Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the International Monetary Fund (IMF), focusing on the: (1) conditions IMF negotiates with its borrower countries; and (2) trade policies of borrower countries."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on staff-on-inmate sexual misconduct in women's prisons, focusing on the: (1) applicable laws, policies, and procedures for addressing such misconduct; and (2) number, nature, and outcome of allegations that have been made in recent years."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the International Monetary Fund (IMF), focusing on how the IMF: (1) establishes financial arrangements with borrower countries and the types of conditions set under these arrangements and assess how this process was used for six borrower countries; and (2) monitors countries' performance and assess how this process was used for the same six borrower countries, detailing the conditions met and not met, the reasons why conditions were not met, and the actions IMF took in response."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO investigated the use of federal research and development grant funds by the University of California system in its payments to graduate student researchers (GSR), focusing on whether: (1) the compensation paid to GSRs was in accordance with the guidelines set forth in the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) Circular A-21; (2) foreign students were receiving a larger share of federal research funds than resident students as compensation for performing as GSRs; (3) the university's treatment of GSR compensation for federal income tax purposes was consistent with its actions in charging such moneys to the federal grants under OMB Circular A-21; and (4) the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) provided adequate oversight in safeguarding against the diversion of funds from federal research grant awards."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the narcotics threat from Colombia, focusing on: (1) the nature of the drug threat from Colombia; (2) recent initiatives of the Colombian government to address the threat, and obstacles it faces; and (3) the status of U.S. efforts to assist the Colombian government in furthering its counternarcotics activities and reducing the flow of illegal narcotics to the United States."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the costs associated with the year 2000 problem, focusing on: (1) estimated year 2000 costs and agency processes to track costs to date; (2) planned uses of emergency funding; (3) year 2000 costs for fiscal year (FY) 2000 and beyond; (4) agency program and information technology (IT) initiatives delayed by year 2000 activities; and (5) lessons learned from year 2000 efforts that can be applied to other IT activities."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the status of initiatives intended to reform the United Nations (U.N.), focusing on U.N. efforts to: (1) unify and focus its organizational structure; (2) control its budget and institute new budget procedures; (3) improve oversight, program monitoring, and evaluation; and (4) improve its human resources management."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the impact of sports programming costs on cable television rates, focusing on: (1) the extent to which sports programming costs are contributing to higher cable television rates; (2) how prices paid for sports programming differ for small and large cable operators; (3) the extent to which sports programmers require cable operators to bundle sports programming with other cable programming and how this practice affects cable rates; and (4) whether the salaries of players in major professional sports have risen over the last 4 years, and if so, whether this has contributed to increases in cable rates."

'The Hanford Site has been used to produce nuclear materials for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessors. A large inventory of radioactive and mixed waste, largely generated during Pu production, exists in 177 underground single- and double-shell tanks. These wastes are to be retrieved and separated into low-activity waste (LAW) and high-level waste (HLW) fractions. The DOE is proceeding with an approach to privatize the treatment and immobilization of Handord''s LAW and HLW.'

We propose a fuser that projects different function estimators in different regions of the input space based on the lower envelope of the error curves of the individual estimators. This fuser is shown to be optimal among projective fusers and also to perform at least as well as the best individual estimator. By incorporating an optimal linear fuser as another estimator, this fuser performs at least as well as the optimal linear combination. We illustrate the fuser by combining neural networks trained using different parameters for the network and/or for learning algorithms.

A project to recover economic amounts of oil from a very mature oil field is being conducted by Laguna Petroleum Corporation of Midland, Texas, with partial funding from a U. S. Department of Energy grant to study shallow carbonate rock reservoirs. The objectives of the project are to use modern engineering methods to optimize oil field management and to use geological and geophysical data to recover untapped potential within the petroleum reservoirs. The integration of data and techniques from these disciplines has yielded results greater than those achievable without their cooperation. The cost of successfully accomplishing these goals is to be low enough for even small independent operators to afford. This article is a report describing accomplishments for the fiscal year 1997-1998.

The FRS process validation procedure is focused upon cleaning N-Reactor Spent Fuel of corrosion products using a statistical process control approach to cleaning parameters.

