Research summary looking at the students of the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science. Information on demographics, student satisfaction, computer use, regression analyses for admission variables, DAT data analyses, GPA-based group comparison, group differences for admission variables, and descriptive data is included.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO summarized from available research what is known about adverse drug events (ADE), focusing on the: (1) different types and causes of ADEs; (2) evidence on the overall incidence and cost of ADEs in the United States; and (3) measures that have been proposed to reduce the number and severity of ADEs."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) approach to implementing the U.S. Space Command's long-range plan for expanding military space systems, focusing on the extent to which: (1) plans for expanding military space systems conform to national and defense space policies; (2) funding projections support planned military space programs and desired capabilities; and (3) actions are being taken to educate military personnel to support future military space operations."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Army's largest ongoing initiatives integrating active and reserve combat units, focusing on the effects of these efforts on the Army's: (1) total costs; (2) force structure; (3) personnel tempo; and (4) risk in carrying out the national military strategy."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the potential environmental effects of aviation emissions, focusing on what: (1) is currently known about aviation's contribution to global warming and how aviation emissions, both domestic and global, compare with emissions from other sources; and (2) options are available for reducing aviation emissions."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the appointment of political appointees to career positions in the executive branch, focusing on: (1) the number of political appointees who converted to career service positions between October 1, 1998, and June 30, 2000; and (2) certain information about the political positions they held and the career positions to which they converted."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed other countries' experiences in accrual budgeting, focusing on: (1) countries' reasons for shifting to accrual budgeting; (2) the ways other countries are using accrual-based information in the budget; (3) the implications of accrual budgeting for decision-making; (4) the key implementation challenges (technical and political) associated with the use of accrual budgeting; and (5) issues raised by these countries' experiences that may be informative to the United States."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Medicare hospice benefit, focusing on: (1) the patterns and trends in hospice use by Medicare beneficiaries; (2) factors that affect the use of the hospice benefit; and (3) the availability of hospice providers to serve the needs of Medicare beneficiaries."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Currently, veterans who are disabled while serving their country are compensated for average reduction in earning capacity. Monthly compensation is based on the severity of a veteran's disability. After an initial rating for compensation has been determined, veterans who believe their condition has worsened may file a claim with the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) to reevaluate their disability rating. These repeat claims outnumbered initial disability applications by nearly three to one in fiscal year 1999, dominating VA's workload. To help reduce the volume of repeat claims, the Veterans' Claims Adjudication Commission asked Congress to consider paying less severely disabled veterans compensation in a lump sum. GAO surveyed veterans who are now being compensated on their reaction to a lump sum option. Veterans had mixed views. Many veterans and military personnel could see advantages and disadvantages to this new option. They also suggested some strategies that they believed could minimize the financial risks a lump sum payment option might introduce."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's (DOD) estimates of its reinvestigation backlog, focusing on: (1) how DOD estimates the backlog; (2) the soundness of DOD's backlog estimates; and (3) DOD's plans to address the backlog problem."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) efforts to implement its Joint Electronic Commerce Program, focusing on: (1) issues DOD needs to resolve to successfully implement its vision for electronic commerce; and (2) the implementation status and performance measures associated with key electronic commerce initiatives."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the effect of competition from satellite providers on cable rates, focusing on: (1) the extent to which the level of subscribership (or penetration) of direct broadcast satellite (DBS) has influenced cable rates; and (2) other key factors that may influence the level of cable rates."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report summarizes GAO's findings on the economic and social effects of "convenience gambling." The National Gambling Impact Study Commission defines convenience gambling as the placement of slot machines or video poker terminals in restaurants, bars, drugstores, and other businesses to attract local residents rather than tourists. Although data from the communities GAO studied indicated that legalized convenience gambling increased tax revenues and created jobs, local government officials said that its presence discouraged some businesses from coming into the community. Although government officials in these communities suggested that convenience gambling contributed to bankruptcy filings, GAO was unable to find evidence of such a link. Many factors prevented GAO from clearly identifying the social effects of gambling in the communities studied. GAO was able to gather anecdotal evidence that suggested a link between certain social problems and gambling, but hard evidence to support those findings was lacking."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. government controls the export of high performance computers to sensitive destinations on the basis of foreign policy and national security concerns. The current control system for high performance computers is ineffective because it focuses on controlling individual machines and cannot prevent countries of concern from linking or clustering many lower performance uncontrolled computers to collectively perform at higher levels than current export control allows. The current system uses the measure of millions of theoretical operations per second as a way to classify and control high power computers meant for export. However, this system, as well as three remedies suggested by the Department of Commerce, do not solve the problems posed by clustering."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the effectiveness of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's (PBGC) contracting activities, focusing on: (1) the basis for PBGC's decisions regarding the use of contractors versus government personnel to address its workloads; (2) PBGC's processes and procedures for selecting contractors; and (3) how effective PBGC has been in monitoring the performance of its contractors."

