Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO examined the underlying records for the net excise tax revenue distributed to the Airport and Airway Trust Fund (AATF) for fiscal year 2001. GAO (1) did a detailed test of transactions that represent the underlying basis of amounts distributed to AATF, (2) reviewed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) quarterly AATF certifications, (3) reviewed the Department of the Treasury Financial Management Service adjustments to AATF for fiscal year 2001, (4) reviewed procedures in the Office of Tax Analysis' process for estimating amounts to be distributed to AATF for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2001, (5) compared net excise tax distributions to AATF during fiscal year 2001 and amounts reported in the financial statements prepared by the Bureau of the Public Debt for AATF and the Federal Aviation Administration's consolidated financial statements, and (6) reviewed key reconciliations of IRS records to Treasury records."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Citing the desire to "ensure that the President's appointees have the opportunity to review any new or pending regulations," the White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card, Jr. sent a memorandum to the heads of all executive agencies on January 20, 2001, directing them to (1) not send proposed or final regulations to the Office of the Federal Register, (2) withdraw regulations that had been sent to the Office but not yet published in the Federal Register, and (3) postpone for 60 days the effective date of regulations that had been published in the Federal Register but had not yet taken effect. GAO found that federal agencies delayed the effective dates for 90 of the 371 final rules that were subject to the memorandum. The effective dates for the remaining 281 rules were either not delayed or GAO could find no indication in the Federal Register of a delay."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO audited the Bureau of Public Debt's Schedule of Federal Debt for fiscal years 2001 and 2000. GAO found that (1) the Schedules of Federal Debt were presented fairly, in all material respects, in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles; (2) the Bureau had effective internal control over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations related to the Schedule of Federal Debt for fiscal year 2001; and (3) there was no reportable noncompliance in fiscal year 2001 with a selected provision of a law GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Nursing homes that participate in Medicare and Medicaid must periodically assess the needs of residents in order to develop an appropriate plan of care. Such resident assessments are known as the minimum data set (MDS). According to officials in the 10 states with MDS accuracy review programs in operation as of January 2001, these programs were established to set Medicaid payments and identify quality of care problems. Nine of the 10 states conduct periodic on-site reviews in all or a significant portion of their nursing homes to assess the accuracy of the MDS data. These reviews sample a home's MDS assessments to determine whether the basis for the assessments is adequately documented in residents' medical records. These reviews often include interviews of nursing home personnel familiar with residents and observations of the residents themselves. States with separate MDS review programs identified various approaches to improve MDS accuracy. State officials highlighted the on-site review process itself and provider education activities as their primary approaches. State officials also reported such remedies as requiring nursing homes to prepare a corrective action plan or imposing financial penalties on nursing homes …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress established a national child support enforcement (CSE) program in 1965 to ensure that noncustodial parents financially support their children. In fiscal year 2000, the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) estimated that $84 billion in past-due child support was owed, but never collected. The Social Security Act contains provisions to help child support agencies collect support when noncustodial parents or their income and assets are hard to find. The Act mandates that states enact laws requiring social security numbers (SSNs) on applications for a driver's license. State CSE programs rely on SSNs to locate the addresses, income, and assets of noncustodial parents. Motor vehicle agencies can be a valuable source of SSNs that CSE programs have difficulty obtaining elsewhere. The Act also requires that states suspend, withhold, or restrict the driver's licenses of noncustodial parents delinquent in child support payments. Most motor vehicle agencies that GAO surveyed collect SSNs from all applicants for driver's licenses, but OCSE has taken few steps to promote such collection in states not currently doing so. Although state officials and privacy experts expressed few concerns about motor vehicle agencies collecting …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Federal agencies need to work with other governmental organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and the private sector, both domestically and internationally, to achieve results. By focusing on accountable, results-oriented management, the federal government can use this network to deliver economical, efficient, and effective programs and services to the American people. The administration's plan to use the Executive Branch Management Scorecard to highlight agencies' progress in achieving management and performance improvements outlined in the President's Management Agenda is a promising first step. However, many of the challenges facing the federal government are long-standing and complex and will require sustained attention. Using broad standards, the scorecards in the president's budget grade agencies on the following five governmentwide initiatives: (1) strategic management of human capital, (2) competitive sourcing, (3) improved financial performance, (4) expanded electronic government, and (5) budget and performance integration. These initiatives cannot be addressed in an isolated or piecemeal fashion separate from other management challenges and high-risk areas."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO performed detailed tests of transactions that represent the underlying basis of amounts distributed to the Unemployment Trust Fund (UTF) and reviewed key reconciliations of the Internal Revenue Service records to the Department of the Treasury records. GAO found that the net federal unemployment tax revenue distributed to UTF for fiscal year 2001 is supported by the underlying records."