The major goals of Enhanced Design Alternative (EDA) V are to keep the temperature of the cladding on the spent nuclear fuel (SNF) within the waste package below 350 C (Section 4.2.3), the temperature of the emplacement drift walls below 225 C (Section 4.2.3), and to keep the emplacement drifts dry for several thousand years. In addition, the design would produce relatively consistent heat output from waste package to waste package and ensure that waste package thermal outputs are spread more evenly across the repository. The design would also provide defense in depth (Section 5.3). The goals of this design would be achieved by the combination of design features described below. This EDA would have an areal mass loading (AML) of 150 metric tons of uranium equivalent (MTU) per acre (Section 4.1.16) as opposed to the 85 MTU/acre in the Viability Assessment (VA) reference design. To achieve this loading and the elements necessary to the EDA's overall goals, the design would require approximately 420 acres of emplacement area, within the lower repository block (Appendix A, Section A.2). A conceptual layout was developed for EDA V (Section 5.4.3). The layout, as shown in Figure 2, contains openings that are sized and …

The chemical carryover of impurities and treatment chemicals from the boiler to the steam phase, and ultimately to the low-pressure turbine and condenser, can be quantified based on laboratory experiments preformed over ranges of temperature, pH, and composition. The two major assumptions are that thermodynamic equilibrium is maintained and no deposition, adsorption or decomposition occurs. The most recent results on acetic, formic and phosphoric acids are presented with consideration of the effects of hydrolysis and dimerization reactions. Complications arising from thermal decomposition of the organic acids are discussed. The partitioning constants for these acids and other solutes measured in this program have been incorporated into a simple thermodynamic computer code that calculates the effect of chemical and mechanical carryover on the composition of the condensate formed to varying extents in the water/steam cycle.

The purpose of this report is to document fault tree analyses which have been completed for the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) safety analysis. Logic models for equipment failures and human error combinations that could lead to flammable gas explosions in various process tanks, or failure of critical support systems were developed for internal initiating events and for earthquakes. These fault trees provide frequency estimates for support systems failures and accidents that could lead to radioactive and hazardous chemical releases both on-site and off-site. Top event frequency results from these fault trees will be used in further APET analyses to calculate accident risk associated with DWPF facility operations. This report lists and explains important underlying assumptions, provides references for failure data sources, and briefly describes the fault tree method used. Specific commitments from DWPF to provide new procedural/administrative controls or system design changes are listed in the ''Facility Commitments'' section. The purpose of the ''Assumptions'' section is to clarify the basis for fault tree modeling, and is not necessarily a list of items required to be protected by Technical Safety Requirements (TSRs).

'The Hanford Site has been used to produce nuclear materials for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessors. A large inventory of radioactive and mixed waste, largely generated during Pu production, exists in 177 underground single- and double-shell tanks. These wastes are to be retrieved and separated into low-activity waste (LAW) and high-level waste (HLW) fractions. The DOE is proceeding with an approach to privatize the treatment and immobilization of Handord''s LAW and HLW.'

A method combining ({alpha},p) NRA and ellipsometry has been developed for measuring the Boron and Phosphorus content of borophosphosilicate glass (BPSG) used for interlevel dielectrics in integrated circuits. Yields from the {sup 31}P({alpha},p{sub 0}){sup 34}S (Q = 0.63 MeV) and {sup 10}B({alpha},p{sub 0}) {sup 13}C (Q = 4.06 MeV) reactions are coupled with ellipsometry thickness measurements to calculate the average atomic percent of B and P in the film. Due to the relatively low Q value of the {sup 31}P({alpha},p{sub 0}){sup 34}S reaction and the thickness range of the glass films ({le} 1.2 micrometers) they analyze, fairly high energy alpha particles, and Mylar range foils on the detector are required. Alpha energy, detector angle and range foil thickness were determined by reaction yields and the need to separate the yield peaks of interest from competing ({alpha},p) reactions and backscattered alphas. They have determined that 6.0 MeV incident alphas with a detector angle of 135{degree} and about 100 micrometers of Mylar range foil are optimum for the system. The yield for the {sup 10}B({alpha},p{sub 0}) {sup 13}C reaction is quite constant in the energy range of interest ({approximately} 5.8 to 6 MeV) but the yield for the {sup 31}P({alpha},p{sub 0}){sup 34}S …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the International Monetary Fund (IMF), focusing on the: (1) extent to which IMF borrower countries restrict international trade and the borrowers whose trade has the potential to affect the United States; (2) reported trade barriers and export policies of four IMF borrowers that are among those with the greatest capacity to affect the United States--Brazil, Indonesia, the Republic of Korea, and Thailand--and recent actions reported to have been taken to reduce those barriers or modify policies; (3) actions, in the context of their recent IMF financing arrangements, the four countries have taken or are committed to take to liberalize their trading systems; and (4) extent to which the impact of the four countries' export policies on the United States can be predicted and measured and which U.S. industry sectors might be affected by recent changes in trade from these countries."

