Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Energy (Energy) and its predecessor agencies and contractors have employed thousands of workers in the nuclear weapons production complex. Some employees were exposed to toxic substances, including radioactive and hazardous materials, during this work and many subsequently developed illnesses. Subtitle D of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act of 2000 allows Energy to help its contractor employees file state workers' compensation claims for illnesses determined by a panel of physicians to be caused by exposure to toxic substances in the course of employment at an Energy facility. Energy began accepting applications under this program in July 2001, but did not begin processing them until its final regulations became effective on September 13, 2002. The Congress mandated that GAO study the effectiveness of the benefit program under Subtitle D of this Act. This testimony is based on GAO's ongoing work on this issue and focuses on three key areas: (1) the number, status, and characteristics of claims filed with Energy; (2) the extent to which there will be a "willing payer" of workers' compensation benefits, that is, an insurer who--by order from, or agreement …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In 1988, radioactive contamination was found in the drinking water wells of residences located near the federal government's uranium enrichment plant in Paducah, Kentucky, which is still in operation. In response, the Department of Energy (DOE) began a cleanup program to identify and remove contamination in the groundwater, surface water, and soil located within and outside the plant. In 2000, GAO reported that DOE faced significant challenges in cleaning up the site and that it was doubtful that the cleanup would be completed as scheduled by 2010, and within the $1.3 billion cost projection. GAO was asked to testify on (1) how much DOE has spent on the Paducah cleanup and for what purposes, and the estimated total future costs for the site; (2) the status of DOE's cleanup effort; and (3) the challenges DOE faces in completing the cleanup. This testimony is based on ongoing work, and GAO expects to issue a final report on this work in April 2004."

This report is a guide to the military construction (MilCon) appropriations bill.

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Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The inability of first responders--police officers, firemen, hazardous materials teams, emergency medical service personnel, and others--to communicate effectively with one another as needed during an emergency is a long-standing and widely recognized problem in many areas across the country. When first responders cannot communicate effectively as needed, it can literally cost lives--of both emergency responders and those they are trying to assist. At the request of the Chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform, we are examining the barriers to improved interoperability and the roles that federal, state, and local governments can play in improving wireless interoperability communications."

We review the attempts to construct black hole/string solutions in asymptotically plane wave spacetimes. First, we demonstrate that geometries admitting a covariantly constant null Killing vector cannot admit event horizons, which implies that pp-waves can't describe black holes. However, relaxing the symmetry requirements allows us to generate solutions which do possess regular event horizons while retaining the requisite asymptotic properties. In particular, we present two solution generating techniques and use them to construct asymptotically plane wave black string/brane geometries.

This report provides a reverse chronology of major events involving India and India - U.S relations.

Inverse bremsstrahlung absorption of the pump laser beam in a backward Raman amplifier over the round-trip light transit time through the sub-critical density plasma can more than double the electron temperature of the plasma and produce time-varying axial temperature gradients. The resulting increased Landau damping of the plasma wave and detuning of the resonance can act to stabilize the pump against unwanted amplification of Langmuir noise without disrupting nonlinear amplification of the femtosecond seed pulse. Because the heating rate increases with the charge state Z, only low-Z plasmas (hydrogen, helium, or helium-hydrogen mixtures) will maintain a low enough temperature for efficient operation.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "In September 2003, we responded to a request from Representative Elton Gallegly to provide information on the number of taxpayers who claimed more than 10 withholding allowances and taxpayers who claimed exemption from federal income tax withholding. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) calls such claims questionable Form W-4s. However, in the course of performing our work, we became concerned about the reliability of the information that IRS maintains on these taxpayers and decided that we could not use it to answer Representative Gallegly's questions. The objectives of this letter are to summarize our findings about the reliability of the information IRS maintains on taxpayers who claimed more than 10 withholding allowances or exemption from federal tax withholding and to bring to the attention of the Commissioner, Internal Revenue, some resulting questions about the value of IRS continuing to collect the information."

