Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) modernization efforts, focusing on the business practice, performance management, and information technology challenges IRS faces."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on U.S. government programs intended to help businesses promote their products and services in overseas markets, focusing on: (1) the federal agencies involved in promoting exports of U.S. goods and services and the export promotion activities they perform; (2) these agencies' total resources devoted to export promotion in fiscal year (FY) 1999; and (3) the agencies' overseas resources devoted to export promotion during this period."

This report is a fact sheet on a new method for producing metallurgical furnace briquettes for the steel industry written for the NICE3 Program.

This fact sheet contains a description of Nebraska's wind energy resources and the state's green power programs. The fact sheet includes a list of contacts for those interested in obtaining more information.

This fact sheet contains a description of Minnesota's wind energy resources, and the state's green power and net metering programs as well as financial incentives that support the programs. The fact sheet includes a list of contacts for those interested in obtaining more information.

Although many actuators employing electrostatic comb drives have been demonstrated in a laboratory environment, widespread acceptance in mass produced microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) may be limited due to issues associated with low drive force, large real estate demands, high operating voltages, and reliability concerns due to stiction. On the other hand, comb drives require very low drive currents, offer predictable response, and are highly compatible with the fabrication technology. The expand the application space and facilitate the widespread deployment of self-actuated MEMS, a new class of advanced actuation systems has been developed that maintains the highly desirable aspects of existing components, while significantly diminishing the issues that could impede large scale acceptance. In this paper, the authors will present low-voltage electrostatic actuators that offer a dramatic increase in force over conventional comb drive designs. In addition, these actuators consume only a small fraction of the chip area previously used, yielding significant gains in power density. To increase the stroke length of these novel electrostatic actuators, the authors have developed highly efficient compliant stroke amplifiers. The coupling of compact, high-force actuators with fully compliant displacement multipliers sets a new paradigm for highly integrated microelectromechanical systems.

A vitrification process was developed and successfully implemented by the US Department of Energy's (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) and at the West Valley Nuclear Services (WVNS) to convert high-level liquid nuclear wastes (HLLW) to a solid borosilicate glass for safe long term geologic disposal. Over the last decade, SRS has successfully completed two additional vitrification projects to safely dispose of mixed low level wastes (MLLW) (radioactive and hazardous) at the SRS and at the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR). The SRS, in conjunction with other laboratories, has also demonstrated that vitrification can be used to dispose of a wide variety of MLLW and low-level wastes (LLW) at the SRS, at ORR, at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), at Rocky Flats (RF), at the Fernald Environmental Management Project (FEMP), and at the Hanford Waste Vitrification Project (HWVP). The SRS, in conjunction with the Electric Power Research Institute and the National Atomic Energy Commission of Argentina (CNEA), have demonstrated that vitrification can also be used to safely dispose of ion-exchange (IEX) resins and sludges from commercial nuclear reactors. In addition, the SRS has successfully demonstrated that numerous wastes declared hazardous by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) can be vitrified, e.g. …

A fracture mechanics approach for elastic-plastic materials has been used to evaluate the effects of light water reactor (LWR) coolant environments on the fatigue lives of carbon and low-alloy steels. The fatigue life of such steel, defined as the number of cycles required to form an engineering-size crack, i.e., 3-mm deep, is considered to be composed of the growth of (a) microstructurally small cracks and (b) mechanically small cracks. The growth of the latter was characterized in terms of {Delta}J and crack growth rate (da/dN) data in air and LWR environments; in water, the growth rates from long crack tests had to be decreased to match the rates from fatigue S-N data. The growth of microstructurally small cracks was expressed by a modified Hobson relationship in air and by a slip dissolution/oxidation model in water. The crack length for transition from a microstructurally small crack to a mechanically small crack was based on studies on small crack growth. The estimated fatigue S-N curves show good agreement with the experimental data for these steels in air and water environments. At low strain amplitudes, the predicted lives in water can be significantly lower than the experimental values.

This report is a fact sheet written for the Inventions and Innovation Program about a new process for manufacturing metallurgical grade coke briquettes for the steel industry.

Intense highly collimated neutrino beams, created from muon decays at high-energy muon colliders or storage rings, cause significant radiation problems even at very large distances from the machine. A recently developed weighted neutrino interaction generator permits detailed Monte Carlo simulations of the interactions of neutrinos and of their progeny with the MARS code. Special aspects of neutrino radiation dose evaluation are discussed. Dose distributions in a tissue-equivalent phantom are calculated when irradiated with 100 MeV to 10 TeV neutrino beams. Results are obtained for a bare phantom, one embedded in several shielding materials, and one located at various distances behind a shield. Neutrino radiation is investigated around muon storage rings serving as the basis for neutrino factories. The most challenging problem of off-site neutrino dose from muon colliders and storage rings is studied. The distance from the collider ring (up to 60 km) at which the expected dose rates equals prescribed annual dose limits is calculated for 0.5--4 TeV muon colliders and 30 and 50 GeV muon storage rings. Possible mitigation of neutrino radiation problems are discussed and investigated.

