A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies can directly purchase more than 8 million commercial products and services through the General Services Administration's (GSA) multiple award schedules (MAS) contracts. Over the past 10 years, MAS contract sales have increased dramatically--with sales jumping from $4 billion to $32 billion. In addition to simplifying the procurement process, the MAS program is designed to take advantage of the government's significant aggregate buying power. While GSA seeks to negotiate best pricing for its MAS contracts by analyzing vendor-provided information--such as discounts given to other customers and recent sales data for the same or similar items--past reports have found that GSA has not always used pricing tools effectively and that management controls for better ensuring fair and reasonable pricing had been reduced. This report discusses GSA's process for negotiating most favored customer prices for MAS contracts and its efforts to improve the overall quality of negotiations."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has long-standing problems with its information technology (IT) systems supporting military personnel and pay. To address these problems, DOD initiated the Defense Integrated Military Human Resources System (DIMHRS) program, which is to provide a joint, integrated, standardized military personnel and pay system across all military components. In November 2004, DOD accepted the design for the first of three phases, DIMHRS (Personnel/Pay). GAO reviewed DOD's management of the requirements definition for the system as well as the program's management structure."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Many developing countries have expressed concern about their inability to take advantage of global trading opportunities. The United States considers this ability a key factor in reducing poverty, achieving economic growth, raising income levels, and promoting stability. U.S. trade capacity building assistance is designed to address these concerns. GAO (1) identified the nature and extent of U.S. trade capacity building; (2) described how agencies implement such assistance, including coordination; and (3) assessed whether agencies evaluate its effectiveness."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "GAO is required to annually audit the financial statements of the Bank Insurance Fund (BIF), Savings Association Insurance Fund (SAIF), and FSLIC Resolution Fund (FRF), which are administered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). GAO is responsible for obtaining reasonable assurance about whether FDIC's financial statements for BIF, SAIF, and FRF are presented fairly in all material respects, in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, and whether FDIC maintained effective internal control over financial reporting and compliance. Also, GAO is responsible for testing FDIC's compliance with selected laws and regulations. Created in 1933 to insure bank deposits and promote sound banking practices, FDIC plays an important role in maintaining public confidence in the nation's financial system. In 1989, legislation to reform the federal deposit insurance system created three funds to be administered by FDIC: BIF and SAIF, which protect bank and savings deposits, and FRF, which was created to close out the business of the former Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), through its Federal Housing Administration (FHA), insures billions of dollars in home mortgage loans made by private lenders. FHA insures low down payment loans and a number of parties have made proposals to either eliminate or otherwise change FHA's borrower contribution requirements. GAO was asked to (1) identify the key characteristics of existing low and no down payment products, (2) review relevant literature on the importance of loan-to-value (LTV) ratios and credit scores to loan performance, (3) report on the performance of low and no down payment mortgages supported by FHA and others, and (4) identify lessons for FHA from others in terms of designing and implementing low and no down payment products."

In the current hybrid vehicle market, the Toyota Prius drive system is considered the leader in electrical, mechanical, and manufacturing innovations. It is a significant accomplishment that Toyota is able to manufacture and sell the vehicle for a profit. The Toyota Prius traction motor design approach for reducing manufacturing costs and the motor s torque capability have been studied and tested. The findings were presented in two previous Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reports. The conclusions from this report reveal, through temperature rise tests, that the 2004 Toyota Prius (THSII) motor is applicable only for use in a hybrid automobile. It would be significantly undersized if used in a fuel cell vehicle application. The power rating of the Prius motor is limited by the permissible temperature rise of the motor winding (170 C) and the motor cooling oil (158 C). The continuous ratings at base speed (1200 rpm) with different coolant temperatures are projected from test data at 900 rpm. They are approximately 15 kW with 105 C coolant and 21 kW with 35 C coolant. These continuous ratings are much lower than the 30 kW specified as a technical motor target of the U.S. Department of Energy FreedomCAR Program. …

The objective of this task was to study permanent magnet (PM) radial-gap traction drive systems that could meet the U.S. Department of Energy FreedomCAR Program's 2010 goals to expose weaknesses or identify strengths. Initially, the approach was to compare attributes such as physical deformations during operation, performance (torque, power, efficiency versus speed), material requirements (strength), material costs, manufacturability, weight, power density, specific power, reliability, and drivability for specific motors. Three motors selected were the commercially available 60-kW radial-gap surface-mounted PM motor manufactured by UQM Technologies, Inc.; a hypothetical PM motor with rotor-supported magnets similar to the Honda MCF-21; and Delphi's automotive electric machine drive motor, whose rotor is a ferromagnetic cylinder, held at one end by a shaft that supports the magnets on its inner surface. Potential problems have appeared related to PM motors, such as (1) high no-load spin losses and high operational power losses, probably from eddy current losses in the rotor; (2) the undemonstrated dual mode inverter control (DMIC) for driving a brushless dc motor (BDCM) (UQM and Delphi motors); (3) uncertainty about the potential for reducing current with DMIC; and (4) uncertainty about the relation between material requirements and maximum rotor speed. Therefore, the approach was …

This report provides appropriations of HIV/AIDS International programs from FY2003 through FY2006.

