This report will provide an overview of some of the more common legal, procedural and practical issues, questions, and problems that committees have faced in the course of an investigation. Following a summary of the case law developing the scope and limitations of the power of inquiry, the essential tools of investigative oversight--subpoenas, staff interviews and depositions, grants of immunity, and the contempt power -- are described. Next, some of the special problems of investigating the executive are detailed, with particular emphasis on claims of presidential executive privilege, the problems raised by attempts to access information with respect to open or closed civil or criminal investigative matters, or to obtain information that is part of the agency deliberative process, and the effect on congressional access of statutory prohibitions on public disclosure. The discussion then focuses on various procedural and legal requirements that accompany the preparation for, and conduct of, an investigative hearing, including matters concerning jurisdiction, particular rules and requirements for the conduct of such proceedings, and the nature, applicability and scope of certain constitutional and common law testimonial privileges that may be claimed by witnesses. The case law and practice respecting the rights of minority party members during the …

On July 29, 1994, the United States signed the Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea of 10 December 1982. This agreement substantially reforms the seabed mining provisions of the 1982 Convention, which the United States found objectionable. In signing the Agreement, President Clinton accepted provisional application of it which enables the United States to participate in the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and its organs and bodies. On November 16, 1994, the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention entered into force without accession by the United States.The treaty document was referred to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations late in the 103d Congress and awaits committee action in the 104th Congress.

Federal land ownership and management are of perennial interest to Congress. This report describes the constitutional authority for federal land ownership. It provides the history of federal land acquisition and disposal, and describes the federal land management agency jurisdictions, based on congressional authorities to reserve or withdraw lands from disposal. The report then describes several efforts to force additional federal land disposal, including recent legislative activity. It concludes with describes the various current land acquisition and disposal authorities of the four major federal land management agencies. The report will be updated to reflect major legislative activity or changes in acquisition or disposal authorities.

Deng Xiaoping's death will create a vacuum at the center of political power in China. Successor leaders will decide whether to continue the recent collective leadership decision-making processes and policy emphasis on political stability and economic reform; or to press for political power in a search for personal or policy advantage. A struggle for political power in Beijing would complicate an already difficult set of problems of governance caused by rapid economic growth, social change, realignment of central and local power arrangements and other factors. Nevertheless, there are important reasons why China may effectively work its way through the leadership transition.

The purpose of this brief report is to appraise Congress of some relevant perspectives concerning the experience of U.S.-Japan merchandise trade since 1968. For the first seven years of the period under review, more American goods were sold to Japan than imported from that nascent major Asian economy, which has been,however, trailing Canada by far as our second top trading partner. Somewhat normally acceptable trade deficits were registered between 1966 and 1979, after which the growth of trade imbalances became unprecedented.

This report provides an overview of some of the more common legal, procedural, and practical issues, questions and problems that committees have faced in the courts of an oversight investigation.

This report describes the history and background of the offset and the legislative history of recent attempts to eliminate or reduce the offset. It delineates and analyzes the arguments for and against eliminating or reducing the offset and allowing concurrent receipt, and addresses the issues of costs, precedents in other Federal programs, purposes of the two programs, and equity issues. Finally, options other than full concurrent receipt are mentioned.

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.

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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether witness fees under section 22.001, Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, must be paid to a person who is subpoenaed to appear and give testimony at a location other than the courthouse (RQ-667)

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) efforts to educate farmers about risk management, focusing on: (1) the extent of farmers' use of risk management tools; and (2) educational programs and projects USDA has directed or initiated to prepare farmers for managing risks and determining the groups or individuals who have participated in or been served by these programs."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) new rule on emission standards for new nonroad spark-ignition nonhandheld engines. GAO noted that: (1) the rule would control emissions from new nonroad spark-ignition nonhandheld engines at or below 19 kilowatts, which are principally used in lawn and garden equipment; and (2) EPA complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) new rules on endangered and threatened species of salmonids. GAO noted that: (1) the rules would impart threatened status on several species of salmonids; and (2) NOAA complied with the applicable requirements in promulgating the rules."

