A project to develop non-intrusive active sensors that can be applied on existing aging aerospace structures for monitoring the onset and progress of structural damage (fatigue cracks and corrosion) is presented. The state of the art in active sensors structural health monitoring and damage detection is reviewed. Methods based on (a) elastic wave propagation and (b) electro-mechanical (NM) impedance technique are sighted and briefly discussed. The instrumentation of these specimens with piezoelectric active sensors is illustrated. The main detection strategies (E/M impedance for local area detection and wave propagation for wide area interrogation) are discussed. The signal processing and damage interpretation algorithms are tuned to the specific structural interrogation method used. In the high-frequency EIM impedance approach, pattern recognition methods are used to compare impedance signatures taken at various time intervals and to identify damage presence and progression from the change in these signatures. In the wave propagation approach, the acoustic-ultrasonic methods identifying additional reflection generated from the damage site and changes in transmission velocity and phase are used. Both approaches benefit from the use of artificial intelligence neural networks algorithms that can extract damage features based on a learning process. Design and fabrication of a set of structural specimens …

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Bureau of Indian Affairs' (BIA) new rule on the distribution of fiscal year (FY) 2000 Indian Reservation Roads Funds. GAO noted that: (1) the new rule is published as a temporary one and requires distribution of one-half of the FY 2000 Indian Reservation Roads funds to projects on or near Indian reservations using the Relative Need Formula adopted in 1993; and (2) BIA complied with the applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

This report provides a summary of major provisions of federal law and a chronology of key legislative and judicial actions.

Current law governing financial activity of campaigns for federal office is based on two principal statutes: the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) of 1971, as amended in 1974, 1976, and 1979, and the Revenue Act of 1971. These laws were enacted to remedy widely perceived shortcomings of existing law, the Corrupt Practices Act of 1925, and in response to reports of campaign finance abuses over the years, culminating in the 1972-1974 Watergate scandal. This report provides a summary of major provisions of federal law and a chronology of key legislative and judicial actions.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed its recent report on the management of federal medical stockpiles that would be used to treat civilians in a chemical or biological terrorist attack."

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The magnitude of Russian foreign debt, both official bilateral and commercial, compounded by collapse of the Russian economic system, is an obstacle in preventing the Russian Federation from effectively increasing the domestic priority of drawing down its nuclear weapons complex and providing a healthy, competitive environment to its nuclear cities. Debt-for-nature swaps, introduced in the early 1980s, provide debtor nations with a means of converting a portion of foreign debt into local currency, often at steep discounts, to use for purposes such as environmental protection that serve both a domestic and international need. This paper presents the debt-for-nature concept as a model for providing an infusion of funds to further U.S. and international nonproliferation objectives to help stabilize Russian closed city economic conditions through direct work on proliferation problems and remediation of the environment. A specific proposal is presented to demonstrate the utility and efficacy of the dept swap concept through initial collaboration with the city administration of Ozersk. The purpose of the proposal is to facilitate making Ozersk a safe, healthy competitive city, providing useful employment for its scientists and population and converting its superior infrastructure into productive activities.

The next great issue on the Russian landscape will be management of its foreign debt. In the near future the United States will be called upon to lead an international program of debt restructuring to assist Russia in overcoming the burden of its debt trap. With debt service obligations equal to 50{percent} of 1999 revenues, Russia has virtually no chance of sustaining a program of economic recovery without debt relief (Hardt, 1999). With some form of debt restructuring a foregone conclusion, Russia, the United States, and world community have a vital stake in searching for creative ways to transform the inevitability of debt restructuring into something of value and constructive to Russia and the problems it faces. This was the rationale behind debt-for-nature swaps which emerged in the early 1980s in Latin American and Eastern Europe as a means of relieving developing nations of their crippling foreign debt. Debt-for-nature swaps served both domestic and international needs by converting a portion of foreign debt, often at steep discounts, into local currency that was then used to fund programs to preserve the environment. The debt swap mechanism provides the prospect of getting something of real value where nothing is expected. The Pacific …

