Video footage from The Black Academy of Arts and Letters recorded during final performance of the summer arts institute entitled 'Djaamana' Deen,' on July 7th, 2006. The footage shows children ages 10-17 performing a variety of dance and musical sections. The camera focuses on close-ups of the stage and participants.

Video footage from The Black Academy of Arts and Letters recorded during final performance of the summer arts institute entitled 'Djaamana' Deen,' on July 7th, 2006. The footage shows children ages 10-17 performing a variety of dance and musical sections.

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

This report discusses the ongoing debate about whether or not to approve energy development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). Current law forbids energy leasing in the Refuge. This report addresses several legislative options on the issue, as well as policymakers' arguments for and against development, especially in the wake of increasing terrorism since 2000-2001.

Materials containing ceramic and metal phases play a significant role in modern materials technology.

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

The BASE Light Ion Facility upgrades have been completed. All proton beams are now delivered to Cave 4A. New control software, a larger diameter beam window, and improved quality assurance measures have been added.

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Given today's unprecedented terrorism threat environment and the resulting widespread congressional and public interest in the security of our nation's borders, GAO conducted an investigation testing whether radioactive sources could be smuggled across U.S. borders. Most travelers enter the United States through the nation's 154 land border ports of entry. Department of Homeland Security U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) inspectors at ports of entry are responsible for the primary inspection of travelers to determine their admissibility into the United States and to enforce laws related to preventing the entry of contraband, such as drugs and weapons of mass destruction. GAO's testimony provides the results of undercover tests made by its investigators to determine whether monitors at U.S. ports of entry detect radioactive sources in vehicles attempting to enter the United States. GAO also provides observations regarding the procedures that CBP inspectors followed during its investigation. GAO has also issued a report on the results of this investigation (GAO-06-545R)."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter responds to Congress's request for additional information related to the subcommittee's May 25, 2006 hearing on whether charities participating in the Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) are meeting their employment tax responsibilities. Our responses are based on work performed during GAO's audit, communication with the Internal Revenue Service, GAO's views of generally accepted accounting principles and generally accepted auditing standards, and on professional judgment."

This reports documents the definition, laws, history, and the consequences behind the making, distribution, and consumption of child pornography.

This report is on Civil RICO and Standing: Anza v. Ideal Steel Supply Corporation.

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

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, the Department of Defense (DOD) has increasingly relied on goods and services provided by the private sector under contract. Since fiscal year 2000, DOD's contracting for goods and services has nearly doubled, and this trend is expected to continue. In fiscal year 2005 alone, DOD obligated nearly $270 billion on contracts for goods and services. Given the magnitude of the dollar amounts involved, it is essential that DOD acquisitions be handled in an efficient, effective, and accountable manner. In other words, DOD needs to ensure that it buys the right things, the right way. Enacted January 6, 2006, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006 required us to review DOD's efforts to identify and assess the vulnerability of its contracts to fraud, waste, and abuse. We reviewed the areas of vulnerability that DOD faces with regard to contracting fraud, waste, and abuse, and the recent initiatives that DOD has taken to address these vulnerabilities, including actions DOD has taken in response to a March 2005 Defense Science Board report on management oversight in acquisition organizations."

In response to the foreign challenge in the global marketplace, the United States Congress has explored ways to stimulate technological advancement in the private sector. The government has supported various efforts to promote cooperative research and development activities among industry, universities, and the federal R&D establishment designed to increase the competitiveness of American industry and to encourage the generation of new products, processes, and services.

The BaBar high energy physics experiment will be in operation at the PEP-II asymmetric e{sup +}e{sup -} collider in Spring 1999. The primary purpose of the experiment is the investigation of CP violation in the neutral B meson system. The electromagnetic calorimeter forms a central part of the experiment and new techniques are employed in data acquisition and reconstruction software to maximize the capability of this device. The use of a matched digital filter in the feature extraction in the front end electronics is presented. The performance of the filter in the presence of the expected high levels of soft photon background from the machine is evaluated. The high luminosity of the PEP-II machine and the demands on the precision of the calorimeter require reliable software that allows for increased physics capability. BaBar has selected C++ as its primary programming language and object oriented analysis and design as its coding paradigm. The application of this technology to the reconstruction software for the calorimeter is presented. The design of the systems for clustering, cluster division, track matching, particle identification and global calibration is discussed with emphasis on the provisions in the design for increased physics capability as levels of understanding of …

