A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to spend over $100 billion on capabilities and technologies to achieve the initial goals of the President's 2004 Vision for Space Exploration. In the past, NASA has had difficulty meeting cost, schedule, and performance objectives for some of its projects because it failed to adequately define project requirements and quantify resources. NASA will be further challenged by a constrained federal budget and a shrinking experienced NASA workforce. To help face these challenges and manage projects with greater efficiency and accountability, NASA recently updated its program and project management policy and is developing an agencywide systems engineering policy. GAO has issued a series of reports on the importance of obtaining critical information and knowledge at key junctures in major system acquisitions to help meet cost and schedule objectives. This report (1) evaluates whether NASA's policy supports a knowledge-based acquisition approach and (2) describes how NASA centers are implementing the agency's acquisition policies and guidance."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Commerce's (Commerce) Economic Development Administration (EDA) Reauthorization Act of 2004 directed us to regularly review the implementation of two authorities granted to the Secretary of Commerce: (1) allowing excess funds from projects constructed under projected cost to be reinvested in new or existing projects and (2) establishing a performance award process for grant recipients that meet or exceed performance measures established in connection with the grant. This report (1) discusses EDA's authority to reinvest excess funds and provides information on the portion of these funds EDA has had to return to the U.S. Treasury and (2) describes the status of the performance award system and identifies some steps EDA could take to develop a useful performance award system."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter responds to follow-up questions about our September 14, 2005, testimony before Congress. In that testimony, we discussed the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) progress in building management capabilities essential to successfully modernizing its information technology (IT) systems. Systems modernization is a vital part of the FBI's ongoing efforts to transform itself in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks."

The relationship between pullback velocity and impact velocity is studied for different microstructures in Cu. A size distribution of potential nucleation sites is derived under the conditions of an applied stochastic stress field. The size distribution depends on flow stress leading to a connection between the plastic flow appropriate to a given microstructure and nucleation rate. The pullback velocity in turn depends on the nucleation rate resulting in a prediction for the relationship between pullback velocity and flow stress. The theory is compared to observations of Cu on Cu gas-gun experiments (10-50 GPa) for a diverse set of microstructures. The scaling law is incorporated into a 1D finite difference code and is shown to reproduce the experimental data with one adjustable parameter that depends only on a nucleation exponent, {Lambda}.

None

The 128-B-2 waste site was a burn pit historically used for the disposal of combustible and noncombustible wastes, including paint and solvents, office waste, concrete debris, and metallic debris. This site has been remediated by removing approximately 5,627 bank cubic meters of debris, ash, and contaminated soil to the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. The results of verification sampling demonstrated that residual contaminant concentrations do not preclude any future uses and allow for unrestricted use of shallow zone soils. The results also showed that residual contaminant concentrations are protective of groundwater and the Columbia River.

Many energetic systems can be activated via mechanical means. Percussion primers in small caliber ammunition and stab detonators used in medium caliber ammunition are just two examples. Current medium caliber (20-60mm) munitions are detonated through the use of impact sensitive stab detonators. Stab detonators are very sensitive and must be small, as to meet weight and size limitations. A mix of energetic powders, sensitive to mechanical stimulus, is typically used to ignite such devices. Stab detonators are mechanically activated by forcing a firing pin through the closure disc of the device and into the stab initiating mix. Rapid heating caused by mechanically driven compression and friction of the mixture results in its ignition. The rapid decomposition of these materials generates a pressure/temperature pulse that is sufficient to initiate a transfer charge, which has enough output energy to detonate the main charge. This general type of ignition mix is used in a large variety of primers, igniters, and detonators.[1] Common primer mixes, such as NOL-130, are made up of lead styphnate (basic) 40%, lead azide (dextrinated) 20%, barium nitrate 20%, antimony sulfide 15%, and tetrazene 5%.[1] These materials pose acute and chronic toxicity hazards during mixing of the composition and later …

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive 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 federal law preempts a portion of Senate Bill 410, enacted during the regular session of the Seventy-ninth Legislature, that purports to authorize the importation of Canadian pharmaceuticals into Texas, and the require the State Board of Pharmacy to assist in such importation (RQ-0355-GA)

A woman holding scissors creates a star-shaped piñata of many colors. A piñata is a brightly-colored paper container that is usually filled with candy and/or toys and is used to celebrate a variety of special occasions. It is generally hung from a tree branch or ceiling and participants then use a stick to break the piñata and obtain the candy and/or toys from inside it.