We have successfully demonstrated spectrally-resolved x-ray scattering in a variety of dense plasmas as a powerful new technique for providing microscopic dense plasma parameters unattainable by other means. The results have also been used to distinguish between ionization balance models. This has led to 10 published or to be published papers, 8 invited talks and significant interest from both internal and external experimental plasma physicists and the international statistical plasma physics theory community.

The purpose of this project is to develop a greater understanding of the kinetics involved during a liquid-solid phase transition occurring at high pressure and temperature. Kinetic limitations are known to play a large role in the dynamics of solidification at low temperatures, determining, e.g., whether a material crystallizes upon freezing or becomes an amorphous solid. The role of kinetics is not at all understood in transitions at high temperature when extreme pressures are involved. In order to investigate time scales during a dynamic compression experiment we needed to create an ability to alter the length of time spent by the sample in the transition region. Traditionally, the extreme high-pressure phase diagram is studied through a few static and dynamic techniques: static compression involving diamond anvil cells (DAC) [1], shock compression [2, 3], and quasi-isentropic compression [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. Static DAC experiments explore equilibrium material properties along an isotherm or an isobar [1]. Dynamic material properties can be explored with shock compression [2, 3], probing single states on the Hugoniot, or with quasi-isentropic compression [4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]. In the case of shocks, pressures variation typically occurs on a sub-nanosecond time scale or …

This document includes discussion of the debate over government policy regarding industrial competitiveness and technological advancement. Technology and competitiveness, federal roles, and various approaches are among topics mentioned in this report.

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The Next Linear Collider (NLC) accelerator proposal at SLAC requires a highly efficient and reliable, low cost, pulsed-power modulator to drive the klystrons. A solid-state induction modulator has been developed at SLAC to power the klystrons; this modulator uses commercial high voltage and high current Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT) modules. Testing of these IGBT modules under pulsed conditions was very successful; however, the IGBTs failed when tests were performed into a low inductance short circuit. The internal electrical connections of a commercial IGBT module have been analyzed to extract self and mutual partial inductances for the main current paths as well as for the gate structure. The IGBT module, together with the partial inductances, has been modeled using PSpice. Predictions for electrical paths that carry the highest current correlate with the sites of failed die under short circuit tests. A similar analysis has been carried out for a SLAC proposal for an IGBT module layout. This paper discusses the mathematical model of the IGBT module geometry and presents simulation results.

Electron-wall interaction effects in Hall thrusters are studied through measurements of the plasma response to variations of the thruster channel width and the discharge voltage. The discharge voltage threshold is shown to separate two thruster regimes. Below this threshold, the electron energy gain is constant in the acceleration region and therefore, secondary electron emission (SEE) from the channel walls is insufficient to enhance electron energy losses at the channel walls. Above this voltage threshold, the maximum electron temperature saturates.

This report discusses federal regulation of insurers — whether optional or mandatory — in the broader context of national interests. To assist that discussion, it traces the evolving rationale for regulation generally, explains insurers' roles as risk managers and financial intermediaries, and reviews briefly important aspects of the major lines of insurance.

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Protein arrays are the best tool for the rapid analysis of a whole proteome thus helping to identify all the protein/protein interactions in a living cell and they can also be used as powerful biosensors. The objective of this proposal is to develop a new entropically activated ligation method based in the naturally occurring protein trans-splicing process. This method will be used for the generation of spatially addressable arrays of multiple protein components by standard photolithographic techniques. Key to our approach is the use of the protein trans-splicing process. This naturally occurring process will allow us to create a truly generic and highly efficient method for the covalent attachment of proteins through its C-terminus to any solid support.

During the past two years, we have succeeded in implementing an efficient parallel Importance Sampling Monte-Carlo (ISMC) scheme with application towards rarely occurring transition events, of great abundance in materials science and chemistry. The inefficiency of the standard atomistic modeling techniques for these problems may be traced to the extremely low probability of sampling system trajectories, or paths, that lead to a successful transition event. Instead of following the conventional approach of developing smart algorithms for searching transition paths, we tackle this problem by explicitly enhancing the probability of sampling successful transition events by means of an importance function. By selecting it appropriately, one focuses predominantly on the successful transition paths while discarding most irrelevant ones. In this manner, the rare-event problem is reformulated into an optimization problem for finding the best-possible importance function. Utilizing efficient iterative minimization algorithms, our IS approach can now be used to calculate the rate of occurrence of low-probability transition phenomena of short duration (short successful paths), but which involve collective degrees of freedom of many atoms.

This report discusses the issue of children that have been left as orphans due to AIDS taking their parents lives. Moreover, the report details that between 2001 and 2003 the number of children orphaned from AIDS increased by 3.5 million. The rate of orphaned children is only expected to increase in the future if massive spending is not issued to curb the problem.

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Russia's then-Premier Vladimir Putin ordered military, police, and security forces to enter the breakaway Chechnya region in September 1999, and these forces occupied most of the region by early 2000. The conflict has resulted in thousands of military and civilian casualties and the massive destruction of housing and infrastructure. Putin's rise to power and continuing popularity have been tied at least partly to his perceived ability to prosecute this conflict successfully. This report details the background on the conflict in the region, elections and peace-making, and related material over the Russian-Chechnyan conflict.

This report mainly discusses about the Campus-Based Student Financial Aid Programs Under the Higher Education Act.

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