This list provides a sampling of the rapidly proliferating number of agricultural resources available on the Internet. It is not intended to be exhaustive. It is divided into 24 main categories and 15 subcategories.

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The Clinton Administration took several actions to increase protection at designated marine sites, referred to as marine reserves or marine protected areas (MPAs). The idea of protecting marine areas has been discussed for many years, but has not been applied extensively in the marine environment. Congress is likely to examine both the recent Clinton Administration actions and the concepts behind MPAs, and consider any Bush administration views, especially as it considers appropriations and reauthorization legislation. This report will be updated as events warrant.

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Advances in information technology, along with an increasing number of parties with access to identifiable health information, have created new challenges to maintaining the privacy of medical records. Patients and providers alike have expressed concern that broad access to medical records by insurers, employers, and others may result in inappropriate use of the information. Congress sought to protect the privacy of individuals' medical information as part of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA). HIPAA included a timetable for developing comprehensive privacy standards that would establish rights for patients with respect to their medical records and define the conditions for using and disclosing identifiable health information. The final privacy regulation offers all Americans the opportunity to know and, to some extent, control how physicians, hospitals, and health plans use their personal information. At the same time, these entities will face a complex set of privacy requirements that are not well understood at this time. Some of the uncertainty expressed by stakeholder groups reflects the recent issuance of the regulation. With time, everyone will have greater opportunity to examine its provisions and assess their implications for …

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Congress has enacted many statutes that designate types of customers or geographic areas for preference and priority in purchasing electricity from federal agencies. In general, the preference has been intended to (1) direct the benefits of public resources--relatively inexpensive hydropower--to portions of the public through nonprofit entities, (2) spread the benefits of federally generated hydropower widely and encourage the development of rural areas, (3) prevent private interests from exerting control over the full development of electric power on public lands, and (4) provide a yardstick against which the rates of investor-owned utilities can be measured. The applications of various preference provisions have been challenged several times in the courts, which have directed a power marketing administration (PMA) to provide power to preference customers. In other instances, they have supported the denial of power to such customers. The characteristics of the electricity industry have changed. During the last 20 years, competition has been replacing regulation in major sectors of the U.S. economy. Several proposals have come before Congress to restructure the electrical industry, including some that would encourage the states to allow retail customers a choice in …

Recent results from searches for the SM and SUSY Higgs bosons in Run 1 at the Tevatron have been shown. The sensitivity of the present SM Higgs searches at the Tevatron is limited by statistics leading to a reach in p{bar p} {r_arrow} VH production more than an order of magnitude higher than the SM prediction. The search for the neutral SUSY Higgs via p{bar p} {r_arrow} b{bar b}{psi} {r_arrow} b{bar b}b{bar b} excludes regions in the tan {beta} vs M{sub A} space which extend significantly those previously probed by LEP. They have presented results from studies of the discovery and sensitivity reach for the Higgs bosons in Run 2. Combining all search channels and the data from both experiments a SM Higgs can be excluded at 95% CL over the full mass range M{sub H} < 190 GeV with 15 fb{sup {minus}1}. The sensitivity to neutral SUSY Higgs production with b{bar b} has been shown. The p{bar p} {r_arrow} b{bar b}{psi} {r_arrow} b{bar b}b{bar b} channel serves as the most important mode for discovering or ruling out the MSSM Higgs at large tan {beta}.

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A high-temperature (300 C), high-pressure (18 MPa), and high-leak rate (1500 L/min) facility, and a room temperature, high-pressure (52 MPa) test facility were used to test flawed steam generator tubes. Single and multiple rectangular flaws were fabricated by electro-discharge machining on the outside surface of the tubes. This paper briefly reviews analytical methods for predicting ligament rupture and unstable burst of tubes with single and multiple rectangular flaws. Test data are presented to validate the failure models. The ligament rupture pressure of specimens with multiple flaws predicted by an equivalent rectangular crack method agree fairly well with measured data.

It is well accepted that the 1992 M 5.6 Little Skull Mountain earthquake, the largest historical event to have occurred within 25 km of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, was triggered by the M 7.2 Landers earthquake that occurred the day before. On the premise that earthquakes can be triggered by applied stresses, we have examined the earthquake catalog from the Southern Great Basin Digital Seismic Network (SGBDSN) for other evidence of triggering by external and internal stresses. This catalog now comprises over 12,000 events, encompassing five years of consistent monitoring, and has a low threshold of completeness, varying from M 0 in the center of the network to M 1 at the fringes. We examined the SGBDSN catalog response to external stresses such as large signals propagating from teleseismic and regional earthquakes, microseismic storms, and earth tides. Results are generally negative. We also examined the interplay of earthquakes within the SGBDSN. The number of ''foreshocks'', as judged by most criteria, is significantly higher than the background seismicity rate. In order to establish this, we first removed aftershocks from the catalog with widely used methodology. The existence of SGBDSN foreshocks is supported by comparing actual statistics to those of a simulated catalog …

The purpose of this assumptions document is to provide general scope, strategy, technical basis, schedule and cost assumptions for the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR) life cycle cost (LCC) estimate and schedule update incorporating information from the Viability Assessment (VA) , License Application Design Selection (LADS), 1999 Update to the Total System Life Cycle Cost (TSLCC) estimate and from other related and updated information. This document is intended to generally follow the assumptions outlined in the previous MGR cost estimates and as further prescribed by DOE guidance.

