Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the exemption of certain persons from regulation as a credit services organization or as mortgage brokers.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the justice court technology fund and to requiring the assessment of a technology fee on conviction of certain misdemeanor offenses.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate in memory of President Ronald Wilson Reagan.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate honoring Louis, Ben, Bill, and Rick Bolanos for their valiant service in this country's behalf.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to certain temporary wine and beer retailer's permits.

Joint resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives proposing a constitutional amendment providing for the issuance of additional general obligation bonds by the Texas Water Development Board to provide assistance to economically distressed areas.

Joint resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives proposing a constitutional amendment authorizing the issuance of general obligation bonds for maintenance, improvement, repair, and construction projects and for the purchase of needed equipment.

Detailed Monte Carlo simulations are performed on radiation environment in the LHC IP5 interaction region at the locations of the TOTEM Roman Pots proposed to detect particles produced at very small angles in the elastic scattering and diffraction dissociation processes at the LHC. Radiation loads on these detectors are calculated with the MARS14 code both of the pp-collision origin and beam loss related (beam-gas and tails from collimators).

This report discusses the anxieties within Congress in the wake of the Enron scandal. Moreover, the report notes that the 108th Congress is not likely to pass legislative reform as extreme as the 107th Congress, but will still confront issues of accounting reform. The report also highlights what the 108th Congress plans to reform.

During the last 50 years, a large amount of information on radionuclide accumulators or ''sentinel-type'' organisms in the environment has been published. Much of this work focused on the risks of food-chain transfer of radionuclides to higher organisms such as reindeer and man. However, until the 1980's and 1990's, there has been little published data on the radiocesium ({sup 134}Cs and {sup 137}Cs) accumulation by mushrooms. This presentation will consist of a review of the published data for {sup 134,137}Cs accumulation by mushrooms in nature. This review will discuss the aspects that promote {sup 134,137}Cs uptake by mushrooms and focus on mushrooms that demonstrate a large propensity for use in the environmental biomonitoring of radiocesium contamination. It will also provide descriptions of habitats for many of these mushrooms and discuss on how growth media and other conditions relate to Cs accumulation.

Sub-Saharan Africa has been far more severely affected by AIDS than any other part of the world. The United Nations reports that 26.6 million adults and children are infected with the HIV virus in the region, which has about 10% of the world's population but more than two-thirds of the worldwide total of infected people. This report discusses this issue in detail, including the cause of the African AIDS epidemic, the social and economic consequences, response and treatment, and U.S. policy.

An archaeological evaluation of proposed pipeline system improvements in northern Milam County.

Argonne National Laboratory founded the Laboratory Computing Resource Center (LCRC) in the spring of 2002 to help meet pressing program needs for computational modeling, simulation, and analysis. The guiding mission is to provide critical computing resources that accelerate the development of high-performance computing expertise, applications, and computations to meet the Laboratory's challenging science and engineering missions. In September 2002 the LCRC deployed a 350-node computing cluster from Linux NetworX to address Laboratory needs for mid-range supercomputing. This cluster, named 'Jazz', achieved over a teraflop of computing power (1012 floating-point calculations per second) on standard tests, making it the Laboratory's first terascale computing system and one of the 50 fastest computers in the world at the time. Jazz was made available to early users in November 2002 while the system was undergoing development and configuration. In April 2003, Jazz was officially made available for production operation. Since then, the Jazz user community has grown steadily. By the end of fiscal year 2007, there were over 60 active projects representing a wide cross-section of Laboratory expertise, including work in biosciences, chemistry, climate, computer science, engineering applications, environmental science, geoscience, information science, materials science, mathematics, nanoscience, nuclear engineering, and physics. Most important, many …

This report provides a background and overview of arsenic-treated wood.

The Engineered Barrier System (EBS) represents one system in the performance of the Yucca Mountain high-level radioactive waste (HLW) repository to isolate and prevent the transport of radionuclides from the site to the accessible environment. Breached Waste Package and Drip Shield Experiments (BWPDSE) were performed at the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration Nevada Support Facility in North Las Vegas, NV in the A-1 lowbay between May 2, 2002 and July 25, 2002. Data collected from the BWPDSE will be used to support the flux splitting model used in Analysis and Modeling Report ANL-WIS-PA-000001 REV 00 ICN 03 ''EBS Radionuclide Transport Abstraction'' (BSC 2001a). Tests were conducted by dripping water from heights representing the drift crown or wall on a full-scale section of a drip shield with both smooth and rough surfaces. The drip shields had machined square breaches that represent the general corrosion breaches or nodes in the ''WAPDEG Analysis of Waste Package and Drip Shield Degradation'' AMR (CRWMS M&O 2000d). Tests conducted during the BWPDSE included: initial tests to determine the splash radius distances and spread factor from the line of drip impact, single patch tests to determine the amount of water collected in target breaches from …

