A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The CARE Act authorized grants to the states and certain territories for AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) to purchase and provide HIV/AIDS drugs to eligible individuals. An ADAP's coverage--who and what is covered--is determined by each ADAP's eligibility and other program criteria, and ADAPs may establish waiting lists for eligible individuals. ADAPs may purchase their drugs through the 340B federal drug pricing program, which provides discounts on certain drugs to covered entities. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) oversees ADAPs and is responsible for monitoring the prices they pay. GAO was asked to examine (1) coverage differences among ADAPs, (2) how the prices ADAPs reported paying for HIV/AIDS drugs compare to 340B prices, (3) how HRSA monitors the drug prices ADAPs pay, and (4) how the 340B prices compare to other selected federal drug pricing programs."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Title insurance is a required element of almost all real estate purchases and is not an insignificant cost for consumers. However, consumers generally do not have the knowledge needed to "shop around" for title insurance and usually rely on professionals involved in real estate--such as lenders, real estate agents, and attorneys--for advice in selecting a title insurer. Recent state and federal investigations into title insurance sales have identified practices that may have benefited these professionals and title insurance providers at the expense of consumers. At the request of the House Financial Services Committee, GAO currently has work under way studying the title insurance industry, including pricing, competition, the size of the market, the roles of the various participants in the market, and how the industry is regulated. This testimony discusses the preliminary results of GAO's work to date and identifies issues for further study. In so doing, this testimony focuses on: (1) the reasonableness of cost structures and agent practices common to the title insurance market that are not typical of other insurance markets; (2) the implications of activities identified in recent state and federal investigations that may …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "We are pleased to appear before the Congress today in support of the fiscal year 2007 budget request for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). This request will help us continue our support of the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and will help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. Budget constraints in the federal government grew tighter in fiscal years 2005 and 2006. In developing our fiscal year 2007 budget, we considered those constraints consistent with GAO's and Congress's desire to "lead by example." In fiscal year 2007, we are requesting budget authority of $509.4 million, a reasonable 5 percent increase over our fiscal year 2006 revised funding level. In the event Congress acts to hold federal pay increases to 2.2 percent, our requested increase will drop to below 5 percent. This request will allow us to continue making improvements in productivity, maintain our progress in technology and other transformation areas, and support a full-time equivalent (FTE) staffing level of 3,267. This represents an increase of 50 FTEs over our planned fiscal year 2006 staffing …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. officials often call the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Doha Development Agenda or "Round" of global trade talks, launched in Doha, Qatar, in November 2001, a "once in a generation opportunity" to expand trade. President Bush has identified their success as his administration's top trade priority. Due to various U.S. notification and consultation requirements, concluding the negotiations in 2006 is essential for a Doha agreement to qualify for congressional consideration under U.S. Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which expires July 1, 2007. A ministerial meeting among the WTO's 149 members was held on December 13-18, 2005, in Hong Kong, China, to make decisions needed to advance the talks. Given the importance of the WTO Doha Round to the United States, GAO was asked to provide an update on the status of the negotiations. In this report, the latest in a series on the negotiations, we (1) provide the status of the Doha negotiations on the eve of the Hong Kong ministerial, (2) review the outcome of the Hong Kong ministerial, and (3) discuss the prospects for concluding the Doha Round before TPA expires in July 2007."