A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Although the Department of Defense (DOD) pays active-duty servicemembers who do not live in military housing a Basic Allowance for Housing (BAH) to help them afford private market residences, expected growth at some military installations has raised concerns about whether nearby communities will have enough affordable rental housing for incoming personnel. In response to a congressional mandate, GAO assessed (1) how excluding BAH would affect servicemembers' eligibility to apply for federal rental housing programs and (2) factors that could affect their use of the programs in selected communities gaining military personnel. GAO compared servicemembers' eligibility for the programs as of December 2005 by including and excluding BAH from income determinations and examined factors affecting potential program use near four growing military installations."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Since the Global War on Terrorism, the Department of Defense (DOD) has taken steps to expand the role of the United States Special Operations Command (Command) and its forces. In response, the Command has transformed its headquarters to coordinate counterterrorism activities, and DOD has increased funding and the number of special operations forces positions. Given the expanded mission, it is critical that the Command has personnel with the right knowledge and skill sets. GAO was asked to assess: (1) whether the Command has determined all of the personnel requirements needed to meet its expanded role; (2) the progress and challenges in meeting growth goals; and (3) any effect of deployments on the Command's ability to provide trained forces, and the progress made in managing deployments. GAO performed its work at the Special Operations Command and its service components, analyzed personnel data against requirements, and examined policies and directives."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Established in 1994, the Department of the Treasury's Bank Enterprise Award (BEA) program provides cash awards to banks that increase their investments in community development financial institutions (CDFI) and lending in economically distressed communities. CDFIs are specialized institutions that provide financial services to areas and populations underserved by conventional lenders and investors. In 2005, Treasury provided nearly $10 million in BEA awards. The BEA program has faced longstanding questions about its effectiveness and experienced significant declines in funding in recent years. This report (1) examines the extent to which the BEA program may have provided banks with financial incentives and (2) assesses the BEA program's performance measures and internal controls. To complete this study, GAO reviewed relevant award data; interviewed Treasury, bank, and CDFI officials; and assessed the BEA program's performance measures and internal controls against GAO's standards for effective measures and controls."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In the 1990s, several heinous crimes put the issue of the sexual abuse of children onto the nation's policy agenda. Sexual crimes against children and adults are often perpetrated by individuals known to their victims and these crimes devastate families and communities. To safeguard children and their families, Congress enacted a series of laws between 1994 and 2003 that required sex offenders to register their addresses with law enforcement agencies. The laws also required that states, in order to be eligible to receive certain federal funds, establish sex offender registries, and the Department of Justice (DOJ) establish a national sex offender registry. The National Sex Offender Registry (NSOR) is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) within DOJ. It is a nationwide database compiled from information in individual state sex offender registries and it currently lists over 400,000 convicted sex offenders. The system requires convicted sex offenders to register with law enforcement agencies upon release from prison and to update their address information whenever they move or change addresses. Law enforcement agencies rely on information in sex offender registries to track the location and movement …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Mandated to screen all checked baggage by using explosive detection systems at airports by December 31, 2003, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has deployed two types of screening equipment: explosive detection systems (EDS), which use computer-aided tomography X-rays to recognize explosives, and explosive trace detection (ETD) systems, which use chemical analysis to detect explosive residues. This report discusses (1) EDS and ETD maintenance costs, (2) factors that played a role in these costs, and (3) the extent to which TSA conducts oversight of maintenance contracts. GAO reviewed TSA's contract files and processes for reviewing contractor cost and performance data."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Hurricane Katrina was one of the largest natural disasters in our nation's history. Significant federal, state, and local resources were mobilized to respond to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, including those of the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard played a key role in the planning, response, and recovery efforts for Hurricane Katrina in three mission areas: search and rescue, marine pollution response, and management of maritime commerce. This report discusses the activities undertaken by the Coast Guard, as well as the challenges and lessons learned as a result of the agency's efforts. More specifically, it focuses on (1) the factors that prepared the Coast Guard to perform these three mission areas in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; (2) the Coast Guard's response to Hurricane Katrina, the challenges it faced in performing its missions, and its efforts to mitigate these challenges; and (3) the implications and lessons learned, as identified by the Coast Guard, regarding the effect of Hurricane Katrina surge operations on its people, assets, financial resources, and operations. To determine the Coast Guard's preparation factors, the challenges and lessons learned we interviewed officials responsible for …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia are important U.S. allies in the war on terrorism. The United States provides these countries with security assistance, however, Congress restricts funding when credible evidence exists that foreign security units have committed gross human rights violations. GAO (1) describes the goals of U.S. security assistance to these countries and examines U.S. agencies' assessment of this assistance, (2) assesses U.S. agencies' implementation in Morocco and Tunisia of State's policy to screen foreign security forces to ensure compliance with congressional human rights funding restrictions, and (3) examines agencies' efforts to monitor the use of U.S.-origin defense articles provided through U.S. security assistance programs in the three countries, including Western Sahara, to ensure that they are not misused or diverted. GAO visited U.S. posts in Morocco and Tunisia and analyzed trainee files to determine compliance with human rights vetting policy."

