A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The number of charter schools is growing, spurred by demand for innovation and federal incentives, such as the Race to the Top Fund, which favors states supportive of charter schools. However, states often define charter schools differently than traditional public schools. Some charter schools operate as a school district, while others are part of a school district and some are for-profit entities. These differences could complicate eligibility determination for federal administrators. GAO was asked: (1) To what extent do charter schools apply for federal discretionary grant programs and what challenges do they face, if any, in doing so? (2) What role has the U.S. Department of Education played in helping charter schools establish their eligibility for federal discretionary grant programs? GAO identified grant programs governmentwide for which charter schools are eligible to apply, surveyed a stratified random sample of charter school officials, and interviewed federal agency officials. We also visited charter schools, school districts, charter school associations, and state educational agencies in 3 states."

Maintaining the security of U.S. borders is a fundamental responsibility of the federal government. This report discusses the contribution of intelligence agencies to the border security efforts of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies that work in cooperation with state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. Much of the intelligence community's border security-related efforts are classified, however.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Report from the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence describing the group's goals, activities, accomplishments, and other information, for review by the 82nd Texas Legislature.

Application materials submitted to the Texas Historical Commission requesting a historic marker for the Jeff Davis County Jail, in Fort Davis, Texas. The materials include the inscription text of the marker, original application, narrative, and photographs.

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

This report provides an overview of clean air legislative and regulatory issues. The contents include EPA'S greenhouse gas regulations, legislation on climate change, emissions from power plant information, and Air quality standards.

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The response of a glass batch to heating is determined by the batch makeup and in turn determines the rate of melting. Batches formulated for a high-alumina nuclear waste to be vitrified in an all-electric melter were heated at a constant temperature-increase rate to determine changes in melting behavior in response to the selection of batch chemicals and silica grain-size as well as the addition of heat-generating reactants. The type of batch materials and the size of silica grains determine how much, if any, primary foam occurs during melting. Small quartz grains, 5 {micro}m in size, caused extensive foaming because their major portion dissolved at temperatures <800 C, contributing to the formation of viscous glass forming melt that trapped evolving batch gases. Primary foam did not occur in batches with larger quartz grains, {+-}75 {micro}m in size, because their major portion dissolved at temperatures >800 C when batch gases no longer evolved. The exothermal reaction of nitrates with sucrose was ignited at a temperature as low as 160 C and caused a temporary jump in temperature of several hundred degrees. Secondary foam, the source of which is oxygen from redox reactions, occurred in all batches of a limited composition variation …

The report explains radio frequency (RF) coupling to unconventional dipole antennas. Normal dipoles have thin equal length arms that operate at maximum efficiency around resonance frequencies. In some applications like high-explosive (HE) safety analysis, structures similar to dipoles with ''fat'' unequal length arms must be evaluated for indirect-lightning effects. An example is shown where a metal drum-shaped container with HE forms one arm and the detonator cable acts as the other. Even if the HE is in a facility converted into a ''Faraday cage'', a lightning strike to the facility could still produce electric fields inside. The detonator cable concentrates the electric field and carries the energy into the detonator, potentially creating a hazard. This electromagnetic (EM) field coupling of lightning energy is the indirect effect of a lightning strike. In practice, ''Faraday cages'' are formed by the rebar of the concrete facilities. The individual rebar rods in the roof, walls and floor are normally electrically connected because of the construction technique of using metal wire to tie the pieces together. There are two additional requirements for a good cage. (1) The roof-wall joint and the wall-floor joint must be electrically attached. (2) All metallic penetrations into the facility must …

The Laser Inertial Fusion Energy (LIFE) concept is being designed to operate as either a pure fusion or hybrid fusion-fission system. A key component of a LIFE engine is the fusion chamber subsystem. The present work details the chamber design for the pure fusion option. The fusion chamber consists of the first wall and blanket. This integrated system must absorb the fusion energy, produce fusion fuel to replace that burned in previous targets, and enable both target and laser beam transport to the ignition point. The chamber system also must mitigate target emissions, including ions, x-rays and neutrons and reset itself to enable operation at 10-15 Hz. Finally, the chamber must offer a high level of availability, which implies both a reasonable lifetime and the ability to rapidly replace damaged components. An integrated LIFE design that meets all of these requirements is described herein.

Prior to 2001, the Department of Energy (DOE) sponsored limited tours of the Hanford Site for the public, but discontinued the program after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S. In 2003, DOE's Richland Operations Office (DOE-RL) requested the site's prime contractor to reinstate the public tour program starting in 2004 under strict controls and security requirements. The planning involved a collaborative effort among the security, safety and communications departments of DOE-RL and the site's contracting companies. This paper describes the evolution of, and enhancements to, Hanford's public tours, including the addition of a separate tour program for the B Reactor, the first full-scale nuclear reactor in the world. Topics included in the discussion include the history and growth of the tour program, associated costs, and visitor surveys and assessments.

The LCLS undulator field integrals must be very small so that the beam trajectory slope and offset stay within tolerance. In order to make accurate measurements of the small field integrals, a long coil will be used. This note describes the design of the coil measurement system.

