A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins ""Enhanced 911" (E911) service refers to the capability of public safety answering points to automatically receive an emergency caller's location information. An industry association estimates that nearly 82 million 911 calls are placed each year by callers using mobile phones. Wireless E911 technology provides emergency responders with the location and callback number of a person calling 911 from a mobile phone. The ENHANCE 911 Act of 2004 called for GAO to study state and local use of funds collected for the purpose of wireless E911 implementation. We are reporting on (1) the progress made in implementing wireless E911 services throughout the country, (2) the states and localities that have established taxes, fees, or charges for wireless E911 implementation, and (3) the states or localities that have used funds collected for the purposes of wireless E911 for unrelated purposes. To address these issues, we surveyed state-level E911 contacts on the collection and use of E911 funds. Of the 51 state E911 contacts (including the District of Columbia) who were asked to participate in our survey, we received 44 responses. We provided the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) with …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The relative size of the Department of State's (State) travel program and continuing concerns about fraud, waste, and abuse in government travel card programs led to this request to audit State's centrally billed travel accounts. GAO was asked to evaluate the effectiveness of internal controls over (1) the authorization and justification of premium-class tickets charged to the centrally billed account and (2) monitoring of unused tickets, reconciling monthly statements, and maximizing performance rebates."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the fiscal year 2007 budget request for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). This request will help us continue our support of the Congress in meeting its constitutional responsibilities and will help improve the performance and ensure the accountability of the federal government for the benefit of the American people. Budget constraints in the federal government grew tighter in fiscal years 2005 and 2006. In developing our fiscal year 2007 budget, we considered those constraints consistent with GAO's and the Committee's desire to "lead by example." In fiscal year 2007, we are requesting budget authority of $509.4 million, a reasonable 5 percent increase over our fiscal year 2006 revised funding level. In the event Congress acts to hold federal pay increases to 2.2 percent, our requested increase will drop to below 5 percent. This request will allow us to continue making improvements in productivity, maintain our progress in technology and other transformation areas, and support a full-time equivalent (FTE) staffing level of 3,267. This represents an increase of 50 FTEs over our planned fiscal year 2006 staffing level and will allow us to rebuild our …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 2002, GAO reported that immigration benefit fraud was pervasive and significant and the approach to controlling it was fragmented. Experts believe that individuals ineligible for these benefits, including terrorists and criminals, could use fraudulent means to enter or remain in the U.S. You asked that GAO evaluate U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service's (USCIS) anti-fraud efforts. This report addresses the questions: (1) What do available data and information indicate regarding the nature and extent of fraud? (2) What actions has USCIS taken to improve its ability to detect fraud? (3) What actions does the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) take to sanction those who commit fraud?"

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This report discusses ethanol consumption which has grown significantly in the past several years with the establishment of a renewable fuels standard in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (P.L. 109-58). This standard requires U.S. gasoline to contain a minimum amount of renewable fuel, including ethanol.

Economists have advocated for real-time pricing (RTP) of electricity on the basis of the gains in economic efficiency that would result from charging customers the contemporaneous marginal cost of supplying electricity instead of the average cost. In recent years, RTP has also become the subject of interest in a variety of policy contexts, including integrated resource planning initiatives, ongoing efforts to improve efficiency and reliability in competitive electricity markets, and implementation of default service in states with retail choice. Most experience with RTP has been as an optional service, that is, a self-selecting alternative to the standard utility service. By our count, approximately 70 utilities in the U.S. offered an optional RTP program at some point over the past 20 years. However, many programs are now defunct. In 2003, 47 utilities in the U.S. were still offering an optional RTP program, on either a pilot or permanent basis (see Figure 1). In addition, 10 utilities in states with retail choice currently offer RTP as the default service for large customers that are not under contract with a competitive supplier. Another two utilities have received regulatory approval to do so in the next few years. Although the results of a few …

