Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on Custom Service's Merchandise Processing Fee (MPF) that is charged on certain imports, focusing on the relationship between the fee and the cost of services provided."

Numerical simulations of groundwater flow at Yucca Mountain, Nevada are used to investigate how faults influence groundwater flow pathways and regional-scale macrodispersion. The 3-D model has a unique grid block discretization that facilitates the accurate representation of the complex geologic structure present in faulted formations. Each hydrogeologic layer is discretized into a single layer of irregular and dipping grid blocks, and faults are discretized such that they are laterally continuous and varied in displacement varies along strike. In addition, the presence of altered fault zones is explicitly modeled, as appropriate. Simulations show that upward head gradients can be readily explained by the geometry of hydrogeologic layers, the variability of layer permeabilities, and the presence of permeable fault zones or faults with displacement only, not necessarily by upwelling from a deep aquifer. Large-scale macrodispersion results from the vertical and lateral diversion of flow near the contact of high- and low-permeability layers at faults, and from upward flow within high-permeability fault zones. Conversely, large-scale channeling can occur as a result of groundwater flow into areas with minimal fault displacement. Contaminants originating at the water table can flow in a direction significantly different from that of the water table gradient, and isolated zones …

Weekly newspaper from Rusk, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a purchase from jail-commissary proceeds is subject to statutory competitive procurement requirements.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a county officer may be credited or compensated for unused vacation time he earned while a county employee.

Document issued by the Office of the Attorney General of Texas in Austin, Texas, providing an interpretation of Texas law. It provides the opinion of the Texas Attorney General, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether Texas Department of Transportation may restrict material specifications to products of only one vendor if other vendors have similar products of equal quality, and related questions.

Weekly newspaper from Albany, Texas that includes local, county, and state news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from San Antonio, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Sanger, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Canadian, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Odem, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This home movie excerpt documents the Saniei family children riding the Forest Park Miniature Railroad through Trinity Park in Forth Worth, Texas.

Semi-weekly newspaper from Livingston, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Hondo, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with extensive advertising.

This report provides the results of a review conducted on existing operating specifications and safety requirements and provides a summary of applicable design constraints on the Single-Shell Tank (SST) System. The SST System is required to transition from the current waste storage mission to support the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) waste retrieval mission described in the Tank Waste Remediation System Mission Analysis Report (Acree 1998). The SST System is also required to support the Project Hanford Management Contract (PHMC) portions of the Waste Feed Delivery (WFD) mission. In Phase 1 the SST System will be required to retrieve waste from selected SSTs (tanks 241-C-102 and 241-C-104) for transfer to the Double-Shell Tank (DST) System (tanks 241-AZ-101,241-AY-102). The SST System will include all the systems, structures and components required to safely store, retrieve, and transfer waste in support of the TWRS mission. Operational Specification Documents (OSDs) govern operation of the existing SST System components. However, the system will be highly modified to support the TWRS mission. Therefore OSD requirements may not apply to the new system's design. This document describes the review of existing SST OSDs and provides the rationale for selecting or rejecting requirements as constraints on the SST …

During this time period, experiments were performed to study the diffusion controlled uptake of quinoline and a coal asphaltene into porous carbon catalyst pellets. Cyclohexane and toluene were used as solvents for quinoline and the coal asphaltene respectively. The experiments were performed at 27 C and 75 C, at a pressure of 250 psi (inert gas) for the quinoline/cyclohexane system. For the coal asphaltene/toluene system, experiments were performed at 27 C, also at a pressure of 250 psi. These experiments were performed in a 20 cm{sup 3} microautoclave, the use of which is advantageous since it is economical from both a chemical procurement and waste disposal standpoint due to the small quantities of solvents and catalysts used. A C++ program was written to simulate data using a mathematical model which incorporated both diffusional and adsorption mechanisms. The simulation results showed that the mathematical model satisfactorily fitted the adsorptive diffusion of quinoline and the coal asphaltene onto a porous activated carbon. For the quinoline/cyclohexane system, the adsorption constant decreased with an increase in temperature. The adsorption constant for the coal asphaltene/toluene system at 27 C was found to be much higher than that of the quinoline/cyclohexane system at the same temperature. …

Three bounding accidents postdated for the K West Basin integrated water treatment system are evaluated against applicable risk evaluation guidelines. The accidents are a spray leak during fuel retrieval, spray leak during backflushing, and a hydrogen explosion. Event trees and accident probabilities are estimated. In all cases, the unmitigated dose consequences are below the risk evaluation guidelines.