A number of discriminants have been developed for seismic monitoring. These include the Ms-mb discriminant which measures differences in surface and body wave magnitudes (e.g., Marshall and Basham, 1972), short period P to S wave amplitude ratio discriminants (e.g., Blandford, 1981) and spectral ratios discriminants (e.g., Murphy and Bennett, 1982). Unfortunately, existing discrimination capabilities are insufficient to meet the needs that will be required by a comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT). Of particular concern are limitations of current capabilities for discriminating small magnitude (mb<4) seismic events such as earthquakes, mining explosions, and mining related seismicity (rockbursts and collapse events) from small magnitude nuclear explosions (both coupled and decoupled). In this report, we summarize our work on the development of new methods for discriminating such small magnitude events.

The calculations contained in this analysis document establish the technical basis for the volume, frequency, and flushing fluid to be utilized for routine Waste Retrieval Sluicing System (WRSS) process line flushes. The WRSS was installed by Project W-320, Tank 241-C-106 Sluicing. The double contained pipelines being flushed have 4 inch stainless steel primary pipes. The flushes are intended to prevent hydrogen buildup in the transfer lines and to provide ALARA conditions for maintenance personnel.

Fusion chambers and high pulse-rate target systems for inertial fusion energy (IFE) must: regenerate chamber conditions suitable for target injection, laser propagation, and ignition at rates of 5 to 10 Hz; extract fusion energy at temperatures high enough for efficient conversion to electricity; breed tritium and fuel targets with minimum tritium inventory; manufacture targets at low cost; inject those targets with sufficient accuracy for high energy gain; assure adequate lifetime of the chamber and beam interface (final optics); minimize radioactive waste levels and annual volumes; and minimize radiation releases under normal operating and accident conditions. The primary goal of the US IFE program over the next four years (Phase I) is to develop the basis for a Proof-of-Performance-level driver and target chamber called the Integrated Research Experiment (IRE). The IRE will explore beam transport and focusing through prototypical chamber environment and will intercept surrogate targets at high pulse rep-rate. The IRE will not have enough driver energy to ignite targets, and it will be a non-nuclear facility. IRE options are being developed for both heavy ion and laser driven IFE. Fig. 1 shows that Phase I is prerequisite to an IRE, and the IRE plus NIF (Phase II) is prerequisite …

The baseline land disposal restrictions (LDR) plan was prepared in 1990 in accordance with the Hanford Federal Facility Agreement and Consent Order (commonly referred to as the Tn-Party Agreement) Milestone M-26-00 (Ecology et al, 1989). The text of this milestone is below. ''LDR requirements include limitations on storage of specified hazardous wastes (including mixed wastes). In accordance with approved plans and schedules, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) shall develop and implement technologies necessary to achieve full compliance with LDR requirements for mixed wastes at the Hanford Site. LDR plans and schedules shall be developed with consideration of other action plan milestones and will not become effective until approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (or Washington State Department of Ecology [Ecology]) upon authorization to administer LDRs pursuant to Section 3006 of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 (RCRA). Disposal of LDR wastes at any time is prohibited except in accordance with applicable LDR requirements for nonradioactive wastes at all times. The plan will include, but not be limited to, the following: Waste characterization plan; Storage report; Treatment report; Treatment plan; Waste minimization plan; A schedule depicting the events necessary to achieve full compliance with LDR requirements; …

The 3 km long linac at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is used for fixed target experiments such as E-155, with energies up to 50 GeV. The SLAC Energy Development (SLED) system increase the maximum no-load energy by a factor of 1.6, but it also causes a varying beam energy curve. To provide a long pulse or bunch train for the experiment the energy profile has to be flat. Besides more sophisticated methods such as varying the phase of two klystrons feeding one structure section as proposed in the NLC design, we describe the method used for E-155 in spring of 1997. The desired low charged beam didn't have any significant beam loading, but by inserting a 180{degree} phase notch during the SLED pulse, a beam pulse of up to 500 ns was achieved. The energy range without compensation would have been 15%, while with compensation the energy spread was reduced to about 0.15%. The phase notch was achieved by triggering a pair of two additional 180{degree} phase switches about half a structure fill-time after the SLED pulse was triggered. Simulations are compared with the experimental result.

