Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to the determination of adequate controls in six small agencies to meet legislative mandates and deliver intended benefits, and to the identification of weaknesses in controls over human resources, financial management, policy management, management information systems, and licensing/enforcement.

The 2020 Vision project began in 1996 with two participating teachers and four classes. It has since grown to comprise more than a dozen participating teachers and hundreds of students across the country. Much of this growth took place in FY98, thanks to the accomplishment of several major goals: implementation of a mentor program, enhanced teacher training, a mid-year conference for students, recruitment of distant schools, and the development of an interactive Web site. The first part of this report describes these accomplishments, as well as future directions for 2020 Vision. The second part summarized the scenarios students wrote during the 1997-98 school year. it identifies recurrent themes in the students' scenarios and compares/contrasts them with scenarios written in the first two years of the project.

This report provides a synopsis of the budget activity related to AIDS from the discovery of the disease in 1981 through FY1999. Funding for AIDS research, prevention and treatment programs within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) discretionary budget has increased from $200,000 in FY1981 to an estimated $3.85 billion in FY1999.

Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to the full-time classification state employee turnover rate for Fiscal Year 1998. This report provides information on employee turnover for use in evaluating and analyzing trends in state employment and in addressing the causes of state employee turnover.

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Report of the Texas State Auditor's Office related to the financial statements of the Teacher Retirement System (System) for fiscal year 1998, and the implementation of Portfolio and Accounting Management for Securities System (PAM), a new investment accounting software package.

Biennial report of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission describing the organization's goals and activities during fiscal years 1997-1998 as well as information about the history of the Commission as it celebrates 90 years (1909-1999).

This report discusses the efforts to reach an agreement on the fiscal year (FY) 1998 budget were, in many respects, a continuation of the efforts to balance the federal budget by (or before) FY2002. The proposals and legislation for FY1998 were designed to move the budget further towards balance.

Annual report of the Children and Youth Community Resource Coordination Groups of Texas describing goals, activities, and accomplishments during fiscal year 1998.

Financial statements from the Employees Retirement System of Texas documenting ... for fiscal year 1997 and 1998.

The Kolsky-Hopkinson Bar Dynamic Test Facility in Building PF-4 at TA-55 recently became operational and the first series of plutonium samples from a baseline alloy were successfully tested on December 8, 1997 through the dedicated efforts of a large number of people in groups NMT-9, NMT-11, MST-8, NMT-5, and JCI. The Enhanced Surveillance Program provided the necessary support for this achievement. The Kolsky-Hopkinson bar is an instrument designed to measure the uniaxial compression stress-strain characteristics of special nuclear materials (SNM) in a glovebox environment at intermediate strain rates (typically 500 s{sup {minus}1} to 10,000 s{sup {minus}1}), over a wide temperature range (cryogenic up to near-melting temperatures), and up to strains of about 50% per test. Due to radiation contamination hazards, SNM samples are contained within a specially designed glovebox with only a small portion of the bar system. The uniaxial high-strain-rate deformation behavior of SNM materials is revealed by stress-strain-strain rate curves calculated from strain signals acquired by gauges on the pressure bars. The compressive stress-strain mechanical behavior of a range of weapons-relevant SNM materials (both baseline and stockpile-aged plutonium and enriched uranium), measured over a wide range of strain rates and temperatures, is necessary to support the development of …

EPA appropriations are included in the annual VA-HUD-Independent Agencies Appropriation Bill. Two major issues were whether Superfund cleanups should be accelerated in the absence of statutory reforms and whether the requested state assistance funds are adequate. Because the House and Senate were in agreement on not granting the requested 50% increase in Superfund and in passing increased state funds, the chief conference issue focused on the roughly $225 million difference between the House and Senate versions.

This report provides an overview of federal pay Salary adjustments for Fiscal Year 1998

This report provides an overview of federal pay Salary adjustments for the Fiscal Year 1998

During fiscal year 1998, the level of success achieved by the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) shall be determined by specific performance measures. These measures take the form of significant deliverables, one of which is the completion of Tank Characterization Reports (TCRs). In order to achieve success regarding the TCR performance deliverable, multiple organizations across TWRS must work together. Therefore, the requirements and expectations needed from each of these TWRS organizations were examined in order to gain an understanding of the performance necessary from each organization to achieve the end deliverable. This memorandum of understanding (MOU) documents the results of this review and establishes the performance criteria by which TWRS will assess its progress and success. These criteria have been determined based upon a TWRS Characterization Project budget of $47.5 million for fiscal year 1998; if this budget is changed or the currently identified work scope is modified, this MOU will need to be revised accordingly. This MOU is subdivided into six sections, where sections three through six each identify individual interfaces between TWRS organizations. The specific performance criteria related to each TWRS organizational interface are then delineated in the section, along with any additional goals or issues pertaining to …

