A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the consistency of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) regional offices' enforcement of environmental requirements, focusing on: (1) the extent to which variations exist among EPA's regional offices in the actions they take to enforce environmental requirements; (2) what factors contribute to any variations; and (3) what EPA is doing to achieve consistency in regional enforcement activities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO audited the Bureau of the Public Debt's (BPD) Schedules of Federal Debt for the fiscal years that ended September 30, 1999 and 1998."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) Title I services at schoolwide and targeted assistance schools; (2) state efforts to hold schools and districts accountable for student achievement; and (3) research and evaluations of Title I and schoolwide programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Advisory Commission to Study the Consumer Price Index's (CPI) updated estimate of CPI bias, focusing on the: (1) methodological changes the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) made to the CPI since December 1996, when the Advisory Commission (also referred to as the Boskin Commission) issued its final report; and (2) opinions of the five former Boskin Commission members on how much of the bias in the CPI that the Commission estimated in its December 1996 report remains after recent methodological changes to the CPI."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Coast Guard's phased-in conversion of some support officer positions, focusing on: (1) how the Coast Guard's current workforce mix compares with the workforce mix of other military services and how the workforce mix has changed since 1991; (2) how many military commissioned officer positions in administrative and support functions offer opportunities for conversion to civilian positions; and (3) what the advantages and disadvantages are of converting those military positions to civilian positions."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO issued a report on factors that limit access to vaccines for children in developing countries, focusing on: (1) shifting donor priorities; (2) inadequate infrastructure and insufficient information for decision-making; and (3) the relatively high cost of newer vaccines."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided a status report on whether the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) policies provide reasonable assurances that financial resources provided to member countries are adequately safeguarded, focusing on the: (1) appropriate use of IMF resources by borrowers; and (2) accuracy of economic and financial information reported by borrowers, and upon which the IMF makes lending decisions."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on three federal human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) programs--the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act of 1990 (CARE Act), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) HIV/AIDS prevention grants, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Housing Opportunities for Persons Living With AIDS (HOPWA)--that fund prevention activities, health care, and other assistance, focusing on: (1) the characteristics of the persons who are served under the CARE Act; (2) how CARE Act, CDC prevention, and HOPWA funds are distributed to treatment, support services, housing, prevention, and program administration; (3) whether the current approach to funding under the CARE Act leads to advantages or disadvantages in particular areas; (4) whether CARE Act services are reaching rural areas; and (5) how the salaries of administrators of organizations providing HIV/AIDS services compare with the salaries of administrators of other similar nonprofit organizations."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, organizations and donors have provided Russia with tens of billions of dollars in economic assistance to helping it transition to a market economy within a democratic state. This transition presents opportunities and challenges to the Russians and to those providing economic assistance. This report focuses on the assistance given to Russia by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank's International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the 1992 Freedom Support Act, and the European Union's Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States program. GAO found that the success of the assistance programs has been mixed. Although there have been several individual successes, such as small business development, GAO's interviews with the financial institutions revealed that overall program goals are not being met. GAO identified three obstacles toward attaining program objectives: (1) difficult conditions in Russia, (2) limitations in how programs were designed and implemented, and (3) the interdependent nature of Russia's transition needs. The financial institutions and donors, along with the Russian government, are reevaluating the design of their programs. …

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 annual reports on depot maintenance, focusing on how military departments or defense agencies: (1) used funds appropriated annually for depot-level repair and maintenance done by contractor personnel; and (2) reported on estimated funds to be used for performing depot maintenance by public and private sector personnel for fiscal years 1999-2005."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the effects that the U.S. cargo preference law and federal export assistance programs have on the pork export industry, focusing on the: (1) extent to which other countries' trade practices and the U.S. cargo preference law are impediments to exporting more pork products; (2) extent to which existing federal programs could be used to increase the export of pork products; and (3) potential for increased exports to strengthen the U.S. agricultural trade balance and improve producer prices."