The Soudan 2 detector is used to search for evidence of nucleon decay. Particular emphasis is put on searches for modes with multiple-charged particles in the final state, and for modes suggested by super-symmetric theories.

Mixed-conducting (electronic and ionic conducting) dense ceramics are used in many applications, including fuel cells, gas separation membranes, batteries, sensors, and electrocatalysis. This paper describes mixed-conducting ceramic membranes that are being developed to selectively remove oxygen and hydrogen from gas streams in a nongalvanic mode of operation (i.e., with no electrodes or external power supply). Ceramic membranes made of Sr-Fe-Co oxide (SFC), which exhibits high combined electronic and oxygen ionic conductivities, can be used for high-purity oxygen separation and/or partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas (syngas, a mixture of CO and H{sub 2}). The electronic and ionic conductivities of SFC were found to be comparable in magnitude. Steady-state oxygen permeability of SFC has been measured as a function of oxygen-partial-pressure gradient and temperature. For an {approx}3-mm-thick membrane, the oxygen permeability was {approx}2.5 scc{center_dot}cm{sup {minus}2}{center_dot}min{sup {minus}1} at 900 C. Oxygen permeation increases as membrane thickness decreases. Tubular SFC membranes have been fabricated and operated at 900 C for {approx}1000 h in converting methane into syngas. The oxygen permeated through the membrane reacted with methane in the presence of a catalyst and produced syngas. We also studied the transport properties of yttria-doped BaCeO{sub 3{minus}{delta}} (BCY) by impedance spectroscopy and open-cell voltage …

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The laser glass for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) Main Amplifier system is pumped by a system of 192 pulsed power/flash lamp assemblies. Each of these 192 assemblies consists of a 1.6 MJ (nominal) capacitor bank working with a Pre-Ionization/Lamp Check (PILC) pulser to drive an array of 40 flash lamps. This paper describes the predicted performance of these Power Conditioning System (PCS) modules in concert with flashlamp assemblies in NIF. Each flashlamp assembly consists of 20 parallel sets of lamps in series pairs. The sensitivity of system performance to various design parameters of the PILC pulser and the main capacitor bank is described. Results of circuit models are compared to sub-scale flashlamp tests and to measurements taken in tests of a PCS module driving a flashlamp assembly in the First Article NIF Test Module facility at Sandia National Laboratories. Also included are predictions from a physics-based, semi-empirical amplifier gain code.

This report discusses "Section 32", which is a permanent appropriation that since 1935 has earmarked the equivalent of 30% of annual customs receipts to support the farm sector through a variety of activities. Today, most of this sizeable appropriation (now about $5.7 billion per year) is simply transferred directly into the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) child nutrition account to fund school feeding and other programs.

As we enter the high energy regime covered by RHIC and HERA, depolarization effects become strong, so that depolarization resonances begin to overlap. As a result, the ''good old days'' of the ZGS and AGS--when techniques for dealing with isolated resonances were sufficient--are now in the past, and a new generation of spin dynamics questions have to be addressed and new techniques have to be developed. Exciting results were presented at this workshop ranging from the recent rapid R&D advances on polarized H- sources to deeper understanding of the subtle spin dynamics involving Siberian snakes. This summary is an attempt to give some of the highlights.