This report is a guide to basic sources useful in tracking federal legislation and regulations. It has been prepared primarily for the use of constituents who wish to follow the federal government's legislative or regulatory activities at the local level. Brief annotations for the selected printed, telephone, electronic, and related sources describe their scope, focus, and frequency, include publisher contact information, and provide Internet addresses where available.

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This report discusses the Appalachian Development Highway Program (ADHP). After a brief description of the ADHP system, the report describes the ADHP's operation, organization, spending history and status. It then describes changes in its funding mechanism resultant from TEA 21 and issues of interest to Congress related to the ADHP.

This report provides an overview of the financial outlook for Social Security and Medicare programs.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

The development of detailed, regional wind-resource distributions and other pertinent wind resource characteristics (e.g., assessment maps and reliable estimates of seasonal, diurnal, and directional) is an important step in planning and accelerating the deployment of wind energy systems. This paper summarizes the approach and methods being used to conduct a wind energy resource assessment of Mongolia. The primary goals of this project are to develop a comprehensive wind energy resource atlas of Mongolia and to establish a wind measurement program in specific regions of Mongolia to identify prospective sites for wind energy projects and to help validate some of the wind resource estimates. The Mongolian wind resource atlas will include detailed, computerized wind power maps and other valuable wind resource characteristic information for the different regions of Mongolia.

Polymeric coated ferromagnetic carriers with an absorbed layer of octyl(phenyl)-N,N-diisobutylcarbamoylmethylphosphine oxide (CMPO) diluted by tributyl phosphate (TBP) are being evaluated for application in the separation and the recovery of low concentrations of americium, plutonium, and uranium from nuclear waste solutions. Due to their chemical nature, these extractants selectively complex americium and plutonium contaminants onto the particles and the complexed particles can be recovered from the solution using a magnet. Physical and chemical characterization of the extractant-absorbed particles were performed by gamma and liquid scintillation counting, scanning electron microscopic (SEM) micrograph, and other physical measurements. Plutonium, americium, and uranium separations have been performed at various HNO{sub 3} and HCl concentrations. Parameters were studied to determine the limitations and capacity of the process. The status of the chemistry and application of the process to Department of Energy (DOE) remediation efforts for actinide decontamination are discussed.

Subsurface data is being collected, organized, and a digital database is being prepared. An ACCESS database and PC-Arcview if being used to manage and interpret the data. Well data and base map have been successfully imported to Arcview and customized. All of the four 30 feet by 60 feet geologic surface geologic quadrangles have been scanned to produce a digital surface data base for the Crow Reservation. Field investigations inventoried for the presence of valley-fill deposits. These appear to represent at least a four major westward-trending valley systems.

Neutron diffraction from magnetic spiral structures is governed by strong selection rules for the polarization of the outgoing beam. When the sample is entirely of one chirality--for instance a right handed spiral--the neutrons diffracted by some Bragg reflections are fully polarized. While the scattering theory has been formulated long ago, attempts to controllably modify the population of left handed and right handed spiral domains in natural magnetic structures (which for instance occur in some rare earth metals) have been largely unsuccessful. In contrast, we have been able to imprint helical magnetic structures in La/Fe multilayers (each layer approximately 30 {angstrom} thick) simply by rotating the growing sample in a weak external field (30e). A first estimate is given of the efficiency of these multilayers as polarizers of neutron beams.

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In view of our increasing dependence on computations rather than construction and operation of more costly experimental facilities, the rigor and accuracy achievable by calculational methods certainly deserve more attention. This is particularly so for the Monte Carlo methods which are generally regarded as the ultimate computational standard for the entire nuclear community around the globe. One obvious question that one may raise is whether the numerical algorithms deployed to process cross sections accurately reflect the rigor of the state-of-the-art nuclear data. The case in point is particularly essential in the resolved and the unresolved resonance regions, which constitute the most demanding task in all processing codes for reactor applications. For the resolved energy region, the point-wise cross sections are highly fluctuating functions of energy and temperature. In light of the availability of a large body of resonance data spanning over the much expanded energy ranges for most of major nuclides, critical examinations and improvement where appropriate, of the existing methods are apparently in order. For the unresolved energy region, improvement of traditional methods based on statistical approaches for treating the self-shielding effects is also desirable. From the perspective of the Monte Carlo approach, an alternative means for generating the …

The objective is to provide a comprehensive geologic analysis of the Mississippi Interior Salt Basin.

