A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Social Security Administration's (SSA) Disability Insurance (DI) program paid $50 billion in cash benefits to more than five million disabled workers in 2000. Eligibility for DI benefits is based on whether a person with a severe physical or mental impairment has earnings that exceed the Substantial Gainful Activity (SGA) level. SSA terminates monthly cash benefit payments for beneficiaries who return to work and have earnings that exceed the SGA level--$1,300 per month for blind beneficiaries and $780 per month for all other beneficiaries. GAO found that the SGA level affects the work patterns of only a small proportion of DI beneficiaries. However, GAO also found that the SGA may affect the earnings of some beneficiaries. About 13 percent of those beneficiaries with earnings near the SGA level in 1985 still had earnings near the SGA level in 1995, even though the level was increased during that period. The absence of key information identifying the monthly earnings of beneficiaries, their trial work period status, and whether they are blind limited GAO's ability to definitively identify a relationship between SGA levels and beneficiaries' work patterns. Data limitations …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Title I program spends $8 billion each year on elementary and secondary education. Although state and local funds account for more than 90 percent of national education expenditures, Title I has been an important source of funding for many poor school districts and schools since 1965. In the 1999-2000 school year, Title I funds were targeted on the basis of numbers and percentages of poor children, but the complex allocation process resulted in differences in actual funding per poor child. When the numbers of children from low-income families shift among states, Title I allocations adjust, but not completely, and a state whose share of the nation's poor children changed from year to year would not necessarily see a corresponding change in its Title I allocation amount. The following two factors account for this: lack of current poverty data and various hold-harmless provisions. GAO found no monetary, statutory, or regulatory incentives for states to target their own funds to children from low-income families. Several policy options could increase Title I funds allocated to states and school districts with high numbers and percentages of poor children. These …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Employers are required to withhold amounts from their employees' salary to cover individual federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare taxes; match the amounts for Social Security and Medicare taxes; and deposit these amounts with the U.S. Treasury. In fiscal year 2000, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) collected $1.3 trillion in this manner. Most employers withhold and deposit these taxes as required; however, the amount of unpaid employment taxes, penalty, and interest has grown significantly. IRS data show that in 1997, 1998, 1999, and 2000, delinquent employers owed about $3.2, $3.5, $4.4, and $5 billion, respectively, in unpaid employment taxes, penalties, and interest. The time IRS takes to notify employers of delinquent payment of employment taxes varies. On average, IRS takes about five weeks to initially notify employers regarding employment tax delinquencies after the Form 941 return is received. When employers fail to file Form 941 returns, IRS normally takes from 14 to 28 weeks to notify them of this delinquency. Aside from its usual efforts to educate and inform taxpayers of their responsibilities, IRS has four programs to prevent or reduce employers' tax delinquencies. Two …

Twenty-two scientists from around the nation and the world met to discuss the way that the molecules, structures, processes and concepts of the biological world could be used or mimicked in designing novel materials, processes or devices of potential practical significance. The emphasis was on basic research, although the long-term goal is, in addition to increased knowledge, the development of applications to further the mission of the Department of Energy.

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We have set up successfully two experimental systems during the past time of the project. The first system is sol-gel chemical method for preparing {gamma}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}, SiO{sub 2}, Cr{sub 2}O{sub 3} granular support particles. The second system is the laser-induced solution deposition (LISD) technique for nanoparticle catalysts containing Fe/Cu, and Co/Cu on the granular support. We have successfully deposited {gamma}-Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}, SiO{sub 2}, Cr{sub 2}O{sub 3} granular support particles by sol-gel method and Co and CoO nanoparticles by LISD novel fabrication technique. The characterization methods we have used include scanning electron microscope (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HRTEM) and X-Ray diffraction (XRD). The research toward to the proposed direction is in good progress. We have given three presentations in national and local materials meetings and have submitted another two papers in another two key national meetings in nanotechnology and American Physical Annual March Meeting 2002. A couple of papers are in preparation.

We present results for YbAl{sub 3} which show that the susceptibility {chi}(T), 4f occupation number n{sub f}(T) and the entropy S(T) exhibit a slow crossover between the Fermi liquid and local moment regimes. In addition both {chi}(T) and the linear specific heat coefficient {gamma} = C/T exhibit low temperature peaks that imply that in addition to the Kondo scale (T{sub K} {approx} 500K) there is a second low temperature scale (T{sub coh} {approx} 50K) for the onset of coherence. We discuss these results in the context of Nozieres' exhaustion in the Anderson lattice.

