A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Under the Medicare Part D program, prescription drug coverage is provided through plans sponsored by private companies. Beneficiaries, their appointed representatives, or physicians can ask sponsors to cover prescriptions restricted under their plan--a process known as a coverage determination--and can appeal denials to the sponsor and the independent review entity (IRE). GAO was asked to review (1) the processes for sponsors' coverage determination decisions and the approval rates, (2) the processes for appealing coverage denials and the approval rates at the sponsor and IRE levels, and (3) the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' (CMS) efforts to inform the public about sponsors' performance and oversee sponsors' processes. GAO visited seven sponsors that account for over half of Part D enrollment. GAO also interviewed and obtained data from CMS and IRE officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Competitive sourcing is aimed at promoting competition between federal employees and the private sector as a way to improve government operations. Key work activities--those that are either inherently governmental or core to the agency's mission--are generally exempt from competitions. In fiscal year 2004, Congress began placing spending limitations on the Forest Service's competitive sourcing program because of concerns about how the program was managed. Also, like other agencies, the Forest Service must report annually to Congress on the savings achieved from any competitions it conducted. GAO was asked to determine the extent to which the Forest Service has (1) plans and guidance to help implement its competitive sourcing program effectively and (2) sufficient cost data to ensure that it complied with its spending limitations and accurately reported its savings to Congress for fiscal years 2004 through 2006. To answer these objectives, GAO examined the agency's strategic plan, guidance, and available cost data for competitive sourcing and interviewed key agency officials."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) relies on contractors to perform many of the functions needed to support troops in deployed locations. For example, at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait the Army uses contractors to provide logistics support for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Contractors at Camp Arifjan refurbish and repair a variety of military vehicles such as the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, armored personnel carriers, and the High-Mobility, Multi-Purpose Wheeled Vehicle (HMMWV). However, while contractors provide valuable support to deployed forces, we have frequently reported that long-standing DOD contract management and oversight problems increase the opportunity for waste and make it more difficult for DOD to ensure that contractors are meeting contract requirements efficiently, effectively, and at a reasonable price. This report discusses information about Task Order 1 that we developed during our review. Our objectives were to (1) evaluate the contractor's performance of maintenance and supply services under Task Order 1, (2) determine the extent to which the Army's quality assurance and contract management activities implement key principles of quality assurance and contract management regulations and guidance, and (3) determine the extent to which the Army is adequately staffed to …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "State and local governments provide an array of services to their residents, such as primary and secondary education, libraries, police and fire services, social programs, roads and other infrastructure, public colleges and universities, and more. These subnational governments may face fiscal stress similar to the federal government. Given the nature of the partnership among levels of government in providing services to Americans and the economic interrelationships among levels of government, understanding potential future fiscal conditions of the state and local government sector is important for federal policymaking. To provide Congress and the public with this broader context, we developed a fiscal model of the state and local sector. This report describes this model and provides (1) simulations of the state and local government sector's long-term fiscal outlook, (2) an analysis of the underlying causes of potential fiscal difficulties for the sector, (3) a discussion of the extent to which the long-term simulations are sensitive to alternative assumptions, and (4) an examination of how the state and local government sector could add to future federal fiscal challenges. The potential fiscal outcomes of the state and local government …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Six years after the attack on the World Trade Center (WTC), concerns persist about health effects experienced by WTC responders and the availability of health care services for those affected. Several federally funded programs provide screening, monitoring, or treatment services to responders. GAO has previously reported on the progress made and implementation problems faced by these WTC health programs. This testimony is based primarily on GAO's testimony, September 11: Improvements Needed in Availability of Health Screening and Monitoring Services for Responders (GAO-07-1229T, Sept. 10, 2007), which updated GAO's report, September 11: HHS Needs to Ensure the Availability of Health Screening and Monitoring for All Responders (GAO-07-892, July 23, 2007). In this testimony, GAO discusses efforts by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) to provide services for nonfederal responders residing outside the New York City (NYC) area. For the July 2007 report, GAO reviewed program documents and interviewed Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) officials, grantees, and others. GAO updated selected information in August and September 2007 and conducted work for this statement in January 2008."

