A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To reduce out-of-wedlock pregnancies among welfare recipients, some states have imposed family caps on welfare benefits. One factor that determines the amount of cash benefits a family receives is the family's size--larger families receive more benefits. In states with a family cap policy, however, no additional cash benefits are provided with the birth of another. Twenty-three states have implemented some variation of a family cap, breaking the traditional link between a family's size and the amount of its monthly welfare check. Generally, these states implemented family cap policies as part of their welfare reforms to reduce out-of-wedlock births and to encourage self-sufficiency. During an average month in 2000, 20 of the 23 family cap states reported that about 108,000 families received less in cash benefits than they would have in the absence of state-imposed family cap policies. In an average month, about nine percent of welfare families in these states had their benefits affected by the family cap. A family's welfare benefits are affected by several factors, including earnings and receipt of child support. Therefore, states were unable to report the precise effect of the family …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The West Valley nuclear facility in western New York State was built in the 1960s to convert spent nuclear fuel from commercial reactors into reusable nuclear fuel. New York State, the owner of the site, and the Atomic Energy Commission--the predecessor of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the Department of Energy (DOE)--jointly promoted the venture. However, the timing of the venture was poor because the market for reprocessed nuclear fuel was limited and because new, more restrictive health and safety standards raised concerns about the facility. West Valley was shut down in the 1970s, and Congress enacted the West Valley Demonstration Project Act in 1980, which brought DOE to West Valley to carry out cleanup activities. This report examines the: (1) status of the cleanup; (2) factors that may be hindering the cleanup; (3) degree of certainty in the Department's estimates of total cleanup costs and schedule; and (4) degree to which the West Valley cleanup may reflect, or have implications for, larger cleanup challenges facing DOE and the nation. DOE has almost completed solidifying the high-level wastes at West Valley, but major additional cleanup …

