Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In February 2006, we briefed Congress on the results of our review of various contracting issues related to the Gulf Coast hurricanes. We conducted this work under the Comptroller General's statutory authority in order to assess how three agencies--the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), and the General Services Administration (GSA)--planned for and conducted oversight of several key contracts in support of Katrina and Rita response and recovery efforts."

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma 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.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the Architect of the Capitol's progress in achieving selected project milestones and in managing the project's schedule since Congress's February 15, 2006, hearing on the project. As part of this discussion, we will address a number of key challenges and risks that continue to face the project, as well as actions AOC has taken or plans to take to address these risks. In addition, we will discuss the status of the project's costs and funding."

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

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

The QD0 quadrupole, the final focus magnet closest to the Interaction Point (IP) for the ILC 20 mr crossing angle layout, must provide strong focusing yet be adjustable to accommodate collision energy changes for energy scans and low energy calibration running. It must also be compact to allow disrupted beam and Beamstrahlung coming from the IP to pass outside into an independent instrumented beam line that leads to a high-power beam absorber. In designing QD0 we take advantage of recent BNL experience making direct wind superconducting magnets. Here we review important considerations for the present design, report on progress producing a prototype, describe our compact quadrupole concept in greater detail, and relate this work to other ILC design challenges.

The main linac of the International Linear Collider (ILC) requires more sophisticated alignment techniques than those provided by survey alone. Various Beam-Based Alignment (BBA) algorithms have been proposed to achieve the desired low emittance preservation. Dispersion Free Steering, Ballistic Alignment and the Kubo method are compared. Alignment algorithms are also tested in the presence of an Earth-like stray field.

Data from a recently installed insertable magnetic probe array in the Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment (SSPX) [E. B. Hooper et al., Nucl. Fusion 39, 863 (1999)] is compared against NIMROD [C. R. Sovinec et al., J. Comp. Phys. 195, 355 (2004)], a full 3D resistive magnetohydrodynamic code that is used to simulate SSPX plasmas. The experiment probe consists of a linear array of chip inductors arranged in clusters that are spaced every 2 cm, and spans the entire machine radius at the flux conserver midplane. Both the experiment and the numerical simulations show the appearance, shortly after breakdown, of a column with a hollow current profile that precedes magnetic reconnection, a process essential to the formation of closed magnetic flux surfaces. However, there are differences between the experiment and the simulation in how the column evolves after it is formed. These differences are studied to help identify the mechanisms that eventually lead to closed-flux surfaces (azimuthally averaged) and flux amplification, which occur in both the experiment and the simulation.

This report contains the overview, history, and analysis of the Congressional charter of the American National Red Cross charters. The review and analysis raises questions about the provisions of the current charter of the American National Red Cross (ANRC) that Congress may wish to examine.

The x-ray FEL at MIT is one example of a design for a new generation linac-based light source. Such a new machine requires very high quality electron beams. Besides the usual requirements on beam parameters such as emittance, energy spread, peak current, there are new challenges emerging in the design studies, e.g., the arrival timing of electron beam must reach precision below tens of femtoseconds level to ensure the laser seed overlaps the desired sections of electron bunch in the multiple-stage HGHG process. In this paper we report the progress on design optimization towards high quality and low sensitivity beams.

HARNESS was proposed as a system that combined the best of emerging technologies found in current distributed computing research and commercial products into a very flexible, dynamically adaptable framework that could be used by applications to allow them to evolve and better handle their execution environment. The HARNESS system was designed using the considerable experience from previous projects such as PVM, MPI, IceT and Cumulvs. As such, the system was designed to avoid any of the common problems found with using these current systems, such as no single point of failure, ability to survive machine, node and software failures. Additional features included improved inter-component connectivity, with full support for dynamic down loading of addition components at run-time thus reducing the stress on application developers to build in all the libraries they need in advance.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Through the Civil Works Program, the Corps of Engineers (Corps) constructs, operates, and maintains thousands of civil works projects across the United States. The Corps uses a two-phase study process to help inform congressional decision makers about civil works projects and determine if they warrant federal investment. As part of the process for deciding to proceed with a project, the Corps analyzes and documents that the costs of constructing a project are outweighed by the benefits. To conduct activities within its civil works portfolio, the Corps received over $5 billion annually for fiscal years 2005 and 2006. During the last 4 years, GAO has issued five reports relating to the Corps' Civil Works Program. Four of these reports focused on the planning studies for specific Corps' projects or actions, which included a review of the cost and benefit analyses used to support the project decisions. The fifth report focused on the Corps management of its civil works appropriation accounts. For this statement, GAO was asked to summarize the key themes from these five studies. GAO made recommendations in the five reports cited in this testimony. The Corps generally …

Experiments were performed to determine the corrosion rate of lead when exposed to off-gas or degradation products of organic materials used in the model 9975 package.[1] The experiments were completed within the framework of a parametric test matrix with variables of organic configuration, temperature, humidity and the effect of durations of exposure on the corrosion of lead in the 9975 package. The room temperature vulcanizing (RTV) sealant was the most corrosive organic species in the testing, followed by the polyvinyl acetate (PVAc) glue. The Celotex{copyright} material uniquely induced measurable corrosion only in situations with condensed water, and to a much lesser extent than the PVAc glue and RTV. The coupons exhibited faster corrosion at higher temperatures than at room temperatures. There was a particularly pronounced effect of condensed water as the coupons exposed in the cells with condensed water exhibited much higher corrosion rates. In the 9975 package, the PVAc glue was determined to be the most aggressive due to it's proximity in the design. The condition considered most representative of the package conditions is that of the coupon exposed to the Celotex{copyright}/glue organic exposed in the ambient humidity conditions. The corrosion rate of 2 mpy measured in the laboratory …

This report gives a brief overview of U.S. law as it relates to the crime of money laundering by identifying bills in the 109th Congress that have amended definitions or sentencing for money laundering and predicated offenses.

