A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the budgetary implications of selected program reforms discussed in its work but not yet implemented or enacted."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the availability of the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) federal crop insurance for specialty crops, focusing on: (1) USDA's recent progress in expanding coverage to specialty crops; (2) the new marketing practices insurance companies have introduced for specialty crops and the potential advantages and disadvantages of the practices, including their effect on producers' participation; and (3) the potential effect on participation by producers in the catastrophic crop insurance program if they were charged higher fees."

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) on-hand and on-order inventory, focusing on whether DOD: (1) had on-hand inventory exceeding current requirements as of September 30, 1996, and 1997; and (2) was buying inventory for which it had no current requirements as of those same dates."

A proposed, high charge, fixed target experiment (E-158) is planned to run with the highest possible energies available at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), at 45 and 48 Gev. The charge is up to 6 {center_dot} 10{sup 11} particles in a 370 ns long beam pulse. The SLAC Energy Development (SLED) rf system generates an increasing no-load beam energy, with a linearly decreasing slope. We show how to obtain a current variation that tracks the no-load voltage, resulting in zero energy spread. We discuss the results of a lower energy experiment that verifies the predicted charge and current at the energies required for E-158.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed selected operational practices of the National Gambling Impact Study Commission (NGISC), focusing on: (1) whether NGISC is subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) and, if so, whether NGISC followed FACA with respect to three specific meetings; (2) what contracting procedures were used in NGISC's award of three major contracts; (3) why NGISC contracted for legal counsel instead of using government legal support; (4) whether NGISC attempted to interfere with the work of one of its contractors; (5) how Regent University employees were involved in NGISC activities; (6) whether NGISC has paid for relocating any staff; and (7) whether NGISC employees are allowed to work at a location other than the NGISC office."

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A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) the environment within which railroad rates have been set since 1990; (2) how railroad rates have changed since 1990; (3) how railroad service quality has changed since 1990; and (4) actions taken by the Surface Transportation Board and others to address railroad service quality problems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Housing Administration's (FHA) appraisal process, focusing on: (1) how well the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is monitoring the performance of the appraisers on its roster and implementing procedures for addressing consumers' complaints about FHA appraisals; (2) the extent to which HUD is holding appraisers accountable for poor-quality FHA appraisals; (3) the extent to which HUD is holding lenders responsible for the quality of the FHA appraisals they use; and (4) how HUD ensures that appraisers on its roster are qualified to perform FHA appraisals."

The Site Electrical Power System receives and distributes utility power to all North Portal site users. The major North Portal users are the Protected Area including the subsurface facility and Balance of Plant areas. The system is remotely monitored and controlled from the Surface Operations Monitoring and Control System. The system monitors power quality and provides the capability to transfer between Off-Site Utility and standby power (including dedicated safeguards and security power). Standby power is only distributed to selected loads for personnel safety and essential operations. Security power is only distributed to essential security operations. The standby safeguards and security power is independent from all other site power. The system also provides surface lighting, grounding grid, and lightning protection for the North Portal. The system distributes power during construction, operation, caretaker, and closure phases of the repository. The system consists of substation equipment (disconnect switches, breakers, transformers and grounding equipment) and power distribution cabling from substation to the north portal switch gear building. Additionally, the system includes subsurface facility substation (located on surface), switch-gear, standby diesel generators, underground duct banks, power cables and conduits, switch-gear building and associated distribution equipment for power distribution. Each area substation distributes power to the …