A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina caused more damage than any other single natural disaster in U.S. history, with Hurricane Rita adding to the devastation. The hurricanes hit some of the most distressed areas in the country. Louisiana and Mississippi had the highest poverty rates in the United States, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Hurricane Katrina destroyed or made uninhabitable an estimated 300,000 homes, many of which had families with children. In response to this destruction, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided many affected households with trailers for temporary housing in Louisiana and Mississippi. Those trailers not placed on homeowners' property were located in group sites. Although FEMA's guidance suggests that group sites should be located near existing supermarkets, public transportation, schools, and health care facilities, FEMA officials said the agency was not always able to locate temporary housing in these settings because of the level of destruction and, sometimes, opposition from communities. As of May 2008, several thousand households remained in group sites. Given the number of people who remained in group sites more than 2 years after Hurricane Katrina, GAO was asked to …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Section 402 of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2009 required us to report to the appropriate congressional committees by the end of the 110th Congress regarding the Department of Defense's (DOD) progress in implementing GAO's recommendations over the last 7 years. During this period of time, we issued 637 reports to DOD or its components that included 2,726 recommendations. By law, agencies, including DOD, are required to submit written statements to Congress explaining actions taken in response to recommendations we have made. We follow up on the implementation status of each recommendation at least annually to determine whether DOD has instituted sufficient corrective actions. This report, which responds to this mandate, contains the results of our analysis on the implementation status of the 2,726 recommendations we made to DOD or its components in reports issued during fiscal years 2001 through 2007. Based on discussion with congressional staff, we are also providing examples of related financial accomplishments3 reported for the period, based on DOD-related work."

We explore the physics of the general CP-conserving MSSM with Minimal Flavor Violation, the pMSSM. The 19 soft SUSY breaking parameters are chosen so to satisfy all existing experimental and theoretical constraints assuming that the WIMP is the lightest neutralino. We scan this parameter space twice using both flat and log priors and compare the results which yield similar conclusions. Constraints from both LEP and the Tevatron play an important role in obtaining our final model samples. Implications for future TeV-scale e{sup +}e{sup -} linear colliders (LC) are discussed.

We classify all bifurcations from traveling waves to non-trivial time-periodic solutions of the Benjamin-Ono equation that are predicted by linearization. We use a spectrally accurate numerical continuation method to study several paths of non-trivial solutions beyond the realm of linear theory. These paths are found to either re-connect with a different traveling wave or to blow up. In the latter case, as the bifurcation parameter approaches a critical value, the amplitude of the initial condition grows without bound and the period approaches zero. We propose a conjecture that gives the mapping from one bifurcation to its counterpart on the other side of the path of non-trivial solutions. By experimentation with data fitting, we identify the form of the exact solutions on the path connecting two traveling waves, which represents the Fourier coefficients of the solution as power sums of a finite number of particle positions whose elementary symmetric functions execute simple orbits in the complex plane (circles or epicycles). We then solve a system of algebraic equations to express the unknown constants in the new representation in terms of the mean, a spatial phase, a temporal phase, four integers (enumerating the bifurcation at each end of the path) and one …

Unstable austenitic stainless steels undergo a strain-induced martensite transformation. The effect of hydrogen on this transformation is not well understood. Some researchers believe that hydrogen makes the transformation to martensite more difficult because hydrogen is an austenite stabilizer. Others believe that hydrogen has little or no effect at all on the transformation and claim that the transformation is simply a function of strain and temperature. Still other researchers believe that hydrogen should increase the ability of the metal to transform due to hydrogen-enhanced dislocation mobility and slip planarity. While the role of hydrogen on the martensite transformation is still debated, it has been experimentally verified that this transformation does occur in hydrogen-charged materials. What is the effect of strain-induced martensite on hydrogen embrittlement? Martensite near crack-tips or other highly strained regions could provide much higher hydrogen diffusivity and allow for quicker hydrogen concentration. Martensite may be more intrinsically brittle than austenite and has been shown to be severely embrittled by hydrogen. However, it does not appear to be a necessary condition for embrittlement since Type 21-6-9 stainless steel is more stable than Type 304L stainless steel but susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement. In this study, the effect of hydrogen on strain-induced …

The Silicon Detector proposed for the International Linear Collider (ILC) requires electronic read-out that can be tightly coupled to the silicon detectors envisioned for the tracker and the electromagnetic calorimeter. The KPiX is a 1024-channel read-out chip that bump-bonds to the detector and communicates through a few digital signals, power, and detector bias. The KPiX front-end is a low-noise dual-range charge-amplifier with a dynamic range of 17 bit, achieved by autonomous switching of the feedback capacitor. The device takes advantage of the ILC duty cycle of 1 ms trains at 5 Hz rate by lowering the supply current after the data acquisition cycle for an average power consumption of <20 {micro}W/channel. During the 1 ms train, up to four events exceeding a programmable threshold can be stored, the amplitude as a voltage on a capacitor for subsequent digitization, the event time in digital format. The chip can be configured for other than ILC applications.

