A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Red Cross played a key role in providing relief to victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, mounting its largest ever disaster response. Under the National Response Plan, and its emergency support function-6 (ESF-6), the Red Cross and FEMA are tasked with working together to coordinate federal mass care assistance in support of voluntary organizations, as well as state and local governments, as they meet mass care needs--such as shelter, food, and first aid. Questions have been raised about how the Red Cross and FEMA operated following the Gulf Coast hurricanes and what improvements can be made for the 2006 hurricane season. This report includes GAO's interim findings on the Red Cross and FEMA's hurricane operations. GAO will continue to analyze federal and charitable hurricane relief efforts."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The recent security breach at the Department of Veterans Affairs, in which personal data on millions of veterans were compromised, has highlighted the importance of the federal government's processes for protecting personal information. As the federal government obtains and processes information about individuals in increasingly diverse ways, it remains critically important that it properly protect this information and respect the privacy rights of individuals. GAO was asked to testify on preventing and responding to improper disclosures of personal information in the federal government, including how agencies should notify individuals and the public when breaches occur. In preparing this testimony, GAO drew on its previous reports and testimonies, as well as on expert opinion provided in congressional testimony and other sources."

We present the scaling properties of Lambda, Xi, and their anti-particles produced at mid-rapidity in Au+Au collisions at RHIC at psNN = 200 GeV. The yield of multi-strange baryons per participant nucleon increases from peripheral to central collisions more rapidly than the Lambda yield, which appears to correspond to an increasing strange quark density of matter produced. The value of the strange phase space occupancy factor gamma s, obtained from a thermal model fit to the data, approaches unity for the most central collisions. We also show that the nuclear modification factors, RCP, of Lambda and Xi are consistent with each other and with that of protons in the transverse momentum range2.0< pT< 5.0 GeV/c. This scaling behaviour is consistent with a scenario of hadron formation from constituent quark degrees of freedom through quark recombination or coalescence.

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 a reserve peace officer may wear his official uniform and display the insignia of an official law enforcement agency while working as a private security officer licensed by the Texas Private Security Board (RQ-0421-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 a county or district clerk is required to charge an administration fee for the return of funds deposited with the clerk as a cash bail bond; reconsideration of Attorney General Opinion JC-0163 (RQ-0425-GA)

The primary focus of this issue brief is legislative action with respect to abortion. However, discussion of those legislative proposals necessarily involves a brief discussion of the leading U.S. Supreme Court decisions concerning a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate her pregnancy. For a more detailed discussion of the relevant case law, see CRS Report 95-724, Abortion Law Development: A Brief Overview.

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A Monte Carlo model has been developed for interrogation of fissionable material embedded in thick cargos when high-energy {beta}-delayed {gamma} rays are detected following neutron-induced fission. The model includes the principal structural components of the laboratory, the neutron source and collimator assembly in which it resides, the assembly that represents cargo of given characteristics, a target of highly-enriched uranium (HEU) and large external plastic scintillators for photon detection. The ability of this model to reproduce experimental measurements was tested by comparing simulations with measurements of the number of induced fissions and the number of detected photons when the HUE target was irradiated with 14.25-MeV neutrons in the absence of any cargo and while embedded in assemblies of plywood and iron pipes. The simulations agreed with experimental measurements within a factor of about 2 for irradiation of the bare target and when the areal density of intervening cargo was 33 g cm{sup -2} (wood) and 61 g cm{sup -2} (steel pipes). This suggests that the model can permit exploration of a large range in parameter space with reasonable fidelity.

