A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Internet gambling is a fast-growing industry with estimated 2003 revenues of more than $4 billion. However, concerns have been raised about its social and economic impacts. In light of recent recommendations by a Congressionally appointed commission, which advocated restricting Internet gambling within the United States, GAO was asked to examine the U.S. payments system, particularly credit cards, as it relates to interactive on-line gaming. We examined (1) the legal framework for Internet gambling domestically and abroad; (2) the credit card industry's policies regarding the use of credit cards to pay for Internet gambling and actions taken to restrict such usage; and (3) the views of law enforcement, banking regulators, and the credit card and gaming industries on the vulnerability of Internet gambling to money laundering. We issued an interim report on these issues in September 2002. GAO makes no recommendations in this report."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Strategic human capital management challenges face public sector organizations both here and abroad. The United States is not alone in examining how government agencies can use their performance management systems as a tool to foster a more results-oriented organizational culture. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has reported that its member nations have increasingly moved towards performance-based pay and appraisal systems that reward employees, hold them accountable for the quality of their work, and connect their efforts to organizational results. Four OECD member countries--Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom--have begun to use their performance management systems to achieve results. Although the performance management initiatives in these countries reflect their specific organizational structures, cultures, and priorities, their experiences developing and implementing results-oriented individual performance management initiatives may provide U.S. agencies with information and insights as they implement strategic human capital practices. These countries have begun to use their performance management systems to create a "line of sight" between individual and organizational goals, use competencies to provide a fuller assessment of individual performance, link pay to individual and overall organizational performance, and foster organizationwide …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) program was started by the Department of Defense (DOD) as a way to get new technologies that meet critical military needs into the hands of users faster and less cost. GAO was asked to examine DOD's process for structuring and executing ACTDs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "For national security and foreign policy reasons, U.S. export control policy seeks to balance economic interests in promoting high technology exports with national security interests to maintain a military advantage in high performance computers over potential adversaries. In January 2002, the President announced that the control threshold--above which computers exported to countries such as China, India, and Russia--would increase from 85,000 millions of theoretical operations per second (MTOPS) to 190,000 MTOPS. The report justifying the changes in control thresholds for high performance computers focused on the availability of such computers. However, the justification did not fully address the requirements of the National Defense Authorization Act of 1998. The December 2001 report did not address several key issues related to the decision to raise the threshold: (1) the unrestricted export of computers with performance capabilities between the old and new thresholds will allow countries of concern to obtain computers that they have had difficulty constructing on their own, (2) the United States is unable to monitor the end-uses of many of the computers it exports, and (3) the report does not acknowledge the multilateral process used to …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The trafficking of child pornography through increasingly sophisticated electronic media, including Internet chat rooms, newsgroups, and peer-to-peer networks, has made such images more readily accessible. These technological advances have created more challenges for law enforcement, including requiring effective coordination to combat this crime. The federal law enforcement agencies that play a role in investigating child pornography are the FBI, Customs, Postal Inspection Service, and Secret Service. This report provides information on the coordination of federal efforts to combat child pornography. Specifically, it (1) identifies mechanisms federal agencies have in place to combat child pornography and (2) provides information on an opportunity to further enhance coordination among federal law enforcement agencies."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Air Force began to test the force requirements in its manpower requirements-determination process in May 2000. The defense strategy envisions simultaneously fighting two major theater wars and conducting multiple contingency operations in peacetime. The Total Force Assessment was the Air Force's first evaluation of manpower adequacy in these contexts since 1995. Because the Total Force Assessment was not implemented as planned, the Air Force cannot demonstrate that it has the forces needed to carry out the full spectrum of military operations. Although intended to examine whether authorized Air Force personnel were sufficient to meet both the wartime and peacetime scenarios, the assessment only addressed the wartime scenario and did not address the adequacy of manpower for conducting multiple contingency operations in peacetime. Air Force officials concluded that manpower was adequate to support the wartime scenario but this assessment was inconclusive because the effort was discontinued before all discrepancies in the assessment's results were resolved. Although the Air Force spent considerable time and effort conducting at least a portion of its planned assessment, it has not used the results to the extent anticipated."

Monthly report written by the Texas Daily Newspaper Association's (TDNA's) office manager, Darla Thompson, to Phil Berkebile providing a summary of revenues and account balances, programs, meetings, and other activities in the office during the previous month.

