A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. military assistance programs provided $74 billion in military equipment, services, and training to countries in the Middle East from fiscal years 1991 through 2000. The Foreign Military Sales and Foreign Military Financing programs account for about 96 percent of the value of military items in the U.S. delivered to the region. The U.S. weapon systems delivered include F-16 and F/A-18 fighter aircraft; Apache and Cobra helicopters; M1A1 Tanks; and AMRAAM, ATACMS, and Stinger missiles. Conditions on the use of U.S. military equipment, services, and training delivered to countries in the Middle East, with few exceptions, are limited to standard conditions that the U.S. government places on all transfers of U.S. military items. By law, the U.S. may provide military items to foreign governments only for internal security, legitimate self-defense, participation in collective agreements that are consistent with the United Nations' charter, or civic action."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Management of the U.S. Postal Service's (USPS) e-commerce program has been fragmented, and implementation of e-commerce initiatives has varied at different business units. Overall, USPS' performance in this area has fallen short of expectations. Last year, the Postmaster General announced a sweeping management restructuring that changed both the reporting structure and program managers. USPS also revised its procedures for approving and implementing new Internet initiatives, including e-commerce. However, concerns persist about whether USPS' e-commerce initiatives are being cross-subsidized by other postal products and services. USPS managers contend that e-commerce products and services must cover their incremental costs. GAO found that this goal has not been met and it is unclear when it might be achieved. Without accurate, complete, and consistent financial information, USPS cannot assess its progress toward its financial performance goals for e-commerce. USPS also lacks clear and comprehensive policies and procedures for reporting direct and indirect revenues and costs for e-commerce and other new products and services. As a result, reporting inconsistencies are likely to continue. In contrast, USPS has reportedly developed privacy policies and practices for its e-commerce customers that exceed those required …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Changes in the character and the conduct of warfighting and in the range and the nature of missions call for an Army force that is more responsive and dominant across the full spectrum of operations and requires much less in-theater logistics support. To meet these new demands, the Army is using the latest technology to develop a series of weapon systems that will be lighter than today's heavy force systems but just as lethal and survivable. The Army's transformation effort will face several challenges. First, the transformation will place additional funding demands on the defense budget. Second, the Army's plans for the transformation assume that weapons systems and equipment can be developed and acquired much faster than in the past. Third, the Army needs to update current acquisition plans to reflect transformation priorities and schedules. The success of this effort depends on the Army's ability to manage transformation acquisitions as leading commercial firms do. By following best practices used in the commercial sector, the Army can better match its needs with its resources."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (DOE) manages the nation's nuclear weapons production complex, cleans up the environmental legacy from the production of nuclear weapons, and conducts research and development into both energy and basic science. DOE launched several reforms in the 1990s to realign its organizational structure, reduce its workforce, strengthen contracting procedures by competitive awards practices, streamline oversight of activities, and delegate some responsibilities to the private sector. Despite these reforms, GAO found that management weaknesses persist because DOE's reforms were piecemeal solutions whose effect has been muted by three impediments to fundamental improvement: the department's diverse missions, dysfunctional organizational structure, and weak control of accountability. Management weaknesses and performance problems will likely continue unless DOE addresses these impediments in a comprehensive fashion."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) assists nearly 30,000 privately owned and operated multifamily properties to provide affordable housing for low and moderate income persons. HUD is responsible for ensuring that the owners of HUD-assisted properties provide housing that is decent, safe, sanitary, and in good repair. HUD began its Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC) in 1998 to inspect multifamily properties, and rate their condition. This report addresses whether: (1) HUD field offices are complying with the procedures HUD established to ensure that the physical deficiencies at these properties are corrected, (2) all physical deficiencies have been corrected at properties that HUD classified as repaired, and (3) HUD staff and property owners are meeting the Department's timeliness goals and requirements for addressing physical deficiencies. GAO found that HUD's field offices often did not follow the Department's procedures for ensuring that property owners are correcting all physical deficiencies. GAO visited properties that HUD said had been repaired and found that about half of them had not been corrected. Furthermore, HUD's staff and property owners are not meeting timeliness goals and requirements for addressing physical deficiencies."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Export Enhancement Act of 1992 created the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee to coordinate the delivery of federal export promotion services and to eliminate the areas of overlap and duplication among federal export promotion programs. The Export Enhancement Act of 1999 reiterated that eliminating duplication was a primary objective. In 1993, Congress recommended that three agencies co-locate their staffs at a domestic network of 19 "one-stop shops" called U.S. Export Assistance Centers. These centers were to provide coordinated export training, as well as trade leads, export finance, and counseling to U.S. firms interested in becoming exporters. GAO found that the Department of Commerce did not coordinate closely with the Small Business Administration in introducing its export training program. As a result, Commerce and the SBA provide separate and duplicative training programs for potential small business exporters. Neither Commerce nor SBA systematically collect outcome data for their export training programs. Instead, both agencies track the number of clients trained and Commerce identifies export successes for its clients overall, but not for training participants. Staff at Commerce and SBA do not systematically follow up with training participants to …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO audited the financial statement for the Senate Stationary Room Revolving Fund for fiscal year 2000. GAO found that (1) the statement is presented fairly in all material respects; (2) although internal control should be improved, the Stationary Room had effective internal controls over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations; and (3) there was no reportable noncompliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Although physicians and other health care providers acknowledge that they can buy drugs for prices lower than Medicare payments, they contend that they need drug payments in excess of their actual costs to compensate for inadequate or nonexistent Medicare payments for administrating the drugs. Physicians are able to obtain Medicare-covered drugs at prices significantly below current Medicare payments, which are set at 95 percent of average wholesale prices (AWP). The prices paid by wholesalers and group purchasing organizations that would be generally available to physicians were considerably less than AWPs used to establish the Medicare payment for these drugs. The difference between these prices and AWP for physician-administered drugs in GAO's sample varied by drug. For most physician-administered drugs, the average discount from AWP ranged from 13 percent to 34 percent; two physician-administered drugs had discounts of 65 percent and 86 percent. Other suppliers are also able to buy drugs at prices that are considerably less than the AWP used to establish the applicable Medicare payment. Pharmacy suppliers were predominant billers for 10 of the high-expenditure and high-volume Medicare-covered drugs GAO analyzed. These suppliers generally provide …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Despite the recent success of casino gaming and other business ventures undertaken by some Native Americans and Alaska Natives, unemployment and poverty remain widespread in these communities. Many federal programs are available to help Native Americans with economic development, and some tribes are using these programs. Although agencies reported that their programs helped to create and retain jobs, little is known about the effectiveness of these programs. The preparation of performance plans and reports, the designation of agency points of contact, and the establishment of a single office to coordinate federal programs relating to Indian economic development could improve Native Americans' access to federal programs and provide federal decisionmakers with valuable performance information."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO assessed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) performance in the following five key tax filing season activities: (1) processing individual tax returns and refunds, (2) increasing the extent to which individual income tax returns are filed electronically, (3) answering telephone calls and providing quality telephone service, (4) providing accurate and timely face-to-face assistance at its Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TAC), and (5) providing services via the Internet. GAO found that IRS' performance during the 2001 filing season varied. Although there was less information available on which to base a judgement than in past filing seasons, IRS' processing of 130 million individual income tax returns and 94 million refunds in 2001 went smoothly. IRS addressed problems quickly, with relatively minor impact on taxpayers. About 31 percent of all individual income tax returns were filed electronically in 2001--an increase of 13.7 percent compared to 2000. That rate of increase was below IRS' goal of 20 percent and the lowest percentage since 1996. IRS has identified several impediments, but it lacks enough information to determine why about 40 million individual income tax returns were prepared on computers but filed on …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The number of contracts under Medicare's managed care program--Medicare+Choice (M+C)--fell from 340 to 180 between 1998 and 2001. The reduction reflected decisions by some managed care organizations (MCOs) to terminate selected contracts or to discontinue service in some covered areas. Although nearly all MCOs renewed at least some of their Medicare contracts over this period, many reduced the geographic areas served. As a result, 1.6 million beneficiaries had to switch MCOs or return to Medicare's traditional fee-for-service program. Other MCOs plan either to terminate or reduce their participation in M+C at the end of 2001. Concerned about MCO withdrawals, Congress sought to make participation in the program more attractive. As a result of the Benefits Improvement and Protection Act of 2000, aggregate Medicare+Choice payments in 2001 are estimated to have increased by $1 billion. The act permitted three basic uses for the higher payment. MCOs could (1) improve their health plans' benefit packages, (2) set aside money for future years in a benefit stabilization fund, or (3) stabilize or enhance beneficiary access to providers. Most MCOs reported that additional money would be used to stabilize or …

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Limited quantitative data exists on the extent to which American industry has sought to use pollution prevention methods to reduce pollutants discharged from its facilities. This shortcoming has inhibited the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to monitor and encourage companies' use of pollution prevention measures. Whether to undertake pollution prevention is typically a business decision that is influenced largely by a company's judgment as to whether an investment in pollution prevention will benefit it financially. One notable exception is the design of environmental regulations, some of which have had the unintended consequence of discouraging pollution prevention practices. In some cases, EPA may have no means to address them. The design of some regulations may be constrained by their governing statutes. In other cases, EPA may be better able to take the national goal of promoting pollution prevention into consideration in developing its regulatory proposals. The Pollution Prevention Act requires EPA to review its regulatory proposals to determine their effects on source reduction. However, the agency has not systematically tracked the implementation of this provision, and therefore does not know the extent to which source reduction has …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Social Security Administration (SSA) needs to identify strengths and weaknesses within its agencywide operational and managerial capabilities to enable the delivery of high-quality customer service in the face of increases in both workloads and in the number of retirements from its experienced workforce. Evaluating SSA's management of information technology (IT) is critical to assess whether the agency is adequately addressing these capabilities. This report reviews SSA's IT policies, procedures, and practices in the following five areas: investment management, enterprise architecture, software acquisition and development, information security, and human capital. GAO found that SSA had many important IT management policies and procedures in place in each of these five key areas but did not always implement them consistently. In some areas, SSA had not established key policies, procedures, or practices essential to ensure that its IT was effectively managed. GAO found weaknesses in all of the five key areas of IT management--particularly in investment management and human capital management."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "All military services routinely use cannibalization to maintain aircraft. The adverse effects of cannibalizations include (1) higher maintenance costs due to increased mechanics' workloads, (2) morale and personnel retention problems, and (3) taking expensive aircraft out of service for long periods of time. The services have many reasons for cannibalizing aircraft and strong incentives for continuing to do so. In the broadest sense, cannibalizations are done because of pressures to meet readiness and operational needs and because of shortcomings in the supply system. Although the services have undertaken steps to address logistics shortfalls, few specific strategies have been developed to reduce cannibalizations and the associated maintenance hours."

