A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since 1995, the average price of natural gas in the United States has almost tripled as demand has grown faster than supply. Despite this increase, natural gas is regularly lost as it is burned (flared) and released into the atmosphere (vented) during the production of oil and gas. GAO was asked to (1) describe flaring and venting data and what the federal government could do to improve them; (2) report, on the basis of available information, on the extent of flaring and venting and their contributions to greenhouse gases; and (3) identify opportunities for the federal government to reduce flaring and venting."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To help investors make informed decisions, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) enforces federal securities laws requiring companies to disclose all information that would be considered important or "material" to a reasonable investor, including information on environmental risks and liabilities, in reports filed with SEC. To monitor companies' disclosures, SEC reviews their filings and issues comment letters requesting revisions or additional information, if needed. This report addresses (1) key stakeholders' views on how well SEC has defined the requirements for environmental disclosure, (2) the extent to which companies are disclosing such information in their SEC filings, (3) the adequacy of SEC's efforts to monitor and enforce compliance with disclosure requirements, and (4) experts' suggestions for increasing and improving environmental disclosure."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "With responsibility for protecting thousands of federal facilities, the Federal Protective Service (FPS), which transferred from the General Services Administration (GSA) to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in March 2003, plays a critical role in the federal government's defense against the threat of terrorism and other criminal activity. GAO was asked to determine what challenges, if any, FPS faces now that it has been transferred from GSA to DHS."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Health care is an information-intensive industry that remains highly fragmented and inefficient. Hence, the uses of information technology (IT)--in delivering clinical care, performing administrative functions, and supporting the public health infrastructure--have the potential to yield both cost savings and improvements in the care itself. In 2003, GAO reported on benefits to health care that could result from using IT--both cost savings and measurable improvements in the delivery and quality of care. GAO also reported on federal agencies' existing and planned information systems intended to support our nation's preparedness for and ability to respond to public health emergencies and the status of health care standards setting initiatives. Congress has asked GAO to summarize our work on reported benefits of the use of IT for health care delivery and on IT initiatives supporting public health preparedness and response."

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 article XI, section 11(A) of the Texas Constitution applies to city officers with two year terms or city police officers, and whether a home-rule city with two year terms may provide in its charter that a mayor or council member who becomes a candidate for another office automatically vacates the current office (RQ-0168-GA)

We measured the nondipole parameters for the spin-orbit doublets Xe 4d{sub 5/2} and Xe 4d{sub 3/2} over a photon-energy range from 100 eV to 250 eV at beamline 8.0.1.3 of the Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Significant nondipole effects are found at relatively low energies as a result of Cooper minima in dipole channels and interchannel coupling in quadrupole channels. Most importantly, sharp disagreement between experiment and theory, when otherwise excellent agreement was expected, has provided the first evidence of satellite two-electron quadrupole photoionization transitions, along with their crucial importance for a quantitatively accurate theory.

As part of Task 1 in Advanced Technologies for Stripper Gas Well Enhancement, Schlumberger Data & Consulting Services (DCS) joined with two Appalachian Basin producers, Great Lakes Energy Partners, LLC, and Belden & Blake Corporation to develop methodologies for identification and enhancement of stripper wells with economic upside potential. These industry partners previously provided us with data for more than 700 wells in northwestern Pennsylvania. Phase 1 goals of this project are to develop and validate methodologies that can quickly and cost-effectively identify underperforming wells with remediation potential. We have enhanced and streamlined our software and are using it with the latest versions of Microsoft's{trademark} Access and Excel programs. During the last quarter of 2002, Great Lakes provided us with additional data for approximately 2,200 wells located in their Cooperstown field situated in northwestern Pennsylvania. We identified approximately 130 potential remediation candidates, and Great Lakes personnel are currently reviewing this list for viable remediation. Within the last few weeks, a list of five candidates have been chosen for refract, in addition to two alternate wells. This field has provided a rigorous test of our software and analytical methods. We have processed all the information provided to us including the Cooperstown …

