Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the software change controls at the Social Security Administration (SSA), focusing on: (1) whether key controls as described in agency policies and procedures regarding software change authorization, testing, and approval complied with federal guidance; and (2) the extent to which agencies contracted for year 2000 remediation of mission-critical systems and involved foreign nationals in these efforts."

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Task 1 involves fitting the conventional ElectroCore separator with a central electrode and evaluating the performance. The conventional ElectroCore, used in the field test at Plant Miller near Birmingham, Alabama, was shipped to the LSR laboratory where it was cleaned and inspected. The unit had been sitting unprotected outdoors and was badly rusted inside and out. After cleaning the unit to the best of our ability, the internal walls of the separator were still very rough compared to when the unit was new. Restoring the unit to its original condition was estimated to cost about $30,000 and take about 16 weeks, so it was decided to modify the test procedures to be able to use the unit in its existing condition. Repairing the unit would put the project over budget and behind schedule. The rough walls would have little impact on the electrical characteristics or on the details of the flow geometry. It was believed that the rough walls would have a large impact on particle performance because the particles are expected to bounce along the wall before being extracted from the bleed flow outlet slot. The device is designed to prevent particles from adhering to the walls and it …

A performance computational model for a 100 kW nominal solid oxide fuel cell generator system is described. The calculational methods are based on the FORTRAN programming language. Comprehensive parameter input options are presented, and constraints are identified. Example reactant, electrical, and efficiency outputs are demonstrated over the relevant operating ranges. A sample calculated output display at nominal operating conditions is given.

In this paper, the authors present a fully constrained least squares linear spectral mixture analysis-based compression technique for hyperspectral image analysis, particularly, target detection and classification. Unlike most compression techniques that directly deal with image gray levels, the proposed compression approach generates the abundance fractional images of potential targets present in an image scene and then encodes these fractional images so as to achieve data compression. Since the vital information used for image analysis is generally preserved and retained in the abundance fractional images, the loss of information may have very little impact on image analysis. In some occasions, it even improves analysis performance. Airborne visible infrared imaging spectrometer (AVIRIS) data experiments demonstrate that it can effectively detect and classify targets while achieving very high compression ratios.

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The measurements of coupling impedance for the US Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) ring are presented. The work involves a strip-line Beam Position Monitor (BPM) and a window-frame kicker magnet. The conventional wire method is employed with improved formulas. The SNS Accumulator Ring is designed to contain a proton bunch of 2* 10{sup 14} particles at 1 GeV with a repetition rate of 60 Hz for achieving 2 MW output power. This will be the highest intensity of proton beams in the world. Care must be taken to prevent collective instabilities. An accurate impedance budget of the ring components supported by experiments is essential. Therefore, an important piece of the ring design is to measure the coupling impedance of some critical ring components and to compare with theory, model and simulation in order to gain confidence in the ring design. In this paper we report the measurements of coupling impedance of a strip-line BPM and a window-frame kicker magnet for the SNS accumulator ring.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the use of employee screening measures by Medicare claims administration and program safeguard contractors, focusing on the: (1) requirements the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) has placed on Medicare contractors to conduct employee background checks; (2) steps Medicare contractors are taking to ensure that employees are trustworthy in handling Medicare funds and sensitive information; and (3) costs to Medicare contractors of conducting background checks or using other employee screening measures."

OAK-B135 Monitoring the Durability Performance of Concrete in Nuclear Waste Containment. Technical Progress Report No. 4. The analysis of the effect of cracks on the acceleration of the calcium leaching process of cement-based materials has been pursued. During the last period (Technical Progress Report No 3), we have introduced a modeling accounting for the high diffusivity of fractures in comparison with the weak solid material diffusivity. It has been shown through dimensional and asymptotic analysis that small fractures do not significantly accelerate the material aging process. This important result for the overall structural aging kinetics of containment structure has been developed in a paper submitted to the international journal ''Transport in Porous Media''.

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The results of high temperature solubility studies at ORNL are presented in which mainly direct pH measurements were made of aqueous solutions in contact with the crystalline solid phases: Al(OH){sub 3}, AlOOH, Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4}, Mg(OH){sub 2}, Nd(OH){sub 3}, and ZnO. Examples are highlighted of specific phenomena such as: the kinetics of gibbsite and boehmite dissolution and precipitation; the appearance of metastable equilibria in the dissolution of Fe{sub 3}O{sub 4}; the extremely rapid precipitation of crystalline brucite, Mg(OH){sub 2}; and anomalies in the apparent solubility profiles of AlO(OH) and ZnO. General trends associated with the effects of temperature and ionic strength are mentioned. Some of the potentiometric investigations were augmented by conventional batch [AlO(OH) and ZnO], and flow-through column (ZnO) experiments. In the additional case of ZnCr{sub 2}O{sub 4}, the extremely low solubility of this spinel permitted application of only the latter technique and these results are discussed in terms of the measured chromium levels that resulted from incongruent dissolution.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Commerce's fiscal year (FY) 1999 annual program performance report and FY 2001 annual performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA)."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Defense's (DOD) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Education's fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plans required by the Government Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Energy's (DOE) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2000/2001 performance plans required by the Government Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Health and Human Service's (HHS) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by Government Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Justice's (DOJ) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Labor's (DOL) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance reports and FY 2001 performance plan, required by the Government Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of State's fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of the Treasury's fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Transportation's (DOT) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plan required by the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plans by the Governmental Performance and Results Act."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) fiscal year (FY) 1999 performance report and FY 2001 performance plans."