Detailed consideration of several aspects of a field-reversal experiment was begun in the Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF): Model calculations have provided some plausible parameters for a field-reversed deuterium plasma in the MFTF, and a buildup calculation indicates that the MFTF neutral-beam system is marginally sufficient to achieve field reversal by neutral injection alone. However, the many uncertainties indicate the need for further research and development on alternate buildup methods. A discussion of experimental objectives is presented and important diagnostics are listed. The range of parameter space accessible with the MFTF magnet design is explored, and we find that with proper aiming of the neutral beams, meaningful experiments can be performed to advance toward these objectives. Finally, it is pointed out that if we achieve enhanced n tau confinement by means of field reversal, then quasi-steady-state operation of MFTF is conceivable.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Institutions of higher education, including for-profit, nonprofit, and public schools, receive billions of dollars each year from the Department of Education (Education) to help students pay for school. In the 2009-2010 school year, Education provided $132 billion in grants and loans to students under federal student aid programs, up from $49 billion in the 2001-2002 school year. However, relatively little information is available about the quality of education being provided by these schools. Student characteristics are also important to consider when comparing educational outcomes at schools in different sectors (for-profit, nonprofit, and public). Measuring the quality of educational programs (i.e., how much knowledge or skill students gain) is difficult. Because few direct measures are available, indirect outcome measures, such as graduation and student loan default rates, are often used. Although no single outcome can be used to fully measure something as complex as educational quality, looking at multiple outcome measures (e.g., graduation rates, pass rates on licensing exams, employment outcomes, and student loan default rates) can shed light on the quality of education provided by schools. Available data indicate that for-profit schools enroll a higher proportion …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLBA) designates federal funds to support the education of students with limited English proficiency and provides for formula-based grants to states. This report describes the data the Education Department used to distribute Title III funds and the implications of data measurement issues for the two allowable sources of data-- American Community Survey (ACS) and state assessment data--for allocating funds across states. In addition, the report describes changes in federal funding to support these students under NCLBA and how states and school districts used these funds as well as Education's Title III oversight and support to states. To address these objectives, GAO reviewed documentation on ACS and state data, interviewed federal and state officials, and collected data from 12 states, 11 districts, and 6 schools."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 (referred to hereafter as the Reform Act) included provisions to better inform individuals who file for personal bankruptcy about their options for reaffirming debt--whereby filers may voluntarily agree to pay certain creditors in an effort to retain assets, such as an automobile. Reaffirmation agreements between debtors and creditors are required, by law, to formally disclose to debtors the terms of the agreement, such as the amount of debt reaffirmed. Some requirements differ for credit unions, such as an exemption for reporting debtor financial information when the debtor's attorney signs the agreement. The Reform Act required GAO to study the bankruptcy reaffirmation process. This report discusses (1) the extent to which required Reform Act disclosures and other information have been incorporated into reaffirmation agreements, (2) the types of debts reaffirmed and the percent this debt comprised of debtors' overall debt burden, and (3) how reaffirmed and original interest rates compare. GAO reviewed a representative sample of bankruptcy files with agreements in five bankruptcy courts (in AL, CA, IL, TX, and WV) selected by, among other things, filing …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) reported on its Office of Management and Budget Circular A-76 studies in July 2000. GAO found that DOD generally complied with the reporting requirements that Congress had imposed on it. DOD took steps to ensure that the information it provided on 286 A-76 studies was complete and accurate. GAO determined that the information was generally consistent with data it had collected on other A-76 studies. However, because of historical weaknesses in DOD's database from which the data were obtained, GAO could not be sure of the data's accuracy. Overall, DOD reported that the A-76 studies over the five year period saved about $290 million in fiscal year 1999. GAO's work showed that savings were being achieved, but limitations in DOD's baseline cost data made it difficult to determine precisely how much was being saved. In addition, DOD reported that 40 percent of the A-76 studies resulted in contracts with the private sector. At the same time, the report indicated that only 23 percent of the studies resulted in outside contracts in 1999. This was considerably lower than in earlier years when …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The 2010 National Security Strategy emphasizes the importance of strengthening our security and resilience at home and building capability to respond to and recover from major chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high-yield explosive (CBRNE) incidents. The National Guard has established 17 CBRNE Enhanced Response Force Packages (CERFP), which are staffed with National Guard part-time personnel, to provide life-saving capabilities in response to a CBRNE event. The teams are intended to coordinate operations with multiple response partners at the local, state, and federal levels--including Department of Defense (DOD) forces. The National Guard Bureau (NGB) is responsible for managing the CERFP program. GAO assessed (1) how well CERFPs are prepared to perform their mission and how such readiness is measured and reported; (2) how effectively CERFPs coordinate with incident response partners and how well this is evaluated; and (3) the effectiveness of the CERFPs' command and control framework. GAO reviewed program documentation, surveyed National Guard and emergency management officials from 27 states, observed training exercises, and interviewed DOD, NGB, and CERFP officials"

