A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress has appropriated more than $20 billion since April 2003 to support rebuilding efforts in Iraq. This complex undertaking, which is occurring in an unstable security environment and under significant time constraints, is being carried out largely through contracts with private-sector companies. As of September 2003, agencies had obligated nearly $3.7 billion on 100 contracts or task orders under existing contracts. Given widespread congressional interest in ensuring that reconstruction contracts are awarded properly and administered effectively, GAO reviewed 25 contract actions that represented about 97 percent of the obligated funds. GAO determined whether agencies had complied with competition requirements in awarding new contracts and issuing task orders and evaluated agencies' initial efforts in carrying out contract administration tasks."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Risk Management Agency (RMA) administers the federal crop insurance program in partnership with insurance companies who share in the risk of loss or gain. In 2002, American Growers Insurance Company (American Growers), at the time, the largest participant in the program, was placed under regulatory control by the state of Nebraska. To ensure that policyholders were protected and that farmers' claims were paid, RMA agreed to fund the dissolution of American Growers. To date, RMA has spent about $40 million. GAO was asked to determine (1) what factors led to the failure of American Growers, (2) whether RMA procedures were adequate to monitor companies' financial condition, and (3) how effectively and efficiently RMA handled the dissolution of American Growers."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The emergence of webcasting as a means of transmitting audio and video content over the Internet has led to concerns about copyright protection and the payment of royalties to those who own the recording copyrights. Arriving at an acceptable rate for calculating royalties has been particularly challenging. Under the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002, small commercial webcasters reached an agreement with copyright owners that included the option of paying royalties for the period of October 28, 1998, to December 31, 2004, on the basis of a percentage of their revenues, expenses, a combination of both, or a minimum fee rather than paying the royalty rates set by the Librarian of Congress. During debate on the act, copyright owners raised concerns that small webcasters might have arrangements with other parties, such as advertisers, that could produce revenues or expenses that might not be included in their royalty calculations. In this context, the Congress mandated that GAO, in consultation with the Register of Copyrights, prepare a report on the (1) economic arrangements between small webcasters and third parties and (2) effect of those arrangements on the royalties …

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This publication supersedes GAO-04-218G, Acquisition/Financial Systems Interface Requirements: Checklist for Reviewing Systems under the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act (Exposure Draft), December 2003. The Federal Financial Management Improvement Act of 1996 (FFMIA) requires that agencies implement and maintain financial management systems that substantially comply with federal financial management system requirements. These requirements are described in detail in the Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) guidance and in the Federal Financial Management System Requirements series issued by the Joint Financial Management Improvement Program (JFMIP). JFMIP intends for its requirements series to promote understanding of key financial management systems concepts and requirements, to provide a framework for establishing integrated financial management systems that support program and financial managers, and to describe specific requirements of financial management systems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "With rising federal deficits and greater competition for public resources, it is increasingly important for federal programs, such as the Workforce Investment Act (WIA) programs, to show results. This report examines (1) how useful WIA performance data are for gauging program performance; (2) what local areas are doing to manage their WIA performance and assess one-stops on a timely basis, and how states assist these efforts; and (3) the extent to which the Department of Labor is trying to improve WIA's performance measurement system and assess one-stop success."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "More than a decade after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, there is continued interest in the federal response to the health concerns of Gulf War veterans. Gulf War veterans' reports of unexplained illnesses and possible exposures to various health hazards have prompted numerous federal research projects on Gulf War illnesses. This research has been funded primarily by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Health and Human Services. GAO is reporting on (1) the status of research and investigations on Gulf War illnesses, (2) the efforts that have been made by VA and DOD to monitor cancer incidence among Gulf War veterans, and (3) VA's communication and collaboration with the Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses (RAC)."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "More than a decade after the 1991 Persian Gulf War, there is continued interest in the federal response to the health concerns of Gulf War veterans. Gulf War veterans' reports of illnesses and possible exposures to various health hazards have prompted numerous federal research projects on Gulf War illnesses. This research has been funded primarily by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the Department of Defense (DOD), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In 1993, the President named the Secretary of VA as the responsible party for coordinating research activities undertaken or funded by the executive branch of the federal government on the health consequences of service in the Gulf War. In 2002, a congressionally mandated federal advisory committee--the VA Research Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans' Illnesses (RAC)--was established to provide advice on federal Gulf War illnesses research needs and priorities to the Secretary of VA. This statement is based on GAO's report entitled Department of Veterans Affairs: Federal Gulf War Illnesses Research Strategy Needs Reassessment (GAO-04-767). The testimony presents findings about the status of research on Gulf War illnesses and VA's communication and …