The ability to accurately quantify the intrinsic resolution of chemically amplified photoresists is critical for the optimization of resists for extreme ultraviolet (EUV) Iithography. We have recently reported on two resolution metrics that have been shown to extract resolution numbers consistent with direct observation. In this paper we examine the previously reported contact-hole resolution metric and explore the sensitivity of the metric to potential error sources associated with the experimental side of the resolution extraction process. For EUV exposures at the SEMATECH Berkeley microfield exposure tool, we report a full-process error-bar in extracted resolution of 1.75 nm RMS and verify this result experimentally.

One of the environmental remediation challenges facing the nation is the retrieval and permanent disposal of approximately 90 million gallons of radioactive waste stored in underground tanks at the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) facilities. The Hanford Site is located in southeastern Washington State and stores roughly 60 percent of this waste. An estimated 53 million gallons of high-level, transuranic, and low-level radioactive waste is stored underground in 149 single-shell tanks (SSTs) and 28 newer double-shell tanks (DSTs) at the Hanford Site. These SSTs range in size from 55,000 gallons to 1,000,000 gallon capacity. Approximately 30 million gallons of this waste is stored in SSTs. The SSTs were constructed between 1943 and 1964 and all have exceeded the nominal 20-year design life. Sixty-seven SSTs are known or suspected to have leaked an estimated 1,000,000 gallons of waste to the surrounding soil. The risk of additional SST leakage has been greatly reduced by removing more than 3 million gallons of interstitial liquids and supernatant and transferring this waste to the DST system. Retrieval of SST saltcake and sludge waste is underway to further reduce risks and stage feed materials for the Hanford Site Waste Treatment Plant. Regulatory requirements for SST …

The Department of Energy's Hanford Site in southeastern Washington State was established in the 1940s as part of the Manhattan Project. Hanford's role was to produce weapons-grade nuclear material for defense, and by 1989, when the Site's mission changed from operations to cleanup, Hanford had produced more than 60 percent of the nation's plutonium. The legacy of Hanford's production years is enormous in terms of nuclear and hazardous waste, especially the 270 billion gallons of contaminated groundwater and the 5 million cubic yards of contaminated soil. Managing the contaminated soil and groundwater are particularly important because the Columbia River, the lifeblood of the northwest and the nation's eighth largest river, bounds the Site. Fluor Hanford's Soil & Groundwater Remediation Project (S&GRP) integrates all of the activities that deal with remediating and monitoring the groundwater across the Site. The S&GRP uses a detailed series of steps to record, track, and verify information. The Sample and Data Management (SDM) Process consists of 10 integrated steps that start with the data quality objectives process that establishes the mechanism for collecting the right information with the right people. The process ends with data quality assessment, which is used to ensure that all quantitative data …

This month's issue has the following articles: (1) Science and Security in Sharp Focus--Commentary by William H. Goldstein; (2) Extending the Search for Extrasolar Planets--The Gemini Planet Imager will delve deep into the universe to identify planets that cannot be detected with current instrumentation; (3) Standardizing the Art of Electron-Beam Welding--The Laboratory's EBeam Profiler makes electron-beam welds consistent and improves quality control; (4) Molecular Building Blocks Made of Diamonds--Livermore physicists are exploring the electrical properties of diamondoids, tiny molecules of diamond; and (5) Animation Brings Science to Life--Animation helps scientists and engineers effectively communicate their ideas and research in a visually compelling way.