Following our earlier study on the dynamics of low energy electron attachment to formic acid, we report the results of elastic low-energy electron collisions with formic acid. Momentum transfer and angular differential cross sections were obtained by performing fixed-nuclei calculations employing the complex Kohn variational method. We make a brief description of the technique used to account for the polar nature of this polyatomic target and compare our results with available experimental data.

Organizations that implement strategic energy management programs have the potential to achieve sustained energy savings if the programs are carried out properly. A key opportunity for achieving energy savings that plant managers can take is to determine an appropriate level of energy performance by comparing their plant's performance with that of similar plants in the same industry. Manufacturing facilities can set energy efficiency targets by using performance-based indicators. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), through its ENERGY STAR{reg_sign} program, has been developing plant energy performance indicators (EPIs) to encourage a variety of U.S. industries to use energy more efficiently. This report describes work with the corn refining industry to provide a plant-level indicator of energy efficiency for facilities that produce a variety of products--including corn starch, corn oil, animal feed, corn sweeteners, and ethanol--for the paper, food, beverage, and other industries in the United States. Consideration is given to the role that performance-based indicators play in motivating change; the steps needed to develop indicators, including interacting with an industry to secure adequate data for an indicator; and the actual application and use of an indicator when complete. How indicators are employed in the EPA's efforts to encourage industries to voluntarily …

Relatively minor perturbations to a crystal structure can in some cases result in apparently large changes in symmetry. Changes in space group or even lattice can be induced by heavy metal or halide soaking (Dauter et al, 2001), flash freezing (Skrzypczak-Jankun et al, 1996), and Se-Met substitution (Poulsen et al, 2001). Relations between various space groups and lattices can provide insight in the underlying structural causes for the symmetry or lattice transformations. Furthermore, these relations can be useful in understanding twinning and how to efficiently solve two different but related crystal structures. Although (pseudo) symmetric properties of a certain combination of unit cell parameters and a space group are immediately obvious (such as a pseudo four-fold axis if a is approximately equal to b in an orthorhombic space group), other relations (e.g. Lehtio, et al, 2005) that are less obvious might be crucial to the understanding and detection of certain idiosyncrasies of experimental data. We have developed a set of tools that allows straightforward exploration of possible metric symmetry relations given unit cell parameters and a space group. The new iotbx.explore{_}metric{_}symmetry command produces an overview of the various relations between several possible point groups for a given lattice. Methods for …

Direct numerical methods for solving the Vlasov equationoffer some advantages over macroparticle simulations, as they do notsuffer from the numerical noise inherent in using a number ofmacroparticles smaller than the bunch population. Unfortunately thesemethods are more time-consuming and generally considered impractical in afull 6D phase space. However, in a lower-dimension phase space they maybecome attractive if the beam dynamics is sensitive to the presence ofsmall charge-density fluctuations and a high resolution is needed. Inthis paper we present a 2D Vlasov solver for studying the longitudinalbeam dynamics in single-pass systems of interest for X-FEL's, wherecharacterization of the microbunching instability is of particularrelevance. The solver includes a model to account for the smearing effectof a finite horizontal emittance on microbuncing. We explore the effectof space charge and coherent synchrotron radiation (CSR). The numericalsolutions are compared with results from linear theory and good agreementis found in the regime where linear theory applies.

We present strange particle spectra and yields measured atmid-rapidity in sqrt text s=200 GeV proton-proton (p+p) collisions atRHIC. We find that the previously observed universal transverse mass(mathrm mT \equiv\sqrt mathrm p_T 2+\mathrm m2) scaling of hadronproduction in p+p collisions seems to break down at higher \mt and thatthere is a difference in the shape of the \mt spectrum between baryonsand mesons. We observe mid-rapidity anti-baryon to baryon ratios nearunity for Lambda and Xi baryons and no dependence of the ratio ontransverse momentum, indicating that our data do not yet reach thequark-jet dominated region. We show the dependence of the mean transversemomentum (\mpt) on measured charged particle multiplicity and on particlemass and infer that these trends are consistent with gluon-jet dominatedparticle production. The data are compared to previous measurements fromCERN-SPS, ISR and FNAL experiments and to Leading Order (LO) and Next toLeading order (NLO) string fragmentation model predictions. We infer fromthese comparisons that the spectral shapes and particle yields from $p+p$collisions at RHIC energies have large contributions from gluon jetsrather than quark jets.

