Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided a list of potential questions that Senate committees could use to help determine the leadership and management experiences and capabilities of nominees to leadership posts in major executive branch agencies. These questions cover a wide range of management-related issues in different organizations within each agency and, therefore, would not be relevant to all nominees. GAO suggests that these questions be used to prompt informal and formal discussions on management challenges."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The number of federal and state inmates released to communities increased more than threefold from 1980 to 1998. Since 1980, recidivism rates have been about 40 percent. Within the group of recidivists, the number of offenders reincarcerated for violating parole or other release conditions rose more than sevenfold from 1980 to 1998. Furthermore, such reincarcerations represent an increasing proportion of all prison admissions. The Bureau of Justice Statistics' (BJS) 1997 survey found that most federal offenders (62 percent) were imprisoned for drug offense convictions, and almost half (47 percent) of all state offenders were incarcerated for violent offense convictions. Also, the majority of inmates in both correctional systems--federal inmates (73 percent) and state inmates (83 percent)--had some history of illegal drug use. BJS' survey also showed that 27 percent of both federal and state exit cohort inmates participated in vocational training programs, and 11 percent of federal and 2 percent of state exit cohort inmates worked in prison industry jobs. In addition, 33 percent of the federal inmates and 36 percent of the state inmates participated in residential in-patient treatment programs for alcohol and drug abuse. …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In fiscal year 1999, the federal government provided housing assistance to about 5.2 million renter households at a cost of about $28.7 billion in outlays and tax credits. Of this amount, more than $15 billion supported housing units developed under production programs that no longer receive appropriations to produce new or rehabilitated units. This report focuses on six programs that continue to increase the number of households assisted by the federal government: the housing voucher program, which is the largest source of federal funds for housing assistance, and five production programs, that now receive federal funds to produce new or rehabilitate units. GAO found that production programs are more expensive than housing vouchers. GAO estimates that the total per-unit costs for housing production programs are from 32 to 59 percent greater than for housing vouchers in the first year and from 12 to 27 percent greater over 30 years. If costs were the only consideration, the production programs reviewed in this report should have been replaced with vouchers. However, in many markets, production programs are the only sources of new affordable rental units, and use restrictions will keep …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "According to the Navy, the primary purpose of forward-deployed naval forces is to project power from the sea to influence events ashore. To be successful, naval forces must be able to gain access to, and operate in the coastal areas of potential adversaries. Consequently, they must be able to detect and neutralize enemy sea mines and other antiship weapons. Finally, they must be able to launch and support offensive operations against enemy forces ashore. This report assesses the Navy's (1) existing mine countermeasures, (2) antisubmarine warfare, (3) ship self-defense, (4) surface fire support capabilities, and (5) progress in the acquisition programs the Navy is pursuing to address shortfalls in these areas. GAO found that the Navy's current force of specialized ships, helicopters, and other assets developed to detect and neutralize enemy sea mines lack several key warfighting capabilities it needs for shoreline operations. Although the Navy is making some progress in overcoming shortfalls in antisubmarine warfare, a lack of resources and priorities among competing programs persists. The Navy's ship defense capabilities against cruise missiles are marginal, and surface ships will be at risk when operating within …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the Department of Commerce's National Technical Information Service (NTIS), which is a permanent repository and principal disseminator of scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related information. NTIS acquires research reports primarily from federal agencies and their contractors and grantees as well as from international sources. GAO discusses (1) the various functions of NTIS; (2) the quantity, age, and demand trends of reports in NTIS' repository; (3) the extent to which the reports in NTIS' repository are readily available from other public sources; and (4) whether federal agencies are sending their reports to NTIS for sale to the public, as required by law. GAO found that NTIS provides its basic statutory clearinghouse repository function of collecting and disseminating full-text paper reports and various other fee-based services for agencies. These include brokerage services, distribution services, and Web services. NTIS has about 2.5 million reports in its repository that are to be retained permanently. About 75 percent of the reports are more than 12 years old, and NTIS has sold one or more copies of about eight percent of its 2.5 million reports. Of the 1.8 million reports …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report discusses Multilateral Development Banks (MDB), which provide financial support for projects and programs that promote social and economic progress in developing countries. GAO provides (1) summaries of each bank's mission, function, and operations; (2) key bank financial data covering the last three fiscal years; and (3) information on the U.S. investment in capital and voting percentages in each MDB. GAO found that MDBs are autonomous international financial entities that finance economic and social development projects and programs in developing countries. The MDBs primarily fund these projects and programs using money borrowed from world capital markets or money provided by the governments of member countries. MDBs enable developing countries to access foreign currency resources on more advantageous terms than would be available to them on the basis of their own international credit standing. The MDBs provide assistance in the form of loans, equity investments, loan and equity guarantees, and technical assistance. Direct lending is the primary vehicle of development assistance. The United States is the largest member in most of the MDBs discussed in this report, contributing significant amounts to support the missions of the …

