Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In May 2003, the Bush Administration proposed amending the legislation that currently restricts foreign ownership of U.S. airlines, raising the allowable percentage of total foreign ownership of voting stock in U.S. airlines from 25 to 49 percent. The Department of Transportation (DOT) suggested that implementing this amendment could provide significant benefits to U.S. consumers and airlines, particularly by providing access to additional capital, which would help the financial health of the industry. DOT and the Department of State also maintain that these new limitations would bring the United States in line with current foreign ownership laws of the European Union (EU). Concerned about the effect that changes in foreign ownership and control requirements might have on the aviation industry, national interests, and consumers--and recognizing that we examined this issue in 1992 when DOT earlier proposed increasing the level of foreign ownership--the Subcommittee on Aviation, Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation asked us to discuss two related topics: (1) current proposals to revise U.S. limits on foreign ownership and control, including information on current shareholders and past examples of efforts by foreign interests to purchase significant equity in …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Following the shutdown of a nuclear power plant a significant radioactive waste hazard remains until the waste is removed and the plant site decommissioned. In 1999, GAO reported that the combined value of the owners' decommissioning funds was insufficient to ensure enough funds would be available for decommissioning. GAO was asked to update its 1999 report and to evaluate the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) analysis of the owners' funds and its process for acting on reports that show insufficient funds."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "China's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001 created substantial opportunities for U.S. companies seeking to expand into China's market. In joining the WTO, China agreed to liberalize its trade regime and open its markets to foreign goods and services. However, the U.S. government has become concerned about ensuring that China honors its commitments to offer a more predictable environment for trade. GAO was asked to describe (1) the monitoring of compliance challenges associated with the scope and complexity of China's WTO commitments and (2) the efforts to date of the key players involved in ensuring China's compliance: the executive branch, Congress, the private sector, the WTO and its other members. GAO's observations are based on its prior analysis of China's WTO commitments, its previous survey of and interviews with private sector representatives, and its examination of first-year efforts to ensure China's WTO compliance."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) air traffic control modernization (ATC) efforts are designed to enhance the safety, capacity, and efficiency of the national airspace system through the acquisition of a vast network of radar, navigation, communications, and information processing systems, as well as new air traffic control facilities. Since 1981, when these efforts began, FAA's ATC modernization projects have consistently experienced cost, schedule, and performance problems that GAO and others have attributed to systemic management issues. As a result, FAA's cost estimates have grown and planned improvements have been delayed. Initially FAA estimated that its ATC modernization efforts would cost $12 billion and could be completed over 10 years. Now, two decades and $35 billion later, FAA expects to need another $16 billion through 2007 to complete key projects, for a total cost of $51 billion. This testimony (1) provides an overview of the systemic management issues that GAO and others have identified in FAA's ATC modernization efforts over time, (2) discusses key actions that FAA and others have taken to address these issues, and (3) identifies the challenges that lie ahead for FAA."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In response to long-standing concerns, HUD initiated efforts to improve the administration of its programs in 1997, and Congress passed the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act (QHWRA) in 1998. The act contains over 80 reforms that affect two key rental housing assistance programs: the low-rent housing program (also referred to as public housing) and the Housing Choice Voucher program (formerly Section 8). According to many housing agencies, implementing these reforms challenged their ability to address their core mission of providing safe, decent, and sanitary rental units for low-income residents. In particular, some small agencies that manage properties with relatively few rental units have contended that some reforms have little relevance to their operations and pose a significant burden because of the agencies' limited staff and financial resources. In response to a Congressional request, GAO compared housing agencies by size in terms of (1) the impact of recent housing reforms on their ability to administer HUD programs, (2) the agencies' performance as measured by HUD, and (3) the differences in the technical assistance that the agencies require. To carry out its work, GAO surveyed a statistical …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "For the past 6 years, since GAO began auditing the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government (CFS), GAO has been unable to express an opinion on them because of material weaknesses in internal control and financial reporting. Contributing to GAO's inability to express an opinion has been the federal government's lack of adequate systems, controls, and procedures to properly prepare its consolidated financial statements. The purpose of this report is to discuss in greater detail weaknesses in financial reporting procedures and internal control over the process for preparing the CFS that GAO identified and to recommend improvements to address those weaknesses."