This multi-faceted study evaluated several aspects of uncontrolled air flows in commercial buildings in both Northern and Southern climates. Field data were collected from 25 small commercial buildings in New York State to understand baseline conditions for Northern buildings. Laboratory wall assembly testing was completed at Syracuse University to understand the impact of typical air leakage pathways on heat and moisture transport within wall assemblies for both Northern and Southern building applications. The experimental data from the laboratory tests were used to verify detailed heat and moisture (HAM) simulation models that could be used to evaluate a wider array of building applications and situations. Whole building testing at FSEC's Building Science Laboratory (BSL) systematically evaluated the energy and IAQ impacts of duct leakage with various attic and ceiling configurations. This systematic test carefully controlled all aspects of building performance to quantify the impact of duct leakage and unbalanced flow. The newest features of the EnergyPlus building simulation tool were used to model the combined impacts of duct leakage, ceiling leakage, unbalanced flows, and air conditioner performance. The experimental data provided the basis to validate the simulation model so it could be used to study the impact of duct leakage over …

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The purpose of our research has been to develop and demonstrate a seismic technology that will provide the oil and gas industry a better methodology for understanding reservoir and seal architectures and for improving interpretations of hydrocarbon systems. Our research goal was to expand the valuable science of seismic stratigraphy beyond the constraints of compressional (P-P) seismic data by using all modes (P-P, P-SV, SH-SH, SV-SV, SV-P) of a seismic elastic wavefield to define depositional sequences and facies. Our objective was to demonstrate that one or more modes of an elastic wavefield may image stratal surfaces across some stratigraphic intervals that are not seen by companion wave modes and thus provide different, but equally valid, information regarding depositional sequences and sedimentary facies within that interval. We use the term elastic wavefield stratigraphy to describe the methodology we use to integrate seismic sequences and seismic facies from all modes of an elastic wavefield into a seismic interpretation. We interpreted both onshore and marine multicomponent seismic surveys to select the data examples that we use to document the principles of elastic wavefield stratigraphy. We have also used examples from published papers that illustrate some concepts better than did the multicomponent seismic data …

This report describes results toward developing a process to sequester CO{sub 2} centered on the enzyme pyruvate carboxylase. The process involves the use of bacteria to convert CO{sub 2} and glucose as a co-substrate and generates succinic acid as a commodity chemical product. The phases of research have included strain development and process development. Though we continue to work on one important component of strain development, the research has principally focused on process development. In the previous year we constructed several strains which would serve as templates for the CO{sub 2} sequestration, including the knock-out of genes involved in the formation of undesirable byproducts. This project period the focus has been on the integration of the pyruvate carboxylase gene (pyc) onto the E. coli chromosome. This has proven to be a difficult task because of relatively low expression of the gene and resulting low enzyme activity when only one copy of the gene is present on the chromosome. Several molecular biology techniques have been applied, with some success, to improve the level of protein activity as described herein. Progress in process development has come as a result of conducting numerous fermentation experiments to select optimal conditions for CO{sub 2} sequestration. …

Highly Compact Accelerator-Driven Subcritical Assembly for Medical and Industrial Applications

In the next five years, the DOE expects to build systemsthat approach a petaflop in scale. In the near term (two years), DOE willhave several near-petaflops systems that are 10 percent to 25 percent ofa peraflop-scale system. A common feature of these precursors to petaflopsystems (such as the Cray XT3 or the IBM BlueGene/L) is that they rely onan unprecedented degree of concurrency, which puts stress on every aspectof HPC system design. Such complex systems will likely break current bestpractices for fault resilience, I/O scaling, and debugging, and evenraise fundamental questions about languages and application programmingmodels. It is important that potential problems are anticipated farenough in advance that they can be addressed in time to prepare the wayfor petaflop-scale systems. This report considers the following fourquestions: (1) What software is on a critical path to make the systemswork? (2) What are the strengths/weaknesses of the vendors and ofexisting vendor solutions? (3) What are the local strengths at the labs?(4) Who are other key players who will play a role and canhelp?

