Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the process used by eight Michigan school districts to contract for Medicaid consulting and billing services, focusing on whether the process used by the school districts complied with Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) procurement regulations."

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; Attendance at meetings and speaking engagements by members of the Board of Managers of the Harris County Hospital District (RQ-0133-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 the Polygraph Examiners Board may inspect a polygraph examiner’s work product in the examiner’s place of business without a search warrant, and related question (RQ-0140-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 junior college district may procure insurance using a designated broker of record (RQ-0135-JC)

The purpose of this document is to provide the definition and means of maintaining the safety envelope (SE) for the Emergency Notification and Evacuation System (ENES). Together with the appendices, it provides: (1) The system requirements for determining system operability (Section 3.0); (2) Evaluations of equipment to determine the safety boundary for the system (Section 4.0); (3) List of system drawings that are annotated to show the SE boundaries (Appendix A); (4) Identification of the SE equipment by reference to systems and drawings (Appendix B); (5) Requirements for the individual SE equipment (Section 4.0); and (6) A list of the operational and surveillance procedures necessary to operate and maintain the system equipment within the SE (Sections 5.0 and 6.0). The Private Automatic Exchange (PAX) phones and PAX switchers are outside the safety envelope defined in WHC-SD-CP-OSR-010, Section 5.4.10, ''Safety Communication and Alarm Systems,'' Section 5.4.1 0.1, ''Major Components and Operating Characteristics,'' and Section 5.4.10.1.12, ''PAX System.'' The PAX override microphone system maintains the safety envelope, and functions as a backup to the evacuation sirens during an emergency.

The Spent Nuclear Fuels Project (SNFP) is charged with moving to storage 2,100 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel elements left over from plutonium production at DOE'S Hanford site in Washington state. Two new facilities, the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility (CVDF) and the Canister Storage Building (CSB) are in final construction. In order to meet aggressive schedule commitments, the SNFP chose to prepare the safety analysis reports (SAR's) in phases that covered only specific portions of each facility's design as it was built. Each SAR also merged the preliminary and final safety analysis reports into a single SAR, thereby covering all aspects of design, construction, and operation for that portion (phase) of the facility. A policy of ''NRC equivalency'' was also implemented in parallel with this effort, with the goal of achieving a rigor of safety analysis equivalent to that of NRC-licensed fuel processing facilities. DOE Order 5480.23. ''Nuclear Safety Analysis Reports'' allows preparation of both a phased and a merged SAR to accelerate construction schedules. However, project managers must be aware that such acceleration is not guaranteed. Managers considering this approach for their project should be cognizant of numerous obstacles that will be encountered. Merging and phasing SAR's will …

This document specifies the critical characteristics for Commercial Grade Items (CGI) procured for use within the safety envelope of PFP's PAX system as required by HNF-PRO-268 and HNF-PRO-1819. These are the minimum specifications that the equipment must meet in order to properly perform its safety function. There may be several manufacturers or models that meet the critical characteristics for any one item.

DOE Policy 450.4 mandates that safety be integrated into all aspects of the management and operations of its facilities. The goal of an institutionalized Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS) is to have a single integrated system that includes Environment, Safety, and Health requirements in the work planning and execution processes to ensure the protection of the worker, public, environment, and the federal property over the life cycle of the Environmental Restoration (ER) Project. The purpose of this Environmental Restoration Contractor (ERC) ISMS Phase MI Verification was to determine whether ISMS programs and processes were institutionalized within the ER Project, whether these programs and processes were implemented, and whether the system had promoted the development of a safety conscious work culture.

The objective of this project is to design, construct and field demonstrate a 3-MMscfd membrane system to recover natural gas liquids (NGL) and remove water from raw natural gas. An extended field test to demonstrate system performance under real-world conditions is required to convince industry users of the efficiency and reliability of the process. The system will be designed and fabricated by Membrane Technology and Research, Inc. (MTR) and then installed and operated at British Petroleum (BP)-Amoco's Pascagoula, MS plant. The Gas Research Institute will partially support the field demonstration and BP-Amoco will help install the unit and provide onsite operators and utilities. The gas processed by the membrane system will meet pipeline specifications for dewpoint and Btu value and can be delivered without further treatment to the pipeline. Based on data from prior membrane module tests, the process is likely to be significantly less expensive than glycol dehydration followed by propane refrigeration, the principal competitive technology. At the end of this demonstration project the process will be ready for commercialization. The route to commercialization will be developed during this project and may involve collaboration with other companies already servicing the natural gas processing industry.

