Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN), focusing on the impact of proposed Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) modifications on the: (1) confidentiality of information about the program; and (2) possible legal liability of members of the Network arising from their peer review activities."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) what reasons, if any, exist for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to report the taxable portion of annuity benefits for newly retired federal employees on the Form CSA 1099R (Statement of Annuity Paid); and (2) the feasibility of OPM's doing so."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the potential cost to decommission nuclear power plants and the implications of competition within the electricity industry, focusing on whether: (1) there is adequate assurance that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) licensees are accumulating sufficient funds for decommissioning; and (2) NRC is adequately addressing the effects of electricity deregulation on the funds that will eventually be needed for decommissioning."

Advances in scientific computing research have never been more vital to the core missions of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory than they are today. These advances are evolving so rapidly, and over such a broad front of computational science, that to remain on the leading edge, the Laboratory must collaborate with many academic centers of excellence. In FY 1998, ISCR dramatically expanded its interactions with academia through collaborations, visiting faculty, guests and a seminar series. The pages of this annual report summarize the activities of the 63 faculty members and 34 students who participated in ISCR collaborative activities during FY 1998. The 1998 ISCR call for proposals issued by the University Collaborative Research Program (UCRP) resulted in eight awards made by the University of California Office of the President to research teams at UC San Diego, UC Davis, UC Los Angeles, and UC Berkeley. These projects are noted. ISCR is now part of the Laboratory�s Center for Applied Scientific Computing (CASC). Many CASC scientists participate actively in ISCR�University collaborations, as noted. The eight collaborations shown represent innovative research efforts supported by ISCR in FY 1998. Abstracts discussing each of these collaborations begin on page 79. The Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI) …

Certain radionuclide ions (e.g., TcO{sub 4}{sup 16}) exhibit unusually strong Affinities toward the polymer-rich phase in aqueous biphase systems generated by combinations of salt solutions with polymers such as poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) and poly(propylene glycol) (PPG). Thus, aqueous polymer phases could potentially be used to selectively extract these ions during pretreatment of radioactive tank wastes at Hanford. To help develop a fundamental understanding of the interactions between various ions and polymers in aqueous solution, interaction enthalpies between sodium perrhenate and a random copolymer of PEG and PPG (UCON-50) were measured by microcalorimetric titration. An entropy compensation effect was observed in this system in which changes in enthalpic interactions were balanced by entropy changes such that the interaction free energy remained constant and approximately equal to zero.

Argonne National Laboratory is developing a process for the conditioning of spent nuclear fuel to prepare the material for final disposal. Two waste streams will result from the treatment process, a stainless steel based form and a ceramic based form. The ceramic waste form will be enclosed in a stainless steel container. In order to assess the performance of the ceramic waste form in a repository two factors must be examined, the surface area increases caused by waste form cracking and any ceramic/canister interactions that may release toxic material. The results indicate that the surface area increases are less than the High Level Waste glass and any toxic releases are below regulatory limits.

Progress continues on many fronts of experimental testing of electroweak symmetry breaking. Updates were presented on LEP, SLC, Brookhaven g-2 ring, Tevatron Collider, HERA, CESR and Tevatron neutrino experiments. Perhaps most exciting is the Higgs search at LEP2, complementing the indirect constraints. However, the standard model with one Higgs doublet remains viable.

The new muon (g - 2) experiment is now fully operational The goal of the experiment is to obtain a relative error on (g - 2) of {+-}O.35 ppm to measure the electroweak contribution for the first time, and to observe, or place stringent limits on physics beyond the standard model which can contribute to (g - 2). A brief status report is presented.

Historically, x-ray research has been propelled by the existence of urgent and compelling scientific questions and the push of powerful and exquisite source technology. These two factors have gone hand in hand since Rontgen discovered x-rays. Here we review the progress being made with existing third-generation synchrotron-radiation light sources and the prospects for a fourth-generation light source with dramatically improved laser-like beam characteristics. The central technology for high-brilliance x-ray beams is the x-ray undulator, a series of alternating-pole magnets situated above and below the particle beam. When the particle beam is oscillated by the alternating magnetic fields, a set of. interacting and interfering wave fronts is produced, which leads to an x-ray beam with extraordinary properties. Third-generation sources of light in the hard x-ray range have been constructed at three principal facilities: the European Synchrotrons Radiation Facility (ESRF) in France; the Super Photon Ring 8-GeV (or Spring-8) in Japan; and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) in the US. Undulator technology is also used on a number of low-energy machines for radiation in the ultraviolet and soft x-ray regimes. At the APS, these devices exceed all of our original expectations for beam brilliance, tunability, spectral range, and operational flexibility. Shown in …

