A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Under Executive Order 12866, the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) reviews hundreds of agency rules each year before they are published in the Federal Register. Those reviews can have a significant effect on a broad array of public policies. GAO was asked to (1) describe OIRA's review process and any changes in its policies or processes in recent years, (2) provide detailed information about rules submitted by nine health, safety, or environmental agencies that were returned, withdrawn, or changed at OIRA's suggestion, and (3) describe how OIRA decided that certain existing rules merited high priority review."

Increased nitrogen levels have been correlated with decreased ductility and elevated ductile-to-brittle transition temperature in pressure vessel steels [1]. However, the exact role played by nitrogen in the embrittlement of steels remains unclear. Miller and Burke have reported atom probe ion microscopy findings from neutron-irradiated low-alloy pressure vessel steel showing the presence of a 1 to 2 ruonolayer thick film of Mo, N, and C at prior austenitic grain boundaries (GB's) [2], suggesting a role for nitrogen as an intergranular embrittler. It is of interest for the development of mitigation strategies whether nitrogen must combine with other impurities to form nitride precipitates in order to exert an embrittling effect. Briant et al [1] have associated the embrittling effect of N in steels exclusively with intergranular nitride formation. This association suggests that high nitrogen levels may be acceptable if nitride precipitation at grain boundaries is suppressed. To address whether precipitate formation is indeed essential to the N embrittlement process in pressure vessel steel, a computational study was undertaken to ascertain whether the presence of interstitial nitrogen alone could embrittle an Fe GB. If so, nitrogen in any form must be kept completely away from the grain boundaries, if not out of …

Adiabatic shear bands, obtained in compression deformation at a strain rate of 4000 s{sup -1}, in a pearlitic 1.3%C steel, were investigated. Shear-bands initiated at 55% compression deformation with the width of the band equal to 14 {micro}m. Nano-indentor hardness of the shear band was 11.5 GPa in contrast to the initial matrix hardness of 3.5 GPa. The high strength of the shear band is attributed to its creation from two sequential events. First, large strain deformation, at a high strain rate, accompanied by adiabatic heating, led to phase transformation to austenite. Second, retransformation upon rapid cooling occurred by a divorced eutectoid transformation. The result is a predicted microstructure consisting of nano-size carbide particles within a matrix of fine ferrite grains. It is proposed that the divorced eutectoid transformation occurs in iron-carbon steels during high rate deformation in ball milling, ball drop tests and in commercial wire drawing.

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

Eisenhower's Atoms for Peace speech in 1953 is remembered for engaging the world, and the Soviet Union in particular, in a dialogue about arms control and the formulation of a nuclear regime in which national and international security concerns growing from this unprecedented emerging and frightening new weapons capability would be addressed while tapping the civilian promise of nuclear applications for the good of mankind. Out of it came a series of initiatives, leading fifteen years later to the NPT, intended to allow the growth and spread of the beneficial uses of nuclear know-how while constraining the incentives and capabilities for nuclear weapons. The last 50 years has seen a gradual spread in nations with nuclear weapons, other nations with nuclear knowledge and capabilities, and still others with nuclear weapon intentions. Still most nations of the world have forgone weapon development, most have signed and abided by the NPT, and some that have had programs or even weapons, have turned these capabilities off. Yet despite this experience, and despite a relatively successful record up to a few years ago, there is today a clear and generally recognized crisis in nuclear governance, a crisis that affects the future of all the …

The main challenge to build the cryogenic system for the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider Upgrade is to accommodate the strong differences among three types of superconducting devices with regard to their structure, location, as well as the cryogenic operating requirement. Three kinds of cooling methods are applied in the overall cryogenic system, saturated liquid helium cooling for the SRF cavities, single-phase helium cooling for the SCQ magnets, and two-phase helium cooling for the SSM solenoid. The optimization for the BEPCII cryogenic system was carried out by using a large-scale computational simulation package. This paper presents thermal parameters and numerical analyses for the BEPCII cryogenic system.

This report summarizes the congressional-mandated presidential designation procedures on major illicit narcotics producing and transit countries that will be fully in effect for fiscal year 2004 and subsequent years. The report also provides background on the past procedures and presidential actions, congressional reform efforts, and the transitional procedures in effect for fiscal years 2002 and 2003.

A pair of superconducting interaction region quadrupole magnets in Beijing Electron-Positron Collider Upgrade (BEPCII) are to be cooled by supercritical helium in order to eliminate the flow instabilities in the constrained cooling channels. The fluid flow is simulated by the commercial computational dynamics fluid software. The heat loads to the superconducting quadrupole (SCQ) magnets from the radiation shields at 80 K and from the thermal conduction of mechanical supports are considered. The temperature distribution of the fluid in the liquid helium cooling channels, and the heat transfer in the SCQ magnet and by its supports are presented. The influence of mass flow rate on pressure drop in the cooling passage is analyzed.