Dynamic retail electricity pricing, especially real-time pricing (RTP), has been widely heralded as a panacea for providing much-needed demand response in electricity markets. However, in designing default service for competitive retail markets, demand response often appears to be an afterthought. But that may be changing as states that initiated customer choice in the past 5-7 years reach an important juncture in retail market design. Most states with retail choice established an initial transitional period, during which utilities were required to offer a default or ''standard offer'' generation service, often at a capped or otherwise administratively-determined rate. Many retail choice states have reached, or are nearing, the end of their transitional period and several states have adopted an RTP-type default service for large commercial and industrial (C&I) customers. Are these initiatives motivated by the desire to induce greater demand response, or is RTP being called upon to serve a different role in competitive markets? Surprisingly, we found that in most cases, the primary reason for adopting RTP as the default service was not to encourage demand response, but rather to advance policy objectives related to the development of competitive retail markets. However, we also find that, if efforts are made in …

Calculations made by the U.S. Department of Energy's Yucca Mountain Project as part of the licensing of a proposed geologic repository (in southwestern Nevada) for the disposal of high-level radioactive waste, predict that emplacement tunnels will remain open with little collapse long after ground support has disintegrated. This conclusion includes the effects of anticipated seismic events. Natural analogues cannot provide a quantitative test of this conclusion, but they can provide a reasonableness test by examining the natural and anthropogenic examples of stability of subterranean openings. Available data from a variety of sources, combined with limited observations by the author, show that natural underground openings tend to resist collapse for millions of years and that anthropogenic subterranean openings have remained open from before recorded history through today. This stability is true even in seismically active areas. In fact, the archaeological record is heavily skewed toward preservation of underground structures relative to those found at the surface.

Experiments have been conducted to examine the fate of uranium during the formation of sodium aluminosilicate (NAS) when wastes containing high aluminate concentrations are mixed with wastes of high silicate concentration. Testing was conducted at varying degrees of uranium saturation. Testing examined typical tank conditions, e.g., stagnant, slightly elevated temperature (50 C). The results showed that under sub-saturated conditions uranium is not removed from solution to any large extent in both simulant testing and actual tank waste testing. This aspect was not thoroughly understood prior to this work and was necessary to avoid criticality issues when actual tank wastes were aggregated. There are data supporting a small removal due to sorption of uranium on sites in the NAS. Above the solubility limit the data are clear that a reduction in uranium concentration occurs concomitant with the formation of aluminosilicate. This uranium precipitation is fairly rapid and ceases when uranium reaches its solubility limit. At the solubility limit, it appears that uranium is not affected, but further testing might be warranted.

Mineral abundances and whole-rock chemical and uranium-series isotopic compositions were measured in unfractured and rubble core samples from borehole USWSD-9 in the same layers of variably zeolitized tuffs that underlie the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Uranium concentrations and isotopic compositions also were measured in pore water from core samples from the same rock units and rock leachates representing loosely bound U adsorbed on mineral surfaces or contained in readily soluble secondary minerals. The chemical and isotopic data were used to evaluate differences in water-rock interaction between fractured and unfractured rock and between fracture surfaces and rock matrix. Samples of unfractured and rubble fragments (about 1 centimeter) core and material from fracture surfaces show similar amounts of uranium-series disequilibrium, recording a complex history of sorption and loss of uranium over the past 1 million years. The data indicate that fractures in zeolitized tuffs may not have had greater amounts of water-rock interaction than the rock matrix. The data also show that rock matrix from subrepository units is capable of scavenging uranium with elevated uranium-234/uranium-238 from percolating water and that retardation of radionuclides and dose reduction may be greater than currently credited to this aspect of the natural …

This report summarizes the reasons for the Endangered Species Act (ESA) listings and outlines efforts to protect ESA-listed species.

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This report provides background on India's nuclear fuel cycle, a discussion of various issues involved in separating civilian and military nuclear facilities and potential concerns for Congress as it considers whether the United States has adequate assurances that its nuclear cooperation does not assist, encourage, or induce India's nuclear weapons development, production, or proliferation.

This report provides an overview of key environmental issues receiving attention in the 109th Congress.

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This report contains the regional developments and implications for U.S. interests in central Asia.

A new concept of TeV-range laser ponderomotive acceleration in a plasma is proposed. Particles are accelerated in the point-like scattering by the leading front of the laser pulse, propagating at the group velocity less than the vacuum speed of light. In this scheme, the gain in particle energy is determined by the group velocity and does not depend on laser intensity, which determines the quantum probability of acceleration. The quantum and classical analysis of the scheme proposed is presented. Estimates show that the concept proposed is a promising technique for compact laser acceleration of TeV energy range.

