A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on improvements needed to track and archive trade agreements, focusing on: (1) the number of trade agreements the United States is party to; (2) the way in which the executive branch notifies Congress when trade agreements are entered into; and (3) the extent to which the public has ready access to information from government sources about trade agreements."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reported on the: (1) status of the development and use of alternative fuel technologies in transit buses, particularly the use of compressed natural gas (CNG) as a fuel; (2) air quality benefits of such technologies; (3) costs incurred by transit operators to use CNG buses, as well as other alternative fuels, compared with the costs to use diesel buses; and (4) primary incentives and disincentives for using these technologies."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) reports on how the pork industry's sharp decline in prices does not reflect pork prices at the retail level, focusing on the: (1) structural changes in the pork industry that have occurred since the 1980s and their effect on production and marketing; (2) reasons for the sudden and rapid decline in prices paid to farmers in late 1998; and (3) extent to which USDA's methods for obtaining and reporting on prices at the farm and retail level for hogs and pork products result in accurate estimates of these prices."

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This Engineering Task Plan authorizes the development of an Alternative Generation and Analysis (AGA). The AGA will determine how to expand the environmental operating envelope during core sampling operations.

The SOLA-VOF code developed by the T-3 (Theoretical Physics, Fluids) group at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has been extensively modified at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The modified and improved version has been dubbed ''VOLVOF,'' to acknowledge the state of Tennessee, the Volunteer state and home of ORNL. Modifications include generalization of boundary conditions, additional flexibility in setting up problems, addition of a problem interruption and restart capability, segregation of graphics functions to allow utilization of modern commercial graphics programs, and addition of time and date stamps to output files. Also, the pressure iteration has been restructured to exploit the much greater system memory available on modern workstations and personal computers. A solution monitoring capability has been added to utilize the multi-tasking capability of modern computer operating systems. These changes are documented in the following report. NAMELIST input variables are defined, and input files and the resulting output are given for two test problems. Modification and documentation of a working technical computer program is almost never complete. This is certainly true for the present effort. However, the impending retirement of the writer dictates that the current configuration and capability be reported.

The Work Flow Analysis Report will be used to facilitate the requirements for implementing the further deployment of the Action Tracking module of Passport. The report consists of workflow integration processes for Action Tracking.

The Salt Well Liquid (SWL) Pumping Dynamic Simulation used by the single-shell tank (SST) Interim Stabilization Project is described. A graphical dynamic simulation predicts SWL removal from 29 SSTs using an exponential function and unique time constant for each SST. Increasing quarterly efficiencies are applied to adjust the pumping rates during fiscal year 2000.

This procedure is intended for the Area Radiation Monitoring System, ARMS, that is replacing the existing Programmable Input-Output Processing System, PIOPS, radiation monitoring system in the 105KE basin. The new system will be referred to as the 105KE ARMS, 105KE Area Radiation Monitoring System. This ATP will ensure calibration integrity of the 105KE radiation detector loops. Also, this ATP will test and document the display, printing, alarm output, alarm acknowledgement, upscale check, and security functions. This ATP test is to be performed after completion of the 105KE ARMS installation. The alarm outputs of the 105KE ARMS will be connected to the basin detector alarms, basin annunciator system, and security Alarm Monitoring System, AMS, located in the 200 area Central Alarm Station (CAS).

The Transuranic Waste Characterization Quality Assurance Program Plan required each U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) site that characterizes transuranic waste to be sent the Waste Isolation Pilot Plan that addresses applicable requirements specified in the quality assurance project plan (QAPP).

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Year 2000 census, focusing on: (1) the need to boost the declining level of public participation in the census; and (2) the Census Bureau's need to collect timely and accurate data from nonrespondents."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on skilled nursing facilities, focusing on: (1) the initial effect of the skilled nursing facility (SNF) prospective payment system (PPS) on Medicare beneficiaries' access to care; (2) the initial effect of the SNF PPS on providers; and (3) the role the SNF PPS has played in the poor financial performance of large nursing home chains."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed how the Department of Veterans' Affairs' (VA) manages its national formulary and how drugs other than those on the formulary are made available to veterans."

