A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Many small employers--those with 50 or fewer workers--do not offer health benefits to their employees. This is particularly true for employers with fewer than 10 workers. The families of workers employed by small employers are about twice as likely to be uninsured as households with a worker at a large employer. Despite efforts by Congress and the states to help small employers buy coverage, many small employers continue to cite cost as a major obstacle to providing coverage. Small and large employers purchasing health insurance generally had comparable premiums in 1998, but this comparison does not fully reflect the challenges facing small employers in providing health insurance for their employees. Although the premiums were similar, the health plans offered by small employers were slightly less generous on average--they had slightly higher average cost-sharing requirements for their employees and were somewhat less likely to offer some benefits, excluding, for example, mental health services and chiropractic care. Also, insurers' costs to administer employer-based health insurance and protect against potentially large health care costs result in a larger share of small employers' premium dollars being spent on these nonbenefit …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Medicare's physician fee schedule establishes payments for more than 7,000 different services, such as office visits, surgical procedures, and treatments. Before 1992, fees were based on charges physicians billed for these services. Since then, the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), which runs Medicare, has been phasing in a new fee schedule on the basis of the amount of resources used to provide that service relative to other services. The development of the resource-based practice expense component was a substantial undertaking. The implementation of the resource-based methodology has been the subject of considerable controversy, partly because of HCFA's adjustments to the underlying data and basic method and partly because payment changes were required to be budget-neutral--which means that total Medicare spending for physician services was to be the same under the new payment method as it was under the old one. As a result, Medicare payments to some specialties have increased while payments to other specialties have decreased. Oncologists claim that their practice expense payments are particularly inadequate for some office-based services, such as chemotherapy. Oncology practice expense payments in 2001 are eight percent higher than they …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report provides information on oil and gas activities in the National Wildlife Refuge System. GAO focuses on (1) how many units produced or had oil or gas activities on their lands in 2000, (2) why these activities took place in these units, (3) the number of these units for which the federal government owned the oil and gas mineral rights, (4) resources available to these units to manage oil and gas activities, and (5) the effects of the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act of 1966 on leases for oil and gas activities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies are seeking to add new techniques to their arsenal of investigative tools. "Brain fingerprinting" measures brain wave responses to determine whether an individual recognizes certain details of an event or activity. Because the technique requires specific information about the event that would be known only to the perpetrator and the investigator, Brain Fingerprinting is not designed as a screening tool--a function that involves questioning a subject about events unknown to the investigator. Instead, an investigator would be able to use certain information as evidence for or against a subject. For example, the technique could be used to determine whether a subject has knowledge of details about a crime. Officials representing the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the Secret Service, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation do not forsee using the brain fingerprinting technique because of its limited use. Furthermore, given the technique's limitations, the research expenses, equipment, and training costs are perceived to exceed benefits."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Americans have become increasingly concerned about the downside of growth and development--increasing dependence on automobiles; worsening traffic congestion; and the loss of farmland, forests, and open space. Some are also concerned that "urban sprawl" can increase air and water pollution, endanger their health, and even threaten their livelihood. Most local transportation planners and state air quality managers do not consider the effects of different land use strategies on air quality. They do not do so principally because nonpoint sources are diffuse and difficult to identify and measure. According to local transportation planners and state air quality managers, federal agencies could help remove barriers to, and provide incentives for, assessing and mitigating the environmental impacts of land use. They proposed actions in the following three key areas: (1) financial incentives for transportation, environmental, and local decisionmakers to collaborate on land use strategies that