A guide to campaign finance ethics and rules for political committees.

An instructional guide from the Texas Ethic Commission on appointing a campaign treasurer by a general-purpose committee.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story. This story aired at 6:00 P.M.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, covering a news story by reporter Clif Caldwell about a house explosion likely caused by a gas leak and the death of Lorenzo Venedidas's sister. This story aired at 10:00 P.M.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, covering a news story about a house explosion and the death of 38 year old woman, Luena Hernandez. This story aired at 6:00 P.M.

Photograph of the 121st Annual Ponca Pow Wow at White Eagle Park in Ponca City, OK. Photo by Mary Huffman, Sept. 1, 1997.

Photograph of the 121st Annual Ponca Pow Wow at White Eagle Park in Ponca City, OK. Photo by Mary Huffman, Sept. 1, 1997.

Photograph of the 121st Annual Ponca Pow Wow at White Eagle Park in Ponca City, OK. Photo by Mary Huffman, Sept. 1, 1997.

Photograph of the 121st Annual Ponca Pow Wow at White Eagle Park in Ponca City, OK. Photo by Mary Huffman, Sept. 1, 1997.

Photograph of the 121st Annual Ponca Pow Wow at White Eagle Park in Ponca City, OK. Photo by Mary Huffman, Sept. 1, 1997.

Monthly newspaper from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma that includes news and information about the Churches of Christ along with advertising.

The goal of the 6th International Meshing Roundtable is to bring together researchers and developers from industry, academia, and government labs in a stimulating, open environment for the exchange of technical information related to the meshing process. In the pas~ the Roundtable has enjoyed significant participation born each of these groups from a wide variety of countries. The Roundtable will consist of technical presentations from contributed papers and abstracts, two invited speakers, and two invited panels of experts discussing topics related to the development and use of automatic mesh generation tools. In addition, this year we will feature a "Bring Your Best Mesh" competition and poster session to encourage discussion and participation from a wide variety of mesh generation tool users. The schedule and evening social events are designed to provide numerous opportunities for informal dialog. A proceedings will be published by Sandia National Laboratories and distributed at the Roundtable. In addition, papers of exceptionally high quaIity will be submitted to a special issue of the International Journal of Computational Geometry and Applications. Papers and one page abstracts were sought that present original results on the meshing process. Potential topics include but are got limited to: Unstructured triangular and tetrahedral …

This report covers the progress made on the title project for the project period. The study of coal chemical structure is a vital component of research efforts to develop better chemical utilization of coals, and for furthering our basic understanding of coal geochemistry. In this grant we are addressing several structural questions pertaining to coals with advances in state of the art solids NMR methods. The main activity during this granting period was a completion of a detailed comparative analysis of the suite of spectral editing techniques developed in our laboratory for this purpose. The appended report is a manuscript being submitted to the Journal of Magnetic Resonance on this subject.

'The purpose of this task is to undertake the design, synthesis, and characterization of the next generation of crown ethers for metal-ion separations applicable to the US Department of Energy''s (DOE''s) environmental needs. The general target problem is the removal of alkali and alkaline-earth metal contaminants from certain environmental and waste streams. Although not a radioactivity hazard, Li{sup +} ions leaching from burial sites containing more than 12 metric tons of lithium compounds contaminate the groundwater at the Oak Ridge Y-12 Plant and have raised noncompliance concerns because of the resultant toxicity to aquatic biota. A more highly visible problem has been treatment of high-level wastes stored in underground tanks at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory, and especially the Hanford Site. The fission products {sup 90}Sr and {sup 137}Cs have been explicitly targeted for removal by the following DOE programs: the Office of Environmental Management, the Office of Science and Technology, the Tank Waste Remediation System, the Tanks Focus Area, and the Efficient Separations and Processing Cross-Cutting Program. These seemingly ubiquitous fission products also appear in soil and groundwater at numerous DOE sites. In addition, radium has recently been named as a target contaminant …

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'Biofiltration systems can be used to treat volatile organic compounds (VOCs); however, the systems are poorly understood and are currently operated as black boxes. Common operational problems associated with biofilters include fouling, deactivation, and overgrowth, all of which make biofilters ineffective for continuous, long-term use. The objective of this investigation is to develop generic methods for long-term stable operation, in particular by using selective limitation of supplemental nutrients while maintaining high activity and the ability to regenerate biofilter activity. As part of this effort, the authors will provide a deeper fundamental understanding of the important biological and transport mechanisms in biodestruction of sparingly soluble VOCs and will extend this engineering approach and developed mathematical models to two additional systems of high-priority environmental management (EM) relevance-direct degradation and cometabolic degradation of priority pollutants such as BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene) and TCE (trichioroethylene), respectively. Preliminary results indicate that the author can control overgrowth of the biofilm while sustaining high degradation rates and develop basic predictive models that elucidate mass transfer and kinetic limitations in this system for alkanes. The alkanes are degraded into CO, and waterwith minimal biomass (due to the methodology proposed). This system will be used to test …

'The objective of this research program is to develop methods for concentrating tritium in water based on large primary isotope effects in catalytic redox processes. Basic research is being conducted to develop the chemistry of a complete cyclic process. Because tritium [generally present as tritiated water (HTO)] is in a rapidly established equilibrium with water, it moves with groundwater and separation from water cannot be achieved by the usual pump-and-treat methods using sorbents. The general methodology developed in this work will be applicable to a number of US Department of Energy waste streams, and as a consequence of the process, tritium could be incorporated in an organic polymer, a form that will prevent its ready transport in groundwater.'

