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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Plumbing Code applicable to residential construction and related questions(RQ-0406-JC).

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Authority of a justice of the peace to sentence a juvenile to detention for contempt, and related questions (RQ-0408-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether a member of a governed body that is located within the boundaries of the Cow Creek Groundwater Conservation District may serve as a member of the board of directors of the district (RQ-0423-JC)

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the state employee pay rise effective September 1,2002 applies to appellate court briefing attorneys and law clerks(RQ-0428-JC).

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, John Cornyn, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether new construction in an area of the state that is outside municipal jurisdiction may delay complying with the Texas Building Energy Performance Standards, chapter 388 of the Health and Safety Code, until September 1, 2002 (RQ-0430-JC)

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A formalism is presented to determine donor (N{sub D}) and acceptor (N{sub A}) concentrations in wurtzitic InN characterized by degenerate carrier concentration (n) and mobility ({mu}). The theory includes scattering not only by charged point defects and impurities, but also by charged threading dislocations, of concentration N{sub dis}. For an 0.45-{micro}m-thick InN layer grown on Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} by molecular beam epitaxy, having N{sub dis} = 5 x 10{sup 10} cm{sup -2}, determined by transmission electron microscopy, n(20 K) = 3.5 x 10{sup 18} cm{sup -3}, and {mu}(20 K) = 1055 cm{sup 2}/V-s, determined by Hall-effect measurements, the fitted values are N{sub D} = 4.7 x 10{sup 18} cm{sup -3} and N{sub A} = 1.2 x 10{sup 18} cm{sup -3}. The identities of the donors and acceptors are not known, although a comparison of N{sub D} with analytical data, and also with calculations of defect formation energies, suggests that a potential candidate for the dominant donor is H.

The physics program of any next-step tokamak such as FIRE [Fusion Ignition Research Experiment] sets demands for plasma measurement which are at least as comprehensive as on present tokamaks, with the additional capabilities needed for control of the plasma and for understanding the effects of the alpha-particles. The diagnostic instrumentation must be able to provide the fine spatial and temporal resolution required for the advanced tokamak plasma scenarios. It must also be able to overcome the effects of neutron- and gamma-induced electrical noise in ceramic components or detectors, and fluorescence and absorption in optical components. There are practical engineering issues of minimizing radiation streaming while providing essential diagnostic access to the plasma. Many diagnostics will require components at or close to the first wall, e.g., ceramics and MI cable for magnetic diagnostics and mirrors for optical diagnostics; these components must be mounted to operate, and survive, i n fluxes which require special material selection. A better set of diagnostics of alpha-particles than that available for the TFTR [Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor] is essential; it must be qualified well before moving into D-T [deuterim-tritium] experiments. A start has been made to assessing the potential implementation of key diagnostics for the FIRE …

Boronization on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) has proved to be quite beneficial with increases in confinement and density, and decreases in impurities observed in the plasma. The boron has been applied to the interior surfaces of NSTX, about every 2 to 3 weeks of plasma operation, by producing a glow discharge in the vacuum vessel using deuterated trimethylboron (TMB) in a 10% mixture with helium. Special NSTX requirements restricted the selection of the candidate boronization method to the use of deuterated boron compounds. Deuterated TMB met these requirements, but is a hazardous gas and special care in the execution of the boronization process is required. This paper describes the existing GDC, Gas Injection, and Torus Vacuum Pumping System hardware used for this process, the glow discharge process, and the automated control system that allows for remote operation to maximize both the safety and efficacy of applying the boron coating. The administrative requirements and the detailed procedure for the setup, operation and shutdown of the process are also described.

A new technique for studying high heat flux interactions with plasma facing components is presented. The beam from a continuous wave 300 W neodymium laser was focused to 80 W/mm2 and scanned at high speed over the surface of carbon tiles. These tiles were previously used in the TFTR [Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor] inner limiter and have a surface layer of amorphous hydrogenated carbon that was codeposited during plasma operations. Laser scanning released up to 84% of the codeposited tritium. The temperature rise of the codeposit on the tiles was significantly higher than that of the manufactured material. In one experiment, the codeposit surface temperature rose to 1,770 C while for the same conditions, the manufactured surface increased to only 1,080 C. The peak temperature did not follow the usual square-root dependence on heat pulse duration. Durations of order 100 ms resulted in brittle destruction and material loss from the surface, while a duration of approximately 10 ms showed minimal change. A digital microscope imaged the codeposit before, during, and after the interaction with the laser and revealed hot spots on a 100-micron scale. These results will be compared to analytic modeling and are relevant to the response of plasma …

Rodlike molecules form liquid crystalline phases with orientational order and positional disorder. The great majority of materials in which liquid crystalline phases have been observed are comprised of organic molecules or polymers, even though there has been continuing and growing interest in inorganic liquid crystals. Recent advances in the control of the sizes and shapes of inorganic nanocrystals allow for the formation of a broad class of new inorganic liquid crystals. Here we show the formation of liquid crystalline phases of CdSe semiconductor nanorods. These new liquid crystalline phases may have great importance for both application and fundamental study.