Social security benefits are not paid for the month in which a recipient dies. Legislation is routinely introduced that would either pay the full amount of the benefits for the month of death or pro-rate the benefits based on the proportion of the month that the recipient was alive.

Zircaloy cladding tubes strain in-situ during service life in the corrosive environment of a Pressurized Water Reactor for a variety of reasons. First, the tube undergoes stress free growth due to the preferential alignment of irradiation induced vacancy loops on basal planes. Positive strains develop in the textured tubes along prism orientations while negative strains develop along basal orientations (Reference (a)). Second, early in life, free standing tubes will often shrink by creep in the diametrical direction under the external pressure of the water environment, but potentially grow later in life in the diametrical direction once the expanding fuel pellet contacts the cladding inner wall (Reference (b)). Finally, the Zircaloy cladding absorbs hydrogen as a by product of the corrosion reaction (Reference (c)). Once above the solubility limit in Zircaloy, the hydride precipitates as zirconium hydride (References (c) through (j)). Both hydrogen in solid solution and precipitated as Zirconium hydride cause a volume expansion of the Zircaloy metal (Reference (k)). Few studies are reported on that have investigated the influence that in-situ clad straining has on corrosion of Zircaloy. If Zircaloy corrosion rates are governed by diffusion of anions through a thin passivating boundary layer at the oxide-to-metal interface (References …

This report discusses Class Actions and proposed reform in the 106th Congress of Class Action Fairness Act of 2000.

This report discusses various issues surrounding federal deposit insurance. A key concern is maintaining a balance between providing the benefits of deposit insurance and promoting sound management practices at banks, thrifts, and credit unions.

The Magnitude and Distance Amplitude Correction (MDAC; Taylor and Hartse, 1998; Taylor et al., 2002) procedure for correcting regional seismic amplitudes for seismic event identification has been modified to include more realistic earthquake source models and source scaling. In the MDAC2 formulation we generalize the Brune (1970) earthquake source spectrum to use a more physical apparent stress model that can represent non-constant stress-drop scaling. We also event include a parameter that allows for variable P-wave and S-wave comer frequency scaling, imposing some of the constraints of ratio correction techniques (Rodger and Walter, 2002). Very Stable moment magnitude measures (Mayeda et al., 2002) from regional coda wave envelopes that have been tied to independently derived regional seismic moments are incorporated. This eliminates two fitting parameters that were necessary in relating seismic moment to magnitude. The incorporation of Bayesian tomography to replace the assumption of a constant Q0 model is also described. These modifications allow for more flexibility in the MDAC grid-search procedure. The direct tie to regional seismic moment rather than body wave magnitude reduces effects of upper mantle bias on the corrected amplitudes. In this paper, we develop the theory and test the formulation on Nevada Test Site (NTS) data.

