Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report evaluates how the Small Business Administration (SBA) has managed its Women's Business Center Program. GAO found that the two offices that run the program--the Office of WOmen's Business Ownership (program office) and the Office of Procurement and Grants (grants office)--have addressed the weaknesses cited in GAO's 1999 report. For example, files from the program office that GAO reviewed were generally complete, and the few documents that GAO could not locate were provided promptly. The program office was also able to provide various historical documents for 1999 and 2000, and the program office and grants office had tried to improve coordination with each other, such as through better recordkeeping."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony discusses the implementation and management of the General Services Administration's (GSA) Metropolitan Area Acquisition (MAA) program, which encourages competition for telecommunication services in large cities. GAO found that as of June 2001, GSA had awarded 37 MAA contracts for 20 metropolitan areas. Existing GSA contracts were to become MAA contracts within nine months after contractors were authorized to begin work. This goal was met in only two of the 14 metropolitan areas in which authorization was given. GSA charges customer agencies two types of fees to recover the costs of their contract management and administration activities. Although GSA does not yet allow MAA contractors to offer FTS2001 services, it is taking steps to allow crossover between the two programs."

The EIGER (Electromagnetic Interactions Generalized) modeling suite is a joint development activity by the Lawrence Livermore National Lab, Sandia National Labs, the University of Houston, and the Navy (Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center-San Diego). The effort endeavors to bring the next generation of hybrid, higher-order, full-wave analysis methods into a single integrated framework. The tools are based upon frequency-domain solutions of Maxwell's equations to model scattering and radiation from complex 2D and 3D structures. The framework employs boundary element solutions of integral equation formulations and finite element solutions of the Helmholtz wave equation. A goal is to use higher-order representations to model both the geometry (using higher-order geometric elements) and numerical methods (using higher-order vector basis functions). In addition, a variety of advanced Green's functions and symmetry operators can be applied to efficiently treat geometries containing such features as layered material regions and periodic structures. Each of these methods can be brought to bear simultaneously, on different portions of a complex structure. HPC implementation issues were addressed during the design of the software architecture, so that the same package runs on platforms ranging from serial desktop workstations through advanced HPC architectures. Our current efforts on higher-order modeling and improved …

SSPX (Sustained Spheromak Physics eXperiment) was constructed to investigate the key physics issues of buildup and sustainment of spheromak plasmas with elevated electron temperature. Long pulse buildup to high magnetic field and temperature, at modest gun current, may point the way to a potentially simpler and more compact fusion reactor. Reported here are T{sub e} measurements in new magnetic flux geometries, results from sustainment experiments with {approx}1ms pulses, and power balance modeling of buildup. The experiment uses coaxial gun injection. Tungsten coated walls reduce plasma impurities. The magnet coil set has been upgraded from 3 (base set) to 9 coils (bias coils) to control the vacuum magnetic flux geometry within the gun and flux conserver (a=l=0.5 m). SSPX is powered by a formation bank (0.5 MJ, {tau}{sub rise}{approx}0.15 ms) and a sustainment bank (1.5 MJ, {tau}{sub p}{approx}1 ms). Radiated power <20% of input power and the burn-out of low Z impurities (C, N, and O{sup +Z{le}5}) have been achieved using bakeout, wall conditioning, and titanium gettering. These techniques have produced long decay time plasmas and electron temperature > 100 eV.

A four-chamber piston pump has been tested in several evolving configurations. A significant improvement over an earlier hyadrazine pump is the elimination of warm gas leakage in the powerhead. This has been achieved through the used of soft seals for the power piston and intake-exhaust valves, with gas temperatures approaching 800 K (980 F). The pumped fluid serves as a coolant, and the cylinder walls and heads are made of aluminum for high thermal conductivity, low mass, and affordability.

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a 1.5 to 15 {angstrom}-wavelength free-electron laser (FEL), currently proposed for the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). The photon output consists of high brightness, transversely coherent pulses with duration < 300 fs, together with a broad spontaneous spectrum with total power comparable to the coherent output. The output fluence, and pulse duration, pose special challenges for optical component and diagnostic designs. We discuss some of the proposed solutions, and give specific examples related to the planned initial experiments.

The SNS is a Department of Energy (DOE) research facility under construction near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The SNS includes a 300-m long, 1 GeV, 2 MW, linear accelerator that produces neutrons by collisions of high-energy protons with mercury target nuclei. The mercury target atoms are in a circulating mercury loop that is water-cooled. The mercury loop operates at a nominal average temperature of 75 C (60 C nominal cold leg temperature and 90 C nominal hot leg temperature). The overall target system also includes circulating fluid systems for supercritical cryogenic hydrogen (to moderate product neutrons to low energy), heavy water (for cooling of shielding), and several light water systems (for shielding cooling, proton beam window and neutron beam window cooling, and to moderate neutrons to energies higher than those from the cryogenic hydrogen moderator).

With growing interest in and demonstrated cases of inorganic hydrothermal synthesis of reduced or organic carbon compounds from CO and CO{sub 2}, it becomes crucial to establish geochemical criteria to distinguish reduced/organic carbon compounds of abiogenic origin from those of biogenic origin with overwhelming abundances on the surface and in subsurface of the Earth. Chemical and isotopic compositions, particularly {sup 13}C/{sup 12}C ratios, of reduced/organic carbon compounds have been widely utilized for deducing the origins and formation pathways of these compounds. An example is isotopic and C{sub 1}/(C{sub 2}+C{sub 3}) ratios of natural gases, which have been used to distinguish bacterial, thermogenic, and possible abiogenic origins. Another example is that ancient graphitic carbon with {delta}{sup 13}C values c-25per thousand has been considered of biogenic origin. Although these criteria could be largely valid, growing data including those from our hydrothermal experiments suggest that a great caution must be exercised.

Providing high quality light to users in a consistent and reliable manner is one of the main goals of the accelerator physics group at the Advanced Light source (ALS). To meet this goal considerable time is spent monitoring the performance of the machine. At the Group's weekly meeting the performance of the accelerator over the previous week's run is reviewed. This paper describes the parameters that are monitored to optimize the performance of the ALS.

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