Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the: (1) accuracy, completeness, and usefulness of the information Medicare managed care organizations (MCO) distribute about their plans' benefit packages; (2) extent to which MCOs inform beneficiaries of their plan appeal rights and the appeals process; and (3) Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) review, approval, and oversight of the plan information that MCOs distribute."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) management of health care assets."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed how the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) manage their wildfire programs, focusing on the: (1) process the Forest Service and BLM use to determine the amount of funds needed to prepare for fighting fires; (2) roles and responsibilities of the National Interagency Fire Center in mobilizing firefighting resources; and (3) types of agreements reached among federal, state, and local firefighting organizations."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) new rule on changes to the hospital inpatient prospective payment systems and fiscal year 2000 rates. GAO noted that: (1) the final rule would revise the Medicare hospital inpatient prospective payment systems for operating costs and capital-related costs to implement changes arising from HCFA's continuing experience with the systems; and (2) HCFA complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the cost and realization of national security objectives at Russia's Mayak nuclear complex and Shchuch'ye chemical weapons storage depot, focusing on whether the: (1) Mayak project will be completed on schedule and within past Department of Defense (DOD) estimates of its total cost to the United States; (2) United States has made progress in ensuring that the completed Mayak facility would achieve U.S. national security objectives by safely and securely storing retired materials taken only from dismantled nuclear weapons; (3) Shchuch'ye project will be completed on schedule and the status of DOD efforts to estimate its total cost to the United States; and (4) completed Shchuch'ye facility will achieve U.S. national security objectives by helping Russia destroy the Shchuch'ye depot's stocks and accelerate elimination of all Russian chemical weapons under the Chemical Weapons Convention."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) new rule on inpatient hospital deductible and hospital extended care services coinsurance amounts for 2000. GAO noted that: (1) the rule would announce the inpatient hospital deductible and the hospital and extended care services coinsurance amounts for services furnished in calendar year 2000 under Medicare's hospital insurance program; (2) the Medicare statute specifies the formula used to determine these amounts; and (3) HCFA complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's (DOD) distribution of depot maintenance workloads, focusing on: (1) DOD's compliance with the percentage requirement in 10 U.S.C. 2466; (2) comparing the results of DOD's recent report of fiscal year (FY) 1998 workload with prior years' reports; (3) the continuing weaknesses in the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of reported data; and (4) improvements in DOD's guidance, data collection processes, oversight, and opportunities to further improve the quality of future reports."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the progress being made in addressing the year 2000 computing challenge, focusing on: (1) the federal government's progress and the challenges that remain in correcting its systems; (2) state and local government year 2000 issues; and (3) the readiness of key public infrastructure and economic sectors."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget request and the status of the 1999 filing season."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the weaknesses of the Customs Service's Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) project."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Customs Service's management of its Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) system."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed federal agencies' progress in addressing the year 2000 computing challenge and outlined actions needed to ensure a smooth conversion to the next century, focusing on the: (1) status of the federal government's remediation of its mission-critical systems; (2) remaining challenges facing the government in ensuring the continuity of business operations, namely end-to-end testing and business continuity and contingency planning; (3) Office of Management and Budget's (OMB) efforts to identify the government's high-impact programs; and (4) readiness of state systems that are essential to the delivery of federal human services programs."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Customs Service's efforts to interdict drugs, combat corruption, and comply with the Government Performance and Results Act. GAO also discussed the basis for the $163-million access fee to be charged to nongoverment organizations for the use of Customs' automation systems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Caribou Recovery Program, focusing on the: (1) amount and source of funds expended on the woodland caribou recovery program; (2) results of the program, including the outcome of efforts to augment the population and the impact of the recovery efforts on land use; and (3) future direction of the recovery program."

We are developing an advanced process for treatment of mixed wastes in molten salt media at temperatures of 700--1000{degrees}C. Waste destruction has been demonstrated in a single stage oxidation process, with destruction efficiencies above 99.9999% for many waste categories. The molten salt provides a heat transfer medium, prevents thermal surges, and functions as an in situ scrubber to transform the acid-gas forming components of the waste into neutral salts and immobilizes potentially fugitive materials by a combination of particle wetting, encapsulation and chemical dissolution and solvation. Because the offgas is collected and assayed before release, and wastes containing toxic and radioactive materials are treated while immobilized in a condensed phase, the process avoids the problems sometimes associated with incineration processes. We are studying a potentially improved modification of this process, which treats oxidizable wastes in two stages: pyrolysis followed by catalyzed molten salt oxidation of the pyrolysis gases at ca. 700{degrees}C. 15 refs., 5 figs., 1 tab.

