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Many Members have in recent years expressed dissatisfaction with the way the House arranges its work schedule. The chief complaints appear to be that existing practices make inefficient use of time and do not allow predictability, generating persistent scheduling conflicts and other time pressures. This report discusses how four types of House schedule that have been practiced or proposed during the past decade address these areas of dissatisfaction.

As a result of a series of laws enacted in 1983, 1985 and 1990, Social Security is considered to be "off budget" for federal budget purposes. While the meaning of this might seem obvious -- that Social Security is not to be considered as part of the federal budget -- many people are confused by the continued use of aggregate budget figures that include Social Security's receipts and expenditures.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 "Nationwide, states reported that federal and state expenditures for child care under the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF) block grant and the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) block grant grew from $4.1 billion in fiscal year 1997 to $6.9 billion in fiscal year 1999 and totaled over $16 billion in constant fiscal year 1997 dollars for this three-year period. More than half of the children whose child care was subsidized with CCDF funds were cared for in centers, and CCDF subsidies for all types of care were primarily provided through vouchers. Eligible parents who were subsidized by CCDF were offered a choice of receiving a voucher to pay a provider of their choosing or using a provider who had a contract with the state. More than half of all the states gave TANF and former TANF families transitioning to work first or second priority for receiving child care subsidies while other eligible low-income families were assigned lower priorities. Officials reported that their states funded the child care needs of their TANF and former TANF families transitioning to work, and were serving all of these …

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins ""

This 20-page brochure profiles industrial manufacturing firms who are achieving significant energy savings in their plants. The DOE Office of Industrial Technologies six plant-of-the-year nominees are featured, and an additional 10 projects from other companies are also highlighted. Information on OIT's awards and recognition process, and information on OIT and BestPractices is also included.

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RSAP is a computer code for display of neutron cross section data and selected SAMMY output. SAMMY is a multilevel R-matrix code for fitting neutron time-of-flight cross-section data using Bayes' method. RSAP, which runs on the Digital Unix Alpha platform, reads ORELA Data Files (ODF) created by SAMMY and uses graphics routines from the PLPLOT package. In addition, RSAP can read data and/or computed values from ASCII files with a format specified by the user. Plot output may be displayed in an X window, sent to a postscript file (rsap.ps), or sent to a color postscript file (rsap.psc). Thirteen plot types are supported, allowing the user to display cross section data, transmission data, errors, theory, Bayes fits, and residuals in various combinations. In this document the designations theory and Bayes refer to the initial and final theoretical cross sections, respectively, as evaluated by SAMMY. Special plot types include Bayes/Data, Theory--Data, and Bayes--Data. Output from two SAMMY runs may be compared by plotting the ratios Theory2/Theory1 and Bayes2/Bayes1 or by plotting the differences (Theory2-Theory1) and (Bayes2-Bayes1).

The Melt Attack and Coolability Experiments (MACE) program has been underway at Argonne National Laboratory addressing the ability of water to quench and thermally stabilize a molten core concrete interaction (MCCI) when the interaction is flooded from above. In this program, which has been sponsored by the EPRI-headed Advanced Containment Experiments (ACE) international consortium, large scale reactor material integral effects experiments have been conducted, in parallel with related modeling efforts. Plans are currently being developed for continued utilization of the MACE facility under the sponsorship of the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) to achieve the following objectives: (i) resolution of the ex-vessel debris coolability issue through a redirected program which focuses on providing both confirmatory evidence and test data for the coolability mechanisms identified in MACE integral effects tests; and (ii) address remaining uncertainties related to long-term two-dimensional MCCI under dry cavity conditions. In terms of the ex-vessel debris coolability issue, separate effects tests are planned to provide data on key melt coolability mechanisms identified in MACE integral effects tests. The results of these tests will provide both confirmatory evidence and test data to support development of validated models for extrapolation to plant conditions. In terms of dry cavity conditions, reactor …

Thick-film technology has been successfully adapted for the design and fabrication of magnetic probes of a new type suitable for use in the simultaneous ultra-high vacuum and high-temperature environment of a nuclear fusion device. The maximum usable temperature is expected to be around 900 degrees C. This new probe has a specific sensitivity (coupling area per unit volume) an order of magnitude higher than a conventional coil. The new probe in one implementation is capable of simultaneously measuring magnetic field in three orthogonal directions about a single spatial point and in two frequency ranges. Low-frequency coils have a measured coupling area of 296-323 cm squared and a frequency response of about 300 kHz. High-frequency coils have a design coupling area of 12-15 cm squared.

