This report includes a discussion of the groundwater flow direction and rate, the groundwater analytical results, and the methane monitoring results.

The Gordon Research Conference on Applied and Environmental Microbiology was held at Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut, July 22-27, 2001. The conference was attended by 121 participants. The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field, coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, and included US and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. Emphasis was placed on current unpublished research and discussion of the future target areas in this field. There was a conscious effort to stimulate discussion about the key issues in the field today. Session topics included the following: Environmental and applied genomics, Cell-to-cell signaling and multicellular behavior, Emerging technologies and methods, Novel metabolisms and ecosystems, Directed evolution of enzymes and pathways, Symbiotic and trophic relationships, Synthesis and application of novel biopolymers, and Microbes at the oxic-anoxic interface. There was also a special lecture titled ''Under the umbrella of the big tree: microbial biology into the 21st century.''

This manuscript is meant to give a short summary of the advantages of high order schemes and suitable test problems which can properly illustrate these advantages.

This issue brief discusses the Airport Improvement Program and its complement, the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC). After a brief history of federal support for airport construction and improvement, the report describes AIP funding, its source of revenues, the impact of the Wendell H. Ford Aviation Investment and Reform Act for the 21st Century (FAIR21, P.L. 106-181), funding distribution, the types of projects the program funds, and AIP and PFC policy issues.

The next major step in magnetic fusion studies will be the construction of a burning plasma (BP) experiment where the goals will be to achieve and understand the plasma behavior with the internal heating provided by fusion-generated alpha particles. Two devices with these physics goals have been proposed: the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) and the Fusion Ignition Research Experiment (FIRE). Extensive conceptual design work for the instrumentation to try to meet the physics demands has been done for these devices, especially ITER. This article provides a new look at the measurements specifically important for understanding the physics aspects of the alpha particles taking into account two significant events. The first is the completion of physics experiments on the Joint European Torus (JET) and the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) with deuterium-tritium fueling with the first chances to study alpha physics and the second is the realization that relatively compact plasmas, making use of advanced tokamak plasma concepts, are the most probable route to burning plasmas and ultimately a fusion reactor.

The U.S. has generally lacked the capability for an iterative process of detailed structural design, manufacturing, and testing at the full blade level to achieve specific structural performance, cost, and weight targets. This project examined the effects that different composites processing methods had on the performance of representative blade substructures. In addition, the results of the testing of these substructures was used to validate NuMAD, the design tool developed at Sandia National Laboratories.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Appropriations Subcommittees on the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, the Judiciary and Related Agencies.

Appropriations are one part of a complex federal budget process that includes budget resolutions, appropriations (regular, supplemental, and continuing) bills, rescissions, and budget reconciliation bills. This report is a guide to one of the 13 regular appropriations bills that Congress passes each year. It is designed to supplement the information provided by the House and Senate Foreign Operations Appropriations Subcommittees.

The L-Area cavitation test was designed to better define the onset of cavitation in the reactor system. The onset of gas evolution in the effluent piping and pump cavitation was measured using state-of-the-art equipment to provide data with a high confidence and low uncertainty level. The limits calculated from the new data will allow an approximate two percent increase in reactor power if the reactor is effluent temperature-limited with no compromise in reactor safety.

This report covers the economic problems and solutions in Argentina.

This report presents an overview of the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. This is a clash between the principles of territorial integrity and self-determination that is occurring in the Caucasus, creating the longest inter-ethnic dispute in the former Soviet Union. The report includes the background and analysis of history, warfare and peace process in the region. The report discusses the Armenian and Azerbaijani perspective, the role and views of others (Iran, Turkey, Russia), as well as the U.S. policy regarding the conflict.

On October 20-21, 2001, the Ninth APEC Leaders’ Meeting (summit) was hosted by China in Shanghai. The office theme for APEC 2001 was “Meeting New Challenges in the New Century: Achieving Common Prosperity through Participation and Cooperation” with the sub-themes of: (1) sharing the benefits of globalization and the new economy, (2) advancing trade and investment, and (3) promoting sustained economic growth. For the United States, APEC raises fundamental questions that are of special interest to Congress. One is whether consensus can be achieved on the APEC vision of free trade and investment in the Asia Pacific or whether future trade liberalization will be confined primarily to bilateral free-trade agreements or multilateral trade negotiations under the World Trade Organization.