We used a fully coupled climate/chemistry model together with the newly developed IPCC anthropogenic emissions to simulate the climate variation by aerosols. The range of aerosol forcing by the primary indirect effect in next century is estimated between -0.49 and -1.20 W m{sup -2}. This range does not include the potential natural emissions feedbacks associated with climate change. Since sea salt emissions are projected to increase from 88.5 Tg of Na for 2000 to 155 Tg of Na for 2100, the increased aerosol forcing from emissions feedbacks would be mainly over the ocean in southern hemisphere where the maximum is located. More simulations will be performed in order to identify the emissions feedbacks from the total feedbacks. This will provide us a more quantitative range for the aerosol climate forcing as compared to those from greenhouse gases. The magnitudes of climate feedbacks calculated here are subject to uncertainties from climate system. Uncertainty can also arise from the model configuration where the sea surface temperatures are prescribed instead of using a mixed-layer ocean model or a full ocean general circulation model. To quantity these uncertainties, sensitivities tests will be performed in a future study.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

The Black Thunder Coal Mine (BTCM) near Gillette, Wyoming was used as a test bed to determine the feasibility of detecting explosion-induced geomagnetic disturbances with ground-based induction magnetometers. Two magnetic observatories were fielded at distances of 50 km and 64 km geomagnetically north from the northernmost edge of BTCM. Each observatory consisted of three separate but mutually orthogonal magnetometers, Global Positioning System (GPS) timing, battery and solar power, a data acquisition and storage system, and a three-axis seismometer. Explosions with yields of 1 to 3 kT of TNT equivalent occur approximately every three weeks at BTCM. We hypothesize that explosion-induced acoustic waves propagate upward and interact collisionally with the ionosphere to produce ionospheric electron density (and concomitant current density) perturbations which act as sources for geomagnetic disturbances. These disturbances propagate through an ionospheric Alfven waveguide that we postulate to be leaky (due to the imperfectly conducting lower ionospheric boundary). Consequently, wave energy may be observed on the ground. We observed transient pulses, known as Q-bursts, with pulse widths about 0.5 s and with spectral energy dominated by the Schumann resonances. These resonances appear to be excited in the earth-ionosphere cavity by Alfven solitons that may have been generated by the …

A high-speed data link that would provide dramatically faster communication from downhole instruments to the surface and back again has the potential to revolutionize deep drilling for geothermal resources through Diagnostics-While-Drilling (DWD). Many aspects of the drilling process would significantly improve if downhole and surface data were acquired and processed in real-time at the surface, and used to guide the drilling operation. Such a closed-loop, driller-in-the-loop DWD system, would complete the loop between information and control, and greatly improve the performance of drilling systems. The main focus of this program is to demonstrate the value of real-time data for improving drilling. While high-rate transfer of down-hole data to the surface has been accomplished before, insufficient emphasis has been placed on utilization of the data to tune the drilling process to demonstrate the true merit of the concept. Consequently, there has been a lack of incentive on the part of industry to develop a simple, low-cost, effective high-speed data link. Demonstration of the benefits of DWD based on a high-speed data link will convince the drilling industry and stimulate the flow of private resources into the development of an economical high-speed data link for geothermal drilling applications. Such a downhole communication …

The authors present the recent results and future prospects on top quark physics at the Tevatron. They describe the measurements of the top quark mass and the search for single top quark production in 1.8-TeV p{bar p} collisions. The CDF and D0 combined results yield a top quark mass of 174.3 {+-} 5.1 GeV/c{sup 2}. The upper limit at 95% C.L. of the single top production cross section is found to be 16.0 pb and 15.6 pb for the W-gluon fusion process and s-channel W* process, respectively.

This report describes a study of radon (Rn) emanation from pipe scale and soil samples contaminated with naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM). Samples were collected at petroleum production sites in Oklahoma, Michigan, Kentucky, and Illinois. For comparison, data are also presented from preliminary studies conducted at sites in Texas and Wyoming. All samples collected were analyzed for their Rn emanation fraction, defined as the fraction of 222Rn produced that enters the interconnected pore space within a medium contaminated with 226Ra before the 222Rn undergoes radioactive decay. This measure represents one of the important parameters that determine the overall Rn activity flux from any solid medium. The goal of this project was to determine whether Rn emanation from pipe scale and soil is similar to emanation from uranium mill tailings.

Interstitial Fluid Displacement (IFD) is a new and novel method for separating cesium from saltcake waste. Hydrologic modeling of liquid flow through porous saltcake suggests that the cesium, potassium and sodium hydroxide can be separated at high recovery and low volume using IFD.