Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the economic and compliance issues associated with two proposed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations to clean up polluted waters, focusing on: (1) the reasonableness of EPA's economic analyses for the two proposed regulations; and (2) whether EPA's determinations under the Unfunded Mandated Reform Act of 1995 and the Regulatory Flexibility Act were adequately supported."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the establishment and operation of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), focusing on: (1) system availability and responsiveness; (2) type of information available under NICS compared to that available to state and local law enforcement agencies prior to NICS; (3) advantages and disadvantages of NICS background checks being conducted by designated state agencies rather than the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI); and (4) the extent to which transactions under NICS have resulted in firearms being sold to persons ineligible to possess a firearm."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on heroin production, focusing on: (1) the reason for the discrepancy between the published production estimates of Afghanistan's 1999 opium poppy crop by the U.S. government and the United Nations Drug Control Program (UNDCP); (2) whether Afghanistan heroin is being shipped to the United States; and (3) whether the Netherlands is a transshipment site for drugs destined for the United States."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed Nuclear Regulatory Commission's (NRC) new rule on fee recovery. GAO noted that: (1) the final rule would implement for fiscal year (FY) 2000 section 6101 of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990; (2) it requires NRC to recover from its applicants and licensees approximately 100 percent of its budget authority, less amounts appropriated from the Nuclear Waste Fund; (3) for FY 2000, NRC must collect approximately $447 million through these fees; (4) two types of fees are assessed: (a) applicants and licensees are charged for specific services, such as inspections and licensing reviews, that are provided by the NRC; and (b) NRC assesses an annual fee to its licensees to recover generic costs that cannot be attributed to specific licensees; and (5) NRC complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

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 county tax assessor-collector or the county treasurer may electronically transfer tax funds from the tax assessor-collector's account to the appropriate county fund (RQ-0162-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 stat salary supplement should be included in determining who is the "highest paid elected county officer" for purposes of sections 150.032 of the Texas Local Government Code (RQ-0174-JC)

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

Semiweekly newspaper from Seminole, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

These valves are 1/2 inch ball valves fabricated of 316 stainless steel. Packing is TFE (standard). They are used as isolation valves for pressure instrumentation in the SCHe System between the helium bottle supply manifolds and safety class helium pressure instrumentation, and in lower pressure SCHe supply line.

These pressure switches are located in the SCHe helium supply lines at the pressure bottles and upstream of the PRV. The switches monitor the SCHe supply bottle pressure and are set to alarm at 2200 psig. There is one switch for each SCHe supply (4). Electronic output signal is NON-SAFETY (GS).

These gas bottles and associated valves provide the safety grade helium source for emergency MCO purge.

This report provides the basis for closing the organic solvent safety issue. Sufficient information is presented to conclude that risk posed by an unmitigated organic solvent fire is within risk evaluation guidelines.

This Sampling and Analysis Plan presents the rationale and strategy for sampling and analysis activities to support removal of debris from the K-East and K-West Basins located in the 100K Area at the Hanford Site. This project is focused on characterization to support waste designation for disposal of waste at the Environmental Restoration Disposal Facility (ERDF). This material has previously been dispositioned at the Hanford Low-Level Burial Grounds or Central Waste Complex. The structures that house the basins are classified as radioactive material areas. Therefore, all materials removed from the buildings are presumed to be radioactively contaminated. Because most of the materials that will be addressed under this plan will be removed from the basins, and because of the cost associated with screening materials for release, it is anticipated that all debris will be managed as low-level waste. Materials will be surveyed, however, to estimate radionuclide content for disposal and to determine that the debris is not contaminated with levels of transuranic radionuclides that would designate the debris as transuranic waste.

These valves are 1/4 inch ball valves fabricated of 316 stainless steel. Packing is TFE (standard). They provide an isolation function between SCHe Purge Line C, (PV-V-*079), and Purge Line D, (PV-V-*080), and the Process Vent.

These 0-15 psig pressure switches are located in the SCHe helium purge lines after PCV-5*23 and before PCV-5*27. The pressure switches monitor the pressure being maintained between the two PCVs and actuate on low pressure of 15 psig. This design is used for each of the SCHe supply lines (4). Electronic output signal is NON-SAFETY (GS).

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Commodity Credit Corporation's (CCC) major rule on the distribution of Agricultural Disaster and Market Assistance. GAO noted that: (1) the interim and final rules, in part, implement statutory provisions related to cottonseed market loss, a competitiveness program for extra long staple cotton, warehouse-stored tobacco loss assistance, pasture recovery, oilseeds marketing loss, livestock disaster assistance for contract growers and emergency assistance for Harney County, Oregon; and (2) CCC complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

