Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Alvin, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

The Sustained Spheromak Physics Experiment (SSPX) will examine the confinement properties of spheromak plasmas sustained by DC helicity injection. Understanding the plasma-surface interactions is an important component of the experimental program since the spheromak plasma is in close contact with a stabilizing wall (flux conserver) and is maintained by a high-current discharge in the coaxial injector region. Peak electron temperatures in the range of 400 eV are expected, so the copper plasma facing surfaces in SSPX have been coated with tungsten to minimize sputtering and plasma contamination. Here the authors report on the characterization and conditioning of these surfaces used for the initial studies of spheromak formation in SSPX. The high-pressure plasma-sprayed tungsten facing the SSPX plasma was characterized in-situ using beta-backscattering and ex-situ using laboratory measurements on similarly prepared samples. Measurements indicate that water can be desorbed effectively through baking while hydrocarbon/oxide removal using glow discharge and shot conditioning is slow due to the coating's high porosity.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has developed a schedule and approach for the removal of spent fuels, sludge, and debris from the K East (KE) and K West (KW) Basins, located in the 100 Area at the Hanford Site. The project that is the subject of this data quality objective (DQO) process is focused on the removal of debris from the K Basins and onsite disposal of the debris at the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF). This material previously has been dispositioned at the Hanford Low-Level Burial Grounds (LLBGs) or Central Waste Complex (CWC). The goal of this DQO process and the resulting Sampling and Analysis Plan (SAP) is to provide the strategy for characterizing and designating the K-Basin debris to determine if it meets the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC), Revision 3 (BHI 1998). A critical part of the DQO process is to agree on regulatory and WAC interpretation, to support preparation of the DQO workbook and SAP.

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Air Force's 50-percent ceiling waiver for depot maintenance, focusing on the: (1) extent to which the Air Force's justification for the waiver was due to its planned use of temporary contracts to support transitioning workloads; and (2) potential for the ceiling to be exceeded in fiscal years 2000 and 2001."

The following topics related to the treatment of cuttings, cavings and spallings releases to the surface environment in the 1996 performance assessment for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) are presented: (1) mathematical description of models. (2) uncertainty and sensitivity analysis results arising from subjective (i.e., epistemic) uncertainty for individual releases, (3) construction of complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDFs) arising from stochastic (i.e., aleatory) uncertainty, and (4) uncertainty and sensitivity analysis results for CCDFs. The presented results indicate that direct releases due to cuttings, cavings and spallings do not constitute a serious threat to the effectiveness of the WIPP as a disposal facility for transuranic waste. Even when the effects of uncertain analysis inputs are taken into account, the CCDFs for cuttings, cavings and spallings releases fall substantially to the left of the boundary line specified in the US Environmental Protection Agency standard for the geologic disposal of radioactive waste (40 CFR 191, 40 CFR 194).

The disordered vortex phases induced by line and point pinning in YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub x} are explored. At high defect densities there is a single disordered solid separated from the liquid phase by a melting line. At low defect densities the topology of the phase diagram changes dramatically, with a vortex lattice phase adjoining disordered phases at high or low field. Critical points at the termination of first order melting separate the lattice and disordered phases. The line defect disordered phases follow the expected Bose glass behavior, while the point defect disordered phases do not exhibit the expected vortex glass behavior.

A perspective on the contemporary application of Dyson-Schwinger equations, focusing on some recent phenomenological applications: a description and unification of light-meson observable using a one-parameter model of the effective quark-quark interaction, and studies of leptonic and nonleptonic nucleon form factors. The theory and phenomenological application of Dyson-Schwinger equations (DSEs) have seen something of a renaissance. For example, they have been applied simultaneously to phenomena as apparently unconnected as low-energy {pi}{pi} scattering, B {r_arrow} D{sup *} decays and the equation of state for a quark gluon plasma, and there are renewed attempts to understand the origin of the infrared enhancement necessary in the kernel of the quark DSE (QCD gap equation) to generate dynamical chiral symmetry breaking (DCSB). Also significant is the appreciation that in this approach current algebra's anomalies remain a feature of the global aspects of DCSB.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the evolving electronic government (e-government) environment, focusing on: (1) the statutory and policy framework; (2) key efforts to implement electronic government programs; and (3) the major challenges confronting both government and the private sector in making the transition to online business and service environments."

