Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "More than a quarter of automobiles and about a third of light trucks (including sport utility vehicles, vans, and pickup trucks) on the roadways of the United States have one or more tires underinflated 8 pounds per square inch (psi) or more below the level recommended by the vehicle manufacturer, according to a report by the Department of Transportation's (DOT) National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). A decrease in tire pressure can be caused by poor maintenance, driving habits, punctures, road conditions, and the quality of material used in tire construction. According to tire experts, under normal driving conditions, air-filled tires can lose from 1 to 2 psi per month as air permeates through the tires. Vehicles with underinflated tires have had handling problems that caused crashes resulting in fatalities and injuries. In addition, the fuel economy of vehicles driving on underinflated tires is slightly lower. In response to a Congressional request for information on these issues, we addressed the following questions: (1) What is the impact of tire underinflation on safety and fuel economy, and what actions has the federal government taken to promote proper tire inflation? …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Several federal programs help pay for or reduce the costs of prescription drugs for eligible individuals and entities. Three examples are the Medicaid drug rebate program, part of the joint federal-state Medicaid program that finances medical services for certain low-income people; the 340B drug pricing program, which provides discounted drug prices to certain eligible entities such as community health centers; and the Medicare Part D program, which provides a Medicare drug benefit for the elderly and certain disabled people. The price information drug manufacturers report under these federal programs affects related federal spending. Spending is also affected by the extent to which federal oversight ensures the accuracy of this information. GAO was asked to provide information related to the oversight of prescription drug pricing practices that affect these federal programs. This testimony focuses on the oversight of drug pricing related to the three programs and the implications for future congressional oversight. This testimony is based on recent GAO reports examining these programs and related work by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General and others."

An overview of new experimental results on high-pT particleproduction and jets in heavy ion collisions from the Quark Matter 2006conference is presented.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Weekly magazine edition of the daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to honoring Mark R. Warren for his service as president of the Texas Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to granting permission to the YMCA Youth and Government Program to use the legislative chambers and other Capitol Complex facilities.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to recognizing the Lubbock ISD Partners in Education program and local winners of the Texas Association of Partners in Education awards.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to honoring Thomas and Louise Hagood of Paris on their 65th wedding anniversary.

Weekly newspaper from Dallas, Texas that includes local, state, and national news and advertising of interest to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) community.

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 a city may designate as a reinvestment zone under Tax Code section 311.005(a)(5) an area that is not “unproductive, underdeveloped, or blighted” if no bonds or notes are issued to finance the area’s development or redevelopment (RQ-0442-GA)

Two federal programs that support the price and income received by dairy farmers are expiring in 2007 — the dairy price support program and the Milk Income Loss Contract (MILC) program. This report discusses the reauthorization of these and other farm commodity price and income support programs, which is being debated by the 110th Congress in the context of a pending omnibus 2007 farm bill.

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The purpose of this project was to investigate metal-induced crystallization of amorphous silicon at low temperatures using excitation sources such as laser and rapid thermal annealing, as well as, electric field. Deposition of high quality crystalline silicon at low temperatures allows the use of low cost soda-lime glass and polymeric films for economically viable photovoltaic solar cells and low cost large area flat panel displays. In light of current and expected demands on Si supply due to expanding use of consumer electronic products throughout the world and the incessant demand for electric power the need for developing high grade Si thin films on low cost substrate becomes even more important. We used hydrogenated and un-hydrogenated amorphous silicon deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition and sputtering techniques (both of which are extensively used in electronic and solar cell industries) to fabricate nano-crystalline, poly-crystalline (small as well as large grain), and single-crystalline (epitaxial) films at low temperatures. We demonstrated Si nanowires on flat surfaces that can be used for fabricating nanometer scale transistors. We also demonstrated lateral crystallization using Al with and without an applied electric field. These results are critical for high mobility thin film transistors (TFT) for large area …

There are two Gas Detectors, located upstream and downstream of the FEL attenuation materials, which provide a non-intrusive measure of the FEL pulse energy in the fundamental, in real-time, on a pulse-by-pulse basis. The FEL operators and the users will use this information to monitor the performance of the FEL and the Attenuator and to cross-calibrate other detectors. The Gas Detectors measure the FEL pulse energy by measuring the fluorescence induced in a small volume of N{sub 2} gas by the passage of the FEL.

