Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In response to concerns that some children were languishing in temporary foster care, Congress enacted the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) to help states move children in foster care more quickly to safe and permanent homes. ASFA contained two key provisions: (1) the "fast track" provision allows states to bypass efforts to reunify families in certain egregious situations and (2) the "15 of 22" provision requires states, with a few exceptions, to file a petition to terminate parental rights (TPR) when a child has been in foster care for 15 of the most recent 22 months. Representative Wally Herger, Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Human Resources asked GAO to review (1) changes in outcomes for children in foster care since ASFA was enacted, (2) states' implementation of ASFA's fast track and 15 of 22 provisions, (3) states' use of two new adoption related funds provided by ASFA, and (4) states' initiatives to address barriers to achieving permanency"

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO is required by law to audit the consolidated financial statements of the U.S. government. Timely, accurate, and useful financial information is essential for making informed operating decisions day to day, managing the federal government's operations more efficiently and effectively, meeting the goals of federal financial management reform legislation, supporting results-oriented management approaches, and ensuring accountability on an ongoing basis. The importance of such information is heightened by the unprecedented demographic challenge of an aging population. Federal spending on the elderly, health care, and new homeland security and defense commitments increases the need to look at competing claims on the budget and at new priorities. Over the past year, the Principals of the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program continued efforts to accelerate progress in financial management reform. Also, President Bush has implemented the President's Management Agenda to provide direction to, and closely monitor, management reform across government, which encompasses improved financial management performance. To effectively implement federal financial management reform, sustained leadership and oversight are essential."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Federal employees represent the government's knowledge base, drive its capacity to perform, and define its character, and as such, are its greatest asset. The early years of the 21st century are proving to be a period of profound transition for our world, our country, and our government. In response, the federal government needs to engage in a comprehensive review, reassessment, reprioritization, and as appropriate, reengineering of what the government does, how it does business, and in some cases, who does the government's business. Leading public organizations here and abroad have found that strategic human capital management must be the centerpiece of any serious change management initiative and effort to transform the cultures of government agencies. In response to a Congressional request, GAO discussed the status of the federal government's efforts to address high-risk human capital weaknesses, possible short- and longer-term legislative solutions to those weaknesses, and other human capital actions that need to be taken to ensure that federal agencies are successfully transformed to meet current and emerging challenges."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is responsible for collecting virtually all of the funds that pay for the federal government. For 2003, IRS expects to process 130 million individual income tax returns, issue 99 million refunds, receive 100 million telephone calls, and assist 4 million taxpayers face-to-face at IRS and volunteer offices. Most of these interactions with taxpayers occur during the January through April tax filing season. GAO was asked by the Subcommittee on Oversight, House Committee on Ways and Means, to assess the likelihood of IRS allocating more resources to a key priority, compliance; whether proposed spending on computer systems is justified; and filing season performance."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Protecting the computer systems that support federal agencies' operations and our nation's critical infrastructures--such as power distribution, telecommunications, water supply, and national defense--is a continuing concern. These concerns are well-founded for a number of reasons, including the dramatic increases in reported computer security incidents, the ease of obtaining and using hacking tools, the steady advance in the sophistication and effectiveness of attack technology, and the dire warnings of new and more destructive attacks. GAO first designated computer security as high risk in 1997, and in 2003 expanded this high-risk area to include protecting the systems that support our nation's critical infrastructures, referred to as cyber critical infrastructure protection or cyber CIP. GAO has made previous recommendations and periodically testified on federal information security weaknesses--including agencies' progress in implementing key legislative provisions on information security--and the challenges that the nation faces in protecting our nation's critical infrastructures. GAO was asked to provide an update on the status of federal information security and CIP."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Under section 1308 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001, the Department of Defense is to submit an annual report to Congress on its Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program no later than the first Monday in February of each year. The Department of Defense, however, submitted its CTR annual report for fiscal year 2003 to Congress on January 8, 2003, more than 11 months after the submission date mandated by law. The legislation also requires the Comptroller General to provide Congress with an assessment of the report's multiyear plan setting forth the amount and purpose of funding to be provided over the 5-year term of the plan and describing the department's efforts to ensure that CTR assistance is accounted for and used as intended. We reviewed the fiscal year 2003 annual CTR report and compared it with our assessment of the 2002 annual report. As with the 2002 report, we analyzed the 2003 report to determine whether it (1) provides a 5-year plan that sets forth the funding requirements for the program and includes key federal strategic planning elements and (2) describes the methods used …