Fact sheet written for the Inventions and Innovation Program about a new technology for brazing and spot welding.

This fact sheet contains a description of New York's wind energy resources, the state's efforts to development wind energy production, and its green power programs. The fact sheet includes a list of contacts for those interested in obtaining more information.

High energy physics, nuclear physics, space sciences, and many other fields have large challenges in computing. In recent years, PCs have achieved performance comparable to the high-end UNIX workstations, at a small fraction of the price. The authors review the development and broad applications of commodity PCs as the solution to CPU needs, and look forward to the important and exciting future of large scale PC computing.

This report is a fact sheet written for the Inventions and Innovation Program about a new method of disposing of chemically treated wood wastes.

This fact sheet contains a description of the green power programs in Wyoming, the state's efforts to promote wind energy, and a list of contacts for those interested in obtaining more information.

This report is a fact sheet written for the NICE3 Program on a new atmosphere gas recovery system for furnaces used in heat treating operations. The National Industrial Competitiveness through Energy, Environment, and Economics program (NICE3) promotes energy efficiency, clean production, and economic competitiveness in industry.

Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) carry an enormous amount of information about the early universe. The anisotropy spectrum depends sensitively on close to a dozen cosmological parameters, some of which have never been measured before. Experiments over the next decade will help us extract these parameters, teaching us not only about the early universe, but also about physics at unprecedented energies. One of the dangers now is that scientist are tempted to ignore the present data and rely too much on the future. This would be a shame, for hundreds of individuals have put in a great amount of time building state-of-the-art instruments, making painstaking observations at remote places on and off the globe. It seems unfair to ignore all the data that has been taken to date simply because there will be more and better data in the future. The author then makes the following claims: (1) the theory of CMB anisotropies is understood; (2) using this understanding, he is able to extract from future observations extremely accurate measurements of about ten cosmological parameters; (3) taken at face value, present data determines one of these parameters, the curvature of the universe; and (4) the present data is …

This fact sheet contains a description of Montana's wind energy resources, and the state's green power and net metering programs as well as financial incentives that support the programs. The fact sheet includes a list of contacts for those interested in obtaining more information.

This fact sheet contains a description of North Dakota's wind energy resources, the state's efforts to development wind energy production, and its green power and net metering programs. The fact sheet includes a list of contacts for those interested in obtaining more information.

After implantation of As, As + Be, and As + Ga into GaN and annealing for short durations at temperatures as high as 1500 C, the GaN films remained highly resistive. It was apparent from c-RBS studies that although implantation damage did not create an amorphous layer in the GaN film, annealing at 1500 C did not provide enough energy to completely recover the radiation damage. Disorder recovered significantly after annealing at temperatures up to 1500 C, but not completely. From SIMS analysis, oxygen contamination in the AIN capping layer causes oxygen diffusion into the GaN film above 1400 C. The sapphire substrate (A1203) also decomposed and oxygen penetrated into the backside of the GaN layer above 1400 C. To prevent donor-like oxygen impurities from the capping layer and the substrate from contaminating the GaN film and compensating acceptors, post-implantation annealing should be done at temperatures below 1500 C. Oxygen in the cap could be reduced by growing the AIN cap on the GaN layer after the GaN growth run or by depositing the AIN layer in a ultra high vacuum (UHV) system post-growth to minimize residual oxygen and water contamination. With longer annealing times at 1400 C or at …

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The goal of the Environmental Science and Health Effect Program is to conduct policy-relevant research that will help us understand atmospheric impacts and potential health effects that may be caused by the use of petroleum-based fuels and alternative transportation fuels from mobile sources.

The EC-Diesel and particulate filter combination greatly reduced the particulate matter, hydrocarbon, and carbon monoxide emissions of all vehicles tested in the program to date. Particulate matter reductions greater than 98% were achieved. For several vehicles tested, the PM and HC emissions were less than background levels. Based on preliminary statistical analysis, there is 95%+ confidence that EC-D and particulate filters reduced emissions from three different types of vehicles. A fuel consumption penalty was not detectable using the current test procedures and chassis dynamometer laboratory. Test vehicles equipped with the CRT and DPX particulate filters and fueled with EC-Diesel fuel have operated reliably during the program start-up period.

We present beam-beam simulation results from a strong-strong gaussian code for separated beams for the LHC and RHIC. The frequency spectrum produced by the beam-beam collisions is readily obtained and offers a good opportunity for experimental comparisons. Although our results for the emittance blowup are preliminary, we conclude that, for nominal parameter values, there is no significant difference between separated beams and center-on-center collisions.