A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of State's (State) Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) owns 357 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft (valued at over $340 million) primarily to help carry out its counternarcotics efforts, such as aerial eradication of drug crops in Colombia. INL relies on contractor support to help maintain and operate its aircraft. In 2004, GAO analysis showed that INL lagged behind other agencies in implementing Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and General Services Administration (GSA) aviation fleet management principles. GAO was mandated to review INL's management and oversight of this fleet. GAO specifically examined (1) the extent INL has complied with OMB and GSA aviation fleet management guidance and (2) how INL has overseen its aviation support contracts. Since INL has undertaken initiatives to address the weaknesses GAO observed, GAO makes no recommendations. GAO will follow up to ensure that these initiatives are completed, as planned. In comments on this report, State highlighted reforms under way. State also indicated that INL conducted analyses to justify most aviation investments. GAO notes, however, that the documentation provided did not reflect the key analyses called for …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1992, the United States began a unilateral moratorium on the underground testing of nuclear weapons. Prior to the moratorium, underground nuclear testing was a critical component for evaluating and certifying nuclear warheads. In 1993, the Department of Energy (DOE), at the direction of the President and the Congress, established the Stockpile Stewardship Program to increase understanding of the basic phenomena associated with nuclear weapons, provide better predictive understanding of the safety and reliability of weapons, and ensure a strong scientific and technical basis for future United States nuclear weapons policy objectives. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a separately organized agency within DOE, is now responsible for carrying out the Stockpile Stewardship Program. In 1995, the President established an annual stockpile assessment and reporting requirement to help ensure that the nation's nuclear weapons remained safe and reliable without underground nuclear testing. Subsequently, the Congress enacted into law the requirement for an annual stockpile assessment (annual assessment) process in section 3141 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2003. Specifically, section 3141 requires that the Secretaries of Energy and Defense submit a package of reports on …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To support the education and training of health professionals, the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), administers health professions education programs authorized under title VII of the Public Health Service Act. One of these programs, the Health Careers Opportunity Program (HCOP), provides grants to health professions schools and other entities to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds prepare for health professions education and training. Funding preference is given to grant applications that demonstrate a comprehensive approach involving other educational or health-related partners. Congressional committees have encouraged HRSA to give priority to applications from schools with a historic mission of educating minority students for health professions. In 2004, the appropriations conference committee asked GAO to review HRSA's process for awarding grants. This report addresses, for fiscal years 2002 through 2005, (1) HRSA's process for awarding HCOP grants and (2) the number and characteristics of HCOP applicants and grantees. GAO reviewed data from HRSA, interviewed HRSA officials, and reviewed relevant federal laws and agency documents from HHS and the Department of Education."

This Work Plan outlines the scope of work to be conducted to investigate the subsurface contaminant conditions at the property formerly leased by the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) in Powhattan, Kansas (Figure 1.1). Data obtained during this event will be used to (1) evaluate potential contaminant source areas on the property; (2) determine the vertical and horizontal extent of potential contamination; and (3) provide recommendations for future action, with the ultimate goal of assigning this site No Further Action status. The planned investigation includes groundwater monitoring requested by the Kansas Department of Health and Environment (KDHE), in accordance with Section V of the Intergovernmental Agreement between the KDHE and the Farm Service Agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). The work is being performed on behalf of the CCC/USDA by the Environmental Science Division of Argonne National Laboratory. A nonprofit, multidisciplinary research center operated by the University of Chicago for the U.S. Department of Energy, Argonne provides technical assistance to the CCC/USDA with environmental site characterization and remediation at former CCC/USDA grain storage facilities. Argonne issued a Master Work Plan (Argonne 2002) that has been approved by the KDHE. The Master Work Plan describes the general scope of all …

