A briefing report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on its analysis of federal counterterrorist exercises."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the level of federal assistance provided to Suffolk County, New York, as well as data on incomes and the distribution of population within the county."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed five of the Legal Services Corporation's (LSC) largest grantees, focusing on whether the grantee: (1) properly documented the client's eligibility; (2) provided legal services within the past year; and (3) reported duplicate cases."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO: (1) provided information on the usefulness of publicly available environmental information to competitive intelligence professionals; and (2) assessed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) efforts to address industries' concerns about providing the public with access to sensitive business information."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the activities of the U.S. Export Assistance Centers (USEAC) network, focusing on: (1) the nature of coordination among the federal agencies participating in the USEAC network and between these agencies and nonfederal export-service providers; and (2) USEAC assistance to firms that export services and to firms that are not ready to export but show potential and interest in doing so. The three federal agencies participating in the USEAC network include the Department of Commerce, the Export-Import Bank, and the Small Business Administration (SBA)."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the progress of the Air Force's depot maintenance reform initiatives to improve the efficiency and responsiveness of its industrial operations."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided a historical analysis of the Navy's decisions to lease Sealift tankers, Maritime Prepositioning Ships, T-5 replacement tankers, and Chouest specialized support vessels, focusing on: (1) the basis and support for the Navy's lease decisions; (2) past concerns regarding those decisions; and (3) legislative and regulatory changes that affect current and future leasing decisions."

A new mold material has been developed for use in making rare-earth permanent magnet components with precise dimensions in the 10 to 1000 µm range by hot-forging. These molds are made from molds poly(methyl)methacrylate (PMMA) made by deep x-ray lithography (DXRL). An alumina bonded with colloidal silica has been developed for use in these molds. This material can be heated to 950°C without changing dimensions where it develops the strength needed to withstand the hot-fmging conditions (750°C, 100 MPa). In addition, it disintegrates in HF so that parts can be easily removed after forging.

The NIF Power Conditioning System (PCS) is required to deliver -68 kJ to each of the 3840 flashlamp pairs in the NIF laser in a current pulse with a peak of -500 kA and rise time of- 150 µs. The PCS will consist of 192 modules each of which drive 20 lamp-pairs. Each module will basically be a 6 rnF capacitor bank with a nominal charge voltage of 23.5 kV which is switched by a single pressurized air gas switch to 20 RG-220 cables that are connected to individual lamp loads. In addition each module will have a number of subsystems including; a lamp pre-ionization system, power supplies, isolation circuits, trigger systems, safety dump systems, gas system, and an embedded control system. A module will also include components whose primary function is to limit fault currents and thus minimize collateral damage in faults. In the Prototype Development and Testing effort at Sandia National Laboratories all of these were integrated into a single system and proper fimctionality was demonstrated. Extensive testing was done at nominal operating levels into resistive dummy loads and some testing in fault modes was also done. A description of the system and a summary of testing is …

High resolution 2D imaging experiment on the saturated 18.9 nm Ni-like soft X-ray laser is presented. The imaging experiment allows measurement of the absolute output energy and intensity of the X-ray laser, while it gives detailed information on the spatial characteristics of the X-ray laser for understanding the physics and further improving the performance of the X-ray laser.

A thin film of liquid metal serves as a grazing incident liquid metal mirror (GILMM) for robust final optics of an inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant. The amount of laser light the mirror can withstand, called the damage limit, of a sodium film 85{degree} from normal arbitrarily set by surface temperature rise of 200 C to limit liquid ablation is 57 J/cm{sup 2} normal to the beam for a 20 ns pulse and 1.3 J/cm{sup 2} for a 10 ps pulse of 0.35 pm light. Liquid aluminum can handle 106 J/cm{sup 2}. The damage limit actually should be set by avoiding liquid ablation due to the rapid surface heating which is expected to result in even higher temperatures rises than 200 C and even higher power densities. The liquid surface is kept flat to the required accuracy by a combination of polished substrate, adaptive optics, surface tension and low Reynolds number, laminar flow in the film. The film's substrate must be polished to {+-}0.015 m. Then surface tension keeps the surface smooth over short distances (<10 mm) and low Reynolds number laminar flow keeps the surface smooth by keeping the film thickness constant to less than {+-} 0.01 pm …