A method for calculating the redistribution of resonance radiation in hot, dense plasmas is developed by extending the Frequency Fluctuation Model (FFM). This paper is devoted to a brief review of lineshape theory in the linear response approximation, and an introduction to the FFM approach to the modeling of lineshapes in plasmas. This discussion begins with a consideration of the spectral lines emitted by complex ions in plasmas. As is well known, the lineshape is determined by the time- dependent coupling of the ion with the plasma environment. This plasma-emitter interaction, leads to Stark broadening of the spectral lines, and traditionally has been considered in the approximation which treats the ef&@ of the electrons on the emitting ion in the impact limit while the ionic perturbation is� taken to be quasi-static. In this approximation, the time dependence of the perturbation has been eliminated, resulting in a spectral line shape that has purely homogeneous and inhomogeneous contributions and that is described by a simple sum of independent electron imp� act broadened static components. In order to clarify the concepts presented, examples of radiative redistribution functions for simple cases are presented. Included is an example of an X-ray laser pumped system which …

This report summarizes the well installation, plugging and abandonment, and redevelopment activities conducted during the federal fiscal year (FY) 1998 at the Y-12 Plant, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Five new groundwater monitoring wells were installed at the Y-12 Plant under the FY 1998 drilling program. Two of the wells are located in west Bear Creek Valley, one is in the eastern Y-12 Plant area near Lake Reality, and two are located near the Oil Landfarm Waste Management Area, which were installed by Bechtel Jacobs Company LLC (Bechtel Jacobs) as part of a site characterization activity for the Oak Ridge Reservation (ORR) Disposal Cell. Also, two existing wells were upgraded and nine temporary piezometers were installed to characterize hydrogeologic conditions at the Disposal Cell site. In addition, 40 temporary piezometers were installed in the Boneyard/Bumyard area of Bear Creek Valley by Bechtel Jacobs as part of the accelerated remedial actions conducted by the Environmental Restoration Program. Ten monitoring wells at the Y-12 Plant were decommissioned in FY 1998. Two existing monitoring wells were redeveloped during FY 1998 (of these, GW-732 was redeveloped tsvice). All well installation and development (including redevelopment) was conducted following industry-standard methods and approved procedures from the Environmental Surveillance …

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Molten Salt Oxidation (MSO) is a promising alternative to incineration for the treatment of a variety of organic wastes. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has prepared a facility in which an integrated pilot-scale MSO treatment system is being tested and demonstrated. The system consists of a MSO vessel with a dedicated off-gas treatment system, a salt recycle system, feed preparation equipment, and a ceramic final waste forms immobilization system. This integrated system was designed and engineered based on operational experience with an engineering-scale reactor unit and extensive laboratory development on salt recycle and final forms preparation. The MSO/off-gas system has been operational since December 1997. The salt recycle system and the ceramic final forms immobilization became operational in May and August, 1998, respectively. We have tested the MSO facility with various organic feeds, including chlorinated solvents, tributyl phosphate/kerosene, PCB-contaminated waste oils & solvents, booties, plastic pellets, ion exchanged resins, activated carbon, radioactive-spiked organics, and well-characterized low-level liquid mixed wastes. MSO is shown to be a versatile technology for hazardous waste treatment and may be a solution to many waste disposal problems in DOE sites. This report presents the results obtained from operation of the integrated pilot-scale MSO treatment system through …

The Yucca Mountain Project is considering some type of backfill, possibly emplaced as a capillary barrier, for inclusion in the Engineering Barrier System (EBS) at the potential Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository site. The performance of capillary barriers in isothermal, low- temperature, environments has been studied extensively (e.g., Ho and Webb, 1998; OZdenburg and Pruess, 1993; Ross, 1990). The performance of capillary barriers in an non-isothermal, high temperature environment, such as during the thermal pulse phase of a nuclear waste repository, has received much less attention. One concern is that the backfill materials may be altered from that of the as-placed material by the hydrothermal regime imposed by the emplacement of waste in the repository, changing hydrologic properties in a way that degrades the performance of the EBS system. This report is a status report on our efforts to address this concern. The work was initiated by SCR #98-76-041 and was authorized to begin at LLNL in summer 1998. This report is organized as follows. In the first part, we discuss our understanding of the relevant issues of backfill performance based on thermal hydrology. We focus here on changes to hydrologic properties, but we recognize that changes to thermal, mechanical …

The purpose of the Single Heater Test (SHT), the design of the test, and the borehole layout were reported by OCRWM M&O (1996a). Briefly, the main purpose of the SHT is to study the thermal- mechanical behavior of the densely welded non-lithophysal Topopah Spring tuff at the Exploratory Studies Facility (ESF). The SHT is also used as a shake-down for the test of the coupled thermal- mechanical- hydrological-chemical (TMHC) processes.

Annual report of the U.S. Global Change Research Program documenting activities and progress, goals for the upcoming year, proposed budget considerations, and other information about the organization for fiscal year 1998.