After global warming became a concern in the mid-1950s, researchers proposed measuring deep ocean temperatures to reveal any significant trends in core ocean warming. Acoustic thermometry can detect changes in ocean temperature by receiving low-frequency sounds transmitted across an ocean basin because the speed of sound is proportional to water temperature. Acoustic Thermometry of Ocean Climate, or ATOC, is an international program involving 11 institutions in seven nations. It is designed as a 30-month "proof-of-concept" project to provide data on possible global climate change, with funding provided by the U.S. Department of Defense. A debate has arisen over ATOC's impact on marine mammals versus the benefits of better global warming information derived from ATOC. This report dicusses the ATOC program and related concerns.

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In recent years considerable public attention has focused on Social Security's treatment of younger versus older workers. Analysts sometimes have addressed this issue by examining the value Social Security provides each generation of workers in relation to the Social Security taxes they pay. These are referred to as "moneys worth" analyses.

This document is a faxed transmission of Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) materials located in the National Archives as overseen by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and as of May 12, 1998.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether provisions of the City of Greenville regulation of pesticides ordinance are preempted by the Structural Pest Control Act, V.T.C.S. article 135b-6 (RQ-511)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether a common-law conflict if interest rules prohibit a bank that employs a Texas Agricultural Finance Authority board member from participating in the linked deposit program (ID# 39160)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the Texas Funeral Services Commission may by rule allow an embalmer or a funeral director to provide personal supervision to a provisional licensee by being present on the premises (RQ-1010)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the state or a county must reimburse a state district judge for expenses incurred by the judge in defending a mandamus action.

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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Authority of the Commission on Jail Standards to promulgate rules regarding the temporary emergency housing of county inmates, and related questions (RQ-351)

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the implications of H.R. 853 on the congressional budget process, focusing on: (1) the importance of the long-term perspective; (2) the long-term and insurance commitments in the budget; and (3) how this relates to the need for control, accountability, and transparency."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Labor's progress in making its 61 mission-critical systems year 2000 compliant, focusing on: (1) the systems operated by states to administer unemployment benefits payments for Labor's Unemployment Insurance Service (UIS); and (2) an assessment of the risks faced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the year 2000 problem and its impact on the Global Positioning System (GPS)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Education's efforts to ensure that its computer systems supporting critical student financial aid activities will be able to process information reliably through the turn of the century, focusing on: (1) the progress Education has made to date in making its information systems year 2000 compliant; and (2) the future tasks facing the department."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) the implementation status of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) provisions in the group insurance market; (2) the price of coverage for certain individuals losing group insurance; (3) the extent of consumer understanding of HIPAA as well as federal, state, and private efforts undertaken to educate consumers about the law's protections; and (4) federal efforts undertaken to ensure HIPAA compliance."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Air Force's selection of a source of repair for depot maintenance work at the closing Sacramento Air Logistics Center (ALC), focusing on whether the: (1) Air Force's procedures for conducting the Sacramento competition provided substantially equal opportunity for the public and private offerors to compete for the work without regard to performance location; (2) procedures for conducting the competition were in compliance with 10 U.S.C. 2469a and other applicable laws and regulations; (3) appropriate consideration was given to factors other than cost; and (4) award resulted in the lowest total cost to the Department of Defense (DOD) for performance of the work."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Customs Service's efforts to curtail the exportation of stolen vehicles from the United States, focusing on: (1) applicable regulations for exporting used, self-propelled vehicles from the United States; (2) Customs policies and procedures for controlling the export of these vehicles; (3) methods used to illegally export these vehicles; and (4) improvements in operations being considered by Customs."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) new rule on Medicaid Program's state allotments for payment of Medicare Part B premiums for qualifying individuals for fiscal year (FY) 1999. GAO noted that: (1) the Social Security Act provides for the Medicaid program to pay all or part of the Medicare Part B premiums for beneficiaries belonging to two specific eligibility groups of low-income Medicare beneficiaries, referred to as qualifying individuals; (2) this notice announces the federal FY 1999 allotments that are available for state agencies to pay Medicare Part B premiums for these two eligibility groups; and (3) HCFA complied with the applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the total expenditures for the investigations conducted by independent counsels Robert B. Fiske, Jr., and Kenneth W. Starr."

Low power Electromagnetic (EM) Wave sensors can measure general properties of human speech articulator motions, as speech is produced. See Holzrichter, Burnett, Ng, and Lea, J.Acoust.Soc.Am. 103 (1) 622 (1998). Experiments have demonstrated extremely accurate pitch measurements (< 1 Hz per pitch cycle) and accurate onset of voiced speech. Recent measurements of pressure-induced tracheal motions enable very good spectra and amplitude estimates of a voiced excitation function. The use of the measured excitation functions and pitch synchronous processing enable the determination of each pitch cycle of an accurate transfer function and, indirectly, of the corresponding articulator motions. In addition, direct measurements have been made of EM wave reflections from articulator interfaces, including jaw, tongue, and palate, simultaneously with acoustic and glottal open/close signals. While several types of EM sensors are suitable for speech articulator measurements, the homodyne sensor has been found to provide good spatial and temporal resolution for several applications.

This document provides guidelines for implementing Engineering`s responsibility relating to evaluating the adequacy of existing project design outputs. At this time, there exists design documents that were prepared and approved for modifications to operating facilities, that may or may not have been constructed, but have never been turned over to the Operating Facility Management. The process described herein describes the methodology to perform an evaluation of these existing designs and document the findings. The key elements in this process are (1) to evaluate the existing design for general adequacy of the design, (2) to evaluate the existing design due to changes subsequent to the issuance of the documents (i.e. lessons learned, codes or standards change, changes to input documents, ect.), and (3) to verify the existence of critical supporting documentation in the areas of personnel safety, facility safety or environmental compliance.

We study the pair production of neutral Higgs bosons through gluon fusion at hadron colliders in the framework of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. We present analytical expressions for the relevant amplitudes, including both quark and squark loop contributions, and allowing for mixing between the superpartners of left- and right-handed quarks. Squark loop contributions can increase the cross section for the production of two CP--even Higgs bosons by more than two orders of magnitude, if the relevant trilinear soft breaking parameter is large and the mass of the lighter squark eigenstate is not too far above its current lower bound. In the region of large tan{beta}, neutral Higgs boson pair production might even be observable in the 4b final state during the next run of the Tevatron collider.

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