Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Law enforcement officials rely on new technologies to accomplish their enforcement responsibilities. Although the use of some of these technologies has raised privacy concerns, the attacks of September 11 have prompted calls for the use of surveillance technologies to combat terrorism and other crimes that threaten security. This report discusses the government's funding of research and deployment of three surveillance technologies--facial recognition, red light cameras, and photo radar devices. GAO surveyed 35 federal entities, 17 of which had conducted research and development or testing of one or more of the three technologies. They reported obligating $51 million as of June 2001, with the largest amount reported for facial recognition. All of the 17 respondents obligated funds for research and development, none used funds for deployment, and two promoted the technologies but did not obligate any funds."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. Census Bureau conducted the Accuracy and Coverage Evaluation (ACE) survey to estimate the number of people missed, counted more than once, or otherwise improperly counted in the 2000 Census. On the basis of uncertainty in the ACE results, the Bureau's acting director decided that the 2000 Census tabulations should not be adjusted in order to redraw the boundaries of congressional districts or to distribute billions of dollars in federal funding. Although ACE was generally implemented as planned, the Bureau found that it overstated census undercounts because of an error introduced during matching operations and other uncertainties. The Bureau concluded that additional review and analysis of these uncertainties would be needed before the data could be used. Matching more than 1.4 million census and ACE records involved the following four phases, each with its own matching procedures and multiple layers of review: computer matching, clerical matching, field follow-up, and clerical matching. The Bureau applied quality assurance procedures to each phase of person matching. Because the quality assurance procedures had failure rates of less than one percent, the Bureau reported that person matching quality assurance was …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Medicare provides valuable and extensive health care coverage for 40 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries. Nevertheless, significant gaps leave some beneficiaries vulnerable to sizeable out-of-pocket expenses. Medicare provides no limit on out-of-pocket spending and no coverage for most outpatient prescription drugs. Most beneficiaries have supplemental coverage that helps to fill Medicare coverage gaps and pay some out-of-pocket expenses. Privately purchased Medigap policies are a widely available source of supplemental coverage. The other sources--employer-sponsored policies, Medicare + Choice plans, and Medicaid--are not available to all beneficiaries. Medigap policies help to fill in some of Medicare's gaps but also have shortcomings. In 1999, premiums paid for Medigap policies averaged $1,300, with more than 20 percent going to administrative costs. Medigap plans typically cover Medicare's required deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments but do not fully protect beneficiaries from potentially significant out-of-pocket costs. Medigap policies offering prescription drug coverage can be inadequate because beneficiaries still pay most of the cost and the Medigap benefit is capped."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In some cases, Medicare pays significantly more for covered outpatient drugs than the actual costs to the physicians and pharmacy suppliers. Attempts to reduce these payments have been met with provider claims that overpayments for the drugs are needed to cover underpayments for administering or delivering them. Medicare's method for establishing drug payments is flawed. Medicare pays 95 percent of the average wholesale price (AWP), which, despite its name, is neither an average nor a price that wholesalers charge. Instead, it is a number that manufacturers derive using their own criteria. There are no requirements or conventions that AWP reflect the price of actual drug sales. Widely available purchase prices for drugs in 2001 were substantially below AWP. For both physician-billed drugs and pharmacy supplier-billed drugs, Medicare payments often far exceeded widely available prices. Physicians and pharmacy suppliers contend that the excess payments for covered drugs are necessary to offset what they claim are inappropriately low Medicare payments or no such payments for services related to the administration or delivery of these drugs. Although physicians receive an explicit payment for administering drugs, Medicare's payment policies for delivering pharmacy …

