The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), enacted in 1985, enables producers to retire highly erodible or environmentally sensitive cropland, usually for 10 years. Congress reauthorized and amended the CRP in the 1996 Federal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act (P.L. 104-127; 16 U.S.C. 3811, et seq.). The law caps enrollment at 36.4 million acres and makes funding mandatory through the commodity Credit Corporation.

None

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The results of the Defense Department (DOD) financial audit for fiscal year 2000 highlight long-standing financial management weaknesses that continue to plague the military. These weaknesses not only hamper the department's ability to produce timely and accurate financial management information but also unnecessarily increase the cost of carrying out its missions. Although DOD has made incremental improvement, it has a long way to go to overcome its long-standing, serious financial management weaknesses as part of a comprehensive, integrated reform of the department's business support operations. Such an overhaul must include not only DOD's financial management and other management challenges but also its high-risk areas of information technology and human capital management. Personnel throughout the department must share the common goal of reforming the department's business support structure. Without reengineering, DOD will have little chance of radically improving its cumbersome and bureaucratic processes."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses (1) how well the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is providing service to taxpayers and ensuring compliance with tax laws, and (2) IRS' progress in its long-term effort to modernize. GAO found that IRS posted mixed results in 2001 in collecting revenues, providing taxpayer service, and enforcing tax laws. On the plus side, IRS processed millions of tax returns and issued refunds without significant problems, taxpayers had an easier time getting through to telephone assistors, and IRS said that it made progress in correcting weaknesses that threatened the security of electronically filed tax information. On the down side, the quality of service provided to taxpayers who visited taxpayer assistance centers, trends in audit rates and enforcement programs, and productivity all experienced troubling declines. With respect to modernization, IRS is making incremental progress in overhauling its organization, performance management system, business processes, and information technology. IRS is also making important progress in implementing its new organizational structure, developing a blueprint for modernizing its business processes and information systems, and more fully defining its strategic direction. However, IRS progress has fallen short of expectations. For example, IRS is …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Children fall ill with many of the same diseases as adults and are often treated with the same drugs. However, only about 25 percent of drugs used today have been labeled for pediatric patients. The lack of pediatric testing and labeling can place children at risk of under- or overdosing, and the lack of age-appropriate formulations, such as liquids or chewable tablets, can result in improper administration of drugs. The pediatric exclusivity provision of the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act of 1997 has successfully encouraged drug sponsors to generate needed information on how drugs work in children. A wide range of drugs are being studied in many therapeutic areas. The infrastructure for conducting pediatric trials has also been greatly strengthened, which should help to support continued progress. Although several drug labels have been changed to incorporate findings from research done under the pediatric exclusivity provision, label changes typically occur long after the Food and Drug Administration has granted the extension of market exclusivity. In addition, there continues to be little incentive to conduct pediatric research on off-patent drugs."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the challenges facing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) as it moves from its traditional regulatory approach to a risk-informed, performance-based approach. GAO found that NRC's implementation of a risk-informed approach for commercial nuclear power plants is a complex, multiyear undertaking that requires basic changes to the regulations and processes NRC uses to ensure the safe operation of these plants. NRC needs to overcome several inherent difficulties as it seeks to apply a risk-informed regulatory approach to the nuclear material licensees, particularly in light of the large number of licensees and the diversity of activities they conduct. NRC will have to demonstrate that it is meeting its mandate (under the Government Performance and Results Act) of increasing public confidence in NRC as an effective regulator. NRC also faces challenges in human capital management, such as replacing a large percentage of its technical staff and senior managers who are eligible to retire. NRC has developed a five-year plan to identify and maintain the core competencies it needs and has identified legislative options to help resolve its aging staff problem."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Free Trade of the Americas Agreement (FTAA) would eliminate tariffs and create common trade and investment rules within the 34 democratic nations of the Western Hemisphere. The trade ministers for FTAA faced an ambitious agenda at the April 2001 meetings. Accommodations reached by the ministers on controversial issues, such as labor and the environment, antidumping, and nations with small economies, allowed countries to set forth basic principles while keeping topics on the table for future resolution. As a result of the movement on these controversial issues, the trade ministers were able to set out clear objectives and deadlines to promote progress during the next 18 months of the negotiations. The trade ministers told negotiating groups to (1) eliminate material that is in dispute to the maximum extent possible; (2) develop recommendations by April 1, 2002, on the methods and ground rules for negotiation; and (3) develop, where appropriate, inventories of tariffs, nontariff barriers, subsidies, and other practices that distort trade. To build public support for the FTAA process, and to promote transparency in the negotiating process, the trade ministers agreed to publicly release the draft text of …

