A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed federal agencies' assertions that certain private-sector regulatory concerns were, at least in part, attributable to underlying statutes, focusing on: (1) the amount of discretion the underlying statutes gave the rulemaking agencies in developing the regulatory requirements that the agencies had said were attributable to the underlying statutes; (2) whether the regulatory requirements at issue were within the authority granted by the underlying statutes; and (3) whether the rulemaking agencies could have developed regulatory approaches that would have been less burdensome to the regulated entities while still meeting the underlying statutory requirements."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) efforts to improve the safety of meat and poultry products, focusing on whether: (1) the system adopted by USDA in its regulations is consistent with the seven Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) principles endorsed by the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods; (2) the HACCP training program for USDA inspectors is adequate and science-based; and (3) there is an adequate dispute resolution (appeals) process between plants and USDA under the new HACCP inspection system."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO assessed the effectiveness of information system general controls at the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) Austin Automation Center (AAC)."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the Department of Defense's (DOD) management and oversight of its animal research programs, focusing on the extent projects funded or performed by DOD utilizing animals: (1) were directed toward military objectives; (2) unnecessarily duplicated other research; and (3) incorporated alternatives that reduced, replaced, or refined the use of animals."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) the status of competition in the subscription television market; (2) the extent to which ownership ties between cable companies and program suppliers may be affecting the development of competition; and (3) key factors that may influence the development of competition in the future."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Air Force's budget formulation process for its flying hour program for fiscal years (FY) 1997 through 1999, focusing on: (1) the extent to which the Air Force has flown the hours requested in its budget; (2) the process that the Air Force uses to determine flying hour requirements; (3) how the requirements and specific cost factors are used to develop the budget estimate for the flying hour program; and (4) program funding and obligations incurred in FY 1997 and FY 1998 and the reasons for the differences."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on households collecting Food Stamp benefits for persons disqualified for intentional program violations, focusing on: (1) how many individuals were included as members of food stamp households in four states while disqualified from the program in calendar year 1997 and estimated the value of the benefits that were improperly issued to those households; and (2) why these individuals were improperly included in households and what actions the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and state agencies could take to detect and prevent disqualified participation."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Air Force's C-17 logistics support plan, focusing on the: (1) C-17's core logistics capabilities; (2) cost effectiveness of the planned support strategy; and (3) Air Force's implementation of the plan under current law."

A cigarette excise tax increase of 75 cents per pack has been proposed to finance part of the President's universal health care program. The tax enjoys considerable public support, would raise about $11 billion per year, and would be relatively simple to administer because it would increase an existing manufacturer's excise tax. This report discusses these rationales, as well as other effects of and concerns about the tax, organized into topics of market failure as a justification for the tax (i.e., economic efficiency); potential for revenue; equity; and the job loss the tax might cause in tobacco growing regions.

The Single Heater Test (SHT) is one of two in-situ thermal tests included in the site characterization program for the potential underground nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain. The heating phase of the SHT started in August 1996, and was completed in May 1997 after 9 months of heating. The coupled processes in the unsaturated fractured rock mass around the heater were monitored by numerous sensors for thermal, hydrological, mechanical and chemical data. In addition to passive monitoring, active testing of the rock mass moisture content was performed using geophysical methods and air injection testing. The extensive data set available from this test gives a unique opportunity to improve the understanding of the thermal-hydrological situation in the natural setting of the repository rocks. The present paper focuses on the 3-D numerical simulation of the thermal-hydrological processes in the SHT using TOUGH2. In the comparative analysis, they are particularly interested in the accuracy of different fracture-matrix-interaction concepts such as the Effective Continuum (ECM), the Dual Continuum (DKM), and the Multiple Interacting Continua (MINC) method.

On August 11, 1990 during an ornithological survey at the True/Mid Pacific Geothermal Venture proposed well site No.2, a Hawaiian hawk (Buteo solitarius) nest with a nestling was found approximately 430 feet from the proposed well pad clearing. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the State of Hawaii have listed the Hawaiian hawk as an endangered species. Future development in this area could be impacted by the presence of this endangered avian species and its nest in such close proximity to the proposed well site. This report summarizes the results of observations at the nest on August 12, 19 and 25 and September 2, 1990.

The meeting began with presentations by the facilitator, Mr. Spiegel, and the representative from DOE, Dr. Lewis. The facilitator introduced those on the podium. He then described the general structure of the meeting and its purpose: to hear the issues and concerns of those present regarding the proposed Hawaiian Geothermal Project. He described his role as assuring the impartiality and fairness of the meeting. Dr. Lewis of DOE further defined the scope of the project, introduced those of the EIS team present and briefly described the EIS process.

The Savannah River Site (SRS) teamed with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), and ITT Flygt Corporation to conduct a test program evaluating shrouded axial propeller mixers (Flygt mixers) for heel removal in SRS Tank 19. SRS is identifying and investigating techniques to remove sludge heels from waste tanks such as Tank 19.