A low-{beta} insertion has been designed for the BTeV experiment at C0. With {+-} 12 m for detector space, a {beta}* of 0.5 m can be achieved using 170 T/m magnets in the final focus triplets. A total half-crossing angle of 240 {micro}r is necessary to keep the beams separated by 5{sigma} at the 2nd parasitic crossing. There are 2 possible Tevatron collision scenarios: B0 and D0, but not C0, and; C0, but not B0 or D0.

Resonant heating of particles by an electrostatic wave propagating perpendicular to a confining uniform magnetic field is examined. It is shown that, with a sufficiently large wave amplitude, significant perpendicular stochastic heating can be obtained with wave frequency at a fraction of the cyclotron frequency.

The SUGGEL computer code has been developed to suggest a value for the orbital angular momentum of a neutron resonance that is consistent with the magnitude of its neutron width. The suggestion is based on the probability that a resonance having a certain value of g{Gamma}{sub n} is an l-wave resonance. The probability is calculated by using Bayes' theorem on the conditional probability. The probability density functions (pdf's) of g{Gamma}{sub n} for up to d-wave (l=2) have been derived from the {chi}{sup 2} distribution of Porter and Thomas. The pdf's take two possible channel spins into account. This code is a tool which evaluators will use to construct resonance parameters and help to assign resonance spin. The use of this tool is expected to reduce time and effort in the evaluation procedure, since the number of repeated runs of the fitting code (e.g., SAMMY) may be reduced.

Pion-nucleon elastic scattering in the dominant P{sub 33} channel is examined in the model in which the interaction is of the form {pi} + N {leftrightarrow} N, {Delta}(1232). A Low equation formalism is employed which uses covariant phase space and normalizations, a finite nucleon mass, and generates the invariant scattering amplitude which is free of kinematic singularities. New expressions are found for the elastic pion-nucleon scattering amplitude which differ from existing formula both in the kinematics and in the treatment of the renormalization of the nucleon mass and coupling constant. Fitting the model to the phase shifts in the P{sub 33} channel does not uniquely fix the parameters of the model. The cutoff for the pion-nucleon form factor is found to lie in the range {beta} = 750 {+-} 350 MeV/c. The masses of the nucleon and the {Delta} which would arise if there were no coupling to mesons are found to be m{sub N}{sup (0)} = 1179 {+-} 218 MeV and m{sub {Delta}}{sup (0)} = 1491 {+-} 198 MeV. The difference in these bare masses, a quantity which would be accounted for by a residual gluon interaction, is found to be {delta}m{sup (0)} = 341 {+-} 116 MeV.

This paper analyzes the energy efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions reductions potential of the U.S. pulp and paper industry, one of the largest energy users in the U.S. manufacturing sector. We examined over 45 commercially available state-of-the-art technologies and measures. The measures were characterized, and then ordered on the basis of cost-effectiveness. The report indicates that there still exists significant potential for energy savings and carbon dioxide emissions reduction in this industry. The cost-effective potential for energy efficiency improvement is defined as having a simple pay-back period of three years or less. Not including increased recycling the study identifies a cost-effective savings potential of 16% of the primary energy use in 1994. Including increased recycling leads to a higher potential for energy savings, i.e. a range of cost-effective savings between 16% and 24% of primary energy use. Future work is needed to further elaborate on key energy efficiency measures identified in the report including barriers and opportunities for increased recycling of waste paper.

It is found that high beta in low-aspect-ratio tori tends to stabilize the fishbone instability in a plasma with energetic circulating ions. The stabilization results from enhancement of the toroidal drift motion by large Shafranov shift, which makes it difficult to reconcile the condition of considerable energy exchange between the ions and the internal kink perturbation with the condition of the resonant wave-particle interaction.

