This report discusses the Comprehensive Budget Process Reform Act of 1999, was introduced by Representative Jim Nussle on February 25, 1999, and referred to the Committee on the Budget.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the financial condition of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Flood Insurance Program, focusing on the: (1) financial results of the program's operations since fiscal year 1993; (2) major factors contributing to the financial difficulties faced by the program; and (3) actions taken by and plans of the Federal Insurance Administration that may affect the program's financial health."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the reasons for the losses being incurred by the Guaranteed Business and Industry Loan Program, focusing on the Rural Business-Cooperative Service's experience with business and industry guaranteed loans made during fiscal year (FY) 1994 through FY 1998 on which the Service paid losses."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the semiannual reporting requirements contained in the Inspector General (IG) Act of 1978, focusing on the: (1) composition of the semiannual reports; and (2) views of a range of individuals--IGs, agency managers, and congressional staff--on the usefulness of the reports and what modifications, if any, should be made to the semiannual reporting requirements."

As an introduction to {nu}Fact '99, the ICFA/ECFA Workshop on Neutrino Factories Based on Muon Storage Rings, I place the issues of neutrino properties and neutrino oscillations in the broader context of fermion flavor.

A proposal has been made to establish a high density global network of atmospheric micro transponders to record time, temperature, and wind data with time resolution of {le} 1 minute, temperature accuracy of {+-} 1 K, spatial resolution no poorer than {approx}3km horizontally and {approx}0.1km vertically, and 2-D speed accuracy of {le} 1m/s. This data will be used in conjunction with advanced numerical weather prediction models to provide increases in the reliability of long range weather forecasts. Major advances in data collection technology will be required to provide the proposed high-resolution data collection network. Systems studies must be undertaken to determine insertion requirements, spacing, and evolution of the transponder ensemble, which will be used to collect the data. Numerical models which provide realistic global weather pattern simulations must be utilized in order to perform these studies. A global circulation model with a 3{sup o} horizontal resolution has been used for initial simulations of the generation and evolution of transponder distributions. These studies indicate that reasonable global coverage of transponders can be achieved by a launch scenario consisting of the sequential launch of transponders at specified heights from a globally distributed set of launch sites.

Atom-by-atom and concerted hopping of ad-dimers on the open (100) surface of fcc metals are studied by means of density-functional calculations. The adatom interaction is relatively short-ranged, and beyond next-nearest neighbors ad-dimers are effectively dissociated. Diffusion takes place by a simple shearing process, favored because it maximizes adatom coordination at the transition state This holds for Al, Au, and Rh, and is likely a general result because geometrical arguments dominate over details of the electronic structure.

Exclusive and semi-exclusive processes, the diffractive dissociation of hadrons into jets, and hard diffractive processes such as vector meson leptoproduction provide new testing grounds for QCD and essential information on the structure of light-cone wavefunctions of hadrons, particularly the pion distribution amplitude. I review the basic features of the leading-twist QCD predictions and the problems and challenges of studying QCD at the amplitude level. The application of the light-cone formalism to the exclusive semi-leptonic decay of heavy hadrons is also discussed.

For the past decade, interest has been growing in using underground salt caverns for disposing of wastes. The Railroad Commission of Texas has permitted a few caverns for disposal of nonhazardous oil field waste (NOW) and one cavern for disposal of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) from oil field activities. Several salt caverns in Canada have also been permitted for disposal of NOW. In addition, oil and gas agencies in Louisiana and New Mexico are developing cavern disposal regulations. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has funded several studies to evaluate the technical feasibility, legality, economic viability, and risk of disposing of NOW and NORM in caverns. The results of these studies have been disseminated to the scientific and regulatory communities. However, as use of caverns for waste disposal increases, more government and industry representatives and members of the public will become aware of this practice and will need adequate information about how disposal caverns operate and the risks they pose. In anticipation of this need, DOE has fi.mded Argonne National Laboratory to develop a salt cavern public outreach program. Key components of this program are an informational brochure designed for nontechnical persons and a website that provides greater detail …

We present the results of coating the first set of optical elements for an alpha-class extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) lithography system, the Engineering Test Stand (ETS). The optics were coated with Mo/Si multilayer mirrors using an upgraded DC-magnetron sputtering system. Characterization of the near-normal incidence EUV reflectance was performed using synchrotron radiation from the Advanced Light Source at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Stringent requirements were met for these multilayer coatings in terms of reflectance, wavelength matching among the different optics, and thickness control across the diameter of each individual optic. Reflectances above 65% were achieved at 13.35 nm at near-normal angles of incidence. The run-to-run reproducibility of the reflectance peak wavelength was maintained to within 0.4%, providing the required wavelength matching among the seven multilayer-coated optics. The thickness uniformity (or gradient) was controlled to within {+-}0.25% peak-to-valley (P-V) for the condenser optics and {+-}0.1% P-V for the four projection optics, exceeding the prescribed specification for the optics of the ETS.