Photograph of a public artwork at Fort Worth's Intermodal Transportation Center. It is a square of red bricks with the words "The Dance Floor of Politics" written in a white square in the middle. A person's leg can be seen standing on the lower right corner of the red square.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has spent nearly $90 billion since 1985 to develop a Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). In the next 6 years, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), the developer, plans to invest about $58 billion more. MDA's overall goal is to produce a system that is capable of defeating enemy missiles launched from any range during any phase of their flight. MDA's approach is to field new capabilities in 2-year blocks. The first--Block 2004--was to provide some protection by December 2005 against attacks out of North Korea and the Middle East. Congress requires GAO to assess MDA's progress annually. This year's report assesses (1) MDA's progress during fiscal year 2005 and (2) whether capabilities fielded under Block 2004 met goals. To the extent goals were not met, GAO identifies reasons for shortfalls and discusses corrective actions that should be taken."

Environmental estrogens are environmental contaminants that can mimic the biological activities of the female hormone estrogen in the endocrine system, i.e. they act as endocrine disrupters. Several substances are reported to have estrogen-like activity or estrogenic activity. These include steroid hormones, synthetic estrogens (xenoestrogens), environmental pollutants and phytoestrogens (plant estrogens). Using the chromogenic substrate ortho-nitrophenyl-{beta}-D-galactopyranoside (ONPG) we show that an estrogen-sensitive yeast strain RMY/ER-ERE, with human estrogen receptor (hER{alpha}) gene and the lacZ gene which encodes the enzyme {beta}-galactosidase, is able to detect estrogenic activity in water samples over a wide range of spiked concentrations of the hormonal estrogen 17{beta}-estradiol (E2). Ortho-nitrophenol (ONP), the yellow product of this assay can be detected using spectrophotometry but requires cell lysis to release the enzyme and allow product formation. We improved this aspect in a fluorogenic assay by using fluorescein di-{beta}-D-galactopyranoside (FDG) as a substrate. The product was visualized using fluorescence microscopy without the need to kill, fix or lyse the cells. We show that in live yeast cells, the uptake of E2 and the subsequent production of {beta}-galactosidase enzyme occur quite rapidly, with maximum enzyme-catalyzed fluorescent product formation evident after about 30 minutes of exposure to E2. The fluorogenic assay was applied …

As advanced gasification technology is increasingly adopted as an energy source, disposal of the resulting slag will become a problem. We have shown that gasifier slag can be incorporated into foamed glass, which is currently being manufactured as an abrasive and as an insulating material. The slag we add to foamed glass does not simply act as filler, but improves the mechanical properties of the product. Incorporation of gasifier slag can make foamed glass stronger and more abrasion resistant.

The Hanford Site End State Vision document (DOE/RL-2003-59) states: ''There should be an aggressive plan to develop technology for remediation of the contamination that could get to the groundwater (particularly the technetium [{sup 99}Tc])''. In addition, there is strong support from the public and regulatory agencies for the above statement, with emphasis on investigation of treatment alternatives. In July 2004, PNNL completed a preliminary evaluation of remediation technologies with respect to their effectiveness and implementability for immobilization of {sup 99}Tc beneath the BC Cribs in the 200 West Area (Truex, 2004). As a result of this evaluation, PNNL recommended treatability testing of in situ soil desiccation, because it has the least uncertainty of those technologies evaluated in July 2004 (Treatability Test Outline, September 30, 2004). In 2005, DOE-RL and Fluor Hanford convened an independent technical panel to review alternative remediation technologies, including desiccation, at a three-day workshop in Richland, Washington. The panel was composed of experts in vadose-zone transport, infiltration control, hydrology, geochemistry, environmental engineering, and geology. Their backgrounds include employment in academia, government laboratories, industry, and consulting. Their review, presented in this document, is based upon written reports from Hanford, oral presentations from Hanford staff, and each panel members' …

None

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

An important accomplishment was to understand the seismic velocity anisotropy resulting from the combined roles of depositional stratification and stress in unconsolidated sands. The report presents an experimental study of velocity anisotropy in unconsolidated sands at measured compressive stresses up to 40 bars, which correspond to the first hundred meters of the subsurface. Two types of velocity anisotropy are considered, that due to intrinsic textural anisotropy, and that due to stress anisotropy. We found that sand samples display a bi-linear dependence of velocity anisotropy with stress anisotropy. There exists a transition stress beyond which the stress-induced anisotropy outweighs the intrinsic anisotropy for three different sands.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Billions of dollars have been spent governmentwide to modernize financial management systems that have often exceeded budgeted cost, resulted in delays in delivery dates and did not provide the anticipated system functionality when implemented. GAO was asked to identify (1) the key causes for financial management system implementation failures, and (2) the significant governmentwide initiatives currently under way that are intended to address the key causes of financial management system implementation failures. GAO was also asked to provide its views on actions that can be taken to help improve the management and control of agency financial management system modernization efforts."