A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The aviation industry and business traveler groups have proposed the registered traveler concept as a way to reduce long waits in airport security lines caused by heightened security screening measures implemented after the September 11 terrorist attacks. In addition, aviation security experts have advocated this concept as a way to better target security resources to those travelers who might pose greater security risks. The Aviation and Transportation Security Act of November 2001 allows the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to consider developing a registered traveler program as a way to address these two issues. GAO completed this review to inform Congress and TSA of policy and implementation issues related to the concept of a registered traveler program."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, Congress has expressed concern that urgent joint warfighting requirements are not always met in the most expeditious manner, particularly command and control and blue-force-tracking capabilities that reduce the chances of friendly-fire casualties. In the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (P.L. 108-136), Congress gave the U.S. Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) Limited Acquisition Authority (LAA) to address these and other joint-warfighting challenges. LAA is an authority aimed at ensuring that measures to meet urgent, unanticipated joint warfighting needs are conceived, developed, and fielded in an expeditious manner. Enacted for a 3-year period, LAA will expire after September 30, 2006. The Act required GAO to determine the extent to which LAA has been used. Specifically, we focused on (1) how JFCOM used the authority during fiscal years 2004 and 2005, (2) the processes and procedures JFCOM developed to implement the authority, and (3) the challenges of implementing it. In covering these areas, we did not evaluate the quality of the projects undertaken or the value added of the equipment provided to the warfighter under LAA."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) plays a vital role in advancing transportation safety by investigating accidents, determining their causes, and issuing safety recommendations. To support its mission, NTSB's training center, which opened in 2003, provides training to NTSB investigators and others. It is important that NTSB use its resources efficiently to carry out its mission. GAO was asked to examine the extent to which NTSB follows leading management practices, how NTSB carries out its transportation safety function, and the extent to which NTSB's training center is cost-effective, including potential options for improving the center's cost-effectiveness. GAO reviewed NTSB documents and data concerning management practices and accident investigations, interviewed relevant NTSB and other federal officials, and evaluated NTSB's management practices based on leading practices identified in prior work."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Navy has been transforming itself to better meet 21st century needs. Since 2000, the Congress has appropriated about $50 billion annually for the Navy to operate and maintain its forces and support around 376,000 military personnel. In recognizing that the Navy faces affordability issues in sustaining readiness within its historical share of the defense budget, the Chief of Naval Operations announced a concept called the Fleet Response Plan to enhance its deployment readiness status. The Fleet Response Plan is designed to more rapidly prepare and sustain readiness in ships and squadrons. GAO evaluated the extent to which the Navy has (1) employed a sound management approach in implementing the Fleet Response Plan and (2) tested and evaluated the effectiveness of the plan and shared results to improve implementation."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In the President's Management Agenda, a key element for reforming the federal government is the expansion of electronic government (e-government)--that is, the use of technology, particularly the Internet, to enhance access to government information and services. Accordingly, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) established a task force to select and manage strategic e-government initiatives. GAO was asked to review the completeness of information used for choosing and overseeing these initiatives."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To help carry out its mission to protect the public from criminal activity, the Department of Justice invests about $2 billion annually in information technology (IT). In particular, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), a Justice agency, invested about $459 million in IT in fiscal year 2002. GAO was asked to determine, for key INS IT system investments, whether Justice's oversight has been effective, ensuring that these systems deliver promised capabilities and benefits on time and within budget."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The United States has made great progress in improving working conditions since the construction of the Empire State Building. Yet, since the early 1990s, over 50,000 workers have died from work-related accidents and millions experience work-related injuries or illnesses each year. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is the primary federal agency responsible for protecting workplace safety and health. GAO was asked to assess how well OSHA was able to target its enforcement resources on hazardous worksites, measure its accomplishments, and ensure inspection staff quality."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the U.S. Congress, the administration, law enforcement officials, and the public have questioned the effectiveness of U.S. visa programs in protecting national security. Some have voiced concern that terrorists or other criminals may exploit one of these programs--the Visa Waiver Program--to enter the United States. The program enables citizens of 28 participating countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for 90 days or less without first obtaining a visa. It was created, in part, to promote the effective use of government resources and to facilitate international travel without threatening U.S. security. GAO was asked to review the Visa Waiver Program, including the process for assessing countries' eligibility to participate in the program. GAO was also asked to determine the implications--specifically those affecting national security, foreign relations, tourism, and State Department resources--of eliminating the program. GAO analysts traveled to several visa waiver countries, including Belgium, Italy, Slovenia, Spain, and Uruguay, as well as to Argentina, whose participation in the program was recently revoked."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The tax-filing season, roughly January 1 through April 15, is when most taxpayers file their returns, receive refunds, and call or visit IRS offices or the IRS Web site with questions. To provide better information about the quality of filing season services, IRS is revamping its suite of filing season performance measures. Because the new measures are part of a strategy to improve service and because filing season service affects so many taxpayers, GAO was asked to assess whether the new measures have the four characteristics of successful performance measures graphically depicted below."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The administration has twice proposed reducing the Workforce Investment Act's (WIA) budget, citing large amounts of states' unspent funds carried over from the prior year. However, in light of current economic conditions, state and local workforce officials have expressed a need for more funds, not less. GAO was asked to assess whether the Department of Labor's spending information is a true reflection of states' available funds. GAO examined the spending rate for states, what Labor does to determine how states are managing their spending, and what factors affect states' WIA expenditure rates."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In the wake of anthrax incidents and mounting concerns about the potential for another bioterrorism attack, we assessed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) oversight of the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Laboratory Registration/ Select Agent Transfer Program. We brought program weaknesses we identified to the immediate attention of CDL and HHS officials, who agreed that improvements were warranted. The purpose of this report is to summarize our findings."