By accelerating a gas containing suspended particles or large molecules through a converging nozzle, the suspended species may be focused and therefore used to write fine lines on a surface. Our objective was to study the limits on how narrow this focal region could be as a function of particle size. We find that, for monodisperse particles with masses m{sub p} some 3.6 {times} 10{sup 5} times larger than the molecular mass m of the carrier gas (diameters above some 100{angstrom}), there is no fundamental obstacle to directly write submicron features. However, this conclusion has been verified experimentally only with particles larger than 0.1 {mu}m. Experimental, theoretical and numerical studies on the defocusing role of Brownian motion for very small particles or heavy molecules have shown that high resolution (purely aerodynamic) focusing is impossible with volatile molecules whose masses are typically smaller than 1000 Dalton. For these, the minimal focal diameter after optimization appears to be 5{radical}(m/m{sub p}) times the nozzle diameter d{sub n}. But combinations of focused lasers and aerodynamic focusing appear as promising for direct writing with molecular precursors. Theoretical and numerical schemes capable of predicting the evolution of the focusing beam, including Brownian motion effects, have been …

The International Collaboration on Advanced Neutron Sources was started about a decade ago with the purpose of sharing information throughout the global neutron community. The collaboration has been extremely successful in optimizing the use of resources, and the discussions are open and detailed, with reasons for failure shared as well as reasons for success. Although the meetings have become increasingly oriented toward pulsed neutron sources, many of the neutron instrumentation techniques, such as the development of better monochromators, fast response detectors and various data analysis methods, are highly relevant to the Advanced Neutron Source (ANS). I presented one paper on the ANS, and another on the neutron optical polarizer design work which won a 1989 R D-100 Award. I also gained some valuable design ideas, in particular for the ANS hot source, in discussions with individual researchers from Canada, Western Europe, and Japan.

Unidirectional solidification experiments have been carried out in organic crystals with the aim of improving our knowledge on the effects of constraints on the interface morphology and to increase our understanding of the growth of anisotropic materials. The experimental information shows that lateral constraints such as a sharp change in the cross-sectional area in the solid liquid interface path, can produce important changes in the microstructure if the interface morphology is planar, cellular or dendritic. The study of anisotropic materials cover several topics. It is first shown that slight anisotropy does not influence the dendrite tip selection criterion. This conclusion is obtained from the analysis of the relationship between tip radius and velocity for dendrites growing under the steady state condition for two different materials, CBr{sub 4} and C{sub 2}Cl{sub 6}, which have different surface energy anisotropy values. The values of the dendrite operating parameters {sigma}* are compared with the predictions of the solvability theory and the morphological stability theory. The experiments show better agreement with the latter theory. Critical experiments have been designed and carried out to find the response functions which determine the composition and temperature of the interface as a function of velocity in faceted materials. The …

The Nuclear Physics group at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville is involved in several aspects of heavy-ion physics including both nuclear structure and reaction mechanisms. While our main emphasis is on experimental problems involving heavy-ion accelerators, we have maintained a strong collaboration with several theorists in order to best pursue the physics of our measurements. During the last year we have led several experiments at the Holifield Heavy Ion Research Facility and participated in others at Argonne National Laboratory. Also, we continue to be very active in the collaboration to study ultra-relativistic heavy ion physics utilizing the SPS accelerator at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland and in a RHIC detector R D project. Our experimental work is in four broad areas: (1) the structure of nuclei at high angular momentum, (2) heavy-ion induced transfer reactions, (3) the structure of nuclei far from stability, and (4) ultra-relativistic heavy-ion physics. The results of studies in these particular areas will be described in this document in sections IIA, IIB, IIC, and IID, respectively. Areas (1), (3), and (4) concentrate on the structure of nuclear matter in extreme conditions of rotational motion, imbalance of neutrons and protons, or very high temperature and density. Area (2) …

This report discusses the following topics: the symmetric toroidal array (STAR) spectrometer facility; investigation of the N {yields} {Delta} transition; Hyperon production in the (e, e{prime}k) reactions; investigation of few-body systems with the (e, e{prime}p) reaction; nuclear structure studies with the (e,e{prime}pp) reaction; Measurement of G{sub Em} in a recoil polarimetry measurement; parity violation measurements; and STAR design and performance.

