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 base updated service credits are calculated on the basis of the number of months a member has performed credited service and related questions (ID# 36101)

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 a person whose land was condemned by the federal government for military purposes may recover the property when the federal government no longer uses the property for those purposes and related questions (RQ-875)

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 under Property Code section 204.010(9), a property owners’ association may assess additional fees or raise existing fees for services the association performs, without following “established procedures” for assessing or raising the fees (ID# 38818)

For two decades, scientists have been warning that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and Halons (bromine-containing fluorocarbons) may deplete the stratospheric ozone shield that screens out some of the sun's harmful ultraviolet rays and thus regulates the amounts which reach the Earth's surface. CFCs have been used as refrigerants, solvents, foam blowing agents, and outside the United States as aerosol propellants; Halons are used primarily as firefighting agents. Increased radiation could result in an increase in skin cancers, suppression of the human immune system, and decreased productivity of terrestrial and aquatic organisms, including some commercially important crops.

The Robotics Development Groups at the Savannah River Site (SRS) and at the Hanford site have developed remote video and photography systems for deployment in underground radioactive-waste storage tanks at the Department of Energy (DOE) sites as a part of the Office of Science and Technology (OST) program within DOE. Viewing and documenting the tank interiors and their associated annular spaces is an extremely valuable tool in characterizing their condition and contents and in controlling their remediation. Several specialized video/photography systems and robotic End Effectors have been fabricated that provide remote viewing and lighting. All are remotely deployable into and out of the tank, with all viewing functions remotely operated. Positioning all control components away from the facility prevents the potential for personnel exposure to radiation and contamination. Only the remote video systems are discussed in this paper.

During this Workshop, it was concluded that a Proton-Proton Collider with an energy of 100 TeV per beam and a luminosity of about 10{sup 35} cm{sup {minus}2} s{sup {minus}1} is feasible. The most important technical requirement for the realization of such a project is a large bending field. For instance, a field of 13 Tesla would be desirable. This is twice the field of the SSC superconducting magnets, which very likely may be achieved in a non-too-far future by extrapolation of the present technology. The design of this Collider would follow very closely the methods used for the design of the SSC and of the LHC, with the major noticeable difference that, because of the larger bending field and the larger beam energy, the performance is determined by the effects of the Synchrotron Radiation in the similar manner they affect the performance of an electron-positron collider. This fact has considerable beneficial consequences since it allows the attainment of large luminosity by reducing the beam dimensions at collision and by requiring, to some degree, less number of particles per beam. On the other end. the losses to synchrotron radiation are to be absorbed by the cryogenic system, and the vacuum system …

The ELOISATRON Project is a proton-proton collider at very high energy and very large luminosity. The main goal is to determine the ultimate performance that is possible to achieve with reasonable extrapolation of the present accelerator technology. A complete study and design of the collider requires that several steps of investigations are undertaken. The authors count five of such steps as outlined in the report.

In the following the authors give several relationships which are used for the preliminary design and to estimate the collider performance. They limit to the case of the performance during storage and colliding mode. Two of such relations are the relation between bending field B, the bending radius {rho} and the proton momentum p B (Tesla) {rho} (meter) = 3.3356 p (GeV/c) and the minimum requirement of the collider luminosity L which scales with the beam energy E according to L = (10{sup 33} cm{sup {minus}2} s{sup {minus}1}) (E/20 TeV ). They assume that the collider is made of two identical intersecting rings where the two beams circulate in opposite directions otherwise with identical configuration, dimensions and intensity. Both beams are bunched. They also assume, for simplicity, that the beams are round, that is they have the same betatron emittance in the two transverse planes of oscillations, horizontal and vertical. Also the two beams are exactly round at the interaction point where the lattice functions {beta}* has also the same values in the two planes.

The authors have shown that the design of the ELOISATRON can be approached in five separate steps. In this report they deal with the two major issues of the collider: the size and the strength of the superconducting magnets. The reference design of the SSC calls for a collider circumference of 86 km. It represents the largest size that until recently was judged feasible. The reference design of the LHC requires a bending field of 9 Tesla, that industries are presently determined to demonstrate. Clearly the large size of the project presents problem with magnet tolerances, and collider operation and management. The high field of the superconducting magnets needs to be demonstrated, and the high-field option in excess of 9 Tesla requires extensive research and development. It is obvious from the start that, if the ELOISATRON has to allow large beam energies, the circumference has also to be larger than that of the SSC, probably of few hundred kilometers. On the other end, Tevatron, RHIC and SSC type of superconducting magnets have been built and demonstrated on a large scale and proven to be cost effective and reliable. Their field, nevertheless, hardly can exceed a value of 7.5 Tesla, without …