Background: Discovery of precise specificity oftranscription factors is an important step on the way to understandingthe complex mechanisms of gene regulation in eukaryotes. Recently,doublestranded protein-binding microarrays were developed as apotentially scalable approach to tackle transcription factor binding siteidentification. Results: Here we present an algorithmic approach toexperimental design of a microarray that allows for testing fullspecificity of a transcription factor binding to all possible DNA bindingsites of a given length, with optimally efficient use of the array. Thisdesign is universal, works for any factor that binds a sequence motif andis not species-specific. Furthermore, simulation results show that dataproduced with the designed arrays is easier to analyze and would resultin more precise identification of binding sites. Conclusion: In thisstudy, we present a design of a double stranded DNA microarray forprotein-DNA interaction studies and show that our algorithm allowsoptimally efficient use of the arrays for this purpose. We believe such adesign will prove useful for transcription factor binding siteidentification and other biological problems.

The coupling of energetic metallic multilayers (a.k.a. flash metal) with energetic sol-gel synthesis and processing is an entirely new approach to forming energetic devices for several DoD and DOE needs. They are also practical and commercially viable manufacturing techniques. Improved occupational safety and health, performance, reliability, reproducibility, and environmentally acceptable processing can be achieved using these methodologies and materials. The development and fielding of this technology will enhance mission readiness and reduce the costs, environmental risks and the necessity of resolving environmental concerns related to maintaining military readiness while simultaneously enhancing safety and health. Without sacrificing current performance, we will formulate new impact initiated device (IID) compositions to replace materials from the current composition that pose significant environmental, health, and safety problems associated with functions such as synthesis, material receipt, storage, handling, processing into the composition, reaction products from testing, and safe disposal. To do this, we will advance the use of nanocomposite preparation via the use of multilayer flash metal and sol-gel technologies and apply it to new small IIDs. This work will also serve to demonstrate that these technologies and resultant materials are relevant and practical to a variety of energetic needs of DoD and DOE. The goal …

Assumptions regarding the magnitude and direction ofenergy-related technological change have long beenrecognized as criticaldeterminants of the outputs and policy conclusions derived fromintegrated assessment models. Particularly in the case of developingcountries, however, empirical analysis of technological change has laggedbehind simulation modeling. This paper presents estimates of sectoralproductivity trends and energy-augmenting technological change forseveral energy-intensive industries in India and South Korea, and, forcomparison, the United States. The key findings are substantialheterogeneity among both industries and countries, and a number of casesof declining energy efficiency. The results are subject to certaintechnical qualifications both in regards to the methodology and to thedirect comparison to integrated assessment parameterizations.Nevertheless, they highlight the importance of closer attention to theempirical basis for common modeling assumptions.

CTCP, an innovative TCP congestion control algorithm developed by Microsoft, is evaluated and compared to HSTCP and StandardTCP. Tests were performed on the production Internet from Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) to various geographically located hosts to give a broad overview of the performances. We find that certain issues were apparent during testing (not directly related to the congestion control algorithms) which may skew results. With this in mind, we find that CTCP performed similarly to HSTCP across a multitude of different network environments. However, to improve the fairness and to reduce the impact of CTCP upon existing StandardTCP traffic, two areas of further research were investigated. Algorithmic additions to CTCP for burst control to reduce the aggressiveness of its cwnd increments demonstrated beneficial improvements in both fairness and throughput over the original CTCP algorithm. Similarly, {gamma} auto-tuning algorithms were investigated to dynamically adapt CTCP flows to their network conditions for optimal performance. While the effects of these auto-tuning algorithms when used in addition to burst control showed little to no benefit to fairness nor throughput for the limited number of network paths tested, one of the auto-tuning algorithms performed such that there was negligible impact upon StandardTCP. With these …

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

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the audit reports covering the financial statements of the Big Brothers-Big Sisters of America for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2004. GAO found no reportable instances of noncompliance. The audit reports included the auditor's opinion that the financial statements of the corporation were presented fairly in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the audit reports covering the financial statements of the Catholic War Veterans of the United States of America, Incorporated for Fiscal Year 2004. GAO found no reportable instances of noncompliance. The audit reports included the auditors' opinions that the financial statements of the corporation were presented fairly in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the audit reports covering the financial statements of the Congressional Medal of Honor Society of the United States of America for the fiscal years ended December 31, 2004 and 2003. GAO found no reportable instances of noncompliance. The audit reports included the auditor's opinion that the financial statements of the corporation were presented fairly in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles."