A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress authorized the Pilot Mentor Protege Program to boost the participation of small disadvantaged businesses as subcontractors and suppliers under Department of Defense (DOD) contracts. The program provides incentives for major defense contractors (mentors) to assist small disadvantaged businesses (proteges) in strengthening their ability to compete for work. However, DOD has been criticized for not establishing compelling evidence about the program's overall effectiveness. This report reviews (1) the relationship between the results of the Mentor-Protege Program and the statutory goal of awarding five percent of the total dollar amount contracted by DOD and subcontracted by DOD prime contractors to small disadvantaged businesses; (2) whether the Mentor-Protege Program enhanced the business competitiveness, financial independence, and business development of protege firms; and (3) whether program funds had been used as an effective incentive for mentor firms to participate in the program. GAO found that DOD lacks data integral to assessing the success of the Mentor-Protege Program. DOD lacks enough information to determine the relationship between the program and the goal of awarding five percent of the total dollar amount contracted to small disadvantaged businesses. Although DOD has consistently …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the budget process established by the Budget Enforcement Act, which will expire in fiscal year 2002. Because the goal of achieving zero deficits has been achieved, the focus of the budget process has shifted to to the allocation of surpluses among debt reduction, spending increases, and tax cuts. The budget process should be designed to avoid what has been described as the year-end "train wreck." A year-end "train wreck" results from a failure to reach agreement--or at least a compromise acceptable to all parties--earlier in the year. Although it is possible that early agreement on some broad parameters could facilitate a smoother process, it is not clear that such an agreement will always prevent gridlock--it may just come earlier. Two ideas that have been proposed to avert the year-end disruption caused by an inability to reach agreement on funding the government include joint budget resolutions and biennial budgeting. In discussing alternatives for improving the budget process, there is a broad consensus among observers and budget analysts that the spending constraints established by the act are necessary even with the advent of actual and projected surpluses. …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Floods have been, and continue to be, the most destructive natural hazard in terms of economic loss to the nation, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. From fiscal years 1969 through 2000, the National Flood Insurance Program--a major federal effort to provide flood disaster assistance paid about $10 billion in insurance claims, primarily from premiums collected from program policy holders. This testimony discusses (1) the financial results of the program's operations since fiscal year 1993, (2) the actuarial soundness of the program, and (3) the impact of repetitive losses and FEMA's strategies for reducing those losses."

The objective of this calculation is to evaluate the thermal response of the Fort Saint Vrain (FSV) Codisposal Waste Package (WP) design under nominal Monitored Geologic Repository conditions. The objective of the calculation is to provide thermal parameter information to support the FSV waste package design. The information provided by the sketches (Attachment IV) is that of the potential design of the type of WP considered in this calculation, and all obtained results are valid for that design only. This calculation is associated with the WP design and was performed by the Waste Package Design group in accordance with the ''Technical Work Plan for: Waste Package Design Description for LA'' (Ref. 16). AP-3.124, ''Calculations'' (Ref. 17) is used to perform the calculation and develop the document. The sketches attached to this calculation provide the potential dimensions and materials for the SDHLW (Defense High Level Waste) / DOE (Department of Energy) Long WP.

Prompt {gamma} rays from the neutron-induced fission of {sup 235}U have been studied using the GEANIE spectrometer situated at the LANSCE/WNR ''white'' neutron facility. Gamma-ray production cross sections for 29 ground-state-band transitions in 18 even-even fission fragments were obtained as a function of incident neutron energy, using the time-of-flight technique. Independent yields were deduced from these cross sections and fitted with standard formulations of the fragment charge and mass distributions to study the transition from asymmetric to symmetric fission. The results are interpreted in the context of the disappearance of shell structure at high excitation energies.

The atmospheric dispersion of hazardous materials within the urban environment is a topic of great current interest. Urban structures have been shown/are known to cause overall slowing of the winds, channeling through street canyons, heat island phenomena, wake vortices and enhanced turbulence. Simulations that explicitly resolve individual buildings are limited by computational requirements to domains of a few kilometers. For models that simulate regions covering tens of kilometers with resolutions on the order of a kilometer, the effects of individual buildings must be parameterized by incorporating area-averaged canopy effects. For emergency response applications, results must be provided significantly faster than real time. ADAPT (Sugiyama and Chin, 1998) is a diagnostic model used by the Department of Energy's National Atmospheric Release Advisory Capability (NARAC) at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. It produces non-divergent wind, turbulence, and other meteorological fields required by the NARAC dispersion model LODI (Nasstrom et al., 2000). We have incorporated an urban parameterization into ADAPT for simulations with resolutions on the order of a kilometer. We have concentrated upon parameterizing what we believe are the most significant impacts of the urban canopy--the reduction of the mean velocity and the increased turbulence. The parameterization we have implemented is a modification …

