This report provides an overview of U.S. policy concerns and relations with countries in central Asia. The report discusses issues such as Fostering Pro-Western Orientations, Obstacles to Peace and Independence, Democratization and Human Rights, Security and Arms Control, Trade and Investment, and provides an Aid Overview.

This report discusses the Integrated Deepwater Systems (IDS) program, or Deepwater program for short, which is a $24-billion, 25-year project to replace and modernize the Coast Guard’s aging fleet of deepwater-capable ships and aircraft. It is the largest and most complex acquisition effort in Coast Guard history, encompassing 91 new cutters, 124 new small surface craft, and 244 new or converted airplanes, helicopters, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). The issue for Congress is whether to approve, reject, or modify the Administration’s annual funding requests and overall approach for the program.

Absolute line emission cross sections are presented for 1 keV/amu charge exchange collisions of multiply charged solar wind ions with H{sub 2}O, H, O, CO{sub 2}, and CO cometary targets. The present calculations are contrasted with available laboratory data. A parameter-free model is used to successfully predict the recently observed x-ray spectra of comet C/LINEAR 1999 S4. We show that the resulting spectrum is extremely sensitive to the time variations of the solar wind composition. Our results suggest that orbiting x-ray satellites may be a viable way to predict the solar wind intensities and composition on the Earth many hours before the ions reach the earth.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) provides health care through its TRICARE program. Under TRICARE, beneficiaries may obtain care through a managed care option that requires enrollment and the use of civilian provider networks, which are developed and managed by contractors. Beneficiaries who do not enroll may receive care through TRICARE Standard, a fee-for-service option, using nonnetwork civilian providers or through TRICARE Extra, a preferred provider organization option, using network civilian providers. Nonenrolled beneficiaries in some locations have reported difficulties finding civilian providers who will accept them as patients. The National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2004 directed GAO to provide information on access to care for nonenrolled TRICARE beneficiaries. This report describes (1) how DOD and its contractors evaluate nonenrolled beneficiaries' access to care and the results of these evaluations; (2) impediments to civilian provider acceptance of nonenrolled beneficiaries, and how they are being addressed; and (3) how DOD has implemented the NDAA fiscal year 2004 requirements to take actions to ensure nonenrolled beneficiaries' access to care. To address these objectives, GAO examined DOD's survey results and DOD and contractor documents and interviewed DOD …

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The project proposal was approved for only the phase I period. The goal for this Phase I project was to develop an industrial model that can perform continuous and efficient dewatering of fine coal slurries of the previous flotation process to fine coal cake of {approx}15% water content from 50-70%. The feasibility of this model should be demonstrated experimentally using a lab scale setup. The Phase I project was originally for one year, from May 2005 to May 2006. With DOE approval, the project was extended to Dec. 2006 without additional cost from DOE to accomplish the work. Water has been used in mining for a number of purposes such as a carrier, washing liquid, dust-catching media, fire-retardation media, temperature-control media, and solvent. When coal is cleaned in wet-processing circuits, waste streams containing water, fine coal, and noncombustible particles (ash-forming minerals) are produced. In many coal preparation plants, the fine waste stream is fed into a series of selection processes where fine coal particles are recovered from the mixture to form diluted coal fine slurries. A dewatering process is then needed to reduce the water content to about 15%-20% so that the product is marketable. However, in the dewatering process …

We report on recent developments with the Purgatorio code, a new implementation of Liberman's Inferno model. This fully relativistic average atom code uses phase shift tracking and an efficient refinement scheme to provide an accurate description of continuum states. The resulting equations of state accurately represent the atomic shell-related features which are absent in Thomas-Fermi-based approaches. We discuss various representations of the exchange potential and some of the ambiguities in the choice of the effective charge Z* in average atom models, both of which affect predictions of electrical conductivities and radiative properties.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Average health insurance premiums for plans participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) have risen each year since 1997. These growing premiums result in higher costs to the federal government and plan enrollees. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) oversees FEHBP, negotiating benefits and premiums and administering reserve accounts that may be used to cover plans' unanticipated spending increases. GAO was asked to evaluate the nature and extent of premium increases. To do this, GAO examined (1) FEHBP premium trends compared with those of other purchasers, (2) factors contributing to average premium growth across all FEHBP plans, and (3) factors contributing to differing trends among selected FEHBP plans. GAO reviewed data provided by OPM relating to FEHBP premiums and factors contributing to premium growth. For comparison purposes, GAO also examined premium data from the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and surveys of other public and private employers. GAO also interviewed officials from OPM and eight FEHBP plans with premium growth that was higher than average, and six FEHBP plans with premium growth that was lower than average to discuss premium growth trends and …

Fluidized Bed Steam Reforming (FBSR) is being considered as an alternative technology for the immobilization of a wide variety of aqueous high sodium containing radioactive wastes at various DOE facilities in the United States. The addition of clay, charcoal, and a catalyst as co-reactants converts aqueous Low Activity Wastes (LAW) to a granular or ''mineralized'' waste form while converting organic components to CO{sub 2} and steam, and nitrate/nitrite components, if any, to N{sub 2}. The waste form produced is a multiphase mineral assemblage of Na-Al-Si (NAS) feldspathoid minerals with cage-like structures that atomically bond radionuclides like Tc-99 and anions such as SO{sub 4}, I, F, and Cl. The granular product has been shown to be as durable as LAW glass. Shallow land burial requires that the mineralized waste form be able to sustain the weight of soil overburden and potential intrusion by future generations. The strength requirement necessitates binding the granular product into a monolith. FBSR mineral products were formulated into a variety of monoliths including various cements, Ceramicrete, and hydroceramics. All but one of the nine monoliths tested met the <2g/m{sup 2} durability specification for Na and Re (simulant for Tc-99) when tested using the Product Consistency Test (PCT; …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A key provision of the Cash Management Improvement Act (CMIA) of 1990 (P.L. 101-453), as amended, requires the federal government and the states to minimize the time between transfer of federal funds and payments made by states for federal grant program purposes. Concerns were expressed by representatives of local government subgrantees that more flexibility was needed in the receipt of federal funding for first responders. Congress exempted certain first responder grants from this CMIA provision in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) fiscal years 2005 and 2006 appropriations acts. Under the exemption, grantees can receive cash advance funding and hold such funds for extended periods of time prior to payment. GAO was asked to (1) assess whether this CMIA provision, prior to its exemption in fiscal year 2005, had prevented DHS grant recipients from receiving first responder grant funds when such funds were needed; and (2) identify any key fiscal and accountability implications of the exemption."

