A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO is required to annually audit the financial statements of the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) and FSLIC Resolution Fund (FRF), which are administered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). GAO is responsible for obtaining reasonable assurance about whether FDIC's financial statements for DIF and FRF are presented fairly in all material respects, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, and whether FDIC maintained effective internal control over financial reporting and compliance. Also, GAO is responsible for testing FDIC's compliance with selected laws and regulations. Created in 1933 to insure bank deposits and promote sound banking practices, FDIC plays an important role in maintaining public confidence in the nation's financial system. In 1989, legislation to reform the federal deposit insurance system created three funds to be administered by FDIC: the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF) and the Savings Association Insurance Fund (SAIF), which protect bank and savings deposits, and FRF, which was created to close out the business of the former Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation. In accordance with subsequent legislation passed in 2006, FDIC merged the BIF and SAIF into the newly established DIF …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The 2005 London subway bombings and 2006 rail attacks in Mumbai, India highlighted the vulnerability of passenger rail and other surface transportation systems to terrorist attack and demonstrated the need for greater focus on securing these systems. This testimony is based primarily on GAO's September 2005 passenger rail security report and selected program updates obtained in January 2007. Specifically, it addressees (1) the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has assessed the risks facing the U.S. passenger rail system and developed a strategy based on risk assessments for securing all modes of transportation, including passenger rail; (2) the actions that the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and other federal agencies have taken to enhance the security of the U.S. passenger rail system, improve federal coordination, and develop industry partnerships; and (3) the security practices that domestic and selected foreign passenger rail operators have implemented to enhance security."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), established in November 2001, has developed and implemented a variety of programs to secure the commercial aviation system. To implement these efforts, TSA funding related to aviation security has totaled about $20 billion since fiscal year 2004. Other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) components, such as the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Science and Technology Directorate (S&T), also play roles in securing commercial aviation. In this testimony, we address the efforts TSA has taken or planned to strengthen aviation security, and the challenges that remain, in three key areas: airline passenger prescreening, airline passenger and checked baggage screening, and air cargo screening. GAO's comments are based on issued GAO reports and testimonies and our preliminary observations from ongoing work on TSA's passenger checkpoint screening procedures and technologies, and staffing standards for Transportation Security Officers (TSO)."

Many of the interesting mechanical and materials properties of the mollusk shell are thought to stem from the prismatic calcite crystal assemblies within this composite structure. It is now evident that proteins play a major role in the formation of these assemblies. Recently, a superfamily of 7 conserved prismatic layer-specific mollusk shell proteins, Asprich, were sequenced, and the 42 AA C-terminal sequence region of this protein superfamily was found to introduce surface voids or porosities on calcite crystals in vitro. Using AFM imaging techniques, we further investigate the effect that this 42 AA domain (Fragment-2) and its constituent subdomains, DEAD-17 and Acidic-2, have on the morphology and growth kinetics of calcite dislocation hillocks. We find that Fragment-2 adsorbs on terrace surfaces and pins acute steps, accelerates then decelerates the growth of obtuse steps, forms clusters and voids on terrace surfaces, and transforms calcite hillock morphology from a rhombohedral form to a rounded one. These results mirror yet are distinct from some of the earlier findings obtained for nacreous polypeptides. The subdomains Acidic-2 and DEAD-17 were found to accelerate then decelerate obtuse steps and induce oval rather than rounded hillock morphologies. Unlike DEAD-17, Acidic-2 does form clusters on terrace surfaces and …

The Nevada Test Site (NTS) is a large (1,350 square miles) secure site currently operated by National Security Technologies, LLC (NSTec), for the U.S. Department of Energy and was established in 1951 to provide a venue for testing nuclear weapons. Three areas with a variety of elevation and geological parameters were used for testing, but the largest number of tests was in Yucca Flat. The Yucca Flat area is approximately 5 miles wide and 20 miles long and approximately 460 subsidence craters resulted from testing in this area. The Sedan crater displaced approximately 12 million tons of earth and is the largest of these craters at 1,280 feet across and 320 feet deep. The profiles of Sedan and the other craters offer a wide variety of shapes and depths that are ideally suited for lunar analog testing.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with 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: Appropriate calculation of the market value of the permanent school fund for making distributions to the available school fund (RQ-0448-GA)

This report provides brief descriptions of the budget volumes and related documents, together with internet addresses Government Printing Office stock number, and prices to obtain the publications for FY 2008.

