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A weekly student newspaper from the Rice University in Houston, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's (DOD) Future Years Defense Program (FYDP) for fiscal year 2000, focusing on the: (1) major changes and adjustments in the 2000 FYDP as compared to the 1999 FYDP; and (2) risks that the 2000 FYDP faces that may prevent it from being implemented as planned."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO assessed the foreign military sales program to determine the changes needed to improve the viability of the program, focusing on: (1) whether the foreign military sales program has achieved full recovery of its administrative costs; (2) the Defense Security Cooperation Agency's (DSCA) basis for making administrative account adjustments; and (3) the effectiveness of various foreign military sales reinvention efforts in terms of cost recovery."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the impact incentive payment legislation for correctional facilities had on the Social Security Administration's (SSA) Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program, focusing on: (1) how many correctional facilities signed incentive payment agreements, how many benefit suspensions did SSA make, and what amount of overpayments did SSA identify and prevent at these facilities; (2) how many of the incentive payment agreements represented new reporting commitments that SSA did not have before the authorization of incentive payments, and what were the results at facilities that made these new commitments; and (3) what other benefits has the legislation produced."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Army's 1999 multiyear contracts for the procurement of 120-mm tank training rounds, focusing on: (1) whether the Army's actions in 1999 resulted in savings on the purchase of 120-mm tank training rounds; (2) the effect the Army's decision to no longer direct that propellant be purchased from the Radford Army Ammunition Plant had on plant overhead and employment; and (3) the potential effect the decision would have on Radford's wartime replenishment mission."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on issues related to the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) licensing of inventions developed under intramural research projects, focusing on the: (1) extent of and reasons for the differences between the number of research inventions licensed under cooperative research and development agreements (CRADA) compared to inventions licensed under other intramural research projects; and (2) internal controls that ensure proper accountability for royalty income resulting from these licenses."

Access through the Fermilab control system to beam physics models of the Fermilab accelerators has been implemented. The models run on Unix workstations, communicating with legacy VMS-based controls consoles via a relational database and TCP/IP.The client side (VMS) and the server side (Unix) are both implemented in object-oriented C++. The models allow scientists and operators in the control room to do beam physics calculations. Settings of real devices as input to the model are supported, and readings from beam diagnostics may be compared with model predictions.

To remediate gas retention in the floating crust layer and the potential for buoyant displacement gas releases from below the crust, waste will be transferred out of Hanford Tank 241-SY-101 (SY-101) in the fall of 1999 and back-diluted with water in several steps of about 100,000 gallons each. To evaluate the effects of back-dilution on the crust a static buoyancy model is derived that predicts crust and liquid surface elevations as a function of mixing efficiency and volume of water added during transfer and back-dilution. Experimental results are presented that demonstrate the basic physics involved and verify the operation of the models. A dissolution model is also developed to evaluate the effects of dissolution of solids on crust flotation. The model includes dissolution of solids suspended in the slurry as well as in the crust layers. The inventory and location of insoluble solids after dissolution of the soluble fraction are also tracked. The buoyancy model is applied to predict the crust behavior for the first back-dilution step in SY-101. Specific concerns addressed include conditions that could cause the crust to sink and back-dilution requirements that keep the base of the crust well above the mixer pump inlet.

Pulsed power is a robust and inexpensive technology for obtaining high powers. Considerable progress has been made on developing light ion beams as a means of transporting this power to inertial fusion capsules. However, further progress is hampered by the lack of an adequate ion source. Alternatively, z-pinches can efficiently convert pulsed power into thermal radiation, which can be used to drive an inertial fusion capsule. However, a z-pinch driven fusion explosion will destroy a portion of the transmission line that delivers the electrical power to the z-pinch. They investigate several options for providing standoff for z-pinch driven fusion. Recyclable Transmission Lines (RTLs) appear to be the most promising approach.

The authors review the searches for supersymmetric particles achieved by the CDF and D0 collaborations at the p{bar p} Tevatron collider at FNAL, at {radical}s = 1.8 TeV and with a total integrated luminosity of 110 pb{sup {minus}1}, per experiment. The prospects for the forthcoming run at {radical}s = 2 TeV and an integrated luminosity reaching ultimately at least 20 fb{sup {minus}1}, are also discussed.

The Intermediate Silicon Layers detector is part of the CDF upgrade for Run II. The ISL is a large radius (29 cm) silicon tracker with a total active area of about 3.5 m{sup 2}. The conceptual design and the status of the project are reviewed.

Superconducting magnet technology and cost reduction are key issues in the R and D effort towards a post-LHC, 100 TeV hadron collider. A dipole field of 10-12 T at 4.5 K operating temperature results in acceptable machine length and refrigeration power requirements, and allows taking advantage of synchrotron radiation damping to achieve low beam emittance. In this paper, the conceptual design of a react-and-wind common coil dipole is presented, which aims at these operating parameters with minimum cost and complexity.

Macroinvertebrate sampling was performed at 16 locations in the Savannah River Site (SRS) streams using Hester-Dendy multiplate samplers and EPA Rapid Bioassessment Protocols (RBP). Some of the sampling locations were unimpacted, while other locations had been subject to various forms of perturbation by SRS activities. In general, the data from the Hester-Dendy multiplate samplers were more sensitive at detecting impacts than were the RBP data. We developed a Biotic Index for the Hester-Dendy data which incorporated eight community structure, function, and balance parameters. when tested using a data set that was unrelated to the data set that was used in developing the Biotic Index, the index was very successful at detecting impact.

