Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the audit report covering the financial statements of the National Academy of the Sciences of the United States of America for the fiscal year ended June 30, 1997, focusing on whether the audit report complied with the financial reporting requirements of the law."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the audit report covering the financial statements of the Jewish War Veterans, U.S.A., National Memorial, Incorporated, for the fiscal year ended March 31, 1998, focusing on whether the audit report complied with the financial reporting requirements of the law."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the audit report covering the financial statements of the National Mining Hall of Fame and Museum for the fiscal year ended December 31, 1997, focusing on whether the audit report complied with the financial reporting requirements of the law."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO investigated alleged improper personnel practices by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) at the Addeliar D. Guy III VA Ambulatory Care Center in Las Vegas, Nevada, focusing on whether Dr. Anthony Salem maintained a hit list for the purpose of disciplining or terminating ambulatory center employees known to be strong advocates of health care for veterans."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided information on the: (1) design components of retirement programs that states offer to their general employees and compared them to the design components of the two principal retirement programs for federal employees; and (2) changes states have considered and made to their retirement programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined various issues related to the safe operation of commercial nuclear power plants, focusing on: (1) some of the challenges that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear power industry could experience in a competitive environment; (2) issues that NRC needs to resolve to implement a risk-informed regulatory approach; and (3) the status of NRC's efforts to apply a risk-informed regulatory approach to two of its oversight programs--plant safety assessments and enforcement."

I report on the scientific aspects of my US/USSR Interacademy Exchange Visit to the Soviet Union. My research was conducted at three different institutes: the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow, the Leningrad Nuclear Physics Institute in Gatchina, and the Yerevan Physics Institute in Soviet Armenia. I included relevant information about the Soviet educational system, salaries of Soviet physicists, work habits and research activities at the three institutes, and the relevance of that research to work going on in the United States. 18 refs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Authority of a university to allocate space in a campus building to be used exclusively by a private group of faculty members (RQ-1845)

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, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Rules of the Industrial Accident Board (RQ-1813)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the food service contract for a county jail is subjective to competitive bidding and related questions (RQ-955)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Authority of the Harris County Hospital District to expend funds for the temporary housing of visiting army medical personnel (RQ-1067)

We present results from experiments directed toward increasing the degree of transverse coherence in x-ray laser beams. We have concentrated on the neon-like yttrium (Z=39) collisionally-pumped x-ray laser as the test system for these studies because of its unique combination of brightness, monochromaticity, and high-reflectivity optics availability. Attempts at improving laser performance using proximate feedback optics failed. Modest success has been found to date in ``double foil`` experiments, involving two x-ray lasers spatially separated by 29 cm and shot sequentially in an ``oscillator-amplifier`` configuration.

Since 1974 the neutrino processes mediated by neutral currents have been a part of supernova (SN) modeling calculations. In this report only present day SN calculations will be discussed. First I will give brief description of the SN computer model and an outline of the explosion process as depicted by that model. Then I will discuss the role weak neutral current (WNC) processes play in this explosion process. Finally, I will discus inelastic scattering of tau neutrinos by heavy elements in WNC or Earth as a mechanism for measuring the mass of tau neutrino.

This paper describes the operational experience in drying brines generated at a radioactive wastewater treatment facility. The brines are composed of aqueous ammonium sulfate/sodium sulfate and aqueous sodium nitrate/sodium sulfate, The brine feeds receive pretreatment to preclude dryer bridging and fouling. The dryer products are a distillate and a powder. The dryer is a vertical thin film type consisting of a steam heated cylinder with rotor. Maintenance on the dryer has been minimal. Although many operability problems have had to be overcome, dryer performance can now be said to be highly reliable.

The authors have measured the ion yields for helium and neon ionized by 120 femtosecond, 614 nanometer laser pulses with intensities up to 10{sup 16} watts per square centimeter. They have found that the He II and Ne II data exhibit features incompatible with standard nonresonant sequential ionization. These features reduce the usefulness of optical field ionization for monitoring laser intensity. For the experiment, they expect dynamic resonances to have little effect on the ionization, and they attribute the features to nonsequential ionization based on the simultaneous saturation of the features and the singly ionized charge states.

The technique of laser-induced ablation of thin films from glass slide substrates has been investigated as a candidate vapor target production method for studies of both tunneling-driven x-ray/xuv recombination lasers and relativistic propagation using intense, ultra-short laser pulses. It is shown by simultaneous two-wavelength interferometry that particle densities of order 10{sup 19}/cm{sup 3} are readily achieved and that some intrinsic ionization accompanies the plume formation. Absorption measurements with both 100 picosecond and 125 femtosecond pulses are consistent with observed edge velocities near 10{sup 6} cm/sec. The level of ionization driven by the intense 125 femtosecond laser pulse has been coarsely estimated. Averaged estimates from spectral blue shifting of spectra transmitted through the plume are consistently lower than those obtained from evaluation of saturation intensity thresholds based on the sequential nonresonant optical field ionization (OFI) process.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has developed a mobile field laboratory for remote measurement of atmospheric processes and observables that are important in global climate change, dispersal of hazardous materials, and atmospheric pollution. Specific observables of interest are water vapor, trace gases, aerosol size and density, wind, and temperature. The goal is to study atmospheric processes continuously for extended periods in remote field locations. This laboratory has just reached field ready status with sensors for aerosol and trace gas measurement based on established techniques. A development program is underway to enhance the sensor suite with several new techniques and instruments that are expected to significantly extend the state of the art in remote trace gas analysis. The new sensors will be incorporated into the lab during the next two years.

This engineering note documents the calculations of Kelly Dixon, used to determine the maximum allowable set pressure for the argon dewar low relief valve, tag number PSV620A, Anderson Greenwood Type 526J. The original setting was 16 psig. This value was chosen in order to protect against cryostat overpressurization by the source dewar (see D0 Engineering Note 115), however, the following calculations will show that the set pressure can be raised to approximately 18.5 psig, which would result in a faster filling of the cryostat, along with a higher level of liquid argon. Three other engineering notes were revised to reflect the change in set pressure according to this note. They are notes 115, 219, and 263.

The hydrologic pathways of four bottomland hardwood wetland sites were investigated at the SRS. They included a recently restored but disturbed system, two disturbed systems, and an undisturbed system. Water table elevations were significantly higher in reference sites then disturbed sites. Hydrologic budgets were developed. The reference site had higher evapotranspiration, but higher interflow and input from the uplands. Lower water tables may be the result of geomorphic changes on the disturbed areas.

An informational fact sheet about the energy-cost benefits of a whole house fan, installation tips, and selection criteria.