Annual financial report of the Texas Lottery Commission for fiscal year 2008, providing statements of assets, expenditures, revenues, and other relevant data as well as the report of an independent auditor.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government's financial condition and fiscal outlook have deteriorated dramatically since 2000. The federal budget has gone from surplus to deficit and the nation's major reported long-term fiscal exposures--a wide range of programs, responsibilities, and activities that either explicitly or implicitly commit the government to future spending--have more than doubled. Current budget processes and measurements do not fully recognize these fiscal exposures until payments are made. Increased information and better incentives to address the long-term consequences of today's policy decisions can help put our nation on a more sound fiscal footing. Given its interest in accurate and timely information on the U.S. fiscal condition, the Senate Committee on the Budget asked us to update our study of other nations' experiences with accrual budgeting and look at other ways countries have increased attention to their long-term fiscal challenges."

The overall goals of the Tank Farm Vadose Zone Project, led by CH2M HILL Hanford Group, Inc., are 1) to define risks from past and future single-shell tank farm activities, 2) to identify and evaluate the efficacy of interim measures, and 3) to aid, via collection of geochemical information and data, the future decisions that must be made by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) regarding the near-term operations, future waste retrieval, and final closure activities for the single-shell tank Waste Management Areas (WMAs). For a more complete discussion of the goals of the Tank Farm Vadose Zone Project, see the overall work plan, Phase 1 RCRA Facility Investigation/Corrective Measures Study Work Plan for the Single-Shell Tank Waste Management Areas (DOE 1999). Specific details on the rationale for activities performed at WMA U are found in Crumpler (2003). To meet these goals, CH2M HILL Hanford Group, Inc., asked scientists from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to perform detailed analyses of vadose zone sediment collected within the U Single-Shell Tank Farm. Specifically, this report contains all the geochemical and selected physical characterization data collected on vadose zone sediment recovered from ten direct push characterization holes emplaced to investigate vadose zone contamination …

The twin aspects of energy and control (or direction) are the underlying concepts. Matter and energy are closely linked, and their understanding and control will have overwhelming importance for our civilization, our planet, our science, and our technology. This importance ranges even beyond the large portfolio of BES, both because these truly significant Grand Challenges confront many other realms of science and because even partial solutions to these challenges will enrich scientists’ collective imagination and ability to solve problems with new ideas and new methods.

I develop a formulation for Hamiltonian dynamics in an accelerator with magnets whose edges follow a spiral. I demonstrate using this Hamiltonian that a spiral FFAG can be made perfectly 'scaling'. I describe how one computes the RF phase during a rapid acceleration cycle to keep the beam at the appropriate RF phase. I examine the effect of tilting an RF cavity with respect a radial line from the center of the machine, potentially with a different angle than the spiral of the magnets. I discuss partially the effects of the finite energy jumps on the dynamics. This is a status report of work that is still incomplete.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To better understand how changes in domestic and international petroleum products markets have affected prices, GAO was asked to evaluate trends in (1) the international trade of petroleum products, (2) refining capacity and intensity of refining capacity use internationally and in the United States, (3) international and domestic crude oil and petroleum product inventories, and (4) domestic petroleum supply infrastructure. To address these objectives, we reviewed numerous studies, evaluated data, and spoke to many industry officials and experts and agency officials."

A variety of surveillance operations require the ability to track vehicles over a long period of time using sequences of images taken from a camera mounted on an airborne or similar platform. In order to be able to see and track a vehicle for any length of time, either a persistent surveillance imager is needed that can image wide fields of view over a long time-span or a highly maneuverable smaller field-of-view imager is needed that can follow the vehicle of interest. The algorithm described here was designed for the persistence surveillance case. In turns out that most vehicle tracking algorithms described in the literature[1,2,3,4] are designed for higher frame rates (> 5 FPS) and relatively short ground sampling distances (GSD) and resolutions ({approx} few cm to a couple tens of cm). But for our datasets, we are restricted to lower resolutions and GSD's ({ge}0.5 m) and limited frame-rates ({le}2.0 Hz). As a consequence, we designed our own simple approach in IDL which is a deterministic, motion-guided object tracker. The object tracking relies both on object features and path dynamics. The algorithm certainly has room for future improvements, but we have found it to be a useful tool in evaluating …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A growing portion of federal spending is related to buying services such as administrative, management, and information technology support. Services accounted for about 60 percent of total fiscal year 2006 procurement dollars. The Services Acquisition Reform Act (SARA) of 2003 established a Services Acquisition Advisory Panel to make recommendations for improving acquisition practices. In January 2007, the panel proposed 89 recommendations to improve federal acquisition practices. GAO was asked to determine how the panel recommendations compare to GAO's past work and identify how the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) expects the recommendations to be addressed. To do this, GAO analyzed the panel report and compared its findings and recommendations to GAO's past work and recommendations, obtained OFPP's views on how it expected the recommendations to be implemented, and reviewed proposed legislation in Congress to determine if legislative provisions had the potential to address some recommendations."