Bromide and resting-cell bacteria tracer tests carried out in a sand and gravel aquifer at the USGS Cape Cod site in 1987 were reinterpreted using a three-dimensional stochastic approach and Lagrangian particle tracking numerical methods. Bacteria transport was strongly coupled to colloid filtration through functional dependence of local-scale colloid transport parameters on hydraulic conductivity and seepage velocity in a stochastic advection-dispersion/attachment-detachment model. Information on geostatistical characterization of the hydraulic conductivity (K) field from a nearby plot was utilized as input that was unavailable when the original analysis was carried out. A finite difference model for groundwater flow and a particle-tracking model of conservative solute transport was calibrated to the bromide-tracer breakthrough data using the aforementioned geostatistical parameters. An optimization routine was utilized to adjust the mean and variance of the lnK field over 100 realizations such that a best fit of a simulated, average bromide breakthrough curve is achieved. Once the optimal bromide fit was accomplished (based on adjusting the lnK statistical parameters in unconditional simulations), a stochastic particle-tracking model for the bacteria was run without adjustments to the local-scale colloid transport parameters. Good predictions of the mean bacteria breakthrough data were achieved using several approaches for modeling components of …

The 'Computational Crystallography Toolbox' (cctbx, http://cctbx.sourceforge.net/) is the open-source component of the Phenix project (http://www.phenix-online.org/). Most recent cctbx developments are geared towards supporting new features of the phenix.refine application. Thus, the open-source mmtbx (macromolecular toolbox) module is currently being most rapidly developed. In this article we give an overview of some of the recent developments. However, the main theme of this article is the presentation of a light-weight example command-line application that was specifically developed for this newsletter: sequence alignment and superposition of two molecules read from files in PDB format. This involves parameter input based on the Phil module presented in Newsletter No. 5, fast reading of the PDB files with the new iotbx.pdb.input class, simple sequence alignment using the new mmtbx.alignment module, and use of the Kearsley (1989) superposition algorithm to find the least-squares solution for superposing C-alpha positions. The major steps are introduced individually, followed by a presentation of the complete application. The example application is deliberately limited in functionality to make it concise enough for this article. The main goal is to show how the open-source components are typically combined into an application. Even though the example is quite specific to macromolecular crystallography, we believe it …

