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

The 9/11 Commission issued several recommendations designed to strengthen aviation security by: enhancing passenger pre-screening; improving measures to detect explosives on passengers; addressing human factors issues at screening checkpoints; expediting deployment of in-line baggage screening systems; intensifying efforts to identify, track, and screen potentially dangerous cargo; and deploying hardened cargo containers on passenger aircraft. In addition to these specific recommendations, an overarching recommendation for transportation security policy asserts that priorities should be set based on risk, and the most practical and cost effective deterrents should be implemented assigning appropriate roles and missions to federal, state, and local authorities, as well as private stakeholders.

We study predictions for B-physics in a class of models, recently introduced, with a non-supersymmetric warped extra dimension. In these models few ({approx} 3) TeV Kaluza-Klein masses are consistent with electroweak data due to bulk custodial symmetry. Furthermore, there is an analog of GIM mechanism which is violated by the heavy top quark (just as in SM) leading to striking signals at B-factories: (1) New Physics (NP) contributions to {Delta}F = 2 transitions are comparable to SM. This implies that, within this NP framework, the success of the SM unitarity triangle fit is a ''coincidence''. Thus, clean extractions of unitarity angles via e.g. B {yields} {pi}{pi}, {rho}{pi}, {rho}{rho}, DK are likely to be affected, in addition to O(1) deviation from SM prediction in Bs mixing. (2) O(1) deviation from SM predictions for B {yields} X{sub s}{ell}{sup +}{ell}{sup -} in rate as well as in forward-backward and direct CP asymmetry. (3) Large mixing-induced CP asymmetry in radiative B decays, wherein the SM unambiguously predicts very small asymmetries. Also, with KK masses 3 TeV or less, and with anarchic Yukawa masses, contributions to electric dipole moments of the neutron are roughly 20 times larger than the current experimental bound so that this …

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Several state and local government agencies and financial institutions accept consular identification (CID) cards, which are issued by foreign governments to their citizens living abroad. Mexico issued more than 2.2 million CID cards in 2002-2003 and Guatemala issued approximately 89,000 from mid-2002 to 2003. Critics of CID cards say their acceptance facilitates the unlawful stay within the United States of undocumented aliens and may provide opportunities for terrorists to remain undetected in this country. GAO examined (1) the purpose of a CID card and how Mexican and Guatemalan CID cards are being used in the United States, (2) steps Mexico and Guatemala have taken to verify the identities of CID card applicants and incorporate security features in CID cards now used in the United States, and (3) the positions and policies of federal agencies regarding CID cards."

Semiweekly newspaper from Brady, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This report provides information about The Condition of the Banking Industry. Smaller banks are less able to garner cheaper funds for lending from wholesale markets and are less able to mitigate their credit and interest rate risks.

This report provides information about the Recommendation of the 9/11 Commission and Related Issues for Detection of Explosives on Airline Passengers. The key issue for congress is balancing various costs of mandating passenger explosives trace detection.

The project aimed at the development of a Vertical Floatation melter, for application to the aluminum industry. This is intended to improve both the energy efficiency and environmental performance of aluminum melting furnaces. Phase I of this project dealt primarily with the initial research effort. Phase II, dealt with pilot-scale testing.

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Variation in the detection, signaling, and repair of DNA damage contributes to human cancer risk. To assess capacity to modulate endogenous DNA damage among radiologic technologists who had been diagnosed with breast cancer and another malignancy (breast-other; n=42), early-onset breast cancer (early-onset, age {<=} 35; n=38), thyroid cancer (n=68), long-lived cancer-free individuals (hyper-normals; n=20) and cancer-free controls (n=49) we quantified DNA damage (single strand breaks and abasic sites) in untreated lymphoblastoid cell lines using the alkaline comet assay. Komet{trademark} software provided comet tail length, % DNA in tail (tail DNA), comet distributed moment (CDM), and Olive tail moment (OTM) summarized as the geometric mean of 100 cells. Category cut-points (median and 75th percentile) were determined from the distribution among controls. Tail length (for {>=} 75% vs. below the median, age adjusted) was most consistently associated with the highest odds ratios in the breast-other, early-onset, and thyroid cancer groups (with risk increased 10-, 5- or 19-fold, respectively, with wide confidence intervals) and decreased risk among the hyper-normal group. For the other three Comet measures, risk of breast-other was elevated approximately three-fold. Risk of early-onset breast cancer was mixed and risk of thyroid cancer ranged from null to a two-fold increase. The …

A synthetic Topopah Spring Tuff water representative of one type of pore water at Yucca Mountain, Nevada (USA) was evaporated at 95 C in a series of experiments to determine the geochemical controls for brines that may form on, and possibly impact upon the long-term integrity of waste containers and drip shields at the designated high-level, nuclear-waste repository. Solution chemistry, condensed vapor chemistry, and precipitate mineralogy were used to identify important chemical divides and to validate geochemical calculations of evaporating water chemistry using a high temperature Pitzer thermodynamic database. The water evolved towards a complex ''sulfate type'' brine that contained about 45 mol% Na, 40 mol% Cl, 9 mol% NO{sub 3}, 5 mol% K, and less than 1 mol% each of SO{sub 4}, Ca, Mg, {Sigma}CO{sub 2}(aq), F, and Si. All measured ions in the condensed vapor phase were below detection limits. The mineral precipitates identified were halite, anhydrite, bassanite, niter and nitratine. Trends in the solution composition and identification of CaSO{sub 4} solids suggest that fluorite, carbonate, sulfate, and magnesium-silicate precipitation control the aqueous solution composition of sulfate type waters by removing fluoride, calcium, and magnesium during the early stages of evaporation. In most cases, the high temperature Pitzer …

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

This report provides information about the Farm Credit System which is a national wide cooperative lending to agricultural and aquatic producers, rural homeowners and certain agricultural related businesses.

