Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From 1945 through 1962, the United States conducted a series of aboveground atomic weapons tests as it built up its Cold War nuclear arsenal. Around this same time period, the United States also conducted underground uranium-mining operations and related activities, which were critical to the production of the atomic weapons. Many people were exposed to radiation resulting from the nuclear weapons development and testing program, and such exposure is presumed to have produced an increased incidence of certain serious diseases, including various types of cancer. To make partial restitution to these individuals, or their eligible surviving beneficiaries, for their hardships associated with the radiation exposure, the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act (RECA) was enacted on October 15, 1990. RECA provided that the Attorney General be responsible for processing and adjudicating claims under the act. The Department of Justice (DOJ) established the Radiation Exposure Compensation Program (RECP), which is administered by its Civil Division's Torts Branch. RECP began processing claims in April 1992. RECA has been amended various times, including on July 10, 2000, when the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act Amendments of 2000 (RECA Amendments of 2000) were enacted. The …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "funds for constructing and upgrading water supply and wastewater treatment facilities. As a result, they typically rely on federal grants and loans, primarily from the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), Economic Development Administration (EDA), Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps), to fund these projects. Concern has been raised about potential overlap between the projects these agencies fund. For fiscal years 2004 through 2006 GAO determined the (1) amount of funding these agencies obligated for rural water projects and (2) extent to which each agency's eligibility criteria and the projects they fund differed. GAO analyzed each agency's financial data and reviewed applicable statutes, regulations, and policies."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Unemployment Insurance (UI) program has been a key component in ensuring the financial security of America's workforce for more than 70 years. The UI program is a federal-state partnership designed to partially replace lost earnings of individuals who become unemployed through no fault of their own. In fiscal year 2006, the UI program covered about 130 million wage and salary workers and paid about $30 billion in benefits to about 7 million workers who lost their jobs. The UI program was established in 1935. At that time, most of the labor force consisted of men who were employed full-time in the manufacturing or trade sectors. Since then, the nature of both work and unemployment has changed in fundamental ways. In recent decades there have been increases in the share of low-wage jobs, the incidence of temporary and contingent work, the number of women in the workforce and the number of two-earner families, and the average duration of unemployment. Given these changes in the labor force, questions about the types of workers who are most likely to receive benefits require further investigation. Congress asked that we …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In May 2006, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced that computer equipment containing personal information on approximately 26.5 million veterans and active duty military personnel had been stolen. Given the importance of information technology (IT) to VA's mission, effective information security controls are critical to maintaining public and veteran confidence in its ability to protect sensitive information. GAO was asked to evaluate (1) whether VA has effectively addressed GAO and VA Office of Inspector General (IG) information security recommendations and (2) actions VA has taken since May 2006 to strengthen its information security practices and secure personal information. To do this, GAO examined security policies and action plans, interviewed pertinent department officials, and conducted testing of encryption software at select VA facilities."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "When oil spills occur in U.S. waters, federal law places primary liability on the vessel owner or operator--that is, the responsible party--up to a statutory limit. As a supplement to this "polluter pays" approach, a federal Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund administered by the Coast Guard pays for costs when a responsible party does not or cannot pay. The Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation Act of 2006 directed GAO to examine spills that cost the responsible party and the Fund at least $1 million. This report answers three questions: (1) How many major spills (i.e., $1 million or more) have occurred since 1990, and what is their total cost? (2) What factors affect the cost of spills? and (3) What are the implications of major oil spills for the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund? GAO's work to address these objectives included analyzing oil spill costs data, interviewing federal, state, and private-sector officials, and reviewing Coast Guard files from selected spills."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Prescription drug spending as a share of national health expenditures increased from 8.9 percent in 2000 to 10.1 percent in 2005--among the fastest growing segments of health care expenditures--and prescription drug prices outpaced inflation during the same period. Rising prescription drug prices can affect consumers, employers, and federal and state governments. Federal policymakers are particularly concerned about rising drug prices as the federal government has assumed greater financial responsibility for prescription drug expenditures with the introduction of a prescription drug benefit to Medicare enrollees in January 2006, known as Medicare Part D. Medicare enrollees are also responsible for a share of drug costs under the Medicare Part D program. As an update to our 2005 report, this report responds to the request from Congress for information on trends in retail prices--known as usual and customary prices--for prescription drugs frequently used by Medicare enrollees and non-Medicare health insurance enrollees. This report focuses on (1) usual and customary price trends from January 2004 through January 2007, and (2) usual and customary price trends from January 2000 through January 2007 for the subset of drugs that were included in both our …

