Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report presents the General Accounting Office's (GAO) Performance Plan for Fiscal Year 2005. In the spirit of the Government Performance and Results Act, this annual plan informs the Congress and the American people about what we expect to accomplish on their behalf in the coming fiscal year. It sets forth our plan to make progress toward achieving our strategic goals for serving the Congress and the American people. The plan is based on our strategic plan, which was prepared in consultation with members of the Congress and other key stakeholders and was issued in March 2004."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Unrelenting growth in health care spending has put pressure on policymakers to seek health care system reforms. The stress comes partly from a wide gap in expectations between what health care Americans want and what the nation can afford and sustain. GAO's Health Care Forum was held on January 13, 2004, to find ways to elevate the nation's understanding of health care cost, access, and quality challenges. Forum attendees included a select group of experts, business leaders, and public officials. The forum's plenary speakers discussed issues associated with health care costs and value, including spending drivers, long-term affordability, and the effect of differences across the country in medical practices. Participants in breakout sessions led by the forum's faculty of experts deliberated on the merits of the various health care reform strategies, including focusing on consumer cost sensitivity, targeting high-cost patients, reducing unwarranted variation in medical practices, and managing technology to control spending growth. GAO has developed a series of questions to evaluate all health care reform proposals, based in part, on the results of this forum."

This Streamlined Approach for Environmental Restoration (SAFER) plan details the activities necessary to close Corrective Action Unit 496: Buried Rocket Site, Antelope Lake. CAU 496 consists of one site located at the Tonopah Test Range, Nevada.

The challenges of increased technological demands in today's workplace require virtually all workers to develop higher-order cognitive skills including problem solving and systems thinking in order to be productive. Such ''habits of mind'' are viewed as particularly critical for success in the information-based workplace, which values reduced hierarchy, greater worker independence, teamwork, communications skills, non-routine problem solving, and understanding of complex systems. The need is particularly compelling in the buildings arena. To scope the problem, this paper presents the results of interviews and focus groups--conducted by Oakland California's Peralta Community College District and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory--in which approximately 50 industry stakeholders discussed contemporary needs for building operator education at the community college level. Numerous gaps were identified between the education today received by building operators and technicians and current workplace needs. The participants concurred that many of the problems seen today in achieving and maintaining energy savings in buildings can be traced to inadequacies in building operation and lack of awareness and knowledge about how existing systems are to be used, monitored, and maintained. Participants and others we interviewed affirmed that while these issues are addressed in various graduate-level and continuing education programs, they are virtually absent at the …

Measurements were completed on the solubility of cupric and cuprous oxides in liquid water and steam at controlled pH conditions from 25 to 400 C (77 to 752 F). The results of this study have been combined with those reported from this laboratory in two previous EPRI reports to provide a complete description of the solubility of these oxides and the speciation of copper dissolved in liquid water and steam as a function of oxidation state, temperature, pH, and in the case of steam, pressure. These constitute the first set of reliable data for cuprous oxide solubility over this range of conditions. For the more intensively studied CuO case, agreement was found between our results and those of previous studies of its solubility in steam, whereas only partial agreement was evident for its solubility in liquid water. For both oxides this disagreement often amounted to orders of magnitude. The solubility of cuprous oxide is somewhat lower than that of CuO at ambient conditions, except as very high pH. However, by 350 C (662 F), Cu{sub 2}O is the more soluble phase. At 100 C (212 F) and above, the logarithm of the solubility of both phases decreases linearly with increasing …

The federal government strives to lead by example in energy and resource management and architectural design. This paper explores how public agencies are supporting that goal by using sustainable practices in the design and operation of their buildings. It presents some elements to consider in establishing a policy for sustainable design and a system for implementing that policy, including some of the most difficult implementation issues agencies have to face. The paper also highlights some of the strengths and weaknesses of federal, state, and local policies and practices governing the design of public buildings; two case studies provide examples. Different approaches are included to help agencies evaluate their effectiveness at various levels of government. And recommendations are made for agencies and others who are committed to sustainable design in both new construction and major renovations.

Small Wind Electric Systems: A Wisconsin Consumer's Guide provides consumers with information to help them determine whether a small wind electric system can provide all or a portion of the energy they need for their home or business based on their wind resource, energy needs, and their economics. Topics discussed in the guide include how to make a home more energy efficient, how to choose the correct turbine size, the parts of a wind electric system, how to determine whether enough wind resource exists, how to choose the best site for a turbine, how to connect a system to the utility grid, and whether it's possible to become independent of the utility grid using wind energy. In addition, the cover of the guide contains a regional wind resource map and a list of incentives and contacts for more information.