Charged lepton-flavor violating processes are extremely rare in the Standard Model, but they are predicted to occur in several beyond-the-Standard Model theories, including Supersymmetry or models with leptoquarks or compositeness. We present a search for such processes in a sample of 117 x 10{sup 6} {Upsilon}(3S) decays recorded with the BABAR detector. We place upper limits on the branching fractions BF({Upsilon}(3S) {yields} e{sup {+-}}{tau}{sup {-+}}) < 5.0 x 10{sup -6} and BF({Upsilon}(3S) {yields} {mu}{sup {+-}}{tau}{sup {-+}}) < 4.1 x 10{sup -6} at 90% confidence level. These results are used to place lower limits on the mass scale of beyond-the-Standard Model physics contributing to lepton-flavor violating decays of the {Upsilon}(3S).

A new stereo borescope has been investigated that would provide a time-resolved calibrated method of recording the motion and deformation of a three-dimensional (3-D) surface during explosively driven dynamic shock experiments at the Nevada Test Site. In these experiments, geometries would likely prove to be incompatible with conventional direct optical systems. Single line-of-sight borescopes lack adequate depth-of-field for quantitative imaging of the 3-D surface. To improve depth-of-field and provide time resolution, a stereo borescope has been fabricated for use with a nine-frame framing camera. At one end, stereo optics couple light from the dynamic surface into a pair of flexible 1-mm-diameter correlated fiber-optic bundles. At the other end, small-format lenses (~3 mm) interface with the framing camera, which is set up to simultaneously record the separate-perspective views. All nine frames could be recorded in a period as short as 1.8 μs, and spatial resolution is optimized to 11 line-pairs per mm. To achieve pseudo 3-D depth perception, photogrammetric analysis has been demonstrated with commercial software from ADAM technology (Australia). This paper presents the results from time-resolved stereo images of dynamic surfaces collected in a series of high-explosives experiments at the National Security Technologies, LLC, “Boom Box” in Santa Barbara, CA. …

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The POSIX interface does not lend itself well to enabling good performance for high-end applications. Extensions are needed in the POSIX I/O interface so that high-concurrency HPC applications running on top of parallel file systems perform well. This paper presents the rationale, design, and evaluation of a reference implementation of a subset of the POSIX I/O interfaces on a widely used parallel file system (PVFS) on clusters. Experimental results on a set of micro-benchmarks confirm that the extensions to the POSIX interface greatly improve scalability and performance.

A modular optical photon Doppler velocimetry (PDV) detector system has been developed by using readily available optical components with a 20-GHz Miteq optical detector into eight channels of single-wide modules integrated into a 3U rack unit (1U = 1.75 inches) with a common power supply. Optical fibers were precisely trimmed, welded, and timed within each unit. This system has been used to collect dynamic velocity data on various physics experiments. An optical power meter displays the laser input power to the module and optical power at the detector. An adjustable micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) optical attenuator is used to adjust the amount of unshifted light entering the detector. Front panel LEDs show the presence of power to the module. A fully loaded chassis with eight channels consumes 45 watts of power. Each chassis requires 1U spacing above and below for heat management. Modules can be easily replaced.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Weekly Jewish newspaper from Fort Worth, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Bastrop, Texas that includes local, state and national 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; Whether the comptrollers report required by tax code sections 313.008 and 313.032 must be limited to the items listed therein ad excluded information that is locked as confidential (RQ-0727-GA).

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Advertising linage report that details ad revenue from the El Paso Times, a Texas Daily Newspaper Association member, for November 2008.

Advertising linage report that details ad revenue from the Austin American-Statesman, a Texas Daily Newspaper Association member, for November 2008.

Advertising linage report that details ad revenue from the San Angelo Standard-Times, a Texas Daily Newspaper Association member, for November 2008.

Email from Erin Moore to Texas Stonewall Democrats Boards on December 11, 2008, discussing her candidacy for Vice President of Texas Stonewall Democrats.

Advertising linage report that details ad revenue from the Waco Tribune-Herald, a Texas Daily Newspaper Association member, for November 2008.

Advertising linage report that details ad revenue from the Monitor McAllen, a Texas Daily Newspaper Association member, for November 2008.

Advertising linage report that details ad revenue from the Houston Chronicle, a Texas Daily Newspaper Association member, for November 2008.