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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 a county clerk may impose various fees for copying public records (ID# 34701)

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 the automatic resignation of an individual from the office of justice of the peace (ID# 38857)

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 justice of the peace may maintain a checking account, separate from the county treasury, into which he or she deposists hot check restitution and fines and related questions (RQ-809)

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 judge may receive a fee for performing a marriage ceremony during regular office hours and use public resources in performing the ceremony.

This CD-ROM contains the proceedings from the DOE Pollution Prevention in the 21st Century Conference XII held July 9-11, 1996. Topics included model facilities, federal and NEPA stakeholders, microchemistry, source 4 solvents and reduction, education and outreach planning, return on investment, energy management, decontamination and decommissioning, planning and regulations, environmental restoration, solid waste, recycling, affirmative procurement in the executive branch, construction and demolition, international and ISO 14000, and poster sessions.

Accelerators of sufficient energy and particle fluence can produce radioactivity as an unwanted byproduct. The radioactivity is typically imbedded in structural materials but may also be removable from surfaces. Many of these radionuclides decay by positron emission or electron capture; they often have long half lives and produce photons of low energy and yield making detection by standard devices difficult. The contamination control limit used throughout the US nuclear industry and the Department of Energy is 1,000 disintegrations per minute. This limit is based on the detection threshold of pancake type Geiger-Mueller probes for radionuclides of relatively high radiotoxicity, such as cobalt-60. Several radionuclides of concern at a high energy electron accelerator are compared in terms of radiotoxicity with radionuclides commonly found in the nuclear industry. Based on this comparison, a count-rate based contamination control limit and associated measurement strategy is proposed which provides adequate detection of contamination at accelerators without an increase in risk.

The electric industry in the United States is undergoing fundamental changes; it is transitioning from regulated monopolies to competitive markets offering customer choice. In this process, the states have been in the forefront of considering the changes in the industry structure and regulation. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) spearheaded a project on electric restructuring in the United States. This is the final report prepared under the project. The purpose of the report is to describe and compare the overall restructuring processes that took place in five states through June 30, 1996. The five states are California, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, and Wisconsin. These are the first major states to consider restructuring or retail wheeling.

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The report describes progress and status of the HDR project at Hijiori. The year was notable for a flow enhancement test of a system with two production wells in operation. Other items include a geochemical survey, reinterpretation of acoustic emission data from 1988 through 1995, borehole measurements to find intersections with fractures, a geological survey, preparation for modeling fractures, improvements in crack simulation in a reservoir analysis model, and environmental survey work. (DJE 2005)

Combined cycles (combinations of a gas turbine and a steam bottoming cycle) are the most efficient power generation technology, while coal is the lowest cost fuel. Therefore, the combination of Coal Gasifiers and Combined Cycles is predicted to be the lowest cost source of baseload electric power in the next decade. In a GCC, the sulfur and particulates are removed from the gasifier gases before they enter the turbine combuster. While H{sub 2}S (and COS/CS{sub 2}) can be removed effectively by cooling hot gases down to near room temperature and scrubbing them with an aqueous amine solution, removing the H{sub 2}S without cooling the gases (i.e., hot gas cleanup) is more advantageous. The leading hot gas sulfur absorbent uses a regenerable zinc oxide (ZnO) based sorbent, zinc titanate (Zn{sub 2}TiO{sub 4} and/or ZnTiO{sub 3}), to remove the H{sub 2}S and other sulfur compounds from the hot coal gases. The zinc absorbs H{sub 2}S, forming zinc sulfide (ZnS); ZnS is then regenerated with oxygen (air), releasing the sulfur as a concentrated stream of SO{sub 2}. The SO{sub 2} can be converted into sulfuric acid, sulfur, or reacted with calcium carbonate to form calcium sulfate (gypsum). The sorbent may be operated in …

Work continued on the study of copolymers for the enhanced recovery of petroleum. This report describes dilute polymer solution extensional flow in porous media.

The research described in this final report focused on the influence of stress agents on protein synthesis in crop plants (primarily soybean). Investigations into the `heat shock` (HS) stress mediated changes in transcriptional and translocational regulation of protein synthesis coupled with studies on anaerobic water deficit and other stress mediated alterations in protein synthesis in plants provided the basis of the research. Understanding of the HS gene expression and function(s) of the HSPs may clarify regulatory mechanisms operative in development. Since the reproductive systems of plants if often very temperature sensitive, it may be that the system could be manipulated to provide greater thermotolerance.

We have presented a fast linear time algorithm for recognizing tandem repeats. Our algorithm is a one pass algorithm. No information about the periodicity of tandem repeats is needed. The use of the indices calculated from non-continuous and overlapping {kappa}-tuples allow tandem repeats with insertions and deletions to be recognized.

This paper introduces PS300, a plasma sprayed, self-lubricating composite coating for use in sliding contacts at temperatures to 800{degrees}C. PS300 is a metal bonded chrome oxide coating with silver and BaF{sub 2}/CaF{sub 2} eutectic solid lubricant additives. PS300 is similar to PS200, a chromium carbide based coating; which is currently being investigated for a variety of tribological applications. In pin-on-disk testing up to 650{degrees}C, PS300 exhibited comparable friction and wear properties to PS200. The PS300 matrix, which is predominantly chromium oxide rather than chromium carbide, does not require diamond grinding and polishes readily with silicon carbide abrasives greatly reducing manufacturing costs compared to PS200. It is anticipated that PS300 has potential for sliding bearing and seal applications in both aerospace and general industry.

