Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO appeared before Subcommittees on Oversight and Human Resources, House Committee on Ways and Means to discuss the results of our investigation of the extent to which states have found that companies manipulate state unemployment tax rates through a variety of methods in order to lower their unemployment taxes, a practice known as "SUTA dumping," and of the extent to which some consulting firms promote SUTA dumping methods. We conducted our investigation from March 2003 through June 2003 in accordance with quality standards for investigations as set forth by the President's Council on Integrity and Efficiency. To obtain an overview of the extent of the problem, we conducted a survey of unemployment insurance administrators, in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Additionally, one of our agents, posing as a business owner who was looking for ways to reduce state unemployment insurance taxes, placed telephone calls to four consulting firms we identified through the Internet to determine whether they promote SUTA dumping techniques. We also interviewed officials of the Office of Workforce Security, Department of Labor to determine how the federal-state unemployment …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Federal housing assistance in rural America dates back to the 1930s, when most rural residents worked on farms. Without electricity, telephone service, or good roads connecting residents to population centers, residents were comparatively isolated and their access to credit was generally poor. These conditions led Congress to authorize separate housing assistance for rural residents, to be administered by USDA. Over time, the quality of the housing stock has improved and credit has become more readily available in rural areas. Also, advances in transportation, computer technology, and telecommunications have diminished many of the distinctions between rural and urban areas. These changes call into question whether rural housing programs still need to be maintained separately from urban housing programs, and whether RHS is adapting to change and managing its resources as efficiently as possible."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Water quality standards comprise designated uses and water quality criteria. These standards are critical in making accurate, scientifically based determinations about which of the nation's waters are most in need of cleanup. GAO examined the extent to which (1) states are changing designated uses when necessary, (2) EPA is assisting states toward that end, (3) EPA is updating the "criteria documents" states use to develop the pollutant limits needed to measure whether designated uses are being attained, and (4) EPA is assisting states in establishing criteria that can be compared with reasonably obtainable monitoring data."

The focus of this program, was to address those scientific, technical, market, and policy activities which are supported/conducted by Japanese and other relevant Asian organizations pursing research, development and/or manufacturing in high performance computing and communications (HPC), networking, and related sectors, as well as, relevant specialized end applications. The scope of the programs and activities were focused on establishing direct and timely analyses of relevant scientific and technical trend and developments.

We present a non-empirical potential model for studying threshold vibrational excitation of polar molecules by electron impact. This work builds on the zero-range potential virtual state model of Gauyacq and Herzenberg (J.P. Gauyacq and A. Herzenberg, Phys. Rev. A 25, 2959 (1982)), using known analytic properties of the S-matrix for a dipole potential to predict the analytic continuation of the negative ion potential curve into the continuum. We derive an equation that determines the nuclear dynamics which can be solved without the need for an expansion in target vibrational states. The model is applied to e{sup -} - HCl and is found to capture the essential features of the observed excitation cross sections, including both the threshold peaks as well as oscillatory structures at energies above threshold.

It is shown that a simple algorithm which exactly segregates between adiabatic and non-adiabatic electrons in particle-in-cell simulations of drift modes yields excellent conservation properties (e.g. particle number, energy) compared to the conventional df scheme. The removal of the free streaming term in the evolution of the marker weight is shown to be responsible for the improved linear and nonlinear properties of the simulated plasma.

The overall objective of this research project is to develop and evaluate an industrial low NOx burner for existing and new gas-fired combustion systems for intermediate temperature (1400 degree to 2000 degree F) industrial heating devices such as watertube boilers and process fluid heaters. A multi-phase effort is being pursued with decision points to determine advisability of continuance. The current contract over Phases II and III of this work. The objectives of each phase are as follows. Phase II - to design, fabricate, and evaluate prototype burners based on the Forced Internal Recirculation (FIR) concept. Phase III - to evaluate the performance of an FIR burner under actual operating conditions in a full-scale field test and establish the performance necessary for subsequent commercialization

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "For several decades, debate over how to balance timber sales with resource protection and recreational use on federally managed lands has been at the heart of controversy surrounding federal land management. The Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is one of the federal agencies that manages some of the nation's forests--about 53 million acres--under its public domain forestry management program and offers timber for sale from these lands. With regard to BLM's offerings of timber for sale, congressional requesters asked GAO to determine (1) the statutory framework for BLM timber sales, (2) the trend in BLM timber volume offered for sale, and (3) factors contributing to any observed trends. GAO reviewed laws, regulations, and BLM policy governing BLM timber sales. GAO obtained and reviewed data on the volumes and composition of BLM timber sale offerings from fiscal years 1990 through 2002 and met with agency officials and others to identify factors affecting timber sale offering trends and their importance."

BNL is conducting a design study of a 1.0 MW super neutrino beam facility. It requires 230 turns charge exchange injection from a 1.2 GeV superconducting linac with 28 mA current for 0.72 msec. This report studies the impact of halo distribution of the linac beam on the efficiency of injection and the final beam distribution in the AGS as functions of the injection orbit bump and the foil thickness. Another important consideration is the residual radiation generated on the accelerator components near the injection area. If necessary, radiation hardened components and local shielding have to be provided.