This DOE funded study was performed to evaluate the potential for treatment and beneficial reuse of produced water from the San Ardo oilfield in Monterey County, CA. The potential benefits of a successful full-scale implementation of this project include improvements in oil production efficiency and additional recoverable oil reserves as well as the addition of a new reclaimed water resource. The overall project was conducted in two Phases. Phase I identified and evaluated potential end uses for the treated produced water, established treated water quality objectives, reviewed regulations related to treatment, transport, storage and use of the treated produced water, and investigated various water treatment technology options. Phase II involved the construction and operation of a small-scale water treatment pilot facility to evaluate the process's performance on produced water from the San Ardo oilfield. Cost estimates for a potential full-scale facility were also developed. Potential end uses identified for the treated water include (1) agricultural use near the oilfield, (2) use by Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA) for the Salinas Valley Water Project or Castroville Seawater Intrusion Project, (3) industrial or power plant use in King City, and (4) use for wetlands creation in the Salinas Basin. All of …

In May 2002, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) signed Assistance Instrument Number DE-FC09-02CH11109 with the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) to support the Environmental Biosciences Program (EBP). This funding instrument replaces DOE Assistance Instrument Number DE-FC02-98CH10902. EBP is an integrated, multidisciplinary scientific research program, employing a range of research initiatives to identify, study and resolve environmental health risks. These initiatives are consistent with the MUSC role as a comprehensive state-supported health sciences institution and with the nation's need for new and better approaches to the solution of a complex and expansive array of environment-related health problems. The intrinsic capabilities of a comprehensive health sciences institution enable MUSC to be a national resource for the scientific investigation of environmental health issues. EBPs success as a nationally prominent research program is due, in part, to its ability to task-organize scientific expertise from multiple disciplines in addressing these complex problems Current research projects have focused EBP talent and resources on providing the scientific basis for risk-based standards, risk-based decision making and the accelerated clean-up of widespread environmental hazards. These hazards include trichloroethylene and low-dose ionizing radiation. A project is also being conducted in the use of geographical information system technology …

This report summarizes the work performed for Phase I (October 2001 - August 2006) under Cooperative Agreement DE-FC26-01NT41245 for the U. S. Department of Energy, National Energy Technology Laboratory (DOE/NETL) entitled 'Solid State Energy Conversion Alliance (SECA) Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Program'. The program focuses on the development of a low-cost, high-performance 3-to-10-kW solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) system suitable for a broad spectrum of power-generation applications. During Phase I of the program significant progress has been made in the area of SOFC technology. A high-efficiency low-cost system was designed and supporting technology developed such as fuel processing, controls, thermal management, and power electronics. Phase I culminated in the successful demonstration of a prototype system that achieved a peak efficiency of 41%, a high-volume cost of $724/kW, a peak power of 5.4 kW, and a degradation rate of 1.8% per 500 hours. . An improved prototype system was designed, assembled, and delivered to DOE/NETL at the end of the program. This prototype achieved an extraordinary peak efficiency of 49.6%.

This report summarizes the work conducted by UConn SOFC seal development team during the Phase I program and no cost extension. The work included composite seal sample fabrication, materials characterizations, leak testing, mechanical strength testing, chemical stability study and acoustic-based diagnostic methods. Materials characterization work revealed a set of attractive material properties including low bulk permeability, high electrical resistivity, good mechanical robustness. Composite seal samples made of a number of glasses and metallic fillers were tested for sealing performance under steady state and thermal cycling conditions. Mechanical testing included static strength (pull out) and interfacial fracture toughness measurements. Chemically stability study evaluated composite seal material stability after aging at 800 C for 168 hrs. Acoustic based diagnostic test was conducted to help detect and understand the micro-cracking processes during thermal cycling test. The composite seal concept was successfully demonstrated and a set of material (coating composition & fillers) were identified to have excellent thermal cycling performance.

The goal of the research supported by DOE-FG02-01ER45939 was to synthesize a number of experimental and theoretical approaches to understand the relationship between morphological fluctuations, the electrical response and the reliability (failure) of metallic nanostructures. The primary focus of our work was the study of metallic nanowires which we regard as prototypical of nanoscale interconnects. Our research plan has been to link together these materials properties and behaviors by understanding the phenomenon of, and the effects of electromigration at nanometer length scales. The thrust of our research has been founded on the concept that, for nanostructures where the surface-to-volume ratio is necessarily high, surface diffusion is the dominant mass transport mechanism that governs the fluctuations, electrical properties and failure modes of nanostructures. Our approach has been to develop experimental methods that permit the direct imaging of the electromagnetic distributions within nanostructures, their structural fluctuations and their electrical response. This experimental research is complemented by a parallel theoretical and computational program that describes the temporal evolution of nanostructures in response to current flow.