A briefing report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Employers face potential tax, regulatory, and liability barriers when they establish telecommuting programs for their employees. Telecommuting refers to working from remote locations rather than an employer-provided location. Even though telecommuting has grown, some proponents are concerned that various laws and regulations discourage employers from establishing these programs. Many telecommuting proponents believe that significant obstacles to increased use of telecommuting involve internal management concerns on (1) assessing whether the employer has the types of positions and employees suitable for a telecommuting program, (2) maintaining security over sensitive company data while monitoring the actions of remote workers, and (3) ensuring that telecommuting activities do not adversely affect profits. A number of state and federal laws and regulations were also cited as potential barriers to telecommuting by those GAO interviewed. However, several of those laws and regulations cited as potential barriers predate the move toward the more technological and information-based economy in which telecommuting has developed. Thus their application to telecommuting is evolving and is somewhat unclear at this time."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Army has made progress developing a sound basis for its force structure requirements. It has improved the rigor of its analysis through more realistic scenarios and the integration of Army plans and initiatives. It has also expanded the analysis to include requirements for the entire Army. However, the weaknesses GAO identified suggest that the Army still lacks a sound basis for its institutional force requirements and the forces needed for the strategic reserve, domestic support, and homeland defense. GAO's analysis of the institutional force requirements casts doubt on their accuracy and, by extension, the accuracy of the shortfall that the Army identified in this element. By developing more accurate estimates of institutional forces, this shortfall might be entirely eliminated. A sound basis for requirements is also hampered by the lack of criteria for the strategic reserve, domestic support, and homeland defense element of the Army's force structure. A clearer definition of their missions is needed to accurately estimate the forces that will be required."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The estimated $6.5 billion full-cycle cost of the 2000 decennial census is nearly double that of the 1990 census. When the full-cycle cost is divided by the number of American households, the cost per housing unit of the 2000 census was $56 compared to $32 per housing unit for the 1990 census. The primary reasons for the cost increases include the following: (1) in the 1990 census, field data collection cost was $16 per housing unit, while in the 2000 census it was $32 per housing unit; (2) in the 1990 census, technology costs were $5 per housing unit compared to $8 per housing unit for the 2000 census; and (3) the data content and products activity cost $3 per housing unit in 1990 and $5 per housing unit in 2000."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Army announced in October 2000 that personnel would begin wearing berets eight months later. To meet the tight deadline for the production of 5 million berets at a cost of about $30 million, the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) shortcut normal contracting procedures and waived restrictions that limit military purchases of some items, including clothing, to those produced in the United States or its possessions. Despite these efforts, DLA was unable to meet the Army's deadline, and it terminated three contracts because the contractors did not meet delivery requirements. So far, the Defense Department (DOD) has received about 2.1 million berets--less than 1 million of which were distributed to Army personnel. DOD still expects another 1.6 million berets to be delivered by September 2002. DOD has taken steps to ensure that proposed waivers are considered at an appropriate management level. DOD no longer allows the Under Secretary of Defense or the service secretaries to delegate their authority to approve waivers. Requests for waivers must also be supported by analyses of why alternatives that would not require a waiver were unacceptable."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Telecommunications Act of 1996 expanded the traditional definition of universal service--affordable, nationwide telephone service--to include eligible schools and libraries. The act authorized the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to begin a program to help these institutions acquire advanced telecommunications services in the following three areas: telecommunications, Internet access, and internal connections. This report discusses state-level data on the amount of funds committed to the three categories of eligible services for each of the program's first three years. GAO found that requests substantially exceeded the program's available funding level during the program's first and third years. Priority is given to funding telecommunications and Internet access requests, and then to internal connections. Applicants have requested nearly $5.2 billion in e-rate support, more than double the program's $2.25 billion funding cap. Because requests for telecommunications and Internet access services total about $1.7 billion, most of the nearly $3.5 billion in internal connections requests could go unfunded under the current funding cap priority rules."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Because of concerns about the long-term budgetary implications associated with the environmental cleanup of the Department of Defense (DOD) training ranges, GAO examined (1) the potential magnitude of the cost to clean up these ranges in compliance with applicable laws and regulations, (2) the scope and reliability of DOD's training range inventory, and (3) the methodologies used to develop cost estimates. GAO found that DOD lacks complete and accurate data with which to estimate training range cleanup costs. DOD has not done a complete inventory of its ranges to fully identify the types and extent of unexploded ordnance present and the associated contamination. Recently, DOD began to compile training range data, but these initial efforts have been delayed because DOD did not issue formal guidance to the services for collecting the information until October 2000. Because DOD has not completed an inventory of its ranges, the services have used varying methods to estimate the size and condition of the ranges necessary to estimate the cost of cleanup for financial statement purposes. As a result, environmental liability costs are not consistently calculated and reported across the services."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Office of Multifamily Housing Assistance Restructuring (OMHAR) administers the mark-to-market program, which was created to preserve the affordability of low-income rental housing while reducing the long-term costs of Section 8 project-based assistance. Legislative authorization for both the mark-to-market program and OMHAR is scheduled to terminate on September 30, 2001. If the legislative authority for the mark-to-market program provided for in Subtitle A of the Multifamily Assisted Housing Reform and Affordability Act of 1997 is allowed to expire, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) estimates it will have to reduce the rents to market levels of well over 1,000 properties without having the tools to mitigate the potential effects of such reductions. If the reduced rents do not provide sufficient revenues to cover the properties' operating expenses, mortgage payments, and repair needs, owners may be forced to reduce expenditures for maintenance or other operating expenses or may default on their mortgages. Such action could result in deteriorating property conditions and substantial claims against the Federal Housing Administration insurance fund, which, in turn, could adversely affect property residents and lead to a decrease in the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense's (DOD) Logistics Strategic Plan is not comprehensive enough and does not provide an adequate overall logistics strategy to effectively guide the defense components' logistics plans. The military services, the Defense Logistics Agency, and the U.S. Transportation Command each developed separate logistics transformation and other implementation plans to support the Department-wide Logistics Strategic Plan. However, these plans also have weaknesses and are not likely to improve the overall economy, efficiency, and effectiveness of logistics activities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Instructor shortages are affecting the quality and quantity of Army truck driver training. Fort Leonard Wood, which trains about 90 percent of truck drivers, is especially affected by the instructor shortage. The result is that student drivers are not fully trained in all aspects of the instruction program when they graduate. If formal schools had enough instructors, they would presumably be able to teach the entire instruction program. The student imbalance between the schools at Fort Leonard Wood and Fort Bliss creates an ineffective use of resources. If the annual student load were more equally distributed between the two schools, student graduates from Fort Leonard Wood might receive more complete training. The formal schools are not adhering to the instruction program, which calls for some training with trucks carrying cargo. Furthermore, no training is provided on how to pull equipment. Similarly, students are not being trained to drive under different weather and surface conditions. Because annual check rides and sustainment are not always being performed, unsafe driving habits may go undetected. Although performing and recording check rides and sustainment may be time-consuming, these procedures can save …

