A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO discussed the status of the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board's: (1) investigations and recommendations; (2) pay structure and use of staff; and (3) contracting activities."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) information management initiatives, focusing on the: (1) status of EPA's efforts to create a central office responsible for information management, policy, and technology issues; and (2) major challenges that the new office needs to address in order to achieve success in collecting, using, and disseminating environmental information."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the apparent discrepancies between the Department of Defense's (DOD) budget allocations and the actual obligations for direct and purchased care, focusing on: (1) the extent to which the Defense Health Program (DHP) obligations have differed from DOD's budget allocations; (2) the reasons for any such differences; and (3) whether congressional oversight of DHP funding changes could be enhanced if DOD provided notification or budget execution data."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the: (1) impact of the year 2000 challenge on the nation's emergency and state and local law enforcement systems; and (2) Department of Justice (DOJ) and the President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion efforts to facilitate remediation and contingency planning and to gauge the year 2000 readiness of these two important sectors."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the effectiveness of the Air Force Supply Management Activity Group in meeting its military customers needs, focusing on the: (1) extent and impact of military customers not receiving aircraft spare parts when needed; and (2) reasons why parts were not always available when needed."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on: (1) the efforts that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the other federal agencies with major cleanup responsibilities have made to set priorities for spending limited cleanup funds at the hazardous waste sites posing the highest risks to human health and the environment; (2) EPA's actions to recover its expenditures for cleanups from the parties that are legally liable for the contamination; and (3) EPA's efforts to better control contractors' cleanup costs."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the results of its ongoing examination of the safety and efficacy of the anthrax vaccine, focusing on: (1) the short- and long-term safety of the vaccine; (2) the efficacy of the vaccine; and (3) problems the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found in the vaccine production facility in Michigan that could compromise the safety, efficacy, and quality of the vaccine."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the key elements of partnerships between the federal government and the private sector, focusing on: (1) some of the weaknesses that are making it necessary for agencies to think strategically when managing buildings and facilities; and (2) the key elements and related experiences of the 6 federal partnerships that were created to meet these challenges."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the South Florida Ecosystem Restoration Initiative, focusing on: (1) how much and for what purposes federal funding has been provided for the restoration of the South Florida ecosystem; and (2) how well the restoration effort is being coordinated and managed."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) management controls over four block grant programs, focusing on whether: (1) HUD's monitoring of grantees under the Grants Management System is adequate; and (2) the Integrated Disbursement and Information Systems (IDIS) provides the data HUD needs to accurately assess grantees' performance."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) International Space Station and the status of Russian involvement in the program, focusing on NASA's efforts to: (1) develop a contingency plan to mitigate the possibility of unforeseen problems, including future Russian nonperformance; (2) ensure that Russian quality assurance and manufacturing processes are acceptable; and (3) control prime contract and nonprime activity costs."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) cleanup program and budget management practices, focusing on: (1) the number of contracts that EPA has awarded for Superfund cleanup activities for the agency; (2) the extent to which EPA is using its Contracts 2000 initiative as a vehicle to improve Superfund contract management practices; and (3) GAO's perspective on the potential effects of transferring $25 million from the Superfund program's budget to the Corrective Action Program's budget as a means of increasing the number of cleanups under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)."

This semi-annual technical progress report describes work performed under DOE Grant No. DE-FG22-96PC96224 during the period September 24, 1998 to March 23, 1999 which covers the fifth six months of the project. Devolatilization is an important initial step in virtually all commercial fossil fuel applications such as combustion, gasification, and liquefaction. Characterization of the temperature history of pulverized coal particles under high heating rates, representative of coal combustors, is critical to the understanding of devolatilization. During this reporting period, characterization experiments were continued from the previous reporting period and completed to a total of 28 single coal particles. These particles were caught in the electrodynamic balance and their volume, external surface area, mass, and density were measured. The same single particles were then heated bidirectionally with a pulsed (10 ms pulse width) Nd:YAG laser beams of equal intensity with heating rates (10{sup 4} - 10{sup 7} K/s) representative of coal combustors. The temporal power variation in the laser pulse was monitored for use in the heat transfer analysis by an ultra-fast fiber optic uv light transmitter included in the beam path and coupled to a silicon photodiode. Transient surface temperatures of the particles were measured using a single-color pyrometer. Dynamics …