The U.S. Department of Energy (USDOE) and Ukraine established a joint program in 1997 to address the need for remotely operated systems for unstructured environments in Ukraine such as the highly hazardous conditions inside the failed Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant (ChNPP) Unit 4, or Shelter Object. The environment inside Shelter Object is extremely hazardous due to ionizing radiation fields, high airborne contamination, and major industrial safety issues. Although Ukrainian workers have explored and mapped much of the internals of Unit 4 in the time since the accident during the morning hours of April 26, 1986, there remain areas where humans have not entered to this date. Based on the agreement between USDOE and Ukraine, the USDOE, in cooperation with the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), developed the Pioneer Robot and has provided it to the ChNPP within the framework of international technical assistance. Pioneer is capable of mobile platform movement and manipulation under teleoperated control, 3-dimensional mapping, and environmental data collection. The Pioneer is radiation hardened for conditions like those of Shelter Object. Pioneer has been evaluated on site in Ukraine for use in both the Shelter Object environment and the more general conditions of ChNPP decommissioning. This …

First results of gyrokinetic analysis of JET [Joint European Torus] ELMy [Edge Localized Modes] H-mode [high-confinement modes] plasmas are presented. ELMy H-mode plasmas form the basis of conservative performance predictions for tokamak reactors of the size of ITER [International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor]. Relatively high performance for long duration has been achieved and the scaling appears to be favorable. It will be necessary to sustain low Z(subscript eff) and high density for high fusion yield. This paper studies the degradation in confinement and increase in the anomalous heat transport observed in two JET plasmas: one with an intense gas puff and the other with a spontaneous transition between Type I to III ELMs at the heating power threshold. Linear gyrokinetic analysis gives the growth rate, gamma(subscript lin) of the fastest growing modes. The flow-shearing rate omega(subscript ExB) and gamma(subscript lin) are large near the top of the pedestal. Their ratio decreases approximately when the confinement degrades and the transport increases. This suggests that tokamak reactors may require intense toroidal or poloidal torque input to maintain sufficiently high |gamma(subscript ExB)|/gamma(subscript lin) near the top of the pedestal for high confinement.

The Task Force on Reactor-Based Plutonium Disposition, now an Expert Group, was set up through the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency to facilitate technical assessments of burning weapons-grade plutonium mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel in U.S. pressurized-water reactors and Russian VVER nuclear reactors. More than ten countries participated to advance the work of the Task Force in a major initiative, which was a blind benchmark study to compare code benchmark calculations against experimental data for the VENUS-2 MOX core at SCK-CEN in Mol, Belgium. At the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the HELIOS-1.4 code was used to perform a comprehensive study of pin-cell and core calculations for the VENUS-2 benchmark.

At the request of Safety and Ecology Corporation of Tennessee, radiation effects of the proposed Pulsed Fast Neutron Analysis (PFNA) Cargo Interrogation System have been examined. First, fissile cargo were examined to determine if a significant neutron signal would be observable during interrogation. Results indicated that ample multiplication would be seen for near critical bare targets. The water-reflected sphere showed relatively little multiplication. By implication, a fissile target shielded by hydrogenous cargo might not be detectable by neutron interrogation, particularly if reliance is placed on the neutron signal. The cargo may be detectable if use can be made of the ample increase in the photon signal. Second, dose rates were calculated at various locations within and just outside the facility building. These results showed that some dose rates may be higher than the target dose rate of 0.05 mrem/h. However, with limited exposure time, the total dose may be well below the allowed total dose. Lastly, estimates were made of the activation of structures and typical cargo. Most cargo will not be exposed long enough to be activated to levels of concern. On the other hand, portions of the structure may experience buildup of some radionuclides to levels of concern.

This report presents Origins, Deadlines, Requirements, and Uses of BiIIs, Resolutions, Nominations, and Treaties related to Congress.

This report provides information about the Stages of Action on Measures on Committee of the Whole.