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) and the Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) are located at the eastern end of the City of Livermore. Recently the research facilities have been placed on heightened security alerts due to the events of September 11. To respond to the security concerns, LLNL and SNL have proposed to place East Avenue between South Vasco Road and Greenville Road under administrative control. This type of control would require security check points at both ends of this segment of East Avenue, including a truck inspection facility west of the Greenville Road intersection. In this configuration, East Avenue would be closed to general public traffic. The purpose of this traffic study is to determine the potential traffic impact of placing East Avenue under administrative control. The primary focus of the traffic study is to evaluate the proposed modifications to the geometry and operation of East Avenue between South Vasco Road and Greenville Road. The study also includes a review of a traffic study prepared for the closure of East Avenue in 1989 to determine if the assumptions and conclusions of that study remain valid.

We explore several supersymmetric alternatives to explain predictions for the cosmic ray positron excess. Light sneutrino or neutralino LSP's, and a fine-tuned model designed to provide a delta-function input, can give adequate statistical descriptions of the reported HEAT data if non-thermal production of the relic cold dark matter density dominates and/or if"boost factors" (that could originate in uncertainties from propagation or local density fluctuations) to increase the size of the signal are included. All the descriptions can be tested at the Tevatron or LHC, and some in other WIMP detecting experiments.

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The paper reviews the existing generic aging management programs (AMPs) for the reactor coolant system (RCS) components in boiling water reactors (BWRs), including the reactor pressure vessel and internals, the reactor recirculation system, and the connected piping. These programs have been evaluated in the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) report, Generic Aging Lessons Learned (GALL), NUREG-1801, for their use in the license renewal process to manage several aging effects, including loss of material, crack initiation and growth, loss of fracture toughness, loss of preload, wall thinning, and cumulative fatigue damage. The program evaluation includes a review of ten attributes (scope of program, preventive actions, parameters monitored/inspected, detection of aging effects, monitoring and trending, acceptance criteria, corrective actions, confirmative process, administrative control, and operating experience) for their effectiveness in managing a specific aging effect in a given component(s). The generic programs are based on the ASME Section XI inservice inspection requirements; industry guidelines for inspection and evaluation of aging effects in BWR reactor vessel, internals, and recirculation piping; monitoring and control of BWR water chemistry; and operating experience as reported in the USNRC generic communications and industry reports. The review concludes that all generic AMPs are acceptable for managing aging effects …

GaN has received much attention over the past few years because of several new applications, including light emitting diodes, blue laser diodes and high-power microwave transistors. One of the biggest problems is a high density of structural defects, mostly dislocations, due to a lack of a suitable lattice-matched substrate since bulk GaN is difficult to grow in large sizes. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) has been applied to study defects in plan-view and cross-sections on samples prepared by conventional techniques such as mechanical thinning and precision ion milling. The density of dislocations close to the sample surface of a 1 mm-thick HVPE sample was in the range of 3x109 cm-2. All three types of dislocations were present in these samples, and almost 50 percent were screw dislocations. Our studies suggest that the core structure of screw dislocations in the same material might differ when the material is grown by different methods.

The 2001 Wastewater Land Application Site Performance Reports for the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory describe site conditions for the facilities with State of Idaho Wastewater Land Application Permits. Permit-required monitoring data are summarized, and any permit exceedences or environmental impacts relating to the operation of any of the facilities during the 2001 permit year are discussed. Additionally, any special studies performed at the facilities, which related to the operation of the facility or application of the wastewater, are discussed.

Interim storage of the remote-handled transuranic (RH/TRU) waste is needed at Argonne National Laboratory-East (ANL-E). Two on-site facilities, the northwest (NW) vaults in the 317 Area and the converted spent nuclear fuel pool in Building 331, were identified as potential storage locations through previous studies. To assist the decision making process of selecting a storage location, radiological risk assessments were conducted to analyze potential radiation exposures that would be associated with storage of the RH/TRU waste in these two facilities. Three drum storage scenarios (one for the 317 Area and two for Building 331) considering different drum handling procedures and stacking patterns were developed. Time-motion information on worker activities that would occur in the procedures was collected and recorded in spreadsheets. Using the time-motion information, potential external doses were estimated for the involved workers for each step in the procedures. The sum of the potential external doses over all the activity steps gave the total collective dose for each scenario. The results show that during the storage phase, storing waste drums in half-liners in Building 331 would result in the lowest collective radiation exposure; however, it would also require the most human resources. When retrieving waste drums for off-site shipment …

Emphasis was placed on current unpublished research and discussion of the future target areas in this field.