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed violation of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998 and noted that, during the last administration, the acting Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (Institute) had served longer than the 210-day period allowed under the Act. However, with the recent Presidential transition, an acting Director may, as of January 20, 2001, once again temporarily serve for the time period allowed under the Presidential inaugural transition provision. Therefore, no action need be taken at this time since there is no current violation of the Act."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Each year, the Department of Defense (DOD) makes about 200,000 decisions to grant, deny, or revoke security clearances for its civilian, military, and contractor personnel. Through a process called adjudication, DOD personnel security specialists review the results of employees' background investigations and determine whether the individual is eligible for a clearance. This report (1) assesses whether DOD's adjudicators consistently document all significant adverse security conditions when determining individuals' eligibility for top secret security clearances and (2) identifies factors that hinder the effectiveness of DOD's adjudicative process. GAO found that DOD adjudicators have not consistently documented all significant adverse security conditions present in investigative case files when determining individuals' eligibility for top secret security clearances. DOD has been unable to demonstrate that it fully considered all significant adverse conditions often not documented, including financial matters. Several factors have hindered the effectiveness of DOD's adjudicative process. The Assistant Secretary has not (1) used common explanatory guidance, such as that contained in the Adjudicative Desk Reference he developed, or issued any other clarifying guidance to promote consistency in applying the federal guidelines; (2) required adjudicators to take DOD adjudicative …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has had longstanding problems in reconciling the transaction activity in its Fund Balance with Treasury accounts. These reconciliation problems hamper DOD's ability to prepare auditable financial statements and have prompted GAO to place DOD financial management on its list of government activities at high risk for waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement. In August 1998, DOD developed a strategic plan to improve the reconciliation process for the activity in its Fund Balance with Treasury accounts. DOD reported that the Defense Finance and Accounting Service's (DFAS) Denver Center, which provides support for the Air Force, has made the most progress in implementing this plan and that its process for reconciling the activity in the Air Force General Funds is more comprehensive than that of the other DOD components. This report reviews the Denver center's reconciliation processes to determine (1) the progress the Denver center has made in reconciling the transaction activity in the Air Force General Funds and (2) whether the Denver center's reconciliation concepts, policies, and practices could be used in reconciling the Fund Balance with Treasury activity of other DOD components. …

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reflects the results of a collaborative effort between GAO and representatives of the Secretary of Education. As required by the Higher Education Amendments of 1998, GAO formed a study group to identify and evaluate a means of establishing a market mechanism for the delivery of student loans. This study group consisted of representatives of the Department of the Treasury, Office of Management and Budget, Congressional Budget Office, entities making Federal Family Education Loan Program (FFELP) loans and other entities in the financial services community, and other participants in the student loan market. The group met as a whole four times before the public release of a draft of this report, and various group members corresponded with GAO and Education between group meetings as well. The mandate called for the evaluation of at least three different market mechanisms relative to 13 criteria. In consultation with the study group, GAO selected five general models for further evaluation--adjustments to the current system and four additional market mechanism models. Adjustments to the current system, in which information would be collected from current market transactions for use in determining …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Oversight of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) generally comes from two select committees of Congress and the CIA's Inspector General. GAO has broad authority to evaluate CIA programs. In reality, however, GAO faces both legal and practical limitations on its ability to review these programs. For example, it has no access to some CIA "unvouchered" accounts and cannot compel its access to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information. In addition, as a practical matter, GAO is limited by the CIA's level of cooperation, which has varied through the years. GAO has not actively audited the CIA since the early 1960s, when it discontinued such work because CIA was not providing it with enough access to information to allow GAO to do its job. The issue has arisen since then from time to time as GAO's work has required some level of access to CIA programs and information. However, given a lack of requests from Congress for GAO to do specific work at the CIA and its limited resources, GAO made a decision not to pursue the issue further. Today, GAO's dealings with the CIA are mostly limited to information …

