A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the amount of excess payments and underpayments made by the Department of Defense (DOD) to its contractors during fiscal year 1999. The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS)--Columbus Center, Ohio reports that contractors repaid $670 million in fiscal year 1999 and closer to a billion dollars--$901 million--in fiscal year 2000. The higher amount for fiscal year 2000 reflects the inclusion of repayments made through offsets of other payments ($269 million) in addition to the amount repaid by check ($632 million). Although small in relation to total contract payments, these amounts represent a sizable amount of cash in the hands of contractors beyond what is intended to finance and pay for the goods and services DOD is purchasing. The 39 large contractors covered by GAO's review returned excess payments totaling $351 million in fiscal year 1999. Seventy-seven percent of these excess payments stemmed from contract administration actions and 18 percent stemmed from billing or payment errors. Large contractors reported resolving $41 million in underpayments during fiscal year 1999. Contractors attributed most underpayments to payment errors made by DFAS--Columbus."

Later phases of the High Current Transport Experiment (HCX) at LBNL will employ superconducting magnetic quadrupole lenses to focus an intense, heavy-ion beam over approximately 50 lattice periods (100 quadrupoles). Here they present a characterization of a baseline quadrupole design suitable for transporting a single, low-energy ({approx} 2 MeV), high-current ({approx} 800 mA) heavy-ion (K{sup +}) beam that will be provided from an existing injector and beam matching section. For optimal performance in this application, a compact quadrupole magnet providing high focusing strength and high field quality is required. The reference parameters that they have chosen take into account magnet development work by AML, LLNL, and MIT and result in a transport lattice well matched to programmatic needs with a lattice period of approximately 50 cm. The goal of this note is to introduce a common framework where the magnetic performance of different designs can be compared. In that regard, they try to avoid the details of an earlier parameter note [1] where provisions for tweaks in magnet excitation, cryostat assembly, etc. were discussed in fairly general terms. This note is not intended to be a final specification for the HCX quadrupoles to be constructed or to be the sole …

The objective of this research was to conduct a systematic study to relate injection molding parameters to properties of blends of starch and synthetic polymer. From this study, we wished to develop a thorough understanding of the injection molding process and gain significant insight into designing molds and aiding in developing products cheaply and efficiently.

The design of high power UV laser systems is limited to a large extent by the laser-initiated damage performance of transmissive fused silica optical components. The 3{omega} (i.e., the third harmonic of the primary laser frequency) damage growth mitigation LDRD effort focused on understanding and reducing the rapid growth of laser-initiated surface damage on fused silica optics. Laser-initiated damage can be discussed in terms of two key issues: damage initiated at some type of precursor and rapid damage growth of the damage due to subsequent laser pulses. The objective of the LDRD effort has been the elucidation of laser-induced damage processes in order to quantify and potentially reduce the risk of damage to fused silica surfaces. The emphasis of the first two years of this effort was the characterization and reduction of damage initiation. In spite of significant reductions in the density of damage sites on polished surfaces, statistically some amount of damage initiation should always be expected. The early effort therefore emphasized the development of testing techniques that quantified the statistical nature of damage initiation on optical surfaces. This work led to the development of an optics lifetime modeling strategy that has been adopted by the NIF project to …

This report seeks to respond to inquiries from congressional staff who request information about major legislation affecting small business.

Ultrasonic (UT) and computed tomography (CT) evaluation of a P/M ring gear was performed at LLNL to characterize the gear and to determine the relative sensitivity of the two techniques to defects of interest. The features of concern lie at the root of the teeth and in layers along the sides of the teeth. These layers can be detected using metalography but success depends on chance and the number of sections polished. Much of the current focus is on improving the sensitivity of the CT scan and on better ways to evaluate the large data sets obtained. The initial data obtained showed anomalies close to the gear teeth as expected. Later data showed anomalies at other locations and in other orientations. Figure 3 shows a radiograph with vertical and horizontal CT slices through regions with anomalies.

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This report discusses general information about individual retirement accounts (IRAs), established by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (P.L. 93-406) to promote retirement saving; the accounts were limited at first to workers (and spouses) who lacked employer pension coverage.