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The NSTX achieved first plasma in 1999. The Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS) is used to provide data-integration services for monitoring and control of all NSTX engineering subsystems. EPICS is a set of software initially developed at U.S. DOE laboratories. It is currently used and maintained through a global collaboration of hundreds of scientists and engineers. This paper will relate some of our experiences using and supporting the EPICS software. Topics include reliability and maintainability, lessons learned, recently added engineering subsystems, new EPICS software tools, and a review of our first EPICS software upgrade. Steps to modernize the technical infrastructure of EPICS to ensure effective support for NSTX will also be described.

An online Trouble Reporting System (TRS) has been introduced at the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). The TRS is used by NSTX operators to report problems that affect NSTX operations. The purpose of the TRS is to enhance NSTX reliability and maintainability by identifying components, occurrences, and trends that contribute to machine downtime. All NSTX personnel have access to the TRS. The user interface is via a web browser, such as Netscape or Internet Explorer. This web-based feature permits any X-terminal, PC, or MAC access to the TRS. The TRS is based upon a trouble reporting system developed at the DIII-D Tokamak, at General Atomics Technologies. This paper will provide a detailed description of the TRS software architecture, user interface, MS SQL server interface and operational experiences. In addition, sample data from the TRS database will be summarized and presented.

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

In this paper, we present results demonstrating the effectiveness of a sensitivity analysis approach to uncertainty quantification of a variably saturated flow model. The basis for our method is a software system which simultaneously solves for solutions of large-scale nonlinear systems of equations and the sensitivity of the solutions to selected parameters. We present test cases showing the effects on the relative uncertainty of pressure due to heterogeneity in the absolute permeability and to differences in parameterizing the Van Genuchten curve soil parameters, {alpha} and n.

There have been many papers that have focused on the attachment of wires to surfaces. The focus of this paper will be on wires connected to arbitrarily shaped surfaces, a body that may be modeled with triangles as described in [1]. The basis function for the wire-to-surface junction is constructed by building the 1/r variation of the surface current near the junction into the surface current. In the following we summarize junction bases as currently used. In the presentation we consider their numerical implementation, examine alternative formulations, and review validation studies that prove the approach is robust with respect to wire orientation and surface geometry at the junction.

This report estimates the amount of funds that will be awarded to each state according to the formula, and also describes how the grants reward states that have education finance systems with characteristics favored by the formula.

The results to date do indeed show that the lattice Boltzmann method accurately solves relevant, non-trivial flow problems. The parallelization of both the fluid and the mobile species in flow has enhanced this capability such that it is useful for solving relevant problems in a timely fashion. The initial studies of stationary or capture species revealed evidence of hydrodynamic screening between upstream and downstream particles. Numerical studies reveal that the critical length for which the test particle is hydrodynamically decoupled from upstream and downstream particles is on the order of 30 sphere radii. For mobile species, the LB capability was shown to be naturally suited for predicting the hydrodynamic lift phenomenon (inertial lift). A conversion factor was developed based on scaling arguments to include relevant forces generated by external fields. Using this conversion, an analytic solution for the Dielectrophoretic force was included into the LB capability which enabled the study of Dielectrophoretic particle capture. The Non-Newtonian enhancements have expanded the applicability of the LB capability to more physical systems. Specifically, with the bead-n-spring representation of macromolecules researchers will be able to study chain dynamics in micro-, physiological and Bio-MEMS environments. Furthermore, the ability to capture the shear thinning behavior, without …

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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.

The goal of this four-year project was to provide a database by which to judge the utility of the rare earth elements (REE) in the exploration for and exploitation of geothermal fields in the United States. Geothermal fluids from hot springs and wells have been sampled from a number of locations, including: (1) the North Island of New Zealand (1 set of samples); (2) the Cascades of Oregon; (3) the Harney, Alvord Desert and Owyhee geothermal areas of Oregon; (4) the Dixie Valley and Beowawe fields in Nevada; (5) Palinpion, the Philippines: (6) the Salton Sea and Heber geothermal fields of southern California; and (7) the Dieng field in Central Java, Indonesia. We have analyzed the samples from all fields for REE except the last two.

Fully kinetic assessments of the stability properties of toroidal drift modes have been obtained for cases for the Large Helical Device (LHD). This calculation employs the comprehensive linear microinstability code FULL, as recently extended for nonaxisymmetric systems. The code retains the important effects in the linearized gyrokinetic equation, using the lowest-order ''ballooning representation'' for high toroidal mode number instabilities in the electrostatic limit. These effects include trapped particles, FLR, transit and bounce and magnetic drift frequency resonances, etc., for any number of plasma species. Results for toroidal drift waves destabilized by trapped electrons and ion temperature gradients are presented, using numerically-calculated three-dimensional MHD equilibria. These are reconstructed from experimental measurements. Quasilinear fluxes of particles and energy for each species are also calculated. Pairs of LHD discharges with different magnetic axis positions and with and without pellet injection are compared.