A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on Border Patrol hiring, focusing on: (1) the Immigration and Naturalization Service's (INS) ability to meet its 5-year goal to increase the Border Patrol's onboard strength by 1,000 agents each year from fiscal years (FY) 1997 through 2001; (2) INS' efforts to improve its recruiting efforts and hiring process; (3) changes in the years of experience and level of supervision of Border Patrol agents during INS' increased hiring; and (4) the ability of INS' basic training program to support the pace at which Border Patrol agents have been hired, including whether the Border Patrol Academy anticipates having the capacity to meet future growth."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the District of Columbia's management of the development of the Comprehensive Automated Personnel and Payroll System (CAPPS), focusing on whether the District has effectively planned and managed CAPPS."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined the conduct and findings of the Air Force's Ranch Hand study on the long-term health effects of exposure to herbicides, such as Agent Orange, in Vietnam, and assessed the study's impact on determinations of veterans' compensation, focusing on: (1) whether the study's findings and data have been properly and promptly reported and disseminated; (2) the statistical limitations of the study and whether they have been adequately reported and communicated; (3) the measures established to monitor the study's conduct and to prevent improper influence, particularly those involving the Ranch Hand Study's Advisory Committee; and (4) the impact of the study on determinations of diseases for which Vietnam veterans are eligible to receive compensation benefits."

The objective of this calculation is to determine downwind normalized concentration, ''Chi/Q'' ({chi}/Q), estimates at the surface for acute (short-term) and chronic (long-term) exposures of an airborne material released from a surfaced-based point release. This calculation was requested by the Safety Analysis Department to support repository design in the Site Recommendation and possible future License Application activities. Attachment IV, item 1 displays this request. The {chi}/Q dispersion estimates will be calculated at twenty pre-determined distances from a surface release point. The acute exposure dispersion estimates will be calculated for five percentile, percentage of occurrences {chi}/Q values are not exceeded, values.

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

Semi-weekly newspaper from Clifton, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Science took the front seat as 219 Advanced Light Source (ALS) users and staff gathered on Monday and Tuesday, October 18 and 19 for the twelfth annual users' meeting. The bulk of the meeting was dedicated to reports on science at the ALS. Packed into two busy days were 31 invited oral presentations and 80 submitted poster presentations, as well as time to visit 24 vendor booths. The oral sessions were dedicated to environmental science, chemical dynamics, biosciences, magnetic materials, and atomic and molecular science. In addition, there was an ALS highlights session that emphasized new results and a session comprising highlights from the young scientists who will carry the ALS into the future.

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.

Earlier this year the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory achieved ''first plasma''. The Central Instrumentation and Control System was used to support plasma operations. Major elements of the system include the Process Control System, Plasma Control System, Network System, Data Acquisition System, and Synchronization System. This paper will focus on the Process Control System. Topics include the architecture, hardware interface, operator interface, data management, and system performance.

This study evaluates alternative transportation system configurations for NTS approved and potential generators based on complex-wide LLW load information. Technical judgments relative to the availability of DOE LLW generators to ship from their sites by rail were developed. Public and worker risk and life-cycle cost components are quantified. The study identifies and evaluates alternative scenarios that increase the use of rail (intermodal where needed) to transport LLW from generator sites to NTS.

Semiweekly newspaper from Boerne, 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.

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

Semimonthly newspaper from Dublin, Texas that includes area information on topics such as history, entertainment, reviews, and recipes along with advertising.

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

The delta prime formalism with neoclassical modifications has proven to be a useful tool in the study of tearing modes in high beta, collisionless plasmas. In this paper the formalism developed for the inclusion of neoclassical effects on tearing modes in monotonic q-profile plasmas is extended to plasmas with hollow current profiles and double rational surfaces. First, the classical formalism of tearing modes in the Rutherford regime in low beta plasmas is extended to q profiles with two rational surfaces. Then it is shown that this formalism is readily extended to include neoclassical effects.

One of the major goals of the US National Ignition Facility is the demonstration of laser driven fusion ignition and burn of targets by inertial confinement and provide capability for a wide variety of high energy density physics experiments. The NIF target area houses the optical systems required to focus the 192 beamlets to a target precisely positioned at the center of the 10 meter diameter, 10-cm thick aluminum target chamber. The chamber serves as mounting surface for the 48 final optics assemblies, the target alignment and positioning equipment, and the target diagnostics. The internal surfaces of the chamber are protected by louvered steel beam dumps. The target area also provides the necessary shielding against target emission and environmental protection equipment. Despite its complexity, the design provides the flexibility to accommodate the needs of the various NIF user groups, such as direct and indirect drive irradiation geometries, modular final optics design, capability to handle cryogenic targets, and easily re-configurable diagnostic instruments. Efficient target area operations are ensured by using line-replaceable designs for systems requiring frequent inspection, maintenance and reconfiguration, such as the final optics, debris shields, phase plates and the diagnostic instruments. A precision diagnostic instrument manipulator (DIMS) allows fast …

The Experimental Physics Industrial Control System (EPICS) is a set of software which is being used as the basis of the National Spherical Torus Experiment's (NSTX) Process Control System, a major element of the NSTX's Central Instrumentation and Control System. EPICS is a result of a co-development effort started by several US Department of Energy National Laboratories. EPICS is actively supported through an international collaboration made up of government and industrial users. EPICS' good points include portability, scalability, and extensibility. A drawback for small experiments is that a wide range of software skills are necessary to get the software tools running for the process engineers. The authors' experience in designing, developing, operating, and maintaining NSTX's EPICS (system) will be reviewed.