This report summarizes environmental information for the Hanford Site in Washington State for the calendar year 2001.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has implemented a program to reclaim lands disturbed by site characterization at Yucca Mountain. Long term goals of the program are to re-establish processes on disturbed sites that will lead to self-sustaining plant communities. The Biological Opinion for Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Studies required that the U.S. Department of Energy develop a Reclamation Standards and Monitoring Plan to evaluate the success of reclamation efforts. According to the Reclamation Standards and Monitoring Plan, reclaimed sites will be monitored periodically, remediated if necessary, and eventually compared to an appropriate reference area to determine whether reclamation goals have been achieved and the site can be released from further monitoring. Plant cover, density, and species richness (success parameters) on reclaimed sites are compared to 60 percent of the values (success criteria) for the same parameters on the reference area. Small sites (less than 0.1 ha) are evaluated for release using qualitative methods while large sites (greater than 0.1 ha) are evaluated using quantitative methods. In the summer of 2000, 31 small sites reclaimed in 1993 and 1994 were evaluated for reclamation success and potential release from further monitoring. Plant density, cover, and species richness were estimated on the C-Well …

The Monitored Geologic Repository test & evaluation program will specify tests, demonstrations, examinations, and analyses, and describe procedures to conduct and document testing necessary to verify meeting Monitored Geologic Repository requirements for a safe and effective geologic repository for radioactive waste. This test program will provide assurance that the repository is performing as designed, and that the barriers perform as expected; it will also develop supporting documentation to support the licensing process and to demonstrate compliance with codes, standards, and regulations. This comprehensive program addresses all aspects of verification from the development of test requirements to the performance of tests and reporting of the test results. The ''Monitored Geologic Repository Test & Evaluation Plan'' provides a detailed description of the test program approach necessary to achieve the above test program objectives. This test plan incorporates a set of test phases focused on ensuring repository safety and operational readiness and implements a project-wide integrated product management team approach to facilitate test program planning, analysis, and implementation. The following sections provide a description of the individual test phases, the methodology for test program planning and analyses, and the management approach for implementing these activities.

The authors present a second-order algorithm for reconstructing an interface from a distribution of volume fractions in a general orthogonal coordinate system with derivatives approximated using finite differences. The method approximates the interface curve by a piecewise-linear profile. An integral formulation is used that accounts for the orthogonal coordinate system in a natural way. The authors present results obtained using this method for tracking a material interface between two compressible media in spherical coordinates.

Final report for program on the study of structure and properties of epitaxial oxide films. The defect structure of epitaxial oxide thin films was investigated. Both binary and complex oxides were studied. Epitaxial oxides were synthesized by organometallic chemical vapor deposition (OMCVD). This technique has been found to be highly versatile for the synthesis of a wide range of epitaxial oxide including dielectrics, ferroelectrics and high T{sub c} superconductors. Systems investigated include the binary oxides ZnO and TiO{sub 2} and ferroelectric oxides BaTiO{sub 3}, BaSrTiO{sub 3} and KNbO{sub 3}. Techniques used to evaluate the defect structure included deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS), photocapacitance spectroscopy, and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. High purity, stoichiometric oxide films were deposited and their defect structure evaluated. Epitaxial ZnO was deposited at temperatures as low as 250 C. PL indicated only near band edge ultraviolet emission showing that both extrinsic and intrinsic point defects could be significantly lowered in OMCVD derived thin films compared to that of the bulk. This presumably was a result of low deposition temperatures and high purity starting materials. Ferroelectric oxides epitaxial thin films of BaTiO{sub 3} and the solid solution BaSrTiO{sub 3} were synthesized and the defect structure determined. Photocapacitance spectroscopy was …

This procedure provides instructions for performing inner containment vessel (ICV) and outer containment vessel (OCV) maintenance and periodic leakage rate testing on the following packaging seals and corresponding seal surfaces using a nondestructive helium (He) leak test. In addition, this procedure provides instructions for performing ICV and OCV structural pressure tests.

This report describes the results of research and development in the area of communication among disparate species of software agents. The two primary elements of the work are the formation of ontologies for use by software agents and the means by which software agents are instructed to carry out complex tasks that require interaction with other agents. This work was grounded in the areas of commercial transport and cybersecurity.

The integrity of coatings used in hot section components of combustion turbine is crucial to the reliability of the buckets. This project was initiated in recognition of the need for predicting the life of coatings analytically, and non destructively; correspondingly, three principal tasks were established. Task 1, with the objective of analytically developing stress, strain and temperature distributions in the bucket and thereby predicting thermal fatigue (TMF) damage for various operating conditions; Task 2 with the objective of developing eddy current techniques to measure both TMF damage and general degradation of coatings and, Task 3, with the objective of developing mechanism based algorithms. This report is a record of the progress to date on these 3 key tasks. Two supporting tasks relating to field validation (Task 4) and economic analysis (Task 5) have not yet been initiated.