A Habitat Evaluation Procedure (HEP) study was conducted on lands acquired and/or managed (4,568 acres total) by the Hellsgate Big Game Winter Range Wildlife Mitigation Project (Hellsgate project) to mitigate some of the losses associated with the original construction and operation of Grand Coulee Dam and inundation of habitats behind the dams. Three separate properties, totaling 2,224 acres were purchased in 1998. One property composed of two separate parcels, mostly grassland lies southeast of the town of Nespelem in Okanogan County (770 acres) and was formerly called the Hinman property. The former Hinman property lies within an area the Tribes have set aside for the protection and preservation of the sharp-tailed grouse (Agency Butte unit). This special management area minus the Hinman acquisition contains 2,388 acres in a long-term lease with the Tribes. The second property lies just south of the Silver Creek turnoff (Ferry County) and is bisected by the Hellsgate Road (part of the Friedlander unit). This parcel contains 60 acres of riparian and conifer forest cover. The third property (now named the Sand Hills unit) acquired for mitigation (1,394 acres) lies within the Hellsgate Reserve in Ferry County. This new acquisition links two existing mitigation parcels (the …

Water use in the pulp and paper industry is very significant, and the U.S. pulp and paper industries as well as other processing industries are actively pursuing water conservation and pollution prevention by in-process recycling of water. Bleach plant effluent is a large portion of the water discharged from a typical bleached kraft pulp mill. The recycling of bleach plant effluents to the kraft recovery cycle is widely regarded as an approach to low effluent bleached kraft pulp production. The focus of this work has been on developing an electrodialysis process for recycling the acidic bleach plant effluent of bleached Kraft pulp mills. Electrodialysis is uniquely suited as a selective kidney to remove non-process elements (NPEs) from bleach plant effluent before they reach the chemical recovery cycle. Using electrodialysis for selective NPE removal can prevent the problems caused by accumulation of inorganic NPEs in the pulping cycle and recovery boiler. In this work, acidic bleach plant filtrates from three mills using different bleaching sequences based on chlorine dioxide were characterized. The analyses showed no fundamental differences in the inorganic NPE composition or other characteristics among these filtrates. The majority of total dissolved solids in the effluents were found to be …

A fundamental part of geophysics is to make inferences about the interior of the earth on the basis of data collected at or near the surface of the earth. In almost all cases these measured data are only indirectly related to the properties of the earth that are of interest, so an inverse problem must be solved in order to obtain estimates of the physical properties within the earth. In February of 1999 the U.S. Department of Energy sponsored a workshop that was intended to examine the methods currently being used to solve geophysical inverse problems and to consider what new approaches should be explored in the future. The interdisciplinary area between inverse problems in geophysics and optimization methods in mathematics was specifically targeted as one where an interchange of ideas was likely to be fruitful. Thus about half of the participants were actively involved in solving geophysical inverse problems and about half were actively involved in research on general optimization methods. This report presents some of the topics that were explored at the workshop and the conclusions that were reached. In general, the objective of a geophysical inverse problem is to find an earth model, described by a set …

Through this funded project, our research group at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has pioneered and been successful in preparing and evaluating the performance of prototypes of neutron, alpha, and gamma-ray detectors based on various types of nanoparticles. These include organic fluors [2,5-diphenyloxazole (PPO) and 1,4-bis-2-(5-phenyloxazolyl)-benzene (POPOP)]-doped polystyrene and polyvinyltoluene nanoparticles, highly crystalline inorganic ZnS-capped CdSe, ZnS, three-component CdSxSe1-x, Ce3+-doped Y2O3, and Ce3+-doped LaPO4 (LaPO4:Ce) nanocrystals (NCs) in polystyrene (PS) or polyvinyltoluene (PVT). Previously, this effort identified two strong candidate nanoparticles for neutron and gamma detection applications. These two NCs are LaPO4:Ce and CdSxSe1-x (Dai, S. et. al. manuscript in preparation; see Figures 1 and 2). Another key accomplishment of the previously funded project is the development of 6Li3PO4 nanoparticles as a neutron-absorbing material (Dai, S. et. al. manuscript in preparation). Because the size of these nanoparticles is well under the diffraction limit for visible light, the 6Li3PO4 nanoparticles can be utilized as a vehicle for doping large percentages of Li-6 into plastic scintillators for detection of thermal neutrons. Our preliminary results indicate that a transparent polymer composite containing as high as 16 wt% of the 6Li3PO4 nanoparticles can be fabricated. Figure 3 shows the pulse height spectra from thermal …

