A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed grant monitoring and evaluation efforts by the U.S. Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Justice Program (OJP). This report discusses the monitoring of discretionary grants awarded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance's (BJA) Byrne Program and the Violence Against Women Office (VAWO) within OJP. In constant 2000 dollars, Byrne and VAWO discretionary grants grew about 85 percent--from $105 million to $194 million between fiscal years 1997 and 2000. These funds were awarded to state and local governments, either on a competitive basis or pursuant to legislation allocating funds through congressional earmarks. BJA and VAWO, together with OJP's Office of the Comptroller, are responsible for monitoring these grants to ensure they are implemented as intended, are responsive to grant goals and objectives, and comply with statutory regulations and policy guidelines. OJP's monitoring requirements include the development of monitoring plans that articulate who will conduct monitoring, the manner in which it will be done, and when and what type of monitoring activities are planned. Grant managers are to maintain documentation in grant files using such techniques as written reports of on-site reviews and telephone interview write-ups. …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has indicated that one-third of Amex's new listings did not meet the exchange's equity listing standards. Amex's listing guidelines address factors that are the same or similar to those addressed by other U.S. stock markets. Quantitative requirements addressed share price, stockholders' equity, income, and market value of publicly held shares. However, the minimum thresholds for meeting these requirements varied to reflect the differences in the companies that each market targeted for listing. The most significant difference between Amex's guidelines and the listing standards of other U.S. stock markets was that Amex was one of only two markets that retained discretion to initially list companies that did not meet all of its quantitative requirements. Amex had not implemented the Office of Compliance Inspections and Examinations' (OCIE) recommendations on the exchange's discretionary listing decisions. OCIE officials told GAO that in the absence of an Amex agreement to address the recommendations, they would include them among the open significant recommendations to be reported to the SEC Commissioners as a result of a 1998 GAO recommendation. The Commission can require Amex to implement OCIE's …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of State is leading an interagency assessment of staffing needs in U.S. embassies and consulates to improve mission effectiveness and reduce security vulnerabilities and costs. This process, called "rightsizing," was begun in response to the recommendations of the Overseas Presence Advisory Panel. In the aftermath of the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa, the Panel determined that overseas staffing levels had not been adjusted to reflect changing missions and requirements; thus, some embassies and consulates were overstaffed, and others were understaffed. The Panel recommended a rightsizing strategy to improve security by reducing the number of embassy staff at risk. The Panel also recommended the establishment of a permanent committee to regularly adjust the U.S. presence, and the adoption of explicit criteria to guide decisions on the size and location of posts. A State-led interagency committee conducted pilot studies at six embassies in 2000 to (1) develop a methodology for assessing staffing at embassies and consulates during the next five years and (2) recommend adjustments to staffing levels at the embassies studied. The interagency committee formed teams that visited U.S. embassies in Amman, …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Concerns arose in the late 1990s about day trading, particularly the use of questionable advertising to attract customers without fully disclosing or by downplaying the risks involved. Concerns were also raised that traders were losing large amounts of money. Day traders as a group and day trading firms have continued to evolve and are generally more experienced and sophisticated about securities markets and investing than was the case several years ago. Likewise, day trading firms' operations have evolved, and many have shifted their primary focus away from retail customers and toward attracting institutional customers, such as hedge funds and money market managers. Furthermore, more firms are likely to engage in proprietary trading activities through professional traders that trade the firms' own capital. Finally, although the number of day trading firms appears to have remained constant, several day trading firms have been acquired by other brokerages and market participants whose customers want the direct access to securities markets and market information that technology used by day trading firms provides. Since GAO's 2000 review, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the self-regulatory organizations have addressed many of the …

One direct result of the terrorist attacks of September 11 is that the cost of domestic security has risen. That increased cost is likely to be in the form of increased outlays on the military, as well as increases in spending for domestic law enforcement, public safety, and private security services. This report briefly discusses the economic effects of this increased cost looks into how security affects GDP.

The objective of this activity is to determine the tangential stresses of the outer shell, due to uneven thermal expansion of the inner and outer shells of the current waste package (WP) designs. Based on the results of the calculation ''Waste Package Barrier Stresses Due to Thermal Expansion'', CAL-EBS-ME-000008 (ref. 10), only tangential stresses are considered for this calculation. The tangential stresses are significantly larger than the radial stresses associated with thermal expansion, and at the WP outer surface the radial stresses are equal to zero. The scope of this activity is limited to determining the tangential stresses the waste package outer shell is subject to due to the interference fit, produced by having two different shell coefficients of thermal expansions. The inner shell has a greater coefficient of thermal expansion than the outer shell, producing a pressure between the two shells. This calculation is associated with Waste Package Project. The calculations are performed for the 21-PWR (pressurized water reactor), 44-BWR (boiling water reactor), 24-BWR, 12-PWR Long, 5 DHLW/DOE SNF - Short (defense high-level waste/Department of Energy spent nuclear fuel), 2-MCO/2-DHLW (multi-canister overpack), and Naval SNF Long WP designs. The information provided by the sketches attached to this calculation is …

