A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 2004, lenders made about $65 billion in loans through the Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) to assist students in paying for postsecondary education. The Higher Education Act (HEA), which authorizes FFELP, broadly defined eligible lenders--including schools. The Department of Education's (Education) Office of Federal Student Aid (FSA) is responsible for ensuring that lenders comply with FFELP laws and regulations. Recently, schools have become increasingly interested in becoming lenders, and this has raised concerns about whether it is appropriate for schools to become lenders given that they both determine students' eligibility for loans and in some cases set the price of attendance. In light of these concerns we determined (1) the extent to which schools have participated as FFELP lenders and their characteristics, (2) how schools have structured lending operations and benefits for borrowers and schools, and (3) statutory and regulatory safeguards designed to protect taxpayers' and borrowers' interests."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Mobility is critical to the nation's economy. Projections of future passenger and freight travel suggest that increased levels of investment may be needed to maintain the current levels of mobility provided by the nation's highway and transit systems. However, calls for greater investment in transportation come amid growing concerns about fiscal imbalances at all levels of the government. As a result, careful decisions will need to be made to ensure that transportation investments maximize the benefits of each federal dollar invested. In this report GAO identifies (1) the categories of benefits and costs that can be attributed to new highway and transit investments and the challenges in measuring them; (2) how state, local, and regional decision makers consider the benefits and costs of new highway and transit investments when comparing alternatives; (3) the extent to which investments meet their projected outcomes; and (4) options to improve the information available to decision makers. To address these objectives, we convened an expert panel, surveyed state departments of transportation and transit agencies, and conducted site visits to five metropolitan areas that had both a capacity-adding highway project and transit …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Terrorist groups need significant amounts of money to organize, recruit, train, and equip adherents. U.S. disruption of terrorist financing can raise the costs and risks and impede their success. This report (1) provides an overview of U.S. government efforts to combat terrorist financing abroad and (2) examines U.S. government efforts to coordinate training and technical assistance. We also examined specific accountability issues the Department of the Treasury faces in its efforts to block terrorists' assets held under U.S. jurisdiction."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The threat of terrorism has made physical security for federal real property assets a major concern. Protecting these assets can be particularly complex and contentious for agencies whose missions include ensuring public access such as the Department of the Interior (Interior) and the General Services Administration (GSA). GAO's objectives were to (1) identify any challenges that Interior faces in protecting national icons and monuments from terrorism, as well as related actions intended to address these challenges; and similarly, (2) determine any challenges GSA faces related to the protection of federal office buildings it owns or leases and actions that have been taken."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Food and beverages have been served on board National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) trains since Amtrak was created. Amtrak's 11 commissaries, located around the country, are responsible for receiving, warehousing and stocking food, beverages, and other items for Amtrak's on-board dining and cafe service. January 1999, Amtrak ran these commissaries with its own employees. Since then, Amtrak has contracted out the responsibility for the commissaries and for ordering and stocking all food, beverage, and related items under a contract that expires in September 2006. Gate Gourmet, the contractor, is also a supplier of food and beverages to several major airlines. During fiscal years 2002 through 2004, the period we focused on in our audit work, Amtrak paid Gate Gourmet between $59 million and $64 million a year in reimbursements and fees. Gate Gourmet personnel operate Amtrak-owned commissaries and order, receive, store, and stock trains with food, beverages, and other related items, such as table linens and napkins. Food and beverage supplies are charged to Amtrak employees who provide on-board food and beverage service and account for the food and beverages en route. When a train arrives …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "With unemployed workers at a greater risk of long-term unemployment than in the past, it is increasingly important to quickly connect Unemployment Insurance (UI) claimants with reemployment activities. However, the shift to remote claims filing in many states has raised concerns about maintaining a connection between the UI program and reemployment services. This report examines (1) the extent to which states have shifted to remote claims filing and how they are making claimants aware of program requirements and services, (2) what states are doing to facilitate reemployment of UI claimants, and (3) what is known about the extent to which UI claimants receive reemployment services and about their outcomes."

There is vital need for a compact, lightweight, and efficient energy-storage system that is both affordable and has an acceptable cycle life for the large-scale production of electric vehicles (EVs) and hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). Most of the current research employs a battery-storage unit (BU) combined with a fuel cell (FC) stack in order to achieve the operating voltage-current point of maximum efficiency for the FC system. A system block diagram is shown in Fig.1.1. In such a conventional arrangement, the battery is sized to deliver the difference between the energy required by the traction drive and the energy supplied by the FC system. Energy requirements can increase depending on the drive cycle over which the vehicle is expected to operate. Peak-power transients result in an increase of losses and elevated temperatures which result in a decrease in the lifetime of the battery. This research will propose a novel two-input direct current (dc) dc to dc converter to interface an additional energy-storage element, an ultracapacitor (UC), which is shown in Fig.1.2. It will assist the battery during transients to reduce the peak-power requirements of the battery.