The purpose of this document is to summarize the primary results of the Hg compatibility research in support of the SNS target. In the absence of possible synergisms resulting from beam/irradiation effects, wetting of 316L/316LN stainless steel under SNS conditions by the Hg target is expected to be very limited. As a result, significant interactions such as dissolution, mass transfer, and embrittlement affecting general compatibility are not anticipated. A wide range of experiments on 316L/316LN stainless steel, including thermal convection and pumped loops, confirmed low corrosion/penetration rates in Hg up to 305 C and little or no wetting or mass transfer below about 250 C. A variety of standard mechanical tests comparing behavior of 316L in air and Hg revealed limited wetting and no degradation of mechanical properties such as reduced elongation or development of brittle fracture features. Preliminary fatigue tests indicated a negative effect (reduced cycles to failure and intergranular cracking) at very high loads for 316LN, but little or no effect at more modest loading. Annealed 316LN was found to be somewhat susceptible to cavitation-erosion damage, but significant improvement was realized with a kolsterizing surface treatment or coldworking the material. Within the scope of these test conditions, no …

A linear lens can focus a cold beam to a singular point. Unfortunately, this ideal situation would never occur in the real world. Besides nonlinearity of the lens, any deviation of the beam parameters from the ideal beam's nominal beam parameters would lead to nonzero final spot size. In other words, the final spot size of a beam focused by a focusing lens with a given focusing strength depends on its beam parameters, such as the emittance, variations in beam current, energy, envelope and envelope slopes, and nonlinearity of the focusing lens. There are many types of final focusing systems. We consider only the system using a ''thin'' solenoid lens in this notes. Generally, the net focusing force in a solenoid focusing system is not sensitive to the beam current for an emittance dominated beam. For simplicity, we will ignore the space charge forces in the discussion, and focus on the contributions of beam emittance, energy variation and nonlinearity of the lens to the final spot size here.

Although most known non-Fermi liquid (NFL) materials are structurally or chemically disordered, the role of this disorder remains unclear. In particular, very few systems have been discovered that may be stoichiometric and well ordered. To test whether U{sub 3}Ni{sub 3}Sn{sub 4} belongs in this latter class, we present measurements of the x-ray absorption fine structure (XAFS) of polycrystalline and single-crystal U{sub 3}Ni{sub 3}Sn{sub 4} samples that are consistent with no measurable local atomic disorder. We also present temperature-dependent specific heat data in applied magnetic fields as high as 8 T that show features that are inconsistent with the antiferromagnetic Griffiths' phase model, but do support the conclusion that a Fermi liquid/NFL crossover temperature increases with applied field. These results are inconsistent with theoretical explanations that require strong disorder effects, but do support the view that U{sub 3}Ni{sub 3}Sn{sub 4} is a stoichoiometric, ordered material that exhibits NFL behavior, and is best described as being near an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point.

Time-lapse fluid pressure and saturation estimates are sensitive to reservoir flow properties such as permeability. In fact, given time-lapse estimates of pressure and saturation changes, one may define a linear partial differential equation for permeability variations within the reservoir. The resulting linear inverse problem can be solved quite efficiently using sparse matrix techniques. An application to a set of crosswell saturation and pressure estimates from a CO{sub 2} flood at the Lost Hills field in California demonstrates the utility of this approach. From the crosswell estimates detailed estimates of reservoir permeability are produced. The resulting permeability estimates agree with a permeability log in an adjacent well and are in accordance with water and CO{sub 2} saturation changes in the interwell region.

Responsive load is the most underutilized reliability resource available to the power system today. It is currently not used at all to provide spinning reserve. Historically there were good reasons for this, but recent technological advances in communications and controls have provided new capabilities and eliminated many of the old obstacles. North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC), Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Northeast Power Coordinating Council (NPCC), New York State Reliability Council (NYSRC), and New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) rules are beginning to recognize these changes and are starting to encourage responsive load provision of reliability services. The Carrier ComfortChoice responsive thermostats provide an example of these technological advances. This is a technology aimed at reducing summer peak demand through central control of residential and small commercial air-conditioning loads. It is being utilized by Long Island Power Authority (LIPA), Consolidated Edison (ConEd), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E). The technology is capable of delivering even greater response in the faster spinning reserve time frame (while still providing peak reduction). Analysis of demand reduction testing results from LIPA during the summer of 2002 provides evidence to back up this claim. It also demonstrates that loads …

The Pennsylvania State University, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory will establish, promote, and manage a national industry-driven Stripper Well Consortium (SWC) that will be focused on improving the production performance of domestic petroleum and/or natural gas stripper wells. The consortium creates a partnership with the U.S. petroleum and natural gas industries and trade associations, state funding agencies, academia, and the National Energy Technology Laboratory. This report serves as the ninth quarterly technical progress report for the SWC. Key activities for this reporting period include: (1) organizing and hosting two fall technology transfer meetings, (2) SWC membership class expansion, and (3) planning the SWC 2003 Spring meeting. In addition, a literature search that focuses on the use of lasers, microwaves, and acoustics for potential stripper well applications continued.

Pressure diffusion wave in porous rocks are under consideration. The pressure diffusion mechanism can provide an explanation of the high attenuation of low-frequency signals in fluid-saturated rocks. Both single and dual porosity models are considered. In either case, the attenuation coefficient is a function of the frequency.