The present project is devoted to developing hydrogen permselective silica membranes supported on composite supports to achieve high flux and selectivity. The supports consist of a thin zeolite silicalite layer coated on {alpha}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} tubes of mean pore size 1 {micro}m. The zeolite layer is grown by reaction in a suitable silicate solution at 95 C. After two or three reaction periods a layer of silicalite crystals about 20 {micro}m thick grows inside the pores of alumina. In addition to the zeolitic pores, this layer contains voids of a few nanometer diameter that remain between the crystals or between the crystals and the pore walls. The quality of the silicalite/alumina composites was evaluated by gas permeation measurements and by nitrogen adsorption and it was found that the residual voids were below 5 nm in diameter. Three techniques were investigated for chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of the silica layer on the silicalite/alumina composite support. The first was TEOS pyrolysis at approximately one millibar partial pressure and 650 C. After 8 h reaction the fluxes of hydrogen and nitrogen at ambient temperature had declined by a factor of approximately 100 indicating sealing of defects and zeolitic pores alike. The second CVD …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the following key outcomes in National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) fiscal year 2002 performance plan: expanding scientific knowledge of the Earth's system, expanding the commercial development of space, and deploying and operating the International Space Station. GAO found that NASA has improved its fiscal year 2002 performance plan and responded to recommendations by GAO and others to make its plan more useful--particularly by providing more comprehensive explanations of how it plans to verify and validate performance data and by better explaining how its performance goals will benefit the public. NASA's annual performance goals appear to be objective and should help to measure progress toward the outcomes. However, the plan still does not explain the reasons for changes in performance goals. Not having these explanations could hinder assessments of NASA's performance."

This Site Environmental Report was prepared by the Environment, Safety, and Health Division at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) for the U.S. Department of Energy. The purpose of this report is to inform the public and Department of Energy stakeholders of the environmental conditions at the NETL sites in Morgantown, West Virginia, and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This report contains the most accurate information that could be collected during the period between January 1, 2000, through December 31, 2000. As stated in DOE Orders 5400.1 and 231.1, the purpose of the report is to: Characterize site environmental management performance; Confirm compliance with environmental standards and requirements and Highlight significant facility programs and efforts.

None

A modern physics facility must synchronize the operation of equipment over a wide area. The primary purpose of the site wide SNS synchronization and timing system is to synchronize the operation of the LINAC, accumulator ring and neutron choppers and to distribute appropriate timing signals to accelerator systems, including the Injector, LINAC, Accumulator Ring and Experimental Facilities. Signals to be distributed include the ring RF clock, real-time timing triggers, machine mode and other informational events. Timing triggers and clocks from the SNS synchronization and timing system are used to synchronize hardware operations including the MEBT beam chopper, RF turn on, synchronous equipment state changes, as well as data acquisition for power supplies and beam diagnostics equipment. This paper will describe the timing equipment being designed for the SNS facility and discuss the tradeoffs between conflicting demands of the accelerator and neutron chopper performance due to AC power grid frequency fluctuations.

The Tevatron Run II will provide CDF and D0 with a large dataset of p{bar p} interactions collected at {radical}s = 2 TeV. They discuss the opportunity for the two experiments to improve the understanding of electroweak and top physics in the first years of data taking (Run IIa, 2fb{sup -1}) in view of the upgrades of the detectors. They also discuss the prospectives for a Higgs discovery at the Tevatron in view of the Run IIb data taking period which will deliver an additional of about 13 fb{sup -1} to each experiment.

The movement of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) through its various states (eg. injection, acceleration, storage, collisions) is controlled by an application called the Sequencer. This program orchestrates most magnet and instrumentation systems and is responsible for the coordinated acquisition and saving of data from various systems. The Sequencer system, its software infrastructure, support programs, and the language used to drive it are discussed in this paper. Initial operational experience is also described.

This paper provides a brief status report for Fermilab E-898, the mini-Booster Neutrino Experiment (mini-BooNE). Presently concentrating on construction activities associated with the beam and detector, the collaboration is looking forward to the day when data taking and analysis will more fully occupy its time. First beam is expected in the Spring of 2002, and initial results are anticipated in 2003.

This report provides an overview of the provisions of the interim rule, as well as a brief synopsis of Sixth Amendment implications regarding intentional intrusion into the attorney-client relationship.