One of the major motivators of this work is the Mercury Project, which is a 1 kW scalable diode-pumped solid-state laser system under development at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). Major goals include 100 J pulses, 10% wallplug efficiency, 10 Hz repetition rate, and a 5 times diffraction limited beam. To achieve these goals the Mercury laser incorporates ytterbium doped Sr{sub 5}(PO{sub 4}){sub 3}F (S-FAP) as the amplifier gain medium. The primary focus of this thesis is a full understanding of the properties of this material which are necessary for proper design and modeling of the system. Ytterbium doped fluorapatites, which were previously investigated at LLNL, were found to be ideal candidate materials for a high power amplifier systems providing high absorption and emission cross sections, long radiative lifetimes, and high efficiency. A family of barium substituted S-FAP crystals were grown in an effort to modify the pump and emission bandwidths for application to broadband diode pumping and short pulse generation. Crystals of Yb{sup 3+}:Sr{sub 5-x}Ba{sub x}(PO{sub 4}){sub 3}F where x < 1 showed homogeneous lines offering 8.4 nm (1.8 times enhancement) of absorption bandwidth and 6.9 nm (1.4 times enhancement) of emission bandwidth. The gain saturation fluence of Yb:S-FAP …

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

Long term testing of the IMRA Wattlite oscillator began this month. The oscillator was operated for over 250 hours while monitoring the output power, the center wavelength and the pointing stability. Due to safety requirements, data was only collected during normal working hours. At night, the external shutter was closed so no data was collected, however, the laser continued to operate. In this mode of operation, approximately 80 hours of data was taken during the 250 hours of operation. The laser was turned off during the two weekend periods of this test series and restarted the following Monday. The warm-up period of the oscillator is most evident in the wavelength data shown in Figure 1. During the two cold start periods, the laser required about two hours for the wavelength to stabilize. Excluding the warm-up periods, the wavelength drift was approximately {+-} 0.1nm over the 250 hours of operation. The output power was monitored with a large area photo-diode. A plot of the output power as a function of time is shown in Figure 2. The two cold start periods are also evident in this data showing the same two-hour warm-up period for the power to stabilize. Once the laser …

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has prepared a Nuclear Criticality Safety Bibliographic Database that is now available via the Internet. This database is a component of the U.S. DOE Nuclear Criticality Safety Program (NCSP) Web site. This WWW resource was developed as part of the DOE response to the DNFSB Recommendation 97-2, which reflected the need to make criticality safety information available to a wide audience. To the extent possible, the hyperlinks on the Web pages direct the user to original source of the reference material in order to ensure accuracy and access to the latest versions. A master index is in place for simple navigation through the site. A search capability is available to assist in locating the on-line reference materials. Among the features included are: A user-friendly site map for ease of use; A personnel registry; Links to all major laboratories and organizations involved in the many aspects of criticality safety; General help for new criticality safety practitioners, including basic technical references and training modules; A discussion of computational methods; An interactive question and answer forum for the criticality safety community; and Collections of bibliographic references mdvahdation experiments. This paper will focus on the bibliographic database. This database …

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Robert Hobbs. Hobbs joined the Army in the spring of 1943. He served with the 35th Infantry Division, and deployed to England in May of 1944. His job was to drive a machine gun Jeep. Hobbs participated in the invasion of Normandy, the Battle of Saint-Lô and the Battle of the Bulge. He returned to the US and was discharged in August of 1945.

The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an oral interview with Dwight Pendleberry. Pendleberry joined the Army with his brother prior to the outbreak of war with Japan. After training as an ordnance man in the artillery, Pendleberry's company was sent to the Philippines in September, 1941. Pendleberry describes the Japanese attack on the Philippines and the subsequent fall of Bataan. He escaped to Corregidor with a few other people only to be captured there one month later. After being taken to Manila, Pendleberry was sent to Cabanatuan. By that time, he had contracted malaria. From there, he was selected to be on a work detail loading and unloading Japanese ships in Manila. Pendleberry also describes executions, genral mistreatment and outright torture at the hands of the Japanese captors. Eventually, Pendleberry and many other POWs were shipped aboard the Noto Maru to Taiwan, then Japan. Pendleberry wound up at Omori prison camp in Tokyo Bay. He describes the low-level fire bombing mission over Tokyo, which took place one night in March, 1945. After that, Pendleberry was moved to northern Japan to work at a coal mine. After the war, Pendleberry was liberated and repatriated back to the US through …

The Waste Handling Building Fire Protection System provides the capability to detect, control, and extinguish fires and/or mitigate explosions throughout the Waste Handling Building (WHB). Fire protection includes appropriate water-based and non-water-based suppression, as appropriate, and includes the distribution and delivery systems for the fire suppression agents. The Waste Handling Building Fire Protection System includes fire or explosion detection panel(s) controlling various detectors, system actuation, annunciators, equipment controls, and signal outputs. The system interfaces with the Waste Handling Building System for mounting of fire protection equipment and components, location of fire suppression equipment, suppression agent runoff, and locating fire rated barriers. The system interfaces with the Waste Handling Building System for adequate drainage and removal capabilities of liquid runoff resulting from fire protection discharges. The system interfaces with the Waste Handling Building Electrical Distribution System for power to operate, and with the Site Fire Protection System for fire protection water supply to automatic sprinklers, standpipes, and hose stations. The system interfaces with the Site Fire Protection System for fire signal transmission outside the WHB as needed to respond to a fire emergency, and with the Waste Handling Building Ventilation System to detect smoke and fire in specific areas, to protect …

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