The objective of this project is to increase oil recovery from fractured reservoirs through improved fundamental understanding of the process of spontaneous imbibition by which oil is displaced from the rock matrix into the fractures. Spontaneous imbibition is fundamentally dependent on the reservoir surface free energy but this has never been investigated for rocks. In this project, the surface free energy of rocks will be determined by using liquids that can be solidified within the rock pore space at selected saturations. Thin sections of the rock then provide a two-dimensional view of the rock minerals and the occupant phases. Saturations and oil/rock, water/rock, and oil/water surface areas will be determined by advanced petrographic analysis and the surface free energy which drives spontaneous imbibition will be determined as a function of increase in wetting phase saturation. The inherent loss in surface free energy resulting from capillary instabilities at the microscopic (pore level) scale will be distinguished from the decrease in surface free energy that drives spontaneous imbibition. A mathematical network/numerical model will be developed and tested against experimental results of recovery versus time over broad variation of key factors such as rock properties, fluid phase viscosities, sample size, shape and boundary …

With the rising influence of the Gene On-tology, new approaches have emerged where the similarity between genes or gene products is obtained by comparing Gene Ontology code annotations associ-ated with them. So far, these approaches have solely relied on the knowledge en-coded in the Gene Ontology and the gene annotations associated with the Gene On-tology database. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate that improvements to these approaches can be obtained by integrating textual evidence extracted from relevant biomedical literature.

In a first beam dynamics validation experiment for a new Pulse Line Ion Acceleration (PLIA) concept, the predicted energy amplification and beam bunching were experimentally observed. Beam energy modulation of -80 keV to +150 keV was measured using a PLIA input voltage waveform of -21 kV to +12 kV. Ion pulses accelerated by 150 keV, and bunching by a factor of four were simultaneously achieved. The measured longitudinal phase space and current waveform of the accelerated beam are in good agreement with 3-D particle-in-cell simulations.

We use Bane's approximation to the Bjorken-Mtingwa theory of intrabeam scattering to calculate the emittance growth as a function of bunch charge in the KEK ATF. We find that our results are consistent with the experimental data. We then calculate the emittance growth in the NLC Main Damping Rings using the same formulae; we allow for some uncertainty in the ATF data by using two different values for the Coulomb log factor in the formulae for the emittance growth rates. We find that despite the IBS emittance growth, it should still be possible to achieve the specified transverse and longitudinal emittances in the NLC Main Damping Rings at the specified bunch charge.

This report is a compendium of sets of mechanical properties of carbon and low alloy steels following the short-term effects of hydrogen exposure. The property sets include the following: Yield Strength; Ultimate Tensile Strength; Uniform Elongation; Reduction of Area; Threshold Cracking, K{sub H} or K{sub th}; Fracture Toughness (K{sub IC}, J{sub IC}, and/or J-R Curve); and Fatigue Crack Growth (da/dN). These properties are drawn from literature sources under a variety of test methods and conditions. However, the collection of literature data is by no means complete, but the diversity of data and dependency of results in test method is sufficient to warrant a design and implementation of a thorough test program. The program would be needed to enable a defensible demonstration of structural integrity of a pressurized hydrogen system. It is essential that the environmental variables be well-defined (e.g., the applicable hydrogen gas pressure range and the test strain rate) and the specimen preparation be realistically consistent (such as the techniques to charge hydrogen and to maintain the hydrogen concentration in the specimens).

The white shark (Carcharodon carcharias) has a complex life history that is characterized by large scale movements and a highly variable diet. Estimates of age and growth for the white shark from the eastern North Pacific Ocean indicate they have a slow growth rate and a relatively high longevity. Age, growth, and longevity estimates useful for stock assessment and fishery models, however, require some form of validation. By counting vertebral growth band pairs, ages can be estimated, but because not all sharks deposit annual growth bands and many are not easily discernable, it is necessary to validate growth band periodicity with an independent method. Radiocarbon ({sup 14}C) age validation uses the discrete {sup 14}C signal produced from thermonuclear testing in the 1950s and 1960s that is retained in skeletal structures as a time-specific marker. Growth band pairs in vertebrae, estimated as annual and spanning the 1930s to 1990s, were analyzed for {Delta}{sup 14}C and stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes ({delta}{sup 13}C and {delta}{sup 15}N). The aim of this study was to evaluate the utility of {sup 14}C age validation for a wide-ranging species with a complex life history and to use stable isotope measurements in vertebrae as a means of …