A total energy cycle analysis (TECA) of electric vehicles (EV) was recently completed. The EV energy cycle includes production and transport of fuels used in power plants to generate electricity, electricity generation, EV operation, and vehicle and battery manufacture. This paper summarizes the key assumptions and results of the EVTECA. The total energy requirements of EVS me estimated to be 24-35% lower than those of the conventional, gasoline-fueled vehicles they replace, while the reductions in total oil use are even greater: 55-85%. Greenhouse gases (GHG) are 24-37% lower with EVs. EVs reduce total emissions of several criteria air pollutants (VOC, CO, and NO{sub x}) but increase total emissions of others (SO{sub x}, TSP, and lead) over the total energy cycle. Regional emissions are generally reduced with EVs, except possibly SO{sub x}. The limitations of the EVTECA are discussed, and its results are compared with those of other evaluations of EVs. In general, many of the results (particularly the oil use, GHG, VOC, CO, SO{sub x}, and lead results) of the analysis are consistent with those of other evaluations.

Photoelectrons produced through the interaction of synchrotrons radiation and the vacuum chamber walls can be accelerated by a charged particle beam, acquiring sufficient energy to produce secondary electrons (SES) in collisions with the walls. If the secondary-electron yield (SEY) coefficient of the wall material is greater than one, a run-away condition can develop. In addition to the SEY, the degree of amplification depends on the beam intensity and temporal distribution. As the electron cloud builds up along a train of stored bunches, a transverse perturbation of the head bunch can be communicated to trailing bunches in a wakefield-like interaction with the cloud. The electron cloud effect is especially of concern for the high-intensity PEP-II (SLAC) and KEK B-factories and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. An initiative was undertaken at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) storage ring to characterize the electron cloud in order to provide realistic limits on critical input parameters in the models and improve their predictive capabilities. An intensive research program was undertaken at CERN to address key issues relating to the LHC. After giving an overview, the recent theoretical and experimental results from the APS and the other laboratories will be discussed.

Corrosion of spent UO{sub 2} fuel has been studied in experiments conducted for nearly six years. Oxidative dissolution in vapor and dripping groundwater at 90 C occurs via general corrosion at fuel-fragment surfaces. Dissolution along fuel-grain boundaries is also evident in samples contacted by the largest volumes of groundwater, and corroded grain boundaries extend at least 20 or 30 grains deep (> 200 {micro}m), possibly throughout millimeter-sized fragments. Apparent dissolution of fuel along defects that intersect grain boundaries has created dissolution pits that are 50 to 200 nm in diameter. Dissolution pits penetrate 1-2 {micro}m into each grain, producing a ''worm-like'' texture along fuel-grain-boundaries. Sub-micrometer-sized fuel shards are common between fuel grains and may contribute to the reactive surface area of fuel exposed to groundwater. Outer surfaces of reacted fuel fragments develop a fine-grained layer of corrosion products adjacent to the fuel (5-15 {micro}m thick). A more coarsely crystalline layer of corrosion products commonly covers the fine-grained layer, the thickness of which varies considerably among samples (from less than 5 {micro}m to greater than 40 {micro}m). The thickest and most porous corrosion layers develop on fuel fragments exposed to the largest volumes of groundwater. Corrosion-layer compositions depend strongly on water …

A recent report submitted to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) (NIPER/BDM-0226) discussed in considerable detail, the geology, structure, tectonics, and history of oil production activities in the Black Mesa basin in Arizona. As part of the final phase of wrapping up research in the Black Mesa basin, the results of a few additional geophysical studies conducted on structure, stratigraphy, petrophysical analysis, and oil and gas occurrences in the basin are presented here. A second objective of this study is to determine the effectiveness of relatively inexpensive, noninvasive techniques like gravity or magnetic in obtaining information on structure and tectonics in sufficient detail for hydrocarbon exploration, particularly by using the higher resolution satellite data now becoming available to the industry.

This project is designed to develop a family of novel NO{sub x} control technologies, called Second Generation Advanced Reburning which has the potential to achieve 90+ NO{sub x} control in coal fired boilers at a significantly lower cost than Selective Catalytic Reduction. The sixth reporting period in Phase II (January 1-March 31, 1999) included experimental activities and combined chemistry-mixing modeling on advanced gas reburning. The goal of combustion tests was to continue the work on identifying prospective promoters for the advanced reburning process. Tests were conducted in Controlled Temperature Tower (CTT) and Boiler Simulator Facility (BSF). Tests showed that some promoters significantly affect the reburning process when co-injected with NH{sub 3} . The promoters injected into reburning zone without NH{sub 3} in the amount 30 ppm do not significantly affect the reburning process. The modeling effort was focused on the description of Na effect on CO emissions in advanced reburning. Increase in CO concentration in flue gas upon Na injection results from inhibition of CO oxidation by Na species in the burnout zone.

