Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) lacks management control of the Standard Procurement System (SPS). DOD has not (1) ensured that accountability and responsibility for measuring progress against commitments are clearly understood, performed, and reported; (2) demonstrated, on the basis of reliable data and credible analysis, that the proposed system solution will produce economic benefits commensurate with costs; (3) used data on progress against project cost, schedule, and performance commitments throughout a project's life cycle to make investment decisions; and (4) divided this large project into a series of incremental investment decisions to spread the risks over smaller, more manageable components. GAO found that DOD lacks the basic information needed to make informed decisions on how to proceed with the project. Nevertheless, DOD continues to push forward in acquiring and deploying additional versions of SPS. This testimony summarizes a July report (GAO-01-682)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress established an Indian trust fund account reconciliation requirement in 1987 in response to tribes' concerns that the Department of the Interior had not consistently provided them with statements on their account balances, their trust fund accounts had never been reconciled, and Interior planned to contract with a third party to manage the accounts. Congress required that the accounts be audited and reconciled before the Bureau of Indian Affairs transferred funds to a third party. Interior's fiscal year 1990 appropriations act added a requirement that the accounts be reconciled to the earliest possible date and that Interior obtain an independent certification of the reconciliation work. The American Indian Trust Fund Management Reform Act of 1994 required Interior to provide tribes with reconciled account statements as of September 30, 1995. To fulfill these requirements, Interior contracted with two major independent public accounting firms, one to reconcile the trust accounts and the other to do an independent certification of the reconciliation. When Interior's reconciliation project was completed in January 1996, each tribe was provided a report that included unreconciled account statements with schedules of proposed adjustments based on results for …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has projected that the failure of Superior Bank could cost the deposit insurance fund as much as $526 million. A major reason for the failure was Superior Bank's business strategy of originating and securing subprime loans on a large scale. In addition to the concentration in risky assets, the bank did not properly value and account for the interests that it had retained in pooled home mortgages. Superior's external auditor, Ernst & Young, also failed to detect the improper valuation of Superior's retained interest until the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS) and FDIC insisted that the issue be reviewed by the auditor's national office. Federal regulators did not identify and act on the bank's problems early enough to prevent a loss to the deposit insurance fund. Both OTS and FDIC were aware of the substantial concentration of retained interests that Superior held, but they took little action because of the apparently high level of earnings, the apparently adequate capital, and the belief that the bank's management was conservatively managing the institution."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1978, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) established a regulatory process for recognizing tribes. The process requires tribes that are petitioning for recognition to submit evidence that they have continuously existed as an Indian tribe since historic times. Recognition establishes a formal government-to-government relationship between the United States and a tribe. The quasi-sovereign status created by this relationship exempts some tribal lands from most state and local laws and regulations, including those that regulate gambling. GAO found that the basis for BIA's tribal recognition decisions is not always clear. Although petitioning tribes must meet set criteria to be granted recognition, no guidance exists to clearly explain how to interpret key aspects of the criteria. This lack of guidance creates controversy and uncertainty for all parties about the basis for decisions. The recognition process is also hampered by limited resources; a lack of time; and ineffective procedures for providing information to interested third parties, such as local municipalities and other Indian tribes. As a result, the number of completed petitions waiting to be considered is growing. BIA estimates that it may take up to 15 years before all …

Final report of the Amtrak Reform Council describing their activities and findings regarding the Council's proposed action plan for restructuring the national intercity rail passenger system in the face of Amtrak's failure to achieve operational self-sufficiency.

We describe some algorithms and tools that have been developed to generate composite overlapping grids on geometries that have been defined with computer aided design (CAD) programs. This process consists of five main steps. Starting from a description of the surfaces defining the computational domain we (1) correct errors in the CAD representation, (2) determine topology of the patched-surface, (3) build a global triangulation of the surface, (4) construct structured surface and volume grids using hyperbolic grid generation, and (5) generate the overlapping grid by determining the holes and the interpolation points. The overlapping grid generator which is used for the final step also supports the rapid generation of grids for block-structured adaptive mesh refinement and for moving grids. These algorithms have been implemented as part of the Overture object-oriented framework.