Groundwater is monitored at the Hanford Site to fulfill a variety of state and federal regulations, including the Atomic Energy Act of 1954; the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976; the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980; and Washington Administrative Code. Separate monitoring plans are prepared for various requirements, but sampling is coordinated and data are shared among users to avoid duplication of effort. The U.S. Department of Energy manages these activities through the Hanford Groundwater Monitoring Project. This document is an integrated monitoring plan for the groundwater project. It documents well and constituent lists for monitoring required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and its implementing orders; includes other, established monitoring plans by reference; and appends a master well/constituent/ frequency matrix for the entire site. The objectives of monitoring fall into three general categories: plume and trend tracking, treatment/ storage/disposal unit monitoring, and remediation performance monitoring. Criteria for selecting Atomic Energy Act of 1954 monitoring networks include locations of wells in relation to known plumes or contaminant sources, well depth and construction, historical data, proximity to the Columbia River, water supplies, or other areas of special interest, and well use for other programs. Constituent …

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to vitrify Hanford's underground storage tank wastes. The vitrified wastes will be divided into low-activity and high-level fractions. There is an effort to reduce the quantity of high-activity wastes by removing nonradioactive components because of the high costs involved in treating high-level waste. Pretreatment options, such as caustic leaching, to selectively remove nonradioactive components are being investigated. The effectiveness of these proposed processes for removing nonradioactive components depends on the chemical phases in the tank sludges. This review summarizes the chemical phases identified to date in Hanford tank sludges.

The data set considered here is the topographic grid used in the Geologic Framework Model (GFM). The grid has been used in each version of the GFM, and was extracted from GFM3.1 (M09901MWDGFM3 1.000, file name ''topography.2grd''). The grid was given a unique DTN (M00002SPATOP00.001). A Technical Assessment method was used to evaluate these data to determine the adequacy of the grid for use in three-dimensional modeling. The topographic grid was compared to qualified borehole collar survey data (DTN: M09906GPS98410.000) and the mismatches documented. An acceptance window was established for the topographic grid based on the needs of the data users. The grid was determined to be within the acceptance window, and was determined to be adequate for its intended use in three-dimensional spatial modeling and is recommended to be Qualified.

Following issuance of the original document (i.e., rev. 0), it was decided to change the terminology for the calculated average concentrations derived from the inventory limit and the volumetric capacity of the unit. In the original document, the concentration values were termed ''limits''. This terminology proved problematic in managing the inventory limits through the deviation process. Thus, these values are now termed ''concentration guidelines''. Since the average concentration values presented in the UDQ serve no essential purpose, they were removed from the table. It was also decided to delete the table of materials acceptable for trench disposal (Table 2 of the original document). This table was only envisioned to be a listing of example materials. The intent of the PA, as well as the UDQ, is that any material, except for activated metal, meeting the trench WAC is acceptable.

Following issuance of the original document (i.e., rev. 0), it was discovered that an error was made in stating the dimensions and volume of the Engineered Trench and the incorrect volume was used in calculating the concentration limits (i.e. the inventory limit divided by the volumetric waste capacity of the unit) in the tables. The terminology of calling the average concentrations ''limits'' proved problematic in managing the inventory limits through the deviation process. Since the average concentration values presented serve no essential purpose (Waste Acceptance Criteria are derived from the inventory limits), they were removed from the tables. Also, the name of the disposal unit was changed from the MegaTrench to the Engineered Trench. For clarification, a statement was added that differences in dimensions of disposal units of less than about 10 percent are inconsequential from a PA perspective.

The Tank Waste Configuration Management (TWRS) Configuration Management Implementation Plan descibes the execution of the configuration management (CM) that the contractor uses to manage and integrate its programmatic and functional operations to perform work.

The mission of the Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project Cold Vacuum Drying Facility (CVDF) is to achieve the earliest possible removal of free water from Multi-Canister Overpacks (MCOs). The MCOs contain metallic uranium SNF that have been removed from the 100K Area fuel storage water basins (i.e., the K East and K West Basins) at the US. Department of Energy Hanford Site in Southeastern Washington state. Removal of free water is necessary to halt water-induced corrosion of exposed uranium surfaces and to allow the MCOs and their SNF payloads to be safely transported to the Hanford Site 200 East Area and stored within the SNF Project Canister Storage Building (CSB). The CVDF is located within a few hundred yards of the basins, southwest of the 165KW Power Control Building and the 105KW Reactor Building. The site area required for the facility and vehicle circulation is approximately 2 acres. Access and egress is provided by the main entrance to the 100K inner area using existing roadways. The CVDF will remove free. water from the MCOs to reduce the potential for continued fuel-water corrosion reactions. The cold vacuum drying process involves the draining of bulk water from the MCO and subsequent vacuum …

This Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP) provides for the inspection and testing of the new Pumping Instrumentation and Control (PIC) skid designed as ''W''. The ATP will be performed after the construction of the PIC skid in the fabrication shop.

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