limit adverse impacts on air and water quality; (2) technical capacity to assess and mitigate land use impacts; and (3) educating the public and local officials about the environmental impacts of their transportation and land use decisions and alternative development strategies that better protect …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 authorized the Department of Defense (DOD) to conduct the Medicare subvention demonstration for a three-year period. Under this demonstration, DOD formed Medicare managed care organizations--collectively called TRICARE Senior Prime--at six sites that provided the full range of Medicare-covered services as well as additional DOD-covered services, notably prescription drugs. The Medicare program was to pay DOD for Medicare-covered care of the enrolled military retirees if DOD continued to spend on all aged military retirees at least as much as it had historically. Under the subvention demonstration, Senior Prime enrollees' care in 1999 cost DOD far more than the Medicare capitation rate that was established for the demonstration. This mainly resulted from enrollees' heavy use of medical services, but DOD coverage of prescription drugs--not included in the Medicare benefit package--also contributed to its high costs. Without the demonstration, Medicare spending in 1999 for retirees who enrolled in Senior Prime would have been, on average, about 55 percent of the Senior capitation rate. The Balanced Budget Act's payment rules resulted in no Medicare payment to DOD in 1999. This was because they were …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1997, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began a management reform effort, called the 2020 Management Reform Plan, to resolve its management and operational problems. GAO found that HUD has had some successes in implementing the management reforms, but challenges remain. Some initiatives, such as consolidating and streamlining operations, were achieved relatively quickly and are producing results. Other efforts, such as improving the efficiency of those operations and improving accountability, have been hampered by inefficient distribution of workload and other problems. HUD has made some progress toward improving accountability and control of its programs. Specifically, HUD developed a strategic planning process; enhanced monitoring tools; improved some aspects of its information and financial management systems; improved contracting procedures; and established centralized entities, such as an enforcement authority, to follow up on problem properties. HUD's efforts to refocus and retrain its staff have been somewhat successful. HUD faces several challenges in its efforts to consolidate and streamline its operations, improve accountability and control of its programs, and refocus and retrain its staff. Successfully addressing these challenges in the areas of human capital, information and financial …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 significantly changed federal welfare policy for low-income families with children. The act eliminated eligible families' legal entitlement to cash assistance and created Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grants to states. TANF emphasizes the importance of work and personal responsibility rather than dependence on government benefits. To avoid financial penalties, states must demonstrate yearly that an ever-increasing proportion of adults receiving TANF are working or engaged in work-related activities. The U.S. Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) for 1999 show that 44 percent of TANF recipients nationwide had physical or mental impairments, a proportion almost three times as high as among adults in the non-TANF population. The percentages of TANF adults with impairments from 1994 can not be compared to later years because Census broadened its measurements of mental impairments starting with its 1997 SIPP data. Most of the counties that screen for impairments rely on recipients' self-disclosure, which may not ensure the identification of some impairments that could interfere with employment. Still, for the one-third of counties that reported service data, …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Because of the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11 and the subsequent appearance of letters containing anthrax, terrorism rose to the top of the national agenda. The Attorney General has indicated that the country needs to be prepared for still more terrorist incidents. The Department of Justice is working with state and local governments to complete risk management tools for the domestic preparedness program. However, the FBI told GAO that these will be limited to threat assessments only and will not include other aspects of risk management that GAO advocates. Despite these inconclusive results, the federal government can benefit from risk management. Risk management is a systematic and analytic process to consider the likelihood that a threat will endanger an asset and to identify actions that reduce the risk and mitigate the consequences of an attack. An effective risk management approach includes a threat assessment, a vulnerability assessment, and a criticality assessment. Such an approach could help the nation prepare against threats it faces and help better target finite resources to areas of highest priority."