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. workforce of the 21st century is expected to face a very different set of opportunities and challenges than previous generations. Demographic and economic trends indicate that the size and composition of the labor force, as well as the characteristics of many jobs, are changing in the 21st century. To discuss these changing labor force dynamics and the role of government policies, GAO hosted the "Workforce Challenges and Opportunities for the 21st Century Forum" on April 22, 2004. The participants were a select group of national leaders and experts on the dynamics of theU.S. workforce. This group included government officials, business and union representatives, and other national experts on workforce issues. As agreed with forum participants, the purpose of the discussion was not to reach consensus but rather to engage in an open, nonattribution-based dialogue."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Since the end of the Gulf War in 1991, many of the approximately 700,000 U.S. veterans have experienced undiagnosed illnesses. They attribute these illnesses to exposure to chemical warfare (CW) agents in plumes--clouds released from bombing of Iraqi sites. But in 2000, the Department of Defense (DOD) estimated that of the 700,000 veterans, 101,752 troops were potentially exposed. GAO was asked to evaluate the validity of DOD, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and British Ministry of Defense (MOD) conclusions about troops' exposure."

Corrective Action Unit 210, Storage Areas and Contaminated Material, is identified in the Federal Facilities Agreement and Consent Order. This Corrective Action Unit consists of four Corrective Action Sites located in Areas 10, 12, and 15 of the Nevada Test Site. This report documents that the closure activities conducted meet the approved closure standards.

The high-density infrared (HDI) transient-liquid coating (TLC) process was successfully developed and demonstrated excellent, enhanced (5 times higher than the current material and process) wear performance for the selected functionally graded material (FGM) coatings under laboratory simulated, in-service conditions. The mating steel component exhibited a wear rate improvement of approximately one and a half (1.5) times. After 8000 cycles of. wear testing, the full-scale component testing demonstrated that the coating integrity was still excellent. Little or no spalling was observed to occur.

Triplication of a wavefront, also classically known as birefringence, can and does occur in transversely isotropic (TI) media. With the growing interest in shear waves, and in particular, converted shear waves, it becomes necessary to study this phenomenon, and the bright spots that accompany it. In a plane that includes the medium's rotational symmetry axis, there may exist a range of angles within which the qSV wave, whose polarization lies in that plane, may propagate at three distinct velocities. The region of the qSV wave curve where this can occur always corresponds to the region of the qSV slowness curve where the closed qSV curve about the origin is concave. When the range of angles is small and the three arrivals are close together, the usual situation, the qSV wave within that small range will be significantly brighter than in other directions. When the range of angles is large, the two cusps of the wave surface, on the borders of the region of triplication will both be bright spots.

Since 1998, there has been an ongoing effort to gain acceptance of U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-owned spent nuclear fuel (SNF) in the national repository. To accomplish this goal, the fuel matrix was used as a discriminating feature to segregate fuels into nine distinct groups. From each of those groups, a characteristic fuel was selected and analyzed for criticality safety based on a proposed packaging strategy. This report identifies and quantifies the important criticality parameters for the canisterized fuels within each criticality group to: (1) demonstrate how the “other” fuels in the group are bounded by the baseline calculations or (2) allow identification of individual type fuels that might require special analysis and packaging.

Because of their intrinsic brightness, supernovae make excellent cosmological probes. We describe the spectral-fitting expanding atmosphere method (SEAM) for obtaining distances to Type IIP supernovae (SNe IIP) and present a distance to SN 1999em for which a Cepheid distance exists. Our models give results consistent with the Cepheid distance, even though we have not attempted to tune the underlying hydrodynamical model but have simply chosen the best fits. This is in contradistinction to the expanding photosphere method (EPM), which yields a distance to SN 1999em that is 50 percent smaller than the Cepheid distance. We emphasize the differences between the SEAM and the EPM. We show that the dilution factors used in the EPM analysis were systematically too small at later epochs. We also show that the EPM blackbody assumption is suspect. Since SNe IIP are visible to redshifts as high as z {approx}< 6, with the James Webb Space Telescope, the SEAM may be a valuable probe of the early universe.