An Intelligent Collection Environment for a data interpretation system is described. The environment accepts two inputs: A data model and a number between 0.0 and 1.0. The data model is as simple as a single word or as complex as a multi-level/multidimensional model. The number between 0.0 and 1.0 is a control knob to indicate the user's desire to allow loose matching of the data (things are ambiguous and unknown) versus strict matching of the data (things are precise and known). The environment produces a set of possible interpretations, a set of requirements to further strengthen or to differentiate a particular subset of the possible interpretation from the others, a set of inconsistencies, and a logic map that graphically shows the lines of reasoning used to derive the above output. The environment is comprised of a knowledge editor, model explorer, expertise server, and the World Wide Web. The Knowledge Editor is used by a subject matter expert to define Linguistic Types, Term Sets, detailed explanations, and dynamically created URI's, and to create rule bases using a straight forward hyper matrix representation. The Model Explorer allows rapid construction and browsing of multi-level models. A multi-level model is a model whose elements …

A short profile (40 cm), long length (2.50 m) rectangular helium cryostat has been designed, built and tested for maintaining electronic chips at a stable 9.0 Kelvin temperature. Heat load, and thermal stresses were major design considerations. The distance from room temperature to liquid nitrogen intercept temperature is only 8 centimeters. Liquid nitrogen temperature to liquid helium temperature occurs in 13 centimeters. An alloy known as Invar, 36% Nickel, balance Iron, was used to fabricate the vessel walls and liquid nitrogen heat intercept tubing because of it's low coefficient of thermal expansion. The cryostat accepts fifty-one, 3.5 cm x 42.5 cm devices that extend 26.7 cm into the cryostat. Tight clearance fits to the liquid nitrogen and liquid helium intercepts are maintained. Gaseous helium is used within the cryostat for heat transfer.

The field of research into the optical properties of silicon nanostructures has seen enormous growth over the last decade. The discovery that silicon nanoparticles exhibit visible photoluminescence (PL) has led to new insights into the mechanisms responsible for such phenomena. The importance of understanding and controlling the PL properties of any silicon based material is of paramount interest to the optoelectronics industry where silicon nanoclusters could be embedded into existing silicon based circuitry. In this talk, we present a combination of quantum Monte Carlo and density functional approaches to the calculation of the electronic, structural, and optical properties of silicon nanostructures.

The Atmospheric Science Division at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses the Naval Research Laboratory's Couple Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) for both operations and research. COAMPS is a non-hydrostatic model, designed as a multi-scale simulation system ranging from synoptic down to meso, storm and local terrain scales. As model resolution increases, the forcing due to small-scale complex terrain features including urban structures and surfaces, intensifies. An urban parameterization has been added to the Naval Research Laboratory's mesoscale model, COAMPS. The parameterization attempts to incorporate the effects of buildings and urban surfaces without explicitly resolving them, and includes modeling the mean flow to turbulence energy exchange, radiative transfer, the surface energy budget, and the addition of anthropogenic heat. The Chemical and Biological National Security Program's (CBNP) URBAN field experiment was designed to collect data to validate numerical models over a range of length and time scales. The experiment was conducted in Salt Lake City in October 2000. The scales ranged from circulation around single buildings to flow in the entire Salt Lake basin. Data from the field experiment includes tracer data as well as observations of mean and turbulence atmospheric parameters. Wind and turbulence predictions from COAMPS are used to drive …

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This report explores the historical evolution of policy rules and the arguments employed for and against a rule-based policy regime.

We present a new wavelet compression and multiresolution modeling approach for sets of contours (level sets). In contrast to previous wavelet schemes, our algorithm creates a parametrization of a scalar field induced by its contoum and compactly stores this parametrization rather than function values sampled on a regular grid. Our representation is based on hierarchical polygon meshes with subdivision connectivity whose vertices are transformed into wavelet coefficients. From this sparse set of coefficients, every set of contours can be efficiently reconstructed at multiple levels of resolution. When applying lossy compression, introducing high quantization errors, our method preserves contour topology, in contrast to compression methods applied to the corresponding field function. We provide numerical results for scalar fields defined on planar domains. Our approach generalizes to volumetric domains, time-varying contours, and level sets of vector fields.

This report describes and analyzes three provisions included in P.L. 107-16. Two of the three provisions will likely induce more tax-exempt bond financing for public school capital investment through loosening arbitrage bond rules for some issuers and expanding the list of otherwise private facilities that are still eligible for tax-exempt financing. The third provision, lower marginal tax rates, will decrease the demand for tax-exempt bonds.