The CTMC method is used to calculate emission cross sections following charge exchange collisions involving highly charged ions of astrophysical interest and typical cometary targets. Comparison is made to experimental data obtained on the EBIT machine at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for O{sup 8+} projectiles impinging on different targets at a collision energy of 10 eV/amu. The theoretical cross sections are used together with ion abundances measured by the Advanced Composition Explorer as well as those obtained by a fitting procedure using laboratory emission cross sections in order to reproduce the x-ray spectrum of comet C/LINEAR S4 measured on July 14th 2001.

This report is one in the series of ''POINT'' reports that over the years have presented temperature dependent cross sections for the then current version of ENDF/B. In each case I have used publicly available nuclear data (the current ENDF/B data, available online at the National Nuclear Data Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory http://www.nndc.bnl.gov/) and publicly available computer codes (the current PREPRO codes, available on-line at the Nuclear Data Section, IAEA, Vienna, Austria http://wwwnds. iaea.or.at/ndspub/endf/prepro/). I have used these in combination to produce the temperature dependent cross sections used in applications and presented in this report. The preceding POINT 2004 report [R1] presented results for the now frozen last version of ENDF/B-VI, Release 8. The current POINT 2007 report is based on data from recently released ENDF/B-VII.0, which is the first release of ENDF/B-VII.

The goal of the data intensive LDRD was to investigate the fundamental research issues underlying the application of High Performance Computing (HPC) resources to the challenges of data intensive computing. We explored these issues through four targeted case studies derived from growing LLNL programs: high speed text processing, massive semantic graph analysis, streaming image feature extraction, and processing of streaming sensor data. The ultimate goal of this analysis was to provide scalable data management algorithms to support the development of a predictive knowledge capability consistent with the direction of Aurora.

The Savannah River Site of Department of Energy will use the new Modular Caustic Side Solvent Extraction Unit (MCU) to process the waste stream by removing/reducing Cs-137 using Caustic Side Solvent Extraction (CSSX) technology. The CSSX technology utilizes multicomponent organic solvent and annular centrifugal contactors to extract Cs-137 from waste salt solution. Due to the radiolysis of the aqueous nuclear wastes, hydrogen generation is expected in the MCU holding tanks. The hydrogen from radiolysis and the vapor from the organic component of the solvent, Isopar-L, may form a composite flammable gas mixture, resulting in a shorter time to flammability than that of a pure hydrogen environment. It has been found that the time-to-Lower Flammability Limit (LFL) and stoichiometric concentration (SC) vary greatly from tank to tank, and could be decreased significantly by the presence of the Isopar-L. However, neither the deflagration nor the detonation event would challenge the Evaluation Guideline for any of the tanks at any liquid level.

These results represent the first set of runs of 10 {beta} values ranging from 2000-7000 trajectories with the p4rhmc code. This initial run sequence spanned roughly 2-weeks in late January and Early February, 2007. To manage the submission of dependent jobs: subSet.pl--submits a set of dependent jobs for a single run; rmSet.pl--removes a set of dependent jobs in reverse order of submission; and statSet.pl--runs pstat command and prints parsed output along with directory contents. The results of running the statSet.pl command are printed for three different times during the start up the next sequence of runs using the milc code.