Given the limitations in the quantity and quality of gene expression array data, the focus of the research was shifted to development of statistical and computational tools for evaluation and detection of disease susceptibility mutations within a large set of individuals or even an entire population. The diseases that are of particular interest are those with complex etiology, involving interaction of multiple genes and/or environmental factors.

The Joint Urban 2003 (JU2003) field study was conducted in Oklahoma City in July 2003 to collect data to increase our knowledge of dispersion in urban areas. Air motions in and around urban areas are very complicated due to the influence of urban structures on both mechanical and thermal forcing. During JU2003, meteorological instruments were deployed at various locations throughout the urban area to characterize the processes that influence dispersion. Some of the instruments were deployed to characterize urban phenomena, such as boundary layer development. In addition, particular sites were chosen for more concentrated measurements to investigate physical processes in more detail. One such site was an urban street canyon on Park Avenue between Broadway and Robinson Avenues in downtown Oklahoma City. The urban canyon study was designed to examine the processes that control dispersion within, into and out of the urban canyon. Several towers were deployed in the Park Avenue block, with multiple levels on each tower for observing the wind using sonic anemometers. Infrared thermometers, net radiometers and ground heat flux plates were deployed on two of the towers midway in the canyon to study the thermodynamic effects and to estimate the surface energy balance. We present results …

The purpose of this grant has been to provide basic chemical research in support of a major project undertaken at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) whose purpose was to provide better understanding of the complex chemical processes occurring an nuclear storage tanks on the Hanford reservation. More specifically, the BNL grant was directed at evaluating the extend of radiation-induced formation of peroxynitrite anion (ONOO) in the tanks and its possible use in was incorporated as a subcontract EMSP 73824, but was later changed to an independent grant to avoid unnecessary duplication of administrative support at both WSU and BNL.

The use of removable thin films for the abatement of hazardous particulates has many advantages. Removable thin films are designed to trap and fix particulates in the film's matrix by adhesion. Thin films can be applied to an existing contaminated area to fix and capture the particulates for removal. The nature of the removable thin films, after sufficient cure time, is such that it can typically be removed as one continuous entity. The removable thin films can be applied to almost any surface type with a high success rate of removal.

Since 1996, a network of piezometers has been used to measure hydraulic head in the water-table aquifer along the groundwater outcrops (i.e. seeplines) near the F- and H-Areas. The piezometers were installed near the seeplines to assess potential impacts of the F- and H-Area Groundwater Remediation Wastewater Treatment Units (WTUs) on the riparian wetlands located between the former F- and H-Area seepage basins and Fourmile Branch. The piezometers were installed in areas expected to be most impacted by the remediation system. Eight additional piezometers were added to the network in 2002 in two locations near the F-Area seepline and two locations near the H-Area seepline, extending coverage further downstream from the seepage basins. The goals of the Permit governing the WTUs are to (1) achieve a 70 percent reduction in the mass flux of tritium to Fourmile Branch within five years of Corrective Action Plan approval and reduce the discharge of other contaminants (metals and radionuclides other than tritium) to Fourmile Branch to levels less than the Groundwater Protection Standards, and (2) reduce the discharge at the seepline of all contaminants to levels that are less than the GWPS by July 31, 2010. Because of the potential for WTU operation …

The Compliance Plan Volume (Volume I) identifies project activity schedule milestones for achieving compliance with Land Disposal Restrictions (LDR). Information regarding the technical evaluation of treatment options for SRS mixed wastes is contained in the Background Volume (Volume II) and is provided for information.

