A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) revised the payment formula for most of the outpatient drugs, including inhalation therapy drugs, covered under Medicare part B. Under the revised formula, effective 2005, Medicare's payment is intended to be closer to acquisition costs. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency that administers Medicare, also pays suppliers of inhalation therapy drugs a $5 per patient per month dispensing fee. Suppliers have raised concerns that once drug payments are closer to acquisition costs, they will no longer be able to use overpayments on drugs to subsidize dispensing costs, which they state are higher than $5. As directed by MMA, GAO (1) examined suppliers' acquisition costs of inhalation therapy drugs and (2) identified costs to suppliers of dispensing inhalation therapy drugs to Medicare beneficiaries."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In August and September of 2003, the Attorney General of the United States visited a number of cities around the country on what has been termed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) as the "USA PATRIOT Act Tour." According to DOJ, the intent of the tour was to (1) educate the public and inform members of Congress about the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act and (2) receive input and feedback from state and local law enforcement with respect to information sharing among law enforcement agencies and threats to homeland security. We are providing information on the locations and costs of the U.S. Attorney General's travels known as the USA PATRIOT Act Tour, as well as the locations and costs of a series of trips in September 2003 referred to by DOJ as "Life and Liberty" travel. These latter trips involved a series of speeches regarding crime statistics and other topics, including the importance of the USA PATRIOT Act. We are also providing information on the official positions and office assignments of the DOJ staff that accompanied the U.S. Attorney General on each of these travel visits. Additionally, …

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 Public Funds Investment Act would govern a municpal utility's authority to invest certain nuclear decommissioning trust funds (RQ-0212-GA)

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 State Board of Barber Examiners may participate in the TexasOnline occupational licensing system established in Government Code section 2054.353 in light of the requirement that an applicant for an original or a renewal barber or manicurist license present a health certificate from a physician under sections 1601.264 and 1601.402(d) of the Occupations Code (RQ-0216-GA)

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A nominal 1500 STP-L PAssively Cooled, Electrically heated hydride (PACE) Bed has been developed for implementation into a new Savannah River Site tritium project. The 1.2 meter (four-foot) long process vessel contains an internal ''U-tube'' for tritium In-Bed Accountability (IBA) measurements. IBA will be performed on six, 12.6 kg production metal hydride storage beds. IBA tests were done on a prototype bed using electric heaters to simulate the radiolytic decay of tritium. Tests had gas flows from 10 to 100 SLPM through the U-tube or 100 SLPM through the bed's vacuum jacket. IBA inventory measurement errors at the 95 percent confidence level were calculated using the correlation of IBA gas temperature rise, or (hydride) bed temperature rise above ambient temperature, versus simulated tritium inventory. Prototype bed IBA inventory errors at 100 SLPM were the largest for gas flows through the vacuum jacket: 15.2 grams for the bed temperature rise and 11.5 grams for the gas temperature rise. For a 100 SLPM U-tube flow, the inventory error was 2.5 grams using bed temperature rise and 1.6 grams using gas temperature rise. For 50 to 100 SLPM U-tube flows, the IBA gas temperature rise inventory errors were nominally one to two grams …

A self-anchoring mast for deploying a high-speed submersible mixer in a tank includes operably connected first and second mast members (20, 22) and a foot member 46 operably connected to the second mast member for supporting the mast in a tank. The second mast member includes a track (36, 38) for slidably receiving a bearing of the mixer to change the orientation of the mixer in the tank.

The purpose of the multiscale thermohydrologic model (MSTHM) is to predict the possible range of thermal-hydrologic conditions, resulting from uncertainty and variability, in the repository emplacement drifts, including the invert, and in the adjoining host rock for the repository at Yucca Mountain. Thus, the goal is to predict the range of possible thermal-hydrologic conditions across the repository; this is quite different from predicting a single expected thermal-hydrologic response. The MSTHM calculates the following thermal-hydrologic parameters: temperature, relative humidity, liquid-phase saturation, evaporation rate, air-mass fraction, gas-phase pressure, capillary pressure, and liquid- and gas-phase fluxes (Table 1-1). These thermal-hydrologic parameters are required to support ''Total System Performance Assessment (TSPA) Model/Analysis for the License Application'' (BSC 2004 [DIRS 168504]). The thermal-hydrologic parameters are determined as a function of position along each of the emplacement drifts and as a function of waste package type. These parameters are determined at various reference locations within the emplacement drifts, including the waste package and drip-shield surfaces and in the invert. The parameters are also determined at various defined locations in the adjoining host rock. The MSTHM uses data obtained from the data tracking numbers (DTNs) listed in Table 4.1-1. The majority of those DTNs were generated from …

