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

The term "unfunded mandates" generally refers to requirements that a unit of government imposes without providing funds to pay for costs of compliance. The Unfunded Mandates Reform Act (UMRA) establishes mechanisms to limit federal imposition of unfunded mandates on other levels of government and on the private sector. This report provides a summary of UMRA and any related issues.

Aerial refueling aircraft are key to military air operations. The U.S. tanker fleet is numerous and effective, but old. Modernizing or replacing the current fleet of tankers presents the Department of Defense (DOD) with difficult choices in terms of desired capabilities, force structure, and budget. The Air Force’s proposal to lease 100 Boeing 767 aircraft to replace it’s KC-135E fleet is controversial.

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

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

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma 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.

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

The possibility of efficient ponderomotive current drive in a magnetized plasma was reported recently in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 205004 (2003)]. Precise limitations on the efficiency are now given through a comprehensive analytical and numerical study of single-particle dynamics under the action of a cyclotron-resonant rf drive in various field configurations. Expressions for the particle energy gain and acceleration along the dc magnetic field are obtained. The fundamental correlation between the two effects is described. A second fundamental quantity, namely the ratio of the potential barrier to the energy gain, can be changed by altering the field configuration. The asymmetric ponderomotive current drive effect can be optimized by minimizing the transverse heating.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) Chemical & Biological National Security Program (CBNP) provides science, technology, and integrated systems for chemical and biological security. Our approach is to develop and field systems that dramatically improve the nation's capabilities to prevent, prepare for, detect, and respond to terrorist use of chemical or biological weapons.

The effort in this project has been in 3 distinct directions. (1) First, we focused on development of minature microfabricated micro-coil NMR detectors with maximum Signal-to-Noise (SNR) ratio. (2) Secondly, we focused on design of minature micro-coil NMR detectors that have minimal effect on the NMR spectrum distortions. (3) Lastly we focused on the development of a permanent magnet capable of generating fields on the order of 1 Tesla with better than 10 ppm uniformity.

We observed Titan in 1996-2004 with high-resolution 2 {micro}m speckle and adaptive optics imaging at the W.M. Keck Observatory. By observing in a 2 {micro}m broadband filter we obtain images that have contributions from both Titan's surface and atmosphere. We have modeled Titan's atmosphere using a plane-parallel radiative transfer code that has been corrected to agree with 3-D Monte Carlo predictions. We find that Titan's surface albedo ranges from {le} 0:02 in the darkest equatorial region of the trailing hemisphere to {approx_equal} 0:1 in the brightest areas of the leading hemisphere. Over the past quarter of a Saturnian year haze optical depth in Titan's Southern hemisphere has decreased substantially from a value of 0.48 in 1996 down to 0.18 in 2004, while the northern haze has been increasing over the past few years. As a result of these changes, in 2004 the North/South haze asymmetry at K' band has disappeared.

This report contains background information and issues of broadband internet access.

Semiweekly newspaper from Sealy, Texas 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.

We describe a general, physics-based approach to numericalreconstruction of the geometrical structure and mechanical properties ofnatural sedimentary rock in 3D. Our procedure consists of three mainsteps: sedimentation, compaction, and diagenesis, followed by theverification of rock mechanical properties. The dynamic geologicprocesses of grain sedimentation and compaction are simulated by solvinga dimensionless form of Newton's equations of motion for an ensemble ofgrains. The diagenetic rock transformation is modeled using a cementationalgorithm, which accounts for the effect of rock grain size on therelative rate of cement overgrowth. Our emphasis is on unconsolidatedsand and sandstone. The main input parameters are the grain sizedistribution, the final rock porosity, the type and amount of cement andclay minerals, and grain mechanical properties: the inter-grain frictioncoefficient, the cement strength, and the grain stiffness moduli. We usea simulated 2D Fontainebleau sandstone to obtain the grain mechanicalproperties. This Fontainebleau sandstone is also used to study theinitiation, growth, and coalescence of micro-cracks under increasingvertical stress. The box fractal dimension of the micro-crackdistribution, and its variation with the applied stress areestimated.