This study combines a variably-saturated groundwater flow model and a mesoscale atmospheric model to examine the effects of soil moisture heterogeneity on atmospheric boundary layer processes. This parallel, integrated model can represent spatial variations in land-surface forcing driven by three-dimensional (3D) atmospheric and subsurface components. The development of atmospheric flow is studied in a series of idealized test cases with different initial soil moisture distributions generated by an offline spin-up procedure or interpolated from a coarse-resolution dataset. These test cases are performed with both the fully-coupled model (which includes 3D groundwater flow and surface water routing) and the uncoupled atmospheric model. The effects of the different soil moisture initializations and lateral subsurface and surface water flow are seen in the differences in atmospheric evolution over a 36-hour period. The fully-coupled model maintains a realistic topographically-driven soil moisture distribution, while the uncoupled atmospheric model does not. Furthermore, the coupled model shows spatial and temporal correlations between surface and lower atmospheric variables and water table depth. These correlations are particularly strong during times when the land surface temperatures trigger shifts in wind behavior, such as during early morning surface heating.

Lithium insertion into various iron vanadates has been investigated. Fe{sub 2}V{sub 4}O{sub 13} and Fe{sub 4}(V{sub 2}O{sub 7}){sub 3} {center_dot} 3H{sub 2}O have discharge capacities approaching 200 mAh/g above 2.0 V vs. Li{sup +}/Li. Although the potential profiles change significantly between the first and subsequent discharges, capacity retention is unexpectedly good. Other phases, structurally related to FeVO{sub 4}, containing copper and/or sodium ions were also studied. One of these, {beta}-Cu{sub 3}Fe{sub 4}(VO{sub 4}){sub 6}, reversibly consumes almost 10 moles of electrons per formula unit (ca. 240 mAh g{sup -1}) between 3.6 and 2.0 V vs. Li{sup +}/Li, in a non-classical insertion process. It is proposed that both copper and vanadium are electrochemically active, whereas iron(III) reacts to form LiFe{sup III}O{sub 2}. The capacity of the Cu{sub 3}Fe{sub 4}(VO{sub 4}){sub 6}/Li system is nearly independent of cycling rate, stabilizing after a few cycles at 120-140 mAh g{sup -1}. Iron vanadates exhibit better capacities than their phosphate analogues, whereas the latter display more constant discharge potentials.

An international experiment to demonstrate muonionization cooling is scheduled for beam at RutherfordAppleton Laboratory (RAL) in 2007. The experimentcomprises one cell of the Study II cooling channel [1],along with upstream and downstream detectors to identifyindividual muons and measure their initial and final 6Dphase-space parameters to a precision of 0.1percent. Magneticdesign of the beam line and cooling channel are completeand portions are under construction. The experiment willbe described, including cooling channel hardware designs,fabrication status, and running plans. Phase 1 of theexperiment will prepare the beam line and providedetector systems, including time-of-flight, Cherenkov,scintillating-fiber trackers and their spectrometersolenoids, and an electromagnetic calorimeter. The Phase2 system will add the cooling channel components,including liquid-hydrogen absorbers embedded insuperconducting Focus Coil solenoids, 201-MHz normalconductingRF cavities, and their surrounding CouplingCoil solenoids. The MICE Collaboration goal is tocomplete the experiment by 2010; progress toward this isdiscussed.

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.

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.

None

This report briefly discusses federal farm support, food assistance, agricultural trade, marketing, and rural development policies are governed by a variety of separate laws. Many of these laws periodically have been evaluated, revised, and renewed through an omnibus, multi-year farm bill. These policies can be and sometimes are modified through free-standing authorizing legislation, or as part of other laws.

This report is about Calling up Measures on the Senate floor.