A research program to investigate the performance and potential for debris formation of Service Level I coating systems used in nuclear power plant containment is being performed at the Savannah River Technology Center. The research activities are aligned to address phenomena important to cause coating disbondment as identified by the Industry Coatings Expert Panel. The period of interest for performance covers the time from application of the coating through 40 years of service, followed by a medium-to-large break loss-of-coolant accident scenario, which is a design basis accident (DBA) scenario. The interactive program elements are described in this report and the application of these elements to evaluate the performance of the specific coating system of Phenoline 305 epoxy-phenolic topcoat over Carbozinc 11 primer on a steel substrate. This system is one of the predominant coating systems present on steel substrates in NPP containment.

The Broad, long term objective of the research plan is to develop exquisitely selective polypeptide metal chelators for the remediation of aqueous systems. A variety of polypeptide chelators will be developed and optimized ranging from antibodies to small peptides. Then, through unique molecular engineering approaches developed in our laboratories, the polypeptide chelators will be anchored directly on the surface of the cells that produce them. Thus, instead of using isolated biomolecules we will employ inexpensive genetically engineered whole cell adsorbents. Following a simple, easily scaleable treatment, the engineered cells can be used to manufacture an inexpensive, particulate adsorbent for metal removal.

This report documents material balance calculations for the Americium/Curium vitrification process and describes the basis used to make the calculations.

The database documented in this numeric data package, a revision to a database originally published by the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center (CDIAC) in 1995, consists of annual estimates, from 1850 through 1990, of the net flux of carbon between terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere resulting from deliberate changes in land cover and land use, especially forest clearing for agriculture and the harvest of wood for wood products or energy. The data are provided on a year-by-year basis for nine regions (North America, South and Central America, Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Tropical Africa, the Former Soviet Union, China, South and Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Developed Region) and the globe. Some data begin earlier than 1850 (e.g., for six regions, areas of different ecosystems are provided for the year 1700) or extend beyond 1990 (e.g., fuelwood harvest in South and Southeast Asia, by forest type, is provided through 1995). The global net flux during the period 1850 to 1990 was 124 Pg of carbon (1 petagram = 10{sup 15} grams). During this period, the greatest regional flux was from South and Southeast Asia (39 Pg of carbon), while the smallest regional flux was from North Africa and …

In the modern urban setting, most individuals spend about 80% of their time indoors and are therefore exposed to the indoor environment to a much greater extent than to the outdoors (Lebowitz 1992). Concomitant with this increased habitation in urban buildings, there have been numerous reports of adverse health effects related to indoor air quality (IAQ) (sick buildings). Most of these buildings were built in the last two decades and were constructed to be energy-efficient. The quality of air in the indoor environment can be altered by a number of factors: release of volatile compounds from furnishings, floor and wall coverings, and other finishing materials or machinery; inadequate ventilation; poor temperature and humidity control; re-entrainment of outdoor volatile organic compounds (VOCs); and the contamination of the indoor environment by microbes (particularly fungi). Armstrong Laboratory (1992) found that the three most frequent causes of IAQ are (1) inadequate design and/or maintenance of the heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, (2) a shortage of fresh air, and (3) lack of humidity control. A similar study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH 1989) recognized inadequate ventilation as the most frequent source of IAQ problems in the work environment (52% …

The PVMaT 5A2 program at ASE Americas is a three-year program that addresses topics in the development of manufacturing systems, low-cost processing approaches, and flexible manufacturing methods. The three-year objectives are as follows: (1) implementation of computer-aided manufacturing systems, including Statistical Process Control, to aid in electrical and mechanical yield improvements of 10%, (2) development and implementation of ISO 9000 and ISO 14000, (3) deployment of wafer production from large-diameter (up to 1 m) EFG cylinders and wafer thicknesses down to 95 microns, (4) development of low-damage, high-yield laser-cutting methods for thin wafers, (5) cell designs for >15% cell efficiencies on 100-micron-thick EFG wafers, (6) development of Rapid Thermal Anneal processing for thin high-efficiency EFG cells, and (7) deployment of flexible manufacturing methods for diversification in wafer size and module design. In the second year of this program, the significant accomplishments in each of three tasks that cover these areas are as follows: Task 4-Manufacturing systems, Task 5-Low-cost processes, and Task 6-Flexible manufacturing.