A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "As part of the efforts by the United States to oust Saddam Hussein, a critical element of U.S. policy included funding the Iraqi National Congress as the lead Iraqi opposition coalition. In 1999, the Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation (INCSF) was established to provide an organizational structure for Department of State funding. From March 2000 until September 2003, the Department of State funded several INCSF programs, including television broadcasting. INCSF's broadcasting goals included broadcasts into Iraq focusing on providing the Iraqi people unbiased news and information and updating them on efforts to bring democracy to Iraq. GAO was asked to review (1) the history of the Department of State's funding of INCSF broadcasting activities and (2) the key issues affecting State's funding decisions."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The free flow of information among federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies could prove vital to fighting the war on terrorism. State and local law enforcement officials are key stakeholders in the United States' efforts to combat terrorism, and as such, they may require access to classified national security information to help prevent or respond to terrorist attacks. In order to gain access to such information, state and local law enforcement officials generally need federal security clearances. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) grants security clearances and shares classified information with state and local law enforcement officials. Immediately following September 11, 2001, some state and local law enforcement officials expressed frustration with the complexity of the process for obtaining security clearances. Others expressed frustration with the length of time it took to obtain a security clearance. These frustrations exacerbated the general concern among law enforcement stakeholders that the lack of security clearances could impede the flow of critical information from the FBI to the state and local level, from the state and local level to the FBI, and laterally from one state or local agency …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (DOE) must obtain a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to construct a nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. In licensing, a quality assurance program helps ensure that the information used to demonstrate the safety of the repository is defensible and well documented. DOE developed a corrective action plan in 2002 to fix recurring problems with the accuracy of such information. This report assesses the status of corrective actions and the adequacy of DOE's plan to measure the effectiveness of actions taken."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy's (DOE) contractor-operated laboratories perform mission-related research and development (R&D) for DOE and other federal agencies. In 1992, DOE established the Laboratory- Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, under which laboratory directors may allocate funding to scientists to conduct worthy independent research. DOE allows participating laboratories to support their LDRD programs by including a charge of up to 6 percent of the total project cost in the indirect costs for R&D performed for DOE and other federal agencies. GAO was asked to address 11 specific questions on DOE's LDRD program regarding: DOE's statutory authority for charging other federal agencies for LDRD, DOE's policies and procedures for ensuring departmental compliance with statutory requirements and committee report direction, the extent to which DOE believes the LDRD program is a necessary tool for recruiting and retaining laboratory scientists, and the sources and amounts of LDRD funding that each laboratory received from fiscal year 1998 through fiscal year 2003. In commenting on the draft report, DOE agreed with its factual accuracy."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of State requested $415 million to fund programs in the Nonproliferation, Antiterrorism, Demining, and Related Programs (NADR) appropriations account for fiscal year 2005. Interest has been expressed in learning about whether programs are being implemented in accord with the law, and in the extent to which programs use experts hired on a contractual basis. GAO was asked to determine (1) the legal authorizations for the programs and the extent to which programs are implemented in accord with these authorizations and (2) the extent to which program management and implementation use outside experts."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Assisted living facilities provide help with activities of daily living in a residential setting for individuals who cannot live independently but do not require 24-hour skilled nursing care. In 2002, over 36,000 assisted living facilities served approximately 900,000 residents. The states establish and enforce licensing standards for these institutions. Because states have taken widely differing approaches to regulating and supporting assisted living, they can potentially learn from each other's experiences as they consider changes to their own policies. GAO was asked to review challenges faced by consumers and providers of assisted living and seek out notable state initiatives addressing those challenges in three selected areas: (1) disclosure of full and accurate information to consumers, (2) state assistance to providers to meet licensing requirements, and (3) procedures for addressing residents' complaints. We identified specific examples of individual programs in Florida, Texas, Washington, Georgia, and Massachusetts that highlighted different approaches in these three areas, which other states might wish to consider emulating."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Farmers receive about $15 billion annually in federal farm program payments to help produce major commodities, including corn, cotton, rice, and wheat. The Farm Program Payments Integrity Act of 1987 (1987 Act) limits payments to individuals and entities--such as corporations and partnerships-- that are "actively engaged in farming." GAO (1) determined how well USDA's regulations limit payments, (2) assessed USDA's oversight of the act, and (3) summarized the distribution of farm payments by type of entity."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In the 1990s, the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) dealt with a series of instances where buyers had not been notified of serious problems revealed by their appraisals. This led to several reforms, some of which allegedly may have caused some buyers to forgo home inspections, confusing that service with appraisals. Advocates of mandating home inspections claim that FHA will benefit from fewer foreclosures, and buyers will benefit by avoiding homes with costly problems. GAO was asked to assess (1) how many recent FHA homebuyers got home inspections and what were the perceived benefits, (2) whether homebuyers understand the differences between appraisals and home inspections, (3) whether inspections are associated with loan performance, and (4) the implications of mandating home inspections."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "For fiscal year 2002 (the most recent data), the Corporation for Public Broadcasting provided about 16 percent of public television's revenues of $1.63 billion. GAO agreed to review the statutory allocations for federal funding of public television, the Corporation's distribution of funds through its Community Service Grant and Television Future Fund programs, its distribution of funds for the Public Broadcasting Service's National Program Service and for local programming, and its grant programs for assisting public television's transition to digital technologies and services."

