Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Some Lyme disease patients and Lyme disease organizations are concerned that federal agencies and advisors have financial interests that may affect their decisions on the funding of Lyme disease research and the approval of Lyme disease products. These agencies include the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). This report reviews (1) the financial interests that CDC, NIH, and FDA employees and members of advisory committees working on Lyme disease have reported and (2) how these agencies addressed any potential conflicts of interest identified in those reports. GAO found that CDC, NIH, and FDA have generally met the requirements for disclosure and review of financial interests related to Lyme disease. Employees and special government employees (SGE's) working on Lyme disease-related activities have reported financial holdings in, and arrangements with, health sector firms, travel paid for by health sector firms, and patents related to Lyme disease. Program officials and agency officials reviewed the interests of the employees and determined that they did not present conflicts."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have conducted an increasingly broad range of research and educational activities related to Lyme disease. CDC has instituted a system for the surveillance of Lyme disease, helped to standardize diagnostic testing, conducted and funded basic research on Lyme disease and on its prevention, and developed patient and practitioner educational materials. CDC has initiated most activities recommended by external reviewers and congressional appropriations committees regarding changes to its programs. NIH has conducted and funded basic research on Lyme disease and on its etiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention. In addition, NIH research is addressing two topics of particular interest to patient advocates--chronic Lyme disease and the occurrence of other tick-borne infections in Lyme disease patients. NIH has also responded to most expert recommendations and congressional recommendations. During the last 10 years, allocations for Lyme disease have increased slightly at CDC, and obligations for Lyme disease have increased significantly at NIH. CDC allocations for Lyme disease research and education have increased seven percent, from $6.9 million to $7.4 million in inflation-adjusted dollars from fiscal …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To ensure that people claiming disability insurance benefits can obtain legal representation at a fair price, the Social Security Act requires that the Social Security Administration (SSA) regulate the fees that attorneys charge people to represent their disability claims before the agency. Inefficiencies in the current process increase both the time it takes to pay the attorney fees and the costs of administration. One segment of attorney fee processing--the fee approval process--was substantially simplified in 1991. Systems support could streamline the second segment of the processing--the fee payment--thus lowering the annual administrative costs and cutting processing time. By automating this final segment of the fee processing, SSA could help improve customer service for both claimants and their attorneys. GAO found that despite internal recommendations for a new system, SSA has repeatedly postponed its plans to improve the attorney fee payment process. Indeed, even though these improvements have been part of SSA's system's plans since 1998, SSA has yet to establish a firm schedule for carrying out its plans. Additionally, although SSA has a draft plan for improving the process, agency officials told GAO that the details …

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To protect human health and safeguard the environment,the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates pollution generated by sewage treatment plants, power generation plants, chemical manufacturers, and pulp and paper mills. Monitoring is a key component of these efforts. Many of the technologies that are now being used to monitor environmental conditions have been in existence for decades. In recent years, however, several technologies have become available that may offer improved measurement and performance capabilities. This report (1) identifies technologies whose wider use can improve the monitoring of pollutants entering the nation's air and water, (2) determines the extent to which these improved technologies are being used and steps that EPA can take to promote their wider use, and (3) identifies factors that influence the development of new technologies and steps that EPA can take to encourage greater development of new technologies. GAO found that several monitoring technologies exist that can better measure emissions or discharges from stationary air sources, wastewater sources, and nonpoint water sources. These technologies offer advantages over older, more commonly used methods by detecting pollutants at lower levels, reducing monitoring costs, and increasing the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO audited the fiscal year 2000 financial statement for the Senate Gift Shop Revolving Fund for fiscal year 2000. GAO found (1) the statement is presented fairly in all material respects; (2) although internal control should be improved, the Gift Shop had effective internal controls over financial reporting and compliance with laws and regulations; and (3) no reportable noncompliance with selected provisions of laws and regulations GAO tested."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government buys about $200 billion worth of goods and services each year. Through its purchasing decisions, the federal government can signal its commitment to preventing pollution, reducing solid waste, increasing recycling, and stimulating markets for environmentally friendly products. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA) directs the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify products made with recycled waste materials or solid waste by-products and to develop guidance for purchasing these products. The act also requires procuring agencies to establish programs for purchasing them. This report examines efforts by federal agencies to (1) implementation of RCRA requirements for procuring products with recycled content and (2) the purchase of environmentally preferable and bio-based products. EPA accelerated its efforts in the 1990s to identify recycled-content products, but the status of agencies' efforts to implement the RCRA purchasing requirements for these products is uncertain. The four major procuring agencies report that, for many reasons, their procurement practices have not changed to increase their purchases of environmentally preferable and bio-based products. One reason for the lack of change is that EPA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1986, Congress passed the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) in response to reports that some emergency rooms across the country had refused to treat indigent and uninsured patients or had inappropriately transferred them to other hospitals, a practice known as "patient dumping." EMTALA requires hospitals that participate in Medicare to provide a medical screening examination to any person who comes to the emergency department, regardless of the individual's ability to pay. If a hospital determines that the person has an emergency medical condition, it must provide treatment to stabilize the condition or provide for an appropriate transfer to another facility. The regional offices of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are responsible for investigating complaints of alleged violations and forwarding confirmed violations to the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) for possible imposition of civil monetary fines. The medical community has raised concerns that the implementation and enforcement of EMTALA have created burdens for hospitals and physicians, such as overcrowded emergency departments. This report reviews (1) how EMTALA has affected hospital emergency departments and …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 requires agencies to produce annual performance reports. GAO reviewed the Department of Transportation's (DOT) performance reports for fiscal years 2000 and 2002 to assess its progress in achieving selected key outcomes in important mission areas. This report (1) assesses the progress DOT has made in accomplishing these outcomes and the strategies the agency has in place to achieve them and (2) compares DOT's fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan with the agency's prior year performance report and plan for these outcomes. DOT's consolidated performance report makes it clear that DOT achieved only limited progress in fiscal year 2000 toward achieving the selected outcomes and that the agency directly indicated that its current strategies are not likely to result in achievement of the goals. DOT provided a clear, well-organized discussion of performance goals, measures, and data in both fiscal year 2000 and fiscal year 2002 performance plans."