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The EA-6B has conducted airborne electronic attack for all services since 1996. In 2002, the Department of Defense (DOD) completed an analysis of alternatives for the EA-6B that concluded the inventory would be insufficient to meet the DOD's needs beyond 2009. Since then, the services have embarked on separate acquisition efforts to develop airborne electronic attack assets. In 2003, the Navy started development of the EA-18G aircraft to replace the EA-6B. This report was done under the Comptroller General's authority and assesses if (1) DOD's 2002 conclusion that the EA-6B inventory would be insufficient beyond 2009 remains valid for assessing the Navy's future needs, and (2) the acquisition approach used to develop the EA-18G is knowledge-based and might mitigate future risks."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past several years, a serious effort has begun to comprehensively reevaluate how the United States maintains its nuclear deterrent and what the nation's approach should be for transforming its aging nuclear weapons complex. The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), a separately organized agency within the Department of Energy, is responsible for overseeing this weapons complex, which comprises three nuclear weapons design laboratories, four production plants, and the Nevada Test Site. At the direction of the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board's (SEAB) Nuclear Weapons Complex Infrastructure Task Force issued a report in October 2005 that provided a systematic review of the requirements for the weapons complex for the next 25 years and offered its vision for an agile and responsive weapons complex. GAO was asked to discuss (1) the current actions NNSA is taking to address the SEAB task force's recommendations and (2) the critical steps that will be needed to achieve and sustain a meaningful, cost-effective transformation of the weapons complex."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Despite progress in HIV/AIDS drug treatments and the reduction of AIDS mortality in the United States, challenges remain concerning the availability of these drugs for individuals with HIV/AIDS and the prevention of new cases. The CARE Act authorizes grants to the states and certain territories specifically for AIDS Drug Assistance Programs (ADAP) to purchase and provide HIV/AIDS drugs to eligible individuals. In its report issued today, Ryan White CARE Act: Improved Oversight Needed to Ensure AIDS Drug Assistance Programs Obtain Best Prices for Drugs (GAO-06-646), GAO examines the program design of ADAPs in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, their funding sources, and drug purchasing. GAO also reports on state approaches to reducing perinatal HIV transmissions and identifying and notifying partners of HIV-infected individuals."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1992, Congress established the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee (TPCC) to provide a unifying interagency framework to coordinate U.S. export promotion activities and to develop a governmentwide strategic plan. TPCC member agencies' activities include providing training, market information, advocacy, trade finance and other services to U.S. companies, especially small- and medium-sized businesses. These U.S. government agencies together have $1.5 billion in budget authority for export promotion programs and activities for fiscal year 2006. Each year, the TPCC submits to Congress a mandated national export strategy, reporting member agencies' activities and trade promotion budget authority and establishing broad priorities. The TPCC secretariat, which has no budget of its own, is housed in the Commerce Department, which chairs the committee. In this testimony, which updates findings from a 2002 report, GAO (1) reports on trends in TPCC member agencies' budget authority; (2) assesses TPCC's coordination of trade promotion and its national export strategies; and (3) discusses small- and medium-sized businesses' participation in trade promotion activities."