Several metals systems were reviewed for their potential to act as resistive temperature devices. Platinum metal was selected as the metal of choice. Platinum was plated onto 5 mil copper wire, and then subsequently coated with Accusol's proprietary ceramic coating. The copper was etched out in an attempt to make a pure platinum, high resistive, resistive-temperature device. The platinum plating on the wire cracked during processing, resulting in a discontinuous layer of platinum, and the element could not be formed in this way.

Proton imaging is a diagnostic with enormous potential for the investigation of fundamental plasma physics problems which were impossible to explore up to now. By using this diagnostic, for the first time the measurement of transient electric fields in dense plasmas has been obtained, determining their evolution on a picosecond scale with micrometric spatial resolution. The data is of great relevance to Inertial Confinement Fusion both in the conventional and Fast Ignitor approach. Detailed analysis and modeling is presently undergoing.

The wetting and interfacial integrity of lead-free Sn-Ag and Sn-Ag-Bi solders with 42 alloy (Fe-42wt percent Ni) were investigated. A tin-iron intermetallic layer formed at the interface and, during cooling, Ni3Sn4 platelets precipitated in the solder. After bonding, the Sn-3Ag joints have a eutectic microstructure, with a fine network of Ag3Sn particles surrounding large primary -Sn grains. Bismuth addition to Sn-3Ag improved wettability, but decreased the joint strength, owing to Bi segregation to the interface.

The goal of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Clean Coal Technology Program (CCT) is to furnish the energy marketplace with a number of advanced, more efficient, and environmentally responsible coal utilization technologies through demonstration projects. These projects seek to establish the commercial feasibility of the most promising advanced coal technologies that have developed beyond the proof-of-concept stage. This document serves as a DOE post-project assessment (PPA) of a project selected in CCT Round IV, the Wabash River Coal Gasification Repowering (WRCGR) Project, as described in a Report to Congress (U.S. Department of Energy 1992). Repowering consists of replacing an existing coal-fired boiler with one or more clean coal technologies to achieve significantly improved environmental performance. The desire to demonstrate utility repowering with a two-stage, pressurized, oxygen-blown, entrained-flow, integrated gasification combined-cycle (IGCC) system prompted Destec Energy, Inc., and PSI Energy, Inc., to form a joint venture and submit a proposal for this project. In July 1992, the Wabash River Coal Gasification Repowering Project Joint Venture (WRCGRPJV, the Participant) entered into a cooperative agreement with DOE to conduct this project. The project was sited at PSI Energy's Wabash River Generating Station, located in West Terre Haute, Indiana. The purpose of this …

We describe a hybrid data-representation and rendering technique for visualizing large-scale particle data generated from numerical modeling of beam dynamics. The basis of the technique is mixing volume rendering and point rendering according to particle density distribution, visibility, and the user's instruction. A hierarchical representation of the data is created on a parallel computer, allowing real-time partitioning into high-density areas for volume rendering, and low-density areas for point rendering. This allows the beam to be interactively visualized while preserving the fine structure usually visible only with slow point based rendering techniques.

Florida International University's (FIU) Hemispheric Center for Environmental Technology (HCET) evaluated five saws for their effectiveness in cutting specially prepared fiberglass-reinforced plywood crates. These crates were built as surrogates for crates that presently hold radioactively contaminated glove boxes at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Los Alamos facility. The Porter-Cable circular saw was assessed on August 15-16, 2001 (Porter-Cable No.1 and Porter-Cable No.2, respectively). During the FIU test of efficacy, a team from the Operating Engineers National Hazmat Program (OENHP) evaluated the occupational safety and health issues associated with this technology. The Porter-Cable saw is a straightforward machine for cutting wood of varying thickness. The blade is fully guarded with a fixed upper and a lower retractable guard. The lower guard retracts as the blade engages the work piece. The unit is operated with an on/off guarded trigger switch and is supported with a handgrip mounted near the front of the saw. The saw is equipped with a directional nozzle, which aims sawdust away from the operator and the line of cut. An optional vacuum system, attached to the directional nozzle, is used to remove and collect dust. During the demonstration of Porter-Cable No.1, personal noise sampling indicated that one worker …

This report describes the tasks performed and the progress made during Phase 2 of the DOE-NERI project number 99-119 entitled Automatic Development of Highly Reliable Control Architecture for Future Nuclear Power Plants. This project is a collaboration effort between the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), The University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) and the North Carolina State University (NCSU). ORNL is the lead organization and is responsible for the coordination and integration of all work.