This is a report on the development of anti-islanding control for grid-connected inverters from distributed generation sources. Islanding occurs when a distributed generation source continues to provide electricity to a portion of the utility grid after the utility experiences a disruption in service. Since the utility no longer controls this part of the distribution system, islanding can pose problems for utility personnel safety, power quality, equipment damage, and restoration of service. This report proposes a new family of anti-islanding schemes that meet IEEE 1547 interconnection standards, that can detect all disruptions in service, have minimum power-quality impact, require low-cost implementation, work for multiple distributed generators, and work for any multi-phase inverters. It also provides design guidelines for the schemes, and evaluates and validates the proposed schemes for practical applications.

In this investigation, various aspects of the mechanisms of gettering contaminant impurities away from device active regions in Si have been systematically conducted. Also systematically studied are the modeling of electrical activity of metallic precipitates in Si based on the Schottky effect. With these studies, our knowledge of gettering in Si and on the electrical activity of metallic precipitates in Si has become substantially complete in the sense that interpretations of major experimental results have become self- and mutually consistent. The purpose of conducting the studies supported by this project was to obtain consistent interpretations of existing experimental results, as well as to conduct the needed new experiments, concerning the various phenomena associated with gettering in Si. The investigated gettering method is that by using an Al layer, and the involved works span from studies concerning basic point defect behaviors during gettering to studies of application of the gettering method to improve multicrystalline Si minority-carrier diffusion lengths. A preliminary study of the effect of gettering in affecting the solar cell efficiency has been conducted. Moreover, a study of the electrical behavior of precipitated metallic impurities in Si based on the Schottky property of the precipitates, which is a newly proposed …

Utility-scale wind turbines require active control systems to operate at variable rotational speeds. As turbines become larger and more flexible, advanced control algorithms become necessary to meet multiple objectives such as speed regulation, blade load mitigation, and mode stabilization. At the same time, they must maximize energy capture. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory has developed control design and testing capabilities to meet these growing challenges.

This is the first in a series of DOE Industrial Technologies Program case studies on corporate energy management. The case study highlights Alcoa Aluminum's successful results and activities through its corporate energy management approach and collaboration with DOE. Case studies in this series will be used to encourage other energy-intensive industrial plants to adopt a corporate strategy, and to promote the concept of replicating results with a company or industry.

Statistical pressure snakes are used to track a mono-color target in an unstructured environment using a video camera. The report discusses an algorithm to extract a bar code signal that is embedded within the target. The target is assumed to be rectangular in shape, with the bar code printed in a slightly different saturation and value in HSV color space. Thus, the visual snake, which primarily weighs hue tracking errors, will not be deterred by the presence of the color bar codes in the target. The bar code is generate with the standard 3 of 9 method. Using this method, the numeric bar codes reveal if the target is right-side-up or up-side-down.

Given a video image source, a statistical pressure snake is able to track a color target in real time. This report presents an algorithm that exploits the one-dimensional nature of the visual snake target outline. If the target resembles a four-sided polygon, then the four polygon sides are identified by mapping all image snake point coordinates into Hough space where lines become points. After establishing that four dominant lines are present in snake contour, the polygon corner points are estimated. The computation burden of this algorithm is of the N logN type. The advantage of this method is that it can provide real-time target corner estimates, even if the corners themselves might be occluded.

In 2003, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) evaluated 23 Phase II fish screen sites in the Yakima River Basin as part of a multi-year project for the Bonneville Power Administration on the effectiveness of fish screening devices. PNNL collected data to determine whether velocities in front of the screens and in the bypasses met the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries (NOAA Fisheries, formerly the National Marine Fisheries Service [NMFS]) criteria to promote safe and timely fish passage. In addition, PNNL conducted underwater video surveys to evaluate the environmental and operational conditions of the screen sites with respect to fish passage. Based on evaluations in 2003, PNNL concluded that: (1) In general, water velocity conditions at the screen sites met fish passage criteria set by the NOAA Fisheries. (2) Conditions at most facilities would be expected to provide for safe juvenile fish passage. (3) Conditions at some facilities indicate that operation and/or maintenance should be modified to improve juvenile fish passage conditions. (4) Automated cleaning brushes generally functioned properly; chains and other moving parts were typically well greased and operative. (5) Removal of sediment buildup and accumulated leafy and woody debris could be improved at some sites.

ML development was started in 1997 by Ray Tuminaro and Charles Tong. Currently, there are several full- and part-time developers. The kernel of ML is written in ANSI C, and there is a rich C++ interface for Trilinos users and developers. ML can be customized to run geometric and algebraic multigrid; it can solve a scalar or a vector equation (with constant number of equations per grid node), and it can solve a form of Maxwell's equations. For a general introduction to ML and its applications, we refer to the Users Guide [SHT04], and to the ML web site, http://software.sandia.gov/ml.

Assume a target motion is visible in the video signal. Statistical pressure snakes are used to track a target specified by a single or a multitude of colors. These snakes define the target contour through a series of image plane coordinate points. This report outlines how to compute certain target degrees of freedom. The image contour can be used to efficiently compute the area moments of the target, which in return will yield the target center of mass, as well as the orientation of the target principle axes. If the target has a known shape such as begin rectangular or circular, then the dimensions of this shape can be estimated in units of image pixels. If the physical target dimensions are known apriori, then the measured target dimensions can be used to estimate the target depth.