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Site restoration activities at DOE facilities and the permanent disposal of nuclear waste generated at DOE facilities involve working with and within various types and levels of radiation fields. Radionuclide decay and the associated radiation fields lead to physical and chemical changes that can degrade or enhance material properties. The principal sources of radiation at the DOE sites are the actinides and fission-products contained in high-level wastes currently in storage. Alpha-decay of the actinide elements and beta-decay of the fission products lead to atomic scale changes in the material (radiation damage and transmutation). During site restoration, materials will be exposed to radiation fields that exceed 104 rad/hr. The radiation exposure due to the release and sorption of long-lived actinides (e.g., 237Np) and fission products (e.g., 137Cs and 90Sr) may cause changes in important properties (e.g., cation exchange capacity) in geological materials (e.g., clays and zeolites) along transport pathways. Among these materials, clays and zeolites, which are expected to sorb and immobilize radionuclides, are known to be extremely susceptible to radiation-induced structure changes (e.g., bubble formation and solid state amorphization) through both collisional displacement and ionization processes. These changes will inevitably affect (either negatively or positively) the further sorption and the …

Data acquisition on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) has increasingly involved the use of Personal Computers (PC's) and specially developed ''turn-key'' hardware and software systems to control diagnostics. Interaction with these proprietary software packages is accomplished through use of Visual Basic, or Visual C++ and COM (Component Object Model) technology. COM is a software architecture that allows the components made by different software vendors to be combined into a variety of applications. This technology is particularly well suited to these systems because of its programming language independence, standards for function calling between components, and ability to transparently reference remote processes. COM objects make possible the creation of acquisition software that can control the experimental parameters of both the hardware and software. Synchronization of these applications for diagnostics, such as CCD camer as and residual gas analyzers, with the rest of the experiment event cycle at PPPL has been made possible by utilization of the MDSplus libraries for Windows. Instead of transferring large data files to remote disk space, Windows MDSplus events and I/O functions allow us to put raw data into MDSplus directly from IDL for Windows and Visual Basic. The combination …

CuPt-type ordering in In{sub 0.49}Al{sub 0.51}P is studied by TEM. The lattice-matched film was grown by MOCVD on a GaAs substrate oriented 10{sup o} off (001) towards [110], at 650 C and 25 nm/min. TEM [110] and [1{bar 1}0] cross-sections (XS) were made by wedge polishing and 2 kV Ar ion milling. In CuPt-type ordering of In{sub 0.52}Ga{sub 0.48}P, alternating In-Ga-In-Ga {l_brace}111{r_brace} planes of group III atoms produce 1/2 {bar 1}11 and 1/2 1{bar 1}1 order spots in the 110 SADP, while the [1{bar 1}0] SADP shows no order spots [1-3]. A few studies have reported this type of order in In{sub 0.49}Al{sub 0.51}P [4]. The 004 BF image of the [1{bar 1}0] XS in Fig. 1 shows uneven light/dark contrast modulation due to phase separation often observed in In{sub 0.52}Ga{sub 0.48}P. There are also light/dark layers marked ML parallel to the film growth plane; such unintentional multilayers have also been observed [5] but their origin is not understood. Order lamellae {approx}1.5 nm thick inclined at a shallow angle to the growth plane overlap the multilayer to produce Moire fringe contrast. Fig. 2 is a DF image showing the thin ordered domains in the [1{bar 1}0] XS, which are inclined …

This project was an extension of previous research to improve the applicability of ozonation and will help address the petroleum-industry problem of treating produced water containing soluble organics. The goal of this project was to maximize oxidation of hexane-extractable organics during a single-pass operation. The project investigated: (1) oxidant production by electrochemical and sonochemical methods, (2) increasing the mass transfer rate in the reactor by forming microbubbles during ozone injection into the produced water, and (3) using ultraviolet irradiation to enhance the reaction if needed. Several types of methodologies for treatment of soluble organics in synthetic and actual produced waters have been performed. The technologies tested may be categorized as follows: (1) Destruction via sonochemical oxidation at different pH, salt concentration, ultraviolet irradiation, and ferrous iron concentrations. (2) Destruction via ozonation at different pH, salt concentration, hydrogen peroxide concentrations, ultraviolet irradiation, temperature, and reactor configurations.