This report is a guide to one of the regular appropriations bills that Congress considers each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on Defense. For both defense authorization and appropriations, this report summarizes the status of the bills, their scope, major issues, funding levels, and related congressional activity.

Hydrogen has been identified as a leading candidate to replace petroleum as part of the transition to a sustainable energy system, and major efforts are being conducted worldwide to develop the technologies and supporting activities required for this transition. In the United States, the federal research efforts are led by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The U.S. DOE Hydrogen Program is an integrated inter-office program being conducted by the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Nuclear Energy (DOE-NE), Office of Fossil Energy and Office of Science. The primary objective of the DOE-NE Nuclear Hydrogen Initiative (NHI) is to develop the nuclear hydrogen production technologies necessary to produce hydrogen at a cost competitive with other alternative transportation fuels. The focus of the NHI is on thermochemical cycles and high temperature electrolysis. The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) has been tasked with the primary responsibility to perform research and development in order to characterize, evaluate and develop the Hybrid Sulfur (HyS) thermochemical process. The HyS Process uses a sulfur dioxide depolarized electrolyzer (SDE) to split water and produce hydrogen. During FY05 and FY06, SRNL designed and conducted proof-of-concept testing for a SDE using a low temperature, PEM fuel …

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This report gives a summary of the achievements under DOE contract No. DOE/ER/14150 during the period September 1, 1990 to December 31, 2007. This project was concerned with the molecular modeling of solid-fluid equilibrium. The focus was on understanding how solid-fluid and solid-solid phase behavior are related to molecular structure, and the research program made a seminal contribution in this area. The project led to 34 journal articles, including a comprehensive review article published in Advances in Chemical Physics. The DOE funding supported the work of 5 Ph.D. students, 2 M.S. students and 5 postdoctoral researchers.

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A variety of system configurations are used in North America to meet the heating and domestic hot water needs of single-family homes. This includes, for example: warm air furnaces with electric water heaters; boilers with integrated hot water coils; and boilers with 'indirect' hot water storage tanks. Integrated hydronic systems which provide both heat and hot water are more popular only in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic regions. For those making decisions about configurations of these integrated hydronic systems, including control options, little information is available concerning the annual energy cost implications of these decisions. This report presents results of a project to use a direct load emulation approach to measure the performance of hydronic systems, develop performance curves, and to provide decision tools to consumers. This is a laboratory measurement system involving direct energy input and output measurements under different load patterns. These results are then used to develop performance correlations for specific systems that can be used to predict energy use in specific applications. A wide range of system types have been tested under this project including conventional boilers with 'tankless' internal coils for domestic hot water production, boilers with indirect external storage tanks, tank type water heaters which …

This report examines, over a more than three decade period, a wide range of proposals to reform holds. In general, the objective of these recommendations is not to abolish holds but to infuse more accountability, uniformity, and transparency in their use and to make it clear that holds are not a veto on the majority leader's prerogative of calling up measures or matters.

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For more than a decade, the study of microturbulence, driven by ion temperature gradient (ITG) drift instabilities in tokamak devices, has been an active area of research in magnetic fusion science for both experimentalists and theorists alike. One of the important impetus for this avenue of research was the discovery of the radial streamers associated the ITG modes in the early nineties using a Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code. Since then, ITG simulations based on the codes with increasing realism have become possible with the dramatic increase in computing power. The notable examples were the demonstration of the importance of nonlinearly generated zonal flows in regulating ion thermal transport and the transition from Bohm to GyroBoham scaling with increased device size. In this paper, we will describe another interesting nonlinear physical process associated with the parallel acceleration of the ions, that is found to play an important role for the steady state turbulent transport. Its discovery is again through the use of the modern massively parallel supercomputers.

This memo discusses the analysis of the high-energy x-ray distribution from a laser-induced plasma to determine the superthermal electron distribution. The methods of deconvolution outlined in I are similar to formulae derived in the literature not including and including effects due to electron stopping. In II the methods are applied to an x-ray spectrum from an Au disc irradiated by ARGUS.

High temperature solid oxide electrolysis cells (SOECs) offer high electrical efficiency and a potential path to large scale hydrogen production. Solid oxide technology is capable of both power generation and hydrogen production. That makes it possible for the development of a reversible solid-oxide system that can respond to market conditions to produce electricity or hydrogen on demand. New high-temperature electrolyzer cell materials are needed to enable cost-effective hydrogen production system designs based on reversible steam electrolysis. Two test methods were established for the eventual development of the reversible, durable electrode materials: the button cell test and the oxygen electrode test. The button cell test is capable of evaluating the performance and degradation of full solid oxide cells with dual atmosphere of air and hydrogen-steam. The oxygen electrode test is capable of isolating the performance and degradation of the oxygen electrode. It has higher throughput and sensitivity than the button cell test.

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Annual financial report of the Texas Lottery Commission for fiscal year 2007, providing statements of assets, expenditures, revenues, and other relevant data as well as the report of an independent auditor.