Three routes are explored for the generation of silathiones: (1) the retroene elimination of propene from allythiodimethylsilane and 1-allythio-1-hydrido-1,2,2,2-tetramethylsilane; (2) the reaction of silylene, Me{sub 2}Di, with carbon disulfide which is thought to form a transient 3-membered ring with CS{sub 2} and the elimination of carbon disulfide to produce diethylsilathione; and (3) the beta-elimination of bis(trimethylsilythio)dimethylsilane. All these methods are explored in some detail. A second example of a silathione-silylene isomerization was observed in the pyrolysis of 1,1-bis(trimethylsilythio)-1,2,2,2-tetramethyldisilane. 89 refs., 5 figs., 10 tab. (BM)

This is a progress report on the second period of activities associated with the DOE grant to the Physics Department of the University of Utah, starting on April 1st, 1991, on photocarrier dynamics, electronic defects and morphology of conducting polymers using the photomodulation spectroscopy. During the second period of this grant we have achieved impressive results and have started new studies, to be completed during the grant continuation period of the third year. We will describe our progress according to the material studied, since this is the best method to summarize our accomplishments. We have used a variety of techniques in our studies such as: CW photomodulation, photomodulation in the femtosecond and picosecond time ranges, CW resonant Raman scattering, transient photoinduced Raman scattering, electro-absorption, degenerate four-wave mixing and the newly technique of spin dependent photomodulation. These techniques have been used to obtain the transient electronic response of the studied conducing polymers.

A novel on-board charge system which utilizes a One-Wire'' system for voltage monitoring is discussed and test results obtained using the system are presented. The system consists of a 20 kHz high frequency charger, an algorithm for charging lead-acid batteries with gelled electrolyte, such that gassing is avoided, the control system to implement this charge algorithm and a one-wire battery monitoring system to provide cell/module voltage information to the battery charge controller. Prototype elements of the system have been tested and the system was installed into an EVA Pacer electric vehicle. Charge tests are performed and data taken with the system installed. All elements of the system functioned properly under user conditions. In particular, the charger demonstrated good efficiency, near unity power factor and full programmability. The charge controller functioned reliably and without flaw. The one-wire monitoring system which permits monitoring of cell/module voltages in a battery pack without an extensive conventional wire harness has proven effective and voltage measurements have taken fast enough for control of charging. It was found that for the purpose of voltage monitoring under driving conditions, the system in its present form is too slow.

Direct holographic imaging of biological materials is widely applicable to the study of the structure, properties and action of genetic material. This particular application involves the sequencing of the human genome where prospective genomic imaging technology is composed of three subtechnologies, name an x-ray holographic camera, suitable chemistry and enzymology for the preparation of tagged DNA samples, and the illuminator in the form of an x-ray laser. We report appropriate x-ray camera, embodied by the instrument developed by MCR, is available and that suitable chemical and enzymatic procedures exist for the preparation of the necessary tagged DNA strands. Concerning the future development of the x-ray illuminator. We find that a practical small scale x-ray light source is indeed feasible. This outcome requires the use of unconventional physical processes in order to achieve the necessary power-compression in the amplifying medium. The understanding of these new physical mechanisms is developing rapidly. Importantly, although the x-ray source does not currently exist, the understanding of these new physical mechanisms is developing rapidly and the research has established the basic scaling laws that will determine the properties of the x-ray illuminator. When this x-ray source becomes available, an extremely rapid and cost effective instrument for …

This is the ninth Technical Progress Report, describing work performed under DOE Contract No. (DE-FC2290PC896631) Development of a Coal Quality Expert.'' The contract is a Cooperative Agreement between the US Department of Energy, CQ Inc., and ABB Combustion Engineering, Inc. This report covers the period from April 1, through June 30, 1992. Four companies and seven host utilities have teamed with CQ Inc. and ABB/CE to perform the work on this project. The work falls under DOE's Clean Coal Technology Program category of Advanced Coal Cleaning.'' The 45-month project will provide the utility industry with a PC expert system to confidently and inexpensively evaluate the potential for coal cleaning blending, and switching options to reduce emissions while producing lowest cost electricity. Specifically, this project will: (1) Enhance the existing Coal Quality Information System (CQIS) database and. Coal Quality Impact Model (CQIM) to allow confident assessment of the effects of cleaning on specific boiler cost and performance. (2) Develop and validate a methodology, Coal Quality Expert (CQE) which allows accurate and detailed predictions of coal quality impacts on total power plant capital cost, operating cost, and performance based upon inputs from inexpensive bench-scale tests.

Experience at SRS, ORNL, BNL, and Georgia Institute of Technology involving irradiated aluminum clad fuel and target elements, as well as studies of non-irradiated aluminum indicate that some types of aluminum assemblies can be kept in a continually well-deionized water atmosphere for up to 25 years without problems. SRS experience ranges from 2.75 years for the L-1.1 charge kept in deionized D[sub 2]O[sup 1] to greater than 10 years for assemblies stored in the Receiving Basin for Off-site Fuel (RBOF)[sup 2]. Experience at Georgia Institute of Technology reactor in Atlanta yielded the longest value of 25 years without problems. The common denominators in all of the reports is that the water is continually deionized to approximately 2 M[Omega] (2 [times] 10[sup 6]ohms) resistivity and the containers for the water are stainless steel or other non-porous material. This resistivity value is equivalent to a value of 0.5 micromhos or microSiemens conductivity and is reagent grade II quality water.[sup 3] 4 tabs, 26 refs.