Comparing the output of a physics simulation with an experiment is often done by visually comparing the two outputs. In order to determine which simulation is a closer match to the experiment, more quantitative measures are needed. This paper describes our early experiences with this problem by considering the slightly simpler problem of finding objects in a image that are similar to a given query object. Focusing on a dataset from a fluid mixing problem, we report on our experiments using classification techniques from machine learning to retrieve the objects of interest in the simulation data. The early results reported in this paper suggest that machine learning techniques can retrieve more objects that are similar to the query than distance-based similarity methods.

An advantage of a proton Super-conducting Linac (SCL) is that RF cavities can be operated independently, allowing easier beam transport: and acceleration. But cavities are to be separated by drifts long enough to avoid they couple to each other. Moreover, cavities are placed in cryostats that include inactive insertions for cold-warm transitions; and interspersed are warm insertions for magnets and other devices. The SCL is then an alternating sequence of accelerating elements and drifts. No periodicity is present, and the longitudinal motion is not adiabatic. This has the consequence that the beam bunch ellipse will tumble, dilute and create a halo in the momentum plane because of inherent nonlinearities. When this is coupled to longitudinal space-charge forces, it may cause beam loss with latent activation of the accelerator components.

Crystal Channeling occurs when an ion enters a crystal with a small angle with respect to the crystal planes. The electrostatic interaction between the incoming ion and the lattice causes the ion to follow the crystal planes. By mechanically bending a crystal, it is possible to use a crystal to deflect ions. One novel use of a bent crystal is to use it to channel beam halo particles into a collimator downstream. By deflecting the halo particles into a collimator with a crystal it may be possible to improve collimation efficiency as compared to a single collimator. A bent crystal is installed in the yellow ring of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). In this paper we discuss our experience with the crystal collimator, and compare our results to previous data, simulation, and theoretical prediction.

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The mission of the Fossil Energy Program is to conduct research and development that contribute to the advancement of fossil energy technologies. The Oak Ridge National Laboratory Fossil Energy Program research and development activities, performed for the Department of Energy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy, cover the areas of coal, clean coal technology, gas, petroleum, and support to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Projects on the ORNL Fossil Energy Program are supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy, the DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory, the DOE Fossil Energy Clean Coal Technology Program, the DOE National Petroleum Technology Office, and the DOE Fossil Energy Office of Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The ORNL Fossil Energy Program shares with DOE Oak Ridge Operations technical management responsibility for all activities on the DOE Fossil Energy Advanced Research Materials Program. The Advanced Research Materials Program includes research at other DOE and government laboratories, at universities, and at industrial organizations.

Data from the first physics run at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Au+Au collisions at {radical}s{sub NN} = 130 GeV, have been analyzed by the STAR Collaboration using three-pion correlations with charged pions to study whether pions are emitted independently at freezeout. We have made a high-statistics measurement of the three-pion correlation function and calculated the normalized three-particle correlator to obtain a quantitative measurement of the degree of chaoticity of the pion source. It is found that the degree of chaoticity seems to increase with increasing particle multiplicity.

Multiple access (MA) in UWB communication has recently been studied in the context of multiple transmitted-reference short duration chirp pulses in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). The transmitted-reference (TR) receiver was extended in previous studies using multiple orthogonal pulses. Improved performance was observed in simulations by sampling the receiver autocorrelation function (ACF) at both zero- and non-zero lags. Sampling of non-zero ACF lags of orthogonal pulses is a novel approach. Method of using least squares filtering techniques for further tolerance against noise and interference for the TR method is proposed.

The 108th Congress is considering two major bills to provide tax incentives to increase the supply of, and reduce the demand for, fossil fuels and electricity: S.1149, the Energy Tax Incentives Act of 2003, approved by the Senate Finance Committee (SFC) on April 2, 2003 (superseding S. 597), and H.R. 6, introduced as H.R. 1531 and approved by the House on April 11, 2003, by a vote of 247-175.

This report provides background information and policy analysis pertinent to proposals to restructure first responder assistance programs. Specifically, this report provides information on existing programs, appropriations, legislation in the 108th Congress, and selected policy issues. This report does not discuss all relevant policy issues, but, rather, those issues that may be germane to any significant restructuring of existing programs.

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One of the least controversial provisions of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 (P.L. 94-163) established corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new passenger cars. This report presents a brief background and analysis regarding the price of crude oil that brought into sharp focus the fuel inefficiency of U.S. automobiles. The report also discusses the previous issues and the most recent developments regarding CAFE.

Cyprus has been divided since 1974. Greek Cypriots, nearly 80% of the population, live in the southern two thirds of the island. Turkish Cypriots live in the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus” (recognized only by Turkey), with about 30,000 Turkish troops providing security. U.N. peacekeeping forces maintain a buffer zone between the two. Members of Congress have urged the Administration to be more active, although they have not proposed an alternative to the U.N.-sponsored talks.

This report describes the major features of S. 1, as ordered reported, and the measure to be considered by the House Ways and Means Committee, H.R. 2473, as ordered reported.