Although its value varies with the microstructure, hysteresis always accompanies hydride formation and decomposition in Pd(pure)-H, e.g., it is present even in nano-crystalline and thin films. Internal oxidation of Pd0.93Cr0.07 alloys leads to a pure Pd matrix containing nano-crystalline chromia precipitates. The characteristic hysteresis of Pd-H almost disappears in this form of Pd. The reasons for this are discussed. Hysteresis is an almost universal feature of first order solid state transitions. Its presence means that when such a transition is reversed, it follows a different path than that taken in the forward direction leading to a loss of useful work. Hysteresis is, of course, a reflection of the irreversibility of the transition.

Production of 18 superconducting low-beta quadrupoles (MQXB) for the LHC is well advanced. These 5.5 m long magnets are designed to operate at 1.9 K with a peak field gradient of 215 T/m in 70 mm aperture. Two MQXB cold masses with a dipole orbit corrector between them form a single cryogenic unit (LQXB) which is the Q2 optical element of the final focus triplets in the LHC interaction regions. A program of magnetic field quality and alignment measurements of the cold masses is performed at room temperature during magnet fabrication and of the LQXB assembly as well as at superfluid helium temperature. Results of these measurements are summarized in this paper.

To comply with the applicable requirements of the U.S. Department of Energy (US DOE), this closure plan has been developed for the E-Area Low-Level Waste Facility(LLWF). The plan is organized according to the specifications of the Format and Content Guide for U.S. Department of Energy Low-Level Waste Disposal Facility Closure Plans. Section 2 provides a brief overview of the general facility description, closure approach, closure schedule, related activities, and key assumptions. Sections 3 and 4 provide specific details of facility characteristics and the technical approach to closure, respectively, as well as supporting information. Additional schedule details are provided in Section 5. Section 6 provides a list of recommended items for consideration in association with future revisions to the E-Area LLWF Closure Plan and Performance Assessment (PA). Operation of the E-Area LLWF began with placement of the first low-level waste box within the Low Activity Waste (LAW) Vault. It is anticipated that operations will continue for at least 25 years, and that a 100-year institutional control period will follow cessation of operations. It is further anticipated that closure will be conducted in the following three phases: operational closure, interim closure, and final closure. Operational closure will be conducted during the 25 …

This report addresses a quarterly report about the advanced technologies of stripper gas well enhancement from July 1 to September 30, 2003

This paper presents the basics of this model, including what physical conditions could produce a calibration constant shift and what might cause those conditions to arise. The new evidences are discussed and it is shown that the possibility of at-the-electrode recombination cannot be eliminated, in fact prior photographic evidence is shown to be reasonable evidence of this phenomenon. Thus in the absence of definitive data, the conclusion that apparent excess heat arises from a nuclear cause is premature. If the apparent excess heat signal is not representative of a true heat source, but is instead an equipment/method malfunction, integrating the signal is of no value. This paper proposes that is the situation, and will therefore focus on examining the phenomenon of apparent excess enthalpy (sometimes called excess heat). Not addressed will be the myriad of other purported evidences of nuclear reactions. The apparent excess heat claims form the largest block of claims for a nuclear FPHE cause, and the correlation of apparent excess heat with apparent nuclear ash detection is often cited as evidence of the nuclear nature of the FPHE. But confidence in the validity of the apparent excess heat signal is of critical importance in validating a nuclear …

SRTC personnel are developing a technique that can determine the concentration of tetraphenylborate (TPB) at 300 grams in 100,000 gallons of salt solution (0.8 mg/L) in the presence of0.378 Ci/gal of Cs-137. The current High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) method of analysis can determine the TPB concentration at 5 mg/L and higher. The limit of quantitation was lowered by modification of the sample preparation steps. The HPLC sample preparation method currently used requires neutralization of the tank waste sample followed by extraction with acetonitrile. This method dilutes the tank waste sample 6.5 to 1 increasing the limit of quantitation. The method described in this report concentrates the sample two-fold lowering the limit of quantitation from 5 mg/L to 0.25mg/L. Researchers used solvent extraction of undiluted tank waste to isolate, and concentrate (two-fold) samples of tank supernate and Plant Inhibited Water (PIW) that simulated tank supernate at the cesium level of approximately 0.3 Ci/gal. The 137Cs content in the tank supernate measured 0.65 Ci/gal prior to a two-fold dilution with PIW. The concentration of the TPB was determined by HPLC on a reversed-phase HPLC column using methanol, acetonitrile, and buffered water as the mobile phase. Important Findings: The 0.8 mg/L quantitation …