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The number of charter schools is growing, spurred by demand for innovation and federal incentives, such as the Race to the Top Fund, which favors states supportive of charter schools. However, states often define charter schools differently than traditional public schools. Some charter schools operate as a school district, while others are part of a school district and some are for-profit entities. These differences could complicate eligibility determination for federal administrators. GAO was asked: (1) To what extent do charter schools apply for federal discretionary grant programs and what challenges do they face, if any, in doing so? (2) What role has the U.S. Department of Education played in helping charter schools establish their eligibility for federal discretionary grant programs? GAO identified grant programs governmentwide for which charter schools are eligible to apply, surveyed a stratified random sample of charter school officials, and interviewed federal agency officials. We also visited charter schools, school districts, charter school associations, and state educational agencies in 3 states."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For years, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has experienced processing delays and significant backlogs of disability claims. At the end of fiscal year 2006, some 1.5 million disability claims were awaiting a decision. About 576,000 of these claims were backlogged--exceeding the number of claims that should optimally be pending at year-end. In response to the congressional request, GAO (1) examined trends in disability claims backlogs and the time required for SSA to decide a claim, (2) identified key factors contributing to the backlogs and processing times, and (3) described the steps SSA is taking to reduce them. To address these issues, GAO analyzed SSA administrative data, conducted an extensive literature review, interviewed SSA officials as well as key program personnel, and conducted site visits in three SSA regions."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "From fiscal years 2005 through 2010, civilian agency obligations on contracts for professional and management support services increased 44 percent, from $22 billion to $32 billion (in 2010 dollars), more than twice the rate of increase for other services. For the five agencies GAO reviewed—the Departments of Homeland Security, Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development, the United States Agency for International Development, and the National Science Foundation—more than half of the 230 statements of work for professional and management support service contracts requested services that closely support the performance of inherently governmental functions. Using these services can inappropriately influence government decisionmaking if proper oversight is not provided. The five agencies generally did not consider and mitigate risks of acquiring professional and management support services prior to awarding the 12 contracts GAO reviewed. The Federal Acquisition Regulation requires agencies to provide enhanced management oversight for contracts that closely support inherently governmental functions. For the 12 contracts, few of the officials said they considered whether contracted services included such functions. In some cases, officials said they later became concerned that contractors might perform inherently governmental functions or that …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Recipients of federal government contracts for services are subject to wage, hour, benefits, and safety and health standards under the McNamara-O'Hara Service Contract Act (SCA) of 1965, as amended, which specifies wage rates and other labor standards for employees of contractors. SCA requires the Department of Labor (DOL) to set locally prevailing wage rates and other labor standards for employees of contractors furnishing services to the federal government. DOL's Employment Standards Administration's Wage and Hour Division (WHD) administers the SCA and each year determines prevailing wage and fringe benefit rates for over 300 standard service occupations in 205 metropolitan areas. SCA also authorizes DOL to enforce contractor compliance with SCA provisions. This report describes how DOL (1) establishes locally prevailing wages and fringe benefits and (2) enforces SCA."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1998, three-fourths of welfare recipients lived in central cities or rural areas, but two-thirds of new, entry-level jobs were in the suburbs. Public transportation, such as buses or subways, often offer little or no access to these jobs, and many welfare recipients do not have cars. To address this mismatch, the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century authorized up to $750 million through fiscal year 2003 for the Job Access and Reverse Commute (Job Access) program. Under the program, the Department of Transportation (DOT) can provide grants to improve transportation to employment sites. DOT must conduct a nationwide solicitation for grant applications and select grantees on a competitive basis. DOT adopted a two-track process for the selection of grantees. A noncompetitive process set aside funds for entities identified in conference reports, or applicants selected by those entities, and they were chosen without scoring or ranking their applications. The previously established competitive process for other applicants was continued. This two-track process for selecting Job Access grantees decreased opportunities to fund projects identified as "meritorious" through the competitive selection process. Although grantees must be chosen on …

Maintaining the security of U.S. borders is a fundamental responsibility of the federal government. This report discusses the contribution of intelligence agencies to the border security efforts of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, and other federal agencies that work in cooperation with state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies. Much of the intelligence community's border security-related efforts are classified, however.

