A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Generally, in paying for hospital outpatient procedures, Medicare makes prospectively set payments that are intended to cover the costs of all items and services delivered with the procedure. Medicare pays separately for some technologies that are too new to be represented in the claims data used to set rates. It also pays separately for certain technologies that are not new, such as radioactive sources used in brachytherapy, a cancer treatment. The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 required separate payment for the radioactive sources. It also directed GAO to make recommendations regarding future payment. GAO examined (1) how Medicare determines payment amounts for technologies that are not new but are separately paid and (2) how payment amounts for iodine, palladium, and iridium sources used in brachytherapy could be determined."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2002, GAO reported that the number of restatement announcements due to financial reporting fraud and/or accounting errors grew significantly between January 1997 and June 2002, negatively impacting the restating companies' market capitalization by billions of dollars. GAO was asked to update key aspects of its 2002 report (GAO-03-138). This report discusses (1) the number of, reasons for, and other trends in restatements; (2) the impact of restatement announcements on the restating companies' stock prices and what is known about investors' confidence in U.S. capital markets; and (3) regulatory enforcement actions involving accounting- and audit-related issues. To address these issues, GAO collected restatement announcements meeting GAO's criteria, calculated and analyzed the impact on company stock prices, obtained input from researchers, and analyzed selected regulatory enforcement actions."

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This report addresses political developments and implications for U.S. interests regarding Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia.

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From examination of only 4 deg{sup 2} of sky in the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS) region, we have identified the first radio-loud quasar at a redshift z > 6. The object, FIRST J1427385+331241, was discovered by matching the FLAMEX IR survey to FIRST survey radio sources with NDWFS counterparts. One candidate z > 6 quasar was found, and spectroscopy with the Keck II telescope confirmed its identification, yielding a redshift z = 6.12. The object is a Broad Absorption Line (BAL) quasar with an optical luminosity of M{sub B} {approx} -26.9 and a radio-to-optical flux ratio {approx} 60. Two Mg II absorptions systems are present at redshifts of z = 2.18 and z = 2.20. We briefly discuss the implications of this discovery for the high-redshift quasar population.

The current design of the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF) includes an auxiliary facility, the Actinide Finishing Facility, which provides a second contact of monosodium titanate (MST) to remove soluble actinides and strontium from waste if needed. This treatment will occur after cesium removal by Caustic-Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX). Although the process changes and safety basis implications have not yet been analyzed, provisions also exist to recover the MST from this operation and return to the initial actinide removal step in the SWPF for an additional (third) contact with fresh waste. A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) request identified the need to study the following issues involving this application of MST: Determine the effect of organics from the solvent extraction (CSSX) process on radionuclide sorption by MST; Determine the efficiency of re-using MST for multiple contacts; and Examine fissile loading on MST under conditions using a waste containing significantly elevated concentrations of plutonium, uranium, neptunium, and strontium. This report describes the results of three experimental studies conducted to address these needs: (1) Addition of high concentrations of entrained CSSX solvent had no noticeable effect, over a two week period, on the sorption of the actinides and strontium by MST in …

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

This report provides an overview of FY2004 appropriations for state and local terrorism preparedness. Preparedness may be defined as enhancing a state or local government’s capability to respond effectively to a terrorist attack, particularly one involving a weapon of mass destruction (WMD).

This report provides information about the Modified Water Deliveries Project on Everglades Restoration. The MOD wasters is a controversial ecological restoration process in South Florida designed to improve water delivery to Everglades national park.

This report provides information about the Implementation and Termination of the Conservation Security Program.CSP is a program that provides financial and technical assistance to promote conservation and improvement of natural resources.