The objective of this project is to increase the recoverable heavy oil reserves within sections of the Wilmington Oil Field, near Long Beach, California. This is realized through the testing and application of advanced reservoir characterization and thermal production technologies. It is hoped that the successful application of these technologies will result in their implementation throughout the Wilmington Field and through technology transfer, will be extended to increase the recoverable oil reserves in other slope and basin clastic (SBC) reservoirs. The existing steamflood in the Tar zone of Fault Block (FB) II-A has been relatively insufficient because of several producability problems which are common in SBC reservoir; inadequate characterization of the heterogeneous turbidite sands, high permeability thief zones, low gravity oil and non-uniform distribution of the remaining oil. This has resulted in poor sweep efficiency, high steam-oil ratios, and early breakthrough. Operational problems related to steam breakthrough, high reservoir pressure, and unconsolidated sands have caused premature well and downhole equipment failures. In aggregate, these reservoir and operational constraints have resulted in increased operating costs and decreased recoverable reserves.

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.

Fermilab experiment E866 has performed a precision measurement of the ratio of Drell-Yan yields from 800 GeV/c protons incident on deuterium and hydrogen targets. The measurement is used to determine the ratio of down antiquarks({bar d}) to up antiquarks({bar u}) in the proton over a broad range in the fraction of the proton momentum carried by the antiquark, 0.02 < x < 0.345. For x < 0.15, the data is in reasonable agreement with pre-existing parton distributions while for x > 0.20 the data is much closer to unity than these parton functions had indicated. The light quark asymmetry provides valuable information on the relative role perturbative and non-perturbative mechanisms play in generating the nucleon sea. A proposal to extend the Drell-Yan measurement to higher values of x using 120 GeV protons from the Fermilab main injector will be discussed.

In this paper we describe the difficulties inherent in making accurate, reproducible measurements of message-passing performance. We describe some of the mistakes often made in attempting such measurements and the consequences of such mistakes. We describe mpptest, a suite of performance measurement programs developed at Argonne National Laboratory, that attempts to avoid such mistakes and obtain reproducible measures of MPI performance that can be useful to both MPI implementers and MPI application writers. We include a number of illustrative examples of its use.

Partitioning and transmutation strategies are under study in several countries as a means of reducing the long-term hazards of spent fuel and other high-level nuclear waste. Various reactor and accelerator-driven system concepts have been proposed to transmute the long-lived radioactive nuclei of waste into stable or short-lived species. Among these concepts, the accelerator-driven transmutation of waste (ATW) system has been proposed by LANL for rapid destruction of transuranic actinides and long-lived fission products ({sup 99}Tc and {sup 129}I).The current reference ATW concept employs a subcritical, liquid metal cooled, fast-spectrum nuclear subsystem. Because the discharged fuel is recycled, analysis of ATW nuclear performance requires modeling of the external cycle as well as the in-core fuel management. The fuel cycle analysis of ATW can be performed rigorously using Monte Carlo calculations coupled with detailed depletion calculations. However, the inefficiency of this approach makes it impractical, particularly in view of (a) the large number of fuel cycle calculations needed for design optimization and (b) the need to represent complex in-core and out-of-core fuel cycle operations. To meet the need for design-oriented capabilities, tools previously developed for fast reactor calculations are being adapted for application to ATW. Here we describe the extension and application …

This report summarizes an assessment conducted by Environmental Technologies Alternatives, Inc., under a subcontract to Argonne National Laboratory. The project was conducted in two phases. An assessment of alternative technologies for recycling of prompt non-tire rubber was conducted in the first phase, and an experimental program focusing on a new technology called the catalytic Regeneration Process offered the greatest opportunity for recovery of high-value recyclable rubber material. An experimental and large-scale test program was undertaken to further delineate the economic potential as an essential step leading to commercial deployment and to determine the course of continued development of the technology by the private sector. The experimental program defined process-operating conditions for the technology and verified the degree of devulcanisation achievable for two rubber compounds: ethylene-propylene-nonconjugated-diene monomer (EPDM) and neoprene. To determine product acceptance, samples of devulcanized EPDM and neoprene were prepared and used in factory trials for the production of automotive moldings (EPDM) and fiber-filled belting (neoprene). The factory trials indicated that the physical properties of the products were acceptable in both cases. The appearance of molded and calendared surface finishes was acceptable, while that of extruded finishes was unsatisfactory. The fiber-filled neoprene belting application offers the greatest economic potential. …

