A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "According to GAO’s updated analysis, replacing the $1 note with a $1 coin would provide a net benefit to the government of approximately $4.4 billion over 30 years, or an average of about $146 million per year. The overall net benefit was due solely to increased seigniorage and not to reduced production costs. This estimate differs from GAO’s 2011 estimate because it considers recent efficiency improvements in note processing that have extended the expected life of the $1 note and other updated information. GAO’s estimate covered 30 years to be consistent with previous GAO analyses and because that period roughly coincides with the life expectancy of the $1 coin."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Reducing aviation noise is important to the efficient operation and expansion of the National Airspace System because community opposition to aviation noise is a major obstacle to airport and runway development. Such development is needed to help address congestion and meet the nation's rapidly growing demand for air travel. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have the primary federal responsibility for research and development (R&D) on aviation noise. FAA focuses on the impacts of aviation noise on communities, while NASA focuses on noise at its source--aircraft engines and airframes. Both FAA and NASA have set noise reduction goals. This congressionally requested report on aviation noise addresses (1) FAA's and NASA's R&D plans for addressing aviation noise and the extent to which they are aligned and (2) FAA's and NASA's noise reduction goals and the likelihood that these goals will be achieved. To conduct its work, GAO reviewed FAA's and NASA's R&D planning documents, coordinating mechanisms, and research plans and interviewed agency officials. In addition, aviation industry representatives reviewed and commented on a draft of this report. A draft was …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO: (1) reviewed two major AmeriCorps programs--AmeriCorps State/National and AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC); (2) compared cost data for NCCC with similar data from the Department of Labor's Job Corps Civilian Conservation Centers (CCC) and reasons for any major differences; (3) compared AmeriCorps participant benefits with those afforded entry-level military personnel; and (4) described information available on the results of AmeriCorps programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the efforts by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and states to provide effective drug abuse treatment programs, focusing on: (1) activities supported by SAMHSA's Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (SAPT) block grant and Knowledge Development and Application (KDA) grant funds for drug abuse treatment; (2) SAMHSA and state mechanisms for monitoring fund use; and (3) SAMHSA and state efforts to determine the effectiveness of drug abuse treatment supported with SAPT block grant funds."

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 2001 and 2000. 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 2001; and (3) there was no reportable noncompliance in fiscal year 2001 with a selected provision of a law GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The National Military Strategy calls for U.S. forces to fight and win two nearly simultaneous major theater wars. Accordingly, the Army calculates its force structure requirements on the basis of this scenario. The strategy also calls for the Army to support operations in a series of concurrent contingencies and assumes that forces thus engaged will be withdrawn and redeployed if war occurs. The Army's difficulty in supporting contingency operations without repeatedly calling on some types of units has raised questions about whether forces structured to meet the two-war scenario can also support multiple peacetime contingency operations. GAO reviewed the Army's force planning process, known as Total Army Analysis 2007, to determine whether the Army's planned force structure will meet its contingency requirements. GAO found that the Army's force structure generally provides the number and types of units required to simultaneously carry out seven illustrative contingency operations requiring Army participation. However, it does not contain the number and types of units needed to meet the needs of five simultaneous contingencies lasting for more than six months and requiring force rotations. If Army forces continue to be called …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Nursing homes that participate in Medicare and Medicaid must periodically assess the needs of residents in order to develop an appropriate plan of care. Such resident assessments are known as the minimum data set (MDS). According to officials in the 10 states with MDS accuracy review programs in operation as of January 2001, these programs were established to set Medicaid payments and identify quality of care problems. Nine of the 10 states conduct periodic on-site reviews in all or a significant portion of their nursing homes to assess the accuracy of the MDS data. These reviews sample a home's MDS assessments to determine whether the basis for the assessments is adequately documented in residents' medical records. These reviews often include interviews of nursing home personnel familiar with residents and observations of the residents themselves. States with separate MDS review programs identified various approaches to improve MDS accuracy. State officials highlighted the on-site review process itself and provider education activities as their primary approaches. State officials also reported such remedies as requiring nursing homes to prepare a corrective action plan or imposing financial penalties on nursing homes …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Forest Service's ecosystem planning efforts, including the Great Lakes Ecological Assessment, focusing on the: (1) views of the Forest Service, other federal agencies, and GAO on key elements that broad-scale ecosystem based assessments should contain to maximize their value to the forest planning process; (2) extent to which the Forest Service has incorporated these elements into the Great Lakes Ecological Assessment and whether it has integrated the assessment into the forest planning process; and (3) extent to which the Forest Service's proposed planning regulations ensure that future broad-scale assessments contain these elements and are integrated into the forest planning process."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress established a national child support enforcement (CSE) program in 1965 to ensure that noncustodial parents financially support their children. In fiscal year 2000, the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) estimated that $84 billion in past-due child support was owed, but never collected. The Social Security Act contains provisions to help child support agencies collect support when noncustodial parents or their income and assets are hard to find. The Act mandates that states enact laws requiring social security numbers (SSNs) on applications for a driver's license. State CSE programs rely on SSNs to locate the addresses, income, and assets of noncustodial parents. Motor vehicle agencies can be a valuable source of SSNs that CSE programs have difficulty obtaining elsewhere. The Act also requires that states suspend, withhold, or restrict the driver's licenses of noncustodial parents delinquent in child support payments. Most motor vehicle agencies that GAO surveyed collect SSNs from all applicants for driver's licenses, but OCSE has taken few steps to promote such collection in states not currently doing so. Although state officials and privacy experts expressed few concerns about motor vehicle agencies collecting …

