A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

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 the Texas Board of Health is authorized by the Medical Radiologic Technologist Certification Act, V.T.C.S. art. 4512m, to promulgate rules establishing a class of certificate for students who perform radiologic procedures in an academic or clinical setting as part of a training program which meets minimum standards adopted by the board (ID# 39225)

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: Eligibility for mandatory release of inmates convicted of indecency with a child under Penal Code section 21.11(a)(11) (ID# 39210)

Document 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 county court at law judge, with an unexpired term greater than one year, who declared at a county commissioners court meeting that he was a candidate for the district judgeship has announced his candidacy or "in fact become a candidate" for purposes of article XVI, section 65 of the Texas Constitution and related questions (RQ-820)

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 the filing of an application for school board trustee results in an automatic resignation from the office of criminal district attorney under article XVI, section 65 of the Texas Constitution (ID# 35324)

This report discusses the dispute between Greece and Turkey over the Rocky islet crisis.

The goal of this work was to study the behavior of the angular distribution of the electron form the decay of the W boson in a specific rest-frame of the W, the Collins-Soper frame. This thesis consists of four major divisions, each dealing with closely related themes: (a) Physics Background, (b) Description of the Hardware and General Software Tools, (c) Description of the Analysis and Specific Tools, and (d) Results and Conclusions. Each division is comprised of one or more chapters and each chapter is divided into sections and subsections.

This report is about the appropriations for the fiscal Year 1996.

The leading property rights bills in the Congress are the Contract with America-derived H.R. 9 (Division B), as passed by the House in March, 1995, and S. 605, as reported from the Committee on the Judiciary.

Interest in salvaging timber has increased markedly since extensive forest fires in 1994. The focus is to use the dead and dying timber before it goes to waste and to increase the supply of Federal timber available to the wood products industry. Supporters also note that salvage sales are one tool that can be used to improve forest health. Critics counter that some dead and dying trees are necessary for healthy ecosystems, and that salvage sales are costly to the U.S. Treasury and to the environment. This report describes the concerns over forest health, and then examines the benefits, costs, and financial consequences of salvage timber sales.

Interest in fuel management, to reduce fire control costs and damages, has been renewed with the numerous, destructive wildfires spread across the West during the summers of 1988 and 1994.

The development of a silicon carbide (SiC) heat exchanger is a critical step in the development of the Externally-Fired Combined Cycle (EFCC) power system. SiC is the only material that provides the necessary combination of resistance to creep, thermal shock, and oxidation. While the SiC structure materials provide the thermomechanical and thermophysical properties needed for an efficient system, the mechanical properties of the SiC tubes are severely degraded through corrosion by the coal combustion products. To obtain the necessary service life of thousands of hours at temperature, a protective coating is needed that is stable with both the SiC tube and the coal combustion products, resists erosion from the particle laden gas stream, is thermal shock resistant, adheres to SiC during repeated thermal shocks (start-up, process upsets, shut-down), and allows the EFCC system to be cost competitive. This demanding set of technical performance and cost drivers was used in reviewing and selecting candidate protective materials. After a review of open literature, discussion with leading researchers in materials for coal combustion environments, and preliminary thermodynamic studies, a total of ten materials were identified for future study that were grouped into three categories: alumina-based materials, materials stable with SiO{sub 2}, and low …

The Savannah River Site (SRS) has upgraded its aqueous emergency response capability to model the transport of pollutants released from SRS facilities during normal operation or accidents through onsite streams to the Savannah River. The transport and dispersion modules from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) WASP5 model were incorporated into the SRS emergency response system, called the Weather Information and Display (WIND) System. WASP5 is a water quality analysis program that simulates surface water pollutant transport, using a finite difference method to solve the advective transport equation. Observed tritium concentrations in the SRS streams and the Savannah River from an accidental release from K-Reactor, one of the SRS nuclear material production reactors, were used to benchmark the new model. Although all SRS reactors have since been deactivated, this release of tritiated water occurred between December 22 and 25, 1991, through the K-Reactor secondary cooling water discharge. Analyses of reactor discharge water suggested the leak began sometime during December 22. The leak was positively identified and isolated on December 25. Following the release, tritium concentrations were tracked and measured as the tritiated water flowed from the K-Area outfall into Indian Grave Branch and pen Branch, through the Savannah River swamp, …

This report discusses the uses of programming by object-orientation. Included in this report are the following: overview of concepts; software development; user interfaces; and databases.

On December 9, 1995, the Secretary of Energy requested that the Department`s Inspector General (IG) conduct a thorough examination of all Secretarial foreign travel from 1993 to December 1995 to include the purpose of each trip, the activities of each Federal participant in each trip, the funding of each trip, and claims for reimbursements for expenses by Federal trip participants. The Secretary also requested that the review include an assessment of travel authorization, voucher, traveler reimbursement, and auditing systems employed by the Department to identify steps that could be taken to reduce errors and improve accounting oversight. Additionally, the Secretary requested that the Inspector General conduct a thorough examination of the establishment and filling of the Department`s Ombudsman position. The Office of Inspector General (OIG) initiated a review into these matters and assigned primary responsibility for the review to the Office of Inspections. The purpose of this inspection was to conduct a thorough examination of the 16 Secretarial foreign trips from June 1993 to December 1995. This report focuses on the four trade missions because of their extent and cost. We examined a number of Departmental management systems and processes involved in planning and executing the 16 foreign trips. To …

Reports on the feasibility of replacing existing embedded process piping with new more corrosion resistant piping between cells and between cells and a hot pipe trench of a Hanford Site style canyon facility. Provides concepts for replacement piping installation, and use of robotics to replace the use of the canyon crane as the primary means of performing/supporting facility modifications (eg, cell lining, pipe replacement, equipment reinstallation) and operational maintenenace.