The 3 km long linac of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) has for many years provided low emittance beams for the SLC collider. With the beginning of the operation of the B-Factory, PEP-II, the linac will now serve primarily as an injector for the low (LER) and high energy rings (HER) of PEP-II. The different beams are stabilized by a new regional linac energy management (LEM) program, which keeps the magnet strengths and therefore the deflections constant at each of the four extraction points. They are at 3.1 GeV (positrons for LER), 9 GeV (electrons for HER), 25 GeV (electrons for the positron production), and 28.5 GeV (electrons for other purposes such as test beams, plasma experiments, and iris destruction tests). Since many components of the accelerator can be configured on each pulse, it is possible to run these beams with different intensities, bunch length, energies, rates, etc. Only the quadrupole magnet strengths are fixed, producing different lattices for different energy beams, which must be matched at extraction from the linac. Since PEP-II injection does not require all of the full 120 Hz rate, it is possible to run other experiments at the same time. That might include an …

The linac at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) can provide beams to different experiments during PEP-II operations. It is planned to have a 30-GeV beam to the end of the linac into the FFTB (Final Focus Test Beam) area, where there will be two plasma experiments installed. They will demonstrate plasma focusing and plasma acceleration up to 1 GeV/m. The acceleration goes linear with the current and is inversely proportional to the square of the bunch length. These high charge, short bunches will create strong longitudinal wakefields in the linac. They create a strong double-horned energy profile and have different beam dynamics in the linac. Therefore we made a test run in Fall of 1998 to measure and quantify the beam properties, like stability, distributions, tails, and backgrounds, which will be discussed in this paper. The actual plasma experiments are planned for the spring of 1999.

Subsurface data is being collected, organized, and a digital database is being prepared for the project. An ACCESS database and PC-Arcview is being used to manage and interpret the data. Well data and base map data have been successfully imported into Arcview and customized to meet the needs of this project. Log tops and other data from about ½ of the exploration wells in the area have been incorporated into the data base. All of the four 30� X 60� geologic quadrangles have been scanned to produce a digital surface geologic data base for the Crow Reservation and all are nearing completion. Formal technical review prior to publication has been completed for the Billings and Bridger Quadrangles; and are underway for the Hardin and Lodge Grass Quadrangles. Field investigations were completed during the last quarter. With the help of a student field assistant from the Crow Tribe, the entire project area was inventoried for the presence of valley-fill deposits in the Kootenai Formation. Field inventory has resulted in the identification of nine exposures of thick valley-fill deposits. These appear to represent at least four major westward-trending valley systems. All the channel localities have been measured and described in detail and …

The experiment E155 at SLAC measured the spin structure functions g{sub 1} and g{sub 2} of the proton and deuteron. The experiment used deep inelastic scattering of 48.3 GeV longitudinally polarized electrons incident on polarized solid {sup 15}NH{sub 3} and {sup 6}LiD targets. The data taken by three independent spectrometers covered a kinematic range of 0.014 &lt; x &lt; 0.9 and 1 (GeV/c){sup 2} &lt; Q{sup 2} &lt; 40 (GeV/c){sup 2}. Due to the high luminosity and polarization available at SLAC the data on g{sub 1} are to date the most precise in this kinematic range. The x and Q{sup 2} dependence of g{sub 1} has been studied using NLO PQCD fits, allowing extraction of values for the Bjorken sum rule and quark and gluon spin contributions to the nucleon. Results are presented for g{sub 1} and g{sub 2} for the proton and deuteron.

This calculation was to seismically evaluate Landfill IV at Y-12 as required by Tennessee Rule 1200-1-7-04(2) for seismic impact zones. The calculation verifies that the landfill meets the seismic requirements of the Tennessee Division of Solid Waste, ``Earthquake Evaluation Guidance Document.`` The theoretical displacements of 0.17 in. and 0.13 in. for the design basis earthquake are well below the limiting seimsic slope stability design criteria. There is no potential for liquefaction due to absence of chohesionless soils, or for loss or reduction of shear strength for the clays at this site as result of earthquake vibration. The vegetative cover on slopes will most likely be displaced and move during a large seismic event, but this is not considered a serious deficiency because the cover is not involved in the structural stability of the landfill and there would be no release of waste to the environment.

This paper discusses the gas-phase reaction mechanisms for removal of NO{sub x} in a plasma. The effect of oxygen content on the competition between the reduction and oxidation processes is discussed. The effect of the electron kinetic energy distribution on the radical production and subsequent chemistry is then discussed in order to predict the best performance that can be achieved for NO{sub x} reduction using the plasma alone. The fundamental limit on the minimum electrical energy consumption that will be required to implement NO{sub x} reduction in any type of plasma reactor is established.