Just like the blind men in the popular story of perceiving the elephant, the three major constituencies participating in the energy debate have greatly different perceptions of the problem. The constituency that is worried about climate change believes the energy problem is caused by profligate use of fossil fuel that has dramatically changed our atmosphere. The energy security group sees dangerous reliance on foreign sources of oil increasingly held by countries hostile to the US. The economic vitality group sees high energy prices and their effect on the economy and our life-style. Just like the blind men, each of the three constituencies perceives a different problem. And just as with the blind men, while each perspective is right as a piece of the elephant, it takes all the perspectives together to actually solve the problem. Environmentalists focus on solutions responding to the scientific consensus that greenhouse gases are creating rapid climate change. The tipping point has come: it is now a consensus position among scientists the global warming is being affected by anthropogenic activity to 90% certainty according to the last IPCC report. Although they still struggle with the prediction of how much global temperatures will rise if we do …

The Simulator for the Linear Collider (SLIC) is a detector simulation program based on the GEANT4 toolkit. It is intended to enable end users to easily model detector concepts by providing the ability to fully describe detectors using plain text files read in by a common executable at runtime. The detector geometry, typically the most complex part of a detector simulation, is described at runtime using the Linear Collider Detector Description (LCDD). This system allows end users to create complex detector geometries in a standard XML format rather than procedural code such as C++. The LCDD system is based on the Geometry Description Markup Language (GDML) from the LHC Applications Group (LCG). The geometry system facilitates the study of different full detector design and their variations. SLIC uses the StdHep format to read input created by event generators and outputs events in the Linear Collider IO (LCIO) format. The SLIC package provides a binding to GEANT4 and many additional commands and features for the end user.

Semi-insulating silicon carbide (SiC) is an attractive material for application as high voltage, photoconductive semiconductor switches (PCSS) due to its large bandgap, high critical electric field strength, high electron saturation velocity and high thermal conductivity. The critical field strength of 300 MV/m for 6H-SiC makes it particularly attractive for compact, high voltage, fast switching applications. To realize the benefits of the high bulk electric field strength of SiC and diffuse switch current, carriers must be excited throughout the bulk of the photo switch. Photoconducting switches with opposing electrodes were fabricated on ''a'' plane, vanadium compensated, semiinsulating, 6H-SiC substrates. The PCSS devices were switched by optically exciting deep extrinsic levels lying within the 6H-SiC bandgap. The SiC photoswitches were tested up to a bias voltage of 11000 V with a corresponding peak current of 150 A. The 6H-SiC substrates withstood average electric fields up to 27 MV/m. Minimum PCCS dynamic resistances of 2 and 10 {Omega} were obtained with 13 mJ optical pulses at 532 and 1064 nm wavelengths, respectively.

At a future e+e- linear collider, precision measurements of jets will be required in order to understand physics at and beyond the electroweak scale. Calorimetry will be used with other detectors in an optimal way to reconstruct particle 4-vectors with unprecedented precision. This Particle Flow Algorithm (PFA) approach is seen as the best way to achieve particle mass resolutions from dijet measurements in the range of {approx} 30%/{radical}E, resulting in innovative methods for choosing the calorimeter technology and optimizing the detector design.

The NCAR effort is primarily focused on the analysis of a diverse suite of measurements taken at the southern end of the Salt Lake City Valley within the Jordan Narrows. These measurements include wind profiler, surface, lidar, radiosonde, multi-layered tether-sonde and sodar measurements. We are also collaborating with other VTMX investigators through linking our measurements within the Jordan Narrows with their investigations. The instrumentation was provided to interested VTMX investigators and was used extensively. Thus the NCAR data set played a large role in the results of the overall experiment. Our work under this proposal includes analysis of the observations, mesoscale modeling efforts in support of our VTMX analysis and general instrumentation development aimed at improving the measurement of vertical transport and mixing under stable conditions. This report is subdivided by research objectives.

Plug-in Hybrid vehicles energy storage and drive cycle impacts presentation given at the 7th Advanced Automotive Battery Conference.

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

This report summarizes the information related to China's Currency, Economic issues, and options for the U.S. trade policies

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