Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Haitian Refugee Immigration Fairness Act (HRIFA) of 1998 authorized certain Haitian nationals and their dependents to apply to adjust their status to legal permanent residence. Section 902(k) of the act requires the Comptroller General to report every six months on the number of Haitian nationals who have applied and been approved to adjust their status to legal permanent residence. The reports are to contain a breakdown of the numbers who applied and the number who were approved as asylum applicants, parolees, children without parents, orphaned children, or abandoned children, and unmarried sons or daughters. As of March 31, 2002, the Immigration and Naturalization Service had received a total of 36,420 HRIFA applications and had approved 7,351 of these applications. The Executive Office for Immigration Review had 198 applications filed and had approved 98 of them."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In exchange for the possibility of dismissed charges or reduced sentences, defendants with substance abuse problems agree to be assigned to drug court programs. In drug courts, judges generally preside over the proceedings; monitor the progress of defendants; and prescribe sanctions and rewards in collaboration with prosecutors, defense attorneys, and treatment providers. Most decisions about drug court operations are left to local jurisdictions. Although programs funded by the Drug Court Program Office (DCPO) must collect and provide performance measurement and outcome data, the Department of Justice (DOJ) has not effectively managed this effort because of (1) its inability to readily identify the universe of DCPO-funded drug court programs, including those subject to DCPO's data collection reporting requirements; (2) its inability to accurately determine the number of drug court programs responding to DCPO's semiannual data collection survey; (3) inefficiencies in the administration of DCPO's semiannual data collection effort; (4) the elimination of post-program impact questions from the data collection survey effort; and (5) the lack of use of the Drug Court Clearinghouse. Various administrative and research factors have also hampered DOJ's ability to complete the two-phase National …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "More than 100,000 retired coal miners and their spouses and dependents in 1992 faced a potential decrease in their employment-related health insurance coverage or loss of such coverage altogether. Some former employers had stopped mining coal or gone out of business and were no longer contributing to the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) retiree benefit funds. To ensure that these individuals would continue to receive the health benefits specified in previous collective bargaining agreements reached with coal companies, often gained in exchange for lower pensions, Congress enacted the Coal Industry Retiree Health Benefit Act of 1992 (Coal Act). The Coal Act replaced the existing UMWA benefit funds with the Combined Benefit Fund (CBF) and the 1992 Benefit Plan. These funds' benefits requires less cost sharing by beneficiaries and provides more extensive coverage than benefit packages offered by the major manufacturing companies and companies with unionized workforces. However, the extent of coverage is generally comparable. The cost of health care for the funds' beneficiaries in 1999 was about 29 percent higher than for demographically similar Medicare beneficiaries with employer-sponsored insurance. The funds' officials have attempted to …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As required by law, the Department of Energy (DOE) has been investigating a site at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to determine its suitability for disposing of highly radioactive wastes in a mined geologic repository. If the site is approved, DOE must apply to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for authorization to construct a repository. If the site is not approved for a license application, or if NRC denies a license to construct a repository, the administration and Congress will have to consider other options for the long-term management of existing and future nuclear wastes. DOE is not prepared to submit an acceptable license application to the NRC within the statutory limits that would take effect if the site is approved. DOE is unlikely to achieve its goal of opening a repository at Yucca Mountain by 2010. Sufficient time would not be available for DOE to obtain a license from NRC and construct enough of the repository to open it in 2010. Another key factor is whether DOE will be able to obtain the increases in annual funding that would be required to open the repository by 2010. DOE currently …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Property Asset Management Reform Act of 2002, will enhance federal real and personal property management and bring the policies and business practices of federal agencies into the 21st century. Available data show that the federal government owns hundreds of thousands of properties worldwide, including military installations, office buildings, laboratories, courthouses, embassies, postal facilities, national parks, forests, and other public lands, estimated to be worth billions of dollars. Most of this government-owned real property is under the custody and control of eight agencies--the Department of Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior, and Veterans Affairs; General Services Administration; the Tennessee Valley Authority; and the U.S. Postal Service. Federal property managers have a large deferred maintenance backlog, obsolete and underutilized properties, and changing facility needs due to rapid advances in technology. It is important that real property-holding agencies link their real property strategic plans to their missions and related capital management and performance plans; ensure that senior real property officers have the knowledge, skills, and expertise needed to effectively perform their duties; are accountable for the reliability, usefulness, and timeliness of their data; and adopt an effective process to monitor …

