Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The devastation experienced throughout the Gulf Coast region in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita has called into question the government's ability to effectively respond to such disasters. The government needs to understand what went right and what went wrong, and to apply these lessons to strengthen its disaster response and recovery operations. The federal government relies on partnerships across the public and private sectors to achieve critical results in preparing for and responding to natural disasters, with an increasing reliance on contractors to carry out specific aspects of its missions. This testimony discusses how three agencies--the General Services Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps)--conducted oversight of 13 key contracts awarded to 12 contractors for hurricane response, as well as public and private sector practices GAO identified that provide examples of how the federal government could better manage its disaster-related procurements."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Today's hearing focuses on Medicare Part D, the program's new outpatient prescription drug benefit. On January 1, 2006, Medicare began providing this benefit, and beneficiaries have until May 15, 2006, to enroll without the risk of penalties. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers the Part D benefit, has undertaken outreach and education efforts to inform beneficiaries and their advisers. GAO was asked to discuss how CMS can better ensure that Medicare beneficiaries are informed about the Part D benefit. This testimony is based on Medicare: CMS Communications to Beneficiaries on the Prescription Drug Benefit Could Be Improved, GAO-06-654 (May 3, 2006)."

A statement of record issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over a decade ago, GAO listed the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) effort to modernize the nation's air traffic control (ATC) system as a high-risk program because of systemic management and acquisition problems. Two relatively new offices housed within FAA--the Air Traffic Organization (ATO) and the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO)--are now primarily responsible for planning and implementing these modernization efforts. Congress created ATO to be a performance-based organization that would improve both the agency's culture, structure, and processes, and the ATC modernization program's performance and accountability. Congress created JPDO, made up of seven partner agencies, to coordinate the federal and nonfederal stakeholders necessary to plan a transition from the current air transportation system to the "next generation air transportation system" (NGATS). This statement is based on GAO's recently completed and ongoing studies of the ATC modernization program. GAO provides information on (1) the status of ATO's efforts to improve the ATC modernization program, (2) the status of JPDO's planning efforts for NGATS, and (3) actions to control costs and leverage resources for ATC modernization and the transformation to NGATS."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Record high crude oil and natural gas prices have generated significant concerns by the public and members of Congress that the high and relatively volatile prices may be the result of factors other than market forces. Several members of the House and the Senate have expressed concerns over the upward trending prices and factors that may be causing the perceived increases in volatility of several energy commodities, including crude oil, gasoline, natural gas, and heating oil. As a result, we initiated this study under the authority of the Comptroller General. This testimony focuses on our ongoing study of (1) changes in energy futures markets and volatility since 2000 and (2) Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) surveillance and enforcement activities in the oversight of energy futures trading."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Unemployment Insurance (UI) has been a key component in ensuring the financial security of America's workforce for over 70 years. In fiscal year 2004, UI covered about 129 million wage and salary workers and paid about $41 billion in benefits to nearly 9 million workers who lost their jobs. The Department of Labor (Labor) and states have a shared responsibility to enhance UI program performance by ensuring that only eligible individuals receive benefits while on the UI rolls and fostering reemployment. Labor's Office of Inspector General and others have found that aspects of UI may be vulnerable to fraud and improper payments, and despite the size and scope of UI, there has been little national information to fully assess states' efforts to foster reemployment. This testimony draws upon results of several GAO reports on (1) Labor's efforts to identify, estimate, and prevent improper benefit payments and (2) federal and state efforts to help speed UI claimants' return to work. We are not making new recommendations at this time. Labor generally agreed with the UI findings in our referenced reports, but took issue with our recommendation that the Secretary …

Internal inspection of pipelines is an important tool for ensuring safe and reliable delivery of fossil energy products. Current inspection systems that are propelled through the pipeline by the product flow cannot be used to inspect all pipelines because of the various physical barriers they encounter. Recent development efforts include a new generation of powered inspection platforms that crawl slowly inside a pipeline and are able to maneuver past the physical barriers that can limit inspection. At Battelle, innovative electromagnetic sensors are being designed and tested for these new pipeline crawlers. The various sensor types can be used to assess a wide range of pipeline anomalies including corrosion, mechanical damage, and cracks. Battelle is in the final year on a projected three-year development effort. In the first year, two innovative electromagnetic inspection technologies were designed and tested. Both were based on moving high-strength permanent magnets to generate inspection energy. One system involved translating permanent magnets towards the pipe. A pulse of electric current would be induced in the pipe to oppose the magnetization according to Lenz's Law. The decay of this pulse would indicate the presence of defects in the pipe wall. This inspection method is similar to pulsed eddy …

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The 126-F-2 site is the clearwell facility formerly used as part of the reactor cooling water treatment at the 183-F facility. During demolition operations in the 1970s, potentially contaminated debris was disposed in the eastern clearwell structure. The site has been remediated by removing all debris in the clearwell structure to the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility. The results of radiological surveys and visual inspection of the remediated clearwell structure show neither residual contamination nor the potential for contaminant migration beyond the clearwell boundaries. The results of verification sampling at the remediation waste staging area demonstrated that residual contaminant concentrations do not preclude any future uses and allow for unrestricted use of shallow zone soils. The results also showed that residual contaminant concentrations are protective of groundwater and the Columbia River.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Port Aransas, Texas on Mustang Island that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

The aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita created staggering problems and challenging conditions for the people of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, as well as for the state and local governments there. Many problems were immediately apparent, whereas others that involved ongoing government functions, such as elections, were less obvious at first. This report discusses the challenge of running elections in the many affected communities.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

The purpose of this annual monitoring report is to evaluate the conditions of and identify trends for groundwater beneath the ERDF and to report leachate results in accordance with the requirements specified in the ERDF ROD.