Following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, there is intense congressional interest in improving the security screening process for airline passengers and their baggage. In the United States, screening is the responsibility of the airlines, which generally contract the work out to screening companies. The Federal Aviation Administration has regulatory authority, deploys security equipment in airports, and conducts research and development on security technology. Congress has begun to consider several bills in this area that have been introduced since the September 11 attacks, as well as Administration proposals and actions.

The High Level Waste (HLW) Salt Disposition Systems Engineering Team was formed on March 13, 1998, and chartered to identify options, evaluate alternatives, and recommend a selected alternative(s) for processing HLW salt to a permitted wasteform. This requirement arises because the existing In-Tank Precipitation process at the Savannah River Site, as currently configured, cannot simultaneously meet the HLW production and Authorization Basis safety requirements. This engineering study was performed in four phases. This document provides the technical bases, assumptions, and results of this engineering study.

A milestone report that describes the NREL's progress and activities related to the DOE FY2001 Annual Operating Plan milestone entitled ''Benchmark 2 new production or pre-production hybrids with ADVISOR.''

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Financial relationships between individual investigators or their research institutions and private industry have yielded significant results, including treatments for such diseases as AIDS and strokes. However, some collaborations have raised concerns that the focus on financial reward might compromise the integrity of the research and the safety of human research subjects. GAO reviewed five universities with broad policies and procedures on financial conflicts of interest. All five had difficulty providing basic data on individual investigators' financial conflicts of interest in clinical research involving human subjects. The universities acknowledged a need for better coordination of information on investigators' financial relationships, and several universities were developing ways to do so. Policies and procedures at the five universities addressed financial conflicts of interest affecting institutions, including technology transfer activities and financial relationships with small start-up companies that market products developed by the universities. The Department of Health and Human Services has had limited success in promoting the integrity of biomedical research and protecting human subjects. HHS has taken steps to improve its oversight and monitoring and has drafted guidance on financial conflicts of interest, but this guidance does not …

A great deal of physics understanding is required for the design and construction of thermonuclear weapons. Since the days of the Manhattan Project, physicists have relied on a combination of theory and experiment for the successful creation of nuclear weapons. One of the great experimental difficulties faced by the designers of nuclear weapons is that nuclear weapons operate in a high energy density regime not found on the earth except during a nuclear weapon detonation. Replicating these conditions is difficult unless a nuclear weapon is actually detonated. One of the reasons for the large number of expensive tests at the Nevada Test Site was that there was no other way to obtain the required data. When the laser was first developed many in the weapons program realized that the ability of a laser to concentrate a large amount of energy in a small volume could create experimental conditions that would be useful for studying the physics of nuclear weapons. The national weapons labs began investigating this possibility and started building ever bigger and better lasers. The vast difference in energy scales between the laboratory and a nuclear weapons explosion meant large and powerful lasers were required. By the early '80s …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Twenty-one percent of grant-eligible applicants who did not use the District of Columbia's tuition assistance grant (TAG) funding to attend a participating college or university may have encountered such barriers as college entrance requirements and the absence of minority outreach programs. Whether enrollment caps at colleges posed a barrier for applicants is unclear. In the program's first year, 516 of the nearly 2,500 eligible applicants did not use the grants. About 21 percent of the institutions in which applicants expressed interest restrict the number of out-of-state students that they will accept, although the extent to which this played a role in limiting access to these institutions is unclear. Enrollment at the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) changed little during the TAG program's first year. The TAG program and UDC appeared to serve different freshmen populations, which may account for the TAG program's minimal impact on UDC enrollment. Although concerns about TAG program administration were largely resolved with the revision of program regulations in December 2000, other administrative issues may hinder program operations, including the determination of applicant eligibility and the distribution of information on …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the Department of Defense's (DOD) handling of appropriated funds from expired appropriation accounts. In 1990, Congress changed the law governing the use of appropriation accounts because it concluded that controls over them were not working. Without adequate controls, Congress was concerned that agencies could disburse money in amounts and for purposes that it had not approved. GAO found that DOD improperly charged appropriation accounts after they were closed. GAO also found that DOD did not establish the requisite systems, controls, and managerial attention required to properly account for its disbursements consistent with the 1990 account closing law. As a result, DOD made at least $615 million of illegal or otherwise improper adjustments during fiscal year 2000 alone. DOD was aware of the limitations the account closing law placed on the availability of canceled appropriations and that the law was enacted because of previous abuses by DOD. DOD also knew that a major system used to control its use of appropriations allowed for disbursements to be charged in a way that was inconsistent with the law. However, DOD did nothing to fix the system, …

