A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO audited the Bureau of Public Debt's schedule of Federal Debt for fiscal years 2003 and 2002. GAO found that (1) the Schedules of Federal Debt were presented fairly, in all material respects, in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles; (2) the Bureau had effective internal control over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations related to the Schedule of Federal Debt for fiscal year 2003; and (3) there was no reportable noncompliance in fiscal year 2003 with a selected provision of a law GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The 1998 terrorist attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa highlighted security deficiencies in diplomatic facilities, leading the Department of State to embark on an estimated $16 billion embassy construction program. The program's key objective is to provide safe, secure, and cost-effective buildings for employees overseas. Given that the size and cost of new facilities are directly related to agencies' anticipated staffing needs, it is imperative that future requirements be projected as accurately as possible. GAO was asked to (1) assess whether State and other federal agencies have adopted a disciplined process for determining future staffing requirements and (2) review cost-sharing proposals for agencies with overseas staff."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Much of the response to a bioterrorist attack would occur at the local level. Many local areas and their supporting state agencies, however, may not be adequately prepared to respond to such an attack. In the Public Health Improvement Act that was passed in 2000, Congress directed GAO to examine state and local preparedness for a bioterrorist attack. In this report GAO provides information on state and local preparedness and state and local concerns regarding the federal role in funding and improving preparedness. To gather this information, GAO visited seven cities and their respective state governments, reviewed documents, and interviewed officials. Cities are not identified because of the sensitive nature of this issue."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) maintains equipment and infrastructure worth billions of dollars in many environments where corrosion is causing military assets to deteriorate, shortening their useful life. The resulting increase in required repairs and replacements drives up costs and takes critical systems out of action, reducing mission readiness. GAO was asked to review military activities related to corrosion control. Specifically, this report examines the extent of the impact of corrosion on DOD and the military services and the extent of the effectiveness of DOD's and the services' approach to preventing and mitigating corrosion."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the mid-1990s, GAO has highlighted the need for the Department of State and other agencies to establish a systematic process for determining their overseas staffing levels. To support this long-standing need and in support of the President's Management Agenda, GAO developed a framework for assessing overseas workforce size and identified options for rightsizing. Because the framework was largely based on work at the U.S. embassy in Paris, GAO was asked to determine whether the rightsizing framework is applicable at U.S. embassies in developing countries. To accomplish this objective, we visited three U.S. embassies in West Africa--a medium-sized post in Dakar, Senegal; and two small embassies in Banjul, The Gambia; and Nouakchott, Mauritania--and applied the framework and its corresponding questions there."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Because of concern about school district spending on administration, Congress directed GAO in two separate mandates in the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 to (1) examine how school districts defined and spent Title I funds on administrative activities and (2) review Title I expenditures in at least six school districts. In response to these mandates, we are reporting on (1) how five studies define Title I administrative expenditures and what they found about the percentage of funds spent on these activities and (2) what proportion of Title I funds was spent on administrative activities compared with instructional and other activities in six school districts."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The attacks on September 11, 2001, show that threats to U.S. security can now come from any number of terrorist groups, at any number of locations, and in wholly unexpected ways. As a result, the Department of Defense (DOD) is shifting to a new defense strategy focused on dealing with uncertainty by acting quickly across a wide range of combat conditions. One key ingredient of the new strategy is the availability of aircraft to carry out their missions. Key measures of availability include the percentage of time an aircraft can perform at least one or all of its assigned missions, termed the "mission capable" (MC) and "full mission capable" (FMC) rates, respectively. GAO examined whether key DOD aircraft have been able to meet MC and FMC goals in recent years, and DOD's process for setting aircraft availability goals."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1986, the United States entered into a Compact of Free Association (Compact) that provided about $2.1 billion in U.S. assistance from 1987 through 2003 to the Pacific Island nations of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). GAO has issued a number of reports raising concerns about the effectiveness of this assistance. GAO was asked to review possible FSM and RMI misuse of Compact funds. We reviewed single audits for 1996 through 2000 and this report summarizes the audit results."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 2001, letters contaminated with anthrax resulted in 23 cases of the disease, 5 deaths, and the contamination of numerous U.S. Postal Service facilities, including the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford, Connecticut (the Wallingford facility). GAO was asked to address, among other matters, whether (1) the Postal Service followed applicable guidelines and requirements for informing employees at the facility about the contamination and (2) lessons can be learned from the response to the facility's contamination."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Army's five maintenance depots produced work valued at $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2002, with the remaining 49 percent of the Army's depot work performed by contractors. GAO was asked to assess (1) the trends in and the reliability of depot workload projections; (2) whether workloads are sufficient for efficient depot operations, initiatives are under way to improve efficiency, and additional workloads are possible; (3) whether the Army has identified depots' core capability and provided workload to support that capability; and (4) whether the Army has a long-range plan for a viable, efficient depot system."