This research uses several techniques to measure the concentration of catalyst sites and determine their stoichiometry for the catalyzed gasification of carbon. Both alkali and alkaline earth oxides are effective catalysts for accelerating the gasification rate of coal chars, but only a fraction of the catalyst appears to be in a form that is effective for gasification, and the composition of that catalyst is not established. Transient techniques with {sup 13}C labeling, are being used to study the surface processes, to measure the concentration of active sites, and to determine the specific reaction rates. We have used secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) for both high surface area samples of carbon/alkali carbonate mixtures and for model carbon surfaces with deposited alkali atoms. SIMS provides a direct measure of surface composition. The combination of these results can provide knowledge of catalyst dispersion and composition, and thus indicate the way to optimally utilize carbon gasification catalysts.

Each node in a message-passing multicomputer typically has several communication links. However, the maximum aggregate communication speed of a node is often less than the sum of its individual link speeds. Such computers are called node bandwidth limited (NBL). The NBL constraint is important when choosing algorithms because it can change the relative performance of different algorithms that accomplish the same task. This paper introduces a model of communication performance for NBL computers and uses the model to analyze the overall performance of three algorithms for vector combining (global sum) on the Intel Touchstone DELTA computer. Each of the three algorithms is found to be at least 33% faster than the other two for some combinations of machine size and vector length. The NBL constraint is shown to significantly affect the conditions under which each algorithm is fastest.

The objective of this project is to produce one or more microorganisms capable of the organic and inorganic sulfur in coal. The original specific technical objectives of the project were to: (1) clone and characterize the genes encoding the enzymes of the 4S'' pathway (sulfoxide/sulfone/sulfonate/sulfate) for release of organic sulfur from coal; (2) return multiple copies of genes to the original host to enhance the biodesulfurization activity of that organism; (3) transfer this pathway into a fast-growing chemolithotrophic bacterium; (4) conduct a batch-mode optimization/analysis of scale-up variables. By letter of September 3, 1991, from the Project Manager at Department of Energy, Pittsburgh Energy Technology Center, these objectives of this project were redirected toward finding and developing suitable vectors for Thiobacillus strains. All work on bacterial strains from Lehigh University was terminated since they did not contain desulfurization traits represented by the 4S'' pathway.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control (HCFAC) program, focusing on : (1) the amounts deposited to the Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) and the sources of such amounts; (2) the amounts appropriated from the trust fund for HCFAC program and the justification for the expenditures of such amounts; (3) expenditures from the trust fund for HCFAC activities not related to Medicare; (4) any savings to the trust fund, as well as other savings, resulting from expenditures from the trust fund for the HCFAC program; and (5) other aspects of the operation of the trust fund."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed U.S. trade with the European Union (EU), focusing on: (1) the size and composition of U.S.-EU trade and investment flows from 1992 through 1998; and (2) U.S.-EU efforts to facilitate electronic commerce (e-commerce)."

The purpose and objective of this design analysis are to develop controls considered necessary and sufficient to implement the requirements for the controlled drilling and blasting excavation of operations support alcoves and test support alcoves in the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF). The conclusions reached in this analysis will flow down into a construction specification ensuring controlled drilling and blasting excavation will be performed within the bounds established here.

Thousands of worldwide observing stations provide meteorological information near the earth's surface as often as once each hour. This surface data may be plotted on geographical maps to provide the meteorologist useful information regarding weather patterns for a region of interest. This report describes the components and applications of a graphical user interface which have been developed to visualize surface observations at any global location and time of interest.

In this paper complex adaptive systems are defined by a self- referential loop in which objects encode functions that act back on these objects. A model for this loop is presented. It uses a simple recursive formal language, derived from the lambda-calculus, to provide a semantics that maps character strings into functions that manipulate symbols on strings. The interaction between two functions, or algorithms, is defined naturally within the language through function composition, and results in the production of a new function. An iterated map acting on sets of functions and a corresponding graph representation are defined. Their properties are useful to discuss the behavior of a fixed size ensemble of randomly interacting functions. This function gas'', or Turning gas'', is studied under various conditions, and evolves cooperative interaction patterns of considerable intricacy. These patterns adapt under the influence of perturbations consisting in the addition of new random functions to the system. Different organizations emerge depending on the availability of self-replicators.

There are four basic eruption processes that produce volcanic ash: (1) decompression of rising magma, gas bubble growth, and fragmentation of the foamy magma in the volcanic vent (magmatic), (2) explosive mixing of magma with ground or surface water (hydrovolcanic), (3) fragmentation of country rock during rapid expansion of steam and/or hot water (phreatic), and (4) breakup of lava fragments during rapid transport from the vent. Variations in eruption style and the characteristics of volcanic ashes produced during explosive eruptions depend on many factors, including magmatic temperature, gas content, viscosity and crystal content of the magma before eruption, the ratio of magma to ground or surface water, and physical properties of the rock enclosing the vent. Volcanic ash is composed of rock and mineral fragments, and glass shards, which is less than 2 mm in diameter. Glass shard shapes and sizes depend upon size and shape of gas bubbles present within the magma immediately before eruption and the processes responsible for fragmentation of the magma. Shards range from slightly curved, thin glass plates, which were broken from large, thin-walled spherical bubble walls, to hollow needles broken from pumiceous melts containing gas bubbles stretched by magma flow within the volcanic vent. …