Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the methodology used to estimate the $12.6 billion in Medicare improper payments, as reported by the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) for fiscal year (FY) 1998, focusing on whether the methodology included tests to detect improper payments resulting from fraudulent and abusive schemes in the Medicare program."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the Navy's records retention and financial disbursements, focusing on the Navy's application of a Department of Defense (DOD) Financial Management Regulation (FMR) which calls for copies of disbursing officer records to be destroyed after 1 year."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the reporting procedures under Section 10A of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed user fees paid to the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) for Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act (CLIA) activities, focusing on the: (1) CLIA program budget history, including their rationale for recent fee increases; (2) allocation of increased fees across laboratories and states; and (3) information HCFA provided to states on CLIA program operations and the recent increase in fees."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Executive Office of the President's (EOP) 1999 Annual Update to the Information Technology Architecture (ITA) and its Capital Investment Plan Report, focusing on whether these documents adequately define a target enterprise systems architecture."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO identified some of the challenges agencies face in producing credible performance information and how those challenges may affect performance reporting, focusing on: (1) whether the weaknesses identified in agencies' performance plans imply challenges for the performance reports; (2) some of the challenges agencies face in producing credible performance data; and (3) how performance reports can be used to address data credibility issues."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Bureau of the Census' Data Capture System (DCS) 2000 for the tabulation of 2000 census data, focusing on the status and quality of DCS 2000, as well as the risks Census faces in successfully completing the system."

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To identify genes misregulated in the final stages of breast carcinogenesis, we performed differential display to compare the gene expression patterns of the human tumorigenic mammary epithelial cells, HMT-3522-T4-2, with those of their immediate premalignant progenitors, HMT-3522-S2. We identified a novel gene, called anti-zuai-1 (AZU-1), that was abundantly expressed in non- and premalignant cells and tissues but was appreciably reduced in breast tumor cell types and in primary tumors. The AZU-1 gene encodes an acidic 571-amino-acid protein containing at least two structurally distinct domains with potential protein-binding functions: an N-terminal serine and proline-rich domain with a predicted immunoglobulin-like fold and a C-terminal coiled-coil domain. In HMT-3522 cells, the bulk of AZU-1 protein resided in a detergent-extractable cytoplasmic pool and was present at much lower levels in tumorigenic T4-2 cells than in their nonmalignant counterparts. Reversion of the tumorigenic phenotype of T4-2 cells, by means described previously, was accompanied by the up-regulation of AZU-1. In addition, reexpression of AZU-1 in T4-2 cells, using viral vectors, was sufficient to reduce their malignant phenotype substantially, both in culture and in vivo. These results indicate that AZU-1 is a candidate breast tumor suppressor that may exert its effects by promoting correct tissue morphogenesis.

Dissociation behavior of carboneous materials with or without fluorine atoms at pressures (P) of tens of gigapascal (GPa) and temperature (T) at several thousand Kelvin is not so well understood. The main issues are: (a) carbon condensation processes and (b) thermodynamics of hydrogen fluoride (HF) produced from dissociation. Item (a) requires information on (i) the melting line of carbon, (ii) liquid carbon, (iii) stability and energy barrier between graphite and diamond clusters, and (iv) kinetics of cluster growth. Item (b) requires knowledge of (v) intermolecular potentials involving HF and (vi) influence of fluorine chemistry on supercritical phase change. The details concerning these issues are described.

Operations at U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) sites, such as Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and Savannah River Site (SRS), have generated a variety of waste streams that have resulted in releases to the environment. These releases have created areas or suspected areas of contamination and contaminated facilities that could contain hazardous, radioactive, and/or mixed wastes. As a result, these areas or facilities are subject to environmental assessments and possible restoration, primarily under the provisions of the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). To reduce risks to human health and the environment and to comply with the requirements of the various environmental laws and regulations, multidisciplinary environmental restoration (ER) programs [which include remedial actions and decontamination and decommissioning and waste management programs] have been established to identify, characterize, and remediate sites and facilities at both ORNL and SRS. To coordinate and ensure compliance with the applicable laws and regulations, DOE, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regions, and the respective state environmental agencies have entered into Federal Facilities Compliance Agreements (FFCA) and/or Consent Agreements. The Environmental Management, Office of Technology Development, and other agencies provide needed technology development and demonstration …

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

This report documents the Hazards Analysis Report (HAR) Addendum for Buildings 518 and 518A. In summary, the description of the facility and the operations given in the 1995 PHA are the same as the present in this year 2000. The hazards description also remains the same. The hazards analysis in this HAR Addendum is different in that it needs to be compared to operations routinely ''performed'' by the public. The HAR Addendum characterizes the level of intrinsic potential hazards associated with a facility and provides the basis for hazard classification. The hazard classification determines the level of safety documentation required and the DOE order governing the safety analysis. The hazard classification also determines the level of review and approval required for the safety analysis. This facility does not contain any safety class systems or systems important to safety as defined in Department of Energy standard DOE-STD-3009-94. The hazards of primary concern associated with B518 and B518A are chemical in nature. The hazard classification is determined by comparing facility inventories of chemicals with threshold values for the various hazard classification levels. In this way, the hazard level of the facility can be ascertained. The most significant hazards that could affect people …