Stress analysis at Harvard University has examined the implication of non-zero interface stresses on model predictions. Stress distributions at distances greater than about 1 mm from the interface are shown to be independent of the interface stress at high creep intensities, and the predictions based on zero initial stress can be used with confidence. Numerical models for growth dynamics developed at MIT are compared with experimental data on t-V relationships and on interface shape obtained from impurity redistribution in aluminum-doped 10 cm wide ribbon. Comparison of primary creep responses in FZ (floating zone) and CZ (Czochralski) silicon above 1200/sup 0/C using four-point bending indicates that oxygen has a significant influence on the creep rate. Both the strain rate and resulting dislocation densities generated in FZ silicon are an order of magnitude higher than for the CZ material at comparable applied stress levels. A fiber optics probe suitable for temperature measurement during sheet growth has been constructed and tested. Study of the feasibility of using laser interferometric techniques for residual stress measurements has continued at the University of Illinois. The method has been successfully applied to CZ silicon, and is being evaluated for use with EFG ribbon.

Studies of defects in plasma-deposited, hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H), covering the period February 1979-January 1980 are described. Substantial progress has been made in understanding defect structures, their electronic properties and the influence of doping. The two most significant results are surprising, in one case for simplicity where complexity was expected, and in the other for complexity where simplicity had been presumed. In the first study we have clarified the nature of the defects by showing the connection between luminescence and light induced ESR experiments. The results indicate that dangling bonds having a positive electronic correlation energy are sufficient to explain most of the experimental information. The second study demonstrates the existence of microstructural inhomogeneities, arising from the nucleation and growth of the films. Thus the usual assumption of a uniform alloy with a random distribution of defects must be modified in considering processes such as electrical conduction, trapping, recombination, hydrogen effusion, etc. Of considerable technological and fundamental interest is the influence of doping on the defect behavior. Previous indications that doping introduces defect states have been confirmed. It remains to determine why this behavior occurs, and if there are any means of circumventing the problem.

