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Committee hearings afford Representatives an opportunity to gather information on, and draw attention to, legislation and issues within a committee's purview; conduct oversight of programs or agencies; and investigate allegations of wrongdoing. This report identifies many of the tasks that need to be performed by full committees and, in most cases, subcommittees in advance of a hearing. Some of these tasks are required by House or committee rules; others are common committee practice.

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This report addresses in summary fashion the differences among several kinds of tax-exempt organizations described in Internal Revenue Code [IRC] subsections 501(c)(3), 501(c)(4), 501(c)(5), 501(c)(6), and section 527. Each of these types of organization has a unique statutory definition, is subject to certain statutory limitations on its activities, enjoys certain benefits from obtaining tax-exempt status, and must share certain information with the general public. Following the report is a table which summarizes this information.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This testimony focuses on the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), its interaction with the regular tax system, and its projected growth in coverage. GAO found that (1) AMT was designed to ensure that high-income individuals do not avoid significant income tax liabilities--for tax year 1997, about 14,000 taxpayers would not have paid any income taxes absent AMT, (2) AMT operates as a separate tax system that parallels the regular individual income tax system but with different rules for determining taxable income, different tax rates for computing tax liability, and different rules for allowing the use of tax credits, (3) AMT affected about one percent of taxpayers in 2000 and accounted for about $5.8 billion in additional tax revenue; by 2010, it is expected to increase the tax liabilities of about one out of six taxpayers and account for about $189 billion in tax revenues over the period, (4) the projected increase in AMT coverage is, for the most part, attributable to inflation and to the scheduled expiration of legislation temporarily excluding some tax credits from AMT rules, and (5) AMT's impacts include increased taxpayer compliance burden; increased Internal Revenue …

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This report examines how best practices offer improvements to the way the Department of Defense defines and matches weapon system requirements to available resources such as cost, schedule, and mature technologies. GAO identified three factors that were key to matching needs and resources before product development began. First, developers employed the technique of systems engineering to identify gaps between resources and customer needs before committing to a new product development. Second, customers and developers were flexible. Leeway existed to reduce or defer customer needs to future programs or for the developer to make an investment to increase knowledge about a technology or design feature before beginning product development. Third, the roles and responsibilities of the customer and the product developer were matched, with the product developer being able to determine or significantly influence product requirements. In cases where these factors were not present at program launch, product development began without a match between requirements and resources. Invariably, this imbalance favored meeting customer needs by adding resources, which resulted in increased costs and later deliveries."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The number of women participating in intercollegiate athletics at four-year colleges and universities increased substantially between school years 1981-82 and 1998-99, while the number of men participating increased more modestly. The total number of women's teams increased by 3,784 teams, compared to an increase of 36 men's teams. In all, 963 schools added teams and 307 discontinued teams since 1992-93. The two factors cited most often as greatly influencing the decision to add or discontinue teams were the need to address student interest in particular sports and the need to meet gender equity goals and requirements. Schools that discontinued men's teams also found the need to reallocate the athletic budget to other sports. Colleges and universities that discontinued a team typically took three months or less between originating the proposal and making the final decision. Most schools informed members of the campus community of the possibility that the team would be discontinued, and most held meetings with campus groups before making the final decision. Most schools offered to help affected athletes transfer to other schools, and students receiving athletics-related financial aid continued to receive financial aid …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "To help military families adapt and function effectively in military life, the Department of Defense (DOD) funds a wide variety of personnel and family support programs. These programs use a combination of direct assistance and information and referral to help with crises, deployments, moves, child care, personal financial management, parenting, and transition out of the service. To efficiently distribute funds to those with the greatest need, DOD requires each service to assess the needs of military personnel and their families and their use of family support programs. This report examines (1) how the Air Force determines the needs of its military families, (2) what type of information about military family needs the Air Force obtains, and (3) how information from needs assessments affects the allocation of funding for Air Force family support programs. GAO found that the Air Force assesses the needs of its personnel every two years using a random sample survey. However, the Air Force process does not meet other DOD criteria generally recognized as important for needs assessments, including the use of benchmarks to determine if needs have changed or emerged. Additionally, the …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "The Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) Mining Law Administration Program (MLAP) is responsible for managing the environmentally responsible exploration and development of locatable minerals on public lands. The program is funded through mining fees collected from the holders of unpatented mining claims and sites and by appropriations to the extent that fees are inadequate to fund the program. Congress and program managers need accurate cost information in order to make informed program and budgeting decisions. However, GAO found that BLM's financial records did not accurately reflect the true costs of its programs because the costs of labor and a number of contracts and services costs were charged to MLAP and not to the appropriate program. As a result, other subactivities benefited from the charging of these improper costs and fewer funds have been available for actual MLAP operations. BLM has taken steps to make correcting adjustments for improper charges to MLAP contracts and services; however, additional adjustments are needed to correct for labor costs that were improperly charged to MLAP. Until these adjustments for improperly charged labor are made, Congress and program managers can place only …

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The CDF Run I B physics program has been very successful, making numerous measurements over a wide variety of B physics topics. Measurements have included masses and lifetimes; discovery of the B{sub c}; B{sub s} {r_arrow} J/{psi}{phi} polarization; B{sup 0} {leftrightarrow} {bar B}{sup 0} mixing; sin (2{beta}); and rare decay limits. Recent results include a search for {Lambda}{sub b} {r_arrow} {Lambda}{gamma} and a study of B{sup 0} {r_arrow} J/{psi}K(*){sup 0} {pi}{sup +}{pi}{sup {minus}} decays. The tools and experience developed during Run I are quite valuable as CDF enters Run II.

