Savannah River Site (SRS) monitors groundwater quality at the F-Area Hazardous Waste management Facility (HWMF) and provides results of this monitoring to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (SCDHEC) semiannually as required by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permit. SRS also performs monthly sampling of the Wastewater Treatment Unit (WTU) effluent in accordance with Section C of the Underground Injection Control (UIC) application.

The African Development Bank Group, including the Bank itself (AfDB) and its "soft-loan" affiliate, the African Development Fund (AfDF), is a development finance institution based in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire. The Bank has 53 African members, as well as 24 non-regional members, including the United States. In the mid-1990s, the Bank faced management problems and difficulties arising from non-performing loans, but reforms launched in 1995 by a new Bank president, Omar Kabbaj, brought new pledges of support from the non-regionals. U.S. contributions to the Bank resumed in FY2000. This report will be updated as events warrant.

The Defense Waste Processing Facility requested that the Immobilization Technology Section compare the relative foaming tendencies of sludge simulant during simulated Chemical Processing Cell operations (HLW-DWPF-TTR-99-0012). Dow Corning 544 antifoam, currently used in DWPF, was compared to a new antifoam formulation developed at the Illinois Institute of Technology. A task plan was written and approved. The task plan deliverables included a recommendation on the choice of antifoam, an evaluation of the influence of solids concentration on foaming, an evaluation on the effect of boil-up rate on foaming, an estimate of the mass of steam stripped to remove 90 percent of the mercury, and a determination of the fate of mercury. Additional parameters to be investigated during experimentation included the maximum foam height observed, hydrogen generation rates, and nitrite destruction rates.

We compare three remote visualization strategies used for interactive exploration of large data sets: image-based rendering, parallel visualization servers, and subsampling. We review each strategy and provide details for an adaptive multiresolution subsampling technique that we have developed. To determine the problem regimes for which each approach is most cost effective, we develop performance models to analyze the costs of computation and communication associated with the common visualization task of isosurface generation. Using these models, we investigate a number of hardware system configurations and task complexity scenarios when parameters such as problem size, visualization demands, and network bandwidth change. For one particular strategy, subsampling, we further investigate the tradeoffs between multiresolution and uniform grid methods in terms of performance and approximation errors.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed issues related to the Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command's decision to exercise, and then terminate, a contract option for a prelubrication system manufactured under the trademark Pre-Luber, focusing on whether the: (1) Pre-Luber offers significant savings in maintenance and repair costs in comparison to the awarded engine without the Pre-Luber; (2) contract was administered fairly, lawfully, and economically; and (3) lubrication system on the subcontractor's engine may infringe on the patent held by Engine Lubrication Systems."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO reviewed 31 completed Department of the Interior (DOI) contracts with outstanding balances, focusing on whether the outstanding balances were not needed for contract closeout and could be deobligated."

A full-scale modular solid/liquid separation (SLS) system was designed, fabricated, installed, and successfully deployed for treatment of liquid low-level waste from the Melton Valley Storage Tanks (MVSTs) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The SLS module, utilizing cross-flow filtration, was operated as part of an integrated tank waste pretreatment system (otherwise known as the Wastewater Triad) to remove suspended solids and prevent fouling of ion-exchange materials and heat exchange surfaces. The information gained from this testing was used to complete design specifications for the full-scale modular SLS system in May 1997. The contract for detailed design and fabrication of the system was awarded to NUMET in July 1997, and the design was completed in January 1998. Fabrication began in March 1998, and the completed system was delivered to ORNL on December 29, 1998. Installation of the system at the MVST facility was completed in May 1999. After completing an operational readiness assessment, approval was given to commence hot operations on June 7, 1999. Operations involving two of the eight MVSTs were performed safely and with very little unscheduled downtime. Filtration of supernatant from tank W-31 was completed on June 24, 1999 and W-26 processing was completed on August 20, 1999. …

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This report presents the results of the required groundwater monitoring program as identified in Section IIID.H.11.c of the RCRA permit and Section C of the Underground Injection Control (UIC) permit application (hereafter referred to as the UIC application).