Significant quantities of weapons-usable fissile materials [primarily plutonium and highly enriched uranium (HEU)] are becoming surplus to national defense needs in both the United States and Russia. These stocks of fissile materials pose significant dangers to national and international security. The dangers exist not only in the potential proliferation of nuclear weapons but also in the potential for environmental, safety, and health (ES&H) consequences if surplus fissile materials are not properly managed. This document summarizes the results of analysis concerned with existing light water reactor plutonium disposition alternatives.

This Task Order Management Plan (TOMP) details the management, organizational structure, interfaces, methodology, resources, and schedule for successfully completing the work to provide {open_quotes}Database Development and Analysis in Support of RD&D for the Vision Industry Teams{close_quotes}. Specifically, it describes the plan to implement the tasking requirements outlined in the Statement of Work, dated August 13, 1996 as well as verbal modifications received during subsequent meetings.

This paper presents aspects of DOE`s demonstration of compliance with the EPA regulation of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP). The WIPP, a geologic repository for transuranic (TRU) waste, is located 2150 feet below the ground surface in a bedded salt formation about 20 miles east of Carlsbad, NM. Performance of the WIPP as a repository requires that releases to the accessible environment not exceed the limits of the regulation 40 CFR Part 191(1) either when the WIPP is undisturbed, or if there is intrusion into the repository by drilling. In 1996, the EPA promulgated 40 CFR Part 194(2): the implementing regulation for 40 CFR Part 191. The regulatory subsection addressed here, 40 CFR 194.24(b), directs the DOE to identify and analyze the components and characteristics of the TRU waste that can impact performance of the WIPP repository, and thereby possibly impact waste containment. DOE must also analyze those waste characteristics and components that will not affect repository performance.

In situ inspections were performed on tarp-covered 55-gallon drums of transuranic (TRU) waste stored underground at the Hanford Site. These inspections were part of a task to characterize TRU drums for extent of corrosion degradation and uncertainty in TRU designation (inaccuracy in earlier assay determinations may have led to drums that actually were low-level waste to be termed TRU), and to attempt to correlate accuracy of existing records with actual drum contents. Two separate storage trench sites were investigated; a total of 90 drums were inspected with ultrasonic techniques and 104 additional drums were visually inspected. A high-humidity environment in the underground storage trenches had been reported in earlier investigations and was expected to result in substantial corrosion degradation. However, corrosion was much less than expected. Only a small percentage of drums had significant corrosion (with one breach) and the maximum rate was estimated at 0.051 mm/yr (2 mils/yr). The corrosion time of underground exposure was 14 to 15 years. These inspection results should be applicable to other similar environments (this applicability should be restricted to arid climates such as the Hanford Site) where drums are stored underground but shielded from direct soil contact by a tarp or other means. …

The electron beam ion trap (EBIT), and the higher-energy Super EBIT at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory can produce any highly charged ion. These highly charged ions are used in a variety of research programs. Recent results from four different experiments are reviewed here. K-shell ionization cross sections have been measured for the hydrogenlike ions of several elements, and L-shell ionization cross sections have been measured for uranium ions. A measurement of the ground-state hyperfine transition in hydrogenlike {sup 165}H{sup 66+} is notable because of the complete absence of Doppler shifts. A cryogenic Penning trap, injected with EBIT ions, has been used to observe a single highly charged ion as it recombines by sequential electron capture from H{sub 2} gas. A large sputtered ion yield, suggesting a surface Coulomb explosion, has been observed from insulators bombarded with very highly charged EBIT ions. 21 refs., 11 figs.

Effectiveness and efficiency of software development can be greatly increased by writing modularized code using informal (styles) and formal (standards) work approaches. Software development is about connecting pieces into a coherent whole. Thus consistent work approaches provide a structure that allows individuals and teams to minimize the time and thought put into making these connections. These investments in structure return even more benefits in the maintenance phase when old code has to be examined by new programmers, or after time has passed. We present some examples of coding style for Avenue: a simplified form of Hungarian notation (notationHungarian, stringCustomerName, etc.), script naming prefixes and suffixes, and options in script headers. We demonstrate several modular, object-like utility scripts that can be used alone or combined into other utilities. These include developer tools such as a System.Echo substitute for Windows, a Window inspector, and a script for detecting and dealing with multiple display resolutions.

An interlaboratory comparison exercise for {sup 129}I has been organized and conducted. A total of seven laboratories participated in the exercise to either a full or limited extent. In the comparison, a suite of 11 samples was used. This suite of standards contained both synthetic `standard type` materials (i.e., AgI) and environmental materials. The isotopic {sup 129}I/{sup 127}I ratio of the samples varied from 10{sup -8} to 10{sup -14}. Results of the comparison are presented.