Crevice corrosion is currently mostly studied using either one of two techniques depending on the information desired. The first method involves two multicrevice formers or washers fastened on both sides of a sample plate. This technique provides exposure information regarding the severity of crevice corrosion (depth, position, frequency of attack) but delivers little or no electrochemical information. The second method involves the potentiodynamic or potentiostatic study of an uncreviced sample in a model crevice solution or under a crevice former in aggressive solution where crevice corrosion may initiate and propagate and global current is recorded. However, crevice corrosion initiation and propagation behavior is highly dependent on exact position in the crevice over time. The distance from the crevice mouth will affect the solution composition, the pH, the ohmic potential drop and the true potential in the crevice. Coupled multi-electrode arrays (MEA) were used to study crevice corrosion in order to take in account spatial and temporal evolution of electrochemistry simultaneously. Scaling laws were used to rescale the crevice geometry while keeping the corrosion electrochemical properties equivalent to that of a natural crevice at a smaller length scale. one of the advantages was to be able to use commercial alloys available …

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This report provides a history of the creation and evolution of the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct.

This report lists out the independent counsels appointed by the Special Division of the United States Court of Appeals, their dates of appointment and final reports that were submitted by them.

Throughout much of the George W. Bush Administration, U.S.-China relations have remained unusually smooth and stable. But U.S. policy toward China now appears to be subject to competing reassessments. State Department officials late in 2005 unveiled what they described as a new policy framework for the relationship -- one in which the United States was willing to work cooperatively with a non-democratic China while encouraging Beijing to become a "responsible stakeholder" in the global system. Other U.S. policymakers appear to be adopting somewhat tougher stances on issues involving China and U.S.-China relations, expressing their concerns about strong PRC economic growth and a more assertive and influential PRC diplomacy in the international arena.

Border security is considered a central aspect of the United States' overall homeland security. Securing the border involves controlling the official ports of entry (POE) through which legitimate travelers and commerce enter the country, as well as monitoring and patrolling the nation's land and maritime borders to detect and interdict the entry of illegal persons and contraband. In the 109th Congress, there are a large number of bills currently pending that would address some of the immigration issues associated with border security by focusing on the movement of people into the country, both at POE and illegally across the U.S. international land border. This report will focus on the main legislative issues facing the 109th Congress relating to the movement of people across the border. It will not address interior enforcement issues or cargo security issues.

Under the Bush Administration, U.S.-China-Taiwan relations have undergone a number of changes. Initially, the new Administration seemed to abandon the long-standing U.S. policy of "strategic ambiguity" on Taiwan in favor of "strategic clarity" that placed more emphasis on Taiwan's interests and less on PRC concerns. President Bush's first term has been a time of increasing complexity and unpredictability in Taiwan's political environment. Political trends in Taiwan have raised anxieties about its future and the implications for U.S. policy.

The United States and Lebanon continue to enjoy good relations. Prominent current issues between the United States and Lebanon include progress toward a Lebanon-Israel peace treaty, U.S. aid to Lebanon, and Lebanon's capacity to stop Hizballah militia attacks on Israel. Lebanon's government is based in part on a 1943 agreement that called for a Maronite Christian President, a Sunni Muslim Prime Minister, and a Shi'ite Muslim Speaker of the National Assembly. This report explores the above, as well as the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and the formation of a new Lebanese government following the withdrawal of Syrian forces from Lebanon.

The F/A-18E/F Super Hornet is the Navy's highest priority aviation modernization program. The decision to undertake F/A-18E/F Super Hornet program was made during a period of great turbulence in Navy aviation modernization. During this time frame the Navy struggled to identify and implement the best way to modernize its aging fleet of F-14 fighters and A-6E attack aircraft. The Department of Defense is currently facing a shortage of radar and communications jamming capability. The Super Hornet has been approved for international export, but no sales have been made as of June 2006. Key issues surrounding the program relate to the total number of Super Hornets to be procured.