The report covers the 2003-04 contract period, with a retrospective of the 11 years for the contract, from 1993 to 2004. This includes personnel, technical publications and reports, plus research laboratories employed. Specific information is given in eight research areas, reporting on all technology developed and/or deployed by the University of Florida.

Recently the collider physics community has seen significant advances in the formalisms and implementations of event generators. This review is a primer of the methods commonly used for the simulation of high energy physics events at particle colliders. We provide brief descriptions, references, and links to the specific computer codes which implement the methods. The aim is to provide an overview of the available tools, allowing the reader to ascertain which tool is best for a particular application, but also making clear the limitations of each tool.

Budget Period 2 of the East Binger Unit (''EBU'') DOE Project has been. Recent activities included additional data gathering and project monitoring, plus initiation of work on an SPE paper on the modeling efforts of the project. Early production performance suggests horizontal wells do not provide sufficient additional production over vertical wells to justify their incremental cost. It will take more time to evaluate the impact of the horizontal wells on sweep and ultimate recovery, but it is unlikely that an improvement in recovery will be sufficient to make the overall economic value of horizontal wells greater than the economic value of vertical wells. Monitoring of overall performance of the pilot area continues. Overall response to the various projects continues to be very favorable. Injection into the pilot area has nearly doubled, while gas production and nitrogen content of produced gas have both decreased. Nitrogen recycle within the pilot area has dropped from 60% to 20%. Efforts to further disseminate knowledge gained through this project, by means of technical paper presentations to industry groups, are underway. Project monitoring and technology transfer will be focus areas of Budget Period 3.

The Savannah River Site is a Department of Energy, government-owned, company-operated industrial complex built in the 1950s to produce materials used in nuclear weapons. Five reactors were built to support the production of nuclear weapons material. Irradiated materials were moved from the reactors to one of the two chemical separation plants. In these facilities, known as ''canyons,'' the irradiated fuel and target assemblies were chemically processed to separate useful products from waste. Unfortunately, the by-product waste of nuclear material production was a highly radioactive liquid that had to be stored and maintained. In 1993 a strategy was developed to implement predictive maintenance technologies in the Liquid Waste Disposition Project Division responsible for processing the liquid waste. Responsibilities include the processing and treatment of 51 underground tanks designed to hold 750,000 to1,300,000 gallons of liquid waste and operation of a facility that vitrifies highly radioactive liquid waste into glass logs. Electrical and mechanical equipment monitored at these facilities is very similar to that found in non-nuclear industrial plants. Annual inspections are performed on electrical components, roof systems, and mechanical equipment. Troubleshooting and post installation and post-maintenance infrared inspections are performed as needed. In conclusion, regardless of the industry, the use of …

An increasing amount of electricity is used by equipment that is neither fully ''on'' nor fully ''off.'' We call these equipment states low power modes, or ''lopomos.'' ''Standby'' and ''sleep'' are the most familiar lopomos, but some new products already have many modes. Lopomos are becoming common in household appliances, safety equipment, and miscellaneous products. Ross and Meier (2000) reports that several international studies have found standby power to be as much as 10 percent of residential energy consumption. Lopomo energy consumption is likely to continue growing rapidly as products with lopomos that use significant amounts of energy penetrate the market. Other sectors such as commercial buildings and industry also have lopomo energy use, perhaps totaling more in aggregate than that of households, but no comprehensive measurements have been made. In this paper, we propose a research agenda for study of lopomo energy consumption. This agenda has been developed with input from over 200 interested parties. Overall, there is consensus that lopomo energy consumption is an important area for research. Many see this as a critical time for addressing lopomo issues. As equipment designs move from the binary ''on/off'' paradigm to one that encompasses multiple power modes, there is a …

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This document describes measurements that characterize an Advanced Research Systems DE204S cryocooler system. The data is relevant to the thermal performance and vibration characteristics of the cold-head. The thermal measurements include heat load mapping of the 1st and 2nd stage, and temperature fluctuation measurement of the 2nd stage heat station. A comparison of fluctuation measurements by four different sensors is also included to support the 2nd stage fluctuation results. Finally, optical measurement of the cyclic 2nd stage heat station deflection is described.

This paper discusses advances made in the field of Micron-gap ThermoPhotoVoltaics (MTPV). Initial modeling has shown that MTPV may enable significant performance improvements relative to conventional far field TPV. These performance improvements include up to a 10x increase in power density, 30% to 35% fractional increase in conversion efficiency, or alternatively, reduced radiator temperature requirements to as low as 550 C. Recent experimental efforts aimed at supporting these predictions have successfully demonstrated that early current and voltage enhancements could be done repeatedly and at higher temperatures. More importantly, these efforts indicated that no unknown energy transfer process occurs reducing the potential utility of MTPV. Progress has been made by running tests with at least one of the following characteristics relative to the MTPV results reported in 2001: Tests at over twice the temperature (900 C); Tests at 50% smaller gaps (0.12 {micro}m); Tests with emitter areas from 4 to 100 times larger (16 mm{sup 2} to 4 cm{sup 2}); and Tests with over 20x reduction in parasitic spacer heat flow. Remaining fundamental challenges to realizing these improvements relative to the recent breakthroughs in conventional far field TPV include reengineering the photovoltaic (PV) diode, filter, and emitter system for MTPV and …

BRAC 2005 Intelligence Joint Cross-Service Group Meeting Minutes of August 24, 2004. The document is redacted and includes the BRAC 2005 Scenario Development And Analysis Executive Summary Brief (PowerPoint slides).