The Westinghouse Savannah River Company (WSRC) has developed a software tool for automating the Human Factors Engineering (HFE) design review, analysis, and evaluation processes. The tool provides a consistent, cost effective, graded, user-friendly approach for evaluating process control system Human System Interface (HSI) specifications, designs, and existing implementations. The initial set of HFE design guidelines, used in the tool, was obtained from NUREG- 0700. Each guideline was analyzed and classified according to its significance (general concept vs. supporting detail), the HSI technology (computer based vs. non-computer based), and the HSI safety function (safety vs. non-safety). Approximately 10 percent of the guidelines were determined to be redundant or obsolete and were discarded. The remaining guidelines were arranged in a Microsoft Access relational database, and a Microsoft Visual Basic user interface was provided to facilitate the HFE design review. The tool also provides the capability to add new criteria to accommodate advances in HSI technology and incorporate lessons learned. Summary reports produced by the tool can be easily ported to Microsoft Word and other popular PC office applications. An IBM compatible PC with Microsoft Windows 95 or higher is required to run the application.

This Final Report covers the work executed by Plug Power from 8/11/03 – 10/31/07 statement of work for Topic 2: advancing the state of the art of fuel cell technology with the development of a new generation of commercially viable, stationary, Back-up/Peak-Shaving fuel cell systems, the GenCore II. The Program cost was $7.2 M with the Department of Energy share being $3.6M and Plug Power’s share being $3.6 M. The Program started in August of 2003 and was scheduled to end in January of 2006. The actual program end date was October of 2007. A no cost extension was grated. The Department of Energy barriers addressed as part of this program are: Technical Barriers for Distributed Generation Systems: o Durability o Power Electronics o Start up time Technical Barriers for Fuel Cell Components: o Stack Material and Manufacturing Cost o Durability o Thermal and water management Background The next generation GenCore backup fuel cell system to be designed, developed and tested by Plug Power under the program is the first, mass-manufacturable design implementation of Plug Power’s GenCore architected platform targeted for battery and small generator replacement applications in the telecommunications, broadband and UPS markets. The next generation GenCore will be …

The challenge of achieving the Tevatron Run II luminosity goal of 3 {center_dot} 10{sup 32} cm{sup -2} s{sup -1} requires high level of engineering and machine operation, good and reliable diagnostics, and clear understanding of the underlying accelerator physics. Recent history demonstrated steady increase of the Tevatron luminosity, which was supported by each of the three listed above items. This report reviews major developments in the accelerator physics, which contributed in the Run II luminosity growth. Present limitations of the luminosity and projections of further luminosity growth are also discussed.

The U.S. wood products industry is a leader in the production of innovative wood materials. New products are taking shape within a growth industry for fiberboard, plywood, particle board, and other natural material-based energy efficient building materials. However, at the same time, standards for clean air are becoming ever stricter. Emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) during production of wood products (including methanol, formaldehyde, acetylaldehyde, and mercaptans) must be tightly controlled. Conventional VOC and HAP emission control techniques such as regenerative thermal oxidation (RTO) and regenerative catalytic oxidation (RCO) require significant amounts of energy and generate secondary pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and spent carbon. Biological treatment of air emissions offers a cost-effective and sustainable control technology for industrial facilities facing increasingly stringent air emission standards. A novel biological treatment system that integrates two types of biofilter systems, promises significant energy and cost savings. This novel system uses microorganisms to degrade air toxins without the use of natural gas as fuel or the creation of secondary pollutants. The replacement of conventional thermal oxidizers with biofilters will yield natural gas savings alone in the range of $82,500 to $231,000 per year per unit. Widespread use of …

For the past several years, the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA) has provided ions of iron, silicon and gold, at energies from 600 MeV/nucleon to 10 GeV/nucleon, for the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) radiobiology research program. NASA has recently funded the construction of a new dedicated ion facility, the Booster Applications Facility (BAF). The Booster synchrotron will supply ion beams ranging from protons to gold, in an energy range from 40--3,000 MeV/nucleon with maximum beam intensities of 10{sup 10} to 10{sup 11} ions per pulse. The BAF Project is described and the future AGS and BAF operation plans are presented.

CDF Run II relative branching ratio measurements for 65 pb{sup -1} of data in the channels B{sub s} {yields} D{sub s}{sup {-+}}{pi}{sup {-+}}, {Lambda} {sub b}{sup 0} {yields} {Lambda}{sub c}{sup {+-}}{pi}{sup {-+}} and B {yields} h{sup +}h{sup -} are presented. Further, an observation of B{sub s} {yields} K{sup {+-}} K{sup {-+}} and a measurement of A{sub CP} are presented.

This report discusses the federal budget for fiscal year 2005.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In connection with fulfilling our requirement to audit the financial statements of the U.S. government, we audited and reported on the Schedules of Federal Debt Managed by the Bureau of the Public Debt (BPD) for the fiscal years ended September 30, 2003 and 2002. As part of these audits, we performed a review of the general and application computer controls over key BPD financial systems."

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