In a 1997 summer study, a team led by Steve Holmes formulated a development plan for the Fermilab proton source and described the results in TM-2021. Subsequently, at the end of 1998, a task group was formed to prepare a detailed design of a high intensity facility called the Proton Driver to replace the Fermilab Booster. In the past two years the design effort has attracted more than fifty participants, mostly from the Beams Division. Physicists and engineers from the Technical Division and FESS as well as other institutions, including the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), Stanford University, University of Hawaii, CERN in Switzerland, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in England and the IHEP in Russia also contributed heavily. The results of that effort are summarized in this document describing the design of a 16 GeV synchrotron, two new beam transport lines (a 400 MeV injection line and a 12/16 GeV extraction line), and related improvements to the present negative ion source and the 400 MeV Linac. A construction cost estimate is presented in Appendix A.

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Characterization of simple devices as well as complex circuits, in two commercial 0.25{micro} processes, demonstrates a high level (up to 58 Mrad) radiation tolerance of these technologies. They are also very likely to be immune to single event gate damage according to the results from 200 MeV-protons irradiation.

At Fermilab, both pixel detector multichip module and sensor hybridization are being developed for the BTeV experiment. The BTeV pixel detector is based on a design relying on a hybrid approach. With this approach, the readout chip and the sensor array are developed separately and the detector is constructed by flip-chip mating the two together. This method offers maximum flexibility in the development process, choice of fabrication technologies, and the choice of sensor material. This paper presents strategies to handle the required data rate and performance results of the first prototype and detector hybridization.

The OPUS utility program produces an output file that can be used for making a variety of plots from output produced by the ORIGEN-S code that computes reactor fuel depletion, activation and fission- product buildup, and the corresponding photon and neutron source spectra. Tables containing individual and total nuclide or element concentrations, in 14 different units, may be generated as a function of time. Three classes of plot data may be produced by OPUS: (1) dominant or selected isotopes or elements, (2) photon and neutron source spectra, and (3) comparisons of selected quantities (totals or individual nuclides) between different ORIGEN-S cases. The input is designed for ease of use with self-explanatory parameter names, free-form input, and commonly used default values. The formatted output data produced by OPUS is designed to be used directly by the PlotOPUS graphics-plotting program. PlotOPUS is an interactive Visual Basic program designed for Windows 9x, 2000, and NT computers. PlotOPUS reads the formatted output data file produced by OPUS, plots the data, and will generate Windows metafile (WMF), JPEG bitmap (JPG), or Windows bitmap (BMP) files for saving the plot images. Even though it is designed to interface with PlotOPUS, the formatted OPUS output file can …

The development of high order statistical analyses applied to measurements of the temporal evolution of fission chain-reactions is described. These statistics are derived via application of Bayes' rule to conditional probabilities describing a sequence of events in a fissile system beginning with the initiation of a chain-reaction by source neutrons and ending with counting events in a collection of neutron-sensitive detectors. Two types of initiating neutron sources are considered: (1) a directly observable source introduced by the experimenter (active initiation), and (2) a source that is intrinsic to the system and is not directly observable (passive initiation). The resulting statistics describe the temporal distribution of the population of prompt neutrons in terms of the time-delays between members of a collection (an n-tuplet) of correlated detector counts, that, in turn, may be collectively correlated with a detected active source neutron emission. These developments are a unification and extension of Rossi-a, pulsed neutron, and neutron noise methods, each of which measure the temporal distribution of pairs of correlated events, to produce a method that measures the temporal distribution of n-tuplets of correlated counts of arbitrary dimension n. In general the technique should expand present capabilities in the analysis of neutron counting measurements.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) is currently reviewing the technical specifications for spent fuel storage casks in an effort to develop standard technical specifications (STS) that define the allowable spent nuclear fuel (SNF) contents. One of the objectives of the review is to minimize the level of detail in the STS that define the acceptable fuel types. To support this initiative, this study has been performed to identify potential fuel specification parameters needed for criticality safety and radiation shielding analysis and rank their importance relative to a potential compromise of the margin of safety.

Monthly newsletter discussing news and activities related to the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement Program, articles about weather and atmospheric phenomena, and other related topics.

This report addresses three specific issues: (1) the historical basis and use of the President’s reorganization authority; (2) the factors contributing to the lapse of the President’s reorganization authority in 1984,1 and (3) thoughts on the future of reorganization in the executive branch.

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This report mainly discusses about the preparation on House Committee Hearings where committee hearings provide representatives an opportunity to gather information and draw attention to legislation and issues within a committees purview.

Lowering the costs of front-end processes in the geologic sequestration of CO{sub 2} can dramatically lower the overall costs. One approach is to sequester less-pure CO{sub 2} waste streams that are less expensive or require less energy to separate from flue gas, a coal gasification process, etc. The objective of this research is to evaluate the impacts of an impure CO{sub 2} waste stream on geologic sequestration using both reaction progress and reactive transport simulators. The simulators serve as numerical laboratories within which a series of computational experiments can be designed, carried out, and analyzed to quantify sensitivity of the overall injection/sequestration process to specific compositional, hydrologic, structural, thermodynamic, and kinetic parameters associated with the injection fluid and subsurface environment.