Ames Laboratory will develop an integrated sampling and analysis system suitable for on-line monitoring of mercury (Hg) and hydrogen chloride (HCl) in advanced coal-based gasifiers. The objectives of this project are to (1) summarize current technology for monitoring Hg and HCl in gaseous effluents; (2) identify analytical techniques for such determinations in high-temperature, high-pressure gases from coal-based systems for producing electrical power; (3) evaluate promising analytical approaches, and (4) produce reliable on-line monitors which are adaptable to plant-scale diagnostics and process control. For HG, the techniques selected for further consideration were atomic absorption and atomic fluorescence. For HCl, non-dispersive infrared absorption, a dry colorimetric procedure, and ion mobility spectroscopy were selected for testing in the laboratory. Results to date are described.

A general model for predicting the solubility properties of refrigerant/lubricant mixtures has been developed based on applicable theory for the excess Gibbs energy of non-ideal solutions. In our approach, flexible thermodynamic forms are chosen to describe the properties of both the gas and liquid phases of refrigerant/lubricant mixtures. After an extensive study of models for describing non-ideal liquid effects, the Wohl-suffix equations, which have been extensively utilized in the analysis of hydrocarbon mixtures, have been developed into a general form applicable to mixtures where one component is a POE lubricant. In the present study we have analyzed several POEs where structural and thermophysical property data were available. Data were also collected from several sources on the solubility of refrigerant/lubricant binary pairs. We have developed a computer code (NISC), based on the Wohl model, that predicts dew point or bubble point conditions over a wide range of composition and temperature. Our present analysis covers mixtures containing up to three refrigerant molecules and one lubricant. The present code can be used to analyze the properties of R-410a and R-407c in mixtures with a POE lubricant. Comparisons with other models, such as the Wilson or modified Wilson equations, indicate that the Wohl-suffix equations …

A study was undertaken to examine the use of a number of solution additives in 1M LiPF{sub 6}/ethylene carbonate (EC)-dimethyl carbonate (DMC) solutions to improve the performance of carbon anodes derived from polymethylacrylonitrile (PMAN)-divinylbenzene (DVB) copolymers. The study goals were to improve the cycle life and reduce the formation of the passivation layer during the first reduction, thereby minimizing the irreversible-capacity losses. Additives studied were 12-crown-4 (12-Cr-4) ether, decalin, and dilithium phthalocyanine (Li{sub 2}Pc). The carbon performance was characterized by galvanostatic cycling, cyclic voltammetry, and complex-impedance spectroscopy. Limited success was obtained with 12-Cr-4 ether at 0.25 M and decalin at 1 v/o. Poor results were noted with Li{sub 2}Pc at 0.025 M and 0.5 M.

A titanate-based ceramic waste form, rich in phases structurally related to zirconolite (CaZrTi{sub 2}O{sub 7}), is being developed as a possible method for immobilizing excess plutonium from dismantled nuclear weapons. As part of this program, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) produced several ceramics that were then characterized at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). The plutonium- loaded ceramic was found to contain a Pu-Gd zirconolite phase but also contained plutonium titanates, Gd-polymignyte, and a series of other phases. In addition, much of the Pu was remained as PuO{sub 2- x}. The Pu oxidation state in the zirconolite was determined to be mainly Pu{sup 4+}, although some Pu{sub 3+} was believed to be present.

We are developing a prototype zooming World-Wide Web browser within Pad++, a multiscale graphical environment. Instead of having a single page visible at a time, multiple pages and the links between them are depicted on a large zoomable information surface. Pages are scaled so that the page in focus is clearly readable with connected pages shown at smaller scales to provide context. We quantitatively compared performance with the Pad++ Web browser and Netscape in several different scenarios. We examined how quickly users could answer questions about a specific Web site designed for this test. Initially we found that subjects answered questions slightly slower with Pad++ than with Netscape. After analyzing the results of this study, we implemented several changes to the Pad++ Web browser, and repeated one Pad++ condition. After improvements were made to the Pad++ browser, subjects using Pad++ answered questions 23% faster than those using Netscape.

Organic analysis is the analytical arm for several Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) research programs and nuclear materials processes, including characterization and certification of nuclear and nonnuclear materials used in weapons, radioactive waste treatment and waste certification programs. Organic Analysis has an extensive repertoire of analytical technique within the group including headspace gas, PCBs/pesticides, volatile organics and semivolatile organic analysis. In addition organic analysis has mobile labs with analytic capabilities that include volatile organics, total petroleum hydrocarbon, PCBs, pesticides, polyaromatic hydrocarbons and high explosive screening. A natural extension of these capabilities can be applied to the detection of chemical and biological agents,

The Savannah River Site`s Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF) near Aiken, SC is the nation`s first and world`s largest vitrification facility. Following a ten year construction period and nearly 3 year non-radioactive test program, the DWPF began radioactive operations in March, 1996. The results of the first 8 months of radioactive operations are presented. Topics include facility production from waste preparation batching to canister filling.

A method is described for fabricating a thermophotovoltaic energy conversion cell including a thin semiconductor wafer substrate having a thickness ({beta}) calculated to decrease the free carrier absorption on a heavily doped substrate; wherein the top surface of the semiconductor wafer substrate is provided with a thermophotovoltaic device, a metallized grid and optionally an antireflective (AR) overcoating; and, the bottom surface (10 ft) of the semiconductor wafer substrate is provided with a highly reflecting coating which may comprise a metal coating or a combined dielectric/metal coating.