There are a number of exothermic chemical reactions which might benefit from the temperature control and freedom from catalyst fouling provided by the ebullated bed reactor technology. A particularly promising area is production of oxygenated chemicals, such as alcohols and ethers, from synthesis gas, which can be economically produced from coal or biomass. The ebullated bed operation requires that the small-diameter ({approx}1/32 inch) catalyst particles have enough mechanical strength to avoid loss by attrition. However, all of the State Of The Art (SOTA) catalysts and advanced catalysts for the purpose are low in mechanical strength. The patented carbon-coated catalyst technology developed in our laboratory converts catalyst particles with low mechanical strength to strong catalysts suitable for ebullated bed application. This R&D program is concerned with the modification on the mechanical strength of the SOTA and advanced catalysts so that the ebullated bed technology can be utilized to produce valuable oxygenated chemicals from syngas/CO{sub 2} efficiently and economically. The objective of this R&D program is to study the technical and economic feasibility of selective production of high-value oxygenated chemicals from synthesis gas and CO{sub 2} mixed feed in an ebullated bed reactor using carbon-coated catalyst particles.

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The recent development of light-weight foams has led to novel light-weight high-strength carbon based materials and structures. These materials exhibit very high specific strengths and low thermal conductivities. Likewise, the novel development of a very high thermal conductivity graphite foam will lead to novel ''out-of-the-box'' solutions for thermal management problems. With a thermal conductivity equivalent to aluminum 6061 and 1/5th the weight, this material is an enabling technology for thermal management problems ranging from heat sinks to radiators and satellite panels to aircraft heat exchangers. The ability to be machined into a heat sink resembling a metallic heat sink, have comparable thermal conductivities to metallic heat sinks, yet be 1/5th the weight is a significant advance to thermal management. However, the foam is not as rugged as the metallic heat sinks in its foamed and graphitized state. Therefore, the material must be rigidized to improve its durability under high demands applications, such as military vehicles. Therefore, this program focuses on several techniques previously conceived to rigidize the foam: carbon CVI, metalization (plating), and polymer coating. These techniques were all explored with success and should lead to improved heat sinks.

Reported herein are results from the Eril Research, Inc.(ERI) participationin the NASA Johnson Space Center sponsored studycharacterizing the radiation shielding properties of the two types ofspace suit that astronauts are wearing during the EVA on-orbit assemblyof the International Space Station (ISS). Measurements using passivedetectors were carried out to assess the shielding properties of the USEMU Suit and the Russian Orlan-M suit during irradiations of the suitsand a tissue equivalent phantom to monoenergetic proton and electronbeams at the Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC). Duringirradiations of 6 MeV electrons and 60 MeV protons, absorbed dose as afunction of depth was measured using TLDs exposed behind swatches of thetwo suit materials and inside the two EVA helmets. Considerable reductionin electron dosewas measured behind all suit materials in exposures to 6MeV electrons. Slowing of the proton beam in the suit materials led to anincrease in dose measured in exposures to 60 MeV protons. During 232 MeVproton irradiations, measurements were made with TLDs and CR-39 PNTDs atfive organ locations inside a tissue equivalent phantom, exposed bothwith and without the two EVA suits. The EVA helmets produce a 13 to 27percent reduction in total dose and a 0 to 25 percent reduction in doseequivalent when …

The Chemical Technology Division (CMT) is one of eight engineering research divisions within Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), one of the U.S. government's oldest and largest research laboratories. The University of Chicago oversees the laboratory on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Argonne's mission is to conduct basic scientific research, to operate national scientific facilities, to enhance the nation's energy resources, and to develop better ways to manage environmental problems. Argonne has the further responsibility of strengthening the nation's technology base through developing industrial technology and transferring that technology to industry. The Chemical Technology Division is a diverse early-stage engineering organization, specializing in the treatment of spent nuclear fuel, development of advanced power sources, and management of both high- and low-level nuclear wastes. Although this work is often indistinguishable from basic research, our efforts are directed toward the practical devices and processes that are covered by ANL's mission. Additionally, the Division operates the Analytical Chemistry Laboratory, which provides a broad range of analytical services to ANL and other organizations. The Division is multi-disciplinary. Its people have formal training as ceramists; physicists; material scientists; electrical, mechanical, chemical, and nuclear engineers; and chemists. They have experience working in academia, urban planning, …