The authors report the first KTeV measurement for the search of direct-CP violation by using 23% of the data sample collected in the 1996-97 fixed target run at Fermilab. The result is, Re({epsilon}{prime}/{epsilon}) = (28.0 {+-} 4.1) x 10{sup -4}, nearly 7{delta} above zero obtained by a blind analysis. This firmly establishes the long-sought direct-CP violation effect in the two-pion system ({pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup -} versus {pi}{sup 0}{pi}{sup 0}) of neutral kaon decays.

Recent improvements in z-pinch wire array load design at Sandia National Laboratories have led to a substantial increase in pinch performance as measured by radiated powers of up to 280 TW in 4 ns and 1.8 MJ of total radiated energy. Next generation, higher current machines will allow for larger mass arrays and comparable or higher velocity implosions to be reached, possibly extending these result.dis the current is pushed above 20 MA, conventional machine design based on a 100 ns implosion time results in higher voltages, hence higher cost and power flow risk. Another approach, which shifts the risk to the load configuration, is to increase the implosion time to minimize the voltage. This approach is being investigated in a series of experimental campaigns on the Saturn and Z machines. In this paper, both experimental and two dimensional computational modeling of the fist long implosion Z experiments will be presented. The experimental data shows broader pulses, lower powers, and larger pinch diameters compared to the corresponding short pulse data. By employing a nested array configuration, the pinch diameter was reduced by 50% with a corresponding increase in power of > 30%. Numerical simulations suggest load velocity is the dominating mechanism …

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Isosurface extraction is an important and useful visualization method. Over the past ten years, the field has seen numerous isosurface techniques published leaving the user in a quandary about which one should be used. Some papers have published complexity analysis of the techniques yet empirical evidence comparing different methods is lacking. This case study presents a comparative study of several representative isosurface extraction algorithms. It reports and analyzes empirical measurements of execution times and memory behavior for each algorithm. The results show that asymptotically optimal techniques may not be the best choice when implemented on modern computer architectures.

The Work Flow analysis Report will be used to facilitate the requirements for implementing the Work Control module of Passport. The report consists of workflow integration processes for Work Management, Preventative Maintenance, Materials and Equipment

Fact sheet written for the Inventions and Innovation Program about a new closed rotary drum dryer for the forest products industry.

This Fact Sheet is written for the Inventions and Innovations Program about a new technology for sulfide reduction and increased oil recovery. The new technology, called Bio-Competitive Exclusion (BCX), results in greater oil production and prevents the production of corrosive hydrogen sulfide in oil and gas reservoirs. This BCX process is initiated and maintained by a new product, called Max-Well 2000, in which nutrients are custom designed to stimulate targeted beneficial microorganisms that live in every oil and gas reservoir. Rapid growth of these microorganisms excludes activity of harmful sulfide-producing bacteria and produces by-products that serve as effective tertiary oil recovery agents and as sulfide degradation agents. Oil and gas production is both increased and sweetened.

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Electrochemical corrosion tests have been conducted on simulated stainless steel-zirconium (SS-Zr) metal waste form (MWF) samples. The uniform aqueous corrosion behavior of the samples in various test solutions was measured by the polarization resistance technique. The data show that the MWF corrosion rates are very low in groundwaters representative of the proposed Yucca Mountain repository. Galvanic corrosion measurements were also conducted on MWF samples that were coupled to an alloy that has been proposed for the inner lining of the high-level nuclear waste container. The experiments show that the steady-state galvanic corrosion currents are small. Galvanic corrosion will, hence, not be an important mechanism of radionuclide release from the MWF alloys.

Fact sheet written for the Inventions and Innovation Program about a new method for stress relief in metalcasting processes that reduces energy consumption and eliminates pollution.