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

In filled PDMS based composites, such as M97XX stress cushions, significant mechanical reinforcement of the polymer component is obtained from hydrogen bonding between the silica filler surface hydroxyls and the siloxane polymer backbone. It is expected that these interactions are influenced by the amount and structure of interfacial water. We have chosen to investigate in detail the effect of chemisorbed and physisorbed water on the interfacial structure and dynamics in silica-filled PDMS-based composites. Toward this end, we have combined classical molecular dynamics simulations and experimental studies employing nanoindentation, temperature programmed desorption (TPD), Dynamic Mechanical Analysis (DMA), and Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) analyses. Our TPD results suggest that moisture desorption and adsorption in M9787 can be approximated by the interaction of its silica constituents (Cab-0-Sil-M-7D and Hi-Sil-233) with moisture. Our experimental data also reveal that, in general, as heat-treated silica particles are exposed to moisture, chemisorbed states, then physisorbed states are gradually filled up in that order. Molecular modeling results suggest that the polymer-silica contact distance and the mobility of interfacial polymer chains significantly decreased as the hydration level at the interface was reduced. The reduced mobility of the PDMS chains in the interfacial domain reduced the bulk motional properties of …

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

Semi-weekly newspaper from Livingston, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

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

There are many options for the handling and storage of spent nuclear fuel from naval vessels. This paper summarizes the options that are available and explores the issues that are involved. In many cases choices have been made, not on the basis of which is the best engineering solution or the most cost-effective, but based on the political realities involved. For example, currently it seems that the most prevalent solution for spent fuel interim storage is in dual-purpose (transport-storage) casks. These casks are robust and, politically, they offer the visible evidence that the fuel is ''road-ready'' to be moved from the local area where the fuel is being stored in the interim. However, dual-purpose casks are the most expensive of the storage mediums. Drywell storage (storage in below grade or bermed pipes), on the other hand, the least expensive and most flexible storage option, suffers from an image of permanence (not politically acceptable) and from being improperly implemented in the past. Though these issues are easily resolved from a technical perspective, the option is often not seriously considered because of this past history. It wasn't too many years ago that spent fuel pools were the storage medium of choice. The …

A lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) target design concept has been developed to drive the subcritical multiplier (SCM) of the accelerator-driven test facility (ADTF). This report gives the target design description, the results from the parametric studies, and the design analyses including physics, heat-transfer, hydraulics, structural, radiological, and safety analyses. The design is based on a coaxial geometrical configuration to minimize the target footprint and to maximize the utilization of the spallation neutrons. The target is installed vertically along the SCM axis. LBE is the target material and the target coolant. Ferritic steel (HT-9 alloy) is the selected structural material based on the current database and the design analyses. Austenitic steel (Type 316 stainless steel) is the backup choice. A uniform proton beam is employed to perform the spallation process. The proton beam has 8.33-mA current and 8.14-cm radius resulting in a current density of 40 {micro}A/cm{sup 2}. The beam power is 5 MW and the proton energy is 600 MeV. The beam tube has 10-cm radius to accommodate the halo current. A hemi-spherical geometry is used for the target window, which is connected to the beam tube. A conical target window with a rounded tip is also considered since it has …

This paper describes a study undertaken to explain the risk profile differences in the results of PRAs of two similar WER-1000 nuclear power plants. The risk profile differences are particularly significant in the area of small steam/feedwater line breaks, small-small LOCAs, support system initiators and containment bypass initiators. A top level (limited depth) approach was used in which we studied design differences, major assumptions, data differences, and also compared the two PRA analyses on an element-by-element basis in order to discern the major causative factors for the risk profile differences. We conclude that the major risk profile differences are due to differences in assumptions and engineering judgment (possibly combined with some design and data differences) involved in treatment of uncertain physical phenomena (primarily sump plugging in LOCAs and turbine building steaming effects in secondary system breaks). Additional major differences are attributable to support system characteristics.