The Gunite and Associated Tanks (GAAT) Remediation Project was the first of its kind performed in the United States. Robotics and remotely operated equipment were used to successfully transfer almost 94,000 gal of remote-handled transuranic sludge containing over 81,000 Ci of radioactive contamination from nine large underground storage tanks at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The sludge was transferred with over 439,000 gal of radioactive waste supernatant and {approx}420,500 gal of fresh water that was used in sluicing operations. The GAATs are located in a high-traffic area of ORNL near a main thoroughfare. A phased and integrated approach to waste retrieval operations was used for the GAAT Remediation Project. The project promoted safety by obtaining experience from low-risk operations in the North Tank Farm before moving to higher-risk operations in the South Tank Farm. This approach allowed project personnel to become familiar with the tanks and waste, as well as the equipment, processes, procedures, and operations required to perform successful waste retrieval. By using an integrated approach to tank waste retrieval and tank waste management, the project was completed years ahead of the original baseline schedule, which resulted in avoiding millions of dollars in associated costs. This report is …

We developed a new fluid property module for TOUGH2, called EOSN, to simulate transport of noble gases in the subsurface. Currently, users may select any of five different noble gases as well as CO2, two at a time. For the three gas components (air and two user-specified noble gases) in EOSN, the Henry's coefficients and the diffusivities in the gas phase are no longer assumed constants, but are temperature dependent. We used the Crovetto et al. (1982) model to estimate Henry's coefficients, and the Reid et al. (1987) correlations to calculate gas phase diffusivities. The new module requires users to provide names of the selected noble gases, which properties are provided internally. There are options for users to specify any (non-zero) molecular weights and half-lives for the gas components. We provide two examples to show applications of TOUGH2IEOSN. While temperature effects are relatively insignificant for one example problem where advection is dominant, they cause almost an order of magnitude difference for the other case where diffusion becomes a dominant process and temperature variations are relatively large. It appears that thermodynamic effects on gas diffusivities and Henry's coefficients can be important for low-permeability porous media and zones with large temperature variations.

In the present quarter, experiments are presented on ceramic/metal interactions of Zirconia/ Ni-B-Si system and with a thin Ti coating deposited on zirconia surface. Existing facilities were modified for evaluation of environmental assisted slow crack growth and creep in flexural mode. Processing of perovskites of LSC, LSF and LSCF composition were continued for evaluation of mechanical properties as a function of environment. These studies in parallel to those on the LSFCO composition is expect to yield important information on questions such as the role of cation segregation and the stability of the perovskite structure on crack initiation vs. crack growth. Studies have been continued on the La{sub 1-x}Sr{sub x}FeO{sub 3-d} composition using neutron diffraction and TGA studies. A transition from p-type to n-type of conductor was observed at relative low pO{sub 2}, at which the majority carriers changed from the holes to electrons because of the valence state decreases in Fe due to the further loss of oxygen. Investigation on the thermodynamic properties of the membrane materials are continued to develop a complete model for the membrane transport. Data obtained at 850 C show that the stoichiometry in La{sub 0.2}Sr{sub 0.8}Fe{sub 0.8}Cr{sub 0.2}O{sub 3-x} vary from {approx}2.85 to 2.6 over …