Progress is reported on analytical R and D for the nuclear explosives programs (coupling of gas chromatograph, mass spectrometer, and infrared spectrometer; analysis of fluorocarbon FC-86; far-infrared laser development; transient behavior of n-type TiO/sub 2/ semiconductor photoelectrodes; and impurities on Kevlar 49 fibers) and for the energy programs (on-line mass spectroscopy of oil shale and testing of additives for controlling the scaling of hypersaline geothermal brine). (DLC)

This summary report presents a condensation of the designs as developed from requirements and concept selection to preliminary design. The study consists of the following six tasks: (1) Design requirements: establish design environmental conditions and criteria. Develop methodology to both assess SKSS reliability and performance, and minimize life cycle costs. (2) Conceptual design: develop at least two SKSS conceptual designs for both barge and spar platform (eight in all). Consider commercial plant SKSS, verify feasibility, define problem areas, estimate life cycle cost. Develop deployment, operation and maintenance scenarios. Recommend an SKSS concept for each platform. (3) Preliminary design; prepare preliminary designs for two SKSS concepts selected by NOAA/DOE. Optimize the designs, provide deployment and retrieval procedures, support requirements, evaute reliability and performance. Assess effects of watch circle and water depth variation. (4) Development and testing recommendations: recommend programs required to confirm design assumptions and performance predictions, including material and component development, and soils investigation. Estimate cost and schedule required to perform these programs. (5) Cost-time analysis: develop a detailed cost and schedule for the acquisition, transportation, deployment, inspection, maintenance, spares, replacement and salvage for the SKSS designs. (6) Commercial plant SKSS recommendations: assess applicability of designs to commercial plant SKSS. …

Tailored ceramics are crystalline assemblages made by high-temperature and pressure consolidation of a nuclear waste with selected additives. The multitask program includes waste form development and characterizations, and process and equipment development. (DLC)

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Business Systems Modernization (BSM) program is a multibillion-dollar, high-risk, highly complex effort that involves the development and delivery of a number of modernized information systems that are intended to replace the agency's aging business and tax processing systems. As required by law, IRS submitted its fiscal year 2007 expenditure plan, in September 2006, to congressional appropriations committees, requesting $167.3 million from the BSM account. GAO's objectives in reviewing the plan were to (1) determine whether it satisfied the conditions specified in the law, (2) determine IRS's progress in implementing prior GAO recommendations, and (3) provide any other observations about the plan and IRS's BSM program. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed the plan, reviewed related documentation, and interviewed IRS officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In November 2005, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) established the Secure Border Initiative (SBI) program to secure U.S. borders and reduce illegal immigration. One element of SBI is SBInet, the program responsible for developing a comprehensive border protection system. By legislative mandate, DHS developed a fiscal year 2007 expenditure plan for SBInet to address nine legislative conditions, including a review by GAO. DHS submitted the plan to the Appropriations Committees on December 4, 2006. To address the mandate, GAO assessed the plan against federal guidelines and industry standards and interviewed appropriate DHS officials."

Each major party in the House has a leadership hierarchy. This report summarizes the election, duties, and responsibilities of the Speaker of the House, the majority and minority leaders, and the whips and whip system.

This report discusses how Morocco and the independence-seeking Popular Front for the Liberation of Saqiat al Hamra and Rio de Oro (Polisario) have been vying for control of the Western Sahara, a former Spanish territory, since the 1970s. The report discusses recent settlement attempts, as well as how the Western Sahara issue has affected Algerian-Moroccan bilaterial relations, Moroccan relations with the African Union, and regional cooperation on economic and security issues. The report also discusses the United States' involvement in and stance on the issue.

This report describes the constituent parts of the intelligence budget, past practice in handling intelligence authorizations and appropriations, the arguments that have been advanced for and against making intelligence spending totals public, a legal analysis of these issues, and a review of the implications of post-Cold War developments on the question. It also describes past congressional interest in keeping intelligence spending totals secret.

