A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In April 2002, GAO identified the need to strengthen equal employment opportunity (EEO) oversight at three Department of Energy (DOE) national weapons laboratories and recommended that DOE and the Department of Labor's (DOL) Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) collaborate to ensure the laboratories complied with EEO requirements. GAO was subsequently asked to examine six other DOE laboratories and determine (1) whether differences exist for managerial and professional women and minorities compared with men and Whites in salaries, merit pay increases, separation patterns, and promotion rates; (2) what EEO concerns laboratory women and minorities have raised; and (3) what DOE and OFCCP have done to implement GAO's earlier recommendation."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The economy of the United States is fueled by 8 million private sector businesses that employ 106 million of the nation's 137 million workers. Employers are seeking better ways to meet their workforce needs as they compete in the global economy. This report examines (1) the extent to which employers, including small businesses, are aware of and using the one-stop system; (2) the degree to which employers who use one-stop services report satisfaction and what factors cause employers not to use them; and (3) what Labor has done to support employer awareness and use of the workforce system and how Labor measures its success in meeting the needs of employers."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In February 2004, GAO reported that improvements were needed in the time taken to adjudicate visas for science students and scholars. Specifically, a primary tool used to screen these applicants for visas (the Visas Mantis program) was operating inefficiently. We found that it took an average of 67 days to process Mantis checks, and many cases were pending for 60 days or more. GAO also found that the way in which information was shared among agencies prevented cases from being resolved expeditiously. Finally, consular officers lacked sufficient program guidance. This report discusses the time to process Mantis checks and assesses actions taken and timeframes for improving the Mantis program."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In recent years, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) has faced serious financial and budgetary problems as well as continuing challenges related to the safety and reliability of its transit services. At the same time, ridership is at an alltime high, and WMATA continues to provide critical services and considerable benefits to the Washington region's economic well-being and to the federal government. This statement is based on preliminary results of our work on WMATA that GAO is performing at the request of the Chairman, House Committee on Government Reform, as well as on GAO's previous review of WMATA and other studies of WMATA's financial condition. It discusses (1) the extent to which WMATA relied on federal funding to build its Metrorail subway system and the federal government's rationale for providing that funding, (2) the extent to which WMATA has relied on other federal funding for capital improvements in recent years, and (3) the current funding challenges that WMATA faces and options that have been proposed to address those challenges."

A chapter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2003, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) paid about $28 billion to help some 5 million low-income tenants afford decent rental housing. HUD has three major programs: the Housing Choice Voucher (voucher) and public housing programs, administered by public housing agencies; and project-based Section 8, administered by private property owners. As they are in every year, some payments were too high or too low, for several reasons. To assess the magnitude and reasons for these errors, HUD established the Rental Housing Integrity Improvement Project (RHIIP). In response to a congressional request, GAO examined the sources and magnitude of improper rent subsidy payments HUD has identified and the steps HUD is taking to address them, including efforts to simplify the process of determining rent subsidies."

We present first-principles total-energy density-functional theory electronic structure calculations for the neutral and charge states of an oxygen vacancy in KH{sub 2}PO{sub 4} (KDP). Even though the overall DOS profiles for the defective KDP are quite similar to those of the perfect KDP, the oxygen vacancy in the neutral and +1 charge states induces defect states in the band gap. For the neutral oxygen vacancy, the gap states are occupied by two electrons. The difference between the integral of the total density of states (DOS) and the sum of the DOS projected on the atoms of 0.98 |e|, indicates that one of the two electrons resulting from the removal of the oxygen atom is trapped in the vacancy, while the other tends to delocalize in the neighboring atoms. For the +1 charge oxygen vacancy, the addition of the hole reduces the occupation of the filled gap-states in the neutral case from two to one electron and produces new empty states in the gap. The new empty gap states are very close to the highest occupied states, leading to a dramatic decrease of the band gap. The difference between the integral of the total DOS and the sum of the DOS …

The molecular structures of drug target proteins and receptors form the basis for 'rational' or structure guided drug design. The majority of target structures are experimentally determined by protein X-ray crystallography, which as evolved into a highly automated, high throughput drug discovery and screening tool. Process automation has accelerated tasks from parallel protein expression, fully automated crystallization, and rapid data collection to highly efficient structure determination methods. A thoroughly designed automation technology platform supported by a powerful informatics infrastructure forms the basis for optimal workflow implementation and the data mining and analysis tools to generate new leads from experimental protein drug target structures.