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The effectiveness and appropriateness of the International Monetary Fund's lending programs to poor countries have been widely debated, generally centering on whether the program has improved these countries' economies. In response to some of these concerns and as part of a concerted international effort to reduce poverty, the Fund expanded the goals of its lending program to its poorest members in 1999 to include an explicit focus on poverty reduction. To underscore this focus, the Fund renamed its concessional lending program the Poverty Reduction and Frowth Facility. GAO found that although the design of the facility does not differ significantly from the Fund's previous program, some elements of the new program are emphasized more now than in the past. The one major design change--getting countries to take ownership of their macroeconomic framework--is difficult to achieve for three reasons. First, many recipient governments have limited capacity to independently analyze and effectively negotiate the macroeconomic framework, which reduces the opportunity for country-specific elements to be addressed. Second, it is difficult to effectively engage nongovernmental organizations in a dialogue on these very complex matters. Finally, a national dialogue on …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Many studies have found significant alcohol consumption among youth, even though the purchase and public possession of alcohol by persons under the age of 21 are illegal in every state and the District of Columbia. This report discusses (1) the amount of federal funds earmarked for preventing underage drinking in fiscal year 2000 and (2) funded programs in fiscal year 2000 that included efforts to publicize in the media the problem of underage drinking. An estimated $71 million of fiscal year 2000 appropriated federal funds specifically targeted the prevention of underage drinking. In addition, many federal agencies had program activities that addressed prevention of underage drinking but for which agency officials could not isolate funding specific to alcohol."

The major goal of this project was to evaluate the impact of fracture porosity on performance of the South Wasson Clear Fork reservoir. The approach was to use subcritical crack (SCC) index measurements and a crack-growth simulator to model potential fracture geometries in this reservoir. The SCC index on representative rock samples and proceedings with other pertinent rock measurements were measured. An approach for modeling coupled matrix and fracture flow using nonneighbor connections in a traditional finite-difference simulator was tested and found to be feasible.

The objective of this report is to characterize fracture porosity and distribution in the Wasson Clear Fork reservoir and to determine the effects of fractures on well performance. The approach is to measure fracture attributes in an analog outcrop, to develop models of fracture spacing and aperture, and to apply this information to the South Wasson Clear Fork reservoir.

Radio-frequency power at 30 MHz has been applied in a variety of situations to National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) plasmas. The response of the plasma is observed in order to study both the physics of High Harmonic Fast Wave (HHFW) heating and as a tool to extend the performance of NSTX plasmas. In this paper we will discuss the progress made to date towards these goals.

Wind Power Today is an annual publication that provides an overview of the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Energy Program. The purpose of Wind Power Today is to show how DOE's Wind Energy Program supports wind turbine research and deployment in hopes of furthering the advancement of wind technologies that produce clean, low-cost, reliable energy. Content objectives include: educate readers about the advantages and potential for widespread deployment of wind energy; explain the program's objectives and goals; describe the program's accomplishments in research and application; examine the barriers to widespread deployment; describe the benefits of continued research and development; facilitate technology transfer; and attract cooperative wind energy projects with industry.

A preliminary reservoir model was constructed for the Lower Clear Fork of the South Wasson Clear Fork reservoir. The model was constructed by calibrating high-frequency cycles observed in cores to the porosity log. The rock fabrics mostly fall in petrophysical class 1, and cross plots of porosity and water saturation could not be used to identify rock fabrics. Data from two limestone fields and one dolostone field were presented to support the contention that grain-dominated fabrics have higher porosity than mud-dominated fabrics do and that this difference is retained when the limestone is dolomitized.

Beam stability issues of the VLHC rings in Phase 1 and Phase 2 are reviewed. For accelerator rings of circumference 232 km and beam pipe radius of the order of 1 cm, the impedance of the vacuum chamber is dominated by the resistive wall. The most dangerous instabilities are the single-bunch transverse mode coupling instability and the transverse coupled bunch instability driven by the resistive wall at sub-revolution frequency. Scaling is studied concerning the thresholds of these instabilities and the dominance of the resistive wall impedance as the size of the accelerator increases.

An assessment has been performed for an Accelerator Transmutation of Waste (ATW) concept based on the use of the high temperature gas reactor technology. The concept has been proposed by General Atomics for the ATW system. The assessment was jointly conducted at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and Los Alamos national laboratory to assess and to define the potential candidates for the ATW system. This report represents the assessment work performed at ANL. The concept uses recycled light water reactor (LWR)-discharge-transuranic extracted from irradiated oxide fuel in a critical and sub-critical accelerator driven gas-cooled transmuter. In this concept, the transmuter operates at 600 MWt first in the critical mode for three cycles and then operates in a subcritical accelerator-driven mode for a single cycle. The transmuter contains both thermal and fast spectrum transmutation zones. The thermal zone is fueled with the TRU oxide material in the form of coated particles, which are mixed with graphite powder, packed into cylindrical compacts, and loaded in hexagonal graphite blocks with cylindrical channels; the fast zone is fueled with TRU-oxide material in the form of coated particles without the graphite powder and the graphite blocks that has been burned in the thermal region for three …

