Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided information on how the Department of Education estimates, tracks, and reports on its budget outlays."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the disclosure practices and safeguards employed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and other federal, state, and local agencies to protect taxpayer information, focusing on: (1) which federal, state, and local agencies receive taxpayer information from IRS; (2) what type of information they receive; (3) how the taxpayer information is being used; (4) what policies and procedures the agencies are required to follow to safeguard taxpayer information; (5) how frequently IRS is to monitor agencies' adherence to the safeguarding requirements; and (6) the results of IRS' most recent monitoring efforts."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO examined fraud and abuse in the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), focusing on: (1) what is known about the amount of fraud and abuse in the program, including the levels of fraud and abuse being detected by the state and local agencies responsible for administering WIC; and (2) the efforts taken to prevent and detect fraud and abuse and barriers to these efforts."

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Constitutionality of an 1891 special law that purported to disincorporate the City of San Elizario.

This report addresses the disposition strategy relating to special-case waste (SCW) managed by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on the Hanford Site. All of PNNL’s SCW currently resides in the 325 Facility of Hanford’s 300 Area. This facility is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (RL), by PNNL. Due to the high activity levels of the waste and difficulties in characterizing, classifying, and packaging it to meet the Hanford Site Solid Waste Acceptance Criteria (DOE 1998a), the materials were listed as SCW under the Hanford Facility Agreement and Consent Order (Ecology et.al.). The Hanford Facility Agreement and Consent Order is also known as the Tri-Party Agreement.

The purpose of this analysis is to document the Quality Assurance (QA) classification of the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR) waste handling building system structures, systems and components (SSCs) performed by the MGR Safety Assurance Department. This analysis also provides the basis for revision of YMP/90-55Q, Q-List (YMP 1998). The Q-List identifies those MGR SSCs subject to the requirements of DOE/RW-0333PY ''Quality Assurance Requirements and Description'' (QARD) (DOE 1998).

The purpose of this analysis is to document the Quality Assurance (QA) classification of the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR) waste handling building fire protection system structures, systems and components (SSCs) performed by the MGR Safety Assurance Department. This analysis also provides the basis for revision of YMP/90-55Q, Q-List (YMP 1998). The Q-List identifies those MGR SSCs subject to the requirements of DOE/RW-0333PY ''Quality Assurance Requirements and Description'' (QARD) (DOE 1998).

These effluent specifications address requirements for the 324/321 Facilities, which are undergoing stabilization activities. Effluent specifications are imposed to protect personnel, the environment and the public, by ensuring adequate implementation and compliance with federal and state regulatory requirements and Hanford programs.

W-441, Cold Vacuum Drying Facility (CVDF) Parts for Process Hood Assembly PV-HOOD-1*12.

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A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) projects to determine whether the Department of Defense's (DOD) strategy of conducting Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrations (ACTD) before developing and producing UAVs provides an improved knowledge base for making acquisition decisions."

The Long Trace Profiler (LTP) is in use at many synchrotron radiation (SR) laboratories throughout the world and by a number of manufacturers who specialize in fabricating grazing incidence mirrors for SR and x-ray telescope applications. Recent improvements in the design and operation of the LTP system have reduced the statistical error in slope profile measurement to the 1 standard deviation level of 0.3 microradian for 0.5 meter long mirrors. This corresponds to a height error on the order of 10-20 nanometers. This level of performance allows one to measure with confidence the absolute shape of large cylindrical aspheres and spheres that have kilometer radii of curvature in the axial direction. The LTP is versatile enough to make measurements of a mirror in the face up, sideways, and face down configurations. We will illustrate the versatility of the current version of the instrument, the LTP II, and present results from two new versions of the instrument: the in situ LTP (ISLTP) and the Vertical Scan LTP (VSLTP). Both of them are based on the penta prism LTP (ppLTP) principle that utilizes a stationary optical head and moving penta prism. The ISLTP is designed to measure the distortion of high heat …

Most HLW programs in the world recognize that any estimate of long-term radiological performance must be couched in terms of the uncertainties derived from natural variation, changes through time and lack of knowledge about the essential processes. The Japan Nuclear Cycle Development Institute followed a relatively standard procedure to address two major categories of uncertainty. First, a FEatures, Events and Processes (FEPs) listing, screening and grouping activity was pursued in order to define the range of uncertainty in system processes as well as possible variations in engineering design. A reference and many alternative cases representing various groups of FEPs were defined and individual numerical simulations performed for each to quantify the range of conceptual uncertainty. Second, parameter distributions were developed for the reference case to represent the uncertainty in the strength of these processes, the sequencing of activities and geometric variations. Both point estimates using high and low values for individual parameters as well as a probabilistic analysis were performed to estimate parameter uncertainty. A brief description of the conceptual model uncertainty analysis is presented. This paper focuses on presenting the details of the probabilistic parameter uncertainty assessment.

The path and termination point for the t-p-process above {sup 56}Ni is uncertain due to a lack of knowledge of nuclear properties, especially masses, near the proton drip line. To address this need we have begun a program to measure masses of nuclei along the r-p-process pathway in the A{approximately}60-80 region using {beta}-{gamma} coincidence spectroscopy. Results for {sup 71}Se are presented and a preliminary experiment for {sup 72}Br is described.

This report provides an overview of photovoltaics (PV) business and applications in China. Although more than 70 million people in China are without access to grid electricity, many of the unelectrified regions benefit from considerable renewable resources, including good solar insolation. Current annual PV sales are still modest, however, and are estimated to be between 2.0 and 2.5 megawatts. This and other significant PV data, including information regarding the current status of key aspects of Chinese businesses, markets, and distribution channels, are included in the report. Detailed company profiles of Chinese business organizations and summaries of visits made to these companies (as well as to more remote sites in Inner Mongolia to examine PV usage by the end-use customer) in September-October 1998 are also presented.

A review is presented of our program to construct an efficient solid state refrigerator based on thermionic emission of electrons over periodic barriers in the solid. The experimental program is to construct a simple device with one barrier layer using a three layers: metal-semiconductor-metal. The theoretical program is doing calculations to determine: (i) the optimal layer thickness, and (ii) the thermal conductivity.

Measurements in nuclear physics laboratories form the empirical foundation for new, realistic, sophisticated theoretical models of a wide variety of astrophysical systems. The predictive power of these models has, in many instances, a strong dependence on the input nuclear data, and more extensive and accurate nuclear data is required for these models than ever before. Progress in astrophysics can be aided by providing scientists with more usable, accurate, and significant amounts of nuclear data in a timely fashion in formats that can be easily incorporated into their models. A number of recent data compilations, evaluations, calculations, and disseminations that address nuclear astrophysics data needs will be described.

In part 1, we describe how the creation of quasiparticles by current flow through a normal-insulator-superconductor (NIS) junction degrades the cooling performance of the junction. Degradation occurs due to the absorption of recombination phonons in the normal electrode and due to a reduction in the cooling power. In part 2, we describe how vibrations from a pulse tube mechanical cooler affect X-ray measurements performed with a superconducting tunnel junction.

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This article discusses the advantages and disadvantages of using computer modeling to study physiology, and provides an example of how students can begin to use computer modeling in the classroom.

Video footage from the NBC 5 television station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story. This story aired at 5 P.M.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Walt Whitman Community School donation pledge form.

Photograph of a scene during a car show, in Wintersmith Park.