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This report discusses Means test on Bankruptcy Reform.

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Project Purpose To enhance technological and topical information transfer in support of industry and government efforts to increase geothermal energy use in the United States (power production, direct use, and geothermal groundsource heat pumps). Project Work GRC 2003 Annual Meeting. The GRC convened the meeting on Oct. 12-15, 2003, at Morelia's Centro de Convenciones y ExpoCentro in Mexico under the theme, International Collaboration for Geothermal Energy in the Americas. The event was also sponsored by the Comision Federal de Electricidad. ~600 participants from more than 20 countries attended the event. The GRC convened a Development of Geothermal Projects Workshop and Geothermal Exploration Techniques Workshop. GRC Field Trips included Los Azufres and Paricutin Volcano on Oct. 11. The Geothermal Energy Association (Washington, DC) staged its Geothermal Energy Trade Show. The Annual Meeting Opening Session was convened on Oct. 13, and included the governor of Michoacan, the Mexico Assistant Secretary of Energy, CFE Geothermal Division Director, DOE Geothermal Program Manager, and private sector representatives. The 2003 Annual Meeting attracted 160 papers for oral and poster presentations. GRC 2004. Under the theme, Geothermal - The Reliable Renewable, the GRC 2004 Annual Meeting convened on Aug. 29-Sept. 1, 2004, at the Hyatt Grand Champions …

In this quarter, we have started the data collection process of the first field deployable multi-wavelength PM measurement system. This system is now operating in real world on PM emissions from a turbine power generator v.s. known PM standard for the system that we designed and tested in the lab. We proved that we could repeatedly collect same scattering signal under same engine load conditions. We further improved the signal to noise ratio of the system, by shortening the exposure time below 1,500 nanosecond and increasing the peak power. Here, we give detailed description on our investigation of the mechanisms in improving precision of pulsed laser timing.

It is well established that gene expression levels in many organisms change during the aging process, and the advent of DNA microarrays has allowed genome-wide patterns of transcriptional changes associated with aging to be studied in both model organisms and various human tissues. Understanding the effects of aging on gene expression in the human brain is of particular interest, because of its relation to both normal and pathological neurodegeneration. Here we show that human cerebral cortex, human cerebellum, and chimpanzee cortex each undergo different patterns of age-related gene expression alterations. In humans, many more genes undergo consistent expression changes in the cortex than in the cerebellum; in chimpanzees, many genes change expression with age in cortex, but the pattern of changes in expression bears almost no resemblance to that of human cortex. These results demonstrate the diversity of aging patterns present within the human brain, as well as how rapidly genome-wide patterns of aging can evolve between species; they may also have implications for the oxidative free radical theory of aging, and help to improve our understanding of human neurodegenerative diseases.

On September 20, 2004, the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy fulfilled its mandate to submit recommendations for a coordinated and comprehensive national ocean policy to the President and Congress. The Commission's final report, "An Ocean Blueprint for the 21st Century," contains 212 recommendations addressing all aspects of ocean and coastal policy. The 16 members of the Commission call on the President and Congress to take decisive, immediate action to carry out these recommendations, which will halt the steady decline of our nation's oceans and coasts.

In the fifth quarter of this DOE NETL project, they have implemented an algorithm that inverts for changes in fluid properties over time using time-lapse seismic anomalies. This algorithm constitutes the second step in the inversion procedure for Phase III of the project. They demonstrate this inversion procedure with a synthetic data example. Additional activities in this reporting period include a trip by the Principal investigator to an International Monitoring Workshop sponsored by the IEA Greenhouse Gas R and D Program in Santa Cruz, California. In the next quarter, they will further process the Sleipner data to prepare it for later inversion, and continue investigating alternative methods for calculating properties of oil/brine/CO{sub 2} systems.

Two simulations, control and land use change, were performed for an eight week period (2 April-16 May 1990) to determine the net sensitivity of the local climate around the Three Gorges Dam. The analysis indicates that the large reservoir acts as a potential evaporating surface that decreases the surface temperature, cools the lower atmosphere, decreasing upward motion, and increasing sinking air mass. Such sinking results in low level moisture divergence, decreasing cloudiness, and increasing net downward radiation, which increases the surface temperature. However, results indicate that evaporative cooling dominates radiative warming in this initial study. The strong evaporation also supplies moisture to the atmosphere, suggesting an increase in precipitation, but the sinking moist air diverges away from the TGD region with no net change in precipitation. This numerical study represents an initial methodology for quantification of the impact of the Three Gorges Dam on the local climate and a more comprehensive, fine-scale set of multi-season simulations with additional observational data is needed for a more complete analysis.