Mask blanks are the substrates that hold the master patterns for integrated circuits. Integrated circuits are semiconductor devices, such as microprocessors (mPs), dynamic random access memory (DRAMs), and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs) that are central to the computer, communication, and electronics industries. These devices are fabricated using a set of master patterns that are sequentially imaged onto light-sensitive coated silicon wafers and processed to form thin layers of insulating and conductive materials on top of the wafer. These materials form electrical paths and transistors that control the flow of electricity through the device. For the past forty years the semiconductor industry has made phenomenal improvements in device functionality, compactness, speed, power, and cost. This progress is principally due to the exponential decrease in the minimum feature size of integrated circuits, which has been reduced by a factor of {radical}2 every three years. Since 1992 the Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) has coordinated the efforts of producing a technology roadmap for semiconductors. In the latest document, ''The International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors: 1999'', future technology nodes (minimum feature sizes) and targeted dates were specified and are summarized in Table 1. Lithography is the imaging technology for producing a de-magnified image of …

A diffuser assembly is provided for narrow groove welding using an automatic gas tungsten arc welding torch. The diffuser assembly includes manifold adapted for adjustable mounting on the welding torch which is received in a central opening in the manifold. Laterally extending manifold sections communicate with a shield gas inlet such that shield gas supplied to the inlet passes to gas passages of the manifold sections. First and second tapered diffusers are respectively connected to the manifold sections in fluid communication with the gas passages thereof. The diffusers extend downwardly along the torch electrode on opposite sides thereof so as to release shield gas along the length of the electrode and at the distal tip of the electrode. The diffusers are of a transverse width which is on the order of the thickness of the electrode so that the diffusers can, in use, be inserted into a narrow welding groove before and after the electrode in the direction of the weld operation.

IVY is a verified theorem prover for first-order logic with equality. It is coded in ACL2, and it makes calls to the theorem prover Otter to search for proofs and to the program MACE to search for countermodels. Verifications of Otter and MACE are not practical because they are coded in C. Instead, Otter and MACE give detailed proofs and models that are checked by verified ACL2 programs. In addition, the initial conversion to clause form is done by verified ACL2 code. The verification is done with respect to finite interpretations.

In support of the gas generation test program (GGTP) for the 9975 shipping container, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was conducted. The objective of this activity was to determine the moisture content as an input to the gas generation model.

This project examines three major areas in which CO{sub 2} flooding can be improved: fluid and matrix interactions, conformance control, sweep efficiency, and reservoir simulation for improved oil recovery. This report discusses the activity during the calendar quarter covering October 1, 1999 through December 31, 1999 that covers mostly the second fiscal quarter of the project's third year. Injectivity experiments were performed on two Indian limestone cores. In tests on the first core, a variety of brine, CO{sub 2} WAG, and oil contaminant injection schemes indicated infectivity reduction due to phase conditions and contamination. The results are only quantitative because of plugging and erosion in the core. To date, tests on the second core have investigated the effects of long-term brine stability on the reduction of fluid-rock interaction, in order to quantify fluid effects on infectivity. The authors continue to develop a new approach in reservoir simulation to improve the history matching process on clusters of PCs. The main objective was to improve simulation of complex improved oil recovery methods, such as CO{sub 2}-foam for mobility control and sweep enhancements. Adsorption experiments using circulation and flow-through methods were used to determine the loss of surfactants for economic evaluation. A sacrificial …

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The efficient implementation of collective communication operations has received much attention. Initial efforts modeled network communication and produced optimal trees based on those models. However, the models used by these initial efforts assumed equal point-to-point latencies between any two processes. This assumption is violated in heterogeneous systems such as clusters of SMPs and wide-area computational grids, and as a result, collective operations that utilize the trees generated by these models perform suboptimally. In response, more recent work has focused on creating topology-aware trees for collective operations that minimize communication across slower channels (e.g., a wide-area network). While these efforts have significant communication benefits, they all limit their view of the network to only two layers. The authors present a strategy based upon a multilayer view of the network. By creating multilevel topology trees they take advantage of communication cost differences at every level in the network. They used this strategy to implement topology-aware versions of several MPI collective operations in MPICH-G, the Globus-enabled version of the popular MPICH implementation of the MPI standard. Using information about topology discovered by Globus, they construct these topology-aware trees automatically during execution, thus freeing the MPI application programmer from having to write special files …

The hadroproduction of lepton pairs with mass Q and finite transverse momentum Q{sub T} is described in perturbative QCD by the same partonic subprocesses as prompt photon production. The authors demonstrate that, like prompt photon production, lepton pair production is dominated by quark-gluon scattering in the region Q{sub T} > Q/2. This feature leads to sensitivity to the gluon density in kinematical regimes accessible in collider and fixed target experiments, and it provides a new independent method for constraining the gluon density.

Document issued by the Open Records Division at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an informal interpretation of Texas law related to whether the Dallas, Texas Police Department must release a service report related to a juvenile under the Texas Public Information Act.

Document issued by the Open Records Division at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an informal interpretation of Texas law related to whether the Texas Department of Insurance must release the compensation agreement between PacifiCare of Texas Inc. and a physicians group.

Document issued by the Open Records Division at the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an informal interpretation of Texas law related to whether the City of Euless, Texas Police Department must release information regarding the arrest of Anthony W. Pults while his prosecution is still ongoing.