Semiweekly newspaper from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas that includes local, national, and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

We describe a coded-aperture based, gamma-ray imager that uses a unique hybrid germanium detector system. A planar, germanium strip detector, eleven millimeters thick is followed by a coaxial detector. The 19 x 19 strip detector (2 mm pitch) is used to determine the location and energy of low energy events. The location of high energy events are determined from the location of the Compton scatter in the planar detector and the energy is determined from the sum of the coaxial and planar energies. With this geometry, we obtain useful quantum efficiency in a position-sensitive mode out to 500 keV. The detector is used with a 19 x 17 URA coded aperture to obtain spectrally resolved images in the gamma-ray band. We discuss the performance of the planar detector, the hybrid system and present images taken of laboratory sources.

Seventy soil gas-sampling points were installed around the perimeter of the 618-11 Burial Ground, approximately 400 feet downgradient of well 699-13-3A, and in four transects downgradient of the burial ground to a maximum distance of 3,100 feet. Soil gas samples were collected and analyzed for helium-3/helium-4 ratios from these 70 points. Helium-3/helium-4 ratios determined from the soil gas sampling points showed significant enrichments, relative to ambient air helium-3 concentrations. The highest concentrations were located along the northern perimeter of the burial ground. Helium-3/helium-4 ratios (normalized to the abundances in ambient air) ranged from 1.0 to 62 around the burial ground. The helium-3/helium-4 ratios from the 4 transect downgradient of the burial ground ranged from 0.988 to 1.68. The helium-3/helium-4 ratios from around the burial ground suggest there is a vadose zone source of tritium along the north side of the burial ground. This vadose zone source is likely the source of tritium in the groundwater. The helium-3/helium-4 ratios also suggest the groundwater plume is traveling east-northeast from the burial ground and the highest groundwater tritium value may be to the north of well 699-13-3A. Finally, there appears to be no immediately upgradient sources of tritium impacting the burial ground since …

This document is an integrated monitoring plan for the groundwater project and contains: well and constituent lists for monitoring required by the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 and its implementing orders ("surveillance monitoring"); other, established monitoring plans by reference; and a master well/ constituent/frequency matrix for the entire Hanford Site.

In this two year program Universal Display Corporation (UDC) together with the University of Michigan, Teknokon, developed and delivered an energy efficient phosphorescent OLED under cabinet illumination system. Specifically the UDC team goal was in 2011 to deliver five (5) Beta level OLED under cabinet lighting fixtures each consisting of five 6-inch x 6-inch OLED lighting panels, delivering over 420 lumens, at an overall system efficacy of >60 lm/W, a CRI of >85, and a projected lifetime to 70% of initial luminance to exceed 20,000 hours. During the course of this program, the Team pursued the commercialization of these OLED based under cabinet lighting fixtures, to enable the launch of commercial OLED lighting products. The UDC team was ideally suited to develop these novel and efficient solid state lighting fixtures, having both the technical experience and commercial distribution mechanisms to leverage work performed under this contract. UDC's business strategy is to non-exclusively license its PHOLED technology to lighting manufacturers, and also supply them with our proprietary PHOLED materials. UDC is currently working with several licensees who are manufacturing OLED lighting panels using our technology. During this 2 year program, we further developed our high efficiency white Phosphorescent OLEDs from the …

During July 2001, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory was requested by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Nuclear Facilities Management, Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, Germantown, Maryland, to review calculations of piping failure probabilities for the High Flux Test Reactor (HFIR) located at and operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The objective of the failure probability calculations was to estimate the probabilities of large leaks (>1500 gpm) that are of sufficient size to disable the primary coolant system of HFIR to the extent that there is a potential for core damage. PNNL reviewed the computational methods and the inputs to the calculations along with an evaluation of potential failure mechanisms not explicitly addressed by the ORNL calculations. The review concluded that the calculated failure probabilities even with consideration of uncertainties in the calculations and of other potential failure mechanisms provide a high level of confidence that failure frequencies are less than the stated goal of 10-6 piping failures per year.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Seminole, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

The objective of the present work is to study and model the interfacial structure development of air-water two-phase flow in a confined test section. Experiments of a total of 9 flow conditions in a cap-turbulent and churn-turbulent flow regimes are carried out in a vertical air-water upward two-phase flow experimental loop with a test section of 20-cm in width and 1-cm in gap. The miniaturized four-sensor conductivity probes are used to measure local two-phase parameters at three different elevations for each flow condition. The bubbles captured by the probes are categorized into two groups in view of the two-group interfacial area transport equation, i.e., spherical/distorted bubbles as Group 1 and cap/churn-turbulent bubbles as Group 2. The acquired parameters are time-averaged local void fraction, interfacial velocity, bubble number frequency, interfacial area concentration, and bubble Sauter mean diameter for both groups of bubbles. Also, the line-averaged and area-averaged data are presented and discussed. The comparisons of these parameters at different elevations demonstrate the development of interfacial structure along the flow direction due to bubble interactions.

