Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Land-, air-, and sea-based components form the "fires triad" that is used to support Marine Corps amphibious assault operations. The sea-based part of the fires triad is referred to as Naval Surface Fire Support (NSFS). The retirement of the last Iowa class battleship left a void in the NSFS part of the fires triad. To field a replacement NSFS capability, the Navy developed a two-phased plan in 1994. In the near-term to midterm, it would modify the capability of 5-inch guns on existing destroyers and cruisers, and develop extended-range guided munitions for the modified 5-inch gun. In the far term, it would field a sufficient number of new destroyers fitted with an even-longerrange advanced gun system and ultimately a very-long-range electromagnetic gun or "Rail Gun." However, in 1996, congressional authorizers became concerned that the Navy would not be able to produce a replacement NSFS capability comparable to the battleships until well into the twenty-first century. In that year's Defense Authorization Act, the Congress directed the Secretary of the Navy to restore at least two Iowa class battleships to the naval vessel registry until a capability was developed equal …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the past, we have reported concerns about possible inconsistencies in the disability decisions made by the 57 regional offices of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In 2002, we reported that VA did not systematically assess the consistency of decision making for any specific impairments included in veterans' disability claims. We recommended that VA conduct such assessments to help reduce any unacceptable variations that VA might find among regional offices. VA agreed that decision-making consistency is an important goal and concurred in principle with our recommendation. However, VA did not discuss how it would measure consistency. In January 2003, in part because of concerns about consistency, we designated VA's disability program, along with other federal disability programs, as high-risk. In fiscal year 2005, VA estimates it will pay about $25 billion in disability compensation benefits to about 2.7 million disabled veterans. In this context, we determined (1) the actions that VA has taken to assess the consistency of regional office decisions on disability compensation claims and (2) the extent to which VA program data can be used to measure the consistency of decision making among …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) received $12.9 billion in fiscal year 2003 for the Housing Choice Voucher Program, which helps about 2 million low-income families pay rent for privately owned housing. This amount included $1.1 billion in administrative fee payments to the public housing agencies that administer the program for HUD. In the Consolidated Appropriations Resolution of 2003, Congress included provisions to address a concern that housing agencies may have received more in fees than they needed to run the program. Housing agencies were directed to report to HUD their available reserves as of January 31, 2003. HUD was directed to reduce the fees agencies would receive if these levels were too high and recapture some excess fees. The conference report accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2004 directed GAO to review compliance with these provisions. This report discusses (1) the extent to which housing agencies complied with the requirement to report to HUD their available administrative fee reserves as of January 31, 2003; (2) how these reported reserves compared with reserves reported in earlier fiscal years and possible reasons for any declines; …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Beginning on November 19, 2004, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is required by law to begin allowing commercial airports to apply to use private contractors to screen passengers and checked baggage. A federal workforce has performed this work since November 2002, in response to a congressional mandate that the federal government take over screening services after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. A 2-year pilot program at five airports testing the effectiveness of private sector screening in a post-September 11 environment concluded on November 18, 2004. This report contains GAO's preliminary observations related to TSA's progress in developing a private-sector screening program that allows airports to apply to opt out of using federal screeners. GAO assessed: (1) the status of TSA's efforts to develop policies and procedures for the opt-out program, including operational plans and guidelines for selecting airports and contractors that may participate; (2) guidance about the opt-out program that TSA has provided to airport operators and other stakeholders, or plans to develop, and how the information is communicated; and (3) TSA's efforts to develop performance measures for evaluating the opt-out program and contractor …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Many foreign nuclear research reactors use highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel. Because HEU can be used in nuclear weapons, the Department of Energy (DOE) has two programs to return HEU from foreign reactors to either the United States or Russia. The U.S. fuel acceptance program includes HEU exported by the United States to 34 countries, 11 of which have returned all of their HEU. The program also includes low enriched uranium (LEU) fuel, which would be very difficult to use in a nuclear weapon. DOE imposes a fee on high-income countries to partially offset the cost of disposing of HEU and LEU fuel in the United States. Under the Russian fuel return program, DOE assists in the return of Russian-origin HEU from 14 countries to Russia. GAO was asked to examine (1) the status of DOE efforts to recover remaining inventories of U.S.-origin HEU and the extent to which the fees imposed on high-income countries support these efforts, and (2) the cost and time frame for completing the Russian fuel return program."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "On June 22, 2004, GAO testified before the Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, Senate Committee on Appropriations on the District of Columbia's structural imbalance and management issues. This letter responds to a request from the subcommittee that GAO provide answers to follow-up questions from the Honorable Richard Durbin, United States Senate."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Hubble's continued operation has been dependent on manned servicing missions using the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) shuttle fleet. The fleet was grounded in early 2003 following the loss of the Space Shuttle Columbia, as NASA focused its efforts on responding to recommendations made by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB). In January 2004, NASA announced its decision to cancel the final planned Hubble servicing mission, primarily because of safety concerns. Without some type of servicing mission, NASA anticipates that Hubble will cease to support scientific investigations by the end of the decade. NASA's decision not to service the Hubble prompted debate about potential alternatives to prolong Hubble's mission and the respective costs of these alternatives. This report addresses the basis of NASA's cost estimates to (1) service Hubble using the shuttle and (2) implement recommendations made by the CAIB. GAO is continuing its work on the Congressional request that GAO examine the potential cost of a robotic servicing mission to the Hubble Telescope."