The Chicago Pile 5 (CP-5) Reactor, the first reactor built on the Argonne National Laboratory-East site, followed a rich history that had begun in 1942 with Enrico Fermi's original pile built under the west stands at the Stagg Field Stadium of The University of Chicago. CP-5 was a 5-megawatt, heavy water-moderated, enriched uranium-fueled reactor used to produce neutrons for scientific research from 1954--79. The reactor was shut down and defueled in 1979, and placed into a lay-up condition pending funding for decontamination and decommissioning (D and D). In 1990, work was initiated on the D and D of the facility in order to alleviate safety and environmental concerns associated with the site due to the deterioration of the building and its associated support systems. A decision was made in early Fiscal Year (FY) 1999 to direct focus and resources to the completion of the CP-5 Reactor D and D Project. An award of contract was made in December 1998 to Duke Engineering and Services (Marlborough, MA), and a D and D crew was on site in March 1999 to begin work, The project is scheduled to be completed in July 2000. The Laboratory has determined that the building housing the …

We present a new approach for investigating the kinetics of defect migration during annealing of low-energy, ion-implanted silicon, employing a combination of computer simulations and atomic-resolution tunneling microscopy. Using atomically-clean Si(111)-7x7 as a sink for bulk point defects created by 5 keV Xe and Ar irradiation, we observe distinct, temperature-dependent surface arrival rates for vacancies and interstitials. A combination of simulation tools provides a detailed description of the processes that underly the observed temperature-dependence of defect segregation, and the predictions of the simulations agree closely with the experimental observations.

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Navy and Marine Corps Intranet effort, focusing on whether the: (1) the Navy acquisition approach and implementation plan are based on appropriate analyses, resolution of key issues, and adequate risk management activities; and (2) Office of the Secretary of Defense is overseeing that effort with adequate review of relevant Navy analyses and other program activities to ensure that system interoperability and information assurance safeguards are implemented."

Sandia National Laboratories has been developing technologies to support person-to-person collaboration and the efforts of teams in the business and research communities. The technologies developed include knowledge-based design advisors, knowledge management systems, and streamlined manufacturing supply chains. These collaborative environments in which people can work together sharing information and knowledge have required a new approach to software development. The approach includes an emphasis on the requisite change in business practice that often inhibits user acceptance of collaborative technology. Leveraging the experience from this work, they have established a multidisciplinary approach for developing collaborative software environments. They call this approach ``A Holistic Software Development Methodology''.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed several evaluations of the Even Start Family Literacy Program's effectiveness, focusing on how the Even Start program has performed in terms of preparing children for school."

A facility effluent monitoring plan is required by the U.S. Department of Energy in Order 5400.1 for any operations that involve hazardous materials and radioactive substances that could impact employee public safety, or the environment. This facility effluent monitoring plan assesses effluent monitoring systems and evaluates whether these systems are adequate to ensure the public health and safety as specified in applicable federal, state, and local requirements. This facility effluent monitoring plan ensures long-range integrity of the effluent monitoring systems by requiring an update whenever a new process or operation introduces new hazardous materials or significant radioactive materials. This document must be reviewed annually even if there are no operational changes, and must be updated, as a minimum, every 3 years.

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) interim rule on property acquisition and relocation grants in the wake of Hurricane Floyd. GAO noted that: (1) the interim final rule provides guidance on the administration of grants of $215 million for the acquisition and relocation of properties affected by Hurricane Floyd and surrounding events for hazard mitigation purposes; and (2) FEMA complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

The USDA Forest Service has numerous permanently appropriated trust funds and special funds that provide substantial funding independent of the annual appropriations process. Critics have alleged abuse of the funds and have sought greater congressional oversight, and the General Accounting Office has testified on the agency’s management of some of these accounts. While the Administration has offered few responses to the criticisms of these funds, it has, in its FY2001 budget request, proposed creating two new trust funds and combining several existing funds into a new fund with expanded purposes. This report provides an overview of the permanently appropriated Forest Service accounts and concerns over their use and proposed alternative structures that could provide greater public and congressional oversight and control over permanently appropriated funds.

The authors reconceptualize macro modified invasion percolation (MMIP) at the near pore (NP) scale and apply it to simulate the non-wetting phase invasion experiments of Glass et al [in review] conducted in macro-heterogeneous porous media. For experiments where viscous forces were non-negligible, they redefine the total pore filling pressure to include viscous losses within the invading phase as well as the viscous influence to decrease randomness imposed by capillary forces at the front. NP-MMIP exhibits the complex invasion order seen experimentally with characteristic alternations between periods of gravity stabilized and destabilized invasion growth controlled by capillary barriers. The breaching of these barriers and subsequent pore scale fingering of the non-wetting phase is represented extremely well as is the saturation field evolution, and total volume invaded.