Nine strains were identified to grow with gasoline as sole sulfur source. Two different genes were cloned from Gordonia terrae KGB1 and tested for the ability to support gasoline BDS. The first of these, fmoA, was cloned by screening a KGB1 gene library for the ability to convert indole to indigo (a sulfur-regulated capability in KGB1). The fmoA gene was overexpressed in a gasoline tolerant strain of Pseudomonas putida PpG1 and the recombinant strain was shown to convert thiophene to a dimer of thiophene sulfoxide at rates nearly two orders of magnitude higher than KGB1 could catalyze the reaction. Despite this high activity the recombinant PpG1 was unable to demonstrate any activity against gasoline either in shake flask or in bench-scale gasoline BDS bioreactor. A second gene (toeA) was cloned from KGB1 and shown to support growth of Rhodococcus erythropolis JB55 on gasoline. The toeA gene was also identified in another gasoline strain T. wratislaviensis EMT4, and was identified as a homolog of dszA from R. erythropolis IGTS8. Expression of this gene in JB55 supported conversion of DBTO2 (the natural substrate for DszA) to HPBS, but activity against gasoline was low and BDS results were inconsistent. It appeared that activity …

The Supreme Court, in Toyota Motor Manufacturing v. Williams, held that to be an individual with a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) an individual must have substantial limitations on abilities that are central to daily life,rather than only to those abilities used in the workplace. In an unanimous opinion written by Justice O’Connor, the Court interpreted the definition of individual with disability narrowly to exclude individuals who are limited only in the performance of manual tasks associated with their job. This report will briefly discuss Williams and its implications for the ADA.

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The main goals of this project were the search for a predicted nonmetallic high-pressure phase of Li and finding the metallization conditions for LiH. It has been predicted by Neaton & Ashcroft at Cornell [1] that the lithium atoms would pair at pressures around 100 GPa and their valence electrons would become localized in the interstitial regions and therefore non-conducting. LiH, an ionic compound, provides the unique opportunity to understand the effects of coupling two elements with opposite tendencies at extreme conditions and to study fundamental principles such as metallization and pairing. We measured the electrical conductivity of liquid lithium at pressures up to 1.8 Mbar and 4-fold compression, achieved through shock reverberation experiments [2]. We found that the results were consistent with a departure of the electronic properties of lithium from the nearly free electron approximation at high pressures and with ionic pairing correlations in the Mbar regime. Given the expected small effect of the temperature on the conductivity at high densities, the apparent conductivity drop and the behavior of the ionic core at the highest pressures could be interpreted as a decrease of the overall volume available for the electrons. It may be interesting to see if the …

We are working on developing an Integrated Systems Analysis Environment (ISAE) for application to analysis and optimization of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). ISAE is based on the concept of Co-simulation, which allows the modeling of complex systems with extreme flexibility. Co-simulation allows the development of virtual ITS systems that can be analyzed and optimized as an overall integrated system. The virtual ITS system is defined by selecting different components from a component library. System component models can be written in multiple programming languages running on different computer platforms. At the same time, ISAE provides full protection for proprietary models. Co-simulation is a cost-effective alternative to competing methodologies, such as developing a translator or selecting a single programming language for all system components. Co-simulation has been recently demonstrated using an example of an automotive system. The demonstration was successfully performed. The paper describes plans on how to implement ISAE and Co-simulation to ITS, and the great advantages that this implementation would represent.

This report provides an overview of the Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA) of 1996, or as it is better known, the Clinger-Cohen Act. Although the Clinger Cohen Act is a combination of the Federal Acquisition Reform Act (FARA) and the ITMRA, this report focuses on the information technology procurement and management reforms only.

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This report describes five major activities that the Alliance to Save Energy performed for the years 2000 and 2001 to support and compliment DOE's Energy Smart Schools Partnership. The major tasks under this project were to: (1) Promote the School Efficiency Peer Exchange program for school personnel; (2) develop the Earth Apple Awards program and disseminate the best award-winning ideas; (3) link Green Schools with Rebuilt with at least one metropolitan area such as Philadelphia or Buffalo; (4) support Rebuild/Energy Smart Schools through working at the state level to develop business, state, and local government and through making presentations in support of school efficiency; (5) update the curriculum search originally conducted in 1995.

The objectives of this project is to demonstrate the use of a new geophysical system to collect economically competitive induced polarization (IP) data using natural electromagnetic (EM) field as a source. The proposed technology uses naturally-existing EM fields, which provides greater depth of exploration and significant economic, energy, environmental and safety benefits.