This document reports the results of electrochemical corrosion tests on AS1S Grade 60 carbon steel coupons exposed to tank 241-AY-102 sludge under conditions similar to those near the bottom of the tank. The tests were performed to evaluate the corrosive behavior of the waste in contact with sludge that does not meet the chemistry control limits of Administrative Control (AC) 5.15, Corrosion Mitigation Program.

This report discusses high-threat biological agents, focusing on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) definition for Category A pathogens (bacteria and viruses), their treatment and detection, current policies, and possible future approaches to reducing their threat.

This report includes an overlook at issues regarding various endangered species. Issues include recovery plans, permits, and critical habitats.

Synchrotron Radiation (SR) has been widely used since the 80's as a tool for many applications of UV, soft X rays and hard X rays in condensed matter physics, chemistry and biology. The evolution of SR sources towards higher brightness has led to the design of low-emittance electron storage rings (emittance is the product of beam size and divergence), and the development of special source magnetic structures, as undulators. This means that more and more photons are available on a narrow bandwidth and on a small collimated beam; in other words there is the possibility of getting a high power in a coherent beam. In most applications, a monochromator is used, and the temporal coherence of the light is given by the monochromator bandwidth. With smaller and smaller sources, even without the use of collimators, the spatial coherence of the light has become appreciable, first in the UV and soft X ray range, and then also with hard X rays. This has made possible new or improved experiments in interferometry, microscopy, holography, correlation spectroscopy, etc. In view of these recent possibilities and applications, it is useful to review some basic concepts about spatial coherence of SR, and its measurement and …

This report discusses the Constitutional and Legal Issues surrounding two major types of soft money that BCRA regulates: political party soft money and soft money used for issue advocacy.

Weekly newspaper from Albany, Texas that includes local, county, and state news along with extensive advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Livingston, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Archer City, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Hondo, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

This is the twelfth Quarterly Technical Report for DOE Cooperative Agreement No: DE-FC26-00NT40954. The goal of the project is to develop and demonstrate a software framework to enable virtual simulation of Vision 21 plants. During the last quarter the software development was completed and the testing of the integrated software was completed. A user manual was written to complete software documentation. An installation CD-ROM including the following items was written: software installer, controller source code, proprietary CORBA wrapper templates for building local and remote servers, publicly available source code of the ACE/TAO CORBA library that needs to be built before compiling the controller source code, pre-built binaries of the publicly available XERCES XML library, and a PDF version of the software user's manual. The software was delivered to DOE. During the last quarter software demonstration tasks were completed. A few additional load points of Demo Case 1 were solved. Integrated simulations of Demo Case 2 with the proprietary HRSGSIM code and FLUENT CFD model were completed. The final task report describing Demo Case1 and Demo Case 2 simulation results was written and delivered to DOE.

Testing of the prototype valve began during this quarter. The objective of the first preliminary tests was to determine the pressure drop that can be created across the valve under different conditions of flow and pressure. As described in Quarterly Report 3, the system uses pneumatic pressure to activate a cylinder which in turn loads two hydraulic cylinders containing the MR fluid. Testing was preformed with no sensors or gauges other than the air pressure supply gauge. The valve was powered at 36 volts and drew about 3.5 amps. The valve held back the MR fluid at 30 psi. (This is the air pressure required to get the cylinders to move without any flow obstruction.) The air pressure was then increased gradually until the valve could no longer hold back the MR pressure and the cylinders moved slowly. The maximum air pressure that could be held without movement of the cylinders was 85 psi; however. as much as 30 psi of this pressure may be required to overcome stiction. Thus, the maximum pressure we were able to stop was somewhere between 55 and 85 psi of air. This translates into 1500 to 2330 psi MR fluid pressure. Based on the …

NCSX modular coil is a major parts of the NCSX coil systems that surround the highly shaped plasma and vacuum vessel. The flexible copper cable conductors are used to form modular coil on both sides of the ''tee'' beam, which is cast inside the supporting shell structure. The Engineering analyses comprise sequentially coupled-field analyses that include an electromagnetic analysis to calculate the magnetic fields and EM forces, and a structural analysis to evaluate the structural responses. In the sequential EM-structural analysis, nodal forces obtained from the EM analysis were applied as ''nodal force'' loads in the subsequent stress analysis using the identical nodal points and elements. The shell model was imported directly from Pro/ENGINEER files in order to obtain an accurate structural representation. The Boolean operations provided by the ANSYS preprocessor were then applied to subdivide the solid model for more desirable finite element meshing. Material properties of the modular coil were based on test results. Analyses using the ANSYS program to evaluate structural responses of the complicated modular coil systems provided a clear understanding of the structural behaviors and the directions for improving the structural design.

