicken with a metal tong. The man is wearing a polo t-shirt and a hat with the text "Pollo Campero".

Photograph of a man picking up fried chicken with metal tongs to place them into the box on his left hand. The man is wearing a white polo shirt and a hat with the text "Pollo Campero".

This report describes the amendment process in the Committee of the Whole, including reading for an amendment, debating, amendment trees, and voting.

This report discusses key drinking water issues in the 108th Congress involving water infrastructure funding and problems caused by specific contaminants, such as the gasoline additive methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), perchlorate, and lead in drinking water. Congress last reauthorized the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) in 1996, and although funding authority for most SDWA programs expired in FY2003, broad reauthorization efforts were not pursued as EPA, states, and water utilities continued implementing the 1996 amendments.

This is the Marine Corps policy for pregnancy and parenthood.

This talk focuses on the theoretical analysis of electrical losses associated with electrically networking large numbers of TPV cells to produce high power TPV power generators.

The standard model prediction for the {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} X{sub s,d}{gamma} decay amplitude with a right-handed photon is believed to be tiny, suppressed by m{sub s,d}/m{sub b}, compared to the amplitude with a left-handed photon. We show that this suppression is fictitious: in inclusive decays, the ratio of these two amplitudes is only suppressed by g{sub s}/(4{pi}), and in exclusive decays by {Lambda}{sub QCD}/m{sub b}. The suppression is not stronger in {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} X{sub d}{gamma} decays than it is in {bar B}{sup 0} {yields} X{sub s}{gamma}. We estimate that the time dependent CP asymmetries in B {yields} K*{gamma}, {rho}{gamma}, K{sub S}{pi}{sup 0}{gamma}, and {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} {gamma} are of order 0.1 and that they have significant uncertainties.

The availability of compact transmission grating spectrometers now allows an attractive and economical alternative to the more familiar Czerny-Turner configuration for many high-temperature plasma applications. Higher throughput is obtained with short focal length refractive optics and stigmatic imaging. Many more spectra can be obtained with a single spectrometer since smaller, more densely packed optical input fibers can be used. Multiple input slits, along with a bandpass filter, can be used to maximize the number of spectra per detector, providing further economy. Curved slits can correct for the strong image curvature of the short focal length optics. Presented here are the governing grating equations for both standard and high-dispersion transmission gratings, defining dispersion, image curvature, and desired slit curvature, that can be used in the design of improved plasma diagnostics.

It has been shown for the first time that quasi- and deep-inelastic reactions can be successfully incorporated into the conventional Ion-Guide Isotope Separator On-Line (IGISOL) technique. This is of particular interest for characterizing the decay properties of refractory elements and is applied to neutron rich nuclei between Z = 20-28. As a first step of this project, the kinematics of quasi- and deep-inelastic reactions, such as {sup 197}Au({sup 65}Cu,X)Y, were studied. Based on these studies, a specialized IGISOL target chamber was designed and built. This chamber was tested in on- and off-line conditions at the Jyvaskyla IGISOL facility. Yields of radioactive, projectile-like species such as {sup 62,63}Co are about 0.8 ions/s/pnA corresponding to a total IGISOL efficiency of about 0.06%.

Fourier-Transform Infrared (FTIR) absorption spectroscopy is implemented to measure the infrared spectrum of water absorbed by the Poly(t-butoxycarbonylstyrene) (tBOC) and the ketal-protected Poly(hydroxystyrene) (KRS-XE) polymer photoresists. The shape and intensity of the OH stretching band of the water spectrum is monitored in a variety of humidity conditions in order to obtain information on the hydrogen-bonding interactions between the water and the polymer chains. The band is deconvoluted into four sub-bands, which represent four types of water molecules in different environments. Because of the hydrophilicity of the polymers studied, a large portion of the sorbed water molecules is believed to be strongly bound to the polar sites of the polymer. The ratios of each type of water are found to be dependent on the humidity conditions to which the sample was exposed. At higher humidities, there is an increase in the fraction of free and weakly-bound water molecules. These findings are used to explain the humidity dependence of the deprotection reaction rates, since certain types of water may slow transport of reactive species within the polymer network.

Neutrino mass and mixing are amongst the major discoveries of recent years. From the observation of flavor change in solar and atmospheric neutrino experiments to the measurements of neutrino mixing with terrestrial neutrinos, recent experiments have provided consistent and compelling evidence for the mixing of massive neutrinos. The discoveries at Super-Kamiokande, SNO, and KamLAND have solved the long-standing solar neutrino problem and demand that we make the first significant revision of the Standard Model in decades. Searches for neutrinoless double-beta decay probe the particle nature of neutrinos and continue to place limits on the effective mass of the neutrino. Possible signs of neutrinoless double-beta decay will stimulate neutrino mass searches in the next decade and beyond. I review the recent discoveries in neutrino physics and the current evidence for massive neutrinos.

The principle objective of the project was to develop an acoustic probe for determining the weight fraction of particles in a flowing suspension. The suspension can be solid-liquid (S-L) or solid-gas-liquid (S-G-L). The work accomplished during the first three years of DOE funding was devoted to the development of a rigorous theory for acoustic wave propagation through solid-liquid (S-L) and solid-gas-liquid (S-G-L). In the first funding period we developed an acoustic probe for S-G-L suspensions that has resulted in a theory, supported by our experiments, to describe small amplitude acoustic wave propagations in dilute suspensions (Norato, 1999; Spelter al., 1999, 2001: Norato et al. 2002). The theory agrees well with experimental data of sound attenuation over a wide range of particle sizes, frequencies, and weight percent solids. We have also completed theoretical and experimental investigation on the effect of entrained gas bubbles on the attenuation. This analysis permits us to determine the S-L weight percent in the presence of bubbles.

Advanced Concepts has focused on developing two material systems (InGaAs/InP and InGaAsSb/GaSb) over the past several years. This work summarizes a scientific evaluation of both material systems to determine which material has the greatest potential for high-efficiency (27%) and power density (0.8W/cm{sup 2}) TPV energy conversion. Lockheed Martin, KAPL Inc. and Bechtel Bettis have issued a joint recommendation to focus all diode development efforts in the future on InGaAs/InP TPV diodes, based on it's potential to acquire the required performance.

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.