A woman examines a string of beads while surrounded by piñatas.

A woman cuts green-colored paper for a piñata. A piñata is a brightly-colored paper container that is usually filled with candy and/or toys and is used to celebrate a variety of special occasions. It is generally hung from a tree branch or ceiling and participants then use a stick to break the piñata and obtain the candy and/or toys from inside it.

A woman creates a star-shaped piñata of many colors. A piñata is a brightly-colored paper container that is usually filled with candy and/or toys and is used to celebrate a variety of special occasions. It is generally hung from a tree branch or ceiling and participants then use a stick to break the piñata and obtain the candy and/or toys from inside it.

Recently, credit card issuers began adjusting their minimum payment formulas, raising the amount of the required monthly payment. Congress has focused on the need to increase consumer awareness of the financial jeopardy that can result from paying only the required minimum. This report provides an overview of the issues and congressional action. It will be updated as events warrant.

This report highlights Qatar, a small peninsular country in the Persian Gulf, which has emerged as an important ally of the United States since the late 1990s and currently serves as host to major U.S. military facilities for command, basing, and equipment pre-positioning. U.S. officials have described Qatar's counterterrorism cooperation since 9/11 as significant; however, some observers have raised questions about possible support for Al Qaeda by some Qatari citizens, including members of Qatar's large ruling family.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

The 2006 EMSL Strategic Plan describes the elements of EMSL’s 5-year strategy to provide outstanding value to its user community and to meet evolving goals of the DOE Office of Biological Research.

B-meson decays involving b {yields} u transitions are sensitive to the Unitarity Triangle angle {alpha} (or {phi}{sub 2}). The B-factories at SLAC and KEK have made significant progress toward the measurement of {alpha} in recent years. This paper summarizes the results of the B-factories' constraints on {alpha}.

This report summarizes the results of a field verification pilot site investigation that involved the installation of a hybrid integrated active desiccant/vapor-compression rooftop heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) unit at an elementary school in the Atlanta Georgia area. For years, the school had experienced serious humidity and indoor air quality (IAQ) problems that had resulted in occupant complaints and microbial (mold) remediation. The outdoor air louvers of the original HVAC units had been closed in an attempt to improve humidity control within the space. The existing vapor compression variable air volume system was replaced by the integrated active desiccant rooftop (IADR) system that was described in detail in an Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) report published in 2004 (Fischer and Sand 2004). The IADR system and all space conditions have been monitored remotely for more than a year. The hybrid system was able to maintain both the space temperature and humidity as desired while delivering the outdoor air ventilation rate required by American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Standard 62. The performance level of the IADR unit and the overall system energy efficiency was measured and found to be very high. A comprehensive IAQ investigation was completed by …

Distributed energy resources (DER) are quickly making their way to industry primarily as backup generation. They are effective at starting and then producing full-load power within a few seconds. The distribution system is aging and transmission system development has not kept up with the growth in load and generation. The nation's transmission system is stressed with heavy power flows over long distances, and many areas are experiencing problems in providing the power quality needed to satisfy customers. Thus, a new market for DER is beginning to emerge. DER can alleviate the burden on the distribution system by providing ancillary services while providing a cost adjustment for the DER owner. This report describes 10 types of ancillary services that distributed generation (DG) can provide to the distribution system. Of these 10 services the feasibility, control strategy, effectiveness, and cost benefits are all analyzed as in the context of a future utility-power market. In this market, services will be provided at a local level that will benefit the customer, the distribution utility, and the transmission company.

The 3.2 giga-pixel LSST camera will produce over half a petabyte of raw images every month. This data needs to be reduced in under a minute to produce real-time transient alerts, and then cataloged and indexed to allow efficient access and simplify further analysis. The indexed catalogs alone are expected to grow at a speed of about 600 terabytes per year. The sheer volume of data, the real-time transient alerting requirements of the LSST, and its spatio-temporal aspects require cutting-edge techniques to build an efficient data access system at reasonable cost. As currently envisioned, the system will rely on a database for catalogs and metadata. Several database systems are being evaluated to understand how they will scale and perform at these data volumes in anticipated LSST access patterns. This paper describes the LSST requirements, the challenges they impose, the data access philosophy, and the database architecture that is expected to be adopted in order to meet the data challenges.

None