The highlight for the first quarter was the presentation of research progress and findings at the DPI Symposium on March 5, 1997. Since that presentation, additional progress was slowed down due to the decreased budget funding for year two, and consequently, the decrease in time-effort of the principal investigators. This report summarizes the progress in each of the topical areas to date. A research article has been prepared for publication for the Optical Character Recognition project; two progress reports are included for the Logical Analysis project; and two progress reports for the Knowledge Representation project. Research activities for the Tipster Technology project will resume this fall.

Over 50 scientists from DOE-DP, DOE-ER, the national laboratories, academia and industry attended a workshop held on November 5-7, 1997 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory jointly sponsored by the DOE-Division of Materials Science, The Materials Research Institute at LLNL and the University of California Presidents Office. Workshop participants were charged to address two questions: Is there a need for a national center for materials analysis using positron techniques and can the capabilities at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory serve this need. To demonstrate the need for a national center the workshop participants discussed the technical advantages enabled by high positron currents and advanced measurement techniques, the role that these techniques will play in materials analysis and the demand for the data. There were general discussions lead by review talks on positron analysis techniques, and their applications to problems in semiconductors, polymers and composites, metals and engineering materials, surface analysis and advanced techniques. These were followed by focus sessions on positron analysis opportunities in these same areas. Livermore now leads the world in materials analysis capabilities by positrons due to developments in response to demands of science based stockpile stewardship. There was a detailed discussion of the LLNL capabilities and a tour …