A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed patient access to clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), focusing on: (1) how health insurers' coverage policies and practices affect patient participation in clinical trials; (2) researchers' experience in enrolling patients for trials sponsored by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and factors that may explain this experience; and (3) whether NIH has evidence of recent difficulties in enrolling patients in clinical trials."

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During the past quartile (two month period) most attention has been concentrated on the problem of definition critical temperature at which ''wet'' corrosion first became operable. It has been shown that, in principle, ''wet'' corrosion processes can not be ignored for Yucca Mountain, even for initial times, when the temperature of the surface of containers is well above the boiling temperature of water for the prevailing conditions. This is because the surfaces are covered by highly hydrophilic oxides (e.g. Fe{sub 2}O{sub 3}, NiO, Cr{sub 2}O{sub 3}) that will hydrate to the form of corresponding hydroxides, which are proton conductors, at least when in the ''wet'' condition. Because proton conduction and the presence of ''bound'' water are all that are required for the external environment to support metallic corrosion in either its general or localized form. Thus, the temperature of dehydration of the hydroxide, e.g. M(OH){sub 2} {yields} MO + H{sub 2}O(g), is a better criterion for the upper temperature limit for ''wet'' corrosion than is the boiling temperature of ''bulk'' water. During this first task, we have reviewed the existing thermodynamic data base for the dehydration of metal hydroxides and analytical expressions have been developed that allow the upper temperature …

The theoretical treatment of the solvation phenomenon of simple ions in aqueous solutions has been rather difficult, despite the apparent simplicity of the system. Long-range solvent-screened electrostatic interactions, coupled to the large variation (with state conditions) of the dielectric permittivity of water, give rise to a variety of rather complex solvation phenomena including dielectric saturation, electrostriction, and ion association. Notably, ion solvation in high-temperature/pressure aqueous solutions plays a leading role in hydrothermal chemistry, such as in the natural formation of ore deposits, the corrosion in boilers and reactors, and in high-temperature microbiology. Tremendous effort has been invested in the study of hydrothermal solutions to determine their thermodynamic, transport, and spectroscopic properties with the goal of elucidating the solute-solvent and solute-solute interactions over a wide range of state conditions. It is precisely at these conditions where our understanding and predictive capabilities are most precarious, in part, as a result of the coexistence of processes with two rather different length scales, i.e., short-ranged (solvation) and long-ranged (compressibility-driven) phenomena (Chialvo and Cummings 1994a). The latter feature makes hydrothermal systems extremely challenging to model, unless we are able to isolate the (compressibility-driven) propagation of the density perturbation from the (solvation-related) finite-density perturbation phenomena (Chialvo …

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We are developing innovations to enable modular builders to improve the energy performance of their classrooms with no increase in first cost. The Modern Building Systems' (MBS) classroom building conforms to the stringent Oregon energy code, and at $18/ft{sup 2} ($1.67/m{sup 2}) (FOB the factory) it is at the low end of the cost range for modular classrooms. We have investigated daylighting, cross-ventilation, solar preheat of ventilation air, air-to-air heat exchanger, electric lighting controls, and down-sizing HVAC systems as strategies to improve energy performance. We were able to improve energy performance with no increase in first cost in all climates examined. Two papers and a full report on Phase I of this study are available. The work described in this report is from the second phase of the project. In the first phase we redesigned the basic modular classroom to incorporate energy strategies including daylighting, cross-ventilation, solar preheating of ventilation air, and insulation. We also explored thermal mass but determined that it was not a cost-effective strategy in the five climates we examined. Energy savings ranged from 6% to 49% with an average of 23%. Paybacks ranged from 1.3 years to 23.8 years, an average of 12.1 years. In Phase …

A one-dimensional (in space) time-dependent simulation code is development to study the transport of energy and particles in a field reversed configuration (FRC) plasma that is undergoing radial contraction. This contraction is due to an imploding metallic liner, which is treated through a boundary condition.

The profiles of the potential of mean force for the <i>Cl^- - H₃O⁺</i> pair, as predicted by two <i>ab initio</i> models, are determined by constraint molecular dynamics simulation at a near-critical condition. The corresponding association constants are then determined and compared with that from conductance measurements to test the reliability of the current simulation models for <i>HCl</i>.