A stand alone cryogenic system designed to maintain the magnets of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at between 80 and 100 K during accelerator shutdown periods has been conceived and designed at Brookhaven National Laboratory and built by PHPK Technologies of Columbus, Ohio. Since most thermal contraction occurs above this temperature, this unit, referred to as the 80 K Cooler, will eliminate the stresses associated with thermal cycling. The cooling system will provide the necessary refrigeration by circulating cooled Helium gas at approximately 15 atmospheres through the RHIC heat shields and magnets. This Helium is cooled by heat exchange with liquid nitrogen and circulated via three cold centrifugal pumps. The nominal delivered cooling capacity required to maintain the magnets at temperature is approximately 36 kW, primarily intercepted at the heat shield. The system also has separate heat exchangers for use as a pre-Cooler from room temperature to 82 K. Selection of sextant or sextants for pre-cooling is designed into the RHIC cryogenic distribution system. Topics covered include Cooler design decisions, details of the Cooler as built, integration into the existing RHIC cryogenic system and initial operating experience.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is a stadium-sized facility containing a 192-beam, 1.8-Megajoule, 500-Terawatt, ultraviolet laser system together with a 10-meter diameter target chamber with room for nearly 100 experimental diagnostics. NIF will be the world's largest and most energetic laser experimental system, providing a scientific center to study inertial confinement fusion and matter at extreme energy densities and pressures. NIF's energetic laser beams will compress fusion targets to conditions required for thermonuclear burn, liberating more energy than required to initiate the fusion reactions. Other NIF experiments will study physical processes at temperatures approaching 10{sup 8} K and 10{sup 11} bar, conditions that exist naturally only in the interior of stars, planets and in nuclear weapons. NIF has completed the first phases of its laser commissioning program. The first four beams of NIF have generated 106 kilojoules of infrared light and over 16 kJ at the third harmonic (351 nm). NIF's target experimental systems are being commissioned and experiments have begun. This paper discusses NIF's current and future experimental capability, plans for facility diagnostics, cryogenic target systems, specialized optics for experiments, and potential enhancements to NIF such as green laser operation and high-energy short …

HORIZONTAL BEAM VIBRATION AROUND 10HZ IN THE RELATIVISTIC HEAVY ION COLLIDER (RHIC) HAVE BEEN IDENTIFIED AND THE POSSIBLE SOURCES TO CAUSE THIS VIBRATION HAVE BEEN INVESTIGATED. TO DETERMINE THE HETIUM PRESSURE OSCILLATIONS AS A POSSIBLE PRIMARY VIBRATION SOURCE, HELIUM PRESSURE MEASUREMENTS WERE CARRIED OUT IN THE FIVE CRYOGENIC TRANSFER LINES AT 2 VALVE BOXES AND 6 LEAD PORTS AT 2 TRIPLET CRYOSTAT FOR BOTH MAGNET RINGS. ADDITIONALLY, COLD MA...

Status of the H-jet polarimeter development is reviewed. The preliminary results of atomic beam intensity and density measurements are presented.

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

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

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

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

News release about the reduction or elimination of several DART bus routes and corresponding adjustments to the frequency of DART and the T rail services, due to dropping ridership rates.

News release about the reduction or elimination of several DART bus routes and corresponding adjustments to the frequency of DART and the T rail services, due to dropping ridership rates.

Video footage from the KXAS-TV/NBC station in Fort Worth, Texas, to accompany a news story.

Student newspaper of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma that includes national, local, and campus news along with advertising.

This report is prepared annually to provide unclassified quantitative data on conventional arms transfers to developing nations by the United States and foreign countries for the preceding eight calendar years. Some general data are provided on worldwide conventional arms transfers, but the principal focus is the level of arms transfers by major weapons suppliers to nations in the developing world. The data in the report illustrate how global patterns of conventional arms transfers have changed in the post-Cold War and post-Persian Gulf War years.

On July 31, 2003, the Senate, facing obstacles to passage of its comprehensive energy bill (S. 14), substituted the energy legislation the Senate had passed in the 107th Congress. It is in conference, now as H.R. 6, in the 108th Congress. The Senate bill would require the Secretary of Transportation to issue, not later than 15 months after enactment, “newregulations setting forth increased fuel economy standards” reflecting “maximum feasible fuel economy levels” consistent with factors set out in the original legislation authorizing the corporate average fuel economy [CAFE] standards – the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA, P.L. 94-163).