The purpose of this analysis is to document the Quality Assurance (QA) classification of the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR) carrier preparation building materials handling system structures, systems and components (SSCs) performed by the MGR Preclosure Safety and Systems Engineering Section. This analysis also provides the basis for revision of YMP/90-55Q, Q-List (YMP 2000). The Q-List identifies those MGR SSCs subject to the requirements of DOE/RW-0333P7 ''Quality Assurance Requirements and Description'' (QARD) (DOE 2000).

The purpose of this analysis is to document the Quality Assurance (QA) classification of the Monitored Geologic Repository (MGR) carried cask handling system structures, systems and components (SSCs) performed by the MGR Preclosure Safety and Systems Engineering Section. This analysis also provides the basis for revision of YMP/90-55Q, Q-List (YMP 2000). The Q-List identifies those MGR SSCs subject to the requirements of DOE/RW-0333P, ''Quality Assurance Requirements and Description'' (QARD) (DOE 2000).

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Drift seepage refers to flow of liquid water into repository emplacement drifts, where it can potentially contribute to degradation of the engineered systems and release and transport of radionuclides within the drifts. Because of these important effects, seepage into emplacement drifts is listed as a ''principal factor for the postclosure safety case'' in the screening criteria for grading of data in Attachment 1 of AP-3.15Q, Rev. 2, ''Managing Technical Product Inputs''. Abstraction refers to distillation of the essential components of a process model into a form suitable for use in total-system performance assessment (TSPA). Thus, the purpose of this analysis/model is to put the information generated by the seepage process modeling in a form appropriate for use in the TSPA for the Site Recommendation. This report also supports the Unsaturated-Zone Flow and Transport Process Model Report. The scope of the work is discussed below. This analysis/model is governed by the ''Technical Work Plan for Unsaturated Zone Flow and Transport Process Model Report'' (CRWMS M&O 2000a). Details of this activity are in Addendum A of the technical work plan. The original Work Direction and Planning Document is included as Attachment 7 of Addendum A. Note that the Work Direction and Planning …

The purpose of this design analysis is to document the SAS2H depletion calculations of certain non-rodded fuel assemblies from batches 8 and 9 of the Crystal River Unit 3 pressurized water reactor (PWR) that are required for Commercial Reactor Critical (CRC) evaluations to support the development of the disposal criticality methodology. A non-rodded assembly is one which never contains a control rod assembly (CRA) or an axial power shaping rod assembly (APSRA) during its irradiation history. The objective of this analysis is to provide SAS2H generated isotopic compositions for each fuel assembly's depleted fuel and depleted burnable poison materials. These SAS2H generated isotopic compositions are acceptable for use in CRC benchmark reactivity calculations containing the various fuel assemblies.

The objective of this calculation is to verify the energy balance of the thermal calculations analyzed by ANSYS Version (V) 5.4 solver (see Section 4). The scope of this calculation is limited to calculating the energy balance of a two-dimensional repository thermal representation using the temperatures obtained from ANSYS V5.4. The procedure, AP-3.124, Calculations (Ref. 3), and the Technical Work Plan for: Waste Package Design Description for LA (Ref. 2) are used to develop this calculation. The associated activity is the development of engineering evaluations to support the Licensing Application design activities.

The possibility of fast ignition of thermo-nuclear fusion is stimulating research interest and activity worldwide. Fast ignition (FI) offers significantly higher gain than conventional spark ignition and the high gain opens the way to an efficient fusion energy producing cycle with laser drivers. The key to FI is the efficient transport of energy from a short pulse laser beam, the igniter, to a small ignition spark in compressed deuterium-tritium fuel. The primary candidate process enabling such energy transfer, is the absorption of laser light and its conversion into a beam of relativistic electrons, which heats the spark. Theory has predicted self-induced magnetic collimation of the electron beam, which could enable efficient transport from the absorption point to the ignition spark. Experiments are required to understand this highly complex process which involves currents in the electron beam, which greatly exceed the Alfven current limit6 (at which the Larmor radius of an electron in the magnetic field associated with by the current is smaller than the radius of the beam). Almost complete current compensation by cold electron return current is therefore required. The oppositely directed hot and cold electron flows initiate strong growth of the Weibel instability, which causes the currents to …

An adaptive path planning algorithm is presented for cooperating Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs) that are used to deploy and operate land-based sensor networks. The algorithm employs a global cost function to generate paths for the UAVs, and adapts the paths to exceptions that might occur. Examples are provided of the paths and adaptation.

Gene Recovery Microdissection (GRM) is a unique and cost-effective process for producing chromosome region-specific libraries of expressed genes. It accelerates the pace, reduces the cost, and extends the capabilities of functional genomic research, the means by which scientists will put to life-saving, life-enhancing use their knowledge of any plant or animal genome.