We measure 300 eV thermal temperatures at near-solid densities by x-ray spectroscopy of tracer layers buried up to 30 pm inside CH slabs which are irradiated by a 0.5 kJ, 5 ps laser. X-ray imaging data suggest that collimated electron transport produces comparable temperatures as deep as 200 pm, and unexpectedly show the heated regions to be 50-120 pm-diameter rings. The data indicate that intense lasers can directionally heat solid matter to high temperatures over large distances; the results are relevant for fast-ignition inertial-confinement fusion and hot, dense plasma research

The importance of the strange quark mass, as a fundamental parameter of the Standard Model (SM) and as an input to many interesting quantities, has been highlighted in many reviews, eg in Ref [1]. A first principles calculation of m{sub s} is possible in lattice QCD but to date there has been a rather large spread in values from lattice calculations. This review aims to clarify the situation by explaining the particular systematic errors and their effects and illustrating the emerging consensus. In addition, a discussion of the strange quark mass is timely given the recent results from KTeV [2] and NA48 [3] for {epsilon}{prime}/{epsilon} which firmly establish direct CP-violation in the SM and when combined with previous measurements give a world average {epsilon}{prime}/{epsilon} (21:2 {+-} 2:8) x 10{sup {minus}4}. This is in stark disagreement with the theoretical predictions which favor a low {epsilon}{prime}/{epsilon} [4]. Although in principle {epsilon}{prime}/{epsilon} does not depend directly on m{sub s} in practice it has been an input in current phenomenological analyses. This dependence arises because the matrix elements of the gluonic, <Q{sub 6}>{sub 0}, and electroweak, <Q{sub 8}>{sub 2}, penguin operators are of the form <{pi}{pi}{vert_bar}Q{sub i}{vert_bar}K> and final state interactions make them notoriously …

This paper presents an open-loop control method for suppressing payload oscillation or swing caused by operator commanded maneuvers in rotary boom cranes and the method is experimentally verified on a one-sixteenth scale model of a Hagglunds shipboard crane. The crane configuration consists of a payload mass that swings like a spherical pendulum on the end of a lift-line which is attached to a boom capable of hub rotation (slewing) and elevation (luffing). Positioning of the payload is accomplished through the hub and boom angles and the load-line length. Since the configuration of the crane affects the excitation and response of the payload, the swing control scheme must account for the varying geometry of the system. Adaptive forward path command filters are employed to remove components of the command signal which induce payload swing.

We have taken 12--50 ns exposure duration images of 200--460 kbar shock loaded, single crystal sapphire (Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}) windows of the c-cut (0001), r-cut (1,-1,0,2) and a-cut (1,1,-2,0) orientations. We find that the spectra of the emission are broad and relatively featureless, extending at least from 760 to 280 nm. Images of this emission at the lower end of the stress range (200--220 kbar) show that it is spatially very heterogeneous, coming from a few seemingly-randomly distributed locations within the crystal. This emission heterogeneity becomes more fine-grained with increasing shock stress. Finally, the r-cut orientation produces significantly less emission than the other two orientations at the same stress.

Hohlraums of full ignition scale (6-mm diameter by 7-mm length) have been heated by x-rays from a z-pinch target on Z to a variety of temperatures and pulse shapes which can be used to simulate the early phases of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) temperature drive. The pulse shape is varied by changing the on-axis target of the z pinch in a static-wall-hohlraum geometry. A 2-{micro}m-thick walled Cu cylindrical target of 8-mm diameter filled with 10 mg/cm{sup 3} CH, for example, produces foot-pulse conditions of {minus}85 eV for a duration of {approximately} 10 ns, while a solid cylindrical target of 5-mm diameter and 14-mg/cm{sup 3} CH generates first-step-pulse conditions of {approximately} 122 eV for a duration of a few ns. Alternatively, reducing the hohlraum size (to 4-mm diameter by 4-mm length) with the latter target has increased the peak temperature to {approximately} 150 eV, which is characteristic of a second-step-pulse temperature. In general, the temperature T of these x-ray driven hohlraums is in agreement with the Planckian relation (T-(P/A){sup 1/4}). P is the measured x-ray input power and A is the surface area of the hohlraum. Fully-integrated 2-D radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the z pinch and subsequent hohlraum heating show plasma …

For the past decade, interest has been growing in using underground salt caverns for disposing of wastes. The Railroad Commission of Texas has permitted a few caverns for disposal of nonhazardous oil field waste (NOW) and one cavern for disposal of naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORM) from oil field activities. Several salt caverns in Canada have also been permitted for disposal of NOW. In addition, oil and gas agencies in Louisiana and New Mexico are developing cavern disposal regulations. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has funded several studies to evaluate the technical feasibility, legality, economic viability, and risk of disposing of NOW and NORM in caverns. The results of these studies have been disseminated to the scientific and regulatory communities. However, as use of caverns for waste disposal increases, more government and industry representatives and members of the public will become aware of this practice and will need adequate information about how disposal caverns operate and the risks they pose. In anticipation of this need, DOE has funded Argonne National Laboratory to develop a salt cavern public outreach program. Key components of this program are an informational brochure designed for nontechnical persons and a website that provides greater detail …