The COBRA-IE computer code is a thermal-hydraulic subchannel analysis program capable of simulating phenomena present in both PWRs and BWRs. As part of ongoing COBRA-IE assessment efforts, the code has been evaluated against experimental data from the NUPEC BWR Full-Size Fine-Mesh Bundle Tests (BFBT). The BFBT experiments utilized an 8 x 8 rod bundle to simulate BWR operating conditions and power profiles, providing an excellent database for investigation of the capabilities of the code. Benchmarks performed included steady-state and transient void distribution, single-phase and two-phase pressure drop, and steady-state and transient critical power measurements. COBRA-IE effectively captured the trends seen in the experimental data with acceptable prediction error. Future sensitivity studies are planned to investigate the effects of enabling and/or modifying optional code models dealing with void drift, turbulent mixing, rewetting, and CHF.

The principal research effort for the first half of Year 3 of the project has been resource assessment. Emphasis has been on estimating the total volume of hydrocarbons generated and the potential amount of this resource that is classified as deep (>15,000 ft) gas in the North Louisiana Salt Basin, the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin, the Manila Subbasin and the Conecuh Subbasin. The amount of this resource that has been expelled, migrated and entrapped is also the focus of the first half of Year 3 of this study.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

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

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

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Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Overview This 2005 EMSL Annual Report describes the research and accomplishments of staff and users of the William R. Wiley Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory (EMSL), located in Richland, Washington. Essential to the success of resolving environmental and other critical scientific issues important to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is the implementation of EMSL Grand Challenges, which are research projects that address complex, large-scale scientific and engineering problems using multi-institutional teams with high-performance scientific resources. Mission EMSL strives for simultaneous excellence in 1) high-impact science and marquee capabilities, 2) outstanding management and operations, and 3) exceptional user outreach and services, and uses these tenets to deliver its mission and implement its strategy. The central focus of EMSL’s strategy is delivery on the mission of the scientific user facility. In addition to its mission, EMSL has a vision and strategy that show where the user facility intends to be in the next 10 years and the progress that will be made during the next 5 years, respectively. The management of EMSL, together with DOE, its Pacific Northwest Site Office, and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) management, has developed the following mission statement for EMSL. EMSL, a national scientific user facility at …

The branching fraction is measured for the decay channels B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}{sub c}K{sub S}{sup 0} and B{sup +} {yields} {eta}{sub c}K{sup +} where {eta}{sub c} {yields} K{bar K}{pi}, using the BABAR detector. The {eta}{sub c} {yields} K{sub S}{sup 0}K{sup +}{pi}{sup -} and {eta}{sub c} {yields} K{sup +}K{sup -}{pi}{sup 0} decay channels are used, including non-resonant decays and possibly those through intermediate resonances.

The overall objective of this program is to develop low temperature curing technologies for UF and PF resins. This will be accomplished by: • Identifying the rate limiting UF and PF curing reactions for current market resins; • Developing new catalysts to accelerate curing reactions at reduced press temperatures and times. In summary, these new curing technologies will improve the strength properties of the composite wood products and minimize the detrimental effects of wood extractives on the final product while significantly reducing energy costs for wood composites. This study is related to the accelerated curing of resins for wood composites such as medium density fiberboard (MDF), particle board (PB) and oriented strandboard (OSB). The latter is frequently manufactured with a phenol-formaldehyde resin whereas ureaformaldehyde (UF) resins are usually used in for the former two grades of composite wood products. One of the reasons that hinder wider use of these resins in the manufacturing of wood composites is the slow curing speed as well as inferior bondability of UF resin. The fast curing of UP and PF resins has been identified as an attractive process development that would allow wood to be bonded at higher moisture contents and at lower press …

We report on the experiments aimed at obtaining core temperature and density maps in direct drive implosions at the OMEGA Laser Facility using multi-monochromatic X-ray imagers. These instruments use an array of pinholes and a flat multilayer mirror to provide unique multi-spectral images distributed over a wide spectral range. Using Argon as a dopant in the DD-filled plastic shells produces emission images in the Ar He-b and Ly-b spectral regions. These images allow the retrieval of temperature and density maps of the plasma. We deployed three identical multi-monochromatic X-ray imagers in a quasi-orthogonal line-of-sight configuration to allow tomographic reconstruction of the structure of the imploding core.

CO{sub 2}-fertilization affects plant growth, which modifies surface physical properties, altering the surface albedo, and fluxes of sensible and latent heat. We investigate how such CO{sub 2}-fertilization effects on vegetation and surface properties would affect the climate system. Using a global three-dimensional climate-carbon model that simulates vegetation dynamics, we compare two multi-century simulations: a ''Control'' simulation with no emissions, and a ''Physiol-noGHG'' simulation where physiological changes occur as a result of prescribed CO{sub 2} emissions, but where CO{sub 2}-induced greenhouse warming is not included. In our simulations, CO{sub 2}-fertilization produces warming; we obtain an annual- and global-mean warming of about 0.65 K (and land-only warming of 1.4 K) after 430 years. This century-scale warming is mostly due to a decreased surface albedo associated with the expansion of the Northern Hemisphere boreal forests. On decadal time scales, the CO{sub 2} uptake by afforestation should produce a cooling effect that exceeds this albedo-based warming; but if the forests remain in place, the CO{sub 2}-enhanced-greenhouse effect would diminish as the ocean equilibrates with the atmosphere, whereas the albedo effect would persist. Thus, on century time scales, there is the prospect for net warming from CO{sub 2}-fertilization of the land biosphere. Further study is …