We have synthesized a series of Ti-Si-N coatings with 0 to 20 at. % Si by high-density plasma-assisted vapor-phase deposition. Composition, structure, and atomic short-range order were characterized by Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS), Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), {Theta}-2{Theta} X-ray Diffraction (XRD), and X-ray Absorption Near Edge Structure (XANES) spectroscopy. The mechanical properties of these coatings were characterized by instrumented nanoindentation, and compared to those of B1-TiN. Our experiments show that the present series of Ti-Si-N coatings are nanocomposites, consisting of a nm-scale mixture of crystalline titanium nitride (TiN) and amorphous silicon nitride (a-Si:N). The mechanical response of the present series of Ti-Si-N coatings was found to be essentially independent of the Si composition, and similar to that of B1-TiN.

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

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

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

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

Funeral program for Mrs. Virginia Ruth Brown Thomas, born October 1, 1921 and died April 13, 2002. The funeral was held April 18, 2002 at Second Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. Robert L. Jemerson. Funeral arrangements were made through Sutton-Sutton Mortuary, Inc., and she was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

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

We offer a case for active technical management of the radiative forcing of the temperatures of the Earth's fluid envelopes, rather than administrative management of atmospheric greenhouse gas inputs, in order to stabilize both the global- and time-averaged climate and its mesoscale features. We suggest that active management of radiative forcing entails negligible--indeed, likely strongly negative--economic costs and environmental impacts, and thus best complies with the pertinent mandate of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. We propose that such approaches be swiftly evaluated in sub-scale in the course of an intensive international program.

The interaction of strong shock waves, such as those generated by the explosion of supernovae with interstellar clouds, is a problem of fundamental importance in understanding the evolution and the dynamics of the interstellar medium (ISM) as it is disrupted by shock waves. Here we present the results of a series of Nova laser experiments investigating the evolution of a high density sphere embedded in a low density medium after the passage of a strong shock wave, thereby emulating the supernova shock-cloud interaction. The Nova laser was utilized to generate a strong ({approx}Mach 10) shock wave that traveled along a miniature beryllium shock tube, 750 {micro}m in diameter, filled with a low-density plastic emulating the ISM. Embedded in the plastic was a copper microsphere (100 {micro}m in diameter) emulating the interstellar cloud. The morphology and evolution as well as the shock wave trajectory were diagnosed via side-on X-ray radiography.

We present a surface compression method that stores surfaces as wavelet-compressed signed-distance volumes. Our approach enables the representation of surfaces with complex topology and arbitrary numbers of components within a single multiresolution data structure. This data structure elegantly handles topological modification at high compression rates. Our method does not require the costly and sometimes infeasible base mesh construction step required by subdivision surface approaches. We present several improvements over previous attempts at compressing signed-distance functions, including an 0(n) distance transform, a zero set initialization method for triangle meshes, and a specialized thresholding algorithm. We demonstrate the potential of sampled distance volumes for surface compression and progressive reconstruction for complex high genus surfaces.

I thought it was important to relate how this project began. Jens Mahler, Mechanical Engineering Deputy Associate Director, recalls that during a discussion between him and Wally Decker, Wally suggested that he document the significant events and the organization of the Mechanical Engineering Department since 1952, i.e., write a history of Mechanical Engineering. Jens agreed that Wally should begin this effort. Upon learning of this, Dave Pehrson, Deputy Associate Director for Engineering, suggested that the History be expanded to include Electronics Engineering and that it be called A History of Engineering. Dave asked me to join Wally on this effort and, unfortunately, Wally died shortly after I started. In the first part of this History, I have attempted to capture the important contributions that Engineering has made to the Programs, since Engineering's primary mission is to provide ''support to the Laboratory Programs.'' In the later parts you will find views discussing the development and application of Engineering's technology base. While Engineering's direct programmatic support had first priority, Engineering had other responsibilities as well. Some of these were to hire and train a competent technical and leadership staff, to anticipate and develop engineering technologies for future use by the Programs, to …