A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Public Law No. 110-28 directed GAO to review how the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) develops its disaster cost estimates. Accordingly, GAO addressed the following questions: (1) What is FEMA's process for developing and refining its cost estimates for any given disaster? (2) From 2000 through 2006, how close have cost estimates been to the actual costs for noncatastrophic (i.e., federal costs under $500 million) natural disasters? (3) What steps has FEMA taken to learn from past experience and improve its management of disaster-related resources and what other opportunities exist? To accomplish this, GAO reviewed relevant FEMA documents and interviewed key officials. GAO also obtained and analyzed disaster cost data and determined that they were sufficiently reliable for the purposes of this review."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2006, the federal government spent about $59 billion on Medicare Advantage (MA) plans, an alternative to the original Medicare fee-for-service (FFS) program. Although health plans were originally envisioned in the 1980s as a potential source of Medicare savings, such plans have generally increased program spending. Payments to MA plans have been estimated to be 12 percent greater than what Medicare would have spent in 2006 had MA beneficiaries been enrolled in Medicare FFS. Some policymakers are concerned about the cost of the MA program and its contribution to overall spending on the Medicare program, which already faces serious long-term financial challenges. MA plans receive a per member per month (PMPM) payment to provide services covered under Medicare FFS. Almost all MA plans receive an additional Medicare payment, known as a rebate. Plans use rebates and sometimes additional beneficiary premiums to fund benefits not covered under Medicare FFS, reduce premiums, or reduce beneficiary cost sharing. This report examines for 2007 (1) MA plans' projected rebate allocations; (2) additional benefits MA plans commonly covered and their costs; (3) MA plans' projected cost sharing; and (4) MA plans' …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In August 2004, pursuant to Section 1111 of the fiscal year 2001 Department of Defense authorization act, the Secretary of Defense authorized components of the United States Air Force (USAF), the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), and the Defense Commissary Agency (DeCA) to implement an equal employment opportunity (EEO) complaint pilot program to reengineer the EEO complaint process to, among other things, reduce complaint processing time and reinforce management accountability. The program was exempt from the procedural requirements of 29 C.F.R. Part 1614 and other regulations, directives, or regulatory restrictions prescribed by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). As required by the legislation, in May 2006, GAO reported on the implementation of the pilot programs and found that two of the three pilot initiatives operated consistent with existing EEOC requirements, with a specific emphasis on alternative dispute resolution (ADR). USAF's pilot operated outside of EEOC regulations, as authorized under the legislation. We identified limitations in the Department of Defense's (DOD) evaluation plan for the pilot program that, if not addressed, would limit the likelihood that the evaluation would yield sound results. For example, the plan did not have well-defined …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "America's port infrastructure is vital to U.S. foreign trade and a bulwark for national security. One way the federal government funds port-related programs is to levy user fees. GAO was asked to examine (1) what is known about the way selected fees assessed on air and sea port users are set, collected, used, and reviewed and (2) the effects of these attributes on program operations. GAO examined the Harbor Maintenance Fee (HMF), the Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF), and the Customs, Immigration, and Agricultural Quarantine Inspection (AQI) user fees assessed on air and cruise passengers and commercial vessels using criteria that have often been used to assess user fees and taxes--equity, efficiency, revenue adequacy, and administrative burden."

The authors present measurements of the relative branching ratios, Dalitz plot structures and CP-asymmetry values in the three-body singly Cabibbo-suppressed decays D{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup 0} and D{sup 0} {yields} K{sup -}K{sup +}{pi}{sup 0} using data collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric-energy ring at SLAC. The author applies the results of the D{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup 0} analysis to extracting CP-violation parameters related to the CKM angle {gamma} (or {phi}{sub 3}) using the decay B{sup -} {yields} D{sub {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup 0}} K{sup -}.

We identify a third image in the unique quasar lens SDSS J1029+2623, the second known quasar lens produced by a massive cluster of galaxies. The spectrum of the third image shows similar emission and absorption features, but has a redder continuum than the other two images which can be explained by differential extinction or microlensing. We also identify several lensed arcs. Our observations suggest a complicated structure of the lens cluster at z {approx} 0.6. We argue that the three lensed images are produced by a naked cusp on the basis of successful mass models, the distribution of cluster member galaxies, and the shapes and locations of the lensed arcs. Lensing by a naked cusp is quite rare among galaxy-scale lenses but is predicted to be common among large-separation lensed quasars. Thus the discovery can be viewed as support for an important theoretical prediction of the standard cold dark matter model.

