A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Ranking Democratic Member, House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, asked GAO to determine (1) whether VA's internal assessments indicate its regional offices are complying with the requirements of the Veterans Claims Assistance Act (VCAA) of 2000 for obtaining military service records for veterans' disability compensation claims and (2) whether VBA could improve its procedures for obtaining military service records for claims involving post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. insular areas of American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI), Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI), face long-standing economic, fiscal, and financial accountability challenges. GAO was requested to identify and report on the (1) economic challenges facing each government, including the effect of changing tax and trade laws on their economies; (2) fiscal condition of each government; and (3) financial accountability of each government, including compliance with the Single Audit Act, which applies to nonfederal entities that receive $500,000 or more a year in federal funding."

This report provides the final hazard categorization (FHC) for the remediation of six solid waste disposal sites (referred to as burial grounds) located in the 300-FF-2 Operable Unit (OU) on the Hanford Site. These six sites (618-1, 618-2, 618-3, 618-7, 618-8, and 618-13 Burial Grounds) were determined to have a total radionuclide inventory (WCH 2005a, WCH 2005d, WCH 2005e and WCH 2006b) that exceeds the DOE-STD-1027 Category 3 threshold quantity (DOE 1997) and are the subject of this analysis. This FHC document examines the hazards, identifies appropriate controls to manage the hazards, and documents the FHC and commitments for the 300-FF-2 Burial Grounds Remediation Project.

This report provides Background and Issues for Congress on Exemptions from Environmental Law for the Department of Defense. several environmental statutes contain national security exemptions which is a department of defense can obtain on a case by case basis.

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This report contains a brief overview and introduction on the congressional appropriations process.

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This report discusses the debate concerning an agricultural guest worker program and the impact such a program might have on U.S. workers. Guest worker programs are meant to assure employers (e.g., fruit, vegetable, and horticultural specialty growers) of an adequate supply of labor when and where it is needed, while not adding permanent residents to the U.S. population. They include mechanisms -- such as the H-2A program's labor certification process -- intended to avoid adversely affecting the wages and working conditions of similarly-employed U.S. workers.

The International Conference on Multiscale Methods and Partial Differential Equations (ICMMPDE for short) was held at IPAM, UCLA on August 26-27, 2005. The conference brought together researchers, students and practitioners with interest in the theoretical, computational and practical aspects of multiscale problems and related partial differential equations. The conference provided a forum to exchange and stimulate new ideas from different disciplines, and to formulate new challenging multiscale problems that will have impact in applications.

A better understanding of multiphase flow through fractures requires knowledge of the detailed physics of interfacial flows at the microscopic pore scale. The objective of our project was to develop tools for the simulation of such phenomena. Complementary work was performed by a group led by Dr.~Paul Meakin of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. Our focus was on the lattice-Boltzmann (LB) method. In particular, we studied both the statics and dynamics of contact lines where two fluids (wetting and non-wetting) meet solid boundaries. Previous work had noted deficiencies in the way LB methods simulate such interfaces. Our work resulted in significant algorithmic improvements that alleviated these deficiencies. As a result, we were able to study in detail the behavior of the dynamic contact angle in flow through capillary tubes. Our simulations revealed that our LB method reproduces the correct scaling of the dynamic contact angle with respect to velocity, viscosity, and surface tension, without specification of an artificial slip length. Further study allowed us to identify the microscopic origin of the dynamic contact angle in LB methods. These results serve to delineate the range of applicability of multiphase LB methods to flows through complex geometries.

Our work involved the continued development of the theory of passivity and passivity breakdown, in the form of the Point Defect Model, with emphasis on zirconium and zirconium alloys in reactor coolant environments, the measurement of critically-important parameters, and the development of a code that can be used by reactor operators to actively manage the accumulation of corrosion damage to the fuel cladding and other components in the heat transport circuits in both BWRs and PWRs. In addition, the modified boiling crevice model has been further developed to describe the accumulation of solutes in porous deposits (CRUD) on fuel under boiling (BWRs) and nucleate boiling (PWRs) conditions, in order to accurately describe the environment that is contact with the Zircaloy cladding. In the current report, we have derived expressions for the total steady-state current density and the partial anodic and cathodic current densities to establish a deterministic basis for describing Zircaloy oxidation. The models are “deterministic” because the relevant natural laws are satisfied explicitly, most importantly the conversation of mass and charge and the equivalence of mass and charge (Faraday’s law). Cathodic reactions (oxygen reduction and hydrogen evolution) are also included in the models, because there is evidence that they …

Moduli stabilization in the type IIA massive string theory so far was achieved only in the AdS vacua. The uplifting to dS vacua has not been performed as yet: neither the analogs of type IIB anti-D3 brane at the tip of the conifold, nor the appropriate D-terms have been identified. The hope was recently expressed that the F-term uplifting may work. We investigate this possibility in the context of a simplified version of the type IIA model developed in hep-th/0505160 and find that the F-term does not uplift the AdS vacua to dS vacua with positive CC. Thus it remains a challenging task to find phenomenologically acceptable vacua in the type IIA string theory.