NERSC is participating in several HPSS (High Performance Storage System) research and development projects as part of the Probe testbed. One of these projects involved beta testing of the IBM 3584 UltraScalable Tape Library, which uses the new ultra-high-density Linear Tape-Open (LTO) Ultrium tape drives. Ultrium tape cartridges have a capacity of up to 300 GB of compressed data, greatly reducing the number of cartridges needed to store massive scientific datasets. NERSC's preliminary performance testing indicates that LTO Ultrium technology, with compatible products and media available from several vendors, may be a viable alternative for computer centers seeking higher-density archival storage media with a small footprint and relatively low cost per drive.

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This interim report summarizes detailed findings and conclusions drawn from evaluations of data obtained from the operation of ambient PM{sub 2.5} speciation sites in a geographical area encompassing southeastern Ohio, western Pennsylvania and northwestern West Virginia. The overall goal of this program, called the Upper Ohio River Valley Project (UORVP), is to better understand the relationship between coal-based power system emissions and ambient air quality in the Upper Ohio River Valley region through the collection of chemically resolved or speciated data. A summary of the sampling activities, sample analyses and the correlation and interpretation of data acquired from February 1999 through March of 2001 are reported. Mass and speciated data from urban and rural sources are compared and seasonal variations in PM{sub 2.5} distribution are also examined. Correlations between meteorological parameters and total PM{sub 2.5} mass are also presented.

This topical report summarizes work accomplished for the Program from January 1 through September 15, 2001 in the following task areas: Task 1--materials development; Task 2--composite element development; Task 3--tube fabrication; Task 4--reactor design and process optimization; Task 5--catalyst development; Task 6--P-1 operation; Task 8--fuels and engine testing; and Task 10--project management. OTM benchmark material, LCM1, exceeds the commercial oxygen flux target and was determined to be sufficiently robust to carry on process development activities. Work will continue on second-generation OTM materials that will satisfy commercial life targets. Three fabrication techniques for composite elements were determined to be technically feasible. These techniques will be studied and a lead manufacturing process for both small and large-scale elements will be selected in the next Budget Period. Experiments in six P-0 reactors, the long tube tester (LTT) and the P-1 pilot plant were conducted. Significant progress in process optimization was made through both the experimental program and modeling studies of alternate reactor designs and process configurations. Three tailored catalyst candidates for use in OTM process reactors were identified. Fuels for the International diesel engine and Nuvera fuel cell tests were ordered and delivered. Fuels testing and engine development work is now underway.

The objective and scope of this calculation is to create the appropriate parameter input for MING 1.0 (CSCI 30018 V1.0, CRWMS M&O 1998b) that will allow the testing of the results from the MING software code with both scientific measurements of microbial populations at the site and laboratory and with natural analogs to the site. This set of calculations provides results that will be used in model validation for the ''In-Drift Microbial Communities'' model (CRWMS M&O 2000) which is part of the Engineered Barrier System Department (EBS) process modeling effort that eventually will feed future Total System Performance Assessment (TSPA) models. This calculation is being produced to replace MING model validation output that is effected by the supersession of DTN MO9909SPAMING1.003 using its replacement DTN MO0106SPAIDM01.034 so that the calculations currently found in the ''In-Drift Microbial Communities'' AMR (CRWMS M&O 2000) will be brought up to date. This set of calculations replaces the calculations contained in sections 6.7.2, 6.7.3 and Attachment I of CRWMS M&O (2000) As all of these calculations are created explicitly for model validation, the data qualification status of all inputs can be considered corroborative in accordance with AP-3.15Q. This work activity has been evaluated in accordance …