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

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

This letter report documents initial numerical analyses conducted by PNNL to provide support for a feasibility study on decommissioning of the canyon buildings at Hanford. The 221-U facility is the first of the major canyon buildings to be decommissioned. The specific objective of this modeling effort was to provide estimates of potential rates of migration of residual contaminants out of the 221-U facility during the first 40 years after decommissioning. If minimal contaminant migration is predicted to occur from the facility during this time period, then the structure may be deemed to provide a level of groundwater protection that is essentially equivalent to the liner and leachate collection systems that are required at conventional landfills. The STOMP code was used to simulate transport of selected radionuclides out of a canyon building, representative of the 221-U facility after decommissioning, for a period of 40 years. Simulation results indicate that none of the selected radionuclides that were modeled migrated beyond the concrete structure of the facility during the 40-year period of interest. Jacques (2001) identified other potential contaminants in the 221-U facility that were not modeled, however, including kerosene, phenol, and various metals. Modeling of these contaminants was beyond the scope of …

This investigation examines the interface atomic structure and bonding characteristics in an advanced ceramic, obtaining new and unique experimental information that will help to understand and improve the properties of ceramics. Unique direct atomic resolution images have been obtained that illustrate how a range of rare-earth atoms bond to the interface between the intergranular phase and the matrix grains in an advanced silicon nitride ceramic. It has been found that each rare-earth atom bonds to the interface at a different location, depending on atom size, electronic configuration and the presence of oxygen at the interface. This is the key factor to understanding the origin of the mechanical properties in these ceramics and will enable precise tailoring in the future to critically improve the materials performance in wide-ranging applications.

This report contains the coverage of vision services under the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

This report provides a brief description of the substantive criminal law and procedures provisions of the House-passed version of H.R. 10 and Senate passed S.2845.

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Many differences exist in Department of Energy (DOE) and Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) Quality Assurance (QA) requirements documents, work scope, organizational structures, and graded application and assessment approaches. These differences must be understood and reconciled to ensure consistent and effective implementation and cost effective assessments of QA Programs for DOE organizations participating in the design, purchase, fabrication, handling, shipping, storing, cleaning, assembly, inspection, testing, operation, maintenance, repair, use and/or modification of the radioactive material packaging. This paper discusses those differences and provides practical recommendations that can serve as stepping stones to more effective and efficient QA programs and value added assessments at DOE sites participating in radioactive material packaging activities.

Fifteen 1.25 inch BSTRA balls were scanned with the high energy computed tomography system at LLNL. This system has a resolution limit of approximately 210 microns. A threshold of 238 microns (two voxels) was used, and no anomalies at or greater than this were observed.

Results are presented from the 3D electromagnetic turbulence code BOUT, the 2D transport code UEDGE, and theoretical analysis of boundary turbulence and transport in a real divertor-plasma geometry and its relationship to the density limit. Key results include: (1) a transition of the boundary turbulence from resistive X-point to resistive-ballooning as a critical plasma density is exceeded; (2) formation of an X-point MARFE in 2D UEDGE transport simulations for increasing outboard radial transport as found by BOUT for increasing density; (3) formation of a density pedestal due to neutral fueling; (4)identification of convective transport by localized plasma 'blobs' in the SOL at high density and decorrelation of turbulence between the midplane and the divertor leg due to strong X-point magnetic shear; (5) a new divertor-leg instability driven by a radial tilt of the divertor plate.

A series of analytical tests was conducted on a suite of granitic rock samples from the Daya Bay region of southeast China. The objective of these analyses was to determine key rock properties that would affect the suitability of this location for the siting of a neutrino oscillation experiment. This report contains the results of chemical analyses, rock property measurements, and a calculation of the mean atomic weight.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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

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Dr. Dragt of the University of Maryland is one of the Institutional Principal Investigators for the SciDAC Accelerator Modeling Project Advanced Computing for 21st Century Accelerator Science and Technology whose principal investigators are Dr. Kwok Ko (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) and Dr. Robert Ryne (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). This report covers the activities of Dr. Dragt while at Berkeley during spring 2002 and at Maryland during fall 2003.