Monthly report written by the Texas Daily Newspaper Association's (TDNA's) office manager, Darla Thompson, to Phil Berkebile providing a summary of revenues and account balances, programs, meetings, and other activities in the office during the previous month.

The state of North Dakota is considering updating its commercial building energy code. This report evaluates the potential costs and benefits to North Dakota residents from updating and requiring compliance with ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2001. Both qualitative and quantitative benefits and costs are assessed in the analysis. Energy and economic impacts are estimated using the Building Loads Analysis and System Thermodynamics (BLAST simulation combined with a Life-cycle Cost (LCC) approach to assess correspodning economic costs and benefits.

OAK-B135 Tech-X Corporation designed and developed all the networking code tying together the NTCC data server with the data client and the physics server with the data server and physics client. We were also solely responsible for the data and physics clients and the vast majority of the work on the data server. We also performed a number of other tasks.

It has been known for over thirty years that potassium-intercalated graphites can readily adsorb and desorb hydrogen at {approx}1 wt% at 77 K. These levels are much higher than can be attained in pure graphite, owing to a larger thermodynamic enthalpy of adsorption. This increased enthalpy may allow hydrogen sorption at higher temperatures. Potassium has other beneficial effects that enable the design of a new material: (a) Increased adsorption enthalpy in potassium-intercalated graphite compared to pure graphite reduces the pressure and increases the temperature required for a given fractional coverage of hydrogen adsorption. We expect the same effects in potassium-intercalated SWNTs. (b) As an intercalant, potassium separates c-axis planes in graphite. Potassium also separates the individual tubes of SWNTs ropes producing swelling and increased surface area. Increased surface area provides more adsorption sites, giving a proportionately higher capacity. The temperature of adsorption depends on the enthalpy of adsorption. The characteristic temperature is roughly the adsorption enthalpy divided by Boltzmann's constant, k{sub B}. For the high hydrogen storage capacity of SWNTs to be achieved at room temperature, it is necessary to increase the enthalpy of adsorption. Our goal for this project was to use metal modifications to the carbon surface of …

This is the fifth Quarterly Technical Report for DOE Cooperative Agreement No: DE-FC26-03NT41728. The objective of this program is to measure the oxidation of mercury in flue gas across SCR catalyst in a coal-fired power plant burning low rank fuels using a slipstream reactor containing multiple commercial catalysts in parallel. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and Argillon GmbH are providing co-funding for this program. This program contains multiple tasks and good progress is being made on all fronts. During this quarter, the available data from laboratory, pilot and full-scale SCR units was reviewed, leading to hypotheses about the mechanism for mercury oxidation by SCR catalysts.

This Technical Progress Report describes progress made on the eight sub-projects awarded in the first year and the five projects awarded in the second year of Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-01NT41091: Establishment of the Center for Advanced Separation Technologies. This work is summarized in the body of the main report: the individual subproject Technical Progress Reports are attached as Appendices. Due to the time taken up by the solicitation/selection process (approx. six months), the second year project TPR's cover the initial 6-month period of activity only.

Regression of refractory linings of furnaces occurs due to a variety of mechanisms. The specific mechanism selected for investigation during this program is the regression of refractories which are in direct contact with a liquid corrodant. Examples include the melting of glass, the production of pig iron and steel, and the melting of aluminum. The rates of regression to a wall thickness which requires reline or extensive reconstruction vary widely, from less than a year to over ten years depending on the specific service environment. This program investigated the feasibility of measuring refractory wall thickness with an impact-echo method while at operating temperature (wall temperatures exceeding 500 C). The impact-echo method uses the impact of a small sphere with the surface of the test object to send a stress wave into the object. In a plate-like structure, the stress wave reflects back to the front surface, reverberating in the structure and causing a periodic surface displacement whose frequency is inversely proportional to the thickness of the test object. Impact-echo testing was chosen because it requires access to only one side of the test object and could be performed during the operation of a refractory structure. Commercially-available impact-echo instrumentation is available …

The purpose and objective of this task was to measure and report the physical and rheological properties, pH, and PSD of a radioactive Hanford tank sample, 241-AZ-102 pretreated by the reference RPP-WTP pretreatment process at SRTC. The LAW pretreated wastes and melter feeds were characterized at two different sodium molarities in accordance with RPP-WTP R and T guidelines for characterization. The initial AZ-102 pretreated waste was received at a concentration of 4.38M Na. This pretreated waste was then diluted to two different sodium molarities of 1.0M Na and 1.3M Na. After the 1.0M Na and 1.3M Na pretreated wastes were characterized, these waste streams were blended with the project approved GFCs to make melter feeds. The physical and rheological properties and pH of the resulting melter feeds were measured using the methods outlined in the RPP-WTP guidelines, unless otherwise stated in this document.

