Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In 1995, the Department of Defense (DOD) began an effort to implement a standard departmentwide travel system. The Defense Travel System (DTS) is envisioned as DOD's standard end-to-end travel system. This testimony is based on GAO's September 2006 related report. Today's testimony highlights GAO's key findings with regard to the following objectives: (1) Were the two key assumptions made in the September 2003 economic analysis reasonable? (2) Was DOD taking action to ensure full utilization of DTS and gathering the data needed to monitor DTS utilization? and (3) Has DOD resolved several functional problems associated with weak system requirements and testing? To address these objectives, GAO (1) reviewed the September 2003 DTS economic analysis, (2) analyzed DTS utilization data, and (3) analyzed DTS flight information."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Of the 26 areas on GAO's high-risk list of federal programs or activities that are at risk for waste, fraud, abuse, or mismanagement, 8 are Department of Defense (DOD) programs or operations and another 6 are governmentwide high-risk areas that also apply to DOD. These high-risk areas relate to most of DOD's major business operations. DOD's failure to effectively resolve these high-risk areas has resulted in billions of dollars of waste each year, ineffective performance, and inadequate accountability. At a time when DOD is competing for resources in an increasingly fiscally constrained environment, it is critically important that DOD get the most from every defense dollar. DOD has taken several positive steps and devoted substantial resources toward establishing key management structures and processes to successfully transform its business operations and address its high-risk areas, but overall progress by area varies widely and huge challenges remain. This testimony addresses DOD's efforts to (1) develop a comprehensive, integrated, enterprisewide business transformation plan and its related leadership approach and (2) comply with legislation that addresses business systems modernization and improving financial management accountability. The testimony also addresses two sections included in …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "American workers are increasingly relying on 401(k) plans, which allow pre-tax contributions to individual accounts, for their retirement income. As workers accrue earnings on their investments, they also pay a number of fees that may significantly decrease their retirement savings. Because of concerns about the effects of fees on participants' retirement savings, GAO examined (1) the types of fees associated with 401(k) plans and who pays these fees, (2) how information on fees is disclosed to plan participants, and (3) how the Department of Labor (Labor) oversees plan fees and certain business arrangements. GAO reviewed industry surveys on fees and interviewed Labor officials and pension professionals about disclosure and reporting practices."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United Nations (UN) estimated in 2005 that renovating its headquarters will cost up to $1.75 billion. As the UN's host country and largest contributor, the United States has a substantial interest in the project's success. In this report, we (1) determine whether the development of the Capital Master Plan (CMP) has been consistent with leading industry practices, (2) examine factors that led to changes in the cost estimate and determine whether the 2005 estimate was updated using industry practices, (3) review the status of financing of the renovation, (4) identify decisions needed for the renovation to proceed, and (5) review UN oversight and State monitoring efforts. To address these objectives, we reviewed UN design and planning documents, including the latest cost estimate, to compare them with industry standards. To assess oversight, we reviewed Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) and UN Board of Auditors reports and met with UN officials."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is responsible for overseeing direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription drugs. If FDA identifies a violation of laws or regulations in a DTC advertising material, the agency may issue a regulatory letter asking the drug company to take specific actions. GAO was asked to discuss (1) trends in drug company spending on DTC advertising and other activities; (2) what is known about the relationship between DTC advertising and drug spending and utilization; (3) the DTC advertising materials FDA reviews; (4) the number of regulatory letters that cited DTC materials and FDA's process for issuing those letters; and (5) the effectiveness of these letters at limiting the dissemination of violative DTC advertising. GAO reviewed research literature, analyzed FDA's processes, and examined FDA documentation."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The President's Management Agenda (PMA) focuses attention on ensuring resources entrusted to the federal government are well managed and used wisely. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) developed standards to measure success and a PMA scorecard that gives a "green", "yellow" or "red score" by agency. Green indicates success, yellow indicates mixed results, and red indicates unsatisfactory results. For the Improved Financial Performance Initiative, GAO was asked to (1) study and evaluate OMB's process and criteria for awarding a green score for current status and progress and (2) provide examples of how agency managers use financial data to better manage on a day-to-day basis. To fulfill these objectives, GAO interviewed OMB and agency officials and examined OMB and agency documentation relevant to OMB's scoring process."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Architect of the Capitol (AOC), through the Capitol Power Plant (CPP), operates five walkable utility tunnels containing steam and chilled water pipes associated with serving the heating and cooling requirements of the U.S. Capitol and 23 surrounding facilities. The tunnels also carry other utilities, such as fiber optic and telephone lines. The Office of Compliance (OOC), which is responsible for advancing safety, health, and workplace rights in the legislative branch, and the tunnel workers have raised concerns about health and safety issues in the tunnels. Specifically, in March 2006, the utility tunnel workers sent a letter to Congress complaining of unsafe working conditions in the tunnels, including falling concrete, asbestos, and extreme heat. In February 2006, OOC filed a complaint against AOC concerning hazards in the tunnels, including falling concrete, an inadequate communication system for these confined spaces, and inadequate escape exits. According to OOC officials, these conditions had been previously brought to the attention of AOC by OOC inspectors as early as 1999. Following a reinspection in mid-2005, OOC determined that AOC had not made sufficient progress in addressing them and that conditions in the tunnels …

This report mainly focuses on Regional Developments and Implications for U.S. Interests in Central Asia after the collapse of soviet union in 1991.

This report consists of the budget for fiscal year 2007.

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This report provides an overview of the evolving roles and missions for United States Northern command on Homeland Security.

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This report discusses the background leading to a proposal to change the compensation system from both an Administration perspective and labor perspective, the current Foreign Service (FS) System, and the outlines of a new system being proposed.