Geant4 is a tool kit developed by a collaboration of physicists and computer professionals in the high energy physics field for simulation of the passage of particles through matter. The motivation for the development of the Beam Tools is to extend the Geant4 applications to accelerator physics. The Beam Tools are a set of C++ classes designed to facilitate the simulation of accelerator elements: r.f. cavities, magnets, absorbers, etc. These elements are constructed from Geant4 solid volumes like boxes, tubes, trapezoids, or spheers. There are many computer programs for beam physics simulations, but Geant4 is ideal to model a beam through a material or to integrate a beam line with a complex detector. There are many such examples in the current international High Energy Physics programs. For instance, an essential part of the R&D associated with the Neutrino Source/Muon Collider accelerator is the ionization cooling channel, which is a section of the system aimed to reduce the size of the muon beam in phase space. The ionization cooling technique uses a combination of linacs and light absorbers to reduce the transverse momentum and size of the beam, while keeping the longitudinal momentum constant. The MuCool/MICE (muon cooling) experiments need accurate …

Mini RF-driven ion sources with 1.2 cm and 1.5 cm inner chamber diameter have been developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Several gas species have been tested including argon, krypton and hydrogen. These mini ion sources operate in inductively coupled mode and are capable of generating high current density ion beams at tens of watts. Since the plasma potential is relatively low in the plasma chamber, these mini ion sources can function reliably without any perceptible sputtering damage. The mini RF-driven ion sources will be combined with electrostatic focusing columns, and are capable of producing nano focused ion beams for micro machining and semiconductor fabrications.

The change in focus of a high-resolution electron microscope is generally assumed to be linear with change in objective lens current. Thus the defocus step size should be constant for a constant step in lens current. Measurements on the LBNL One-Angstrom Microscope show that the step size increases with increasing underfocus (reduced lens current). Differentiation of the best-fit quadratic shows that the defocus step size varies linearly as defocus changes.

A new adaptive grid, 3-D FEM hydrodynamic shock (ie, HYDRO )code called PHASTA-2C has been developed and used to investigate bubble implosion phenomena leading to ultra-high temperatures and pressures. In particular, it was shown that nearly spherical bubble compressions occur during bubble implosions and the predicted conditions associated with a recent ORNL Bubble Fusion experiment [Taleyarkhan et al, Science, March, 2002] are consistent with the occurrence of D/D fusion.

Most large-scale applications of high-critical-temperature superconductors will require wires or tapes that can carry large current in applied magnetic fields. This report describes research and development efforts at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) aimed at producing practical superconducting components and devices using the Y-Ba-Cu-O and Bi-(Pb)-Sr-Ca-Cu-O systems. Topics discussed include various methods of forming second- and first-generation composite conductors, characterization of their structures and superconducting and mechanical properties, modeling of grain-boundary current transport, and the testing and modeling of a superconducting fault current limiter.

Recent upgrades to the NSTX facility have led to improved plasma performance. Using 5MW of neutral beam injection, plasmas with toroidal {beta}{sub T} (= 2{micro}{sub 0}<p>/B{sub T}{sup 2} where B{sub T} is the vacuum toroidal field at the plasma geometric center) > 30% have been achieved with normalized {beta}{sub N} (= {beta}{sub T}aB{sub I}/I{sub p}) {approx} 6% {center_dot} m {center_dot} T/MA.. The highest {beta} discharge exceeded the calculated no-wall {beta} limit for several wall times. The stored energy has reached 390kJ at higher toroidal field (0.55T) corresponding to {beta}{sub T} {approx} 20% and {beta}{sub N} = 5.4. Long pulse ({approx}1s) high {beta}{sub p} ({approx}1.5) discharges have also been obtained at higher {beta}{sub {phi}} (0.5T) with up to 6MW NBI power. The highest energy confinement times, up to 120ms, were observed during H-mode operation which is now routine. Confinement times of {approx}1.5 times ITER98pby2 for several {tau}{sub E} are observed during both H-Mode and non-H-Mode discharges. Calculations indicate that many NSTX discharges have very good ion confinement, approaching neoclassical levels. High Harmonic Fast Wave current drive has been demonstrated by comparing discharges with waves launched parallel and anti-parallel to the plasma current.

The Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) is considering vitrification to process liquid sodium-bearing waste. Preliminary studies were completed to evaluate the potential secondary wastes comprise acidic and caustic scrubber solutions, HEPA filters, activated carbon, and ion exchange media. Possible treatment methods, waste forms, and disposal sites are evaluated from radiological and mercury contamination estimates.

The purpose of this work was to characterize and compare the settling behavior of the radioactive Tank 19F mound sample and non-radioactive Pacific Northwest Nation Laboratory simulants at 6, 11, and 16 weight percent total solids.