This report discusses the vote on H.R. 2400, the "Building Efficient Surface Transportation and Equity Act of 1997"(BESTEA), an omnibus bill to fund surface transportation into the next century.

This report briefly summarizes Employment Division, Oregon Department of Human Resources v. Smith, the legislative history of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), the Supreme Court's decision in City of Boerne, Texas v. Flores, and RFRA's current legal status, and notes the introduction of the Religious Liberty Protection Act (RLPA).

The 105 Congress has sought to raise the priority of combating religious persecution worldwide among U.S. foreign policy objectives. The difficulty has been in agreeing on legislation that would effectively deal with religious persecution without adversely affecting other important U.S. interests. On May 14, 1998, the House passed H.R. 2431 (the Freedom from Religious Persecution Act of 1998) establishing in the State Department a Director of the Office of Religious Persecution Monitoring who is to issue an annual report assessing religious persecution abroad. The legislation places sanctions on countries and groups that carry out or permit such activities. The Senate may soon consider S. 1868 establishing an office in the Department of State to monitor religious persecution headed by an Ambassador at Large and requiring the President to take some action from a broad list of options against countries found engaging in or tolerating religious persecution.

“Rhetoric,” wrote Aristotle, “is the power of determining in a particular case what are the available means of persuasion.” This report reviews some effective means for the rhetoric of persuasive communication in speeches written by congressional staff for Senators and Representatives.

One of the primary vehicles for federal support of the arts and humanities is the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities, composed of the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This report describes the issues and options raised in the 105th Congress with regard to both authorization and appropriations for support of the arts and humanities.

For constituents who want to learn more about the topics that interest them, the Congressional Research Service has prepared this guide to locate information in libraries. It includes sources of background information (encyclopedias, almanacs, business directories, statistics, and biographical directories), current information from newspapers and magazines, organizations, foundations, government, politics, legislation, and books and periodicals. It lists a number of Internet search engines. This report will be updated from time to time.

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 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.

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the Railroad Commission is authorized to refund certain feeds paid pursuant to Natural Resources Code section 113.244 and related questions (RQ-1063)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Authority of a commissioners court to impose a limit on the farming out of county prisoners, and related questions (RQ-1041)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation must defer enforcing general reach-range requirements against gasoline pump credit-card readers until the federal government has adopted reach-range requirements specifically applicable to the credit card readers (RQ-1141)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether municipal utility district may contract with county for provision of additional security patrols in district (RQ-1013)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Regional water planning groups established by section 16.053, Water Code (RQ-1135)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Constitutionality of municipal juvenile curfew ordinance (RQ-1173)

Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether, under Local Government Code section 171.003(a), the Wood County Commissioners Court may approve an invoice from an inn owned by a member of the Wood County Industrial Commission and his wife (RQ-1158)

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) supports an applied superconductivity program entitled ''Superconductivity Program for Electric Power Systems.'' Activities within this program contribute to development of the high-temperature superconductor (HTS) technology needed for industry to proceed with the commercial development of electric power applications such as motors, generators, transformers, transmission cables, and current limiters. Research is conducted in three categories: wire development, systems technology development, and Superconductivity Partnership Initiative (SPI). Wire development activities are devoted to improving the critical current density (J{sub c}) of short-length HTS wires, whereas systems technology development focuses on fabrication of long-length wires, coils, and on magnets. The SPI activities are aimed at development of prototype products. Significant progress has been made in the development of (HTSs) for various applications: some applications have already made significant strides in the marketplace, while others are still in the developmental stages. For successful electric power applications, it is very important that the HTS be fabricated into long-length conductors that exhibit desired superconducting and mechanical properties. Several parameters of the PIT technique must be carefully controlled to obtain the desired properties. Long lengths of Bi-2223 tapes with respectable superconducting properties have been fabricated by a carefully designed thermomechanical treatment process. …

High-temperature fracture strength and compressive creep of an electrodischarge-machinable composite, Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}-30.9 vol.% SiC whiskers-23 vol.% TiC particles have been studied to 1200 C and 1450 C, respectively, in inert atmosphere. Microstructures of fractured and deformed specimens were examined by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. Fast fracture occurred at T {le} 1200 C. Steady-state creep was achieved for T > 1350 C at stresses < 80 MPa, with the rate-controlling mechanism being partially unaccommodated grain-boundary sliding, with a stress exponent of {approx}1 and an activation energy of {approx}470 kJ/mol.

