Newsletter of the Texas Bureau of Disease Control and Epidemiology discussing the news, activities, and events of the organization and other information related to health in Texas.

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, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Accessibility under the Texas Open Records Act of Texas Supreme Court telephone records.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

Nuclear-explosive prompt diagnostics techniques and equipment are surveyed. These techniques and equipment have been developed to answer nuclear-explosive performance questions. The techniques and equipment must be selective in radiation sensitivity, linear in calibration, fast, insensitive to strong signals, wide in dynamic range, and reliable. Diagnostic techniques and equipment measure neutron, gamma-ray, and x-ray emissions, as well as aid in the determination of the physical location of the production of radiation through imaging. The high cost of nuclear experiments will continue to encourage the development of sophisticated techniques to gain as much information as possible from each experiment.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

Three lectures comprise the report. The lecture, Atomic Structure, is primarily theoretical and covers four topics: (1) Non-relativistic one-electron atom, (2) Relativistic one-electron atom, (3) Non-relativistic many-electron atom, and (4) Relativistic many-electron atom. The lecture, Radiative and Collisional Transitions, considers the problem of transitions between atomic states caused by interactions with radiation or other particles. The lecture, Ionization Balance: Spectral Line Shapes, discusses collisional and radiative transitions when ionization and recombination processes are included. 24 figs., 11 tabs.

Proceedings of Public Hearing on Vocational Education held April 25, 1986 in Austin, Texas that focused on problems with vocational education and ways to fix those problems.

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, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a janitorial service contract is exempt from the competitive bidding requirements of article 2368a.5, V.T.C.S..

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.

This report provides a series of assessments regarding China's strategy and objectives for computer development. It examines the specific role played by acquisition of foreign computers and related know-how by PRC.

The Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) is conducting research on the development of microalgae biomass systems for the production of liquid fuels. Particularly appealing at this time, is the idea of using indigenous resources of the Southwest for large-scale production of microalgae.

Recent work on s-process nucleosynthesis has focused attention on the investigation of capture cross sections for nuclei in the mass region near the N = 50 closed neutron shell. Of special astrophysical interest are (i) the analysis of the s-process branching through /sup 85/Kr as a monitor of stellar neutron density and temperature and (ii) the investigation of the possible chronometric pair /sup 87/Rb-/sup 87/Sr as an independent measure of the age of the galaxy. For both problems the capture cross sections of the two pure s-process nuclei /sup 86/Sr and /sup 87/Sr have to be known to an accuracy of 5% or better. The current investigation of the neutron capture cross sections for /sup 86/Sr and /sup 87/Sr was undertaken to extend recent measurements by Walter and Beer to energies below 3.5 keV, where strong resonances are known to exist, and to explore the discrepancy in the results of the Maxwellian averaged capture cross section of /sup 87/Sr at kT = 30 keV as reported by previous investigators. 9 refs., 1 fig.

One possible near term application of a muon-producing magnetic-mirror scheme would be to build a high-flux neutron source for radiation damage studies. The careful arrangement of triton orbits will result in many of the ..pi../sup -/s being produced near the axis of the magnetic mirror. The pions quickly decay into muons, which are transported into a small (few-cm-diameter) reactor chamber producing approximately 1-MW/m/sup 2/ neutron flux on the chamber walls, using a laboratory accelerator and magnetic mirror. The costs of construction and operation of the triton injection accelerator probably introduces most of the uncertainty in the viability of this scheme. If a 10-..mu..A, 600 MeV neutral triton accelerator could be built for less than $100 million and operated cheaply enough, one might well bring muon-catalyzed fusion into practical use.

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, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether the Texas Highway Commission may temporarily close a portion of the Interstate 35E frontage road in Dallas for the purpose of allowing an intercity "grand prix" race.

Weekly report of the Texas Crop and Livestock Reporting Service on broiler chick numbers in Texas and compared with other states. It includes compiled statistics across six consecutive weeks, from the week ending May 17 to the week ending June 21, during 1985 and 1986 for broiler eggs set, chicks hatched, and chicks placed.

Periodic bulletin analyzing issues related to Texas legislation. This issue focuses on the effects of the oil market crash on the Texas state budget.

For muon-catalyzed fusion to be of practical interest, a very efficient means of producing muons must be found. We describe a scheme for producing muons that may be more energy efficient than any heretofore proposed. There are, in particular, some potential advantages of creating muons from collisions of high energy tritons confined in a magnetic mirror configuration. If one could catalyze 200 fusions per muon and employ a uranium blanket that would multiply the neutron energy by a factor of 10, one might produce electricity with an overall plant efficiency (ratio of electric energy produced to nuclear energy released) approaching 30%. One possible near term application of a muon-producing magnetic-mirror scheme would be to build a high-flux neutron source for radiation damage studies. The careful arrangement of triton orbits will result in many of the ..pi../sup -/'s being produced near the axis of the magnetic mirror. The pions quickly decay into muons, which are transported into a small (few-cm-diameter) reactor chamber producing approximately 1-MW/m/sup 2/ neutron flux on the chamber walls, using a laboratory accelerator and magnetic mirror. The costs of construction and operation of the triton injection accelerator probably introduces most of the uncertainty in the viability of this …

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.

Silicon-germanium alloys are used as thermoelectric materials for radioisotope thermoelectric generators. One problem is the loss of the alloy by sublimation. In the Unicouple, sublimation was minimized by a Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ coating. In the Multicouple design the application of Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ coatings which is done at high temperature is not practical. Suppression of sublimation in the Multicouple design is presently accomplished by applying glass coatings. The difficulties encountered with the glass coatings are associated with the poor adherence of the coatings. In the present study, commercial oxide points (mainly ZrO/sub 2/) which have low thermal expansion coefficients are used as coating materials. No spalling from the surface of the coated sample occurred in 1506 hours at 1080/sup 0/C in vacuum, and sublimation was reduced significantly. Zirconium silicate was observed on the surface by x-ray diffraction.

The 6'' long final focus beam position monitors (short FF BPM's are longer, thus deliver more signal after a 15 nanosecond filter, than either the Linac or Arc monitors. The purpose of this note is to compare the resolution of the Arc vs Linac electronics when applied to a short FF 2'' diameter BPM. A method of calibrating the Arc modules is also tested and briefly discussed. The range of each DAC setting to minimize digitization error is also calculated.

We have successfully constructed and tested a pair of high-field coils that is part of the magnet set of the Mirror Fusion Test Facility (MFTF-B) at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Each coil consists of a multifilamentary Nb/sub 3/Sn magnet nested inside a multifilamentary NbTi magnet. During our test, these coils produced a central field of 12 T, with a peak conductor field of 12.5 T. The dimensions of the Nb/sub 3/Sn insert coil are: 1.34-m bore, 2.57-m outer diameter, and 1.14-m overall length. These coils were designed to be fully cryogenically stabilized and cooled by pool-boiling liquid helium. The operating current density of the Nb/sub 3/Sn coils is 2000 A/cm/sup 2/ and 2400 A/cm/sup 2/ for the NbTi magnet. In this paper, we present design considerations and details, construction techniques, and operational results of these coils.

The vaporization of a spherically symmetric liquid droplet homogeneously heated by a high-intensity laser pulse is investigated on the basis of a hydrodynamic description of the system composed of the vapor and ambient gas. In the limit of convective vaporization, the boundary conditions at the fluid-gas interface are formulated by using the notion of a Knudsen layer across which translational equilibrium is established. Numerical solutions to the hydrodynamic equations exhibit the existence of two shock waves propagating in opposite directions with respect to the contact discontinuity that separates the ambient gas and vapor. 17 refs., 6 figs.

An extended series of experiments has been used to investigate transition radiation in the x-ray spectral region. The x-rays were generated at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory electron-positron linear accelerator by 54 MeV electrons traversing multiple thin-foil targets. The measured angular and spectral distributions have shown excellent agreement with calculated predictions based on a simplified theoretical description of transition radiation. Recently, energy-resolved measurements of x-ray generation by targets consisting of multiple closely-spaced foils has clearly demonstrated the longitudinal coherence of transition radiation. This behavior might lead to a variety of applications such as tuneable narrow-band x-ray sources, measurement of x-ray dielectric constants, or particle beam diagnostics. These issues will be discussed, and recent results will be presented.

Newsletter of the Texas Bureau of Disease Control and Epidemiology discussing the news, activities, and events of the organization and other information related to health in Texas.