This report describes the procedures under which committee funding resolutions are considered in the two chambers, and 106th Congress action to review and approve committee operating budgets. Also noted are changes in the Senate’s committee funding processes to move from a session-based biennial funding process to one more closely matched to a fiscal year cycle. Tables at the end of the report show funds approved for the 105th Congress, and the funds requested, recommended, and approved for the 106th Congress for each House and Senate committee.

Tri-weekly student newspaper from Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

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 contract for ambulance service may be exempt from competitive-purchasing requirements in the County Purchasing Act, chapter 262, subchapterC of the Local Government Code, and related questions (RQ-0042-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 section 814.1043 of the Government Code as adopted by House Bill 3504 has no effect by operation of section 60 of Senate Bill 1130 (RQ-0105-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 public junior college may give funds to a charitable and educational nonprofit corporation (RQ-0047-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 county may borrow money from the State Infrastructure Bank for road and bridge construction and repay the loan with the proceeds of ad valorem property taxes levied for that purpose over a term of years without issuing bonds or other obligations evidencing the loan (RQ-0057-JC)

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed federal assessments--user fees, taxes, and other charges--levied on the commercial maritime industry, focusing on: (1) the federal agencies that levied assessments in fiscal year (FY) 1998 compared with FY 1991, the number of assessments levied, and the amounts they collected; (2) who pays the assessments and in which funds they were deposited in fiscal years 1991-1998; (3) new federal assessments that have been recently proposed; and (4) the status of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, and the projected annual balances of the fund."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed large bank holding company mergers and regulatory enforcement of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, focusing on the: (1) fair lending issues raid by consumer and community groups during the application process for six large bank holding company mergers; and (2) Federal Reserve Board's (FRB) consideration of those issues."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) implementation of federal export control regulations for International Space Station technology transfers, focusing on: (1) the licenses granted to NASA to export space station-related technology and commodities and plans to export encryption technology; (2) the results of internal and external assessments of NASA's export control program; and (3) NASA's actions to implement audit recommendations."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the reasons why a Boeing report entitled Center Wing Fuel Tank Heating Study (also referred to as the Panama Study) dated March 14, 1980, was not provided to the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) to aid in its investigation of the 1996 Trans World Airlines (TWA) flight 800 crash until June 1999."

Semiweekly newspaper from Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas that includes local, national, and campus news along with advertising.

Radiation environments characteristic of those encountered during the low-temperature foot pulse and subsequent higher-temperature early-step pulses (without the foot pulse) required for indirect-drive ICF ignition on the National ignition Facility have been produced in hohlraums driven by x-rays from a z-pinch. These environments provide a platform to better understand the dynamics of full-scale NIF hohlraums, ablator material, and capsules prior to NIF completion. Radiation temperature, plasma fill, and wall motion of these hohlraums are discussed.

The West Hackberry Tertiary Project is a field test of the concept that air injection can generate tertiary oil recovery through the Double Displacement Process. The Double Displacement Process is the gas displacement of a water invaded oil column for the purpose of recovering tertiary oil through gravity drainage. The novel aspect of this project is the use of air as the injection fluid. In Gulf Coast oil reservoirs with pronounced bed dip, reservoir performance has shown that gravity drainage recoveries average 80% to 90% of the original oil in place while water drive recoveries average 50% to 60% of the original oil in place. The target for tertiary oil recovery with the Double Displacement Process is the incremental oil between the 50% to 60% water drive recoveries and the 80% to 90% gravity drainage recoveries. The use of air injection in this process combines the benefits of air's low cost and universal accessibility with the potential for improved oil recovery resulting from spontaneous in situ combustion. If successful, this project will demonstrate that utilizing air injection in the Double Displacement Process will result in an economically viable tertiary process in many Gulf Coast oil reservoirs where other tertiary processes …

The eighteen 10-acre infill wells which were drilled as part of the field demonstration portion of the project are all currently in service with no operational problems. These wells consist of fourteen producing wells and four injection wells. The producing wells are currently producing a total of approximately 376 bopd, down from a peak rate of 900 bopd. The four injection wells are currently injecting a total of 140 bwipd. Unit production is currently averaging approximately 2,600 bopd, 12,000 bwpd and 18,000 bwipd.