Using in situ optical microscopy and scattering measurements, we have followed the evolution of surface morphology during etching and measured surface etching rates as a function of humidity and undersaturation. From our experiments to date we have developed the following picture of etch pit formation on KDP crystal surfaces. Pit formation is characterized by a nucleation and growth process: the introduction of water creates a condition of undersaturation at the crystal surface. The equilibrium step directions define the orientation of the edges of the pits and the internal surfaces of the pits are low index facets of KDP. For z-cut and type I crystals, the pits are self-similar, indicating their geometry is controlled by equilibrium, not kinetic parameters. For type II crystals, the aspect ratio of the pits can vary dramatically from sample to sample or even within a sample, showing that the kinetics of dissolution can also play a role in determining overall etch pit geometry. The onset of pit formation during exposure to 55% relative humidity (RH) is detectable within a few hours and most of the etching process is complete within 48 hours, but pits continue to grow for a week or longer. At 75% RH, pits …

Deposit summary of $10.00 made on March 21, 2001

The U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory is storing large amounts of radioactive and mixed wastes. Most of the sodium-bearing wastes have been calcined, but about a million gallons remain uncalcined, and this waste does not meet current regulatory requirements for long-term storage and/or disposal. As a part of the Settlement Agreement between DOE and the State of Idaho, the tanks currently containing SBW are to be taken out of service by December 31, 2012, which requires removing and treatment the remaining SBW. Vitrification is the option for waste disposal that received the highest weighted score against the criteria used. Beginning in FY 2000, the INEEL high-level waste program embarked on a program for technology demonstration and development that would lead to conceptual design of a vitrification facility in the event that vitrification is the preferred alternative for SBW disposal. The Pacific Northwest National Laborator's Research-Scale Melter was used to conduct these initial melter-flowsheet evaluations. Efforts are underway to reduce the volume of waste vitrified, and during the current test, an overall SBW waste volume-reduction factor of 7.6 was achieved.

The P2 console application (Antiproton Source RF Files) calculates frequency and voltage curves from a sequence of command statements input by the user. P2 initially calculates these curves in terms of the actual frequencies and voltages required on the RF cavity as a function of time. These curves are then converted to the appropriate low-level drive voltages that will cause the RF system high-level electronics to generate the required frequency and voltage ramps. The low-level drive ramps are then downloaded into CAMAC ramp cards. In order to convert the required cavity voltage and frequency into the correct drive voltages P2 uses a set of constants that determined from calibration measurements of the various Antiproton Source RF systems. These constants are editable from the P2 constants window. The P2 constants at the time of this writing are shown in Figure 1. The validity of these constants determines the extent to which P2 able to translate the user's commands into the actual voltages and frequencies that appear on the RF cavity. A comparison of the 4/18/2001 calibration of ARF1 with that presently assumed by P2 shows a large discrepancy in both the frequency constants and the voltage constants. This report documents the …

A simple, approximate analysis of the effect of differing cathode and anode areas on the measurement of cell performance on anode-supported solid oxide fuel cells, wherein the cathode area is smaller than the anode area, is presented. It is shown that the effect of cathode area on cathode polarization, on electrolyte contribution, and on anode resistance, as normalized on the basis of the cathode area, is negligible. There is a small but measurable effect on anode polarization, which results from concentration polarization. Effectively, it is the result of a greater amount of fuel transported to the anode/electrolyte interface in cases wherein the anode area is larger than the cathode area. Experiments were performed on cells made with differing cathode areas and geometries. Cathodic and anodic overpotentials measured using reference electrodes, and the measured ohmic area specific resistances by current interruption, were in good agreement with expectations based on the analysis presented. At 800 C, the maximum power density measured with a cathode area of {approx}1.1 cm{sup 2} was {approx}1.65 W/cm{sup 2} compared to {approx}1.45 W/cm{sup 2} for cathode area of {approx}2 cm{sup 2}, for anode thickness of {approx}1.3 mm, with hydrogen as the fuel and air as the oxidant. At …