A 2005 budget draft for the Texas Daily Newspaper Association. The document breaks down the expected income and expenses of the association for the 2005 year.

Several hundred distinct types of DOE-owned spent nuclear fuel (DSNF) may potentially be disposed in the Yucca Mountain repository. These fuel types represent many more types than can be viably individually examined for their effect on the Total System Performance Assessment for the License Application (TSPA-LA). Additionally, for most of these fuel types, there is no known direct experimental test data for the degradation and dissolution of the waste form in repository groundwaters. The approach used in the TSPA-LA model is, therefore, to assess available information on each of 11 groups of DSNF, and to identify a model that can be used in the TSPA-LA model without differentiating between individual codisposal waste packages containing different DSNF types. The purpose of this report is to examine the available data and information concerning the dissolution kinetics of DSNF matrices for the purpose of abstracting a degradation model suitable for use in describing degradation of the DSNF inventory in the Total System Performance Assessment for the License Application. The data and information and associated degradation models were examined for the following types of DSNF: Group 1--Naval spent nuclear fuel; Group 2--Plutonium/uranium alloy (Fermi 1 SNF); Group 3--Plutonium/uranium carbide (Fast Flux Test Facility-Test Fuel …

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

A simple analog circuit that measures the NSTX axisymmetric eddy current distribution has been designed and constructed. It is based on simple circuit model of the NSTX vacuum vessel that was calibrated using a special axisymmetric eddy current code which was written so that accuracy was maintained in the vicinity of the current filaments. The measurement and the model have been benchmarked against data from numerous vacuum shots and they are in excellent agreement. This is an important measurement that helps give more accurate equilibrium reconstructions.

In the fourth quarter of this DOE NETL project, they have developed an algorithm for generating time-lapse seismic anomalies from changes in fluid properties over time. This forward-modeling algorithm constitutes the first step in the inversion procedure of Phase III of the project. Examples were generated illustrating the flexibility of this approach. Additional activities in this reporting period included a trip by the Principal Investigator to the 7th International Conference on Greenhouse Gas Control Technologies (GHGT-7) in Vancouver, Canada, September 5-9, 2004. In the next quarter, they will work on the second step of the inversion procedure, namely, the inversion of the seismic time-lapse anomalies to obtain changes in fluid properties, and will continue investigating alternative methods for calculating properties of oil/brine/CO{sub 2} and brine/CO{sub 2} systems.

Newspaper from Rose State College in Midwest City, Oklahoma that includes national, local, and campus news along with advertising.

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

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

We are presenting the first ab initio structure investigation of the loosely bound {sup 11}Be nucleus, together with a study of the lighter isotope {sup 9}Be. The nuclear structure of these isotopes is particularly interesting due to the appearance of a parity-inverted ground state in {sup 11}Be. Our study is performed in the framework of the ab initio no-core shell model. Results obtained using four different, high-precision two-nucleon interactions, in model spaces up to 9{h_bar}{Omega}, are shown. For both nuclei, and all potentials, we reach convergence in the level ordering of positive- and negative-parity spectra separately. Concerning their relative position, the positive-parity states are always too high in excitation energy, but a fast drop with respect to the negative-parity spectrum is observed when the model space is increased. This behavior is most dramatic for {sup 11}Be. In the largest model space we were able to reach, the 1/2{sup +} level has dropped down to become either the first or the second excited state, depending on which interaction we use. We also observe a contrasting behavior in the convergence patterns for different two-nucleon potentials, and argue that a three-nucleon interaction is needed to explain the parity inversion. Furthermore, large-basis calculations of …

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Men's and Women's Choruses performance at the UNT College of Music Concert Hall.