In this paper the authors review the most recent experimental results on the various B hadron species lifetimes obtained at electron-positron machines and at the Tevatron.

Controlled impact methodology has been used on a powdergun to obtain dynamic behavior properties of Tributyl Phosphate (TBP). A novel test methodology is used to provide extremely accurate equation of state data of the liquid. A thin aluminum plate used for confining the liquid also serves as a diagnostic to provide reshock states and subsequent release adiabats from the reshocked state. Polar polymer, polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) gauges and velocity interferometer system for any reflector (VISAR) provided redundant and precise data of temporal resolution to five nanoseconds and shock velocity measurements of better than 1%. The design and test methodologies are presented in this paper.

In the past few years, many states have established specific regulations for the management of petroleum industry wastes containing naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) above specified thresholds. These regulations have limited the number of disposal options available for NORM-containing wastes, thereby increasing the related waste management costs. In view of the increasing economic burden associated with NORM management, industry and regulators are interested in identifying cost-effective disposal alternatives that still provide adequate protection of human health and the environment. One such alternative being considered is the disposal of NORM-containing wastes in landfills permitted to accept only nonhazardous wastes. The disposal of petroleum industry wastes containing radium-226 and lead-210 above regulated levels in nonhazardous landfills was modeled to evaluate the potential radiological doses and associated health risks to workers and the general public. A variety of scenarios were considered to evaluate the effects associated with the operational phase (i.e., during landfill operations) and future use of the landfill property. Doses were calculated for the maximally exposed receptor for each scenario. This paper presents the results of that study and some conclusions and recommendations drawn from it.

We measure cavity ringdown spectra of the A{sup 2}{Delta}-X{sup 2}II transition of the methylidyne (CH) radical in a series of rich low-pressure methane-oxygen-argon flames and demonstrate that the technique is sensitive, quantitative, and straightforward in its implementation and interpretation. As a line-of-sight technique, it complements imaging techniques, such as planar laser-induced fluorescence. Our results generally agree with chemical kinetic models for methane oxidation that have appeared in the literature, but suggest some refinements are necessary. Additional examination of the CH + O{sub 2} reaction rate as a function of temperature is advised. Our results are consistent with those of Derzy et al. using the C{sup 2}{Sigma}{sup +}-X{sup 2}II transition for stoichiometric, low-pressure flames which include nitrogen. Our results for rich flames, as with earlier experiments for singlet methylene, suggest that flame chemical kinetic models need to be adjusted to account for flame chemistry for stoichiometries richer than {phi} = 1.5.

In this paper, we report initial test results of a four-bounce Bragg reflection X-ray interferometer at 7.46 keV and, for the first time to our knowledge, at the higher energy of 14.91 keV where the spectral acceptance is much smaller.

This edition contains more information about new efforts and programs in DOE's Office of Building Technology, State and Community Programs (BTS), and highlights the evolution of a new approach to making buildings more energy-efficient, comfortable, and affordable.

A simple device composed of a modular double-pentaprism system that enables the long trace profiler (LTP) to measure mirrors in nonconventional ways, i.e., in the vertical-downward and sideways positions, has been devised and implemented in the Advanced Photon Source (APS) long trace profiler (LTP II). The systems is very useful in calibrating mirror-bender assemblies. This paper describes the system and gives results of measurements performed with it on a mirror used at the APS.

Capacitors and power conditioning systems required for the National Ignition Facility (NIF) have experienced several catastrophic failures during prototype demonstration. These events generally resulted in explosion, generating a dramatic fireball and energetic shrapnel, and thus may present a threat to the walls of the capacitor bay that houses the capacitor modules. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the ability of the capacitor bay walls to withstand the overpressure generated by the aforementioned events. Two calculations are described in this paper. The first one was used to estimate the energy release during a fireball event and the second one was used to estimate the pressure in a capacitor module during a capacitor explosion event. Both results were then used to estimate the subsequent overpressure in the capacitor bay where these events occurred. The analysis showed that the expected capacitor bay overpressure was less than the pressure tolerance of the walls. To understand the risk of the above events in NIF, capacitor module failure probabilities were also calculated. This paper concludes with estimates of the probability of single module failure and multi-module failures based on the number of catastrophic failures in the prototype demonstration facility.

This Record of Technical Change provides updates to the technical information included in the ``Fluid Management Plan for the Project Shoal Area Off-sites Project,'' April 1999

Borosilicate glasses loaded with {approx}10 wt % plutonium were found to produce plutonium-silicate alteration phases upon aqueous corrosion under a range of conditions. The phases observed were generally rich in lanthanide (Ln) elements and were related to the lanthanide orthosilicate phases of the monoclinic Ln{sub 2}SiO{sub 5} type. The composition of the phases was variable regarding [Ln]/[Pu] ratio, depending upon type of corrosion test and on the location within the alteration layer. The formation of these phases likely has implications for the incorporation of plutonium into silicate alteration phases during corrosion of titanate ceramics, high-level waste glasses, and spent nuclear fuel.