On the basis of the observation that conserved positions in transcription factor binding sites are often clustered together, we propose a simple extension to the model-based motif discovery methods. We assign position-specific prior distributions to the frequency parameters of the model, penalizing deviations from a specified conservation profile. Examples with both simulated and real data show that this extension helps discover motifs as the data become noisier or when there is a competing false motif.

This is a discussion of the physical measurements, sizes, distances and magnetic fields of the Hyperon Spectrometer Magnet and its components. Some we get from construction drawings (like the target dimensions) and others from measurements in differing coordinate systems. Included also are the properties of the hyperon productions targets used in E781.

This study assessed chemical treatment options for decomposing the tetraphenylborate in High Level Waste (HLW) Tank 48H. Tank 48H, located at the Savannah River Site in Aiken, SC, contains approximately one million liters of HLW. The tetraphenylborate slurry represents legacy material from commissioning of an In Tank Precipitation process to separate radioactive cesium and actinides from the non radioactive chemicals. During early operations, the process encountered an unplanned chemical reaction that catalytically decomposed the excess tetraphenylborate producing benzene. Subsequent research indicated that personnel could not control the operations within the existing equipment to both meet the desired treatment rate for the waste and maintain the benzene concentration within allowable concentrations. Since then, the Department of Energy selected an alternate treatment process for handling high-level waste at the site. However, the site must destroy the tetraphenylborate before returning the tank to HLW service. The research focuses on identifying treatments to decompose tetraphenylborate to the maximum extent feasible, with a preference for decomposition methods that produce carbon dioxide rather than benzene. A number of experiments examined whether the use of oxidants, catalysts or acids proved effective in decomposing the tetraphenylborate. Additional experiments developed an understanding of the solid, liquid and gas decomposition …

Interview with Dr. Charles A. LeMaistre, beginning with the story about how he met his wife, Joyce Trapp LeMaistre. This story intermingles with his early career that lead him to his role as Chancellor at the University of Texas in Austin. Dr. LeMaistre offers insight into the effect desegregation had on the University of Texas campus and M. D. Anderson’s faculty diversity. He recounts how he was offered the presidential position at M. D. Anderson, the transition in administrative procedures, and growth of the institution. Dr. LeMaistre shares his wife’s personal fight with cancer and uses it as an example of how effective the institution’s policies and procedures. Dr. LeMaistre’s modesty in his administrative accomplishments shine a light on the high regard he had for his team and institutional family. The interview concludes with Dr. LeMaistre crediting members of the University Cancer Foundation Board of Visitors and donors.

None

Management of surface water quality is often complicated by interactions between surface water and groundwater. Traditional Land-Surface Models (LSM) used for numerical weather prediction, climate projection, and as inputs to water management decision support systems, do not treat the LSM lower boundary in a fully process-based fashion. LSMs have evolved from a leaky bucket to more sophisticated land surface water and energy budget models that typically have a so-called basement term to depict the bottom model layer exchange with deeper aquifers. Nevertheless, the LSM lower boundary is often assumed zero flux or the soil moisture content is set to a constant value; an approach that while mass conservative, ignores processes that can alter surface fluxes, runoff, and water quantity and quality. Conversely, groundwater models (GWM) for saturated and unsaturated water flow, while addressing important features such as subsurface heterogeneity and three-dimensional flow, often have overly simplified upper boundary conditions that ignore soil heating, runoff, snow and root-zone uptake. In the present study, a state-of-the-art LSM (CLM) and a variably-saturated GWM (ParFlow) have been coupled as a single column model. A set of simulations based on synthetic data and data from the Project for Intercomparison of Landsurface Parameterization Schemes (PILPS), version …

This paper presents a method for solving Poisson's equation with Dirichlet boundary conditions on an irregular bounded three-dimensional region. The method uses a nodal-point discretization and adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) on Cartesian grids, and the AMR multigrid solver of Almgren. The discrete Laplacian operator at internal boundaries comes from either linear or quadratic (Shortley-Weller) extrapolation, and the two methods are compared. It is shown that either way, solution error is second order in the mesh spacing. Error in the gradient of the solution is first order with linear extrapolation, but second order with Shortley-Weller. Examples are given with comparison with the exact solution. The method is also applied to a heavy-ion fusion accelerator problem, showing the advantage of adaptivity.

Letter regarding the separation of the armed services and veterans affairs dinner from the national convention.