This report tracks appropriation action on the President's FY2007 funding request for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Issues of possible congressional concern are summarized, including a Joint Ocean Commission Initiative statement on ocean science and fisheries-related funding.

Thomson scattering has been shown to be a valuable technique for measuring the plasma conditions in laser produced plasmas. Measurement techniques are discussed that use the ion-acoustic frequency measured from the collective Thomson-scattering spectrum to extract the electron temperature, ion temperature, plasma flow, and electron density in a laser produced plasma. In a recent study, they demonstrated a novel Thomson-scattering technique to measure the dispersion of ion-acoustic fluctuations that employing multiple color Thomson-scattering diagnostics. They obtained frequency-resolved Thomson-scattering spectra of the two separate thermal ion-acoustic fluctuations with significantly different wave vectors. This new technique allows a simultaneous time resolved local measurement of electron density and temperature. The plasma fluctuations are shown to become dispersive with increasing electron temperature. Furthermore, a Thomson-scattering technique to measure the electron temperature profile is presented where recent experiments have measured a large electron temperature gradient (Te = 1.4 keV to Te = 3.2 keV over 1.5-mm) along the axis of a 2-mm long hohlraum when heated asymmetrically.

A relativistic many-body method is developed to calculate energy and transition rates for multipole transitions in many-electron ions. This method is based on relativistic many-body perturbation theory (RMBPT), agrees with MCDF calculations in lowest-order, includes all second-order correlation corrections and includes corrections from negative energy states. Reduced matrix elements, oscillator strengths, and transition rates are calculated for electric-multipole (dipole (E1), quadrupole (E2), and octupole (E3)) and magnetic-multipole (dipole (M1), quadrupole (M2), and octupole (M3)) transitions between 3l{sup -1}5l{prime} excited and ground states in Ni-like ions with nuclear charges ranging from Z = 30 to 100. The calculations start from a 1s{sup 2}s{sup 2}2p{sup 6}3s{sup 2}3p{sup 6}3d{sup 10} Dirac-Fock potential. First-order perturbation theory is used to obtain intermediate-coupling coefficients, and second-order RMBPT is used to determine the matrix elements. A detailed discussion of the various contributions to the dipole matrix elements and energy levels is given for nickel-like tungsten (Z = 74). The contributions from negative-energy states are included in the second order E1, M1, E2, M2, E3 and M3 matrix elements. The resulting transition energies and transition rates are compared with experimental values and with results from other recent calculations. These atomic data are important in modeling of M-shell radiation …

GeV electron accelerators are essential to synchrotron radiation facilities and free electron lasers, and as modules for high-energy particle physics. Radio frequency based accelerators are limited to relatively low accelerating fields (10-50 MV/m) and hence require tens to hundreds of meters to reach the multi-GeV beam energies needed to drive radiation sources, and many kilometers to generate particle energies of interest to the frontiers of high-energy physics.Laser wakefield accelerators (LWFA) in which particles are accelerated by the field of a plasma wave driven by an intense laser pulse produce electric fields several orders of magnitude stronger (10-100 GV/m) and so offer the potential of very compact devices. However, until now it has not been possible to maintain the required laser intensity, and hence acceleration, over the several centimeters needed to reach GeV energies.For this reason laser-driven accelerators have to date been limited to the 100 MeV scale. Contrary to predictions that PW-class lasers would be needed to reach GeV energies, here we demonstrate production of a high-quality electron beam with 1 GeV energy by channeling a 40 TW peak power laser pulse in a 3.3 cm long gas-filled capillary discharge waveguide. We anticipate that laser-plasma accelerators based on capillary discharge …

Externally Dispersed Interferometry (EDI) is the series combination of a fixed-delay field-widened Michelson interferometer with a dispersive spectrograph. This combination boosts the spectrograph performance for both Doppler velocimetry and high resolution spectroscopy. The interferometer creates a periodic comb that multiplies against the input spectrum to create moire fringes, which are recorded in combination with the regular spectrum. Both regular and high-frequency spectral components can be recovered from the data--the moire component carries additional information that increases the signal to noise for velocimetry and spectroscopy. Here we present simulations and theoretical studies of the photon limited Doppler velocity noise in an EDI. We used a model spectrum of a 1600K temperature star. For several rotational blurring velocities 0, 7.5, 15 and 25 km/s we calculated the dimensionless Doppler quality index (Q) versus wavenumber v. This is the normalized RMS of the derivative of the spectrum and is proportional to the photon-limited Doppler signal to noise ratio.

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

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

Semi-weekly newspaper from Livingston, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

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

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