In 2000, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a new set of baseline greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions scenarios in the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES) (Nakicenovic et al., 2000). The SRES team defined four narrative storylines (A1, A2, B1 and B2) describing the relationships between the forces driving GHG and aerosol emissions and their evolution during the 21st century. The SRES reports emissions for each of these storylines by type of GHG and by fuel type to 2100 globally and for four world regions (OECD countries as of 1990, countries undergoing economic reform, developing countries in Asia, rest of world). Specific assumptions about the quantification of scenario drivers, such as population and economic growth, technological change, resource availability, land-use changes, and local and regional environmental policies, are also provided. End-use sector-level results for buildings, industry, or transportation or information regarding adoption of particular technologies and policies are not provided in the SRES. The goal of this report is to provide more detailed information on the SRES scenarios at the end use level including historical time series data and a decomposition of energy consumption to understand the forecast implications in terms of end use efficiency to 2030. This …

This report is intended to describe first, the principal physics reasons for an ambitious experimental program in neutrino physics and proton decay based on construction of a series of massive water Cherenkov detectors located deep underground (4850 ft) in the Homestake Mine of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority (SDSTA); and second, the engineering design of the underground chambers to house the Cherenkov detector modules; and third, the conceptual design of the water Cherenkov detectors themselves for this purpose. In this proposal we show the event rates and physics sensitivity for beams from both FNAL (1300 km distant from Homestake) and BNL (2540 km distant from Homestake). The program we propose will benefit with a beam from FNAL because of the high intensities currently available from the Main Injector with modest upgrades. The possibility of tuning the primary proton energy over a large range from 30 to 120 GeV also adds considerable flexibility to the program from FNAL. On the other hand the beam from BNL over the larger distance will produce very large matter effects, and consequently a hint of new physics (beyond CP violation) can be better tested with that configuration. In this proposal we focus on …

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A photograph of the final design of the Sankofa t-shirt design for the Multicultural Center. It reads "UNT Multicultural Center; Leaving a Legacy; Recognizing the Struggle and Pressing Toward the Future". There is also a bird design in the center of it.

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

Soil vapor extraction (SVE) systems are typically designed based on the results of a vadose zone pumping test (transient or steady state) using a pressure criteria to establish the zone of influence (ZOI). A common problem associated with pressure based SVE design is overestimating the ZOI of the extraction well. The vacuum criteria commonly used to establish the boundary of the ZOI results in large areas with very low pore velocities and thus long cleanup times. As a result, design strategies based upon critical pore gas velocity (CPGV) have increased in popularity. The CPGV is used in an effort to loosely incorporate the effects of mass transfer limitations into the design of SVE systems. Critical pore gas velocity designs use a minimum pore gas velocity rather than minimum vacuum to identify the extent of the treatment zone of an SVE system. The CPGV is typically much larger than the pore gas velocity at the perimeter of vacuum based (ZOI) designs resulting in shorter cleanup times. In this paper, we report the results of testing performed at the Savannah River Site (SRS) to determine the influence of a vapor extraction well based upon both a pressure and pore gas velocity design …

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

In this report we study space-mapping and manifold-mapping, two multi-level optimization techniques that aim at accelerating expensive optimization procedures with the aid of simple auxiliary models. Manifold-mapping improves in accuracy the solution given by space-mapping. In this report, the two mentioned techniques are basically described and then applied in the solving of two minimization problems. Several coarse models are tried, both from a two and a three level perspective. The results with these simple tests confirm the speed-up expected for the multi-level approach.

A list of languages used around the world with short descriptions of where each is used and the number of people who use it broken down into the different dialects and regional variants. There are also two maps that detail where the languages are spoken with different colors.

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

Since September 11, 2001, the effectiveness of America's communications capabilities in support of the information needs of first responders and other public safety workers has been a matter of concern to Congress. Most public safety advocates consider that the communications failures following the onslaught of Hurricane Katrina demonstrate that there is much still to be done to provide the United States with adequate communications capabilities in emergencies. This report explores several pieces of legislation aimed at improving the emergency management the emergency communications infrastructure.

The United States and Lebanon continue to enjoy good relations. Prominent current issues between the United States and Lebanon include progress toward a Lebanon-Israel peace treaty, U.S. aid to Lebanon, and Lebanon's capacity to stop Hezbollah militia attacks on Israel. The United States supports Lebanon's independence and favored the end of Israeli and Syrian occupation of parts of Lebanon. This report outlines in detail these U.S.-Lebanese relations, as well as the current state of the Lebanese government and its political elections.

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