Pu is generally considered to be relatively immobile in the terrestrial environment, with the exception of transport via airborne and erosion mechanisms. More recently the transport of colloidal forms of Pu is being studied as a mobilization pathway from subsurface contaminated soils and sediments. The overall objective of this research is to understand the biogeochemical cycling of Pu in environments of interest to long-term DOE stewardship issues. Microbial processes are central to the immobilization of Pu species, through the metabolism of organically complexed Pu species and Pu associated with extracellular carrier phases and the creation of environments favorable for retardation of Pu transport.

The IMPACT-T code is a parallel three-dimensional quasi-static beam dynamics code for modeling high brightness beams in photoinjectors and RF linacs. Developed under the US DOE Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing (SciDAC) program, it includes several key features including a self-consistent calculation of 3D space-charge forces using a shifted and integrated Green function method, multiple energy bins for beams with large energy spread, and models for treating RF standing wave and traveling wave structures. In this paper, we report on recent improvements to the IMPACT-T code including modeling traveling wave structures, short-range transverse and longitudinal wakefields, and longitudinal coherent synchrotron radiation through bending magnets.

The overall goals of this research project are to determine the mechanism of microbial dissolution and stabilization of actinides in Department of Energy's (DOE) TRU wastes, contaminated sludges, soils, and sediments. This includes (1) investigations on the fundamental aspects of microbially catalyzed radionuclide and metal transformations (oxidation/reduction reactions, dissolution, precipitation, chelation); (2) understanding of the microbiological processes that control speciation and alter the chemical forms of complex inorganic/organic contaminant mixtures; and (3) development of new and improved microbially catalyzed processes resulting in immobilization of metals and radionuclides in the waste with concomitant waste volume reduction.

Project Title: Magnetohydrodynamic Particle Acceleration Processes: SSX Experiments, Theory, and Astrophysical Applications PI: Michael R. Brown, Swarthmore College The purpose of the project was to provide theoretical and modeling support to the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment (SSX). Accordingly, the theoretical effort was tightly integrated into the SSX experimental effort. During the grant period, Michael Brown and his experimental collaborators at Swarthmore, with assistance from W. Matthaeus as appropriate, made substantial progress in understanding the physics SSX plasmas.

Current data suggests that radiation-induced bystander effects (RIBE) are associated with release of active polypeptide factors into the extra-cellular medium. Proteolytic processing of membrane-anchored cytokines (shedding) is a generic cellular response to environmental stress; hence, it is likely that RIBE are part of a general mechanism by which cells alert their neighbors to potential harm by exchange of autocrine and paracrine factors. In radiation biology, we lack a general understanding of the relative importance of shed factors in the overall response of tissues to energy absorbed from a radiation field. This project helped fill that knowledge gap by investigating (1) the production of soluble factors by cells traversed by ionizing particles, (2) transport of soluble factors through the extra-cellular medium, and (3) signaling processes initiate by capture of soluble factors on cell-surface receptors.

This research addresses the need for detailed studies of the enzymatic mechanisms for reduction of radionuclides and/or metals by fermentative microorganisms. The overall objective of this research is to elucidate systematically the molecular mechanisms involved in the reduction of uranium by Clostridia. We propose to (1) determine the role of hydrogenases in uranium reduction, (2) purify the enzymes involved in uranium reduction, (3) determine the mechanisms of reduction, e.g., one or two electron transfer reactions, and (4) elucidate the genetic control of the enzymes and cellular factors involved in uranium reduction. This is a collaborative study between BNL and Stanford University involving expertise in biomolecular science, biochemistry, microbiology, and electrochemistry.

Final report for DOE Plasma Physics Junior Faculty Development award DOE-FG02-02ER54688. Reports on research undertaken from 8/1/2002 until 5/15/2006, investigating nonlinear interactions between Alfven waves in a laboratory experiment.

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The IMPACT (Integrated Map and Particle Accelerator Tracking) code was first developed under Computational Grand Challenge project in the mid 1990s [1]. It started as a three-dimensional (3D) data parallel particle-in-cell (PIC) code written in High Performance Fortran. The code used a split-operator based method to solve the Hamiltonian equations of motion. It contained linear transfer maps for drifts, quadrupole magnets and rf cavities. The space-charge forces were calculated using an FFT-based method with 3D open boundary conditions and longitudinal periodic boundary conditions. This code was completely rewritten in the late 1990s based on a message passing parallel programming paradigm using Fortran 90 and MPI following an object-oriented software design. This improved the code's scalability on large parallel computer systems and also gave the code better software maintainability and extensibility [2]. In the following years, under the SciDAC-1 accelerator project, the code was extended to include more accelerating and focusing elements such as DTL, CCL, superconducting linac, solenoid, dipole, multipoles, and others. Besides the original split-operator based integrator, a direct integration of Lorentz equations of motion using a leap-frog algorithm was also added to the IMPACT code to handle arbitrary external nonlinear fields. This integrator can read in 3D electromagnetic …

All too often we rely on Monte Carlo simulations withoutworrying too much about basic physics. It is possible to start with avery simple calorimeter (a big cylinder) and learn the functional form ofpi e by aninduction argument. Monte Carlo simulations provide sanitychecks and constants. A power-law functional form describes test beamresults surprisingly well. The prediction that calorimeters responddifferently to protons and pions of the same energy was unexpected. Theeffect was later demonstrated by the CMS forward calorimeter group, usingthe most noncompensating calorimeter ever built. Calorimeter resolutionis dominated by fluctuations in piz production and the energy deposit byneutrons. The DREAM collaboration has recently used a dual readoutcalorimeter to eliminate the first of these. Ultimate resolution dependson measuring neutrons on an event-by-event basis as well.