A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided information on efforts to grant China membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO), focusing on: (1) the status of negotiations for China to join WTO; (2) the results of the negotiations as compared to U.S. objectives for these negotiations; and (3) trade and legal considerations about granting China permanent normal trade relations status."

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 county sheriff is authorized to manage and dispose of cahs bail bond money for unfiled criminal cases, and related questions (RQ-0117-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 county may discontinue its participation in the salary supplementation program established by section 51.702 of the Government Code, and related questions (RQ-0161-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 section 49.069(b) of the Water Code authorizes a water district to establish a retirement system for district directors, and related questions (RQ-0128-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 section 254.0401(e) of the Election Code precludes the Texas Ethics Commission from making certain contributor address information available on computer diskettes (RQ-0115-JC)

The objective of this calculation is to evaluate the temperature-dependent effective thermal conductivities of a repository-emplaced invert steel set and surrounding ballast material. The scope of this calculation analyzes a ballast-material thermal conductivity range of 0.10 to 0.70 W/m {center_dot} K, a transverse beam spacing range of 0.75 to 1.50 meters, and beam compositions of A 516 carbon steel and plain carbon steel. Results from this calculation are intended to support calculations that identify waste package and repository thermal characteristics for Site Recommendation (SR). This calculation was developed by Waste Package Department (WPD) under Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management (OCRWM) procedure AP-3.12Q, Revision 1, ICN 0, Calculations.

No work was performed; the two remaining Multi Annular Swirl Burner test campaigns are on hold pending selection of a new test facility (replacement for the shut down UTSI burner test facility) and identification of associated testing costs. The Second-Generation PFB Combustion Plant conceptual design prepared in 1987 is being updated to reflect the benefit of pilot plant test data and the latest advances in gas turbine technology. The updated plant is being designed to operate with 95 percent sulfur capture and a single Siemens Westinghouse (SW) 501G gas turbine. Using carbonizer and gas turbine data generated by Foster Wheeler (FW) and SW respectively, Parsons Energy and Chemicals Group prepared preliminary plant heat and materials based on carbonizer operating temperatures of 1700 and 1800 F and found the former to yield the higher plant efficiency. As a result, 1700 F has been selected as the preferred operating condition for the carbonizer. The previous first cut plant heat and material balance was refined and it predicts a 47.7% plant efficiency (HHV) with a net power output of 421.1 MWe. The latter includes a plant auxiliary load estimated to be 23.5 MWe or 5.26% of the gross plant power and a transformer …

The feasibility of chemically treating sediments from the Ft. Lewis, Washington, Logistics Center to develop a permeable barrier for dechlorination of TCE was investigated in a series of laboratory experiments.

The scientific motivation for conducting this research lies in an assessment of the current state of modeling in the subsurface, where ''modeling'' refers to any systematic framework used to gain understanding of a system. At present, subsurface modeling addresses only the phases present, and even there considers the modeling process to be an extension of single phase flow. The shortcoming of this approach is that the governing flow equations do not account for some of the important physical phenomena. therefore accurate simulation is more of an art that a scientific exercise. Experimental and field programs designed to measure data in support of these equations may actually be seeking curve fitting coefficients rather than information characteristic of physical phenomena. By providing a more general framework, we can contribute to improving the knowledge base related to important processes in the subsurface.

Standard problems were created to test the ability of American and Russian computational methods and data regarding the analysis of the storage and handling of Russian pressurized water reactor (VVER) mixed oxide fuel. Criticality safety and radiation shielding problems were analyzed. Analysis of American and Russian multiplication factors for fresh fuel storage for low-enriched uranium (UOX), weapons- (MOX-W) and reactor-grade (MOX-R) MOX differ by less than 2% for all variations of water density. For shielding calculations for fresh fuel, the ORNL results for the neutron source differ from the Russian results by less than 1% for UOX and MOX-R and by approximately 3% for MOX-W. For shielding calculations for fresh fuel assemblies, neutron dose rates at the surface of the assemblies differ from the Russian results by 5% to 9%; the level of agreement for gamma dose varies depending on the type of fuel, with UOX differing by the largest amount. The use of different gamma group structures and instantaneous versus asymptotic decay assumptions also complicate the comparison. For the calculation of dose rates from spent fuel in a shipping cask, the neutron source for UOX after 3-year cooling is within 1% and for MOX-W within 5% of one of …

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.

