Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Supplementing our December 2006 report entitled Compacts of Free Association: Micronesia and the Marshall Islands Face Challenges in Planning for Sustainability, Measuring Progress, and Ensuring Accountability, this report provides information on the uses of economic assistance provided under the amended U.S. compacts with the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) from 2004 through 2006."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Three U.S. national strategies, developed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, directed U.S. law enforcement agencies (LEA) to focus on the prevention of terrorist attacks. The strategies called for LEAs to intensify their efforts to help foreign nations identify, disrupt, and prosecute terrorists. GAO was asked to assess (1) the guidance for LEAs to assist foreign nations to identify, disrupt, and prosecute terrorists and (2) the extent to which LEAs have implemented this guidance."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The congressionally established unified carrier fee system was not implemented before its predecessor, the Single State Registration System, expired thereby preventing states from collecting fees from for-hire motor carriers and other related entities. The Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU) mandated that a new unified carrier fee system replace the Single State Registration System, which expired on January 1, 2007. The Single State Registration System annually provided 38 states with about $100 million in total fees collected from for-hire interstate motor carriers. States used revenue collected from this system to supplement general funds and conduct safety-related services. Unlike the Single State Registration System, the new system broadened the base of those expected to pay fees to include exempt for-hire motor carriers, private motor carriers, brokers, freight forwarders, and leasing companies. To develop and administer this new fee system, Congress established a Board of Directors. This board is also tasked with administering a federal-interstate Unified Carrier Registration Agreement (UCRA), and issuing rules and regulations to govern this agreement. GAO was asked to examine the progress that the board and the Department of Transportation …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As of April 2007, about 26,000 service members had been injured as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), according to the Department of Defense (DOD). Those service members injured in the line of duty are eligible for military disability compensation. When they leave the military, they may also be eligible for compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). In fiscal year 2005 alone, the Army, Navy, and Air Force evaluated over 23,000 military disability retirement cases and, in fiscal year 2004, over $1 billion in permanent and temporary military disability retirement benefits were paid to over 90,000 service members. Through the VA disability compensation and pension claims programs, about $34.5 billion in VA cash disability benefits went to more than 3.5 million veterans and their survivors in fiscal year 2006. On April 23, 2007, we briefed the Commission on the results of our recent studies of DOD and VA disability systems. This report presents the information we provided during that briefing."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "On March 13, 2007, we issued our report on our audit of the Capitol Preservation Fund's (CPF) fiscal years 2005 and 2004 financial statements, including the results of our tests of related internal control and selected provisions of laws. In that report, we noted the need to improve certain CPF-related internal controls established by the Library of Congress (Library) in conjunction with financial management services it provides to the Capitol Preservation Commission (Commission). The purpose of this report is to discuss further those internal control deficiencies and to make four recommendations to the Library for improving its CPF-related internal controls and related procedures."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Each year the federal government funds numerous affordable housing and community and economic development initiatives through an array of programs, such as the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Section 108 Loan Guarantee (Section 108) program. Yet, the need for federal money to fund these initiatives has continued to grow, while the federal budget increasingly has been strained by other competing funding priorities. To help finance their initiatives and achieve program goals, recipients of funding under these federal programs often have combined or "leveraged" their funds with other federal, state, local, and private sector resources. While leveraging is generally recognized favorably by public and private sector officials, its use in federal programs has not been widely analyzed. This report responds, in part, to Congress's request that we examine leveraging as it relates to federal housing, community, and economic development programs. Specifically, this interim report (1) examines the perspectives of stakeholders--government and industry officials, academics, and others with knowledge of or experience with leveraging--on the use, implications, and measurement of leveraging in housing and community and economic development programs and (2) describes the type of data HUD collects …

Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE) conducted independent verification radiological survey activities at Argonne National Laboratory’s Building 315, Zero Power Reactor-6 facility in Argonne, Illinois. Independent verification survey activities included document and data reviews, alpha plus beta and gamma surface scans, alpha and beta surface activity measurements, and instrumentation comparisons. An interim letter report and a draft report, documenting the verification survey findings, were submitted to the DOE on November 8, 2006 and February 22, 2007, respectively (ORISE 2006b and 2007).