Research over the past decade has studied the adsorption of plutonium and uranium onto monosodium titanate (MST) in alkaline solutions. Tests showed that MST would remove the targeted radionuclides from simulated alkaline waste. Testing also indicated that Pu removal kinetics and Np capacity of the MST material impacts the size of equipment and waste blending plans for the Salt Waste Processing Facility (SWPF). Additionally, calculations suggested the baseline MST process may not achieve the desired decontamination in wastes containing elevated concentrations of Pu and Np. In this task, the authors investigated the performance of non-baseline process parameters and their effectiveness for treating waste feed in the Salt Waste Processing Facility. The work addresses a DOE request in support of technical needs expressed, in part, by the Engineering, Procurement, and Construction Contractors for the Salt Waste Processing Facility. The work investigated the effect of increased MST addition (up to 1.2 g/L) and the benefit of extra filtration steps with multiple additions of MST to salt waste containing actinides and strontium. Both simulant and actual waste testing occurred. Actual waste tests used a Tank 39H composite waste solution. In addition, testing to determine desorption of actinides from residual MST occurred. The release …

Cellular senescence suppresses cancer by arresting cells at risk for malignant tumorigenesis. However, senescent cells also secrete molecules that can stimulate premalignant cells to proliferate and form tumors, suggesting the senescence response is antagonistically pleiotropic. We show that premalignant mammary epithelial cells exposed to senescent human fibroblasts in mice irreversibly lose differentiated properties, become invasive and undergo full malignant transformation. Moreover, using cultured mouse or human fibroblasts and non-malignant breast epithelial cells, we show that senescent fibroblasts disrupt epithelial alveolar morphogenesis, functional differentiation, and branching morphogenesis. Further, we identify MMP-3 as the major factor responsible for the effects of senescent fibroblasts on branching morphogenesis. Our findings support the idea that senescent cells contribute to age-related pathology, including cancer, and describe a new property of senescent fibroblasts--the ability to alter epithelial differentiation--that might also explain the loss of tissue function and organization that is a hallmark of aging.

Parasitic energy loss of the particle beam in the Recycler Ring is discussed. The long beam confined between two barrier waves has a spectrum that falls off rapidly with frequency. Discrete summation over the revolution harmonics must be made to obtain the correct energy loss per particle per turn, because only a few lower revolution harmonics of real part of the longitudinal impedance contribute to the parasitic energy loss. The longitudinal impedances of the broadband rf cavities, the broadband resistive-wall monitors, and the resistive wall of the vacuum chamber are discussed. They are the main sources of the parasitic energy loss.

The structural genomics project is an international effort to determine the three-dimensional shapes of all important biological macromolecules, with a primary focus on proteins. Target proteins should be selected according to a strategy which is medically and biologically relevant, of good value, and tractable. As an option to consider, we present the Pfam5000 strategy, which involves selecting the 5000 most important families from the Pfam database as sources for targets. We compare the Pfam5000 strategy to several other proposed strategies that would require similar numbers of targets. These include including complete solution of several small to moderately sized bacterial proteomes, partial coverage of the human proteome, and random selection of approximately 5000 targets from sequenced genomes. We measure the impact that successful implementation of these strategies would have upon structural interpretation of the proteins in Swiss-Prot, TrEMBL, and 131 complete proteomes (including 10 of eukaryotes) from the Proteome Analysis database at EBI. Solving the structures of proteins from the 5000 largest Pfam families would allow accurate fold assignment for approximately 68 percent of all prokaryotic proteins (covering 59 percent of residues) and 61 percent of eukaryotic proteins (40 percent of residues). More fine-grained coverage which would allow accurate modeling of …

This report summarizes a quarterly report of the advanced technologies for stripper gas well enhancement during January 1 to March 31, 2004.

