Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the funding of and the making of grants by the Texas Council on Environmental Technology.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the euthanasia of an animal by an animal shelter; providing criminal penalties.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to information that must be included in the adjutant general's annual report.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to discounts or other forms of pricing flexibility for telecommunications services.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to a declaration of a local state of disaster by certain joint airport boards.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to certain therapeutic optometrists' participation in a managed care plan.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the determination of incompetency in criminal and juvenile justice cases.

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives relating to memorializing Congress to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide that the volume cap for private activity bonds not apply to bonds for water and wastewater facilities.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awards more than $200 million annually to universities and colleges to support its research, education, and extension missions. USDA's largest grant program is the National Research Initiative (NRI). GAO was asked to examine the (1) success of minority-serving institutions in competing for NRI research grants, (2) factors that could improve their success in competing for these grants, and (3) actions USDA has taken to improve the quantity and quality of grant proposals these institutions submit. GAO interviewed senior administrators at 43 minority-serving institutions that had either applied for an NRI grant between fiscal years 1997 and 2001 or received more than $100,000 from USDA for research, three major land grant universities, and cognizant USDA officials."

Financial distress is most common among lower-income families, but its incidence has grown in all income brackets. This trend suggests that explanations for the rise in consumer bankruptcy filings are more likely to be found in micro-analysis of individuals and groups of debtors than in macroeconomic indicators. This report presents statistics on bankruptcy filings, household debt, and households in financial distress.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (DOE) is unusual among federal agencies in that it regulates and inspects its own facilities to protect the safety and health of its workers and of the communities surrounding its vast complex of research laboratories. With few exceptions, all other federal facilities must comply with national standards set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for nuclear safety and by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) for worker safety and health. DOE asserts that, for the most part, its safety and health standards meet or exceed those promulgated for facilities regulated by NRC and OSHA. At DOE's 10 science laboratories, which are run by management and operating (M&O) contractors, the department and its contractors use a contract administration process to select standards appropriate to current worker hazards and public safety issues. Both DOE and the M&O contractors are involved in safety and health activities. DOE's field offices, most of which are located at the laboratories, provide continuous safety and health oversight of the M&O contractors. DOE headquarters offices provide policy guidance to the field offices and also conduct some oversight of the laboratories. Safety …

During the three years of this project, two 3-dimensional position sensitive CdZnTe spectrometers were upgraded in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. A prototype Compton-scattering gamma-ray imager was assembled using the two upgraded CdZnTe detectors. The performance of both gamma-ray spectrometers were individually tested. The angular resolution and detection sensitivity of the imaging system were measured using both a point and a line-shaped 137 Cs radiation source. The measurement results are consistent with that obtained from Monte-Carlo simulations performed during the early phase of the project.

The present document is a final technical report summarizing the progress made during 10/16/2000 - 05/13/2003 toward the development of a small-bore railgun with transaugmentation as a testbed for investigating plasma-materials interaction.

The study of the effects of contacting a simulated salt solution spiked with uranium, plutonium, and neptunium with Tank 50H solids. General finding will be reported.

This issue brief views reorganization and management as involving the alteration of the program administrative structure and operations of the executive branch for reasons of efficiency, economy, and direction. The underlying issue is who reorganizes or sets management policy—Congress or the President— and by what authority and, also, for what purpose?

None

None

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Human activities--especially the federal government's decades-old policy of suppressing all wildland fires--have resulted in dangerous accumulations of brush, small trees, and other vegetation on federal lands. This vegetation has increasingly provided fuel for large, intense wildland fires, particularly in the dry, interior western United States. The scale and intensity of the fires in the 2000 wildland fire season made it one of the worst in 50 years. That season capped a decade characterized by dramatic increases in the number of wildland fires and the costs of suppressing them. These fires have also posed special risks to communities in the wildland-urban interface--where human development meets or intermingles with undeveloped wildland--as well as to watersheds and other resources, such as threatened and endangered species, clean water, and clean air. The centerpiece of the federal response to the growing threat of wildland fires has been the development of the National Fire Plan. This plan advocates a new approach to wildland fires by shifting emphasis from the reactive to the proactive--from attempting to suppress wildland fires to reducing the buildup of hazardous vegetation that fuels fires. The plan recognizes that unless these …

At the second Summit of the Americas in Santiago, Chile (April 1998), 34 Western Hemisphere nations agreed to initiate formal negotiations to create a Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) by 2005. The process so far has led to two draft texts, the second completed for the November 1, 2002 trade ministerial in Quito, Ecuador. A year later, the third draft is expected at the eighth trade ministerial scheduled for November 17-21, 2003 in Miami. Although implementing legislation is not anticipated until the next Congress, for an FTAA to be signed in January 2005, the 108th Congress will play a crucial role during this last phase of the negotiations given its expanded consultative and oversight authority as defined in the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA) provisions of the Trade Act of 2002 (P.L. 107-210). This report will be updated periodically.

In the literature on generalized pattern search algorithms, convergence to a stationary point of a once continuously differentiable cost function is established under the assumption that the cost function can be evaluated exactly. However, there is a large class of engineering problems where the numerical evaluation of the cost function involves the solution of systems of differential algebraic equations. Since the termination criteria of the numerical solvers often depend on the design parameters, computer code for solving these systems usually defines a numerical approximation to the cost function that is discontinuous with respect to the design parameters. Standard generalized pattern search algorithms have been applied heuristically to such problems, but no convergence properties have been stated. In this paper we extend a class of generalized pattern search algorithms to a form that uses adaptive precision approximations to the cost function. These numerical approximations need not define a continuous function. Our algorithms can be used for solving linearly constrained problems with cost functions that are at least locally Lipschitz continuous. Assuming that the cost function is smooth, we prove that our algorithms converge to a stationary point. Under the weaker assumption that the cost function is only locally Lipschitz continuous, we …

The report identifies units that are transferred, as well as those that are created. The provisions affecting the transfer of existing positions and the temporary filling of new positions are discussed.

Report on the Department of Defense's (DoD) establishment of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) advancements in fighting terrorism, as well as the issues of NORTHCOM's relationship with other agencies within the DoD.

Legislation establishing a Department of Homeland Security includes provisions for an information analysis element within the new department. This report examines the information analysis function and the sharing of information among federal agencies but does not address provisions in the proposed legislation governing the sharing of intelligence with state and local officials.

This report addresses the Department of Defense's role of Homeland Security.