Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the use of the Internet to facilitate the submission and resolution of federal customer complaints, focusing on the: (1) type and extent of web-based complaint mechanisms provided by 32 federal agencies which handle 90 percent of the federal government's contact with the public; and (2) status of two federal efforts to develop central Internet-based gateways: www.consumer.gov and FirstGov."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the usage of the social security number (SSN) for purposes not related to social security and the implication of restricting such usage, focusing on: (1) whether the SSN should become a national identifier; (2) whther it is feasible to enact, administer, and enforce a law that restricts the use of SSNs; (3) how have SSN proof requirements changed over time; (4) does the public benefit from the widespread use of SSNs and the sharing of personal information; (5) whether a private business can decline to provide service to someone who refused to disclose his or her SSN; (6) what are the possible effects on businesses of restricting their use of SSNs; (7) how has the high-tech economy affected SSN use; (8) why information brokers need people's SSNs; and (9) whether another identifier would take its place should the use of SSNs be restricted by federal law."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the relationship between the Department of Commerce and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), focusing on: (1) whether the formation of ICANN was in accordance with the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) and the Government Corporation Control Act; (2) how ICANN's interim board was selected and what role Commerce played in the selection of board members; (3) whether Commerce has the authority to enter into agreements with ICANN and to participate in ICANN activities; (4) what the legal basis is for the expenditures of funds by the Department for its participation in ICANN proceedings; (5) whether, under Office of Management and Budget Circular A-25, ICANN, as a project partner with Commerce, has authority to impose fees on Internet users to cover ICANN's operating costs; and (6) whether Commerce has the legal authority to transfer control of the authoritative root server to ICANN."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Federal Reserve Banks' (FRB) computer control vulnerabilities."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the impact of organized crime and public sector corruption on the efforts of the international community to rebuild Bosnia and meet the benchmarks for the withdrawal of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces, focusing on: (1) how organized crime and public sector corruption might affect the successful implementation of the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Dayton Agreement) in Bosnia; (2) whether the international community's anticorruption efforts have improved Bosnia's law enforcement and judicial system and reduced corruption; and (3) whether international assistance resources are being safeguarded and whether such assistance is being used by Bosnia in place of domestic revenues lost due to crime and corruption."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) base closure accounts and its budget request for base closure activities, focusing on: (1) how trends in base realignment and closure appropriations in recent years and estimates for future years compare to the fiscal year (FY) 2001 budget request; and (2) unliquidated obligations and unobligated balances from prior years' appropriations and the extent to which DOD considered these balances and obligations in preparing the FY 2001 budget request."

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether Webb County may replace a cattle guard that was removed from a county road (RQ-0183-JC)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Amount of credit for time served in a county jail for failure to pay a fine assessed for a Class C misdemeanor (RQ-0184-JC)

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a hospital district governed by chapter 286 of the Health and Safety Code may hold an election to increase the maximum tax rate set in its conversion election (RQ-0189-JC)

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.

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The reaction of Au with GaSb occurs at a relatively low temperature (100 C). Upon annealing, a AuSb{sub 2} compound and several Au-Ga phases are produced. Phase transitions occur toward higher Ga concentration with increasing annealing temperatures. Furthermore, the depth of the contact also increases with increased annealing temperature. They found that the AuSb{sub 2} compound forms on the GaSb surface, with the compound crystal partially ordered with respect to the substrate. The transition of Schottky- to ohmic-contact behavior in Au/n-type GaSb occurs simultaneously with the formation of the AuGa compound at about a 250 C annealing temperature. This ohmic contact forms without the segregation of dopants at the metallic compound/GaSb interface. Therefore it is postulated that transition from Schottky- to ohmic-contact behavior is obtained through a series of tunneling transitions of electrons through defects in the depletion region in the Au/n-type GaSb contacts. Contact resistivities of 6-7 x 10{sup -6} {Omega}-cm{sup 2} were obtained with the annealing temperature between 300 and 350 C for 30 seconds. In Au/p-type GaSb contacts, the resistivity was independent of the annealing temperature. This suggested that the carrier transport in p-type contact dominated by thermionic emission.

Chemical kinetic factors of hydrocarbon oxidation are examined in a variety of ignition problems. Ignition is related to the presence of a dominant chain branching reaction mechanism that can drive a chemical system to completion in a very short period of time. Ignition in laboratory environments is studied for problems including shock tubes and rapid compression machines. Modeling of the laboratory systems are used to develop kinetic models that can be used to analyze ignition in practical systems. Two major chain branching regimes are identified, one consisting of high temperature ignition with a chain branching reaction mechanism based on the reaction between atomic hydrogen with molecular oxygen, and the second based on an intermediate temperature thermal decomposition of hydrogen peroxide. Kinetic models are then used to describe ignition in practical combustion environments, including detonations and pulse combustors for high temperature ignition, and engine knock and diesel ignition for intermediate temperature ignition. The final example of ignition in a practical environment is homogeneous charge, compression ignition (HCCI) which is shown to be a problem dominated by the kinetics intermediate temperature hydrocarbon ignition. Model results show why high hydrocarbon and CO emissions are inevitable in HCCI combustion. The conclusion of this study …