Natural gas reservoirs are obvious targets for carbon sequestration by direct carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) injection by virtue of their proven record of gas production and integrity against gas escape. Carbon sequestration in depleted natural gas reservoirs can be coupled with enhanced gas production by injecting CO{sub 2} into the reservoir as it is being produced, a process called Carbon Sequestration with Enhanced Gas Recovery (CSEGR). In this process, supercritical CO{sub 2} is injected deep in the reservoir while methane (CH{sub 4}) is produced at wells some distance away. The active injection of CO{sub 2} causes repressurization and CH{sub 4} displacement to allow the control and enhancement of gas recovery relative to water-drive or depletion-drive reservoir operations. Carbon dioxide undergoes a large change in density as CO{sub 2} gas passes through the critical pressure at temperatures near the critical temperature. This feature makes CO{sub 2} a potentially effective cushion gas for gas storage reservoirs. Thus at the end of the CSEGR process when the reservoir is filled with CO{sub 2}, additional benefit of the reservoir may be obtained through its operation as a natural gas storage reservoir. In this paper, we present discussion and simulation results from TOUGH2/EOS7C of gas …

Accumulations of two solid phases (a nitrated aluminosilicate) and sodium diuranate, in the form of scale, caused the SRS 2H Evaporator pot to become completely inoperable in October 1999. The accumulation of the sodium diuranate phase, which selectively precipitated with the aluminosilicate phase, caused criticality concerns in the 2H Evaporator. In order to understand the role of steady state saturation on the scale formation, solutions processed from the SRS 2H, 2F, and 3H Evaporators were evaluated with a commercially available thermodynamic equilibrium code known as Geochemist's Workbench

This report describes the fabrication and evaluation of polyethylene plastic joints and connecting tubes used in the assembly of contained and shielded radiochemical apparatus.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This report provides an overview and policy analysis of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the Philippines and the Philippine-U.S. program of military cooperation against it. It examines the origins and operations of Abu Sayyaf, the efforts of the Philippine government and military to eliminate it, and the implications of a greater U.S. military role in attempts to suppress it.

The role of grain boundary constraint in strain localization, slip system activation, slip transmission, and the concomitant constitutive response was examined performing a series of uniaxial compression tests on tantalum bicrystals. Tantalum single crystals were diffusion bonded to form a (011) twist boundary and compressed along the [011] direction. The resulting three-dimensional deformation was analyzed via volume reconstruction. With this, both, the effective states of stress and strain over the cross-sectional area could be measured as a function of distance from the twist boundary, revealing a highly constrained grain boundary. Post-test metallurgical characterization was performed using Electron Back-Scattered-Diffraction (EBSD). The results, a spatial distribution of slip patterning and mapping of crystal rotation around the twist-boundary was analyzed and compared to the known behavior of the individual single crystals. A rather large area near the grain boundary revealed no crystal rotation. Instead, patterns of alternating crystal rotation similar to single crystal experiments were found to be some distance away ({approx} 400 m) from the immediate grain boundary region, indicating the large length scale of the rotation free region.

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Multiphase flow models have been proposed for use in situations which have combined Rayleigh-Taylor (RTI) and Richtmyer-Meshkov (RMI) instabilities. Such an approach work poorly for the case of a heavy to light shock incidence on a developed interface. The physical original of this difficulty is traced to an inadequate model of the interfacial pressure term as it appears in the momentum and turbulence kinetic energy equations. Constraints on the form of a better model from a variety of sources are considered. In this context it is observed that a new constraint on closures arises. This occurs because of the discontinuity within the shock responsible for the RMI. The proposed model (Shock Scattering) is shown to give useful results.

The stability of interfaces in lamellar TiAl (or TiAl/Ti{sub 3}Al laminate composite) by straining at ambient temperatures has been investigated using in-situ staining techniques performed in a transmission electron microscope in order to obtain direct evidence to support the previously proposed creep mechanisms in refined lamellar TiAl based upon the interface sliding in association with the cooperative motion of interfacial dislocations. It has been reported previously that the mobility of interfacial dislocations can play a crucial role in the creep deformation behavior of refined lamellar TiAl [1,2]. Since the operation of lattice dislocations within refined {alpha}{sub 2} and {gamma} lamellae is largely restricted, the motion of interfacial dislocations becomes the major strain carrier for plasticity. Results of ex-situ TEM investigation have revealed the occurrence of interface sliding in low-stress (LS) creep regime and deformation twinning in high-stress (HS) creep regime. These results have led us to propose that interface sliding associated with a viscous glide of pre-existing interfacial dislocations is the predominant creep mechanism in LS regime and interface-activated deformation twinning in {gamma} lamellae is the predominant creep mechanism in HS regime. Stress concentration resulted from the pileup of interfacial dislocations is suggested to be the cause for the interface-activated …

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