Despite their great importance in low-temperaturegeochemistry, self-diffusion coefficients of noble gas isotopes in liquidwater (D) have been measured only for the major isotopes of helium, neon,krypton and xenon. Data on the self-diffusion coefficients of minor noblegas isotopes are essentially non-existent and so typically are estimatedby a kinetic theory model in which D varies as the inverse square root ofthe isotopic mass (m): D proportional to m-0.5. To examine the validityof the kinetic theory model, we performed molecular dynamics (MD)simulations of the diffusion of noble gases in ambient liquid water withan accurate set of noble gas-water interaction potentials. Our simulationresults agree with available experimental data on the solvation structureand self-diffusion coefficients of the major noble gas isotopes in liquidwater and reveal for the first time that the isotopic mass-dependence ofall noble gas self-diffusion coefficients has the power-law form Dproportional to m-beta with 0<beta<0.2. Thus our results callinto serious question the widespread assumption that the square rootmodel can be applied to estimate the kinetic fractionation of noble gasisotopes caused by diffusion in ambient liquid water.

Recently, it was demonstrated that the quasiparticledynamics, the layer-dependent charge and potential, and the c-axisscreening coefficient could be extracted from measurements of thespectral function of few layer graphene films grown epitaxially on SiCusing angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES). In this articlewe review these findings, and present detailed methodology for extractingsuch parameters from ARPES. We also present detailed arguments againstthe possibility of an energy gap at the Dirac crossing ED.

In this CRADA, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) assisted RIS Corporation of Knoxville, TN, in the development of graphical environment tools for the development and programming of high speed real-time algorithms to be implemented in a Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The primary application was intended to be digital signal processing for gamma-ray spectroscopy, in particular for Gamma-Ray Energy Tracking Arrays such as the GRETINA project. Key components of this work included assembling an evaluation platform to verify designs on actual hardware, and creating various types of Simulink functional blocks for peak-shaping and constant-fraction discrimination.

This report, sponsored the Army's Energy Engineering Analysis Program, provides the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) Energy manager and practitioner with useful information about the top O&M opportunities consistently found across the DoD/Army sector. The target is to help the DoD/Army sector develop a well-structured and organized O&M program.

CBP-Tech Note-345 (July 2005), devoted to a study of microbunching instability in FERMI@ELETTRA linac quotes '...the above analysis shows that the most of the gain in microbunching instability occurs after BC2, i.e. after transformation of the energy modulation to the spatial modulation that takes place in BC2. It is possible to avoid that if we use only BC1 for all our needs for bunch compression. There are also additional advantages for a mitigation of the microbunching instability related to that. First, we would need to increase R56 in BC1 (for given energy chirp in the electron beam). Second, a relative energy spread is significantly larger at BC1 than at BC2. Both these factors would contribute to instability suppression due to increased Landau damping effect.' One additional argument was however missed in that report. Instability smearing due to finite emittance is stronger in BC1 simply because the geometrical emittance is larger than in BC2. In spite of the considerations in favor of a lattice with one-stage compressor, it was thought at the time that the two bunch compressors configuration was still preferable as it appeared difficult to obtain a flat-flat distribution at the end of the linac with only one bunch …

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the imposition of impact fees on the property of a school district.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to the continuation and functions of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to certain insurance premium surcharges.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to an optional fee on registration of a vehicle in certain counties to fund transportation projects.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to a prohibition on linking the compensation of the chief appraiser of an appraisal district to an increase in the total value of property in the district.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to designating a county official to file certain financial information with the county commissioners court.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to a prohibition on ex parte communications between a member of the board of directors and the chief appraiser of an appraisal district; providing a penalty.

Joint resolution introduced by the Texas House of Representatives and Senate relating to proposing a constitutional amendment providing for the continuation of the constitutional appropriation for facilities and other capital items at Angelo State University on a change in the governance of the university.

Bill introduced by the Texas Senate relating to certain shipments by package stores and wine only package stores to customers.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to adoption and operation of requirements regarding health benefit plan identification cards.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to notice to a surface owner by an oil or gas well operator of the issuance of a permit for certain oil and gas operations.

Bill introduced by the Texas House of Representatives relating to the appointment of bailiffs for the 415th District Court.