The project's overall objective is to develop a commercially viable dynamic signature based sensing system that is used to infer the flow rate and fineness of pulverized coal. This eighteen month effort will focus on developments required to transfer the measurement system from the laboratory to a field ready prototype system. This objective will be achieved through the completion of the laboratory development of the sensor and data algorithm followed by full scale field tests of a portable measurement system. The sensing system utilizes accelerometers attached externally to coal feeder pipes. Raw data is collected from the impingement of the coal particles as well as the acoustic noise generated from the flow and is transformed into characteristic signatures through proper calibration that are meaningful to the operator. The laboratory testing will use a portable version of the sensing system to collect signature data from a variety of flow conditions including coal flow rates, flow orientations, and coal particle characteristics. This work will be conducted at the Coal Flow Measurement Laboratory that is sponsored by EPRI and operated by Airflow Sciences. The data will be used to enhance the algorithm and neural network required to perform real time analysis of the …

To determine prospectively whether physical activity canprevent age-related weight gain and whether changing levels of activityaffect body weight. DESIGN/SUBJECTS: The study consisted of 8,080 maleand 4,871 female runners who completed two questionnaires an average(+/-standard deviation (s.d.)) of 3.20+/-2.30 and 2.59+/-2.17 yearsapart, respectively, as part of the National Runners' Health Study.RESULTS: Changes in running distance were inversely related to changes inmen's and women's body mass indices (BMIs) (slope+/-standard error(s.e.): -0.015+/-0.001 and -0.009+/-0.001 kg/m(2) per Deltakm/week,respectively), waist circumferences (-0.030+/-0.002 and -0.022+/-0.005 cmper Deltakm/week, respectively) and percent changes in body weight(-0.062+/-0.003 and -0.041+/-0.003 percent per Deltakm/week,respectively, all P<0.0001). The regression slopes were significantlysteeper (more negative) in men than women for DeltaBMI and Deltapercentbody weight (P<0.0001). A longer history of running diminishedthe impact of changing running distance on men's weights. When adjustedfor Deltakm/week, years of aging in men and years of aging in women wereassociated with increases of 0.066+/-0.005 and 0.056+/-0.006 kg/m(2) inBMI, respectively, increases of 0.294+/-0.019 and 0.279+/-0.028 percentin Delta percentbody weight, respectively, and increases of 0.203+/-0.016and 0.271+/-0.033 cm in waist circumference, respectively (allP<0.0001). These regression slopes suggest that vigorous exercise mayneed to increase 4.4 km/week annually in men and 6.2 km/week annually inwomen to compensate for the expected gain in weight associated …

This report describes the results of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with Applied Materials, Inc. (AMAT) of Santa Clara, California. This project encompassed the continued development and integration of the ORNL Automated Image Retrieval (AIR) technology, and an extension of the technology denoted Automated Signature Retrieval (ASR), and other related technologies with the Defect Source Identification (DSI) software system that was under development by AMAT at the time this work was performed. In the semiconductor manufacturing environment, defect imagery is used to diagnose problems in the manufacturing line, train yield management engineers, and examine historical data for trends. Image management in semiconductor data systems is a growing cause of concern in the industry as fabricators are now collecting up to 20,000 images each week. In response to this concern, researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) developed a semiconductor-specific content-based image retrieval method and system, also known as AIR. The system uses an image-based query-by-example method to locate and retrieve similar imagery from a database of digital imagery using visual image characteristics. The query method is based on a unique architecture that takes advantage of the statistical, morphological, and structural characteristics of image data, generated by inspection …

This paper describes the design, simulation, construction, and initial performance of a solar water heating system (a 360-tube evacuated-tube heat-pipe solar collector, 54 m2 in gross area, 36 m2 in net absorber area) installed at the top of the hot water recirculation loop in the Social Security Administration's Mid-Atlantic Center in Philadelphia. When solar energy is available, water returning to the hot water storage tank is heated by the solar array. This new approach, in contrast to the more conventional approach of preheating incoming water, is made possible by the thermal diode effect of heat pipes and low heat loss from evacuated-tube solar collectors. The simplicity of this approach and its low installation costs support the deployment of solar energy in existing commercial buildings, especially where the roof is some distance away from the water heating system, which is often in the basement. Initial performance measurements of the system are reported.