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The Hanford Site's mission has been to produce nuclear materials for the US Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessors. A large inventory of radioactive and mixed waste, largely generated during plutonium production, exists in 177 underground single- and double-shell tanks. These wastes are to be retrieved and separated into low-activity waste (LAW) and high-level waste (HLW) fractions. The total volume of LAW requiring immobilization will include the LAW separated from the tank waste, as well as new wastes generated by the retrieval, pretreatment, and immobilization processes. Per the Tri-Party Agreement (1994), both the LAW and HLW will be vitrified. It has been estimated that vitrification of the LAW waste will result in over 500,000 metric tons or 200,000 m{sup 3} of immobilized LAW (ILAW) glass. The ILAW glass is to be disposed of onsite in a near-surface burial facility. It must be demonstrated that the disposal system will adequately retain the radionuclides and prevent contamination of the surrounding environment. This report describes a study of the impacts of systematic glass-composition variation on the responses from accelerated laboratory corrosion tests of representative LAW glasses. A combination of two tests, the product consistency test and vapor-hydration test, is being used to …

During this CRADA, Honeywell FM and T and MoDOT personnel designed a unique scanning system (including both hardware and software) that can be used to perform an automated scan and evaluation of a concrete sample. The specific goals of the CRADA were: (1) Develop a combined system integration, image acquisition, and image analysis approach to mimic the manual scanning and evaluation process. Produce a prototype system which can: (a) automate the scanning process to improve its speed and efficiency; (b) reduce operator fatigue; and (c) improve the consistency of the evaluation process. (2) Capture and preserve the baseline knowledge used by the MoDOT experts in performing the evaluation process. At the present time, the evaluation expertise resides in two MoDOT personnel. Automation of the evaluation process will allow that knowledge to be captured, preserved, and used for training purposes. (3) Develop an approach for the image analysis which is flexible and extensible in order to accommodate the inevitable pathologies that arise in the evaluation process. Such pathologies include features such as cracks and fissures, voids filled with paste or debris, and multiple, overlapping voids. FM and T personnel used image processing, pattern recognition, and system integration skills developed for other …

Bis(cyclopentadienyl)magnesium (MgCp2) is used commonly as a source for doping nitride materials with magnesium. Increased oxygen incorporation known to accompany the use of MgCp2 makes the purity of this precursor an important consideration in nitride CVD. Gas chromatography-mass spectroscopy (GCMS) methods have now been developed for the identification of volatile impurities in MgCp2. Diethylether, an oxygen containing organic compound (CH{sub 3}CH{sub 2}OCH{sub 2}CH{sub 3}), and additional organic impurities were found in the MgCp2 supplied by three manufacturers. Subsequent refinements in the synthetic processes by these companies have resulted in the availability of MgCp2 free of ether and other organic impurities as determined by GCMS.

This report provides information on internships and fellowships in the federal government, with an emphasis on opportunities in the legislative branch. It also contains a bibliography of additional sources of information, including Internet resources.

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The present work is a part of Joint U.S./Russian Project with Weapons-Grade Plutonium Disposition in VVER Reactor and presents the neutronics calculations of kinetics parameters of VVER-1000 core with 3 introduced MOX LTAs. MOX LTA design has been studied in [1] for two options of MOX LTA: 100% plutonium and of ''island'' type. As a result, zoning i.e. fissile plutonium enrichments in different plutonium zones, has been defined. VVER-1000 core with 3 introduced MOX LTAs of chosen design has been calculated in [2]. In present work, the neutronics data for transient analysis codes (RELAP [3]) has been obtained using the codes chain of RRC ''Kurchatov Institute'' [5] that is to be used for exploitation neutronics calculations of VVER. Nowadays the 3D assembly-by-assembly code BIPR-7A and 2D pin-by-pin code PERMAK-A, both with the neutronics constants prepared by the cell code TVS-M, are the base elements of this chain. It should be reminded that in [6] TVS-M was used only for the constants calculations of MOX FAs. In current calculations the code TVS-M has been used both for UOX and MOX fuel constants. Besides, the volume of presented information has been increased and additional explications have been included. The results for the …