The radiation of spherical compressional waves from a spherical cavity in an ideal elastic solid is treated. The equations for the radiation source and field are written in terms of the reduced-displacement potential. The source equation is studied in terms of characteristic frequencies, corresponding periods and wavelengths, and damping. The field equations for the stresses, strains, radial displacement, etc., are reviewed with regard to the transitions between the near and far fields. The natural parameters for defining the dynamic source and field characteristics are 2b/R and b/a in some cases and a/R in others, where a is the compressional-wave velocity, b the shear-wave velocity, and R the cavity radius. Transient solutions for stresses, strains, radial displacement, etc., include damped sinusoidal oscillations. The initial- and final-value theorems for the Laplace transform are used to obtain solutions for tau (reduced time) ..-->.. 0 + (high-frequency, farfield) and tau ..-->.. infinity (zero-frequency, near-field). 14 figures, 4 tables.

The toxicology and natural occurrence of several recognized geotoxic elements including arsenic, cadmium, chromium, nickel, lead, selenium, uranium, and vanadium is reviewed. The behavior of these elements in the environment and in biological systems is examined. The properties of these eight toxic elements are summarized and presented in a toxicity matrix. The toxicity matrix identifies each of the elements in terms of average crustal abundance, average soil concentration, drinking water standards, irrigation water standards, daily human intake, aquatic toxicity, phytotoxicity, mammalian toxicity, human toxicity, and bioaccumulation factors for fish. Fish are the major aquatic environment contribution to the human diet and bioaccumulation in aquatic ecosystems has been demonstrated to be an important factor in the cycling of elements in aquatic ecosystems. The toxicity matrix is used as a first approximation to rank the geotoxicity of elements for the purpose of focusing future efforts. The ranking from highest to lowest toxicity with respect to the toxicity parameters being discussed is as follows: arsenic, cadmium, lead, selenium, chromium, vanadium, nickel, and uranium.

The NUTRAN package of computer programs calculates doses to humans from radioactivity carried out of deep geologic waste repositories by groundwater. It consists of four codes: ORIGEN (developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory), which treats the formation and decay of radionuclides, WASTE, which computes the transport of radionuclides in ground water, BIODOSE, which calculates radionuclide transport in surface waters and ecosystems and human exposures, and WPPLOT, which combines the results of WASTE and BIODOSE into usefully formatted outputs. This report describes what the WASTE, BIODOSE, and WPPLOT codes do. The equations they compute are presented in detail and their meaning is explained. Auxiliary programs which facilitate input and data management operations are also described.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress enacted the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 in September 2010 in response to concerns that small businesses have been unable to access capital that would allow them to create jobs. Among other things, the act aims to stimulate job growth by establishing the $1.5 billion State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) within the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) to strengthen state and territory (state) programs that support lending to small businesses and small manufacturers. Participating states are expected to leverage the SSBCI funds to generate an amount of private financing and investment at least 10 times the amount of their SSBCI funds (that is, a leverage ratio of 10:1). The act also requires GAO to audit SSBCI annually. Accordingly, this report examines (1) which states applied for SSBCI funds and the planned uses of those funds; (2) Treasury's implementation of SSBCI; and (3) Treasury's efforts to measure whether SSBCI achieves its goals. GAO surveyed state SSBCI applicants (for a 100 percent response rate), analyzed data from Treasury case files, and interviewed officials from Treasury and eight participating states."

Low-temperature colossal supersaturation (LTCSS) is a novel surface hardening method for carburization of austenitic stainless steels (SS) without the precipitation of carbides. The formation of carbides is kinetically suppressed, enabling extremely high or colossal carbon supersaturation. As a result, surface carbon concentrations in excess of 12 at. % are routinely achieved. This treatment increases the surface hardness by a factor of four to five, improving resistance to wear, corrosion, and fatigue, with significant retained ductility. LTCSS is a diffusional surface hardening process that provides a uniform and conformal hardened gradient surface with no risk of delamination or peeling. The treatment retains the austenitic phase and is completely non-magnetic. In addition, because parts are treated at low temperature, they do not distort or change dimensions. During this treatment, carbon diffusion proceeds into the metal at temperatures that constrain substitutional diffusion or mobility between the metal alloy elements. Though immobilized and unable to assemble to form carbides, chromium and similar alloying elements nonetheless draw enormous amounts of carbon into their interstitial spaces. The carbon in the interstitial spaces of the alloy crystals makes the surface harder than ever achieved before by more conventional heat treating or diffusion process. The carbon solid solution …