High-level nuclear waste produced from fuel reprocessing operations at the Savannah River Site (SRS) requires pretreatment to remove Cs-137, Sr-90 and alpha-emitting radionuclides (i.e., actinides) prior to disposal onsite as low level waste. Separation processes planned at SRS include sorption of Sr-90 and alpha-emitting radionuclides onto monosodium titanate (MST) and caustic side solvent extraction, for Cs-137 removal. The MST and separated Cs-137 will be encapsulated into a borosilicate glass waste form for eventual entombment at the federal repository. The predominant alpha-emitting radionuclides in the highly alkaline waste solutions include plutonium isotopes Pu-238, Pu-239 and Pu-240. This paper describes recent results to produce an improved sodium titanate material that exhibits increased removal kinetics and capacity for Sr-90 and alpha-emitting radionuclides compared to the baseline MST material.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of River Protection has an extensive integrity assessment program for the Hanford Site Double-Shell Tank System. The DOE Orders and environmental protection regulations provide the guidelines for the activities used to inspect and maintain 28 double-shell tanks (DSTs), the waste evaporator, and ancillary equipment that compose this system. This program has been reviewed by oversight and regulatory bodies and found to comply with the established guidelines. The basis for the DOE Order 435.1-1 for tank integrity comes from the Tank Structural Integrity Paneled by Brookhaven National Laboratory during the late 1990s. These guidelines established criteria for performing Non-Destructive Examination (NDE), for acceptance of the NDE results, for waste chemistry control, and for monitoring the tanks. The environmental regulations mirror these requirements and allow for the tank integrity program to provide compliant storage of the tanks. Both sets of requirements provide additional guidance for the protection of ancillary equipment. CH2M HILL uses two methods of NDE: visual inspection and Ultrasonic Testing (UT). The visual inspection program examines the primary tank and secondary liner of the DST. The primary tank is examined both on the interior surface above the waste in the tank and on the …

CH2M HILL Hanford Group, Inc. (the Hanford Tank Farm Operations contractor) and the Department of Energy's Office of River Protection have just completed the first phase of the Hanford Single-Shell Tank RCRA Corrective Action Program. The focus of this first phase was to characterize the nature and extent of past Hanford single-shell tank releases and to characterize the resulting fate and transport of the released contaminants. Most of these plumes are below 20 meters, with some reaching groundwater (at 60 to 120 meters below ground surface [bgs]).

The impacts and acceptability of using oxalic acid to clean the Savannah River Site, High Level Waste Tanks 1-8, were re-investigated using a two-phased approach. For the first phase, using a representative Tank 1-8 sludge, the chemical equilibrium based software, OLI ESP{copyright} and Savannah River Site laboratory test results were used to develop a chemically speciated material balance and a general oxalate mass balance. Using 8 wt% oxalic acid with a 100% molar excess, for every 1 kg of sludge solid that was dissolved, about 3.4 kg of resultant solids would form for eventual vitrification, while about 0.6 kg of soluble oxalate would precipitate in the evaporator system, and form a salt heel. Using available analyses, a list of potential safety and process impacts were developed, screened, and evaluated for acceptability. The results showed that the use of oxalic acid had two distinct types of impacts, those which were safety based and required potential upgrades or additional studies. Assuming such were performed and adequate, no further actions were required. The second type of impacts were also acceptable, but were long-term, and as such, would need to be managed. These impacts were directly caused by the solubility characteristics of oxalate in …

The Emigrant Slimhole Drilling Project (“ESDP”) was a highly successful, phased resource evaluation program designed to evaluate the commercial geothermal potential of the eastern margin of the northern Fish Lake Valley pull-apart basin in west-central Nevada. The program involved three phases: (1) Resource evaluation; (2) Drilling and resource characterization; and (3) Resource testing and assessment. Efforts included detailed geologic mapping; 3-D modeling; compilation of a GIS database; and production of a conceptual geologic model followed by the successful drilling of the 2,938 foot deep 17-31 slimhole (core hole), which encountered commercial geothermal temperatures (327⁰ F) and exhibits an increasing, conductive, temperature gradient to total depth; completion of a short injection test; and compilation of a detailed geologic core log and revised geologic cross-sections. Results of the project greatly increased the understanding of the geologic model controlling the Emigrant geothermal resource. Information gained from the 17-31 core hole revealed the existence of commercial temperatures beneath the area in the Silver Peak Core Complex which is composed of formations that exhibit excellent reservoir characteristics. Knowledge gained from the ESDP may lead to the development of a new commercial geothermal field in Nevada. Completion of the 17-31 core hole also demonstrated the cost-effectiveness …