'The goal of this project is to identify the chemical and physical factors that control the transport of groundwater colloids in fractured porous media and develop a generalized capability to predict colloid attachment and detachment based on hydraulic factors (head, flow rate), physical structure (fracture aperture), and chemical properties (surface properties of colloids and fracture surfaces). Understanding the processes that control colloid behavior will increase the confidence with which colloid-facilitated contaminant transport can be predicted and assessed at various contaminated US Department of Energy (DOE) sites. An added benefit is the expectation that this work will yield novel techniques to either immobilize colloid-bound contaminants in situ or mobilize colloids for enhancing remedial techniques such as pump-and-treat and bioremediation. Research Statement A series of field-scale and laboratory-scale experiments, using both natural undisturbed samples and simple one-dimension ``artificial fractures,'''' are in progress to investigate the influence of physical and chemical factors on the transport of colloids in fractured materials. The experimental results will be assessed using a computer model (COLFRAC) developed to simulate colloid transport in fractured materials. The overall goal is to assess the relative influence of chemical and physical factors expected to influence colloid transport in fractured materials and investigate …

The microsegregation behavior of electron beam (EB) and gas tungsten arc (GTA) welds of Al-Cu alloys covering a range from 0.19 to 7.74 wt% Cu were characterized for dendrite core concentrations and fraction eutectic solidification. Although a single weld speed of 12.7 mm/sec was used, some differences were observed in the segregation behavior of the two weld types. The microsegregation behavior was also modeled using a finite differences technique considering dendrite tip and eutectic undercooling and solid state diffusion. Fairly good agreement was observed between measured and calculated segregation behavior although differences between the two weld types could not be completely accounted for. The concept of dendrite tip undercooling was used to explain the formation of a single through thickness centerline grain in the higher alloy content GTA welds.

At the Savannah River Site, the in-tank precipitation (ITP) process uses sodium tetraphenylborate (NaTPB) to precipitate radioactive cesium from alkaline wastes. During this process, potassium is also precipitated to form a 4-wt% KTPB/CsTPB slurry. Residual NaTPB decomposes to form benzene, which is retained by the waste slurry. The retained benzene is also readily released from the waste during subsequent waste processing. While the release of benzene certainly poses both flammability and toxicological safety concerns, the magnitude of the hazard depends on the rate of release. Currently, the mechanisms controlling the benzene release rates are not well understood, and predictive models for estimating benzene release rates are not available. The overall purpose of this study is to obtain quantitative measurements of benzene release rates from a series of ITP slurry stimulants. This information will become a basis for developing a quantitative mechanistic model of benzene release rates. The transient benzene release rate was measured from the surface of various ITP slurry (solution) samples mixed with benzene. The benzene release rate was determined by continuously purging the headspace of a sealed sample vessel with an inert gas (nitrogen) and analyzing that purged headspace vapor for benzene every 3 minutes. The following 75-mL …

A group of Canadian, US and Mexican natural resource specialists, organized by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) under its North American Energy, Environment and Economy (NA3E) Program, has applied a simulation modeling approach to estimating the impact of ENSO-driven climatic variations on the productivity of major crops grown in the three countries. Methodological development is described and results of the simulations presented in this report. EPIC (the Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator) was the agro-ecosystem model selected-for this study. EPIC uses a daily time step to simulate crop growth and yield, water use, runoff and soil erosion among other variables. The model was applied to a set of so-called representative farms parameterized through a specially-assembled Geographic Information System (GIS) to reflect the soils, topography, crop management and weather typical of the regions represented. Fifty one representative farms were developed for Canada, 66 for the US and 23 for Mexico. El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) scenarios for the EPIC simulations were created using the historic record of sea-surface temperature (SST) prevailing in the eastern tropical Pacific for the period October 1--September 30. Each year between 1960 and 1989 was thus assigned to an ENSO category or state. The ENSO states were defined …

The Mushroom test is designed to characterize the corner turning performance of a new generation of less insensitive booster explosives. The test is described in detail, and three corner turning figures-of-merit are examined using pure TATB (both Livermore`s Ultrafine and a Los Alamos research blend) and PBX9504 as examples.

Magnetically driven imploding liner systems can be used as a source of shock energy for materials equation of state studies, implosion driven magnetized plasma fusion experiments, and other similar applications. The imploding liner is a cylinder of conducting material through which a current is passed in the longitudinal direction. Interaction of the current with its own magnetic field causes the liner to implode. Sources of electrical energy for imploding liner systems are capacitor banks or explosive pulse power systems seeded by capacitor banks. In August, 1996, a high energy liner experiment (HEL-1) was conducted at the All-Russia Scientific Research Institute (VNIIEF) in Sarov, Russia. A 5 tier 1 meter diameter explosive disk generator provided electrical energy to drive a 48 cm outside diameter, 4 mm thick, aluminum alloy liner having a mass of about 11kg onto an 11 cm diameter diagnostic package. The purpose of the experiment was to measure performance of the explosive pulse power generator and the heavy imploding liner. Electrical performance diagnostics included inductive (B-dot) probes, Faraday Rotation current measurement, Rogowski total current measurement, and voltage probes. Flux loss and conductor motion diagnostics included current-joint voltage measurements and motion sensing contact pins. Optical and electrical impact pins, …