Numerous sites in the United States and around the world are contaminated with depleted uranium (DU) in various forms. A prevalent form is fragmented DU originating from various scientific tests involving high explosives and DU during weapon-development programs, at firing practice ranges, or in war theaters where DU was used in armor-piercing projectiles. The contamination at these sites is typically very heterogeneous, with discrete, visually identifiable DU fragments mixed with native soil. The bulk-averaged DU activity is quite low, whereas DU fragments, which are distinct from the soil matrix, have much higher specific activity. DU is best known as a dark metal that is nearly twice as dense as lead, but DU in the environment readily weathers (oxidizes) to a distinctive bright yellow color that is quite visible. While the specific activity (amount of radioactivity per mass of soil) of DU is relatively low and presents only a minor radiological hazard, the fact that DU is radioactive and visually identifiable makes it desirable to remove the DU ''contamination'' from the environment. The typical approach to conducting this DU remediation is to use radiation-detection instruments to identify the contaminant and then to separate it from the adjacent soil, packaging it for …

The objective of this project is to address waterflood problems of the type found in Morrow sandstone reservoirs in southwestern Kansas and in Cherokee Group reservoirs in southeastern Kansas. Two demonstration sites operated by different independent oil operators are involved in this project. The Stewart Field is located in Finney County, Kansas and is operated by PetroSantander, Inc. Te Nelson Lease is located in Allen County, Kansas, in the N.E. Savonburg Field and is operated by James E. Russell Petroleum, Inc. General topics to be addressed are (1) reservoir management and performance evaluation, (2) waterflood optimization, and (3) the demonstration of recovery processes involving off-the-shelf technologies which can be used to enhance waterflood recovery, increase reserves, and reduce the abandonment rate of these reservoir types. In the Stewart Project, the reservoir management portion of the project conducted during Budget Period 1 involved performance evaluation. This included (1) reservoir characterization and the development of a reservoir database, (2) volumetric analysis to evaluate production performance, (3) reservoir modeling, (4) laboratory work, (5) identification of operational problems, (6) identification of unrecovered mobile oil and estimation of recovery factors, and (7) Identification of the most efficient and economical recovery process. To accomplish these objectives …

On Nov. 1, 1999, Sandia National Laboratories celebrates its 50th birthday. Although Sandia has its roots in the World War II-era Manhattan Project, Sandia began operating as a separate nuclear weapons engineering laboratory under the management of AT&T on Nov. 1, 1949. Today the lab employs more than 7,000 people at its two sites in Albuquerque and Livermore, California, and has research and development missions in national security, energy and environmental technologies, and U.S. economic competitiveness. Lockheed Martin Corporation operates Sandia for the US. Department of Energy.

The authors have demonstrated a functional Pnp heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) using InGaAsN. The metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOCVD) grown Al{sub 0.3}Ga{sub 0.7}As/In{sub 0.03}Ga{sub 0.97}As{sub 0.99}N{sub 0.01} HBT takes advantage of the narrower bandgap energy (E{sub g} = 1.25eV) of In{sub 0.03}Ga{sub 0.97}As{sub 0.99}N{sub 0.01}, which is lattice matched to GaAs. Compared with the Al{sub 0.3}Ga{sub 0.7}As/GaAs material system, the Al{sub 0.3}Ga{sub 0.7}As/In{sub 0.03}Ga{sub 0.97}As{sub 0.99}N{sub 0.01} material system has a larger conduction band offset, while the valence band offset remains comparable. This characteristic band alignment is very suitable for Pnp HBT applications. The device's peak current gain is 23 and it has a turn on voltage of 0.77V, which is 0.25V lower than in a comparable Pnp Al{sub 0.3}Ga{sub 0.7}As/GaAs HBT.

Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) are a recently-discovered set of solar system bodies which lie at about the orbit of Pluto (40 AU) out to about 100 astronomical units (AU). There are estimated to be about 100,000 KBOS with a diameter greater than 100 km. KBOS are postulated to be composed of the pristine material which formed our solar system and may even have organic materials in them. A detailed study of KBO size, orbit distribution, structure, and surface composition could shed light on the origins of the solar system and perhaps even on the origin of life in our solar system. A rendezvous mission including a lander would be needed to perform chemical analysis of the surface and sub-surface composition of KBOS. These requirements set the size of the science probe at around a ton. Mission analyses show that a fission-powered system with an electric thruster could rendezvous at 40 AU in about 13.0 years with a total {Delta}V of 46 krnk. It would deliver a 1000-kg science payload while providing ample onboard power for relaying data back to earth. The launch mass of the entire system (power, thrusters, propellant, navigation, communication, structure, science payload, etc.) would be 7984 kg …

Hydrolytic degradation has been shown to be a significant problem for poly(ester urethane) elastomers exposed to high humidity environments. The ester group in the soft segment is particularly susceptible to hydrolysis. One of the products of this reaction is a carboxylic acid group that catalyses further hydrolysis. The resulting reduction in molecular weight leads to deterioration of the elastomer's mechanical properties. In this paper we have measured the extent of the hydrolysis reaction by {sup 13}C NMR spectroscopy. In addition we have measured the spin-spin relaxation time of the soft phase and followed the increase in mobility of these segments. Both measurements were performed on the solid polymer. These measurements provide an excellent monitoring tool of the chemical and physical state of polymer during the aging process.

This paper reviews the technology options for a fission-based electric propulsion system for interstellar precursor missions. To achieve a total {Delta}V of more than 100 km/s in less than a decade of thrusting with an electric propulsion system of 10,000s Isp requires a specific mass for the power system of less than 35 kg/kWe. Three possible configurations are described: (1) a UZrH-fueled,NaK-cooled reactor with a steam Rankine conversion system,(2) a UN-fueled gas-cooled reactor with a recuperated Brayton conversion system, and (3) a UN-fueled heat pipe-cooled reactor with a recuperated Brayton conversion system. All three of these systems have the potential to meet the specific mass requirements for interstellar precursor missions in the near term. Advanced versions of a fission-based electric propulsion system might travel as much as several light years in 200 years.

We estimate the total in-vessel deuterium retention in Alcator C-Mod from a run campaign of about 1090 plasmas. The estimate is based on measurements of deuterium retained on 22 molybdenum tiles from the inner wall and divertor. The areal density of deuterium on the tiles was measured by nuclear reaction analysis. From these data, the in-vessel deuterium inventory is estimated to be about 0.1 gram, assuming the deuterium coverage is toroidally symmetric. Most of the retained deuterium is on the walls of the main plasma chamber, only about 2.5% of the deuterium is in the divertor. The D coverage is consistent with a layer saturated by implantation with ions and charge-exchange neutrals from the plasma. This contrasts with tokamaks with carbon plasma-facing components (PFC's) where long-term retention of tritium and deuterium is large and mainly in the divertor due to codeposition with carbon eroded by the plasma. The low deuterium retention in the C-Mod divertor is mainly due to the absence of carbon PFC's in C-Mod and the low erosion rate of Mo.

The hysteresis curves of two Accumulator sample magnets have been measured, one large quadrupole and one small quadrupole. Based upon these measurements, a parameterization of hysteresis effects is deduced and generalized to other magnets. The goal is to incorporate the best knowledge of the magnets we have into the Accumulator model, on which lattice measurements are based and which is used to calculate an accurate first guess at the E-835 deceleration tables. Since a well-defined sequence of current cycles is performed during Accumulator operations, some simplifying hypotheses can be applied.