In this paper we describe set-up, calibration, and testing of the F-Area Analytical Labs active well neutron coincidence counter(HV-221000-NDA-X-1-DK-AWCC-1)in SRNL for use in HB-Line to enable assay of 3013EU/Pu metal product. The instrument was required within a three-month window for availability upon receipt of LANL Category IV uranium oxide samples into the SRS HB-Line facility. We describe calibration of the instrument in the SRNL nuclear nondestructive assay facility in the range 10-400 g HEU for qualification and installation in HB-Line for assay of the initial suite of product samples.

This paper describes a novel approach to the parameter anddata handling issues commonly found in experimental scientific computingand scripting in general. The approach is based on the familiarcombination of scripting language and user interface, but using alanguage expressly designed for user interaction and convenience. The L3language combines programming facilities of procedural and functionallanguages with the persistence and need-based evaluation of data flowlanguages. It is implemented in Python, has access to all Pythonlibraries, and retains almost complete source code compatibility to allowsimple movement of code between the languages. The worksheet interfaceuses metadata produced by L3 to provide selection of values through thescriptit self and allow users to dynamically evolve scripts withoutre-running the prior versions. Scripts can be edited via text editors ormanipulated as structures on a drawing canvas. Computed values are validscripts and can be used further in other scripts via simplecopy-and-paste operations. The implementation is freely available underan open-source license.

Constant-volume quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) simulations of uranium (U) have been carried out over a range of pressures and temperatures that span the experimentally observed solid orthorhombic {alpha}-U, body-centered cubic (bcc), and liquid phases, using an ab initio plane-wave pseudopotential method within the generalized gradient approximation of density functional theory. A robust U pseudopotential has been constructed for these simulations that treats the 14 valence and outer-core electrons per atom necessary to calculate accurate structural and thermodynamic properties up to 100 GPa. Its validity has been checked by comparing low-temperature results with experimental data and all-electron full-potential linear-muffin-tin-orbital calculations of several different uranium solid structures. Calculated QMD energies and pressures for the equation of state of uranium in the solid and liquid phases are given, along with results for the Grueneisen parameter and the specific heat. We also present results for the radial distribution function, bond-angle distribution function, electronic density of states, and liquid diffusion coefficient, as well as evidence for short-range order in the liquid.

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office (DOE) of River Protection (ORP) has a continuing program for chemical optimization to better characterize corrosion behavior of High-Level Waste (HLW). The DOE controls the chemistry in its HLW to minimize the propensity of localized corrosion, such as pitting, and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in nitrate-containing solutions. By improving the control of localized corrosion and SCC, the ORP can increase the life of the Double-Shell Tank (DST) carbon steel structural components and reduce overall mission costs. The carbon steel tanks at the Hanford Site are critical to the mission of safely managing stored HLW until it can be treated for disposal. The DOE has historically used additions of sodium hydroxide to retard corrosion processes in HLW tanks. This also increases the amount of waste to be treated. The reactions with carbon dioxide from the air and solid chemical species in the tank continually deplete the hydroxide ion concentration, which then requires continued additions. The DOE can reduce overall costs for caustic addition and treatment of waste, and more effectively utilize waste storage capacity by minimizing these chemical additions. Hydroxide addition is a means to control localized and stress corrosion cracking in carbon steel by …

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Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

This report discusses typical and potential elements of a crosscut budget, provides examples of enacted legislation that authorizes the use of crosscut budgets, and examines some crosscut budgeting issues that Congress might consider.

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether section 521.032, Transportation Code, which permits the Department of Public Safety to issue an enhanced driver's license or personal identification certificate for the purpose of crossing the border between Texas and Mexico conflicts with federal law (RQ-0610-GA).