Based on annual tritium release rates from the five sources of tritium at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Tritium Research Laboratory at Sandia National Laboratory, the regulatory dispersion and dose model, CAP88-PC, was used to predict tritium concentrations in air at perimeter and offsite air surveillance monitoring locations for 1986 through 2001. These predictions were compared with mean annual measured concentrations, based on biweekly sampling. Deterministic predictions were compared with deterministic observations using predicted-to-observed ratios. In addition, the uncertainty on observations and predictions was assessed: when the uncertainty bounds of the observations overlapped with the uncertainty bounds of the predictions, the predictions were assumed to agree with the observations with high probability. Deterministically, 54% of all predictions were higher than the observations, and 96% fell within a factor of three. Accounting for uncertainty, 75% of all predictions agreed with the observations; 87% of the predictions either matched or exceeded the observations. Predictions equaled or exceeded observations at those sampling locations towards which the wind blows most frequently, except those in the hills. Under-predictions were seen at locations towards which the wind blows infrequently when released tritium was from elevated sources. When a high fraction of tritium was from area …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Long-standing financial management problems, coupled with ineffective oversight and management of the Department of Defense's (DOD) travel card program, which GAO has previously reported on, have led to concerns about DOD's use of first and business class airfares. At the request of the Subcommittee on Investigations, Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, Senator Grassley, and Representative Schakowsky, GAO performed work to identify problems in DOD's controls over premium class travel. This testimony focuses on (1) the extent of DOD premium class travel, (2) the effectiveness of key internal control activities and examples of improper premium class travel resulting from internal control breakdowns, and (3) DOD's control environment over premium class travel. In a companion report being issued today, GAO made numerous recommendations--that DOD concurred with--to strengthen key internal control activities and improve the overall control environment."

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This report discusses Congressional Concerns and Issues for Policy, Security Concerns, Administration and Congressional Action and Chronological of Major Events Since 1988.

This CRS Report discusses security concerns, significant congressional and administration action, and a comprehensive chronology pertaining to satellite exports to the PRC. The report discusses issues for U.S. foreign and security policy (including that on China and weapons nonproliferation), such as: What are the benefits and costs of satellite exports to China for U.S. economic and security interests? Should the United States continue, change, or cease the policy in place since the Reagan Administration that has allowed exports of satellites to China (for its launch and – increasingly – for its use)? Etc.

The edge focusing of dogleg magnets in Fermilab Booster has been causing severe distortion to the horizontal linear optics. The doglegs are vertical rectangular bends, therefore the vertical edge focusing is canceled by body focusing and the overall effect is focusing in the horizontal plane. The maximum horizontal beta function is changed from 33.7m to 46.9m and maximum dispersion from 3.19m to 6.14m. Beam size increases accordingly. This is believed to be one of the major reasons of beam loss. In this technote we demonstrate that this effect can be effectively corrected with Booster's quadrupole correctors in short straight sections (QS). There are 24 QS correctors which can alter horizontal linear optics with negligible perturbation to the vertical plane. The currents of correctors are determined by harmonic compensation, i.e., cancellation of dogleg's harmonics that are responsible for the distortion with that of QS correctors. By considering a few leading harmonics, the ideal lattice can be partly restored. For the current dogleg layout, maximum {beta}{sub x} is reduced to 40.6m and maximum D{sub x} is reduced to 4.19m. This scheme can be useful after the dogleg in section No.3 is repositioned. In this case it can bring {beta}{sub x} from 40.9m …

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Higher Education Act of 1965 gives special recognition to some postsecondary schools--called Minority Serving Institutions--that serve a high percentage of minority students. These and other schools face stiff challenges in keeping pace with technology. One rapidly growing area, distance education, has commanded particular attention and an estimated 1.5 million students have enrolled in at least one distance education course. In light of this, GAO was asked to provide information on: (1) the use of distance education by Minority Serving Institutions; (2) the challenges Minority Serving Institutions face in obtaining and using technology; (3) GAO's preliminary finding on the role that accrediting agencies play in ensuring the quality of distance education; and (4) GAO's preliminary findings on whether statutory requirements limit federal aid to students involved in distance education. GAO is currently finalizing the results of its work on (1) the role of accrediting agencies in reviewing distance education programs and (2) federal student financial aid issues related to distance education."