Pyridine hydrogenation in the presence of a surface monolayer consisting of cubic Pt nanoparticles stabilized by tetradecyltrimethylammonium bromide (TTAB) was investigated by sum frequency generation (SFG) vibrational spectroscopy using total internal reflection (TIR) geometry. TIR-SFG spectra analysis revealed that a pyridinium cation (C{sub 5}H{sub 5}NH{sup +}) forms during pyridine hydrogenation on the Pt nanoparticle surface, and the NH group in the C{sub 5}H{sub 5}NH{sup +} cation becomes more hydrogen bound with the increase of the temperature. In addition, the surface coverage of the cation decreases with the increase of the temperature. An important contribution of this study is the in situ identification of reaction intermediates adsorbed on the Pt nanoparticle monolayer during pyridine hydrogenation.

In March of 2007 a document was issued, see attachment I, that defined the test protocol and required welding for the Kansas City Plant to change cutting oils from the recently approved 50:50 oil to an oil with similar characteristics but with different chemistry, additives, and possibly a different vendor due to plans by the current vendor to stop preparing the oils that are used in the KCP 50:50 mix. The KCP manufactured stems with the existing 50:50 oil blend in late FY07 and SRNL welded the stems and evaluated them in agreement with the test plan. This report provides all the data from these set-up and test welds. Set-up welds were shot and low and high voltages (currents) to ensure the window limits were applicable and then additional welds were made to validate the window. The purpose of this report is to ensure that the agreed upon path forward is still applicable.

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This report provides information about environmental programs during the calendar year (CY) of 2006 at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Menlo Park, California. Activities that span the calendar year; i.e., stormwater monitoring covering the winter season of 2006/2007 (October 2006 through May 2007), are also included. Production of an annual site environmental report (ASER) is a requirement established by the United States Department of Energy (DOE) for all management and operating (M&O) contractors throughout the DOE complex. SLAC is a federally-funded research and development center with Stanford University as the M&O contractor. SLAC continued to follow the path to self-declare an environmental management system under DOE Order 450.1, 'Environmental Protection Program' and effectively applied environmental management in meeting the site's integrated safety and environmental management system goals. For normal daily activities, all SLAC managers and supervisors are responsible for ensuring that proper procedures are followed so that Worker safety and health are protected; The environment is protected; and Compliance is ensured. Throughout 2006, SLAC focused on these activities through the SLAC management systems. These systems were also the way SLAC approached implementing 'greening of the government' initiatives such as Executive Order 13148. The management systems at SLAC are effective, …

The BaBar detector has operated over 200 2nd generation Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) in the forward endcap since 2002. Many chambers have increased noise rates and high voltage currents. These aging symptoms are correlated with the integrated RPC current as expected, but also depend on the rate and direction of the gas flow, indicating that pollutants produced in the gas can accelerate aging of downstream RPC surfaces. HF produced by decomposition of the Freon 134a component of the BaBar RPC gas in electric discharges has been proposed as the main pollutant. This paper presents measurements of HF production and absorption rates in BaBar RPCs. Since many of the highest rate chambers in the forward endcap were converted to avalanche mode operation, a comparison of HF production in streamer and avalanche mode RPCs is made. Correlations between the HF production rate and other chamber operating conditions were also explored.

Although the Standard Model of elementary particles is well established, strong interactions are not yet fully under control. We believe QCD is the field theory capable of describing them, but we are not yet capable, in most of the cases, to make exact predictions. Systems that include heavy quark-antiquark pairs (quarkonia) are ideal and unique laboratories to probe both the high energy regimes of QCD, where an expansion in terms of the coupling constant is possible, and the low energy regimes, where non-perturbative effects dominate. In the last years this field is experiencing a rapid expansion with a wealth of new data coming in from diverse sources: data on quarkonium formation from dedicated experiments (BES at BEPC, KEDR at VEPP-4M CLEO-c at CESR), clear samples produced by high luminosity B-factories (PEP and KEKB), and very large samples produced from gluon-gluon fusion in p{bar p} annihilations at Tevatron (CDF and D0 experiments). In this review I will first summarize recent developments in the understanding of heavy quarkonium states which have a well established quark content. Next, the core of the paper will be spent to review the experimental evidences of new states that might be aggregations of more than just a …