This report addresses a quarterly report of the advanced technologies for stripper gas well enhancement.

This report discusses the legislative requirement for the offices of the U.S. government to be located in the District of Columbia (DC), dating to 1790. The report provides an overview of the relevant provisions (codified at 4 U.S.C. 71 and 72) and agencies that have exemptions.

Neutron-induced reaction cross sections are sometimes difficult to measure due to target or beam limitations. For two-step reactions proceeding through an equilibrated intermediate state, an alternate ''surrogate reaction'' technique can be applicable, and is currently undergoing investigation at LLNL. Measured decay probabilities for the intermediate nucleus formed in a light-ion reaction can be combined with optical-model calculations for the formation of the same intermediate nucleus via the neutron-induced reaction. The result is an estimation for overall (n,{gamma}/n/2n) cross sections. As a benchmark, the reaction {sup 92}Zr({alpha},{alpha}'), surrogate, for n+{sup 91}Zr, was studied at the A.W. Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale. Particles were detected in the silicon telescope STARS (Silicon Telescope Array for Reaction Studies) and {gamma}-ray energies measured with germanium clover detectors from the YRAST (Yale Rochester Array for SpecTroscopy) ball. The experiment and preliminary observations will be discussed.

This report provides a history of the creation and evolution of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Also known as the House Ethics Committee and the Committee on Standards, it was first established as a select committee in 1966. It became a standing committee in 1967. Since that time, it has undergone two major reorganizations, first in 1989, and again in 1997.

Multiple sequence alignment analysis is a powerful approach for understanding phylogenetic relationships, annotating genes and detecting functional regulatory elements. With a growing number of partly or fully sequenced vertebrate genomes, effective tools for performing multiple comparisons are required to accurately and efficiently assist biological discoveries. Here we introduce Mulan (http://mulan.dcode.org/), a novel method and a network server for comparing multiple draft and finished-quality sequences to identify functional elements conserved over evolutionary time. Mulan brings together several novel algorithms: the tba multi-aligner program for rapid identification of local sequence conservation and the multiTF program for detecting evolutionarily conserved transcription factor binding sites in multiple alignments. In addition, Mulan supports two-way communication with the GALA database; alignments of multiple species dynamically generated in GALA can be viewed in Mulan, and conserved transcription factor binding sites identified with Mulan/multiTF can be integrated and overlaid with extensive genome annotation data using GALA. Local multiple alignments computed by Mulan ensure reliable representation of short-and large-scale genomic rearrangements in distant organisms. Mulan allows for interactive modification of critical conservation parameters to differentially predict conserved regions in comparisons of both closely and distantly related species. We illustrate the uses and applications of the Mulan tool through multi-species …

Gene deserts, long stretches of DNA sequence devoid of protein coding genes, span approximately one quarter of the human genome. Through human-chicken genome comparisons we were able to characterized one third of human gene deserts as evolutionarily stable - they are highly conserved in vertebrates, resist chromosomal rearrangements, and contain multiple conserved non-coding elements physically linked to their neighboring genes. A linear relationship was observed between human and chicken orthologous stable gene deserts, where the human deserts appear to have expanded homogeneously by a uniform accumulation of repetitive elements. Stable gene deserts are associated with key vertebrate genes that construct the framework of vertebrate development; many of which encode transcription factors. We show that the regulatory machinery governing genes associated with stable gene deserts operates differently from other regions in the human genome and relies heavily on distant regulatory elements. The regulation guided by these elements is independent of the distance between the gene and its distant regulatory element, or the distance between two distant regulatory cassettes. The location of gene deserts and their associated genes in the genome is independent of chromosomal length or content presenting these regions as well-bounded regions evolving separately from the rest of the genome.