We examined the ability of various equilibrium isotherms to replicate the available data for the adsorption of strontium (Sr), plutonium (Pu), uranium (U) and neptunium (Np) on monosodium titanate (MST) during the treatment of simulated and actual Savannah River Site high-level waste. The analysis considered 29 isotherm models from the literature. As part of this study, we developed a general method for selecting the best isotherm models. The selection criteria for rating the isotherms considered the relative error in predicting the experimental data, the complexity of the mathematical expressions, the thermodynamic validity of the expressions, and statistical significance for the expressions. The Fowler Guggenheim-Jovanovic Freundlich (FG-JF), the Fowler Guggenheim-Langmuir Freundlich (FG-LF) and the Dubinin-Astashov (DA) models each reliably predicted the actinide and strontium adsorption on MST. The first two models describe the adsorption process by single layer formation and later al interactions between adsorbed sorbates while the Dubinin-Astashov model assumes volume filling of micropores (by osmotic pressure difference). These two mechanisms include mutually exclusive assumptions. However, we can not determine which model best represents the various adsorption mechanisms on MST. Based on our analysis, the DA model predicted the data well. The DA model assumes that an initial sorption layer …

The Savannah River Site (SRS) is developing a process to treat radioactive waste that is low in cesium-137, but high in strontium-90, plutonium, uranium, and neptunium. Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) personnel asked Savannah River Technology Center (SRTC) personnel to provide recommendations for chemically cleaning the Alpha Removal Process filters. The authors reviewed previous SRTC filter cleaning experience with bench-scale radioactive filters and pilot-scale simulant filters from tests with simulated and actual waste. From reviewing the previous filter cleaning data and assuming the heel in the 512-S filtration system is 85 gallons or less, the authors recommendations and approach to the inquiry are contained in this report.

Historically, the Savannah River Site, like many Department of Energy sites, has used some multiple of the expected Derived Air Concentration (DAC) of a radionuclide as a suspension guide for Radiological Work Permits (RWP) or validation of selected respiratory protection equipment. The term DAC expresses the concentration of a radionuclide in air, typically in mCi/cc. Even though the term DAC is derived from an intake of radioactivity (Annual Limit on Intake) that would result in defined estimated dose to a worker, knowing only the DAC value does not allow a worker's potential dose to be determined. Recently, the Savannah Rive Site has converted to the use of DAC-hours for RWP suspension guides and respiratory equipment validation. The term DAC-hr takes into account not only the concentration of the radionuclide in air (DAC) but also the time the individual was exposed allowing an estimate of a worker's dose to be determined. The conversion to DAC-hrs resulted in four benefits to the radiation protection program without increasing the risk to workers; (1) consistency with the constant air monitor (CAM) alarm setpoint protocol; (2) consistency with Internal Dosimetry terminology; (3) an a priori determination of the potential risk to a worker; and (4) …

An at-wavelength interferometer is being created for the measurement and alignment of the 0.3 numerical aperture Micro Exposure Tool projection optic at EUV wavelengths. The prototype MET system promises to provide early learning from EUV lithographic imaging down to 20-nm feature size. The threefold increase to 0.3 NA in the image-side numerical aperture presents several challenges for the extension of ultra-high-accuracy interferometry, including pinhole fabrication and the calibration and removal of systematic error sources.

The authors present a collection of new results on b-meson and {Lambda}{sub b} masses and branching fractions measured at CDF. They have improved the measurement of the {Lambda}{sub b} and B{sub s} mass and they have measured the branching fractions of B{sub s} {yields} D{sub s}{pi}, {Lambda}{sub b} {yields} {Lambda}{sub c}{pi} and B{sub u} {yields} {Phi}K{sup {+-}}.