We consider QCD-like theories with one massless fermion in various representations of the gauge group SU(N). The theories are formulated on R{sub 3} x S{sub 1}. In the decompactification limit of large r(S{sub 1}) all these theories are characterized by confinement, mass gap and spontaneous breaking of a (discrete) chiral symmetry ({chi}SB). At small r(S{sub 1}), in order to stabilize the vacua of these theories at a center-symmetric point, we suggest to perform a double trace deformation. With these deformation, the theories at hand are at weak coupling at small r(S{sub 1}) and yet exhibit basic features of the large-r(S{sub 1}) limit: confinement and {chi}SB. We calculate the string tension, mass gap, bifermion condensates and {theta} dependence. The double-trace deformation becomes dynamically irrelevant at large r(S{sub 1}). Despite the fact that at small r(S{sub 1}) confinement is Abelian, while it is expected to be non-Abelian at large r(S{sub 1}), we argue that small and large-r(S{sub 1}) physics are continuously connected. If so, one can use small-r(S{sub 1}) laboratory to extract lessons about QCD and QCD-like theories on R{sub 4}.

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We measure the conversion efficiency of 351 nm laser light to soft x-rays (0.1-5 keV) for Au, U and high Z mixtures 'cocktails' used for hohlraum wall materials in indirect drive ICF. We use spherical targets in a direct drive geometry, flattop laser pulses and laser smoothing with phase plates to achieve constant and uniform laser intensities of 10{sup 14} and 10{sup 15} W/cm{sup 2} over the target surface that are relevant for the future ignition experiments on NIF. The absolute time and spectrally-resolved radiation flux is measured with a multichannel soft x-ray power diagnostic. The conversion efficiency is then calculated by dividing the measured x-ray power by the incident laser power from which the measured laser backscattering losses is subtracted. After {approx}0.5 ns, the time resolved x-ray conversion efficiency reaches a slowly increasing plateau of 95% at 10{sup 14} W/cm{sup 2} laser intensity and of 80% at 10{sup 15} W/cm{sup 2}. The M-band flux (2-5 keV) is negligible at 10{sup 14} W/cm{sup 2} reaching {approx}1% of the total x-ray flux for all target materials. In contrast, the M-band flux is significant and depends on the target material at 10{sup 15} W/cm{sup 2} laser intensity, reaching values between 10% of …

Radioactive material being processed as part of the DE3013 program for HB-Line will result in the presence of chlorides, and in some cases fluorides, in the dissolver. Material Science and Technology developed an experimental plan to evaluate the impact of chloride on corrosion of the dissolver vessel ventilation system. The plan set test variables from the proposed operating parameters, previous test results, and a desired maximum chloride concentration for processing. The test variables included concentrations of nitric acid, fluorides and chlorides, and the presence of a welded and stressed metal coupon. Table 1 contains expected general corrosion rates in the HB-Line vessel vent system from dissolution of 3013 contents of varying nitric acid and chloride content. These general corrosion rates were measured upstream of the condenser in the experiment's offgas system near the entrance to the dissolver. However, they could apply elsewhere in the offgas system, depending on factors not simulated in the testing, including offgas system temperatures and airflow. Localized corrosion was significant in Tests One, Two, and Three. This corrosion is significant because it will probably be the first mode of penetration of the 304L steel in several places in the system. See Table 2. For Tests One …

Physics experiments at SLAC require high accuracy positioning, e. g. 100 {micro}m over a distance of 150 m or 25 {micro}m in a 10 x 10 x 3 meter volume. Laser Tracker measurement systems have become one of the most important tools for achieving these accuracies when mapping components. In order to improve and get a better understanding of laser tracker measurement tolerances we extended our laboratory with a rotary calibration table (Kugler GmbH) providing an accuracy of better than 0.2 arcsec. This paper gives an overview of the calibration table and its evaluation. Results of tests on two of our Laser Trackers utilizing the new rotary table as well as the SLAC interferometer bench are presented.