The technology referred to as Cavity Like Completions (CLC) offers a new technique to complete wells in friable and unconsolidated sands. A successfully designed CLC provides significant increases in well PI (performance index) at lower costs than alternative completion techniques. CLC technology is being developed and documented by a partnership of major oil and gas companies through a GPRI (Global Petroleum Research Institute) joint venture. Through the DOE-funded PUMP program, the experiences of the members of the joint venture will be described for other oil and gas producing companies. To date six examples of CLC completions have been investigated by the JV. The project was performed to introduce a new type of completion (or recompletion) technique to the industry that, in many cases, offers a more cost effective method to produce oil and gas from friable reservoirs. The project's scope of work included: (1) Further develop theory, laboratory and field data into a unified model to predict performance of cavity completion; (2) Perform at least one well test for cavity completion (well provided by one of the sponsor companies); (3) Provide summary of geo-mechanical models for PI increase; and (4) Develop guidelines to evaluate success of potential cavity completion. The …

The original proposal described the construction and operation of a 1-MMscfd treatment system to be operated at a Butcher Energy gas field in Ohio. The gas produced at this field contained 17% nitrogen. During pre-commissioning of the project, a series of well tests showed that the amount of gas in the field was significantly smaller than expected and that the nitrogen content of the wells was very high (25 to 30%). After evaluating the revised cost of the project, Butcher Energy decided that the plant would not be economical and withdrew from the project. Since that time, Membrane Technology and Research, Inc. (MTR) has signed a marketing and sales partnership with ABB Lummus Global, a large multinational corporation. MTR will be working with the company's Randall Gas Technologies group, a supplier of equipment and processing technology to the natural gas industry. Randall's engineering group has found a new site for the project at a North Texas Exploration (NTE) gas processing plant. The plant produces about 1 MMscfd of gas containing 24% nitrogen. The membrane unit will bring this gas to 4% nitrogen for delivery to the pipeline. The system has been installed in the field and initial startup activities have …

The project developed a new method for producing high quality mercuric iodide crystals of x-ray and gamma spectrometers. Included are characterization of mercuric iodide crystal properties as a function of growth environment and fabrication and demonstration of room-temperature-operated high-resolution mercuric iodide spectrometers.

The Global Unified Parallel File System (GUPFS) project is a multiple-phase project at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center whose goal is to provide a scalable, high-performance, high-bandwidth, shared file system for all of the NERSC production computing and support systems. The primary purpose of the GUPFS project is to make the scientific users more productive as they conduct advanced scientific research at NERSC by simplifying the scientists' data management tasks and maximizing storage and data availability. This is to be accomplished through the use of a shared file system providing a unified file namespace, operating on consolidated shared storage that is accessible by all the NERSC production computing and support systems. In order to successfully deploy a scalable high-performance shared file system with consolidated disk storage, three major emerging technologies must be brought together: (1) shared/cluster file systems software, (2) cost-effective, high-performance storage area network (SAN) fabrics, and (3) high-performance storage devices. Although they are evolving rapidly, these emerging technologies individually are not targeted towards the needs of scientific high-performance computing (HPC). The GUPFS project is in the process of assessing these emerging technologies to determine the best combination of solutions for a center-wide shared file system, …

This research was conducted to improve our fundamental understanding of the mechanisms of U accumulation with NAS in the evaporators and in other process areas at the SRS that may concentrate U in the presence of silicates, aluminum and NAS. Our study uses information gained from the characterization of solids formed in laboratory tests under similar HLW evaporator conditions to aid our interpretation of characterization data of an actual archived 2H Evaporator scale sample. These basic scientific studies will help support the basis for the continued safe operation of SRS evaporators and this fundamental information will be used to help mitigate U accumulation during evaporator operation.

The purpose of the work performed was to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel bi-layer selective emitter. Selective emitters are incandescent radiant bodies with emissivities that are substantially larger in a selected part of the radiation spectrum, thereby significantly shifting their radiated spectral distribution from that of a blackbody radiating at the same temperature. The major research objectives involved answering the following questions: (1) What maximum VIS/NIR radiant power and emissivity ratios can be attained at 2650 K? (2) What is the observed emitter body life and how does its performance vary with time? (3) What are the design tradeoffs for a dual heating approach in which both an internally mounted heating coil and electrical resistance self-heating are used? (4) What are the quantitative improvements to be had from utilizing a bi-layer emitter body with a low emissivity inner layer and a partially transmissive outer layer? Two approaches to obtaining selective emissivity were investigated. The first was to utilize large optical scattering within an emitter material with a spectral optical absorption that is much greater within the visible spectrum than that within the NIR. With this approach, an optically thick emitter can radiate almost as if optically thin because essentially, …

This report replaces PNNL-14417 and documents a project to demonstrate and evaluate a combined heat and power-configured microturbine system.