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has developed a Portable Data Acquisition (DAQ) System that is basically a laboratory-scale of Program Logic Control (PLC). This DAQ system can obtain signals from numerous sensors (e.g., pH, level, pressure, flow meters), open and close valves, and turn on and off pumps. The data can then be saved on a spreadsheet or displayed as a graph/indicator in real-time on a computer screen. The whole DAQ system was designed to be portable so that it could sit on a bench top during laboratory-scale treatability studies, or moved out into the field during larger studies. This DAQ system is also fairly simple to use. All that is required is some working knowledge of LabVIEW 4.1, and how to properly wire the process equipment. The DAQ system has been used during treatability studies on cesium precipitation, controlled hydrolysis of water- reactive wastes, and other waste treatment studies that enable LLNL to comply with the Federal Facility Compliance Act (FFCAct). Improved data acquisition allows the study to be better monitored, and therefore better controlled, and can be used to determine the results of the treatment study more effectively. This also contributes to the design of larger treatment processes.

This report focuses on two divergent scenarios faced by Russia in the wake of its financial crisis of August 1998. Prime Minister Yevgenii Primakov expected either a vicious cycle of decline and possible collapse in government or an economic management scenario following outlines of an agreed action program that makes imperative fundamental changes in the Russian financial system. The success or failure of Russia in dealing with this crisis may have more effect on the pursuit of peace and prosperity by the United States than any other foreign policy crisis.

Featured in "Science to Support DOE Site Cleanup: The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Environmental Science Program Awards"

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Electronic states of a thin layer of material on a surface possess unique physical and chemical properties. Some of these properties arise from the reduced dimensionality of the thin layer with respect to the bulk or the properties of the electric field where two materials of differing dielectric constants meet at an interface. Other properties are related to the nature of the surface chemical bond. Here, the properties of excess electrons in thin layers of Xenon, Krypton, and alkali metals are investigated, and the bound state energies and effective masses of the excess electrons are determined using two-photon photoemission. For Xenon, the dependence of bound state energy, effective mass, and lifetime on layer thickness from one to nine layers is examined. Not all quantities were measured at each coverage. The two photon photoemission spectra of thin layers of Xenon on a Ag(111) substrate exhibit a number of sharp, well-defined peaks. The binding energy of the excess electronic states of Xenon layers exhibited a pronounced dependence on coverage. A discrete energy shift was observed for each additional atomic layer. At low coverage, a series of states resembling a Rydberg series is observed. This series is similar to the image state series …

October 1997, Vice President Gore directed federal agencies to develop a Clean Water Initiative to improve and strengthen water pollution control efforts. The multi-agency plan was released on Feb. 19, 1998, and identifies more than 100 key actions. Most are existing activities, now labeled as part of the Initiative. The President's FY1999 budget requested $2.2 billion for five departments and agencies ($568 million more than in FY1998) to fund implementation. By October 1998, Congress passed bills to fund the plan, but appropriations provided $1.8 billion, or less than 15%, of the requested increases. In the meantime, however, federal agencies are beginning or accelerating activities to carry out the actions under the Plan.

Since arrival of FY-99 funding in December, the authors have been preparing for the first series of experiments under this grant on the OMEGA laser facility, which just took place (for one day) on April 27, 1999. The campaign was successful and results will be included in the next progress report following analyses. For the first time, they fielded their Ten Inch Manipulator (TIM-) mounted flat-field, grazing-incidence extreme-ultraviolet (euv) spectrograph with a four-channel gated-stripline microchannel plate (MCP) detector. This spectrograph covers the spectral range of 30--250 {angstrom} (hv = 50--400 eV). As in a previous campaign of May 1998, where the authors used this instrument with time-integrated photographic recording, the spectrograph reached closer to the target than did the previous version mounted on the chamber wall; such that the sensitivity increased by at least a factor-of-10 for viewing weak spectral features. The analysis during this reporting period of the euv spectroscopic results from the October 1998 NLUF/OMEGA campaign of Mg X, XI and XII spectra from n = 3 to n = 2 transitions are shown in Fig. 1 versus time. The data plotted represent a composite between the three most sensitive striplines, delayed relative to each other, for a …

Multifragmentation studies induced by GeV light-ion beams permit investigation of the influence of intrinsic thermal properties of hot nuclear matter, with minimal interference from the compression/decompression cycle and rotational instabilities. We summarize recent results obtained with {sup 3}He, proton and pion beams up to 15 GeV/c and present the initial results from a recent experiment with 8 GeV/c antiproton and pion beams. The results are compared with INC simulations coupled to EES and SMM models and the caloric curve for the {sup 3}He data will also be discussed.

