A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since 1994, the United States has appropriated $227 million to support two multilateral science centers in Russia and Ukraine. The science centers pay scientists who once developed nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and missile systems for the Soviet Union to conduct peaceful research. By employing scientists at the science centers, the United States seeks to reduce the risks that these scientists could be tempted to sell their expertise to terrorists. This report examines the (1) selection procedures the State Department uses to fund projects that meet program objectives and (2) monitoring procedures the State Department uses to verify that scientists are working on the peaceful research they are paid to produce. GAO found that State lacks complete information on the total number and locations of senior scientists and has not been granted access to senior scientists at critical research institutes under the Russian Ministry of Defense. GAO also found that State has designed an interagency review process to select and fund research proposals submitted by weapons scientists to the science centers in Russia and Ukraine. The overall goal is to select projects that reduce proliferation risks …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "According to the current National Military Strategy the United States should be prepared to fight and win two nearly simultaneous wars in different parts of the world. Military policy calls for each of the services to acquire and maintain enough war material inventories to sustain a two-war scenario until the industrial base can resupply our armed forces. Because of limitations in the Army's process for determining war reserve spare parts requirements, however, the accuracy of the war reserve spare parts requirements and funding needs are uncertain. These limitations include (1) not using the best available data on the rate at which spare parts would be consumed during wartime for its war reserve spare parts requirements calculations, (2) having a potential mismatch between the Army's process for determining spare parts requirements for war reserves and how the Army plans to repair equipment on the battlefield, and (3) lacking a fact-based assessment of industrial base capacity to provide needed parts for the two-war scenario. Uncertainties are likely to persist for some time as the Army contemplates a significant transformation of its forces and other changes are considered affecting …

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Welcome to the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) energy auditing tool, called ''NEAT.'' NEAT, an acronym for National Energy Audit Tool, a program for personal computers that was designed for use by local agencies in the Weatherization Assistance Program. It is an approved alternative audit that meets all auditing requirements set forth by the Program. NEAT is easy to use. It applies engineering and economic calculations to evaluate energy conservation measures for single-family, detached houses or small multifamily buildings. You can use it to rank measures for each individual house, or to establish a priority list of conservation measures for nearly identical housing types. NEAT was written for the Weatherization Assistance Program by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Many building energy consumption algorithms are taken from Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory's Computerized Instrumented Residential Audit (CIRA), published in 1982 for the Department of Energy. Equipment retrofit conservation measures are based on published reports on various heating retrofits. Heating and cooling system replacement conservation measures are based on the energy ratings of new heating and cooling equipment. The Weatherization Program anticipates that this computer-based energy audit will offer substantial performance improvements to many states who choose to incorporate it into their programs. When conservation …

Coaxial Helicity Injection (CHI) on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) has produced 240 kA of toroidal current without the use of the central solenoid. Values of the current multiplication ratio (CHI produced toroidal current/injector current) up to 10 were obtained, in agreement with predictions. The discharges which lasted for up to 200 ms, limited only by the programmed waveform, are more than an order of magnitude longer in duration that any CHI discharges previously produced in a Spheromak or a Spherical Torus (ST).

Efforts to develop fibrous ceramic monoliths for primarily structural applications are described. Fibrous monoliths (FMs) are relatively insensitive to flaws and can exhibit graceful failure and large work-of-fracture values. They can be inexpensively produced in a wide variety of forms by conventional ceramic processing methods such as extrusion. The FM project that is the subject of this report involved investigations to (1) develop FMs that can be pressureless sintered rather than hot pressed, (2) develop technologies to continuously extrude FM filaments and inexpensively fabricate FM components, (3) evaluate the performance of commercial and new, prototype FMs, (4) develop micromechanical models to guide the design of new FMs and predict their properties, and (5) forge collaborations with industry to produce useful parts.

Coaxial Helicity Injection (CHI) has been investigated on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). Initial experiments produced 130 kA of toroidal current without the use of the central solenoid. The corresponding injector current was 20 kA. Discharges with pulse lengths up to 130 ms have been produced.

We report observations of the first low-to-high (L-H) confinement mode transitions in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). The H-mode energy confinement time increased over reference L-mode discharges transiently by 100-300%, as high as {approximately}150 ms. This confinement time is {approximately}1.8-2.3 times higher than predicted by a multi-machine ELM-free H-mode scaling. This achievement extends the H-mode window of fusion devices down to a record low aspect ratio (R/a) {approximately} 1.3, challenging both confinement and L-H power thresholds scalings based on conventional aspect ratio tokamaks.

The following are proposed activities for quarter 3 (12/15/00-3/14/01): (1) Conduct TGA and fuel characterization studies - Task 1; (2) Continue to perform re-burn experiments. - Task 2; (3) Design fixed bed combustor. - Task 3; and (4) Modify the PCGC2 code to include moisture evaporation model - Task 4. The following were achieved During Quarter 3 (12/15/0-3/14/01): (1) Conducted TGA and Fuel Characterization studies (Appendix I). A comparison of -fuel properties, TGA traces etc is given in Appendix I. Litter has 3 and 6 times more N compared to coal on mass and heat basis. The P of litter is almost 2 % (Task 1). Both litter biomass (LB) and feedlot biomass (FB) have been pulverized. The size distributions are similar for both litter and FB in that 75 % pass through 150 {micro}m sieve while for coal 75 % pass through 60 {micro}m sieve. Rosin Rammler curve parameters are given. The TGA characteristics of FB and LB are similar and pyrolysis starts at 100 C below that of coal; (2) Reburn experiments with litter and with FB have been performed (Appendix II) -Task 2. Litter is almost twice effective (almost 70--90 % reduction) compared to coal in reducing …