This report provides an overview of the "digital divide," which is a term used to describe a perceived gap between those Americans who use or have access to telecommunications and information technologies and those who do not.The report also dicusses about an important subset of th digital divide debate concerns high-speed Internet Access.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 guarantees the availability and renewability of health insurance coverage for certain individuals. It permits a limited number of small businesses and self-employment individuals to establish tax-favored medical savings accounts, increases the tax deduction for health insurance for the self-employed, and amends the Internal Revenue Code to treat private long-term care policies the way health insurance policies and health care expenses are currently treated.

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With the dramatic population increase in the West over the last thirty years, the Western states have been under increasing pressure from their citizens to secure future access to water. In planning to meet this goal, however, Western officials have had to confront a heretofore obscure doctrine of water law: the doctrine of Indian reserved water rights, also known as the Winters doctrine. Therefore, in order for Western water officials to effectively plan for a stable allocation of water on which all parties can rely, they must find a way to satisfy the water claims of local Indian tribes. This report provides an overview of the legal issues surrounding Indian reserved water rights disputes.

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This report contains the availability of judicial review regarding military base closures and realignments.

The report discusses the most recent developments, backgrounds and analysis, finances and congressional hearing, Reports and Documents.

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Between 1999 and 2002, Pacific Gas Transmission Company (PGT) (now TransCanada Pipeline Company) and AVISTA Corporation, together with technical support provided by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) examined the feasibility of developing a subsurface, natural gas-storage facility in deep, underlying Columbia River basalt in south-central Washington state. As part of this project, the 100 Circles #1 well was drilled and characterized in addition to surface studies. This report provides data and interpretations of the geology and hydrology collected specific to the Canoe Ridge site as part of the U.S. DOE funding to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in support of this project.

With the Nation's coal-burning utilities facing the possibility of tighter controls on mercury pollutants, the U.S. Department of Energy is funding projects that could offer power plant operators better ways to reduce these emissions at much lower costs. Sorbent injection technology represents one of the simplest and most mature approaches to controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired boilers. It involves injecting a solid material such as powdered activated carbon into the flue gas. The gas-phase mercury in the flue gas contacts the sorbent and attaches to its surface. The sorbent with the mercury attached is then collected by the existing particle control device along with the other solid material, primarily fly ash. During 2001, ADA Environmental Solutions (ADA-ES) conducted a full-scale demonstration of sorbent-based mercury control technology at the Alabama Power E.C. Gaston Station (Wilsonville, Alabama). This unit burns a low-sulfur bituminous coal and uses a hot-side electrostatic precipitator (ESP) in combination with a Compact Hybrid Particulate Collector (COHPAC{reg_sign}) baghouse to collect fly ash. The majority of the fly ash is collected in the ESP with the residual being collected in the COHPAC{reg_sign} baghouse. Activated carbon was injected between the ESP and COHPAC{reg_sign} units to collect the mercury. Short-term mercury removal …

Technetium (99Tc, half-life = 2.13x105 years, ?-emitter) is one of the radionuclides of major concern for nuclear waste disposal. This concern is due to the long half-life of 99Tc, the ease with which pertechnetate, TcO4 -, migrates in the geosphere, difficulties in incorporating Tc into glass waste forms, and the corresponding regulatory considerations. The problem of mobility of pertechnetate in the environment is compounded by the fact that pertechnetate is the thermodynamically stable form of Tc in oxidizing environments. These factors present challenges for the separation and immobilization of Tc. The objective of this research project is to provide new knowledge about the chemical behavior of Tc so that the factors underlying its speciation in nuclear waste and in waste forms can be understood and the problems can be addressed. In particular, the behavior of Tc and Re in glass will be examined since Re is often used as a non-radioactive surrogate to predict the behavior of Tc.(1) In this project, glasses containing both Re and Tc will be prepared, so that the behavior of both metals can be compared under identical conditions