We have built monitors for use as beam diagnostics in the narrow gap of an undulator for an FEL experiment. They utilize an intercepting screen of doped YAG scintillating crystal to make light that is imaged through a periscope by conventional video equipment. The absolute position can be ascertained by comparing the electron beam position with the position of a He:Ne laser that is observed by this pop-in monitor. The optical properties of the periscope and the mechanical arrangement of the system mean that beam can be spatially determined to the resolution of the camera, in this case approximately 10 micrometers. Our experience with these monitors suggests improvements for successor designs, which we also describe.

In this quarter, we used parallel isolated composite core to test the effectiveness of foam on oil recovery efficiency. This composite core differs from the previous core in two areas: 1) Pyrex® glass beads were used in the center region to form a high permeability region and 2) a fired Berea sandstone was used in the annulus region to form a low permeability region. We also started to conduct surfactant adsorption measurements on coreflooding substrates. Static measurements with three anionic surfactants were conducted on Pyrex® glass beads. Surfactant concentrations were determined to calculate the amount of surfactant adsorbed on the substrate. The preliminary results showed that the loss of surfactant due to adsorption at 500 ppm concentration were 0.34 mg/cm 3 , 0.29 mg/cm 3 , and 0.19 mg/cm 3 for surfactants Alipa®CD128, Chaser�CD1040 and Dowfax�8390, respectively. Simulations were performed to assess the applicability of horizontal wells as a tool to increase oil recovery in CO2 injection projects.

Subsurface data is being collected, organized, and a digital database is being prepared for the project. An ACCESS database and PC-Arcview is being used to manage and interpret the data. Well data and base map data have been successfully imported into Arcview and customized to meet the needs of this project. Log tops and other data from about ½ of the exploration wells in the area have been incorporated into the data base. All of the four 30� X 60� geologic quadrangles have been scanned to produce a digital surface geologic data base for the Crow Reservation and all are nearing completion. Formal technical review prior to publication has been completed for the Billings and Bridger Quadrangles; and are underway for the Hardin and Lodge Grass Quadrangles. Field investigations were completed during the last quarter. With the help of a student field assistant from the Crow Tribe, the entire project area was inventoried for the presence of valley-fill deposits in the Kootenai Formation. Field inventory has resulted in the identification of nine exposures of thick valley-fill deposits. These appear to represent at least four major westward-trending valley systems. All the channel localities have been measured and described in detail and …

Though they were discovered in the 18th century, practical applications of individual lanthanides were not possible until the development of first ion exchange and later solvent extraction techniques. Today, solvent extraction using lipophilic organophosphorus complexants is the principal separation technique applied for lanthanide production by hydrometallurgy. Separations chemistry (coprecipitation, ion exchange, and solvent extraction) also was central to both the discovery of the individual actinides and to the preparation of samples of sufficient purity to allow elucidation of their chemical/physical properties. Solvent extraction, in the form of the PUREX process, has become the single most important separations process in actinide technology. In this report, the basic thermodynamics of extraction of actinide and lanthanide metal ions is discussed.

The GDR in {sup 164}Er at 62 MeV excitation energy has been studied in coincidence with the evaporation residues, selected using the Argonne fragment mass analyzer (FMA). The {sup 164}Er* has a prolate shape with deformation statistical model fit to the data indicate that similar to the ground state.

The X-Ray Computed Microtomography workstation at beamline X27A at the NSLS has been utilized by scientists from a broad range of disciplines from industrial materials processing to environmental science. The most recent applications are presented here as well as a description of the facility that has evolved to accommodate a wide variety of materials and sample sizes. One of the most exciting new developments reported here resulted from a pursuit of faster reconstruction techniques. A Fast Filtered Back Transform (FFBT) reconstruction program has been developed and implemented, that is based on a refinement of the ''gridding'' algorithm first developed for use with radio astronomical data. This program has reduced the reconstruction time to 8.5 sec for a 929 x 929 pixel{sup 2} slice on an R10,000 CPU, more than 8x reduction compared with the Filtered Back-Projection method.