A passively cooled graphite target was proposed for a 1.5 MW neutrino production research facility because of its simplicity and favorable performance as a target material for neutrino production (Ref. 1). The conceptual design for the target in the Reference 1 study was a graphite rod 15 mm in diameter by 800 mm long. Figure 1 shows the graphite target rod supported by graphite spokes, which are mounted to a water-cooled stainless steel support tube. The target is radiatively cooled to the water-cooled surface of the support tube. Based on nuclear analysis results (Ref. 2), the time-averaged power deposition in the target is 35 kW. If this power is deposited uniformly along the axial length of the target, the volumetric power deposition in the target is about 250 MW/m{sup 3}. The target surface temperature required to radiate the deposited power to a water-cooled tube is estimated to be about 1850 C, and the temperature at the center of the target is about 75 C hotter. The sublimation erosion rate (e), estimated assuming that the graphite is submersed in a perfect vacuum environment, can be derived from kinetic theory and is given by: e = p{sub sat} (m/2{pi} kT){sup 1/2} where …

The goal of this Strategic Initiative LDRD project was to establish at LLNL a new core capability in computational biology, combining laboratory strengths in high performance computing, molecular biology, and computational chemistry and physics. As described in this report, this project has been very successful in achieving this goal. This success is demonstrated by the large number of referred publications, invited talks, and follow-on research grants that have resulted from this project. Additionally, this project has helped build connections to internal and external collaborators and funding agencies that will be critical to the long-term vitality of LLNL programs in computational biology. Most importantly, this project has helped establish on-going research groups in the Biology and Biotechnology Research Program, the Physics and Applied Technology Directorate, and the Computation Directorate. These groups include three laboratory staff members originally hired as post-doctoral researchers for this strategic initiative.

A database was generated of estimates of geographically referenced carbon densities of forest vegetation in tropical Southeast Asia for 1980. A geographic information system (GIS) was used to incorporate spatial databases of climatic, edaphic, and geomorphological indices and vegetation to estimate potential (i.e., in the absence of human intervention and natural disturbance) carbon densities of forests. The resulting map was then modified to estimate actual 1980 carbon density as a function of population density and climatic zone. The database covers the following 13 countries: Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia (Campuchea), India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. The data sets within this database are provided in three file formats: ARC/INFO{trademark} exported integer grids, ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) files formatted for raster-based GIS software packages, and generic ASCII files with x, y coordinates for use with non-GIS software packages. This database includes ten ARC/INFO exported integer grid files (five with the pixel size 3.75 km x 3.75 km and five with the pixel size 0.25 degree longitude x 0.25 degree latitude) and 27 ASCII files. The first ASCII file contains the documentation associated with this database. Twenty-four of the ASCII files were generated …

The off-highway sector is under increasing pressure to reduce operating costs (including fuel costs) and to reduce emissions. Recognizing this, the Society of Automotive Engineers and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) convened a workshop in April 2001 (ANL 2001) to (1) determine the interest of the off-highway sector (consisting of agriculture, construction, surface mining, inland marine) in crafting a shared vision of off-highway, heavy machines of the future and (2) identify critical research and development (R&D) needs for minimizing off-highway vehicle emissions while cost-effectively maintaining or enhancing system performance. The workshop also enabled government and industry participants to exchange information. During the workshop, it became clear that the challenges facing the heavy, surface-based off-highway sector can be addressed in three major machine categories: (1) engine/aftertreatment and fuels/lubes, (2) machine systems, and (3) thermal management. Working groups convened to address these topical areas. The status of off-highway technologies was determined, critical technical barriers to achieving future emission standards were identified, and strategies and technologies for reducing fuel consumption were discussed. Priority areas for R&D were identified. Given the apparent success of the discussions at the workshop, several participants from industry agreed to help in the formation of a joint industry/government …

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Given the various reasons individuals lack health insurance coverage, analysis of the effectiveness of a proposal to reduce the number of uninsured (such as those discussed above) requires examining characteristics of individuals with and without health insurance coverage. Numerous sources of data have emerged over time that support estimates of the uninsured. However, each data source differs in how it collects information from individuals, as well as the amount of information it collects related to health insurance status. This report outlines the major advantages and limitations of four federally administered surveys — in providing estimates of the uninsured population.