The monitoring of chemical constituents in manufacturing processes is of economic importance to most industries. The monitoring and control of chemical constituents may be of importance for product quality control or, in the case of process effluents, of environmental concern. The most common approach now employed for chemical process control is to collect samples which are returned to a conventional chemical analysis laboratory. This project attempts to demonstrate the use of microfabricated structures, referred to as 'lab-on-a-chip' devices, that accomplish chemical measurement tasks that emulate those performed in the conventional laboratory. The devices envisioned could be used as hand portable chemical analysis instruments where samples are analyzed in the field or as emplaced sensors for continuous 'real-time' monitoring. This project focuses on the development of filtration elements and solid phase extraction elements that can be monolithically integrated onto electrophoresis and chromatographic structures pioneered in the laboratory. Successful demonstration of these additional functional elements on integrated microfabricated devices allows lab-on-a-chip technologies to address real world samples that would be encountered in process control environments. The resultant technology has a broad application to industrial environmental monitoring problems. such as monitoring municipal water supplies, waste water effluent from industrial facilities, or monitoring of …

This effort represents a contribution to the wider distributed energy resources (DER) research of the Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions (CERTS, http://certs.lbl.gov) that is intended to attack and, hopefully, resolve the technical barriers to DER adoption, particularly those that are unlikely to be of high priority to individual equipment vendors. The longer term goal of the Berkeley Lab effort is to guide the wider technical research towards the key technical problems by forecasting some likely patterns of DER adoption. In sharp contrast to traditional electricity utility planning, this work takes a customer-centric approach and focuses on DER adoption decision making at, what we currently think of as, the customer level. This study reports on Berkeley Lab's second year effort (completed in Federal fiscal year 2000, FY00) of a project aimed to anticipate patterns of customer adoption of distributed energy resources (DER). Marnay, et al., 2000 describes the earlier FY99 Berkeley Lab work. The results presented herein are not intended to represent definitive economic analyses of possible DER projects by any means. The paucity of data available and the importance of excluded factors, such as environmental implications, are simply too important to make such an analysis possible at this time. …

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Each content code uniquely identifies the generated waste and provides a system for tracking theprocess and packaging history. Each content code begins with a two-letter site abbreviation thatdesignates the physical location of the RH-TRU waste. The site-specific letter designations for eachof the DOE sites are provided in Table 2. All TRU waste generating/storage sites are included inTable 2 for completeness. Not all of the sites listed in Table 2 have generated/stored RH-TRU waste.

The first Specific Aim for this grant was to identify and characterize an average of 500 human insertion/deletion polymorphisms per grant year (1500 total). This task was carried out entirely at MMRF. They substantially exceeded this goal by confirming about 2,300 diallelic indels. Complete characterization information for these polymorphisms is available from the Marshfield web site. A manuscript describing results for the first 2,000 diallelic indels was published earlier this year in the American Journal of Human Genetics. The Second Specific Aim of the grant was to investigate and develop improved methods for analysis of diallelic polymorphisms using miniaturized DNA arrays. The initial genotyping technology efforts focused on various hybridization and extension protocols with oligo arrays on flow-through channel glass. Channel glass is a porous material that permits reagents to be passed through the arrays. They devoted roughly 19 months at the beginning of the grant in pursuit of this methodology, but for various technological reasons, progress was limited.

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Construction of the Dalles, Bonneville, McNary, and John Day Dams on the Columbia River by the federal government resulted in a substantial loss of riparian bottomland along the Columbia River. Impacts associated with the Mid-Columbia Projects were assessed for several wildlife species using the Habitat Evaluation Procedures (HEP) developed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USDI-FWS 1980). The studies documented the loss of riparian habitat and established a baseline against which mitigation measures could be developed (USDI-FWS 1990 and USDE-BPA 1990). The impact assessments established a mitigation goal, a portion of which would be satisfied by the creation, restoration, and enhancement of riparian lands on tributaries to the Columbia River, including the Yakima Valley. The Yakama Nation (YN), the Northwest Power Planning Council, and the Bonneville Power Administration have agreed that the Yakama Nation would be funded to implement habitat restoration on lands within and adjacent to their reservation. Some of the targeted lands are owned by the Yakama Nation, some are trust lands, and some lands have been in private ownership. Since the early 1990s, the Yakama Nation has been in the process of assembling riparian lands into Wildlife Management Areas, and restoring natural hydrology and natural cover-types …

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