A new, fast, single-pulse x-ray diffraction (XRD) diagnostic for determining phase transitions in shocked polycrystalline materials has been developed. The diagnostic consists of a 37-stage Marx bank high-voltage pulse generator coupled to a needle-and-washer electron beam diode via coaxial cable, producing line and bremsstrahlung x-ray emission in a 35-ns pulse. The characteristic Kα lines from the selected anodes of silver and molybdenum are used to produce the diffraction patterns, with thin foil filters employed to remove the characteristic Kβ line emission. The x-ray beam passes through a pinhole collimator and is incident on the sample with an approximately 3-mm by 6-mm spot and 1° full-width-half-maximum (FWHM) angular divergence in a Bragg-reflecting geometry. For the experiments described in this report, the angle between the incident beam and the sample surface was 8.5°. A Debye-Scherrer diffraction image was produced on a phosphor located 76 mm from the polycrystalline sample surface. The phosphor image was coupled to a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera through a coherent fiberoptic bundle. Dynamic single-pulse XRD experiments were conducted with thin foil samples of tin, shock loaded with a 1-mm vitreous carbon back window. Detasheet high explosive with a 2-mm-thick aluminum buffer was used to shock the sample. Analysis …

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the Office of Fire Fighters' Pension Commissioner may charge an administrative fee to participating departments in its retirement system (RQ-0230-GA)

The primary focus of this issue brief is legislative action with respect to abortion. However, discussion of those legislative proposals necessarily involves a brief discussion of the leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy. For a more detailed discussion of the relevant case law, see CRS Report 95-724, Abortion Law Development: A Brief Overview.

This report discusses the Navy's homeland security (HLS) and homeland defense (HLD) operations, which raise several potential oversight issues for Congress, including Navy coordination with the Coast Guard in HLS and HLD operations.

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This report discusses the permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) between United States and Ukraine.

This report provides information about the Current Economic Conditions and Selected Forecasts. U.S GDP growth has been positive for 18th consecutive quarters and the economy is in "expansion Phase".

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This work's objective was the development of processes to double or triple the light output power from green and deep green (525 - 555 nm) AlGaInN light emitting diode (LED) dies within 3 years in reference to the Lumileds Luxeon II. The project paid particular effort to all aspects of the internal generation efficiency of light. LEDs in this spectral region show the highest potential for significant performance boosts and enable the realization of phosphor-free white LEDs comprised by red-green-blue LED modules. Such modules will perform at and outperform the efficacy target projections for white-light LED systems in the Department of Energy's accelerated roadmap of the SSL initiative.

We performed a computational and experimental analysis of fast cookoff of LX-10 (94.7% HMX, 5.3% Viton A) confined in a 2 kbar steel tube with reinforced end caps. A Scaled-Thermal-Explosion-eXperiment (STEX) was completed in which three radiant heaters were used to heat the vessel until ignition, resulting in a moderately violent explosion after 20.4 minutes. Thermocouple measurements showed tube temperatures as high as 340 C at ignition and LX-10 surface temperatures as high as 279 C, which is near the melting point of HMX. Three micro-power radar systems were used to measure mean fragment velocities of 840 m/s. Photonics Doppler Velocimeters (PDVs) showed a rapid acceleration of fragments over 80 {micro}s. A one-dimensional ALE3D cookoff model at the vessel midplane was used to simulate the heating, thermal expansion, LX-10 decomposition composition, and closing of the gap between the HE (High Explosive) and vessel wall. Although the ALE3D simulation terminated before ignition, the model provided a good representation of heat transfer through the case and across the dynamic gap to the explosive.

Malignant melanoma is the 6th most commonly diagnosed cancer with increasing incidence in the United States. It is estimated that 54,200 cases of malignant melanoma will be newly diagnosed and 7,600 cases of death will occur in the United States in the year 2003 (1). At the present time, more than 1.3% of Americans will develop malignant melanoma during their lifetime (2). The average survival for patients with metastatic melanoma is about 6-9 months (3). Moreover, metastatic melanoma deposits are resistant to conventional chemotherapy and external beam radiation therapy (3). Systematic chemotherapy is the primary therapeutic approach to treat patients with metastatic melanoma. Dacarbazine is the only single chemotherapy agent approved by FDA for metastatic melanoma treatment (5). However, the response rate to Dacarbazine is only approximately 20% (6). Therefore, there is a great need to develop novel treatment approaches for metastatic melanoma. The global goal of this research program is the rational design, characterization and validation of melanoma imaging and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals. Significant progress has been made in the design and characterization of metal-cyclized radiolabeled alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone peptides. Therapy studies with {sup 188}Re-CCMSH demonstrated the therapeutic efficacy of the receptor-targeted treatment in murine and human melanoma bearing mice …