DOE's State Energy Program published this case study in conjunction with the Florida Energy Office about Florida's experience with establishing the first utility-run solar hot water program in the country.

This project was to undertaken to provide information about a condition known as ''headburn''. Information from the project will enable U.S. Corps of Engineers managers to make adjustments in operational procedures or facilities on the Columbia and Snake rivers to prevent loss of pre-spawning adult salmonids that migrate through the facilities. Headburn is a descriptive clinical term used by fishery biologists to describe scalping or exfoliation of skin and ulceration of underlying connective tissue and muscle, primarily of the jaw and cranial region of salmonids observed at fish passage facilities. Headburn lesions are primarily caused when fish collide with concrete or other structures at dams and fish passage facilities, and may be exacerbated in some fish that ''fallback'' or pass over spillways or through turbine assemblies after having passed the dam through a fish ladder. Prespawning mortality of headburned salmonids can be prevented or greatly reduced by therapeutic treatment of both hatchery and wild fish. Treatments would consist of topical application of an anti-fungal agent, injection of replacement plasma electrolytes into the peritoneal cavity, and injection of a broad-spectrum antibacterial agent at fish passage and trapping facilities or hatcheries.

The 2003 edition of this report, prepared by NREL's Energy Analysis Office, includes up-to-date information on power technologies, including complete technology profiles. The data book also contains charts on electricity restructuring, power technology forecasts and comparisons, electricity supply, electricity capability, electricity generation, electricity demand, prices, economic indicators, environmental indicators, conversion factors, and selected congressional questions and answers.

Quarterly newsletter from DOE's Office of Industrial Technologies to promote the use of energy-efficient industrial systems.

To support the assessment of inspection findings as part of the risk-informed inspection in the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (USNRC's) Reactor Oversight Process (ROP), risk inspection notebooks, also called significance determination process (SDP) notebooks, have been developed for each of the operating plants in the United States. These notebooks serve as a tool for assessing risk significance of inspection findings along with providing an engineering understanding of the significance. Plant-specific notebooks are developed to capture plant-specific features, characteristics, and analyses that influence the risk profile of the plant. At the same time, the notebooks follow a consistent set of assumptions and guidelines to assure consistent treatment of inspection findings across the plants. To achieve these objectives, notebooks are designed to provide specific information that are unique both in the manner in which the information is provided and in the way the screening risk assessment is carried out using the information provided. The unique features of the SDP notebooks, the approaches used to present the information for assessment of inspection findings, the assumptions used in consistent modeling across different plants with due credit to plant-specific features and analyses form the technical basis of the SDP notebooks. In this document, the …

This subcontract report describes Shell Solar Industries (SSI), formerly Siemens Solar Industries, pursuing research and development of CuInSe2-based thin-film PV technology since 1980. In the 1980s, SSI demonstrated a 14.1%-efficient 3.4-cm2 active-area cell; unencapsulated integrated modules with aperture efficiencies of 11.2% on 940 cm2 and 9.1% on 3900 cm2; and an encapsulated module with 8.7% efficiency on 3883 cm2 (verified by NREL). Since these early achievements, SSI has made outstanding progress in the initial commercialization of high-performance thin-film CIS technology. Line yield has been increased from about 60% in 2000 to about 85% in 2002. This major accomplishment supports attractive cost projections for CIS. Recently, NREL confirmed a champion 12.8% aperture-area conversion efficiency for a large-area (3626 cm2) CIS module. Other than definition of the aperture area, this module is simply one module from the upper end of the production distribution for standard modules. Prerequisites for commitment to large-scale commercialization have been demonstrated at successive levels of CIS production. Remaining R&amp;D challenges are to scale the processes to even larger areas, to reach higher production capacity, to demonstrate in-service durability over longer times, and to advance the fundamental understanding of CIS-based materials and devices with the goal of improvements for …