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Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

This section reviews extensions and variations of the direct-semidirect (DSD) model for understanding the high-energy component of gamma spectra resulting from radiative capture of fast nucleons; i.e., the part of the spectrum that is not amenable to standard statistical model (Hauser-Feshbach) treatments. We describe recent results on the extension of the DSD model to unbound final states, including comparison with proton and neutron capture data. The importance of including convective-current magnetic radiation to explain proton capture angular distributions in the 30 MeV region is shown. We conclude with a brief discussion of a model closely related to the DSD, the pure-resonance model.

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Letter from Andres Pereira to Alyson Meiselman discussing the agreement between the Texas Human Rights Foundation and the legal services of Meiselman.

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO commented on whether the efforts of the White House China Trade Relations Working Group and selected agencies violated the anti-lobbying provisions of 18 U.S.C. 1913. GAO noted that it identified one violation, which involved an electronic mail (e-mail) authorized by an agency representative assigned to the Working Group. While this appeared to constitute a violation of the applicable anti-lobbying appropriation provision, it involved a minimal expenditure of appropriated funds. GAO has discussed this e-mail with the White House Counsel's Office."

Computer systems and applications are growing more complex. Consequently, performance analysis has become more difficult due to the complex, transient interrelationships among runtime components. To diagnose these types of performance issues, developers must use detailed instrumentation to capture a large number of performance metrics. Unfortunately, this instrumentation may actually influence the performance analysis, leading the developer to an ambiguous conclusion. In this paper, we introduce a technique for focusing a performance analysis on interesting performance metrics. This technique, called dynamic statistical projection pursuit, identifies interesting performance metrics that the monitoring system should capture across some number of processors. By reducing the number of performance metrics, projection pursuit can limit the impact of instrumentation on the performance of the target system and can reduce the volume of performance data.

The experimental measurement of K{sup +} {yields} {pi}{sup +} {nu}{bar {nu}} is reviewed. New results from experiment E787 at BNL are presented: with data from 1995-97 the branching ratio has been measured to be B(K{sup +} {yields} {pi}{sup +} {nu}{bar {nu}}) = (1.5{sub {minus}1.2}{sup +3.4}) x 10{sup {minus}10}. The future prospects for additional data in this mode are examined.

The goal of this project was to determine the machining techniques and testing capabilities required for mechanical property evaluation of commercially procured reservoir forgings. Due to the small size of these specific forgings, specialized methods are required to adequately machine and test these sub-miniature samples in accordance with the requirements of ASTM-E8 and ASTM-E9. At the time of project initiation, no capability existed at Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (FM&T) to verify the physical properties of these reservoirs as required on the drawing specifications. The project determined the sample definitions, machining processes, and testing procedures to verify the physical properties of the reservoir forgings; specifically, tensile strength, yield strength, reduction of area, and elongation. In addition, a compression test method was also developed to minimize sample preparation time and provide a more easily machined test sample while maintaining the physical validation of the forging.

Laser deposits fabricated from two different compositions of 304L stainless steel powder were characterized to determine the nature of the solidification and solid state transformations. One of the goals of this work was to determine to what extent novel microstructure consisting of single-phase austenite could be achieved with the thermal conditions of the LENS [Laser Engineered Net Shape] process. Although ferrite-free deposits were not obtained, structures with very low ferrite content were achieved. It appeared that, with slight changes in alloy composition, this goal could be met via two different solidification and transformation mechanisms.

The average {sup 235}U neutron total cross sections were obtained in the energy range 2 keV to 330 keV from high-resolution transmission measurements of a 0.033 atom/b sample. The experimental data were corrected for the contribution of isotope impurities and for resonance self-shielding effects in the sample. The results are in very good agreement with the experimental data of Poenitz et al. in the energy range 40 keV to 330 keV and are the only available accurate experimental data in the energy range 2 keV to 40 keV. ENDF/B-VI evaluated data are 1.7% larger. The SAMMY/FITACS code was used for a statistical model analysis of the total cross section, selected fission cross sections and {alpha} data in the energy range 2 keV to 200 keV. SAMMY/FITACS is an extended version of SAMMY which allows consistent analysis of the experimental data in the resolved and unresolved resonance region. The Reich-Moore resonance parameters were obtained from a SAMMY Bayesian fits of high resolution experimental neutron transmission and partial cross section data below 2.25 keV, and the corresponding average parameters and covariance data were used in the present work as input for the statistical model analysis of the high energy range of the …

News release about an air quality warning system for residents in the DFW area.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the National Park Service's (NPS) structural fire safety efforts, focusing on: (1) whether national parks are effectively addressing their structural fire safety responsibilities and if not, what are the main reasons; and (2) what improvements, if any, are under way to address identified problems."