A near tripling in the price of crude oil from March 1999 to the first months of 2000, coupled with other developments, initially brought about sharp increases in the price of home heating oil and diesel fuel, which are essentially the same product. Gasoline prices then increased. These developments brought about discussion of what might be done to mitigate price increases and possible spot shortages, and what might be done to prevent a similar situation in the future.

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

Weekly student newspaper from McMurry University in Abilene, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Ensemble performance at the UNT College of Music.

Concertpresented at the UNT College of Music Kenton Hall.

Concert presented at Winspear Hall at the Murchison Performing Arts Center.

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

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Social Security Administration's (SSA) final actions to ensure its year 2000 readiness, including the actions it took during the rollover period--December 30,1999, through January 3, 2000, as well as for the February 29 leap year date--to ensure a successful transition to the new century."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) fire protection program, focusing on: (1) NRC's efforts to improve its oversight of fire protection at nuclear power plants; (2) any potential barriers to the successful implementation of the risk-informed oversight process for fire protection; and (3) the extent to which fire risk assessments consider the possible failure of passive fire barriers and penetration seals and whether the cumulative effect of granting exemptions has increased the risk of fire at nuclear power plants."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO assessed the effectiveness of information system general controls at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Maryland Health Care System (VAMHCS)."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the various activities that Department of State, Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of the Treasury, and the Agency for International Development (AID) have undertaken to address transnational crime involving sub-Saharan Africa and their efforts to enhance anticrime coordination among U.S. agencies."

Weekly Czech and English language newspaper from Temple, Texas published as the official organ of the Slavonic Benevolent Order of the State of Texas that includes news of interest to members along with advertising.

This is a multiyear experimental research program focused on improving relevant material properties of high-T{sub c} superconductors (HTSs) and on development of fabrication methods that can be transferred to industry for production of commercial conductors. The development of teaming relationships through agreements with industrial partners is a key element of the Argonne program. Recent results are presented on YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub x} (Y-123) coated conductors, sheathed (Bi,Pb){sub 2}Sr{sub 2}Ca{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub x} (Bi-2223) tapes, and applications development.

Sandia National Laboratories has learned through their process of technology transfer that not all high tech transfers are alike. They are not alike by the nature of the customers involved, the process of becoming involved with these customers and finally and most importantly the very nature of the technology itself. Here they focus on technology transfer in the microsystems arena and specifically the sacrificial surface version of microsystems. They have learned and helped others learn that many MEMS applications are best realized through the use of surface micromachining (SMM). This is because SMM builds on the substantial integrated circuit industry. In this paper they review Sandia's process for transferring a disruptive MEMS technology in numerous cases.

This research project has three objectives. The first objective is to develop a capability to predict and optimize the ability of gels to reduce permeability to water more than that to oil or gas. The second objective is to develop procedures for optimizing blocking-agent placement in wells where hydraulic fractures cause channeling. The third objective is to develop procedures to optimize blocking-agent placement in naturally fractured reservoirs. This research project consists of three tasks, each of which addresses one of the above objectives. Work is directed at both injection wells and production wells and at vertical, horizontal, and highly deviated wells.

The Consolidated Incinerator Facility (CIF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS) burns low-level radioactive wastes and mixed wastes as a method of treatment and volume reduction. The CIF generates secondary waste, which consists of ash and offgas scrubber solution. Currently the ash is stabilized/solidified in the Ashcrete process. The scrubber solution (blowdown) is sent to the SRS Effluent Treatment Facility (ETF) for treatment as wastewater. In the past, the scrubber solution was also stabilized/solidified in the Ashcrete process as blowcrete, and will continue to be treated this way for listed waste burns and scrubber solutions that do not meet the ETF Waste Acceptance Criteria (WAC). The disposal plan for Ashcrete and special case blowcrete is to bury these containerized waste forms in shallow unlined trenches in E-Area. The WAC for intimately mixed, cement-based wasteforms intended for direct disposal specifies limits on compressive strength and permeability. Simulated waste and actual CIF ash and scrubber solution were mixed in the laboratory and cast into wasteforms for testing. Test results and related waste disposal consequences are given in this report.

This report describes the groundwater monitoring and corrective-action program at the M-Area Hazardous Waste Management Facility (HWMF) and the Metallurgical Laboratory (Met Lab) HWMF at the Savannah River Site (SRS) during 1999.