We have utilized atomic force microscopy (AFM) to visualize the native surface topology and ultrastructure of Bacillus thuringiensis and Bacillus cereus spores in water and in air. AFM was able to resolve the nanostructure of the exosporium and three distinctive classes of appendages. Removal of the exosporium exposed either a hexagonal honeycomb layer (B. thuringiensis) or a rodlet outer spore coat layer (B. cereus). Removal of the rodlet structure from B. cereus spores revealed an underlying honeycomb layer similar to that observed with B. thuringiensis spores. The periodicity of the rodlet structure on the outer spore coat of B. cereus was {approx}8 nm, and the length of the rodlets was limited to the cross-patched domain structure of this layer to {approx}200 nm. The lattice constant of the honeycomb structures was {approx}9 nm for both B. cereus and B. thuringiensis spores. Both honeycomb structures were composed of multiple, disoriented domains with distinct boundaries. Our results demonstrate that variations in storage and preparation procedures result in architectural changes in individual spore surfaces, which establish AFM as a useful tool for evaluation of preparation and processing ''fingerprints'' of bacterial spores. These results establish that high-resolution AFM has the capacity to reveal species-specific assembly …

A 3D solid model-aided object cueing method that matches phase angles of directional derivative vectors at image pixels to phase angles of vectors normal to projected model edges is described. It is intended for finding specific types of objects at arbitrary position and orientation in overhead images, independent of spatial resolution, obliqueness, acquisition conditions, and type of imaging sensor. It is shown that the phase similarity measure can be efficiently evaluated over all combinations of model position and orientation using the FFT. The highest degree of similarity over all model orientations is captured in a match surface of similarity values vs. model position. Unambiguous peaks in this surface are sorted in descending order of similarity value, and the small image thumbnails that contain them are presented to human analysts for inspection in sorted order.

We have developed a novel method for patterning surface chemistry: Photocatalytic Lithography. This technique relies on inexpensive stamp materials and light; it does not necessitate mass transport or specified substrates, and the wavelength of light should not limit feature resolution. We have demonstrated the utility of this technique through the patterning of proteins, single cells and bacteria.

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Unlike other fuels, hydrogen (H{sub 2}) can be generated and consumed without generating carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}). This creates both significant engineering challenges and unsurpassed ecological advantages for H{sub 2} as a fuel, while enabling an inexhaustible (closed) global fuel cycle based on the cleanest, most abundant, natural, and elementary substances: H{sub 2}, O{sub 2}, and H{sub 2}O. If generated using light, heat, and/or electrical energy from solar, wind, fission, or (future) fusion power sources, H{sub 2} becomes a versatile, storable, and universal carbonless energy carrier, a necessary element for future global energy system(s) aimed at being free of air and water pollution, CO{sub 2}, and other greenhouse gases. The case for hydrogen rests fundamentally on the need to eliminate pollution and stabilize Earth's atmosphere and climate system.

Using high-speed video imaging, trajectories, and kinematics of beads passing below the turbine runner and through the draft tube region of the 1:25 scale model of a single turbine unit from Bonneville Dam powerhouse 1 were collected from May 6-9, 2003 at U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Environmental Research and Development Center (ERDC) in Vicksburg, MS. An individual camera was used to produce 2-dimensional trajectories and paired cameras with overlapping fields of view were used to produce 3-dimension trajectories of near neutrally buoyant beads as they passed through the draft tube region of the turbine model. Image data was collected at two turbine operating levels, lower 1% efficiency and maximum rated output for beads released mid-depth into the turbine intake from each of the three gatewell slots. The purpose of this study was to determine the feasibility of using video imaging to track the trajectories of beads through the draft tube of turbine physical models and from the trajectories calculate the kinematics of the bead trajectory and the beads response to turbulence in the model. This project is part of a research program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Hydropower Turbine System Program (AHTS) who's goal is …

This report addresses Class Actions and Legislative proposals in the 109th Congress of Class Action Fairness Act of 2005.

This report describes the several types of waste streams that cruise ships may discharge and emit.