A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Over the last several years, the Coast Guard has experienced what it considers to be serious reliability and safety problems with its workhorse HH-65 helicopter used for key missions, such as search and rescue, migrant and drug interdiction, and homeland security. Annually, the HH-65 contributes to saving 375 lives and assists on 2,065 drug interdiction cases, according to the Coast Guard. An increasing trend in the number and seriousness of safety-related HH-65 incidents in recent months, highlighted by some the Coast Guard deemed to be serious life-threatening incidents, prompted a Coast Guard decision in January 2004 to replace the existing engine and the associated engine control system in this helicopter with a different engine, which it believes will improve safety and reliability and substantially reduce incidents. In light of the Coast Guard's decision to replace the existing engine, and as part of our already ongoing work on the safety and reliability of the HH-65 helicopter, we determined (1) whether the Coast Guard's decision to replace the existing HH-65 helicopter engine was fact- and risk-based; (2) the management and efficiency implications, if any, of the Coast Guard's …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Weed and Seed program, within the Department of Justice's Office of Justice Programs (OJP), aims to prevent and reduce violent crime in targeted neighborhoods, but it cannot optimize its effectiveness without sound management practices. In 1999, GAO made four recommendations to the Executive Office for Weed and Seed (EOWS) to improve the program's management, including (1) developing adequate internal controls to fully document decisions, (2) improving program monitoring, (3) developing criteria for determining when sites have become self-sustaining and when to reduce or withdraw program funding, and (4) developing additional performance measures. GAO did this study to assess progress in implementing these recommendations."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As the second largest source of foreign direct investment in China, U.S. companies continue their keen interest in China's implementation of its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments. China's 2001 WTO commitments include specific pledges to increase market access, liberalize foreign investment, continue fundamental market reforms, and improve the rule of law. In 2002, GAO reported on selected U.S. companies' views, finding that many commitment areas, particularly those related to rule of law, were important to U.S. companies. GAO also found that company representatives expected China's reforms would have a positive impact on their business operations but expected some difficulties during implementation. In 2003, GAO continued to analyze companies' views about (1) the extent to which China has implemented its WTO commitments and (2) the impact of China's implementation of its WTO commitments on U.S. companies' business operations. GAO collected the views of representatives from 82 U.S. companies with a presence in China. GAO focused on companies in the agriculture, banking, machinery, and pharmaceutical industries. Results reflect a response rate of 60 percent of the study population. These responses may not reflect the views of all U.S. …

This report provides an overview of the jurisdiction and referral reform options on the house committee system.

A new analytical technique has been developed that measures both total protium (H) and deuterium (D) in a gas mixture containing H2, D2, and HD. This new analytical technique uses a micro gas chromatograph (GC) with two molecular sieve columns. One column uses D2 as the carrier gas and the other uses H2 as the carrier gas. Laboratory tests have shown that when used in this configuration the GC can measure both total protium and total deuterium, each with a sensitivity of less than 20 ppm. This new analytical technique was developed as a result of a request to provide instrumentation to measure the protium and deuterium concentrations at several process points during initial testing of the new hydrogen tritium thermal cycling absorption process columns.

The techniques of normal form analysis, well known in the literature, can be used to provide a straightforward characterization of linear betatron dynamics in a coupled lattice. Here, we consider both the beam distribution and the betatron oscillations in a storage ring, assuming that the beam emittances and betatron actions respectively are provided as parameters. We find that the beta functions for uncoupled motion generalize in a simple way to the coupled case. Defined in the way that we propose, the beta functions remain well behaved (positive and finite) under all circumstances, and have essentially the same physical significance for the beam size and betatron oscillations as in the uncoupled case. We discuss a technique for making direct measurements of the ratio of the coupled lattice functions at different points in the lattice.

Bellows are frequently required in accelerators and colliders. Usually RF-shields with spring fingers are employed to screen the bellows. The lack of accessibility in cryogenic systems can be a problem and asks for alternate solutions to eliminate possible overheating, sparking, etc that occurred in intensive beams. This note addresses an alternate kind of RF shield, which uses capacitive contact instead of mechanical contact. The analysis, as well as numerical example of a superconducting cavity structure, shows that the capacitive RF shield satisfies the impedance requirements of both beam and HOMs. The capability of thermal isolation is also analyzed.

In this investigation, new ways to evaluate the long-term effects of tritium on the structural properties of components were developed. Electric discharge machining (EDM) techniques for cutting tensile and fracture toughness samples from the tritium-exposed regions of returned reservoirs were demonstrated. An existing electric discharge machine was used to cut sub-size tensile and fracture toughness samples from the inside walls of reservoir mock-ups. Tensile properties from the EDM tensile samples were similar to those measured using full-size samples cut from similar stock. Although the existing equipment could not be used for machining tritium-exposed hardware, off-the-shelf EDM units are available that could. With the right equipment and the required radiological controls in place, similar machining and testing techniques could be used to directly measure the effects of tritium on the properties of material cut from reservoir returns. Stress-strain property data from tritium-exposed reservoirs would improve finite-element modeling of reservoir performance because the data are representative of the true state of the reservoir material in the field. Tensile data from samples cut directly from reservoirs complement existing shelf storage and burst test data of the Life Storage Program and help answer questions about a specific reservoir's processing history and properties.

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