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Accurate modeling of nucleation, growth and clustering of helium bubbles within metal tritide alloys is of high scientific and technological importance. Of interest is the ability to predict both the distribution of these bubbles and the manner in which these bubbles interact at a critical concentration of helium-to-metal atoms to produce an accelerated release of helium gas. One technique that has been used in the past to model these materials, and again revisited in this research, is percolation theory. Previous efforts have used classical percolation theory to qualitatively and quantitatively model the behavior of interstitial helium atoms in a metal tritide lattice; however, higher fidelity models are needed to predict the distribution of helium bubbles and include features that capture the underlying physical mechanisms present in these materials. In this work, we enhance classical percolation theory by developing the dynamic point-source percolation model. This model alters the traditionally binary character of site occupation probabilities by enabling them to vary depending on proximity to existing occupied sites, i.e. nucleated bubbles. This revised model produces characteristics for one and two dimensional systems that are extremely comparable with measurements from three dimensional physical samples. Future directions for continued development of the dynamic model …

To examine the impact of climate change on vegetative productivity, we exposed fallow agricultural soil to an in situ temperature and CO2 gradient between urban, suburban and rural areas in 2002. Along the gradient, average daytime CO2 concentration increased by 21% and maximum (daytime) and minimum (nighttime) daily temperatures increased by 1.6 and 3.3°C, respectively in an urban relative to a rural location. Consistent location differences in soil temperature were also ascertained. No other consistent differences in meteorological variables (e.g. wind speed, humidity, PAR, tropospheric ozone) as a function of urbanization were documented. The urban-induced environmental changes that were observed were consistent with most short-term (~50 year) global change scenarios regarding CO2 concentration and air temperature. Productivity, determined as final above-ground biomass, and maximum plant height were positively affected by daytime and soil temperatures as well as enhanced [CO2], increasing 60 and 115% for the suburban and urban sites, respectively, relative to the rural site. While long-term data are needed, these initial results suggest that urban environments may act as a reasonable surrogate for investigating future climatic change in vegetative communities.

Experiments explore guiding of intense laser pulses, optimization using channel formation beams and gas jet targets, and the interplay of channel guiding and relativistic self guiding. Impact on laser wakefield particle acceleration is being assessed.

This report documents the results of an extensive sensitivity study conducted by the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. This study investigated the effects of various operating and design parameters on wellbore heat exchanger performance to determine conditions for optimal thermal energy extraction and evaluate the potential for using a wellbore heat exchanger model for power generation. Variables studied included operational parameters such as circulation rates, wellbore geometries and working fluid properties, and regional properties including basal heat flux and formation rock type. Energy extraction is strongly affected by fluid residence time, heat transfer contact area, and formation thermal properties. Water appears to be the most appropriate working fluid. Aside from minimal tubing insulation, tubing properties are second order effects. On the basis of the sensitivity study, a best case model was simulated and the results compared against existing low-temperature power generation plants. Even assuming ideal work conversion to electric power, a wellbore heat exchange model cannot generate 200 kW (682.4e+3 BTU/h) at the onset of pseudosteady state. Using realistic conversion efficiency, the method is unlikely to generate 50 kW (170.6e+3 BTU/h).

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A new chemically-oriented mathematical model for the development step of the LIGA process is presented. The key assumption is that the developer can react with the polymeric resist material in order to increase the solubility of the latter, thereby partially overcoming the need to reduce the polymer size. The ease with which this reaction takes place is assumed to be determined by the number of side chain scissions that occur during the x-ray exposure phase of the process. The dynamics of the dissolution process are simulated by solving the reaction-diffusion equations for this three-component, two-phase system, the three species being the unreacted and reacted polymers and the solvent. The mass fluxes are described by the multicomponent diffusion (Stefan-Maxwell) equations, and the chemical potentials are assumed to be given by the Flory-Huggins theory. Sample calculations are used to determine the dependence of the dissolution rate on key system parameters such as the reaction rate constant, polymer size, solid-phase diffusivity, and Flory-Huggins interaction parameters. A simple photochemistry model is used to relate the reaction rate constant and the polymer size to the absorbed x-ray dose. The resulting formula for the dissolution rate as a function of dose and temperature is ?t to …

A trace explosives detection system typically contains three subsystems: sample collection, preconcentration, and detection. Sample collection of trace explosives (vapor and particulate) through large volumes of airflow helps reduce sampling time while increasing the amount of dilute sample collected. Preconcentration of the collected sample before introduction into the detector improves the sensitivity of the detector because of the increase in sample concentration. By combining large-volume sample collection and preconcentration, an improvement in the detection of explosives is possible. Large-volume sampling and preconcentration is presented using a systems level approach. In addition, the engineering of large-volume sampling and preconcentration for the trace detection of explosives is explained.