The Gunite and Associated Tanks (GAAT) Remediation Project was the first of its kind performed in the United States. Robotics and remotely operated equipment were used to successfully transfer almost 94,000 gal of remote-handled transuranic sludge containing over 81,000 Ci of radioactive contamination from nine large underground storage tanks at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The sludge was transferred with over 439,000 gal of radioactive waste supernatant and {approx}420,500 gal of fresh water that was used in sluicing operations. The GAATs are located in a high-traffic area of ORNL near a main thoroughfare. Volume 1 provides information on the various phases of the project and describes the types of equipment used. Volume 1 also discusses the tank waste retrieval performance and the lessons learned during the remediation effort. Volume 2 consists of the following appendixes, which are referenced in Vol. 1: A--Background Information for the Gunite and Associated Tanks Operable Unit; B--Annotated Bibliography; C--GAAT Equipment Matrix; D--Comprehensive Listing of the Sample Analysis Data from the GAAT Remediation Project; and E--Vendor List for the GAAT Remediation Project. The remediation of the GAATs was completed {approx}5.5 years ahead of schedule and {approx}$120,435K below the cost estimated in the Remedial Investigation/Feasibility Study …

None

This report provides an overview of biodiesel fuel and agriculture in the United States.

This project was conducted as a feasibility study, in preparation for including this work in the forthcoming ''Instrumented Cell'' (IC) Strategic Initiative. The goal of the IC is to study individual cells; the goal of this feasibility study was to determine the best method for isolating large numbers of individual cells in a way that facilitates various types of environmental changes and intracellular measurements. We have the capability to do this with one cell, and sought to expand the number of cells that we could study simultaneously. Our specific goal for this feasibility study was to discover a way to isolate individual cells, and impale them on a nanopipette. This would enable samples to be introduced into and removed from a cell.

This report analyzes each of the provisions in Title XI of the conference report accompanying H.R. 1588, as agreed to by the House.

None

This memo is to assess the TFMC test results and compare it with the strand performance. The TFMC is not an ideal object for studying performance of the CICC in a sense that the instrumentation priority was considered secondary to reliability and therefore a lot of assumptions and modeling need to be made to make the comparison against the LMI strand possible. To compare the CICC performance to strand we need to know at least current in the strands, magnetic field and electric field distribution along the strands, temperature profile and strain distribution. In the TFMC we have much less uniform magnetic field and less determined temperature than in the CSMC Inserts, so role of modeling is greater. A code M&M developed by Polito team (R. Zanino and L. Savoldi Richard) evaluates the temperature profile in the conductor. It includes heat transfer in joints, self-heating, heat transfer to the radial plates. From their model it follows [1] that the radial plates do not affect significantly the temperature in the conductor near the area with the peak magnetic field, which is 3-5 m away from the conductor entrance inside the TFMC winding pack. Unfortunately, there are no sensors in between the …

None

None

The power of a quantum computer (QC) relies on the fundamental concept of the superposition in quantum mechanics and thus allowing an inherent large-scale parallelization of computation. In a QC, binary information embodied in a quantum system, such as spin degrees of freedom of a spin-1/2 particle forms the qubits (quantum mechanical bits), over which appropriate logical gates perform the computation. In classical computers, the basic unit of information is the bit, which can take a value of either 0 or 1. Bits are connected together by logic gates to form logic circuits to implement complex logical operations. The expansion of modern computers has been driven by the developments of faster, smaller and cheaper logic gates. As the size of the logic gates become smaller toward the level of atomic dimensions, the performance of such a system is no longer considered classical but is rather governed by quantum mechanics. Quantum computers offer the potentially superior prospect of solving computational problems that are intractable to classical computers such as efficient database searches and cryptography. A variety of algorithms have been developed recently, most notably Shor's algorithm for factorizing long numbers into prime factors in polynomial time and Grover's quantum search algorithm. …

This letter report is a supplement to the letter reports submitted previously under ECRs No. 2002-600-012 (Borrow Area C) and No. 2002-600-012a (CWC expansion). This letter report covers all areas that may be subject to surface disturbance under Alternative Groups A, B, C, D1, D2, D3, E1, E2, E3, and the No Action Alternative of the Hanford Solid Waste Environmental Impact Statement (HSW EIS), except for the following Low-Level Burial Grounds (LLBGs). The LLBGs proposed for use in the HSW EIS that are not subject of this letter report (218-W-3A, 218-W-3AE, 218-W 4B, 218-W-5, the developed portion of 218-W-4C, and the eastern half [except the northeastern corner] of 218-W-6 in the 200 West Area; and 218-E-10 and 218-E-12B in the 200 East Area) are surveyed annually. Annual letter reports concerning these are currently sent to Mr. Brett M. Barnes of Fluor Hanford, Inc. For the areas of surface disturbance described herein we provide a summary of field survey methods, survey results, and considerations and recommendations based on these results.