The deposition of carbon from carbonaceous gaseous environments is prevalent in many chemical and petrochemical processes such as, hydrogen-, ammonia-, and methanol-reforming systems, syngas production systems, and iron-ore reduction plants. One of the major consequences of carbon deposition is the degradation of structural materials by a phenomenon known as ''metal dusting''. There are two major issues of importance in metal dusting. First is formation of coke and subsequent deposition of coke on metallic structural components. Second is the initiation and subsequent propagation of metal dusting degradation of the structural alloy. In the past, we reported on the mechanism for metal dusting of Fe- and Ni-base alloys. In this report, we present metal dusting data on both Fe- and Ni-base alloys after exposure in high and atmospheric pressure environments that simulate the gas chemistry in operating hydrogen reformers. We have also measured the progression of pits by measuring the depth as a function of exposure time for a variety of Fe- and Ni-base structural alloys. We have clearly established the role of transport of iron in forming a non-protective spinel phase in the initiation process and presence of carbon transfer channels in the oxide scale for the continued propagation of pits, …

In 2005, the University of Washington developed a new statistical model to analyze the combined juvenile and adult detection histories of PIT-tagged salmon migrating through the Federal Columbia River Power System (FCRPS). This model, implemented by software Program ROSTER (River-Ocean Survival and Transportation Effects Routine), has been used to estimate survival and transportation effects on large temporal and spatial scales for PIT-tagged hatchery spring and summer Chinook salmon and steelhead released in the Snake River Basin from 1996 to 2003. Those results are reported here. Annual estimates of the smolt-to-adult return ratio (SAR), juvenile inriver survival from Lower Granite to Bonneville, the ocean return probability from Bonneville to Bonneville, and adult upriver survival from Bonneville to Lower Granite are reported. Annual estimates of transport-inriver (T/I) ratios and differential post-Bonneville mortality (D) are reported on both a systemwide basis, incorporating all transport dams analyzed, and a dam-specific basis. Transportation effects are estimated only for dams where at least 5,000 tagged smolts were transported from a given upstream release group. Because few tagged hatchery steelhead were transported in these years, no transportation effects are estimated for steelhead. Performance measures include age-1-ocean adult returns for steelhead, but not for Chinook salmon. Annual estimates …

This report summarizes the results from the characterization of the second quarter April 2007 sampling of Tank 50H for the Saltstone Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC). Six one liter samples were taken in polyethylene bottles to analyze for the WAC contaminants and a 200 mL sample was taken in a steel container for analysis of volatile organic compounds. The information from this characterization will be given to Waste Solidification Engineering personnel to qualify the transfer of aqueous waste to the Saltstone Facility. The following conclusions are drawn from the analytical results found in this report: (1) All six of the one liter samples taken in April 2007 from the mixed slurry in Tank 50 have the same compositions within the experimental uncertainty of the analyses. (2) Of the ninety-one process, chemical, and radioactive WAC target or limit contaminants listed in Revision 7 of the 'Waste Acceptance Criteria for Aqueous Waste sent to the Z-Area Saltstone Production Facility', eighty-nine had concentrations that were unequivocally less than the WAC limit or target. (3) The two contaminants whose concentrations could not be shown to be less than their WAC targets were methanol and radioactive Nb-93m. Currently the AD Section of SRNL does not have …

During the period of October 15 and 18, 2007, ORISE performed confirmatory radiological survey activities which included beta and gamma structural surface scans and beta activity direct measurements within the Auxiliary Building, beta or gamma scans within Turbine Building embedded piping, beta activity determinations within Turbine Building Drain 3-1-27, and gamma scans and the collection of a soil sample from the clay soils adjacent to the Lower Mixing Box.

The objective of this project is to design, fabricate and demonstrate a cost effective, multi-spectral scanner for natural gas leak detection in transmission and distribution pipelines. During the first year of the project, a laboratory version of the multi-spectral scanner was designed, fabricated, and tested at EnUrga Inc. The multi-spectral scanner was also evaluated using a blind Department of Energy study at the Rocky Mountain Oilfield Testing Center. The performance of the scanner was inconsistent during the blind study. However, most of the leaks were outside the view of the multi-spectral scanner that was developed during the first year of the project. Therefore, a definite evaluation of the capability of the scanner was not obtained. Despite the results, sufficient number of plumes was detected fully confirming the feasibility of the multi-spectral scanner. During the second year, the optical design of the scanner was changed to improve the sensitivity of the system. Laboratory tests show that the system can reliably detect small leaks (20 SCFH) at 30 to 50 feet. A prototype scanner was built and evaluated during the second year of the project. Only laboratory evaluations were completed during the second year. The laboratory evaluations show the feasibility of using …

During the period of October 15 and 18, 2007, ORISE performed confirmatory radiological survey activities which included beta and gamma structural surface scans and beta activity direct measurements within the Auxiliary Building, beta or gamma scans within Turbine Building embedded piping, beta activity determinations within Turbine Building Drain 3-1-27, and gamma scans and the collection of a soil sample from the clay soils adjacent to the Lower Mixing Box.

Report from the Texas House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence describing the group's goals, activities, accomplishments, and other information, for review by the 82nd Texas Legislature.