The stochastic engine uses a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling device to allow an analyst to construct a reasonable estimate of the state of nature that is consistent with observed data and modeling assumptions. The key engine output is a sample from the posterior distribution, which is the conditional probability distribution of the state of nature, given the data. In applications the state of nature may refer to a complicated, multi-attributed feature like the lithology map of a volume of earth, or to a particular related parameter of interest, say the centroid of the largest contiguous sub-region of specified lithology type. The posterior distribution, which we will call f, can be thought of as the best stochastic description of the state of nature that incorporates all pertinent physical and theoretical models as well as observed data. Characterization of the posterior distribution is the primary goal in the Bayesian statistical paradigm. In applications of the stochastic engine, however, analytical calculation of the posterior distribution is precluded, and only a sample drawn from the distribution is feasible. The engine's MCMC technique, which employs the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, provides a sample in the form of a sequence (chain) of possible states of nature, …

Reconciliation report with an ending account balance of $434.54 reconciled for the period ending on September 11, 2001.

This report is a summary of socioeconomic data analyses conducted in support of the Radiological Monitoring Program during fiscal year 2001. Socioeconomic data contained in this report include estimates for the years 2000 and 2001 of the resident population in the vicinity of Yucca Mountain. The estimates presented in this report are based on selected Census 2000 statistics, and housing and population data that were acquired and developed in accordance with LP-RS-00 1 Q-M&0, Scientific Investigation of Economic, Demographic, and Agricultural Characteristics in the Vicinity of Yucca Mountain. The study area from which data were collected is delineated by a radial grid, consisting of 160 grid cells, that is suitable for evaluating the pathways and potential impacts of a release of radioactive materials to the environment within a distance of 84 kilometers from Yucca Mountain. Data are presented in a tabular format by the county, state, area, and grid cell in which housing units, households, and resident population are located. Also included is a visual representation of the distribution of the 2000 residential populations within the study area, showing Census 2000 geography, county boundaries, and taxing district boundaries for selected communities.

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The goal of this project was to develop tools to facilitate data transformations between heterogeneous data sources found throughout biomedical applications. Such transformations are necessary when sharing data between different groups working on related problems as well as when querying data spread over different databases, files and software analysis packages.

The mixture of toxic chemicals, heavy metals, halogenated solvents and radionuclides in many DOE waste materials presents a challenging problem for separating the different species and disposing of individual contaminants. One approach for dealing with mixed wastes is to genetically engineer the radiation-resistant bacterium, Deinococcus radiodurans to survive in and detoxify DOE's mixed waste streams, and to develop process parameters for treating mixed wastes with such constructed strains. The goal for this project is to develop a suite of genetic tools for Deinococcus radiodurans and to use these tools to construct and test stable strains for detoxification of haloorganics in mixed wastes.

This report briefly reviews issues regarding the implementation of the zero-valent iron permeable reactive barrier (PRB) technology at sites managed by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Initially, the PRB technology, using zero-valent iron for the reactive media, was received with great enthusiasm, and DOE invested millions of dollars testing and implementing PRBs. Recently, a negative perception of the technology has been building. This perception is based on the failure of some deployments to satisfy goals for treatment and operating expenses. The purpose of this report, therefore, is to suggest reasons for the problems that have been encountered and to recommend whether DOE should invest in additional research and deployments. The principal conclusion of this review is that the most significant problems have been the result of insufficient characterization, which resulted in poor engineering implementation. Although there are legitimate concerns regarding the longevity of the reactive media, the ability of zero-valent iron to reduce certain chlorinated hydrocarbons and to immobilize certain metals and radionuclides is well documented. The primary problem encountered at some DOE full-scale deployments has been an inadequate assessment of site hydrology, which resulted in misapplication of the technology. The result is PRBs with higher than expected flow …