Alteration may be expected for spent nuclear fuel exposed to groundwater under oxidizing conditions such as that which exist at the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. The actinide elements released during the corrosion of spent fuel may be incorporated into the structures of secondary U{sup 6+} phases. The incorporation of transuranics into the crystal structures of the alteration products may significantly decrease their mobility. A series of precipitation tests were conducted at 90 C to determine the potential incorporation of Ce{sup 4+} and Nd{sup 3+} (surrogates for Pu{sup 4+} and Am{sup 3+}, respectively) into uranyl phase. Dehydrated schoepite (UO{sub 3}{center_dot}0.8-1.0HP{sub 2}O) was produced by hydrolysis of a uranium oxyacetate solution containing either cerium or neodymium. ICP-MS analysis of the leachant, leachate, and solid phase reaction products which were dissolved in a HNO{sub 3} solution indicates that 26 ppm of Ce was incorporated into dehydrated schoepite. ICP-MS results from the Nd-doped tests indicate significant neodymium incorporation as well, however, the heterogeneous distribution of Nd in the solid phase noted during the AEM/EELS examination implies that neodymium may not incorporate into the structure of dehydrated schoepite.

The Basic Research Opportunities in Photovoltaics Workshop was held on May 3, 1999, in Seattle, Washington, in conjunction with the 195th Meeting of the Electrochemical Society. The workshop was structured into eight topics. Each topic area opened with a presentation in which the participants were asked to address the following: a brief introduction of the area of research; key research issues that were identified in an earlier workshop in 1992; what fundamental research has been done since then or is currently being done to address those issues; what are the research issues that are still relevant in light of advances made since the first workshop; identification of new fundamental research opportunities that will lead to important advances and innovations; and identification of significant commonalities and common research issues that have a cross-cutting impact, such as logically exist in silicon-based thin films, II-VI, and related materials. The topic areas discussed included amorphous and microcrystalline silicon, crystalline silicon, cadmium telluride, copper indium diselenide; III-V materials; novel materials and energy conversion approaches, semiconducting oxides, and characterization. After the meeting, participants in each working topic continued discussions by electronic means, completing journal articles that are to be published as a separate section in the …

Exclusive and semi-exclusive processes, the diffractive dissociation of hadrons into jets, and hard diffractive processes such as vector meson leptoproduction provide new testing grounds for QCD and essential information on the structure of light-cone wavefunctions of hadrons, particularly the pion distribution amplitude. I review the basic features of the leading-twist QCD predictions and the problems and challenges of studying QCD at the amplitude level. The application of the light-cone formalism to the exclusive semi-leptonic decay of heavy hadrons is also discussed.

This final progress report includes brief comments on the organization of the conference, the conference program, and a list of attendees.

NMR spectroscopy is expanding the horizons of structural biology by determining the structures and describing the dynamics of blobular proteins in aqueous solution, as well as other classes of proteins including membrane proteins and the polypeptides that form the aggregates diagnostic of prion and amyloid diseases. Significant results are also emerging on DNA and RNA oligomers and their complexes with proteins. This meeting focused attention on key structural questions emanating from molecular biology and how NMR spectroscopy can be used to answer them.

The Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Plant Cell Walls was held at Tilton School, Tilton, New Hampshire, July 18-22, 1997. The conference was well attended with 106 participants. The attendees represented the spectrum of endeavor in this field coming from academia, industry, and government laboratories, both US and foreign scientists, senior researchers, young investigators, and students. In designing the formal speakers program, emphasis was placed on current unpublished research and discussion of the future target areas in this field. There was a conscious effort to stimulate lively discussion about the key issues in the field today. Time for formal presentations was limited in the interest of group discussions. In order that more scientists could communicate their most recent results, poster presentation time was scheduled. In addition to these formal interactions, free time was scheduled to allow informal discussions. Such discussions are fostering new collaborations and joint efforts in the field.

An overall comparative assessment of different energy systems and their potential long-term role in contributing to a sustainable energy mix is examined through the use of a global, long-term Energy, Economics, Environment (E{sup 3}) model. This model is used to generate a set of surprise-free futures that encompass a range of economic potentialities. The focus of this study is nuclear energy (NE), and the range of possible futures embodies extrema of NE growth [a Basic Option (BO)] to an NE Phase Out (PO). These NE scenario extrema are expressed against a background that reflects E{sup 3} circumstances ranging from a Business-As-Usual (BAU) to one that is Ecologically Driven (ED), with the latter emphasizing price-induced reductions in greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions associate with a mix of fossil energy sources. Hence, four ''views-of-the-future'' scenarios emerge to form the framework of this study: BAU/BO, BAU/PO, ED/BO, and ED/PO. Model results ranging from (regional and temporal) primary- and nuclear-energy demands, carbon-dioxide emissions, nuclear-material (plutonium) accumulations and attendant proliferation-risk implications, Gross National Product (GNP) impacts, and a range of technology requirements provide essential input to the subject assessment.

Scattered light at three-halves of the incident laser frequency from solid targets is observed at five different angles. When the incident laser intensity is low enough, rescattering of two plasmon decay (TPD) instability electron plasma waves by ion acoustic waves is not significant. In this regime, Thomson scattering measurements of the electron temperature and the plasma flow velocity allow quantitative comparison of the angular dependence of the spectrum to theory.