The potential performance and flexibility of a compact, quasi-axisymmetric (QAS) stellarator design, has been addressed by studying the effects of varied pressure and rotational transform profiles on the global, ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) stability and the energetic particle transport. The CAS3D and TERPSICHORE code packages were used in the MHD studies while the ORBITMN/ORBIT3D code package was used for the transport simulations of the three field period QAS. To assess robust performance in a medium-size experiment, the VMEC code was used to obtain magnetic flux surfaces for 30 equilibria near the design point, while keeping the boundary shape and the average beta fixed at 3.8%. The plasma equilibria obtained were designated P0X/I0Y as follows: P00/I00 was the baseline configuration. P01, P02 and P03 were defined so that P01 was similar to P00, P02 was more peaked than P01, while P03 was broader than P01. P04 was a very broad, parabolic pressure profile and P05 was the pressure profile used in helias reactor studies based on the W7-X design. The iota profiles were chosen as follows: I01 was linear, maintaining i(0) and i(a) the same as in I00. I02 and I03 were based on I01 and also kept i(0) and i(a) as …

The Colorado Geological Survey and Southern Ute Indian Tribe proposed to determine the cause of several gas seeps which are occurring on the western outcrop of the coalbed methane producing Fruitland Formation on the Southern Ute Indian Reservation. Correlation between outcrop coals and subsurface coals was necessary to determine seep source in the northern part of the study area. Subsurface studies include structure and net coal isopach maps, stratigraphy was cross-sections, production maps, and a production database. Detailed coal stratigraphy was correlated through production wells near the outcrop region. These maps and cross-sections were correlated to new surface outcrop maps generated by the Colorado, Geological Survey and the Southern Ute Division of Energy Resources. Methane gas seepage has been noted historically within the study area. The total investigation may help determine if gas seepage is natural, a result of coalbed methane development, or some combination of the above.

The task of this work was to evaluate the past performance of the E.N. WOODS Unit and to forecast its future economic performance by taking into consideration the geology, petrophysics and production history of the reservoir. The Decline Curve Analysis feature of the Appraisal of Petroleum Properties including Taxation Systems (EDAPT) software along with the Production Management Systems (PMS) software were used to evaluate the original volume of hydrocarbon in place and estimate the reserve. The Black Oil Simulator (BOAST II) was then used to model the waterflooding operation and estimate the incremental oil production attributable to the water injection. BOAST II was also used to predict future performance of the reservoir.

The FETI algorithms are numerically scalable iterative domain decomposition methods. These methods are well documented for solving equations arising from the Finite Element discretization of second or fourth order elasticity problems. The one level FETI method equipped with the Dirichlet preconditioned was shown to be numerically scalable for second order elasticity problems while the two level FETI method was designed to be numerically scalable for fourth order elasticity problems. The second level coarse grid is an enriched version of the original one level FETI method with coarse grid. The coarse problem is enriched by enforcing transverse displacements to be continuous at the corner points. This coarse problem grows linearly with the number of subdomains. Current implementations use a direct solution method to solve this coarse problem. However, the current implementation gives rise to a full matrix system. This full matrix can lead to increased storage requirements especially if working within a distributed memory environment. Also, the factorization and subsequent forward/backward substitutions of the second level coarse problem becomes the dominant factor in solving the global problem as the number of subdomains becomes large (N{sub s} > 1,000). The authors introduce an alternative formulation of the two level coarse problem that …

Synchrotron radiation with photon energies at or below 1keV is giving new insights into such areas as wet cell biology, condensed matter physics and extreme ultraviolet optics technology.

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The objective of this Class 3 project was demonstrate that detailed reservoir characterization of slope and basin clastic reservoirs in sandstone's of the Delaware Mountain Group in the Delaware Basin of West Texas and New Mexico is a cost effective way to recover a higher percentage of the original oil in place through strategic placement of infill wells and geologically based field development. Project objectives are divided into two main phases. The original objectives of the reservoir-characterization phase of the project were (1) to provide a detailed understanding of the architecture and heterogeneity of two representative fields of the Delaware Mountain Group, Geraldine Ford and Ford West, which produce from the Bell Canyon and Cherry Canyon Formations, respectively, (2) to chose a demonstration area in one of the fields, and (3) to simulate a CO{sub 2} flood in the demonstration area.

The authors report on the results from their investigation of pion electroproduction based on the dynamical model developed in the SL Model. The essential point of SL model is to have a consistent description of the {pi}N scattering and {gamma}N {yields} {pi}N transition. This is important in extracting the {gamma}N {yields} {Delta} form factors since it was found that the nonresonant mechanisms and the final {pi}N interaction can account for about 40% of the M1 strength at Q{sup 2} = 0. The details have been discussed and the talk given by T. Sato in this conference. Here they only present their results for the {gamma}N {yields} {Delta} form factors.

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Understanding the properties of high gain (alpha-dominated) fusion plasmas in an advanced toroidal configuration is a critical issue that must be addressed to provide the scientific foundation for an attractive magnetic fusion reactor. The functional fusion plasma objectives for major next physics steps in magnetic fusion research can be described as: Burning Plasma Physics - The achievement and understanding of alpha-dominated plasmas that have characteristics similar to those expected in a fusion energy source, and Advanced Toroidal Physics - The achievement and understanding of bootstrap-current-dominated plasmas with externally controlled profiles and other characteristics (e.g. confinement and beta) similar to those expected in an attractive fusion system.

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