Six vitrification runs were conducted in the 5-inch Cylindrical Induction Melter (CIM5) to evaluate the system's ability to process potential product loading extremes that may be encountered during Am/Cm vitrification in the F-Canyon MPPF. This evaluation demonstrates the CIM5 system's ability to vitrify feed streams of the specified extremes.

A lattice-Monte Carlo approach was developed to simulate ferroelectric domain behavior. The model utilizes a Hamiltonian for the total energy that includes electrostatic terms (involving dipole-dipole interactions, local polarization gradients, and applied electric field), and elastic strain energy. The contributions of these energy components to the domain structure and to the overall applied field response of the system were examined. In general, the model exhibited domain structure characteristics consistent with those observed in a tetragonally distorted ferroelectric. Good qualitative agreement between the appearance of simulated electrical hysteresis loops and those characteristic of real ferroelectric materials was found.

The degraded polycube samples were tested in air and argon/oxygen atmospheres to determine the effect of size increase on the flammable gases concentrations. Within the size range tested, the flammable gas generation rate increases with increasing size but the extrapolation of the data to actual processing polycube size yielded flammable gas species concentration in the off-gas stream below the lower flammable limit of all the major gas species identified. Extreme surface area increase with a powder sample showed no significant effect on the flammable gas generation rate. The polycube went through the thermal stabilization process by undergoing both pyrolysis and oxidation generating at the end a plutonium oxide powder that showed unmeasurable weight change at 1273 K.

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

Weekly newspaper from Harper, 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.

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

This documents the documentation that is required to be turned over to Operations with the Canister Cleaning System (CCS). The Acceptance for Beneficial Use will be updated as required prior to turnover. This document is prepared for the purposes of documenting an agreement among the various disciplines and organizations within the Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project as to what is required in terms of installed components of the CCS. This documentation will be used to achieve project closeout and turnover of ownership of the CCS to K Basins Operations.

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

Refrigerator energy use is a dominant component of total energy use for many low-income households. Poorly operating or inefficient refrigerators can place an unnecessary financial burden on those households or the public agencies that pay their electricity bills, such as housing authorities. This paper presents an analytic tool that is low cost and easy to use. The procedure can be implemented with minimal staff training. The tool enables housing providers or weatherization agencies to identify poorly operating or high use refrigerators and target them for replacement or repair. The use of the procedure is illustrated, and its value for participants in a bulk refrigerator purchase and replacement program is discussed.

Disilaoxacyclopentanes have proven to be excellent precursors to sol-gel type materials. These materials have shown promise as precursors for encapsulation and microelectronics applications. The polymers are highly crosslinked and are structurally similar to traditional sol-gels, but unlike typical sol-gels they are prepared without the use of solvents and water, they have low VOC's and show little shrinkage during processing.

This report covers the accomplishments of the home energy ratings systems/energy-efficient mortgages (HERS/EEMs) pilot states from 1993 through 1998, including such indicators as funding, ratings and EEMs achieved, active raters, and training and marketing activities. A brief description of each HERS program's evolution is included, as well as their directors' views of the programs' future prospects. Finally, an analysis is provided of successful HERS program characteristics and factors that appear to contribute to HERS program success.

Interfaces play an important role in determining the effect of electric fields on the mechanism of the formation spinel by solid-state reaction. The reaction occurs by the movement of phase boundaries but the rate of this movement can be affected by grain boundaries in the reactants or in the reaction product. Only by understanding these relationships will it be possible to engineer their behavior. As a particular example of such a study, MgIn{sub 2}O{sub 4} can be formed by the reaction between single-crystal MgO substrate and a thin film of In{sub 2}O{sub 3} with or without an applied electric field. High-resolution backscattered electron (BSE) imaging and electron backscattered diffraction (EBSD) in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) has been used to obtain complementary chemical and crystallographic information.

A wide variety of waste simulants were developed over the past few years to test various retrieval, pretreatment and waste immobilization technologies and unit operations. Experiments can be performed cost-effectively using non-radioactive waste simulants in open laboratories. This document reviews the composition of many previously used waste simulants for remediation of tank wastes at the Hanford reservation. In this review, the simulants used in testing for the retrieval, pretreatment, and vitrification processes are compiled, and the representative chemical and physical characteristics of each simulant are specified. The retrieval and transport simulants may be useful for testing in-plant fluidic devices and in some cases for filtration technologies. The pretreatment simulants will be useful for filtration, Sr/TRU removal, and ion exchange testing. The vitrification simulants will be useful for testing melter, melter feed preparation technologies, and for waste form evaluations.