Radiological sampling and analyses are performed to collect data for a variety of specific reasons covering a wide range of projects. These activities include: Effluent monitoring; Environmental surveillance; Emergency response; Routine ambient monitoring; Background assessments; Nuclear license termination; Remediation; Deactivation and decommissioning (D&D); and Waste management. In this chapter, effluent monitoring and environmental surveillance programs at nuclear operating facilities and radiological sampling and analysis plans for remediation and D&D activities will be discussed.

Studying the details of hydrocarbon chemistry in an internal combustion engine is not straightforward. A number of factors, including varying conditions of temperature and pressure, complex fluid motions, as well as variation in the composition of gasoline, render a meaningful characterization of the combusting system difficult. Some simplified experimental laboratory devices offer an alternative to complex engine environments: they remove some of the complexities that exist in real engines but retain the ability to work under engine-relevant conditions. The choice of simplified experimental devices is limited by the range of temperature and pressure at which they can operate; only the shock tube and rapid compression machine (RCM) can reach engine-relevant temperatures and pressures quickly enough and yet withstand the high pressures that occur after the ignition event. Both devices, however, suffer a common drawback: the use of inert diluent gases has been shown to affect the measured ignition delay time under some experimental conditions. Interestingly, this effect appears to be opposite in the shock tube and RCM: in the comparative study of the carrier gases argon and nitrogen, argon decreases the ignition delay time in the shock tube, but increases it in the RCM. This observation is investigated in more …

New and recent results are presented on charm and charmonium spectroscopy from BABAR experiment at SLAC. In particular, measurements on D{sub sJ} states branching fractions have been performed both in B-decays and inclusive e{sup +}e{sup -} {yields} c{bar c} interactions. Here a search for D{sub sj}(2632) has been performed and a new D{sub sJ} state at a mass of 2.856 GeV/c{sup 2} has been observed. A search for Y(4260) has been performed in exclusive D{sub D} production from initial-state radiation.

The principal objective of this two-year study is to develop and test a new advanced, automatic approach to seismic detection/location using array processing. We address a strategy to obtain significantly improved precision in the location of low-magnitude events compared with current fully-automatic approaches, combined with a low false alarm rate. We have developed and evaluated a prototype automatic system which uses as a basis regional array processing with fixed, carefully calibrated, site-specific parameters in conjuction with improved automatic phase onset time estimation. We have in parallel developed tools for Matched Field Processing for optimized detection and source-region identification of seismic signals. This narrow-band procedure aims to mitigate some of the causes of difficulty encountered using the standard array processing system, specifically complicated source-time histories of seismic events and shortcomings in the plane-wave approximation for seismic phase arrivals at regional arrays.

Maintaining a smaller, aging U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without underground nuclear testing requires the capability to verify and validate the complex computer calculations on which stockpile confidence is based. This capability, in turn, requires nonnuclear hydrodynamic tests (hydrotests) that can x-ray stages of the implosion process, providing freeze-frame photos of materials imploding at speeds of more than 16,000 kilometers per hour. The images will yield important information on shapes and densities of metals and other materials under the extreme pressures and temperatures generated by the detonation of high explosives. The Dual-Axis Radiographic Hydrodynamics Test (DARHT) Facility at Los Alamos national Laboratory is a two-arm x-ray imaging system that will provide such images, capturing the inner workings of a mock nuclear explosion with high resolution. Scientists compare the radiographic images with computer models, examine the differences, and refine the models to more accurately represent weapon behavior. One of DARHT's arms (now called DARHT-II) recently got a ''leg up'' through a collaboration of Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos scientists, using a Livermore accelerator to test its subsystems and codes.

Weekly student newspaper from San Antonio College in San Antonio, Texas that includes campus news along with advertising.