The Cooperative Air Surface Exchange Study 1999 (CASES99), designed to investigate in detail the nocturnal boundary layer (NBL) of the atmosphere with particular emphasis on turbulence and turbulence events, took place during October 1999, within the Atmospheric Boundary Layer Experiments (ABLE) region east of Wichita KS. The principal measurement site was a heavily instrumented 2-km square located near Leon (LE), KS, but additional sites at Smileyberg (SM) and Beaumont (BE) were also used. The authors augmented the normal ABLE measurements at Beaumont (radar wind profiler, minisodar, 10-m meteorological tower, precipitation gauge) with a sonic anemometer mounted on the tower, 7 m above the surface. For this campaign, the minisodar data were saved in single-pulse mode with no averaging. The Beaumont site is within gently rolling rangeland used primarily for grazing. The site is on a flat plain rising gradually to the east.The Flint Hills escarpment, located approximately 2 km to the east, marks the highest point in, and the eastern boundary of, the Walnut River watershed. Although most terrain features are subtle, terrain effects on atmospheric flows are still possible, particularly in stable conditions. The intent was to observe turbulence and, hopefully, turbulence events with the sonic anemometer and minisodar. …

Advanced Electron Paramagnetic Resonance spectroscopy (pulsed EPR, time-resolved EPR, high-frequency EPR, ENDOR) has been used to structurally characterize metastable point defects in irradiated alkali borate, silicate, and borosilicate glasses and to study mobile interstitial H atoms. In addition, the yield of radiolytic oxygen has been determined by outgassing. Several mechanisms for the defect formation in oxide glasses have been established.

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This Record of Technical Change provides updates to the technical information included in ''Corrective Action Investigation Plan for Corrective Action Unit 263: Area 25 Building 4839 Leachfield, Nevada Test Site, Nevada,'' Revision 0

A briefing report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Senior Executive Service's (SES) retirement trends, focusing on: (1) trends for the SES' workforce governmentwide and for selected agencies and occupational series through fiscal year (FY) 2005 and how they compared with the trends over the 7-year period ending FY 1998; and (2) the implications of SES retirement trends for SES succession planning."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) management and marketing contracts of single-family housing, focusing on HUD's: (1) experience with the contractors who manage and market these properties; and (2) progress in reducing its single-family property inventory."

The phycobilisome (PBS) light-harvesting antenna is composed of chromophore-containing biliproteins and 'colorless' linker peptides and is structurally designed to support unidirectional transfer of excitation energy from the periphery of the PBS to its core. The linker peptides have a unique role in this transfer process by modulating the spectral properties of the associated biliprotein. There is only one three-dimensional structure of a biliprotein/linker complex available to date (APC/LC7.8) and the mechanism of interaction between these two proteins remains unknown. This study brings together a detailed spectroscopic characterization of C-Phycocyanin (PC)-linker complexes (isolated from Synechococcus sp. PCC 7002) with proteomic analysis of the linker amino acid sequences to produce a model for biliprotein/linker interaction. The amino acid sequences of the rod linkers [LR8.9, LR32.3 and LRC28.5] were examined to identify evolutionarily conserved regions important to either the structure or function of this protein family. Although there is not one common homologous site among all the linkers, there are strong trends across each separate subset (LC, LR and LRC) and the N-terminal segments of both LR32.3 and LRC28.5 display multiple regions of similarity with other linkers. Predictions of the secondary structure of LR32.3 and LRC28.5, and comparison to the crystal structure of …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Superfund program administrative reforms, focusing on the: (1) reforms' demonstrated results and the performance measures EPA uses to gauge these results; and (2) legislative changes to the program that either EPA or key stakeholders--including, among others, officials representing parties responsible for cleanups, environmental groups, and states--believe are still necessary."

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

The hydroacoustic nuclear explosion monitoring regime, like it's counterpart in seismic monitoring, requires ground truth calibration. Model predictions of traveltimes, blockages, reflections, diffractions, and waveform envelopes need to be verified with ground truth experiments, particularly in the high latitudes where models often fail. Although pressure detonated explosives are a simple, reliable, and flexible method to generate an impulsive hydroacoustic calibration source at a desired depth; safety procedures, specialized training, and local regulations often preclude their use. This leaves few alternatives since airgun and other seismic marine sources are designed for use only at shallow depths and hence do not effectively couple into the SOFAR channel, a necessary requirement for long range propagation. Imploding spheres could be an effective source at mid-ocean depths and below but development of a method to reliably break such spheres has been elusive. We designed and tested a prototype system to initiate catastrophic glass sphere failure at a prescribed depth. The system firmly holds a glass sphere in contact with a piston-ram assembly. The end cap on the cylinder confining the piston and opposing the ram has a rupture disk sealed to it. The rupture disk is calibrated to fail within 5% of the calibrated failure …

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