We describe a general strategy we have found effective for parallelizing solid mechanics simula- tions. Such simulations often have several computationally intensive parts, including finite element integration, detection of material contacts, and particle interaction if smoothed particle hydrody- namics is used to model highly deforming materials. The need to balance all of these computations simultaneously is a difficult challenge that has kept many commercial and government codes from being used effectively on parallel supercomputers with hundreds or thousands of processors. Our strategy is to load-balance each of the significant computations independently with whatever bal- ancing technique is most appropriate. The chief benefit is that each computation can be scalably paraIlelized. The drawback is the data exchange between processors and extra coding that must be written to maintain multiple decompositions in a single code. We discuss these trade-offs and give performance results showing this strategy has led to a parallel implementation of a widely-used solid mechanics code that can now be run efficiently on thousands of processors of the Pentium-based Sandia/Intel TFLOPS machine. We illustrate with several examples the kinds of high-resolution, million-element models that can now be simulated routinely. We also look to the future and dis- cuss what possibilities …

The generation of surface defects on electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma derived aluminum oxide films has been studied. We find that Cl active O vacancies can be generated using electron and ion irradiation yielding surface concentrations of 3 xl 013 to 1X1014 sites"cm-2. These values correspond to surface defect concentrations of 3 to 10% when compared to ordered, crystalline u-alumina. The vacancies appear to be responsible for increased surface O concentrations when immersed in water. Anodic polarization of irradiated films yields a decrease in the stable pitting potential which correlates with electron dose.

We propose a multi length scale approach to modeling recrystallization which links a dislocation model, a cell growth model and a macroscopic model. Although this methodology and linking framework will be applied to recrystallization, it is also applicable to other types of phase transformations in bulk and layered materials. Critical processes such as the dislocation structure evolution, nucleation, the evolution of crystal orientations into a preferred texture, and grain size evolution all operate at different length scales. In this paper we focus on incorporating experimental measurements of dislocation substructures, rnisorientation measurements of dislocation boundaries, and dislocation simulations into a mesoscopic model of cell growth. In particular, we show how feeding information from the dislocation model into the cell growth model can create realistic initial microstructure.

For nearly fifty years the US held a dominant position in research and development in the free world. The situation has changed dramatically in the last decade. Countries around the world realize that to foster sustainable economic growth, they must build and maintain a foundation in science and technology. The time in which a country could base its gross national product solely on extraction of raw materials or on people-intensive manufacturing is drawing to a close. The funding for research and development has been growing in the rest of the world, while US expenditures have not kept pace. In 1961, the United States funded 71 `?40 of the world's R&D. It is estimated that the US contribution to research and development fimding today has reached the 3 3o/0 level, and will drop to 26o/0 of the world's total by 2003.1 In 1981 US government spending per capita on non-defense research and development was nearly fifty percent above our major competitors; by 2002 it is projected to be f@ percent below them.2 This trend has a profound impact on how research and development institutions in the United States plan for their future technical growth. Sandia National Laboratories, as one of the …

Development of remediation technologies for the characterization, retrieval, treatment, concentration, and final disposal of radioactive and chemical tank waste stored within the Department of Energy (DOE) complex represents an enormous scientific and technological challenge. A combined total of over 90 million gallons of high-level waste (HLW) and low-level waste (LLW) are stored in 335 underground storage tanks at four different DOE sites. Roughly 98% of this waste is highly alkaline in nature and contains high concentrations of nitrate and nitrite salts along with lesser concentrations of other salts. The primary waste forms are sludge, saltcake, and liquid supernatant with the bulk of the radioactivity contained in the sludge, making it the largest source of HLW. The saltcake (liquid waste with most of the water removed) and liquid supernatant consist mainly of sodium nitrate and sodium hydroxide salts. The main radioactive constituent in the alkaline supernatant is cesium-137, but strontium-90, technetium-99, and transuranic nuclides are also present in varying concentrations. Reduction of the radioactivity below Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) limits would allow the bulk of the waste to be disposed of as LLW. Because of the long half-life of technetium-99 (2.1 x 10 5 y) and the mobility of the pertechnetate …

Interferograms constmcted from satellite-borne synthetic aperture radar images have the capability of mapping sub-cm ground surface deformation over areas on the order of 100 x 100 km with a spatial resolution on the order of 10 meters. We investigate the utility of synthetic aperture radar interferomehy (InSAR) used in conjunction with regional seismic methods in detecting and discriminating different types of seismic events in the context of special event analysis for the CTBT. For this initial study, we carried out elastic dislocation modeling of underground explosions, mine collapses and small (M<5.5) shallow earthquakes to produce synthetic interferograms and then analyzed satellite radar data for a large mine collapse. The synthetic modeling shows that, for a given magnitude each type of event produces a distinctive pattern of ground deformation that can be recognized in, and recovered from, the corresponding interferogram. These diagnostic characteristics include not only differences in the polarities of surface displacements but also differences in displacement amplitudes from the different sources. The technique is especially sensitive to source depth, a parameter that is crucial in discriminating earthquakes from the other event types but is often very poorly constrained by regional seismic data alone. The ERS radar data analyzed is …