This report discusses the Better Education for Students and Teachers Act, which would eliminate the requirement for educational services to children with disabilities in certain situations.

The AP-0 Target Hall Collection Lens is a pulsed device which focuses anti-protons just downstream of the Target. Since the angles at which the anti-protons depart the Target can be quite large, a very high focusing strength is required to maximize anti-proton capture into the downstream Debuncher Ring. The current design of the Collection Lens was designed to operate with a focusing gradient of 1,000 T/m. However, multiple failures of early devices resulted in lowering the normal operating gradient to about 750 T/m. At this gradient, the Lens design fares much better, lasting several million pulses, but ultimately still fails. A Finite Element Analysis (FEA) has been performed on this Collection Lens design to help determine the cause and/or nature of the failures. The Collection Lens magnetic field is created by passing high current through a central conductor cylinder. A uniform current distribution through the cylinder will create a tangential or azimuthal magnetic field that varies linearly from zero at the center of the cylinder to a maximum at the outer surface of the cylinder. Anti-proton particles passing through this cylinder (along the longitudinal direction) will see an inward focusing kick back toward the center of the cylinder proportional to …

We have carried out a series of surface studies of selected cathode materials. Instrumental techniques such as Raman microscopy, surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), and atomic force microscopy were used to investigate the cathode surfaces. The goal of this study was to identify detrimental processes which occur at the electrode/electrolyte interface and can lead to electrode degradation and failure during cycling and/or storage at elevated temperatures.

The authors show that the specific heat of the superconductor MgB{sub 2} in zero field, for which significant non-BCS features have been reported, can be fitted, essentially within experimental error, over the entire range of temperature to T{sub c} by a phenomenological two-gap model. The resulting gap parameters agree with previous determinations from band-structure calculations, and from various spectroscopic experiments. The determination from specific heat, a bulk property, shows that the presence of two superconducting gaps in MgB{sub 2} is a volume effect.

Goemon is a C++ library that supersedes Tracy 2 written in Pascal. It has been continuously developed at ALS since 1993. This paper describes its design and implementation issues, and applications.

Carbon is an integral part of many battery electrodes. We explored the use of semiconductor-processing techniques that involve photolithography to pattern photoresists and subsequent pyrolysis to form carbon microstructures that function as microelectrodes. In this study, we describe the status of the fabrication of carbon microelectrodes obtained by pyrolysis of photoresist. Electrochemical nanometer-scale patterning of the surface of a conducting lithium manganese oxide (LiMn{sub 2}O{sub 4}) by scanning probe microscopy (SPM) was studied. We show that a localized surface chemical change can be confined to a depth which depends on the oxide-tip voltage difference and ambient humidity The ability to produce nanometer-size patterns of chemically modified oxide or nanometer-sized alterations of the oxide morphology is demonstrated and discussed with reference to possible mechanisms.