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""Unless we fix our health care system--in both the public and private sectors--rising health care costs will have severe, adverse consequences for the federal budget as well as the U.S. economy in the future." This is one of the key messages that Comptroller General David M. Walker has been delivering across the country in town-hall style meetings, in speeches, and on radio and television programs. Using another format to explore issues with health care experts, Mr. Walker convened a forum at GAO on May 17, 2007. Attendees included health policy experts, business leaders, and public officials selected for their subject matter knowledge and representation of various perspectives. Participants examined health care cost, access, and quality challenges in discussion sessions led by distinguished economists Robert Reischauer and Mark Pauly and other leading health care authorities Carolyn Clancy and Suzanne Delbanco. Nationally known health insurance expert Leonard Schaeffer served as the keynote lunchtime speaker. At the conclusion of the forum, participants were polled for their views on points raised during the discussions. The poll was conducted using electronic voting technology that produced real-time, but confidential, results."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony is intended to discuss our report on whether or not the government of Iraq has met 18 benchmarks contained in the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 20072 (the Act). The Act requires GAO to report on the status of the achievement of these benchmarks. Consistent with GAO's core values and our desire to be fair and balanced, we also considered and used a "partially met" rating for some benchmarks. In comparison, the Act requires the administration to report on whether satisfactory progress is being made toward meeting the benchmarks. The benchmarks cover Iraqi government actions needed to advance reconciliation within Iraqi society, improve the security of the Iraqi population, provide essential services to the population, and promote economic well-being. To complete this work, we reviewed U.S. agency and Iraqi documents and interviewed officials from the Departments of Defense, State, and the Treasury; the Multi-National Force-Iraq (MNF-I) and its subordinate commands; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the Central Intelligence Agency; the National Intelligence Council; and the United Nations. These officials included Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, and General …

This paper presents numerical simulations of reactive transport which may be induced in the caprock of an on-shore depleted gas reservoir by the geological sequestration of carbon dioxide. The objective is to verify that CO{sub 2} geological disposal activities currently being planned for the study area are safe and do not induce any undesired environmental impact. In our model, fluid flow and mineral alteration are induced in the caprock by penetration of high CO{sub 2} concentrations from the underlying reservoir, where it was assumed that large amounts of CO{sub 2} have already been injected at depth. The main focus is on the potential effect of precipitation and dissolution processes on the sealing efficiency of caprock formations. Concerns that some leakage may occur in the investigated system arise because the seal is made up of potentially highly-reactive rocks, consisting of carbonate-rich shales (calcite+dolomite averaging up to more than 30% of solid volume fraction). Batch simulations and multi-dimensional 1D and 2D modeling have been used to investigate multicomponent geochemical processes. Numerical simulations account for fracture-matrix interactions, gas phase participation in multiphase fluid flow and geochemical reactions, and kinetics of fluid-rock interactions. The geochemical processes and parameters to which the occurrence of high …

This document contains Technical Safety Requirements (TSRs) for the Radioactive and Hazardous Waste Management (RHWM) Division's B695 Segment of the Decontamination and Waste Treatment Facility (DWTF) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The TSRs constitute requirements regarding the safe operation of the B695 Segment of the DWTF. The TSRs are derived from the Documented Safety Analysis (DSA) for the B695 Segment of the DWTF (LLNL 2004). The analysis presented there determined that the B695 Segment of the DWTF is a low-chemical hazard, Hazard Category 3, nonreactor nuclear facility. The TSRs consist primarily of inventory limits as well as controls to preserve the underlying assumptions in the hazard analyses. Furthermore, appropriate commitments to safety programs are presented in the administrative controls section of the TSRs. The B695 Segment of the DWTF (B695 and the west portion of B696) is a waste treatment and storage facility located in the northeast quadrant of the LLNL main site. The approximate area and boundary of the B695 Segment of the DWTF are shown in the B695 Segment of the DWTF DSA. Activities typically conducted in the B695 Segment of the DWTF include container storage, lab-packing, repacking, overpacking, bulking, sampling, waste transfer, and waste treatment. B695 …