None

None

Prior to using human nasopharyngeal samples, we will use prepared mixtures of viruses with bacteria and eukaryotic cells in our research on microfluidic separation techniques. Some examples of these mixtures are the bacteriophage MS2 with its host bacteria, E. coli, and BSL-1, Risk-Group-1 virus such as fowlpox virus vaccine with its host cell, DF-1, derived from chickens.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

The 5th International Workshop on Oxide Surfaces (IWOX-V) was held at Granlibakken Conference center in Lake Tahoe, CA, January 7-12. The total attendance was ~90. The breakdown of attendees by country is as follows: USA 41 Germany 18 Japan 7 UK 5 Italy 5 France 4 Austria 3 Denmark 3 Cech. Repub. 1 Ireland 1 New Zealand 1 India 1 The technical program included oral sessions on the electronic and magnetic properties of oxide surfaces, surface and interface structure, advances in theory, surface defects, thin film oxides on metals and on oxides, thin film metals on oxides, surface photochemistry, surface reactivity, and interactions with water. Two evening poster sessions had similar themes. As in previous years, the program stimulated significant interest and discussion among the attendees. The local expenses (food and lodging, $918 per person) for eight foreign invited speakers were covered by BES funds. In addition, partial reimbursement for travel ($328 per person) was supported by BES funds for two more foreign invited speakers.

The reactions that cause transformations in organic compounds in the Earth’s crust remain mysterious despite decades of research into how fossil fuel resources form. A major reason for this persistent mysteriousness is the failure of many researchers to realize the intimate involvement of water in those transformations. Our goal was to overcome this staggering ignorance by developing the means to calculate the consequences of reactions involving organic compounds and water. We pursued this research from 1989 through 2006, and this report focuses on progress between 2002 and 2006. There were two major obstacles that we overcame in the course of this research. On the one hand, we developed new theoretical equations that allow researchers to make these calculations. On the other hand, we critiqued available data and provided sound means to make estimates in the absence of experimental data for hundreds of organic compounds dissolved in water. Finally, we merged these two lines of research into an interactive web site that allows users to do the calculations with the equations and data. We call the web site ORCHYD for: “ORganic Compounds HYDration properties database,” but it is far more than a database since it allows users to make extremely accurate …

This public lecture is about 100 years of research on elementary particles and fundamental forces, beginning with the identification of the electron about 1900 and extending to the astonishing discovery of Dark Matter in the late 1900s. The author talks about the elementary particle concept; the discoveries of leptons, quarks and force carrying particles; and some of the experimental technology used. The author tells of his own research, the discovery of the tau lepton, the long, inconclusive search for fractional charged particles and his new involvement in astronomical research on Dark Matter. He concludes by looking ahead to old unsolved puzzles and new questions on the fundamental nature of matter and force that face us in the 21st Century.

Here we investigate evolution of a magnetized system, in which continuously produced high energy emission undergoes annihilation on a soft photon field, such that the synchrotron radiation of the created electron-positron pairs increases number density of the soft photons. This situation is important in high energy astrophysics, because, for an extremely wide range of magnetic field strengths (nano to mega Gauss), it involves {gamma}-ray photons with energies between 0.3GeV and 30TeV. We derive and analyze the conditions for which the system is unstable to runaway production of soft photons and ultrarelativistic electrons, and for which it can reach a steady state with an optical depth to photon-photon annihilation larger than unity, as well those for which efficient pair loading of the emitting volume takes place. We also discuss the application of our analysis to a realistic situation involving astrophysical sources of a broad-band {gamma}-ray emission and briefly consider the particular case of sources close to active supermassive black holes.

We describe the path we are following in the development of a computational approach to simulate radiation damage in FeCr ferritic steels. In these alloys magnetism introduces an anomaly in the heat of formation of the solid solution that has implications on the way excess Cr precipitates in the {alpha}{prime} phase in presence of heterogeneities. These complexities represent a challenge for atomistic (empirical) approaches that we address: (i) by proposing a modified many body potential, (ii) by using a thermodynamic package that determines free energy and phase diagrams, and (iii) by using a displacement Monte Carlo code in the transmutation ensemble that can deal with millions of atoms in parallel computational environments. This approach predicts that grain boundaries, dislocations and free surfaces are not preferential sites for precipitation of {alpha}{prime}.

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