We report the results of some recent E791 charm analyses. They include 1) a search for rare and forbidden decays, 2) measurements of form factors for D{sup +} {yields} K{sup *0}l{sup +}{nu}{sub l} and D{sup +}{sub s} {yields}{phi}l{sup +}{nu}{sub l}, and 3) D{sup +}{sub s} and D{sup 0} lifetime measurements including the lifetime difference between D{sup 0} {yields} K{sup -}{pi}{sup +} and D{sup 0} {yields} K{sup -}K{sup +}. The latter is the first direct search for a possible lifetime difference that could contribute to D{sup 0} - {anti D}{sup 0} mixing.

We discuss tau identification techniques at hadron colliders, and present the measurements and the searches performed so far. We report on top quark pair production in the decay channel containing at least one tau lepton. Also, we present results dedicated to searches for new particles, with taus in the final state. We present a search for the charged Higgs boson in the tau decay channel, as well as for the leptoquark family containing tau leptons. Finally, we indicate the capabilities of detecting and triggering on tau leptons in the future collider run.

A 120 GeV Main Injector proton beam will be delivered to the NuMI beam line at Fermilab at the rate of 3.7x 10{sup 20} per year. Realistic Monte Carlo simulations have been performed to examine the radiation environment in the beam extraction system and NuMI beam line elements. A complete 3-D model of the 160 meter extraction region has been implemented utilizing the computer code MARS. The model includes a description of the field of the electrostatic septa and POISSON calculated field maps of the Lambertson magnets and the other lattice components in the area. The beam element alignment and the source term have been simulated using the code STRUCT. Results on beam losses in the system, energy deposition in the core elements and residual dose rates on the components are presented.

We report the determination of sin{sup 2}{theta}{sub W} in {nu}-N deep inelastic scattering from the NuTeV experiment. Using separate neutrino and anti-neutrino beams, NuTeV is able to extract sin{sup 2}{theta}{sub W} with low systematic errors from the Paschos-Wolfenstein variable R{sup -}, a ratio of differences of neutrino and anti-neutrino neutral-current and charged-current cross-sections. NuTeV measures sin{sup 2}{theta}{sub W} {sup (on - shell)} = 0.2253 {+-} 0.0019(stat) {+-} 0.0010(syst), which implies M{sub W}= 80.26 {+-} 0.11 GeV.

A self-verifying temperature sensor that employs advanced contact thermocouple probe technology was tested in a laboratory-scale, joule-heated, refractory-lined glass melter used for radioactive waste vitrification. The novel temperature probe monitors melt temperature at any given level of the melt chamber. The data acquisition system provides the real-time temperature for molten glass. Test results indicate that the self-verifying sensor is more accurate and reliable than classic platinum/rhodium thermocouple and sheath assemblies. The results of this test are reported as well as enhancements being made to the temperature probe. To obtain more reliable temperature measurements of the molten glass for improving production efficiency and ensuring consistent glass properties, optical sensing was reviewed for application in a high temperature environment.

Anisotropic, smooth etching of the group-III nitrides has been reported at relatively high rates in high-density plasma etch systems. However, such etch results are often obtained under high de-bias andlor high plasma flux conditions where plasma induced damage can be significant. Despite the fact that the group-III nitrides have higher bonding energies than more conventional III-V compounds, plasma-induced etch damage is still a concern. Attempts to minimize such damage by reducing the ion energy or increasing the chemical activity in the plasma often result in a loss of etch rate or anisotropy which significantly limits critical dimensions and reduces the utility of the process for device applications requiring vertical etch profiles. It is therefore necessary to develop plasma etch processes which couple anisotropy for critical dimension and sidewall profile control and high etch rates with low-damage for optimum device performance. In this study we report changes in sheet resistance and contact resistance for n- and p-type GaN samples exposed to an Ar inductively coupled plasma (ICP). In general, plasma-induced damage was more sensitive to ion bombardment energies as compared to plasma flux. In addition, p-GaN was typically more sensitive to plasma-induced damage as compared to n-GaN.