This report provides background on India's nuclear fuel cycle, a discussion of various issues involved in separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and potential concerns for Congress as it considers whether the United States has adequate assurances that its nuclear cooperation.

This report identifies and analyzes the patent law aspects of the avian influenza drug situation.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Spending on outpatient prescription drugs in Medicaid--the joint federal-state program that finances medical services for certain low-income adults and children--has accounted for a substantial and growing share of Medicaid expenditures. Medicaid's total spending on outpatient prescription drugs grew from $4.6 billion in fiscal year 1990 to $40 billion in fiscal year 2004--or from 7.0 to 14.2 percent of Medicaid's total expenditures for medical care. State Medicaid programs do not directly purchase prescription drugs; instead, they reimburse retail pharmacies for covered outpatient prescription drugs dispensed to Medicaid beneficiaries. For some outpatient multiple-source prescription drugs, state Medicaid programs may only receive federal matching funds for reimbursements up to a maximum amount known as a federal upper limit (FUL). Required by law as a cost-containment strategy, FULs are calculated as 150 percent of the lowest price for a drug, from among the prices published nationally in three drug pricing compendia. State Medicaid programs have the authority to determine their own reimbursements to retail pharmacies6 for covered outpatient multiple-source prescription drugs, as long as those reimbursements do not exceed established FULs in the aggregate. The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (DRA) included …

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The non-equilibrium dynamics of mixing, oscillations and equilibration is studied in a field theory of flavored neutral mesons that effectively models two flavors of mixed neutrinos, in interaction with other mesons that represent a thermal bath of hadrons or quarks and charged leptons. This model describes the general features of neutrino mixing and relaxation via charged currents in a medium. The reduced density matrix and the non-equilibrium effective action that describes the propagation of neutrinos is obtained by integrating out the bath degrees of freedom. We obtain the dispersion relations, mixing angles and relaxation rates of ``neutrino'' quasiparticles. The dispersion relations and mixing angles are of the same form as those of neutrinos in the medium, and the relaxation rates are given by $\Gamma_1(k) = \Gamma_{ee}(k) \cos^2\theta_m(k)+\Gamma_{\mu\mu}(k)\sin^2\theta_m(k); \Gamma_2(k)= \Gamma_{\mu\mu}(k) \cos^2\theta_m(k)+\Gamma_{ee}(k)\sin^2\theta_m(k) $ where $\Gamma_{\alpha\alpha}(k)$ are the relaxation rates of the flavor fields in \emph{absence} of mixing, and $\theta_m(k)$ is the mixing angle in the medium. A Weisskopf-Wigner approximation that describes the asymptotic time evolution in terms of a non-hermitian Hamiltonian is derived. At long time $>>\Gamma^{-1}_{1,2}$ ``neutrinos'' equilibrate with the bath. The equilibrium density matrix is nearly diagonal in the basis of eigenstates of an \emph{effective Hamiltonian that includes self-energy corrections …

Ablative targets for the National Ignition Campaign (NIC) have been fabricated by sputter coating spherical mandrels made of glow discharge polymer (GDP) with graded copper doped beryllium (Be) layers. The inner mandrel must be completely removed to meet specific ignition design requirements. The process of removing the mandrel requires elevated temperature in the presence of oxygen. However, elevating the temperature in air also oxidizes the Be and can cause blistering on the inner surface of the Be shell. This paper will discuss a refined technique, which removes the GDP mandrel without compromising the integrity of the inner Be surface. The oxygen gradient that develops during the mandrel removal and the impact of its presence will also be discussed.

This report summarizes the study of the tolerance limits on the assembly of the cathode and the Pierce electrode for the DARHT-II diode (2.5 MV, 2 kA case), performed through a series of computer simulations using the PIC code WARP [1]. We have considered sources of beam quality degradation like the errors in axial and transverse positioning, and the size of the radial gap between the cathode and the Pierce electrode (shroud). The figure of merit was chosen to be the RMS beam (edge) emittance at a distance of 1 meter from the cathode, as defined by {var_epsilon}{sub x} = 4 {beta}{gamma} {radical}(<x{sup 2}><x{prime}{sup 2}>-<xx{prime}>{sup 2}) {center_dot}. The analysis shows that to position the cathode at the correct axial and transverse location is more important than the size of the radial gap.

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 Education Code sections 44.031 and 44.033 apply to real and personal property lease-purchase contracts authorized under Local Government Code sections 271.004 and 271.005 (RQ-0500-GA)

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 Texas Department of Insurance is prohibited from disclosing the identities of companies writing commercial property insurance along the Texas coast (RQ-0502-GA)

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: Education Code section 11.168 and its effect on an independent school district’s authority to build or pay for infrastructure for new schools within the district (RQ-0503-GA)

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 2006 Qualified Allocation Plan of the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs complies with Government Code section 2306.671(b) (RQ-0515-GA)

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.