AC complex impedance spectroscopy studies were conducted between 600-800 C on symmetrical cells that employed strontium-and-magnesium-doped lanthanum gallate electrolyte, La{sub 0.9}Sr{sub 0.1}Ga{sub 0.8}Mg{sub 0.2}O{sub 3} (LSGM). The objective of the study was to identify the materials system for fabrication and evaluation of intermediate temperature (600-800 C) solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). The slurry-coated electrode materials had fine porosity to enhance catalytic activity. Cathode materials investigated include La{sub 1-x}Sr{sub x}MnO{sub 3} (LSM), LSCF (La{sub 1-x}Sr{sub x}Co{sub y}Fe{sub 1-y}O{sub 3}), a two-phase particulate composite consisting of LSM-doped-lanthanum gallate (LSGM), and LSCF-LSGM. The anode materials were Ni-Ce{sub 0.85}Gd{sub 0.15}O{sub 2} (Ni-GDC) and Ni-Ce{sub 0.6}La{sub 0.4}O{sub 2} (Ni-LDC) composites. Experiments conducted with the anode materials investigated the effect of having a barrier layer of GDC or LDC in between the LSGM electrolyte and the Ni-composite anode to prevent adverse reaction of the Ni with lanthanum in LSGM. For proper interpretation of the beneficial effects of the barrier layer, similar measurements were performed without the barrier layer. The ohmic and the polarization resistances of the system were obtained over time as a function of temperature (600-800 C), firing temperature, thickness, and the composition of the electrodes. The study revealed important details pertaining to the ohmic …

With the Nation's coal-burning utilities facing the possibility of tighter controls on mercury pollutants, the U.S. Department of Energy is funding projects that could offer power plant operators better ways to reduce these emissions at much lower costs. Sorbent injection technology represents one of the simplest and most mature approaches to controlling mercury emissions from coal-fired boilers. It involves injecting a solid material such as powdered activated carbon into the flue gas. The gas-phase mercury in the flue gas contacts the sorbent and attaches to its surface. The sorbent with the mercury attached is then collected by the existing particle control device along with the other solid material, primarily fly ash. During 2001, ADA Environmental Solutions (ADA-ES) conducted a full-scale demonstration of sorbent-based mercury control technology at the Alabama Power E.C. Gaston Station (Wilsonville, Alabama). This unit burns a low-sulfur bituminous coal and uses a hot-side electrostatic precipitator (ESP) in combination with a Compact Hybrid Particulate Collector (COHPAC{reg_sign}) baghouse to collect fly ash. The majority of the fly ash is collected in the ESP with the residual being collected in the COHPAC{reg_sign} baghouse. Activated carbon was injected between the ESP and COHPAC{reg_sign} units to collect the mercury. Short-term mercury removal …

This research investigates the economic penetration and system-wide effects of large-scale intermittent technologies in an electric generation system. The research extends the standard screening curve analysis to optimize the penetration and system structure with intermittent technologies. The analysis is based on hour-by-hour electric demands and intermittent generation. A theoretical framework is developed to find an expression for the marginal value of an intermittent technology as a function of the average system marginal cost, the capacity factor of the generator, and the covariance between the generator's hourly production and the hourly system marginal cost. A series of model runs are made examining the penetration of wind and photovoltaic in a simple electric generation system. These illustrate the conclusions in the theoretical analysis and illustrate the effects that large-scale intermittent penetration has on the structure of the generation system. In the long-term, adding intermittent generation to a system allows us to restructure the dispatchable generation capacity to a mix with lower capital cost. It is found that large scale intermittent generation tends to reduce the optimal capacity and production of baseload generators and increase the capacity and production of intermediate generators, although the extent to which this occurs depends strongly on the …

In the past, automotive refrigerants have conventionally been used solely for the purpose of air conditioning. However, with the development of hybrid-electric vehicles and the incorporation of power electronics (PEs) into the automobile, automotive refrigerants are taking on a new role. Unfortunately, PEs have lifetimes and functionalities that are highly dependent on temperature and as a result thermal control plays an important role in the performance of PEs. Typically, PEs are placed in the engine compartment where the internal combustion engine (ICE) already produces substantial heat. Along with the ICE heat, the additional thermal energy produced by PEs themselves forces designers to use different cooling methods to prevent overheating. Generally, heat sinks and separate cooling loops are used to maintain the temperature. Disturbingly, the thermal control system can consume one third of the total volume and may weigh more than the PEs [1]. Hence, other avenues have been sought to cool PEs, including submerging PEs in automobile refrigerants to take advantage of two-phase cooling. The objective of this report is to explore the different automotive refrigerants presently available that could be used for PE cooling. Evaluation of the refrigerants will be done by comparing environmental effects and some thermo-physical properties …