The modeling of a lattice and the calculation of the dynamic aperture, are exercises fraught with uncertainty and possible error. If we want an accurate value for the dynamic aperture, we must start with an accurate model for the lattice. This model should incorporate the misalignments, including the rolls, of the lattice elements, as well as the error fields in the magnets. These quantities are not always well known. It has been known for sometime that long term tracking must be symplectic. This means that either we utilize a code like MARYLIE which employs a Lie algebraic approach, or a code that employs zero length kicks for the non-linear parts of the magnetic fields. Calculation of the dynamic aperture of the Recycler is particularly difficult because of the large intrinsic sextupole built into gradient magnets. A recent attempt to calculate the dynamic aperture for the Recycler Ring has used MAD. Originally the calculation was done with the magnets treated, as they exist, as single objects. The result was a dynamic aperture of 3:0{sigma}. The calculation was redone with the magnets split into 16 segments and the result was a dynamic aperture of 9:5{sigma}. This report is an attempt to understand …

The Power Electronics and Electric Machinery Research Center (PEEMRC) of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has for many years been developing technologies for power converters for motor drives and many other applications. Some of the research goals are to improve efficiency and reduce audible and electromagnetic interference noise generation for inverters and the driven loads. The converters are being required to produce more power with reduced weight and volume, which requires improvements in heat removal from the electronics, as well as improved circuit designs that have fewer electrical losses. PEEMRC has recently developed and patented a soft-switching inverter topology called an Auxiliary Resonant Tank (ART), and this design has been tested and proven at ORNL using a 10-kW laboratory prototype. The objective of this project was to develop, test, and install the ART inverter technology in an electric transit bus with the final goal of evaluating performance of the ORNL inverter under field conditions in a vehicle. A scaled-up inverter with the capacity to drive a 22-e bus was built based on the 10-kW ORNL laboratory prototype ART soft-switching inverter. Most (if not all) commercially available inverters for traction drive and other applications use hard-switching inverters. A Cooperative Research and …

This report presents the work done so far on Hunton Formation in West Carney Field in Lincoln County, Oklahoma. West Carney Field produces oil and gas from the Hunton Formation. The field was developed starting in 1995. Some of the unique characteristics of the field include decreasing water oil and ratio over time, decreasing gas-oil ratio at the beginning of production, inability to calculate oil reserves in the field based on long data, and sustained oil rates over long periods of time.

The authors describe the Color Glass Condensate and its importance for a variety of problems related to small-x physics.

The objective of this Class 3 project was demonstrate that detailed reservoir characterization of slope and basin clastic reservoirs in sandstone's of the Delaware Mountain Group in the Delaware Basin of West Texas and New Mexico is a cost effective way to recover oil more economically through geologically based field development. This project was focused on East Ford field, a Delaware Mountain Group field that produced from the upper Bell Canyon Formation (Ramsey sandstone). The field, discovered in 9160, is operated by Oral Petco, Inc., as the East Ford unit. A CO2 flood was being conducted in the unit, and this flood is the Phase 2 demonstration for the project.

This paper quantifies the nickel alloy stress corrosion crack growth rate (SCCGR) dissolved hydrogen level functionality. SCCGR has been observed to exhibit a maximum in proximity to the nickel/nickel oxide phase transition. The dissolved hydrogen level SCCGR dependency has been quantified in a phenomenological model in terms of the stability of nickel oxide not the dissolved hydrogen level. The observed SCCGR dependency has been extended to lower temperatures through the developed model and Contact Electrical Resistance (CER) measurements of the nickel/nickel oxide phase transition. Understanding obtained from this hydrogen level SCC functionality and complementary SCC subprocesses test results is discussed. Specifically, the possible SCC fundamental subprocesses of corrosion kinetics, hydrogen permeation and pickup have also been measured for nickel alloys. Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis has been performed on SCCGR specimens tested in heavy water (D{sub 2}O).

The objective of this CRADA is to establish a new approach to fluid transfer and array construction. This new approach will involve a high-speed, multiplexed fluid distribution valve and ink jet valves. It will enable the parallel handling of multiple reagents for a system that will have multiple applications in addition to the high-speed construction of microarrays. The primary tasks involve proof of principle experiments aimed at establishing key components of the technology and evaluating various optional configurations. The basic platform for evaluating the technology will be set-up by the Contractor at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and will employ custom valving prepared by Rheodyne. The test platform will consist of a motion controller, 3-axes of motion, software, and pneumatic control; and will be used to evaluate the hybrid valve.

Work in materials other than silicon for MEMS applications has typically been restricted to metals and metal oxides instead of more ''exotic'' semiconductors. However, group III-V and II-VI semiconductors form a very important and versatile collection of material and electronic parameters available to the MEMS and MOEMS designer. With these materials, not only are the traditional mechanical material variables (thermal conductivity, thermal expansion, Young's modulus, etc.) available, but also chemical constituents can be varied in ternary and quaternary materials. This flexibility can be extremely important for both friction and chemical compatibility issues for MEMS. In addition, the ability to continually vary the bandgap energy can be particularly useful for many electronics and infrared detection applications. However, there are two major obstacles associated with alternate semiconductor material MEMS. The first issue is the actual fabrication of non-silicon micro-devices and the second impediment is communicating with these novel devices. We have implemented an essentially material independent fabrication method that is amenable to most group III-V and II-VI semiconductors. This technique uses a combination of non-traditional direct write precision fabrication processes such as diamond turning, ion milling, laser ablation, etc. This type of deterministic fabrication approach lends itself to an almost trivial assembly …