ENERGY STAR(Registered Trademark) is a voluntary labeling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products, buildings and practices. Operated jointly by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), ENERGY STAR labels exist for more than thirty products, spanning office equipment, residential heating and cooling equipment, commercial and residential lighting, home electronics, and major appliances. This report presents savings estimates for a subset of ENERGY STAR program activities, focused primarily on labeled products. We present estimates of the energy, dollar and carbon savings achieved by the program in the year 2000, what we expect in 2001, and provide savings forecasts for two market penetration scenarios for the period 2001 to 2020. The target market penetration forecast represents our best estimate of future ENERGY STAR savings. It is based on realistic market penetration goals for each of the products. We also provide a forecast under the assumption of 100 percent market penetration; that is, we assume that all purchasers buy ENERGY STAR-compliant products instead of standard efficiency products throughout the analysis period.

Three generations of synchrotron radiation sources have revolutionized our understanding of various correlations in the equilibrium phase of materials through x-ray imaging, spectroscopy and scattering techniques. It is anticipated that new sources based on energy-recovery linacs (ERLs) and x-ray free-electron lasers (FELs) will deliver x-ray pulses that are below a few-hundred femtoseconds in length and have very high coherence. These sources will extend and broaden our current knowledge of materials science. But more importantly, it is expected that these sources will provide the first glimpse of nonequilibrium processes in materials, including nonthermal melting, metal-insulator transitions involving nonequilibrium phases, laser-induced catalytic oxidation, and determining the structure of imperfect nanoparticles lacking crystalline structure.

This Topical Report is presented to satisfy reporting requirements in the Statement of work section J.5 page 120 per Department of Energy contract DE-AC26-01NT41093. The project does not contain any imperial research data. This report describes the assembly of Commercial off the shelf (COTS) items configured in a unique manner to represent new and innovative technology in the service of size reduction and material handling at DOE sites, to assist in the D&D effort currently underway at the designated DOE Facilities.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

We demonstrate the application code ''rap'' which is part of the ''Overture'' library. A CAD geometry imported from an IGES file is first cleaned up and simplified to suit the needs of mesh generation. Thereafter, the topology of the model is computed and a water-tight surface triangulation is created on the CAD surface. This triangulation is used to speed up the projection of points onto the CAD surface during the generation of overlapping surface grids. From each surface grid, volume grids are grown into the domain using a hyperbolic marching procedure. The final step is to fill any remaining parts of the interior with background meshes.

In radiation shielding applications we need photon and electron data, as well as computer codes that utilize these data, in order to predict results inexpensively and safely. In this paper we will first cover the current status of available photon and electron data that have only recently been adopted for inclusion in ENDF/B-VI, with emphasis on the improved detail that is included in these data bases. Next we will cover the availability of these data bases and computer codes that use them.

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This investigation has focused on the effects of fluid flow on solids deposition from solutions that simulate the feed to the 2H evaporator at the Savannah River Site. Literature studies indicate that the fluid flow (or shear) affects particle-particle and particle-surface interactions and thus the phenomena of particle aggregation in solution and particle deposition (i.e., scale formation) onto solid surfaces. Experimental tests were conducted with two configurations: (1) using a rheometer to provide controlled shear conditions and (2) using controlled flow of reactive solution through samples of stainless steel tubing. All tests were conducted at 80 C and at high silicon and aluminum concentrations, 0.133 M each, in solutions containing 4 M sodium hydroxide and 1 A4 each of sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite. Two findings from these experiments are important for consideration in developing approaches for reducing or eliminating evaporator scaling problems: (1) The rheometer tests suggested that for the conditions studied, maximum solids deposition occurs at a moderate shear rate, approximately 12 s{sup -1}. That value is expected to be on the order of shear rates that will occur in various parts of the evaporator system; for instance, a 6 gal/min single-phase liquid flow through the 2-in. lift …

Omnibus energy legislation (H.R. 4) that is now in conference would expand energy tax incentives significantly. The House passed the bill on August 2, 2001, and the Senate approved its version April 25, 2002. Several energy tax issues are addressed in these bills: 1) tax incentives to increase the supply of oil and gas, and the demand for coal; 2) energy tax issues relating to energy conservation and energy efficiency; 3) energy tax issues relating to alternative fuels; 4) selected issues relating to electricity restructuring; and 5) expiring energy tax provisions.