The Center for Extended Magnetohydrodynamic Modeling (CEMM) is developing computer simulation models for predicting the behavior of magnetically confined plasmas. Over the first phase of support from the Department of Energy’s Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) initiative, the focus has been on macroscopic dynamics that alter the confinement properties of magnetic field configurations. The ultimate objective is to provide computational capabilities to predict plasma behavior—not unlike computational weather prediction—to optimize performance and to increase the reliability of magnetic confinement for fusion energy. Numerical modeling aids theoretical research by solving complicated mathematical models of plasma behavior including strong nonlinear effects and the influences of geometrical shaping of actual experiments. The numerical modeling itself remains an area of active research, due to challenges associated with simulating multiple temporal and spatial scales. The research summarized in this report spans computational and physical topics associated with state of the art simulation of magnetized plasmas. The tasks performed for this grant are categorized according to whether they are primarily computational, algorithmic, or application-oriented in nature. All involve the development and use of the Non-Ideal Magnetohydrodynamics with Rotation, Open Discussion (NIMROD) code, which is described at http://nimrodteam.org. With respect to computation, we have tested and …

TMVOC-MP is a massively parallel version of the TMVOC code (Pruess and Battistelli, 2002), a numerical simulator for three-phase non-isothermal flow of water, gas, and a multicomponent mixture of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) in multidimensional heterogeneous porous/fractured media. TMVOC-MP was developed by introducing massively parallel computing techniques into TMVOC. It retains the physical process model of TMVOC, designed for applications to contamination problems that involve hydrocarbon fuels or organic solvents in saturated and unsaturated zones. TMVOC-MP can model contaminant behavior under 'natural' environmental conditions, as well as for engineered systems, such as soil vapor extraction, groundwater pumping, or steam-assisted source remediation. With its sophisticated parallel computing techniques, TMVOC-MP can handle much larger problems than TMVOC, and can be much more computationally efficient. TMVOC-MP models multiphase fluid systems containing variable proportions of water, non-condensible gases (NCGs), and water-soluble volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). The user can specify the number and nature of NCGs and VOCs. There are no intrinsic limitations to the number of NCGs or VOCs, although the arrays for fluid components are currently dimensioned as 20, accommodating water plus 19 components that may be either NCGs or VOCs. Among them, NCG arrays are dimensioned as 10. The user may select …

This sampling and analysis instruction (SAI) provides the requirements for sample collection and laboratory analysis to evaluate the extent of hexavalent chromium contamination present in the soil below the 100-C-7 and 100-C-7:1 remedial action waste site excavations.

Pyrite (FeS{sub 2}) is one of the most common naturally occurring minerals that is present in many subsurface environments. It plays an important role in the genesis of enriched ore deposits through weathering reactions, is the most abundant sulfide mineral in many mine tailings, and is the primary source of acid drainage from mines and waste rock piles. The pyrite oxidation reaction serves as a prototype for oxidative weathering processes with broad significance for geoscientific, engineering, and environmental applications. Mathematical modeling of these processes is extremely challenging because aqueous concentrations of key species vary over an enormous range, oxygen inventory and supply are typically small in comparison to pyrite inventory, and chemical reactions are complex, involving kinetic control and microbial catalysis. We present the mathematical formulation of a general multi-phase advective-diffusive reactive transport model for redox processes. Two alternative implementations were made in the TOUGHREACT and TOUGH2-CHEM simulation codes which use sequential iteration and simultaneous solution, respectively. The simulators are applied to reactive consumption of pyrite in (1) saturated flow of oxidizing water, and (2) saturated-unsaturated flow in which oxygen transport occurs in both aqueous and gas phases. Geochemical evolutions predicted from different process models are compared, and issues of …

A recent independent review led to uncertainty about the technical basis for characterizing the residual amount of tritium in polymer components used in the Savannah River Site Tritium Facilities that are sent for waste disposal. A review of a paper published in the open literature firmly establishes the basis of the currently used characterization, 10 Ci/cc. Information provided in that paper about exposure experiments performed at the DOE Mound Laboratory allows the calculation of the currently used characterization. These experiments involved exposure of high density polyethylene (HD-PE) to initially 1 atm tritium gas. In addition, a review of recent research at the Savannah River Site not only further substantiates this characterization, but also establishes its use for ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW-PE), polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE, a trade name is Teflon{reg_sign}), and Vespel{reg_sign} polyimide. 10 Ci/cc tritium is a representative characterization for any type of polymer components exposed at ambient temperature and at approximately 1 atm. tritium gas.