Volume visualization of large data sets suffers from the same problem that many other visualization modalities suffer from: either one can visualize the entire data set and lose small details or visualize a small region and lose the context. In this paper, they present a magnification lens technique for volume visualization. While the notion of a magnification-lens is not new, and other techniques attempt to simulate the physical properties of a magnifying lens, their contribution is in developing a magnification lens that is fast, can be implemented using a fairly small software overhead, and has a natural, intuitive appearance. The issue with magnification lens is the border, or transition, region. The lens center and exterior have a constant zoom factor, and are simple to render. It is the border region that blends between the external and interior magnification, and has a non-constant magnification. They use the perspective-correct textures capability, available in most current graphics systems, to produce a lens with a tessellated border region that approximates linear compression with respect to the radius of the magnification lens. They discuss how a cubic border can mitigate the discontinuities resulting from the use of a linear function, without significant performance loss. They …

Presently we have focused on the membrane synthesis, hydrotalcite surface and transport mechanism characterization, and quantitative measurement on CO{sub 2} reversibility. This quarterly report presents the results from the surface characterization study. FTIR, DRIFTS and TGA/MS have been used to quantitatively characterize the thermal behavior of hydrotalcite materials. Based upon these characterization results, a thermal evolution pattern accounting for the loss of interlayer water, hydroxyl group, and CO{sub 2} is proposed for the hydrotalcite we studied. According to the DRIFTS results, a small amount of CO{sub 2} release ({approximately}2wt%) was observed at {approximately}220 C, while the remaining releases at {approximately}450 C. TGA/MS result is consistent with the amount and the temperature region estimated from DRIFTS. Both regions are possible candidates for transport of CO{sub 2} in a membrane configuration. In the next quarter, we will conduct adsorption/desorption study to verify the reversibility of the CO{sub 2} released from these two regions.

We present a practical method for achieving a transformer ratio (R) greater than 2 with any collinear wakefield accelerator--i.e. with either plasma or structure based wakefield accelerators. It is known that the transformer ratio cannot generally be greater than 2 for a symmetric drive bunch in a collinear wakefield accelerator. However, using a ramped bunch train (RBT) where a train of n electron drive bunches, with increasing (ramping) charge, one can achieve R = 2n after the bunch train. We believe this method is feasible from an engineering standpoint. We describe a proof of principle experiment using an disk-loaded waveguide, of frequency 13.65 GHz, driven by a RBT of 4 electron bunches. We expect to achieve R > 6 using 4 electron bunches. Details of the simulation and experimental design are presented.

The New American Home{reg_sign} is an annual showcase project designed by committee and co-sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders' National Council of the Housing Industry, BUILDERS Magazine, and Ladies Home Journal. Hedgewood Properties teamed with Building America's IBACOS Consortium and Southface Energy Institute to build a house with a Home Energy Rating Systems (HERS) level of 90.

A persistent problem in the analysis of Lamb wave signatures in experimental data is the fact that several different modes appear simultaneously in the signal. The modes overlap in both the frequency and time domains. Attempts to separate the overlapping Lamb wave signatures by conventional signal processing methods have been unsatisfactory. This paper reports an exciting alternative to conventional methods. Severely overlapping Lamb waves are found to be readily separable by Bayesian parameter estimation. The authors have used linear-chirped Gaussian-windowed sinusoids as models of each Lamb wave mode. The separation algorithm allows each mode to be examined individually.

The design status of the vacuum vessel for the Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE) is presented. The purpose and configuration of the various components of the vessel are described, along with the results of preliminary structural analysis. It appears that a vessel can be designed to meet the requirements within the rather restricted space constraints.

This guidebook has been prepared primarily for Federal energy managers to provide practical information for applying the principles of low-energy, whole-building design in new Federal buildings. An important objective of this guidebook is to teach energy managers how to be advocates for renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies, and how to apply specific strategies during each phase of a given project's time line. These key action items are broken out by phase and appear in abbreviated form in this guidebook.

This report provides Genetic Information and Legal Issues Relating to Discrimination and Privacy. It also discusses current federal law,sate statutes and current legislation.

On March 12, 2001, Yoweri Museveni was re-elected president of Uganda after defeating his one- time ally, Kizza Besigye. International and regional election monitors declared the elections relatively free, although the electoral process was marred by mismanagement and sporadic violence. In the legislative elections in late June 2001, more than 50 incumbent members of Parliament were defeated, including 10 ministers. The elections were marred by violence in which an estimated 12 people were killed.