The Argonne Wakefield Accelerator group develops accelerating structures based on dielectric loaded waveguides. We use high charge short electron bunches to excite wakefields in dielectric loaded structures, and a second (low charge) beam to probe the wakefields left behind by the drive beam. We report measurements of beam parameters and also initial results of the dielectric loaded accelerating structures. We have studied acceleration of the probe beam in these structures and we have also made measurements on the RF pulses that are generated by the drive beam. Single drive bunches, as well as multiple bunches separated by an integer number of RF periods have been used to generate the accelerating wakefields.

The purpose of the studies conducted at Argonne National Laboratory is to understand the impact mental representational systems have in identifying how user comfort parameters influence how information is to best be presented. By understanding how each individual perceives information based on the three representational systems (visual, auditory and kinesthetic modalities), it has been found that a different approach must be taken in the design of interfaces resulting in an outcome that is much more effective and representative of the users mental model. This paper will present current findings and future theories to be explored.

Experimental Breeder Reactor-II (EBR-II), an experimental sodium cooled fast breeder reactor located at Argonne National Laboratory-West (ANL-W), was shut down in 1994, and has since been defueled in preparation for final plant closure. Approximately 100,000 gallons of liquid sodium is contained in the primary and secondary cooling systems of the EBR-II plant. The liquid sodium must be drained from the reactor systems during closure of the plant to place the reactor plant in an industrially and radiologically safe condition for long term storage or dismantlement. Because the liquid sodium is a listed waste under the Resource Conservation Recovery Act (RCRA), it is not suitable for disposal. It therefore must be transferred to the Sodium Process Facility (SPF), which is located approximately nine hundred feet from the reactor complex, where it will be processed into a non-reactive form, suitable for land disposal in Idaho. To facilitate this transfer, a heated pipeline for carrying liquid sodium metal from EBR-II to the SPF was designed and installed. The SPF was originally designed and built to process primary sodium from the Fermi-1 reactor. The sodium is stored at ANL-W in 55 gallon drums. Design of the SPF did not originally accommodate processing of EBR-II …

It is known that surface and subsurface damage in machined silicon nitride (Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}) ceramic components can significantly affect component strength and lifetime. Because Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} may transmit some light into its subsurface, they have developed an elastic optical scattering technique to provide two-dimensional image data for detecting surface or subsurface defects and machining damage. This technique has been used to analyze diamond-ground Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} specimens subjected to various machining conditions. The results were compared with photomicroscopy data for detect characterization and were correlated with machining conditions.

The motivation for parity experiments in simple atomic systems is that the atomic physics is known precisely so they directly test the weak interactions. We review the status of the parity experiments that have been done in atomic hydrogen and suggest some possibilities for experiments in helium like ions.

Recently we created La/Fe multilayers with a helical magnetic structure imprinted from the conditions of growth rather than by the magnetic interactions between layers. Each sublayer was 30{angstrom} thick, and during deposition the sample was rotated in an external field of 3 Oe. a field strong enough to magnetize the Fe layer being deposited but not sufficient to perturb the magnetization of the Fe layers already grown. As a result adjacent Fe layers formed a helical structure with a chirality and periodicity determined by the rotational direction and speed of the substrate and the rate of deposition. Following this discovery, an extensive set of experiments (mainly using Kerr effect magnetometry and polarized neutron reflectivity) was undertaken to ascertain the stability of imprinted magnetic structures, and to understand the onset of magnetization during growth. La/Fe imprinted helical magnetic structures (of different La and Fe thicknesses) were found to be stable in time and to be permanently erased only by magnetic fields larger than 90 Oe.

The magnetic properties of La/Fe multilayers were tested by magneto-optical Kerr effect and polarized neutron reflectometry. The experiments indicated that above a layer thickness t{sub la} = 25{angstrom} the magnetic state of the virgin sample is represented by a spiral-like arrangement of magnetizations of subsequent Fe layers, whereas each Fe layer itself is ferromagnetic. Polarized neutron reflectometry shows that the helix has predominantly one chirality over the entire surface area of several cm{sup 2}. Tine magnetic spiral structure is imprinted during the growth process by rotating the sample in a small residual magnetic field. External magnetic field of 90 Oe are sufficient to erase the magnetic structure irreversibly.