Jazz concert performed at the UNT College of Music Kenton Hall.

This report includes the progress in development of Direct Fuel Cell/Turbine. (DFC/T.) power plants for generation of clean power at very high efficiencies. The DFC/T power system is based on an indirectly heated gas turbine to supplement fuel cell generated power. The DFC/T power generation concept extends the high efficiency of the fuel cell by utilizing the fuel cell's byproduct heat in a Brayton cycle. Features of the DFC/T system include: electrical efficiencies of up to 75% on natural gas, 60% on coal gas, minimal emissions, simplicity in design, direct reforming internal to the fuel cell, reduced carbon dioxide release to the environment, and potential cost competitiveness with existing combined cycle power plants. FCE successfully completed testing of the pre-alpha sub-MW DFC/T power plant. This power plant was constructed by integration of a 250kW fuel cell stack and a microturbine. Following these proof-of-concept tests, a stand-alone test of the microturbine verified the turbine power output expectations at an elevated (representative of the packaged unit condition) turbine inlet temperature. Preliminary design of the packaged sub-MW alpha DFC/T unit has been completed and procurement activity has been initiated. The preliminary design of a 40 MW power plant including the key equipment layout …

Temperature-gradient Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition was used to deposit In{sub x}Ga{sub 1-x}N/GaN multiple quantum well structures with a concentration gradient of indium across the wafer. These multiple quantum well structures were deposited on low defect density (2 x 10{sup 8} cm{sup -2}) GaN template layers for investigation of microstructural properties and V-defect (pinhole) formation. Room temperature photoluminescence and photomodulated transmission were used for optical characterization which show a systematic decrease in emission energy for a decrease in growth temperature. Triple-axis X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and cross-section transmission electron microscopy were used to obtain microstructural properties of different regions across the wafer. Results show that there is a decrease in crystal quality and an increase in V-defect formation with increasing indium concentration. A direct correlation was found between V-defect density and growth temperature due to increased strain and indium segregation for increasing indium concentration.

We present results of near infrared imaging of the disk-galaxy-merger NGC 6240 using adaptive optics on the Keck II Telescope and reprocessed archival data from NICMOS on the Hubble Space Telescope. Both the North and South nuclei of NGC 6240 are clearly elongated, with considerable sub-structure within each nucleus. In K' band there are at least two point-sources within the North nucleus; we tentatively identify the south-western point-source within the North nucleus as the position of one of the two AGNs. Within the South nucleus, the northern subnucleus is more highly reddened. Based upon the nuclear separation measured at 5 GHz, we suggest that the AGN in the South nucleus is still enshrouded in dust at K' band, and is located slightly to the north of the brightest point in K' band. Within the South nucleus there is strong H{sub 2} 1-0 S(1) line emission from the northern sub-nucleus, contrary to the conclusions of previous seeing-limited observations. Narrowband H{sub 2} emission-line images show that a streamer or ribbon of excited molecular hydrogen connects the North and South nuclei. We suggest that this linear feature corresponds to a bridge of gas connecting the two nuclei, as seen in computer simulations of …

The high pressure magnetic properties of the heavy lanthanide elements Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho, Er, and Tm have been investigated using ac magnetic susceptibility with a diamond anvil cell. It is found that the magnetic transition temperatures monotonically decrease with increasing pressure. In addition, the amplitudes of the magnetic transition signals decrease with increasing pressure, with the signals all eventually disappearing at pressures by 20 GPa. In contrast to previous studies, we see no evidence of any pressure-induced transitions from one magnetically ordered phase to another in Gd, Tb, Dy, or Ho. The transition temperatures, T{sub crit} are all found to drop at a rate proportional to their de Gennes factor, and the values of T{sub crit}/T{sub crit}(P = 0) vs P/P{sub crit}, where P{sub crit} is the pressure where the magnetic transition disappears, all sit on a single phase diagram.

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