The characteristics of photoelectron microbunches emitted from a photocathode in response to laser irradiation determine many of the incident laser pulse requirements. RF photocathode designs based on grazing incidence of the irradiation benefit from the removal of launch optics from the electron beamline and enhanced absorption at Brewster angles. However, this also introduces two well known complexities in the laser pulse 'launch' requirements: (i) a transverse spatial anamorphism to guarantee that the projected transverse spatial profile of the irradiation is circular (in the plane of the photocathode) and (ii) a 'time slew' or tilted amplitude front on the laser pulse that is incident on the photocathode to guarantee that the temporal (longitudinal) profiles are synchronous across the entire transverse irradiation profile in the photocathode plane. A single diffraction grating can be used to fulfill these combined requirements. This reported work focuses on grating behavior only. It does not address imaging requirements associated with relayed optical transport from the grating to the photocathode. Because the grating is a highly dispersive optical element by design, the dispersive aspects of all launch requirements are important.

The United States Department of Energy (US DOE) concept for facility in-situ decommissioning (ISD) is to physically stabilize and isolate in tact, structurally sound facilities that are no longer needed for their original purpose of, i.e., producing (reactor facilities), processing (isotope separation facilities) or storing radioactive materials. The Savannah River Site 105-P and 105-R Reactor Facility ISD requires about 250,000 cubic yards of grout to fill the below grade structure. The fills are designed to prevent subsidence, reduce water infiltration, and isolate contaminated materials. This work is being performed as a Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensations and Liability Act (CERCLA) action and is part of the overall soil and groundwater completion projects for P- and R-Areas. Cementitious materials were designed for the following applications: (1) Below grade massive voids/rooms: Portland cement-based structural flowable fills for - Bulk filling, Restricted placement and Underwater placement. (2) Special below grade applications for reduced load bearing capacity needs: Cellular portland cement lightweight fill (3) Reactor vessel fills that are compatible with reactive metal (aluminum metal) components in the reactor vessels: Calcium sulfoaluminate flowable fill, and Magnesium potassium phosphate flowable fill. (4) Caps to prevent water infiltration and intrusion into areas with the highest levels of …

Monte Carlo simulations of the spontaneous radiation at low and high energies up to the Near Experimental Hall entrance yield beam widths for use in the design of transport and diagnostic instruments in the Front End Enclosure.

The photocathode of the proposed LCLS RF Photoinjector will be irradiated by uv laser light which is generated as the third harmonic of incident fundamental ir laser light. We have investigated quantitatively the effect of input ir spectral bandwidth on the exiting longitudinal intensity profiles, energy conversion efficiencies and spectral bandwidths that characterize the third harmonic generation (THG) process with a pair of crystals. These profiles, efficiencies and bandwidths include the residual fundamental and residual second harmonic light exiting the second crystal. The intrinsic acceptance bandwidth for THG is determined by crystal material and thickness as well as the type of phase matching that is used. For our case of BBO material with type I phase matching these bandwidths are approximately 0.9 nm*cm and 0.1 nm*cm for second and third harmonic generation respectively. Consequently for fixed crystal thicknesses and a fixed input ir longitudinal profile, the specified input ir bandwidth will determine the profiles, efficiencies and bandwidths exiting the second crystal. The results reported here are predictions of the SNLO code that is available as 'freeware' from the Sandia National Laboratories. It has been modified for this work. It is critical to note that this modification has enabled us to …

Between 2007 and 2010 DuPont conducted a program under DOE award DE-FC36-07GO17056 to develop and improve Zymomonas mobilis as an ethanologen for commercial use in biorefineries to produce cellulosic ethanol. This program followed upon an earlier DOE funded program in which DuPont, in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) had developed a Zymomonas strain in conjunction with the development of an integrated cellulosic ethanol process. In the current project, we sought to maximize the utility of Zymomonas by adding the pathway to allow fermentation of the minor sugar arabinose, improve the utilization of xylose, improve tolerance to process hydrolysate and reduce the cost of producing the ethanologen. We undertook four major work streams to address these tasks, employing a range of approaches including genetic engineering, adaptation, metabolite and pathway analysis and fermentation process development. Through this project, we have developed a series of strains with improved characteristics versus the starting strain, and demonstrated robust scalability to at least the 200L scale. By a combination of improved ethanol fermentation yield and titer as well as reduced seed train costs, we have been able to reduce the capital investment and minimum ethanol selling price (MESP) by approximately 8.5% and 11% …

The primary objective of the INIE program is to strengthen nuclear science and engineering programs at the member institutions and to address the long term goal of the University Reactor Infrastructure and Education Assistance Program.

This report discusses in brief the current political state of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the crisis situation in eastern Congo that has displaced more than 250,000 civilians. It also describes U.S., U.N., and other international efforts to aid in resolving the crisis.

This report discusses the current political conditions of Rwanda, including a brief historical overview. The report also includes information about the poor human rights conditions in Rwanda and U.S. Rwanda relations.

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

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