Thin layers of photoresist were spin coated onto silicon wafers, and then carbonized to form smooth carbon films by heating in nitrogen for 1 hour at temperatures between 600 to 1100 C. Well-defined carbon microstructures on Si wafers that are being considered for electrodes in a microbattery concept were obtained by additional processing steps involving patterning and lithography of the photoresist prior to carbonization. The status of the fabrication of carbon microelectrodes obtained by pyrolysis of photoresist, characterization of the carbons by surface-sensitive techniques and electrochemical analysis by cyclic voltammetry of the I{sup -}/I{sub 3}{sup -} redox reaction is described.

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High-level waste (HLW) glass compositions, processing schemes, limits on waste content, and corrosion/dissolution release models are dependent on an accurate knowledge of melting temperatures and thermochemical values. Unfortunately, existing models for predicting these temperatures are empirically-based, depending on extrapolations of experimental information. In addition, present models of leaching behavior of glass waste forms use simplistic assumptions or experimentally measured values obtained under non-realistic conditions. There is thus a critical need for both more accurate and more widely applicable models for HLW glass behavior, which this project addressed. Significant progress was made in this project on modeling HLW glass. Borosilicate glass was accurately represented along with the additional important components that contain iron, lithium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. The formation of crystalline inclusions in the glass, an issue in Hanford HLW formulations, was modeled and shown to be predictive. Thus the results of this work have already demonstrated practical benefits with the ability to map compositional regions where crystalline material forms, and therefore avoid that detrimental effect. With regard to a fundamental understanding, added insights on the behavior of the components of glass have been obtained, including the potential formation of molecular clusters. The EMSP project had very significant effects beyond …

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress appropriates billions of dollars annually to construct buildings and other facilities for military training and operations. Small business have carried out a significant portion of this work. Congress and small business advocates, however, had become concerned that agencies were combining requirements into larger contracts that small businesses could not win. GAO examined the contract bundling of military construction requirements. GAO determined whether (1) overall data on construction contract awards to small businesses indicated that their ability to compete for contracts had been impaired and (2) selected Department of Defense (DOD) contracting offices had combined construction requirements in ways that hampered small businesses' ability to compete. Overall data on military construction contract awards to small businesses revealed that small businesses are generally continuing to win work and that their ability to compete is not being impaired. The Small Business Administration reviewed and approved of DOD's plan to determine whether the construction work being done could accommodate smaller contractors. Small businesses were able to compete for the remaining contracts."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report reviews the Small Business Administration's (SBA) fiscal year 2000 performance report and fiscal year 2002 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 to assess SBA's progress in achieving selected key outcomes that are important to its mission. SBA's reported progress in achieving its outcomes is mixed. However, GAO had difficulty assessing SBA's progress due to weaknesses in its performance measures and data. GAO was unable to assess SBA's lack of an explanation about how the strategies relate to the outcomes or a discussion regarding strategies for the outcome. GAO identified some improvements from SBA's prior year report and plan, but several weaknesses persist in SBA's fiscal year 2000 performance report and performance plan. The performance report includes a section that summarizes SBA's programs, a matrix that identifies ongoing and closed audit reviews, and several recommendations associated with each. However, SBA omitted time frames or schedules for achieving unmet goals, lacked strategies for meeting unmet goals, and failed to adequately link strategies to indicators and measures."

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The 470 Ohm carbon resistor gauge has been used in the stress range up to approximately 4-5 GPa for highly heterogeneous materials and/or divergent flow experiments. The attractiveness of the gauge is due to its rugged nature, simple construction, low cost, reproducibility, and survivability in dynamic events. The associated drawbacks are a long time response to pressure equilibration and gauge resistance hysteresis. In the range below 0.4 GPa, the gauge calibration has been mainly extrapolated into this regime. Because of the need for calibration data within this low stress regime, calibration experiments were performed using a split-Hopkinson bar, drop tower apparatus, and a gas pressure chamber. Since the performance of the gauge at elevated temperatures is a concern, the change in resistance due to heating at atmospheric pressure was also investigated. Details of the various calibration arrangements and the results will be discussed and compared a calibration curve fit to previously published calibration data.

Laser driven shock measurements have been performed on pre-compressed samples. A diamond anvil cell (DAC) has been used to statically compress water to 1 GPa and then strong shocked with an energetic laser. The use of intense laser irradiation can drive shocks in targets making it possible to study the equation of state (EOS) of samples well into the hundreds of GPQ regime. Generally, such experiments employ a sample initially at normal density and standard pressure. Therefore providing data on the principal Hugoniot. In this experiment the initial state of the sample was varied to provide data off the principal Hugoniot. We report the work that was done on the Vulcan laser and describe a method to achieve off principal Hugoniot data.