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The National Ignition Facility (NIF) is a 192 beam Nd-glass laser facility presently under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for performing inertial confinement fusion (ICF) and experiments studying high energy density (HED) science. When completed in 2009, NIF will be able to produce 1.8 MJ, 500 TW of ultraviolet light for target experiments that will create conditions of extreme temperatures (>10{sup 8} K), pressures (10 GBar) and matter densities (>100 g/cm{sup 3}). A detailed program called the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) has been developed to enable ignition experiments in 2010, with the goal of producing fusion ignition and burn of a deuterium-tritium (DT) fuel mixture in millimeter-scale target capsules. The first of the target experiments leading up to these ignition shots will begin in 2008. The targets for the NIC are both complex and precise, and are extraordinarily demanding in materials fabrication, machining, assembly, cryogenics and characterization. The DT fuel is contained in a 2-millimeter diameter graded copper/beryllium or CH shell. The 75mm thick cryogenic ice DT fuel layer is formed to sub-micron uniformity at a temperature of approximately 18 Kelvin. The capsule and its fuel layer sit at the center of a gold/depleted uranium 'cocktail' hohlraum. Researchers …

This document contains Technical Safety Requirements (TSR) for the Radioactive and Hazardous Waste Management (RHWM) WASTE STORAGE FACILITIES, which include Area 612 (A612) and the Decontamination and Waste Treatment Facility (DWTF) Storage Area at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). The TSRs constitute requirements regarding the safe operation of the WASTE STORAGE FACILITIES. These TSRs are derived from the Documented Safety Analysis for the Waste Storage Facilities (DSA) (LLNL 2006). The analysis presented therein determined that the WASTE STORAGE FACILITIES are low-chemical hazard, Hazard Category 2 non-reactor nuclear facilities. The TSRs consist primarily of inventory limits and controls to preserve the underlying assumptions in the hazard and accident analyses. Further, appropriate commitments to safety programs are presented in the administrative controls sections of the TSRs. The WASTE STORAGE FACILITIES are used by RHWM to handle and store hazardous waste, TRANSURANIC (TRU) WASTE, LOW-LEVEL WASTE (LLW), mixed waste, California combined waste, nonhazardous industrial waste, and conditionally accepted waste generated at LLNL as well as small amounts from other U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) facilities, as described in the DSA. In addition, several minor treatments (e.g., drum crushing, size reduction, and decontamination) are carried out in these facilities. The WASTE STORAGE FACILITIES are …

Fuel cells may become the energy-delivery devices of the 21st century with realization of a carbon-neutral energy economy. Although there are many types of fuel cells, polymerelectrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) are receiving the most attention for automotive and small stationary applications. In a PEFC, hydrogen and oxygen are combined electrochemically to produce water, electricity, and waste heat. During the operation of a PEFC, many interrelated and complex phenomena occur. These processes include mass and heat transfer, electrochemical reactions, and ionic and electronic transport. Most of these processes occur in the through-plane direction in what we term the PEFC sandwich as shown in Figure 1. This sandwich comprises multiple layers including diffusion media that can be composite structures containing a macroporous gas-diffusion layer (GDL) and microporous layer (MPL), catalyst layers (CLs), flow fields or bipolar plates, and a membrane. During operation fuel is fed into the anode flow field, moves through the diffusion medium, and reacts electrochemically at the anode CL to form hydrogen ions and electrons. The oxidant, usually oxygen in air, is fed into the cathode flow field, moves through the diffusion medium, and is electrochemically reduced at the cathode CL by combination with the generated protons and electrons. …

A numerically solvable two-dimensional model introduced bythe authors [Phys. Rev. A 73, 032721 (2006)]is used to investigate thevalidity of the nonlocal approximation to the dynamics of resonantcollisions of electrons with diatomic molecules. The nonlocalapproximation to this model is derived in detail, all underlyingassumptions are specified and explicit expressions for the resonant andnon-resonant (background) T matrix for the studied processes are given.Different choices of the so-called discrete state, which fully determinesthe nonlocal approximation, are discussedand it is shown that a physicalchoice of this state can in general give poorer results than otherchoices that minimize the non-adiabatic effects and/or the backgroundterms of the T matrix. The background contributions to the crosssections, which are usually not considered in the resonant theory ofelectron-molecule collisions, can be significant not only for elasticscattering but also for the inelastic process of vibrationalexcitation.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Application materials submitted to the Texas Historical Commission requesting a historic marker for the Hugo and Georgia Gibson House, in Seguin, Texas. The materials include the inscription text of the marker, original application, narrative, floor plans, and photographs.

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.

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This report presents summary estimates of the distribution of household income for 2006.