This report describes work conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), in conjunction with Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL), to remove nitrates in simulated low-activity waste (LAW). The major objective of this work was to provide data for identifying and demonstrating a technically viable and cost-effective approach to condition LAW for immobilization (grout).

We present data on coherent production of the ({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup -}) system by 600 GeV/c pion beam in the reaction {pi}{sup -} + A {yields} A + ({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -}{pi}{sup -}) for the C, Cu and Pb targets. The Primakoff formalism was used for extracting the radiative width of the a{sub 2} meson. We obtain a preliminary value {Gamma}(a{sub 2}{sup -} {yields} {pi}{sup -}{gamma}) = 225 {+-} 25(stat) {+-} 45(syst) keV.

Intense highly collimated neutrino beams are created from muon decays at high-energy muon colliders causing significant radiation problems even at very large distances from the collider ring. A newly developed weighted neutrino interaction generator permits detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the interactions of neutrinos (and of their progeny) to be performed using the MARS code. Dose distributions in a human tissue-equivalent phantom (TEP) are calculated when irradiated with neutrino beams (100 MeV-10 TeV). Results are obtained for a bare TEP, one embedded in several shielding materials and for a TEP located at various distances behind a shield. The distance from the collider ring (up to 60 km) at which recommended annual dose limits can be met is calculated for 0.5, 1,2,3 and 4 TeV muon colliders. The possibility to mitigate the problem via beam wobbling is investigated.

The most recent results on the studies of the W properties, namely of the process W{yields}{tau}{nu} and of the {Gamma}{sub W} measurements performed in {anti p}p collisions at {radical}s=1800 GeV, are reported. The data are from the two experiments operating at the Tevatron Collider, CDF and DO.

ULSI technology requires low resistance, stable silicides formed on small geometry lines. Titanium disilicide (TiSiz), which is the most widely used silicide for ULSI applications, exists in two crystallographic phases: the high resistance, metastable C49 phase and the low resistance, stable C54 phase. The major issue with TiSiz is the increasing thermal budget required to transform the C49 phase into the low resistance C54 phase as linewiths decrease below 0.25 pm. Annealing above 900"C to obtain this transformation often results in thermal degradation, so it is desirable to reduce the transformation temperature. The transformation temperature has been shown to be a fi.mction of many factors including microstructure, grain size, and impurities. In this paper we report an investig+ion of rapid thermal silicidation of titanium films (250, 400, and 600 A) on single crystalline silicon at temperatures from 300 to 1000"C. The ramp rates for these experiments are 5, 30, 70, and 200oC/s. The transformation temperature decreases as the ramp rate increases and as the initial film thickness increases. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is used to analyze the resultant film microstructure. The ramp rate influence on Ti silicidation is also investigated on polycrystalline Si lines with widths ranging from 0.27 to …

We report the production jet cross-sections and properties in W and Z events using data from collisions with {radical}s = 1800 GeV at Fermilab Tevatron. Observed distributions in general agree with predictions of leading order QCD matrix element calculations with added gluon radiations and simulated parton fragmentations; however, some limitations of LO QCD predictions are also observed. The cross-section ratio of W + {>=} 1 jet events to inclusive W events is reported and compared with next-to-the-leading order QCD expectations. Good agreement between data and theory is seen. The color coherence effects are also observed in W+ jets events.

A management system approach for evaluating environment, safety, health, and quality is in use at Sandia National Laboratories (SNL). Sandia is a multiprogram laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000. As a multi-program national laboratory, SNL has many diverse operations including research, engineering development and applications, production, and central services supporting all activities and operations. Basic research examples include fusion power generation, nuclear reactor experiments, and investigation of combustion processes. Engineering development examples are design, testing, and prototype developments of micro-mechanical systems for safe'~arding computer systems, air bags for automobiles, satellite systems, design of transportation systems for nuclear materials, and systems for use in medical applications such as diagnostics and surgery. Production operations include manufacture of instrumented detection devices, radioisotopes, and replacement parts for previously produced engineered systems. Support services include facilities engineering, construction, and site management, site security, packaging and transportation of hazardous materials wastes, ES&H functional programs to establish requirements and guidance to comply with federal, state, local, and contractual requirements and work safety. In this diverse environment, unlike more traditional single function business units, an integrated consistent management system is not typical. Instead, each type …