In this article the performance and experience of three large RPC systems in the running/future experiments are summarized: Belle, BaBar and BESIII.

The Nopal I uranium mine in the Sierra Pena Blanca, Chihuahua, Mexico serves as a natural analogue to the Yucca Mountain repository. The Pena Blanca Natural Analogue Performance Assessment Model simulates the mobilization and transport of radionuclides that are released from the mine and transported to the saturated zone. the Pena Blanca Natural Analogue Model uses probabilistic simulations of hydrogeologic processes that are analogous to the processes that occur at the Yucca Mountain site. The Nopal I uranium deposit lies in fractured, welded, and altered rhyolitic ash flow tuffs that overlie carbonate rocks, a setting analogous to the geologic formations at the Yucca Mountain site. The Nopal I mine site has the following characteristics as compared to the Yucca Mountain repository site. (1) Analogous source: UO{sub 2} uranium ore deposit = spent nuclear fuel in the repository; (2) Analogous geologic setting: fractured, welded, and altered rhyolitic ash flow tuffs overlying carbonate rocks; (3) Analogous climate: Semiarid to arid; (4) Analogous geochemistry: Oxidizing conditions; and (5) Analogous hydrogeology: The ore deposit lies in the unsaturated zone above the water table. The Nopal I deposit is approximately 8 {+-} 0.5 million years old and has been exposed to oxidizing conditions during the …

A sample of {tau}{sup {+-}} {yields} K*{sup {+-}} decays with K*{sup {+-}} {yields} K{sub S}{sup 0}{pi}{sup {+-}} and K{sub S}{sup 0} {yields} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}, using 123.4 fb{sup -1} of data collected by the BaBar detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is used to search for a direct CP violation effect in the charged Higgs sector. No evidence of CP violation is found and the imaginary part of the charged Higgs coupling, {l_brace}Im{r_brace}({Lambda}), in the Multi-Higgs-Doublet-Model is found to be at -0.284 < {l_brace}Im{r_brace}({Lambda}) < 0.200 at 90% Confidence Level. In addition the installation of the kk2f Monte Carlo generator into the BaBar software framework is described.

This Report is about the Gordon Research Conference on Radiation Oncology Which was held at Crowne Plazza

In this work, asymmetric dense Pd/porous stainless steel composite membranes were fabricated by depositing palladium on the outer surface of the tubular support. The electroless plating method combined with an osmotic pressure field was used to deposit the palladium film. Surface morphology and microstructure of the composite membranes were characterized by SEM and EDX. The SEM and EDX analyses revealed strong adhesion of the plated pure palladium film on the substrate and dense coalescence of the Pd film. Membranes were further characterized by conducting permeability experiments with pure hydrogen, nitrogen, and helium gases at temperatures from 325 to 450 C and transmembrane pressure differences from 5 to 45 psi. The permeation results showed that the fabricated membranes have both high hydrogen permeability and selectivity. For example, the hydrogen permeability for a composite membrane with a 20 {micro}m Pd film was 3.02 x 10{sup -5} moles/m{sup 2}.s.Pa{sup 0.765} at 450 C. Hydrogen/nitrogen selectivity for this composite membrane was 1000 at 450 C with a transmembrane pressure difference of 14.7 psi. Steam reforming of methane is one of the most important chemical processes in hydrogen and syngas production. To investigate the usefulness of palladium-based composite membranes in membrane-reactor configuration for simultaneous production …

We describe searches for decays to two-body charmless final states {eta}'{eta}, {eta}'{pi}{sup 0} and {eta}{pi}{sup 0} of B{sup 0} mesons produced in e{sup +}e{sup -} annihilation. The data, collected with the BABAR detector at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, represent 232 million produced B{bar B} pairs. The results for branching fractions are, in units of 10{sup -6} (upper limits at 90% C.L.): {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}'{eta}) = 0.2{sub -0.5}{sup +0.7} {+-} 0.4 (< 1.7), {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}{pi}{sup 0}) = 0.6{sub -0.4}{sup +0.5} {+-} 0.1 (< 1.3), and {Beta}(B{sup 0} {yields} {eta}'{pi}{sup 0}) = 0.8{sub -0.6}{sup +0.8} {+-} 0.1 (< 2.1). The first error quoted is statistical and the second systematic.