ASC code teams require a robust software debugging tool to help developers quickly find bugs in their codes and get their codes running. Development debugging commonly runs up to 512 processes. Production jobs run up to full ASC Purple scale, and at times require introspection while running. Developers want a debugger that runs on all their development and production platforms and that works with all compilers and runtimes used with ASC codes. The TotalView Multiprocess Debugger made by Etnus was specified for ASC Purple to address this needed capability. The ASC Purple environment builds on the environment seen by TotalView on ASCI White. The debugger must now operate with the Power5 CPU, Federation switch, AIX 5.3 operating system including large pages, IBM compilers 7 and 9, POE 4.2 parallel environment, and rs6000 SLURM resource manager. Users require robust, basic debugger functionality with acceptable performance at development debugging scale. A TotalView installation must be provided at the beginning of the early user access period that meets these requirements. A functional enhancement, fast conditional data watchpoints, and a scalability enhancement, capability up to 8192 processes, are to be demonstrated.

As part of the deliverables for the Development Environment for Purple, additional capabilities to improve the tools offerings and to address unique Purple system requirements, such as increased processor count, were expected. This report details some of the new capabilities that have been incorporated into the development environment tools for Purple. The shift on Purple to 64-bit applications (from 32-bit on White) initially broke many debugging and memory tools. Most tools were updated to support 64 bit well before Purple was delivered to LLNL, but the company that provided the popular heavy-weight 32-bit AIX memory tool, ZeroFault, was reluctant to port to 64 bit due to perceived lack of market. LLNL tried offering financial incentives to the ZeroFault developers, which were turned down, but eventually they did give vague promises to try to port to AIX 64-bit mode when they got time. The ZeroFault developers have been making intermittent and very slow progress over the last two plus years, but despite getting close, have not released a version of ZeroFault that yet meets our needs for 64-bit applications. However, given the critical need for memory tools and the uncertainty of ZeroFault development, other memory tool options were actively pursued and …

Direct numerical methods for solving the Vlasov equation offer some advantages over macroparticle simulations, as they do not suffer from the numerical noise inherent in using a number of macroparticles smaller than the bunch population. Unfortunately these methods are more time-consuming and generally considered impractical in a full 6D phase space. However, in a lower-dimension phase space they may become attractive if the beam dynamics is sensitive to the presence of small charge-density fluctuations and a high resolution is needed. In this paper we present a 2D Vlasov solver for studying the longitudinal beam dynamics in single-pass systems of interest for X-FEL's, where characterization of the microbunching instability is of particular relevance. The solver includes a model to account for the smearing effect of a finite horizontal emittance on microbunching. We explore the effect of space charge and coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR). The numerical solutions are compared with results from linear theory and good agreement is found in the regime where linear theory applies.

The objective of Phase II HST work is to develop a better understanding of the evolution of the HST for 1,000 years at the CAMBRIC underground nuclear test site in Frenchman Flat at the NTS. This work provides a better understanding of activities as they actually occurred, incorporates improvements based on recent data acquisition, and provides a basis to use the CAMBRIC site for model validation and monitoring activities as required by the UGTA Project. CAMBRIC was the only test in Frenchman Flat detonated under the water table and best represents a fully saturated environment. These simulations are part of a broad Phase II Frenchman Flat Corrective Action Unit (CAU) flow and transport modeling effort being conducted by the Department of Energy (DOE) Underground Test Area (UGTA) Project. HST simulations provide, either directly or indirectly, the source term used in the CAU model to calculate a contaminant boundary. Work described in this report augments Phase I HST calculations at CAMBRIC conducted by Tompson et al. (1999) and Pawloski et al. (2001). Phase II HST calculations have been organized to calculate source terms under two scenarios: (1) A representation of the transient flow and radionuclide release behavior at the CAMBRIC site …

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This report is on the Automobile and Light Truck Fuel Economy: The CAFE Standards.

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This report details the U.S international border security and barriers deployed along the border.