Intelligent, integrated microsystems combine some or all of the functions of sensing, processing information, actuation, and communication within a single integrated package, and preferably upon a single silicon chip. As the elements of these highly integrated solutions interact strongly with each other, the microsystem can be neither designed nor fabricated piecemeal, in contrast to the more familiar assembled products. Driven by technological imperatives, microsystems will best be developed by multi-disciplinary teams, most likely within the flatter, less hierarchical organizations. Standardization of design and process tools around a single, dominant technology will expedite economically viable operation under a common production infrastructure. The production base for intelligent, integrated microsystems has elements in common with the mathematical theory of chaos. Similar to chaos theory, the development of microsystems technology will be strongly dependent on, and optimized to, the initial product requirements that will drive standardization--thereby further rewarding early entrants to integrated microsystem technology.

This is a collection of papers including abstracts about the celebration of 50 years of excellence in science and engineering at the Savannah River Site. The Symposium Committee invited current and former employees to nominate the innovations to be recognized. Several selection panels of experts in various technical fields reviewed 190 nominations and selected the achievements included in this proceedings. Neither the Symposium Committee nor the selection panels claim that these accomplishments are the best of the best. Instead, they believe that they typify the outstanding quality of science and engineering at the Site during its first half-century.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is promoting the use of alternative fuels and alternative fuel vehicles (AFVs). To support this activity, DOE has directed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to conduct projects to evaluate the performance and acceptability of light-duty AFVs. The authors tested a 1999 B2500 dedicated CNG Ram Wagon with a 5.2L V8 engine. The vehicle was run through a series of tests explained briefly in this fact sheet.

Pu300 has particular application in the Arms Control Transparency arena, where very sensitive material is often the subject of tests and measurements. In Arms Control Transparency projects, we attempt to measure attributes of material removed from a nuclear weapon without revealing sensitive information about the material. The measured attribute can either be reported directly or compared against a threshold value. The set of attributes that are measured can be used as a fingerprint for the material. One such attribute for plutonium is material age. Age, in this sense, is defined as the amount of time that has passed since americium separation. The Pu300 system consists of a coaxial HPGe detector and a Canberra Inspector multichannel analyzer. The Inspector allows the high resolution spectral information to be limited by adjusting upper and lower level discriminators so only the information between 330keV and 350keV is collected. The fits of the peaks in the gamma-ray spectrum are fed into a physics code to give an age of the material measured. The physics code is based on the buildup of {sup 241}Am from the decay of {sup 241}Pu.

Sawtooth phenomena have been studied on DIII-D and TFTR. In the experiments, with high power neutral beam injection the sawtooth characteristics were studied with fast electron temperature (ECE) and soft x-ray diagnostics. A strong ballistic electron heat pulse is found on DIII-D, stronger than was previously reported on TFTR. Evidence is presented in this paper that the ballistic effect is related to the sawtooth precursor. Fast, 2 msec interval, measurements on DIII-D were made of the ion temperature evolution following the sawtooth to document the ion heat pulse characteristics. It is found that the ion heat pulse does not exhibit the very fast, ''ballistic'' behavior seen for the electrons. Further, both the electron and ion heat pulses from partial sawtooth crashes and similar events are seen to propagate at speeds close to those expected from the power balance calculations of the thermal diffusivities. These results suggest that the fast sawtooth induced heat pulse propagation is not a feature of non-linear transport models, but that MHD events can have a strong effect on thermal transport.

A hazard assessment was conducted in the parking area of the Rapaport Building in Windsor Connecticut. The site had been a processing plant for nuclear fuels for the Navy's nuclear fuel program. The subject of the study was a storm drain that showed signs of increased radiation from enriched uranium products that had been produced or used in the adjacent building. The conclusion of the assessment is that there is no public hazard from radiation from the drain.

Measurements have been made to determine safe levels of laser exposure on common metals used in contact with high explosive (HE) samples. Laser light is often used on metals in contact with HE during alignment procedures and experimental data collection. The measurements look at temperature rise of the surface of the metal in contact with HE when laser energy is incident on the opposite side of the metal. The temperature rise was measured as a function of incident laser power, spot size, metal composition and metal thickness. Numerical simulations were also performed to solve the two-dimensional heat flow problem for the experimental geometry. In order to allow a single numerical simulation to represent a large number of physical cases, the equations used in the simulation were expressed in terms of dimensionless variables. The normalized numerical solutions can then be compared with the various experimental configurations used. Calculations and experiment agree well over the range measured.