Electron beam temperature, {beta}{perpendicular} (= v{perpendicular}/v), is important to control for the development of high dose flash radiographic bremsstrahlung sources. At high voltage (> 5 MV) increasing electron beam temperature has a serious deleterious effect on dose production. The average and time resolved behavior of beam temperature was measured during radiographic experiments on the HERMES III accelerator (10 MV, 50 kA, 70 ns). A linear array of thermoluminescent dosimeters (TLDs) were used to estimate the time integrated average of beam temperature. On and off-axis photoconducting diamond (PCD) detectors were used to measure the time resolved bremsstrahlung dose rate, which is dependent on beam energy and temperature. The beam temperature can be determined by correlating PCD response with accelerator voltage and current and also by analyzing the ratio of PCD amplitudes on and off axis. This ratio is insensitive to voltage and current and thus, is more reliable than utilizing absolute dose rate. The data is unfolded using comparisons with Monte Carlo simulations to obtain absolute beam temperatures. The data taken on HERMES III show abrupt increases in {beta}{perpendicular} midway through the pulse indicating rapid onset of beam instability.

Theoretical analysis and preliminary experiment on ionization instability of intense laser pulses in ionizing plasmas are presented. The ionization instability is due to the dependence of the ionization rate on the laser intensity and scatters the laser energy off the original propagation direction.

The U.S. Department of Energy DOE's Inventions and Innovation (I&I) Program can help if you are an individual inventor or small business planning to develop your energy-saving invention or innovation. The program provides financial assistance at two levels and also offers technical guidance and commercialization support to successful applicants.

An abrasion resistant coating is created by adding a ductile phase to a brittle matrix phase during spray coating where an Al-Cu-Fe quasicrystalline phase (brittle matrix) and an FeAl intermetallic (ductile phase) are combined. This composite coating produces a coating mostly of quasicrystal phase and an inter-splat layer of the FeAl phase to help reduce porosity and cracking within the coating. Coatings are prepared by plasma spraying unblended and blended quasicrystal and intermetallic powders. The blended powders contain 1, 5, 10 and 20 volume percent of the intermetallic powders. The unblended powders are either 100 volume percent quasicrystalline or 100 volume percent intermetallic; these unblended powders were studied for comparison to the others. Sufficient ductile phase should be added to the brittle matrix to transform abrasive wear mode from brittle fracture to plastic deformation, while at the same time the hardness of the composite should not be reduced below that of the original brittle phase material.

A syringe-like disposable cutaneous biopsy instrument equipped with a tubular blade at its lower end, and designed so that a vacuum is created during use, said vacuum serving to retain undeformed a plug of tissue cut from a patient's skin.

The authors present a technique for deriving predictions for the run times of parallel applications from the run times of similar applications that have executed in the past. The novel aspect of the work is the use of search techniques to determine those application characteristics that yield the best definition of similarity for the purpose of making predictions. They use four workloads recorded from parallel computers at Argonne National Laboratory, the Cornell Theory Center, and the San Diego Supercomputer Center to evaluate the effectiveness of the approach.They show that on these workloads the techniques achieve predictions that are between 14 and 60% better than those achieved by other researchers; the approach achieves mean prediction errors that are between 41 and 65% of mean application run times.

Simple statistical mechanics models have been assembled into a wide-range equation of state for the hydrogen isotopes. The solid is represented by an Einstein-Grtineisen model delimited by a Lindemann melting curve. The fluid is represented by an ideal gas plus a soft-sphere fluid configurational term. Dissociation and ionization are approximated by modifying the ideal gas chemical-equilibrium formulation. The T = 0 isotherm and dissociation models have been fitted to new diamond-anvil isotherm and laser-generated shock data. The main limitation of the model is in ionization at high compression.