Electromagnetic radiation is strongly absorbed by a magnetized plasma if the radiation frequency equals the cyclotron frequency of plasma electrons. It is demonstrated that absorption can be completely canceled in the presence of a magnetostatic field of an undulator or a second radiation beam, resulting in plasma transparency at the cyclotron frequency. This effect is reminiscent of the electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT) of the three-level atomic systems, except that it occurs in a completely classical plasma. Unlike the atomic systems, where all the excited levels required for EIT exist in each atom, this classical EIT requires the excitation of the nonlocal plasma oscillation. The complexity of the plasma system results in an index of refraction at the cyclotron frequency that differs from unity. Lagrangian description was used to elucidate the physics and enable numerical simulation of the plasma transparency and control of group and phase velocity. This control naturally leads to applications for electromagnetic pulse compression in the plasma and electron/ion acceleration.

The purpose of this report is to describe and document the function, operational performance, problems encountered, lessons-learned, and overall assessment of the performance of the waste conditioning system (WCS) in the Gunite{trademark} and Associated Tanks (GAAT) remediation project at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The GAAT are located in the main plant area of ORNL in the North and South Tank Farms. These tanks were constructed in 1943 as part of the Manhattan Project during World War II. Each tank in the South Tank Farm (STF) has a 50-ft inside diameter and a capacity of {approx}170,000 gal. Each Gunite tank in the North Tank Farm (NTF) has a 25-ft inside diameter with a capacity of {approx}44,000 gal. The GAAT were designed to receive radioactive and chemical wastes from ORNL processes. The tanks were constructed of Gunite, which is created by pneumatically spraying concrete over a wire mesh. Following construction, the site was backfilled so the domes of the tanks were covered with {approx}6 ft of earth. The STF tanks (W-5, -6, -7, -8, -9, and -10) are set in a 2 x 3 array with an east-west axis. The two GAAT in the NTF are on the north side …

A major feature of the Magnox gas cooled reactor design is the graphite core, which acts as the moderator but also provides the physical structure for fuel, control rods, instrumentation and coolant gas channels. The lifetime of a graphite core is dependent upon two principal aging processes: irradiation damage and radiolytic oxidation. Irradiation damage from fast neutrons creates lattice defects leading to changes in physical and mechanical properties and the accumulation of stresses. Radiolytic oxidation is caused by the reaction of oxidizing species from the carbon dioxide coolant gas with the graphite, these species being produced by gamma radiation. Radiolytic oxidation reduces the density and hence the moderating capability of the graphite, but also reduces strength affecting the integrity of core components. In order to manage continued operation over the planned lifetimes of their power stations, BNFL needed to extend their database of the effects of these two phenomena on the ir graphite cores through an irradiation experiment. This paper will discuss the background, purpose, and the processes taken and planned (i.e. post irradiation examination) to ensure meaningful data on the graphite core material is obtained from the irradiation experiment.

We report measurements of the photoinduced change in reflectivity of an untwinned single crystal of YBa2Cu3O6.5 in the ortho II structure. The decay rate of the transient change in reflectivity is found to decrease rapidly with decreasing temperature and, below Tc, with decreasing laser intensity. We interpret the decay as a process of thermalization of antinodal quasiparticles, with a rate determined by inelastic scattering of quasiparticle pairs.

A suite of instrumentation including a minisodar, a low-frequency, single-axis sodar, a wind profiling radar and a tethersonde was used during the Vertical Transport and Mixing field study in Salt Lake City, UT, USA, to study the evolution and dynamics of stratified layers that commonly develop during nighttime. The month-long field study provided ten nights with good conditions for tethersonde flights. The real-time sodar display was used to place the tethersonde within and near the stratified layers and to make multiple transects, while atmospheric temperature, moisture, wind speed and wind direction were measured. Not surprisingly, the existence of layers with enhanced acoustic scattering correlated well with regions of potential temperature inversions; however, because wind speeds were invariably low, the Richardson number was rarely less than 0.25. The possible role of moisture in the dynamics of elevated stable layer is discussed.

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Funeral program for Everett L. Turbon, born May 20, 1919 and died March 9, 2002. The funeral was held March 14, 2002 at St. Joseph's Catholic Church, officiated by Rev. Thomas Fitzgerald. Funeral arrangements were made through Carter-Taylor-Williams Mortuary, and he was buried in San Fernando Cemetery #2 in San Antonio, Texas.

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