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Two synthetic data sets were examined to study the possible methods for distinguishing the effects of changes in saturation, and changes in pore pressure, on seismic velocity and impedance measurements. The results show that the results obtained previously on the dependence of laboratory velocity data on changes in saturation carry over without change to the data in these data sets. The assumption in this case is that the only data available are the seismic velocities. This situation can arise in cross-well seismic tomography. Of more direct interest to this project is how these methods and results should change when the data are instead seismic impedance measurements. The main conclusions are that the most appropriate plotting methods for seismic impedance data in order to distinguish changes in saturation, changes in pressure, and saturation changes from pressure changes are ({rho}{mu}, {lambda}/{mu}) and ({mu}/{lambda}, {rho}{mu}{sup 2}/{lambda}). All of these plotting coordinates can be computed easily from the impedance data {rho}{nu}{sub p} and {rho}{nu}{sub s}, since {rho}{mu} = ({rho}{nu}{sub s}){sup 2}, and {rho}{lambda} = ({rho}{nu}{sub p}){sup 2} - 2({rho}{nu}{sub s}){sup 2}, while {lambda}/{mu} = {rho}{lambda}/{rho}{mu} and {rho}{mu}{sup 2}/{lambda} = ({rho}{mu}){sup 2}/{rho}{lambda}. These choices are not the only possibilities, but they seem to give the …

(1) LLNL measured the material removal rate from stainless steel, silicon carbide, rhenium, N5, hastalloy X, and titanium as a function of pulse fluence at a wavelength of 810 nm for pulse durations of 150 fs, 1.5 ps, 20 ps, and 500 ps. The spot size of the beam used was 150 microns in diameter and the nominal material thickness was 1-2 mm. These experiments were performed on the existing 1 kHz laser system. Holes of different penetration depths were obtained to ascertain change in removal rate as a function of depth. Measurements included electron microscopy of selected samples. (2) The experiments in I were repeated for all materials but select pulse durations with the sample in a vacuum of base pressure 10 mTorr to determine if hole quality and ablation rate is improved. (3) LLNL measured material removal rate from stainless steel, silicon carbide, rhenium, N5, hastalloy X, and titanium as a function of pulse fluence at a wavelength of 532 nm for pulse duration at 200 ns. The spot size of the beam used was 200 microns in diameter and the material thickness was the same as in task I. Holes of different penetration depths were obtained to …

Solid-state lasers have held great promise for the generation of high-average-power, high-quality output beams for a number of decades. However, the inherent difficulty of scaling the active solid-state gain media while continuing to provide efficient cooling has limited demonstrated powers to <5kW. Even at the maximum demonstrated average powers, the output is most often delivered as continuous wave (CW) or as small energy pulses at high pulse repetition frequency (PRF) and the beam divergence is typically >10X the diffraction limit. Challenges posed by optical distortions and depolarization arising from internal temperature gradients in the gain medium of a continuously cooled system are only increased for laser designs that would attempt to deliver the high average power in the form of high energy pulses (>25J) from a single coherent optical aperture. Although demonstrated phase-locking of multiple laser apertures may hold significant promise for the future scaling of solid-state laser systems,1 the continuing need for additional technical development and innovation coupled with the anticipated complexity of these systems effectively limits this approach for near-term multi-kW laser operation outside of a laboratory setting. We have developed and demonstrated a new operational mode for solid-state laser systems in which the cooling of the gain …