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed policies and procedures for conducting personal searches to determine the controls Customs Service has in place to ensure that airline passengers are not inappropriately selected or subjected to personal searches, focusing on how the Customs' personal search data: (1) identifies the characteristics--race and gender--of passengers who were more or less likely to be subjected to more intrusive searches; and (2) the results of searching those passengers."

The novelty of this work is in presenting interesting error properties of two types of asymptotically ''optimal'' quadrilateral meshes for bilinear approximation. The first type of mesh has an error equidistributing property where the maximum interpolation error is asymptotically the same over all elements. The second type has faster than expected ''super-convergence'' property for certain saddle-shaped data functions. The ''superconvergent'' mesh may be an order of magnitude more accurate than the error equidistributing mesh. Both types of mesh are generated by a coordinate transformation of a regular mesh of squares. The coordinate transformation is derived by interpreting the Hessian matrix of a data function as a metric tensor. The insights in this work may have application in mesh design near corner or point singularities.

In electrical power devices, ac losses from a superconductor is a primary factor which determines their usefulness as commercial power equipment. For this reason, extensive studies have been carried out on the losses of Bi{sub 2}Sr{sub 2}Ca{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub 10}/Ag, [Bi(2223)/Ag], tapes. These studies were mostly limited to a single isolated tape. However, a conductor in a power device is surrounded by other conductors and the precise magnetic field distribution around it is very different from that for a single conductor carrying currents or in ac fields. Since the precise field distribution in and around a superconductor is critical in determining the losses, it is very important to measure and to understand the losses in Bi(2223)/Ag tapes which are surrounded by other tapes as in a power device. Taking this fact into consideration, recently the authors have studied ac losses in stacks of Bi(2223)/Ag tapes in parallel and perpendicular applied fields and shown that they can calculate the losses in these cases utilizing the critical state model if a number of appropriate factors about properties of the tape are taken into a consideration. However, in a power device such as a transformer, magnetic fields near the ends of a solenoid …

McStain Enterprises' new cottage-style homes built under the U.S. Department of Energy's Building America program are designed to greatly reduce energy costs and improve indoor air quality for their customers in Longmont, Colorado. In addition, energy-efficient features in the homes provide owners with greater durability and value, allow some buyers to qualify for special energy-efficient mortgages, and can result in higher resale values. Features include improved building envelope and air distribution systems, high-efficiency heating and cooling systems, improved indoor air quality, and Green Builder concepts from Colorado's Green Builder Program.

The CAN interface cards that are currently in use are PCMCIA based and use a microprocessor and CAN chip that are no longer in production. The long-term support of the SGT CAN interface is of concern due to this issue along with performance inadequacies and technical support. The CAN bus is at the heart of the SGT trailer. If the CAN bus in the SGT trailer cannot be maintained adequately, then the trailer itself cannot be maintained adequately. These concerns led to the need for a CRADA to help develop a new product that would be called the ''Gryphon'' CAN tool. FM and T provided manufacturing expertise along with design criteria to ensure SGT compatibility and long-term support. FM and T also provided resources for software support. Dearborn provided software and hardware design expertise to implement the necessary requirements. Both partners worked around heavy internal workloads to support completion of the project. This CRADA establishes a US source for an item that is very critical to support the SGT project. The Dearborn Group had the same goal to provide a US alternative to German suppliers. The Dearborn Group was also interested in developing a CAN product that has performance characteristics …

The author has been investigating the affective and intellectual views that gifted children have about computers. These studies have used various methodological approaches in order to develop a broad perspective on the issues involved in this topic. The author has used survey instruments (Sesko, 1998) and interview techniques (Sesko, 1999) to capture both statistical and narrative data. The objective of this study is to explore in depth the interactions that one student has with the machine and its applications. The driver for this and the previous studies was the paucity of research in the area of gifted and talented children and their involvement with what has become the primary intellectual tool of the century (Turkel, 1984). The second reason is that it has been posited that the intellectual characteristics of gifted children should enable those who are interested in computers to achieve a high level of proficiency with either computer applications or programming. Further, the ability to learn things at a young age should allow gifted children who use computers to develop a large variety of computer-based activities. The author has shown evidence to support these ideas in previous work. Finally, as Hausman (1985) claims, facilities with computers should allow …

Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Heavy Vehicle Technologies (OHVT) prepared a Technology Roadmap describing the challenges facing development of higher fuel efficiency, less polluting sport utility vehicles, vans, and commercial trucks. Based on this roadmap, a multiyear program plan (MYPP) was also developed, in which approaches to solving the numerous challenges are enumerated. Additional planning has been performed by DOE and national laboratory staff, on approaches to solving the numerous challenges faced by heavy vehicle system improvements. Workshops and planning documents have been developed concerning advanced aerodynamics, frictional and other parasitic losses, and thermal management. Similarly, the Heavy Vehicle Propulsion Materials Program has developed its own multiyear program plan. The High Temperature Materials Laboratory, a major user facility sponsored by OHVT, has now developed its program plan, described herein. Information was gathered via participation in the development of OHVT's overall Technology Roadmap and MYPP, through personal contacts within the materials-user community, and from attendance at conferences and expositions. Major materials issues for the heavy vehicle industry currently center on trying to increase efficiency of (diesel) engines while at the same time reducing emissions (particularly NO{sub x} and particulates). These requirements dictate the use of increasingly stronger, …

The feasibility of chemically treating sediments from the Ft. Lewis, Washington, Logistics Center to develop a permeable barrier for dechlorination of TCE was investigated in a series of laboratory experiments.

The purpose of this 3-year cooperative research project was to develop a parallel kinematic machining (PKM) capability for complex parts that normally require expensive multiple setups on conventional orthogonal machine tools. This non-conventional, non-orthogonal machining approach is based on a 6-axis positioning system commonly referred to as a hexapod. Sandia National Laboratories/New Mexico (SNL/NM) was the lead site responsible for a multitude of projects that defined the machining parameters and detailed the metrology of the hexapod. The role of the Kansas City Plant (KCP) in this project was limited to evaluating the application of this unique technology to production applications.

The 2-MV Injector consists of a 17-cm-diameter surface ionization source, an extraction diode, and an electrostatic quadrupole (ESQ) accelerator, with maximum current of 0.8 A of potassium beam at 2 MeV. Previous performance of the Injector produced a beam with adequate current and emittance but with a hollow profile at the end of the ESQ section. We have examined the profile of the beam as it leaves the diode. The measured nonuniform beam density distribution qualitatively agrees with EGUN simulation. Implications for emittance growth in the post acceleration and transport phase will be investigated.

The authors consider the physics of the ballistic transport of intense ion beams in a heavy ion fusion reactor chamber filled with low pressure FLIBE gas. The authors consider first a single beam envelope model and show via a simple case that emittance growth is an issue in the chamber as well as in the accelerator. They develop a model for the neutralization of beam space-charge by the electrons produced by gas ionization by the beam and derive an expression for the evolution of the neutralization factor as the beam propagates into the chamber. They then extend the envelope model from a one species beam to a beam of ions of several charge states by considering the entire beam as a set of subbeams (one for each charge state) each described with coupled envelope equation. The fully electromagnetic PIC code BPIC was used to investigate the behavior in greater detail. A parametric study of the sensitivity of the final spot radius at the target versus the ion beam stripping and gas ionization cross-sections (which are characterized by large uncertainties) shows that, in the studied regime (Hylife-II parameters), the accessible window of cross-sections for ballistic transport in the chamber through neutral …

This scope document defines the work scope for accomplishing the design of the GE MS7001H and MS9001H (7H and 9H) combined-cycle power systems under the original ATS Phase 3 DOE Cooperative Agreement No. DE-FC21-95MC31176, and incorporates changes in scope required to convert Phase 3 to the ''restructured'' Phase 3R as defined in Amendment A012 to the Cooperative Agreement.

The U.S. Department of Energy has established a new, larger inertial fusion energy program. To manage program growth, we have developed a new inertial fusion energy research and we have established a Virtual National Laboratory for Heavy Ion Fusion. There has been significant technical progress. Improvements in target design have reduced the predicted energy requirements by approximately a factor of two. There have also been important experiments on chamber dynamics and other inertial fusion technologies. The accelerator program has completed a number of small-scale experiments. Experiments with driver-scale beams are being designed -- including experiments with driver-scale ion sources and injectors. Finally we are developing the technologies needed to build a major research facility known as the Integrated Research Experiment (IRE)