GEANIE at LANSCE/WNR combines the precision energy resolution of germanium detectors with the advantages of a white source providing neutrons with energies 1 < E{sub n}(MeV) < 250 to address a variety of topics in nuclear physics. The authors present the analysis of two data sets, n+{sup 235}U and n+{sup 92}Mo, acquired at GEANIE during the 1998 beam cycle. These data showcase the breadth of subjects under study at this facility, including the spectroscopy of stable and near-stable nuclei, reaction dynamics, fission studies, and the relative population of isomer and ground states in neutron-induced reactions.

Following the planting of several thousand hardwood seedlings in a 69-ha wetland restoration area in west-central South Carolina, wild pigs (Sus scrofa) depredated a large percentage of the young trees. This planting was undertaken as part of a mitigation effort to restore a bottomland hardwood community in the corridor and delta of a third order stream that had been previously impacted by the discharge of heated nuclear reactor effluent. The depredated restoration areas had been pretreated with both herbicide and control burning prior to planting the hardwood seedlings. After discovery of the wild pig damage, these areas were surveyed on foot to assess the magnitude of the depredation on the planted seedling crop. Foraging by the local wild pigs in the pretreatment areas selectively impacted only four of the nine hardwood species used in this restoration effort. Based on the surveys, the remaining five species did not appear to have been impacted at all. A variety of reasons could be used to explain this phenomenon. The pretreatment methodology is thought to have been the primary aspect of the restoration program that initially led the wild pigs to discover the planted seedlings. In addition, it is possible that a combination of …

Strippable or temporary coatings are innovative technologies for decontamination that effectively reduce loose contamination at low cost. These coatings have become a viable option during the deactivation and decommissioning of both US Department of Energy (DOE) and commercial nuclear facilities to remove or fix loose contamination on both vertical and horizontal surfaces. The ALARA{trademark} 1146 strippable coating was demonstrated as part of the Savannah River Site LSDDP and successfully removed transferable (surface) contamination from multiple surfaces (metal and concrete) with an average decontamination factor for alpha contamination of 6.68 and an average percentage of alpha contamination removed of 85.0%. Beta contamination removed was an average DF of 5.55 and an average percentage removed of 82.0%. This paper is an Innovative Technology Summary Report designed to provide potential users with the information they need to quickly determine if a technology would apply to a particular environmental management problem. They also are designed for readers who may recommend that a technology be considered by prospective users. This Innovative Technology offers a 35% cost savings over the Baseline Technology.

This report describes work done by the Syracuse University during Phase 1 of this subcontract. Researchers performed work in the following areas: (1) In ``Electroabsorption measurements and built-in potentials in a-Si:H-based solar cells and devices'', researchers obtained an estimate of Vbi = 1.17 V in cells with a-SiGe:H absorber layers from United Solar Systems Corp. (2) In ``Solar cell modeling employing the AMPS computer program'', researchers began operating a simple AMPS modeling site and explored the effect of conduction bandtail width on Voc computed analytical approximations and the AMPS program. The quantitative differences between the two procedures are discussed. (3) In ``Drift mobility measurements in a-Si:H made with high hydrogen dilution'', researchers measured electron and hole mobilities in several n/i/Ni (semitransparent) cells from Pennsylvania State University with a-Si absorber layers made under maximal hydrogen dilution and found a modest increase in hole mobility in these materials compared to conventional a-Si:H. (4) In ``Electroabsorption spectroscopy in solar cells'', researchers discovered and interpreted an infrared absorption band near 1.0 eV, which they believe is caused by dopants and defects at the n/i interface of cells, and which also has interesting implications for the nature of electroabsorption and for the doping mechanism in …

This report presents data of groundwater monitoring conducted during the first and second quarters of 1999 in support of the Interim Remedial Action. The data is from groundwater monitoring wells described in this report as the primary, secondary, and recovery wells of the initial operation of the Effectiveness Monitoring Strategy (EMS) as stipulated in Revision 1.3 (WSRC, 1996), the proposed wells for the full operation of the EMS as described in Revision 1.5 (WSRC, 1999), and general wells pertinent to the report. Also included are data from SRTC projects in the TNX Area that are deemed useful for groundwater characterization.

The inductively coupled plasma/atomic emission spectroscopy [ICP/AES (ICP)] system for elemental analyses in support of vitrification processing was first installed in 1986. The initial instrument was a Jobin Yvon (JY) Model JY-70 ICP that consisted of sequential and simultaneous spectrometers for analysis of nonradioactive samples as radioactive surrogates. The JY-70 ICP continued supporting nonradioactive testing during the Functional and Checkout Testing of Systems (FACTS) using the full-scale melter with ``cold'' (nonradioactive) testing campaigns. As a result, the need for another system was identified to allow for the analysis of radioactive samples. The Mass Spec (Spectrometry) Lab was established for the installation of the modified ICP system for handling radioactive samples. The conceptual setup of another ICP was predicated on the use of a hood to allow ease of accessibility of the torch, nebulizer, and spray chamber, and the minimization of air flow paths. However, reconsideration of the radioactive sample dose rate and contamination levels led to the configuration of the glovebox system with a common transfer interface box for the ICP and the inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometer (ICP-MS) glovebox assemblies. As a result, a simultaneous Model JY-50P ICP with glovebox was installed in 1990 as a first generation ICP glovebox …