Embedded gold and mechanical deformation in silica were used to investigate initiation of laser-induced damage at 3.55-nm (7.6 ns). The nanoparticle-covered surfaces were coated with between 0 and 500 nm of SiO{sub 2} by e-beam deposition. The threshold for observable damage and initiation site morphology for these ''engineered'' surfaces was determined. The gold nanoparticle coated surfaces with 500nm SiO{sub 2} coating exhibited pinpoint damage threshold of <0.7 J/cm{sup 2} determined by light scattering and Nomarski microscopy. The gold nanoparticle coated surfaces with the 100nm SiO{sub 2} coatings exhibited what nominally appeared to be film exfoliation damage threshold of 19 J/cm{sup 2} via light scattering and Nomarski microscopy. With atomic force microscopy pinholes could be detected at fluences greater than 7 J/cm{sup 2} and blisters at fluences greater than 3 J/cm{sup 2} on the 100 nm-coated surfaces. A series of mechanical indents and scratches were made in the fused silica substrates using a nano-indentor. Plastic deformation without cracking led to damage thresholds of -25 J/cm{sup 2}, whereas indents and scratches with cracking led to damage thresholds of only {approx}5 J/cm{sup 2}. Particularly illuminating was the deterministic damage of scratches at the deepest end of the scratch, as if the scratch acted …

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The NSF Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO) is supporting research on advanced adaptive optics technologies. CfAO research activities include development and characterization of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) deformable mirror (DM) technology, as well as development and characterization of high-resolution adaptive optics systems using liquid crystal (LC) spatial light modulator (SLM) technology. This paper presents an overview of the CfAO advanced adaptive optics technology development activities including current status and future plans.

As part of the Dual Axis Radiography Hydrotest Facility, Phase II (DARHT II) multipulse Bremsstrahlung target, we have been performing an investigation of (1) the possible adverse effects of backstreaming ion emission from the Bremsstrahlung converter target and (2) maintaining sufficient target density to ensure dose in latter pulses. Theory predictions show that the first effect would primarily be manifested in the static focusing system as a rapidly varying x-ray spot. From experiments performed on ETA-II, we have shown that the first effect is not strongly present when the beam initially interacts with the target. Electron beam pulses delivered to the target after formation of a plasma are strongly affected, however. Secondly, we have performed studies of the effect of the time varying target density on dose and seek to demonstrate various techniques for maintaining that density. Measurements are presented of the target density as a function of time and are compared with our hydrodynamic models.

The 28 MHz accelerating system consists of a quarter wave cavity driven by an inductively coupled 100kW tetrode amplifer and 1kW solid state driver amplifer. 40dB of rf feedback closed around the cavity and amplifers reduces small perturbations within the loop by a factor of 100, and reduces the time required to shift the phase at transition by a factor of 10, limited by the saturation of the drive chain. The cavity is tuned over a 200kHz range by a mechanical tuner which varies the gap capacitance. Broadband HOM damping is provided by two orthogonal loop coupled high pass filters. Design parameters and commissioning results are presented.

We review the work carried out in the X13 R&D Straight Section of the NSLS X-Ray Ring on small gap in-vacuum undulators (IVUNs). Then we discuss: (1) plans to replace the pure permanent magnet undulator in X13 by a hybrid design providing stronger magnetic fields, enhancing the tunability of the device; (2) plans to install hybrid IVUNs in the two RF straights of the X-Ray Ring, increasing the number of insertion devices in the XRay Ring to eight; (3) the possibility of reducing the vertical beta function in the X13 straight from 0.33 m down to 0.16 m. This reduction in beta function would allow us to decrease the usable undulator gap from 3mm down to 2mm, further increasing the tuning range.

Certain longitudinal instabilities in the stretched bunches of the National Synchrotron Light Source Vacuum Ultra-Violet ring are described and simulated using a code for the integration of the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation (these proceedings). Results for the microwave instability driven by broadband impedance, instability driven by high-Q radio-frequency modes, and response functions in stretched bunches, are compared with measurements from the ring.

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A conceptual RF System design provides a basis for a more detailed engineering study to explore the technical issues involved in fabricating and testing a capture RF system in a proton-driver target experiment. A large-bore 71 MHz cavity design is detailed which is self-consistent with a proton-driver target experiment at BNL. Analysis of cell to cell coupling in a linac composed of a string of such cavitites is presented.