According to the Technical Work Plan titled Technical Work Plan for Waste Form Degradation Process Model Report for SR (CRWMS M&O 2000a), the purpose of this study is to perform abstractions on solubility limits of radioactive elements based on the process-level information and thermodynamic databases provided by Natural Environment Program Operations (NEPO) and Waste Package Operations (WPO). The scope of this analysis is to produce solubility limits as functions, distributions, or constants for all transported radioactive elements identified by the Performance Assessment Operations (PAO) radioisotope screening. Results from an expert elicitation for solubility limits of most radioactive elements were used in the previous Total System Performance Assessments (TSPAs). However, the elicitation conducted in 1993 does not meet the criteria set forth by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) due to lack of documentation and traceability (Kotra et al. 1996, Section 3). Therefore, at the Waste Form Abstraction Workshop held on February 2-4, 1999, at Albuquerque, New Mexico, the Yucca Mountain Site Characterization Project (YMP) decided to develop geochemical models to study solubility for the proposed Monitored Geologic Repository. WPO/NEPO is to develop process-level solubility models, including review and compilation of relevant thermodynamic data. PAO's responsibility is to perform abstractions based …

In this quarter we completed the manufacture and bench testing of the first prototype of the MT-24/LF system to be used in the natural IP survey. The MT-24/LF will dramatically reduce field costs by simplifying field operations through the use of high accuracy GPS synchronization between wide band high accuracy (24 bit) autonomous recording systems. The simplification of field operations comes about from the elimination of the need for long lengths of telemetry cable and also from the elimination of trained operators for field data acquisition. Instead, all data is now synchronized by GPS and recorded to compact Flash media which is quickly and efficiently recovered and brought back to base for processing.

The Class 2 Project at West Welch was designed to demonstrate the use of advanced technologies to enhance the economics of improved oil recovery (IOR) projects in lower quality Shallow Shelf Carbonate (SSC) reservoirs, resulting in recovery of additional oil that would otherwise be left in the reservoir at project abandonment. Accurate reservoir description is critical to the effective evaluation and efficient design of IOR projects in the heterogeneous SSC reservoirs. Therefore, the majority of Budget Period 1 was devoted to reservoir characterization. Technologies being demonstrated include: (1) Advanced petrophysics; (2) Three-dimensional (3-D) seismic; (3) Crosswell bore tomography; (4) Advanced reservoir simulation; (5) Carbon dioxide (CO{sub 2}) stimulation treatments; (6) Hydraulic fracturing design and monitoring; and (7) Mobility control agents.

This research was focused on developing morphology-dependent stimulated raman scattering (MDSRS) spectroscopy as an analytic optical imaging technique. MDSRS uses the cavity modes (called morphology dependent resonances, MDRs) associated with axisymmetric dielectric microstructures to generate nonlinear optical signals. Since different cavity modes span different regions inside the microstructure, it becomes possible to generate location-specific spectra. The information gotten from MDSRS imaging experiments is analogous with that generated from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies in that spatial variations in chemical composition and molecular configuration within a structure can be mapped out. The authors demonstrated that MDSRS imaging is feasible and is free from nonlinear artifact. They did this by measuring the molecular structure variations that are present in the interfaces of 180 {micro}m dia. charged water droplets. The 4 publications that resulted from these studies are attached. From a chemical perspective a water droplet is, however, a simple thing. Will it be possible to use MDSRS imaging to study more complex systems such as combusting fuel droplets, layered polymer or glass fibers, or biological cells? The long-term goal of the research was to answer this question. The answer they have come up with is yes and no. The results on nitrate …

The goals of this project were to establish database access to several databases of interest, customizing bioJava for database applications, improving performance of bioJava applets, development of additional applets, and maintenance of GenLang for web applications.

DOE award DEFG02-96ER45590 was for the construction of an ARP Spectrometer for installation at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) on undulator beamline U13. The spectrometer is completely assembled and under vacuum on the floor of the NSLS. It consists of vacuum chamber; pumps, sample cryostat and manipulator, and electronic energy analyzer. The analyzer has achieved energy resolution of 5 meV in multi-channel mode, angular resolution of 2 mR is expected though as yet unproven, and sample temperatures below 10K should be achieved. These specifications are either equal to or better than those described in the original proposal. The spectrometer has not yet been attached to beamline U13.