From introduction: "With the refinement of modern resuscitation procedures increasing numbers of people have 'died' and then returned to life. Many individuals report that during the time of clinical death extraordinary phenomena occur, which challenge accepted ideas of what happens when we die. A remarkable degree of correlation in these reports demands serious consideration. This paper will address pertinent questions raised by these reports."

From introduction: "One of the commonest reactions to the visionary experiences of heaven by the critical observer has been to argue that these are nothing more than the projections of the expectations of the dying person, who was either consciously or subconsciously trained to expect heavenly scenery (etc.) by his cultural upbringing. [...] This paper is a preliminary report on the status of NDEs in Pure Land Buddhism in China, and is an important contribution to cross-cultural research for several reasons" (pp. 154-155).

Paper analyzing near-death experiences that involve a "tunnel experience" (TE) as a specific aspect of the phenomena.

Analyses are presented of the downhole pressure buildup data for wells located in the Redondo Creek area of the Baca Geothermal Field. The downhole drilling information and pressure/temperature surveys are first interpreted to locate zones at which fluid enters the wellbore from the fractured formation and to estimate the initial reservoir temperature and pressure in these zones. Interpretation of the buildup data for each well considers wellbore effects, the CO{sub 2} content of the fluid and differentiates between the single-phase and two-phase portions of the data. Different straight-line approximations to the two portions of the data on the Horner plot for a flow test yield corresponding estimates for the single and two-phase mobilities. Estimates for the formation kh are made for the wells.

Linear plasma fluid theory is used to study the stability of a cold electron beam in Brillouin equilibrium which passes through a stationary cold ion background, with particular interest in stability for parameters relevant to EBIS devices. Dispersion is studied both analytically and numerically. For {ell}=0, the usual infinite medium two stream instability condition is shown to correspond to a requirement that beam perveance exceed a minimum value, P>33 {micro}pervs; hence, this mode is stable for EBIS (P {approx} l{micro}perv). The Brillouin equilibrium rotation is shown to cause an electron-ion rotating stream instability, which is convectively unstable. The {ell}=1 mode is also found to be unstable. Higher modes numbers, {ell}>1, are unstable, but have reduced growth. Instability is only weakly affected by finite beam radius and boundary conditions.

The Nova OTR (overall transmittance/reflectance) photometer operates at 1.064 nm, 528 nm, or 351 nm in order to closely simulate 1st, 2nd and 3rd harmonic frequencies of the Nova fusion laser. The optic is scanned on a large XY carriage while reflectance or transmittance data is taken on-the-fly. The system is controlled by an LSI 11/23 computer which processes the data and prints out the results in hard copy form, or stores data on a memory disk. The detectors are temperature controlled to within +- 0.01/sup 0/C which aids in achieving of an absolute accuracy of +- 0.1 to +- 0.5% of full scale, depending on the operating point. The photometer is capable of scanning a large optic (1 meter in diameter) in 20 to 30 minutes.

Gold gratings with spatial periods of 0.3 and 0.2 ..mu..m have been fabricated in thicknesses of 0.6 and 0.25 ..mu..m, respectively, and used in x-ray spectroscopy and spatial-period-division. Fabrication techniques included: holographic lithography, shadowing, x-ray lithography and gold microplating. Control of linewidth to tolerances of the order of 10 nm has been demonstrated for gratings of 0.2 ..mu..m period. A high resolution imaging spectrometer, composed of a 22x Wolter x-ray microscope in conjunction with a gold transmission grating, was tested. At a wavelength of 0.69 nm a resolving power, lambda/..delta.. lambda, of 200 was demonstrated. Resolution in this case was source size limited. Gratings of 99.5 nm period were exposed in PMMA by x-ray (lambda = 4.5 nm) spatial-period-division.

A facility-development effort is currently underway at Sandia National Laboratories in order to create an experimental capability for the study of two-phase, steam/water flows through a variety of porous media. The facility definition phase of this project is described. Equations are derived for the steady, adiabatic, macroscopically-linear two-phase flow of a single-component fluid through a porous medium, including energy transfer both by convection and conduction. These equations are then solved to give relative permeabilities for the steam and water phases as functions of known and/or measurable quantities. A viable experimental approach was thereby formulated, leading to the definition of facility components and instrumentation requirements, including the application of gamma-beam densitometry for the measurement of liquid-saturation distributions in porous media. Finally, a state-of-the-art computer code was utilized to numerically simulate the proposed experiments, providing an estimate of the facility operating envelope.

Scenarios are being constructed for the release of radioactive maerial from hypothetical repositories in different types of rock at NTS. Deductive event trees are constructed; each path through an event tree is a scenario. The complete set of NTS event trees comprises about 340 scenarios, not counting the multiple paths through the subtrees made by expanding complex events. Each of these scenarios is being analyzed for 10 different types of rocks. (DLC)

We have calculated the line broadening of the Moessbauer line due to diffusion of Moessbauer atoms via single vacanices. We take into account the perturbation of vacancy jumps in the neighbourhood of an impurity Moessbauer atom (e.g. Fe in Al) using the 5-frequency model. The anisotropy of the line width is given by the Fourier transform of the final distribution of a Moessbauer atom after an encounter with a vacancy. This distribution is calculated by Monte Carlo computer simulation. 3 figures, 1 tables.