Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In January 2003, we issued two reports that provide insight regarding the share-in-savings (SIS) provisions of the E-Government Act of 2002: one on critical elements of training for new acquisition initiatives and one on commercial practices that foster successful SIS contracting. As follow-up to these reports, we are writing to underscore the need for the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) to ensure (1) that members of the federal acquisition workforce understand and appropriately apply this new authority and (2) that appropriate data are collected and available to meet mandated reporting requirements regarding the effective use of SIS contracting. SIS contracting represents a significant change in the way the federal government acquires information technology. In our report on improving training for new acquisition initiatives, we emphasized the importance that industry and government experts place on training to successfully implement such change. Training on this information technology acquisition initiative will be essential to its effective implementation. In our report on SIS contracting, we highlighted the federal government's limited experience with SIS contracting as well as conditions that fostered successful implementation in commercial SIS contracts."

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to honoring Jack W. Coe of Alvin on his retirement from Rohm and Haas Texas Incorporated.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to recognize March 19, 2003, as Paris-Lamar County Day at the State Capitol.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to commending Sr. Fernando Silva Nieto for his exceptional achievements as governor of San Luis Potosi.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to commemorating the 40th anniversary of the agreement between the State of Texas and the AEC.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to commending Sr. Mario Zolezzi Garcia for his outstanding achievements as mayor of Matamoros.

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 Exchange of the Farmers Insurance Group of Companies® are "authorized insurers" that are required to file withdrawal plans under article 21.49-2C of the Texas Insurance Code; whether their proposed refusal to renew policies of homeowners in Texas would violate state law; and whether the Commissioner of Insurance may impose a moratorium on the approval of a plan for withdrawal (RQ-0620-JC)

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This report examines the federal laws and regulations relevant to entering into Government employment from the private sector. It is intended to provide those conducting congressional oversight with an outline of some of the issues, rules, regulations, ad oversight tools that may be available regarding this subject.

In ultraperipheral relativistic deuteron on heavy-ion collisions, a photon emitted from the heavy nucleus may dissociate the deuterium ion. We find deuterium breakup cross sections of 1.24 barns for deuterium-gold collisions at a center of mass energy of 200 GeV per nucleon, as studied at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, and 2.35 barns for deuterium-lead collisions at a center of mass energy of 6.2 TeV, as proposed for the Large Hadron Collider. In the latter case, the cross section is as large as that of hadronic interactions. The estimated error is 5%. We discuss the use of this process as a luminosity monitor and a 'tag' for moderate impact parameter collisions.

Extensive measurements at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) with BoroBond{trademark} blocks of varying thickness, natural boron carbide (B{sub 4}C) content, and water content, and with a simplified mockup of the Rackable Can Storage Box (RCSB) of fixed natural B{sub 4}C and water content, have led to a method of quantifying the water content of RCSBs by fast neutron time-of-flight transmission measurements (NMIS)* and quantifying the B{sub 4}C content with gamma ray spectrometry assuming the water content is known. The time-of-flight transmission measurements results can also be used to assess the uniformity of the BoroBond{trademark} in the RCSB. The data from both measurements will be stored for future comparisons to initial measurements. These methods can also be implemented at the RCSB production site, or subsequently at the Y-12 National Security Complex during the operating lifetime of the RCSBs at the Highly Enriched Uranium Materials Facility.

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Radiation measurements and gamma spectroscopy analyses were made on numerous uranium ingots produced during the treatment of Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II) spent nuclear fuel. The objective of these measurements was to provide background data for shielding concerns and potential process optimization. The uranium ingots resulted from the processing of both driver and blanket fuel by the electrometallurgical treatment process. The observed variation in the measurements was traced to the levels of certain fission product residues that remained in the uranium ingots produced during spent fuel treatment. A minor process change to hold the material at an elevated temperature for a specified length of time was found to significantly reduce concentrations of high-activity fission products and, thus the radiation field.

OAK B264 Application and Network-Cognizant Proxies - Final Report. Current networks show increasing heterogeneity both in terms of their bandwidths/delays and the applications they are required to support. This is a trend that is likely to intensify in the future, as real-time services, such as video, become more widely available and networking access over wireless links becomes more widespread. For this reason they propose that application-specific proxies, intermediate network nodes that broker the interactions between server and client, will become an increasingly important network element. These proxies will allow adaptation to changes in network characteristics without requiring a direct intervention of either server or client. Moreover, it will be possible to locate these proxies strategically at those points where a mismatch occurs between subdomains (for example, a proxy could be placed so as to act as a bridge between a reliable network domain and an unreliable one). This design philosophy favors scalability in the sense that the basic network infrastructure can remain unchanged while new functionality can be added to proxies, as required by the applications. While proxies can perform numerous generic functions, such as caching or security, they concentrate here on media-specific, and in particular video-specific, tasks. The goal …

This is a multiyear experimental research program that focuses on improving relevant material properties of high-T{sub c} superconductors and developing fabrication methods that can be transferred to industry for production of commercial conductors. The development of teaming relationships through agreements with industrial partners is a key element of the Argonne National Laboratory(ANL) program. This report summarizes key results from a yearlong effort to apply Raman microscopy methods to the characterization of MBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub x} (MBCO, where M=Y or a rare earth element) thin films on textured substrates. Important crystallographic features and orientation relationships in coated conductors made by the inclined-substrate deposition (ISD) process are also presented.

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A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Terrorists and countries of concern may be able to gain access to poorly secured weapons of mass destruction at sites throughout Russia. To address this threat to U.S. national security, the Departments of Defense (DOD) and Energy (DOE) have obligated more than $1.8 billion since 1992. GAO was asked to report on U.S. programs to help improve security at sites where Russia stores (1) weapons-usable nuclear material, (2) nuclear warheads, (3) dangerous biological pathogens, and (4) chemical weapons. For each area, GAO assessed U.S. plans to address security threats at sites in Russia, U.S. progress in implementing those plans, and the primary challenges facing DOD and DOE."

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

Low-defect mask blanks remain a key technical challenge to Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography (EUVL). The mask blank is ion-beam sputter-coated with an 81-layer Mo/Si multilayer stack for high reflectance at {lambda} = 13.4nm. The current mask coating process can achieve a median added defect level of 0.05 defects/cm{sup 2} (12 added defects 90nm or larger on a 200mm Si-wafer test substrate), but this must be reduced by about a factor of 10 to meet mask cost requirements for EUVL. To further reduce the particle defect level, we have studied pathways for particle transport, using test particles and particles native to the coating process, and combined the results into a computational model of particle transport in an ion-beam sputter system. At process pressure, gas drag is negligible for particles above 100nm, so particles travel ballistically until they hit a surface. Bounce from chamber walls allows particles to reach all surfaces in the chamber if they have initial velocities above {approx}100m/s. The ion beam has sufficient momentum to entrain slower particles and accelerate them toward the sputter target, where some can bounce to the substrate. The model shows preliminary agreement with experimental defect distributions on witness wafers at various positions within the coating …

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In this document we identify several archaeological sites that may be of use in validating the ILAW performance assessment. Glasses that might be recovered at these sites would be recovered with the surrounding soil. This soil would be analyzed and the distribution of elements released from the glass to the soil would be mapped. Coincidence of the actual migration and the modeled migration would constitute a validation exercise of the current performance assessment model for the Hanford Site.

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Soil stabilization for the INEEL Stormwater Pollution Prevention Plan (SWPPP) has mostly been by revegetation, but has experienced only limited success. The purpose of this report is to discuss issues associated with revegetation failures and to explore possible remedies.

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