Both the PEP-II and KEKB B-Factories have plans to upgrade their Interaction Regions (IRs) in order to improve luminosity performance. Last summer PEP-II added cooling to the IR beam pipe in order to increase beam currents thereby raising the luminosity. In addition, PEP-II is working on a design that modifies the permanent magnets near the Interaction Point (IP) for an even higher luminosity increase. KEKB is also planning an improvement to their IR that will decrease the detector beam pipe radius. In addition, KEK has a design to increase the luminosity of KEKB to 1 x 10{sup 35} cm{sup -2} sec{sup -1} which includes changes to the IR. PEP-II is also investigating the feasibility of a 1 x 10{sup 36} cm{sup -2} sec{sup -1} luminosity design. I summarize these various upgrades and concentrate on issues common to the different designs.

In the context of constructing one-loop amplitudes using a unitarity bootstrap approach we discuss a general systematic procedure for obtaining the coefficients of the scalar bubble and triangle integral functions of one-loop amplitudes. Coefficients are extracted after examining the behavior of the cut integrand as the unconstrained parameters of a specifically chosen parameterization of the cut loop momentum approach infinity. Measurements of new physics at the forthcoming experimental program at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will require a precise understanding of processes at next-to-leading order (NLO). This places increased demands for the computation of new one-loop amplitudes. This in turn has spurred recent developments towards improved calculational techniques. Direct calculations using Feynman diagrams are in general inefficient. Developments of more efficient techniques have usually centered around unitarity techniques [1], where tree amplitudes are effectively 'glued' together to form loops. The most straightforward application of this method, in which the cut loop momentum is in D = 4, allows for the computation of 'cut-constructible' terms only, i.e. (poly)logarithmic containing terms and any related constants. QCD amplitudes contain, in addition to such terms, rational pieces which cannot be derived using such cuts. These 'missing' rational parts can be extracted using cut loop …

Temporal sampling does more than add another axis to the vector of observables. Instead, under the recognition that how objects change (and move) in time speaks directly to the physics underlying astronomical phenomena, next-generation wide-field synoptic surveys are poised to revolutionize our understanding of just about anything that goes bump in the night (which is just about everything at some level). Still, even the most ambitious surveys will require targeted spectroscopic follow-up to fill in the physical details of newly discovered transients. We are now building a new system intended to ingest and classify transient phenomena in near real-time from high-throughput imaging data streams. Described herein, the Transient Classification Project at Berkeley will be making use of classification techniques operating on"features" extracted from time series and contextual (static) information. We also highlight the need for a community adoption of a standard representation of astronomical time series data (i.e.,"VOTimeseries").

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The synthesis, crystal structure, solution stability and photophysical properties of an aryl group bridging two 1-hydroxypyridin-2-one units complexed to Eu(III) are reported. The results show that this backbone unit increases the rigidity of the ensuing complex, and also the conjugation of the ligand. As a result of the latter, the singlet absorption energy is decreased, along with the energy of the lowest excited triplet state. The resulting efficiency of sensitization for the Eu(III) ion is influenced by these phenomena, yielding an overall quantum yield of 6.2% in aqueous solution. The kinetic parameters arising from the luminescence data reveal an enhanced non-radiative decay rate for this compound when compared to previously reported aliphatic bridges.

Significant high temperature plasma research in both the magnetic and inertial confinement regimes led to the official launching of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project which is aimed at challenging controlled fusion power for human kind. In particular, such an endeavor originated from the fruitful research outcomes from the world wide magnetic confinement devices (primarily based on the Tokamak approach) mainly in advanced countries (US, EU, and Japan). In recent years, all new steady state capable Tokamak devices are operated and/or constructed in Asian countries and incidentally, the majority of the ITER consortium consists of Asian countries. This provides an opportunity to revisit the unresolved essential physics issues and/or extend the understanding of the transient physics to the required steady state operation so that ITER can benefit from these efforts. The core physics of a magnetically confined hot plasma has two essential components; plasma stability and cross-field energy transport physics. Complete understanding of these two areas is critical for the successful operation of ITER and perhaps, Demo reactor construction. In order to have stable high beta plasmas with a sufficiently long confinement time, the physics of an abrupt disruption and sudden deterioration of the energy transport must be understood …