The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) assists the President in carrying out his budgetary duties. Originally created by the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act as the Bureau of the Budget, it was reconstituted as OMB in 1970. Its primary function is to oversee the development and implementation of the federal budget.

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Although the end of the Cold War has freed U.S.-India relations from the constraints of a bipolar world, relations continue to be affected by the burden of history, most notably the longstanding India-Pakistan regional rivalry. The main areas of U.S. and congressional interest in India include nuclear weapons and missile proliferation, regional stability, human rights, and economic policy issues.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 a legislator who serves as an independent contractor for an independent school district holds a “position of profit under this State” (RQ-513)

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO discussed the threat of corruption to Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and Customs Service employees along the Southwest Border, focusing on: (1) the extent to which INS and the Customs Service have and comply with policies and procedures for ensuring employee integrity; (2) an identification and comparison of the Departments of Justice's and the Treasury's organizational structures, policies, and procedures for handling allegations of drug-related employee misconduct and whether the policies and procedures are followed; (3) an identification of the types of illegal drug-related activities in which INS and Customs employees on the Southwest Border have been convicted; and (4) the extent to which lessons learned from corruption cases closed in fiscal years 1992 through 1997 have led to changes in policies and procedures for preventing the drug-related corruption of INS and Customs employees."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Agriculture's (USDA) federal crop insurance program, focusing on whether USDA: (1) has set adequate insurance rates to achieve the legislative requirement of actuarial soundness; (2) appropriately reimburses participating crop insurance companies for their administrative costs; (3) can deliver catastrophic crop insurance at less cost to the government than private insurance companies; and (4) has established methodologies in the revenue insurance plans that set sound premium rates."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Navy's decisions in the early 1970s and early 1980s to lease Sealift Tankers, Maritime Prepositioning Ships, and T-5 replacement tankers, and more recently, Chouest specialized support vessels, focusing on the: (1) basis and support for the Navy's decisions to lease rather than purchase these vessels; (2) concerns that surrounded the decisions; and (3) legislative and regulatory changes that have been implemented that will influence future lease versus purchase decisions."

A chapter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reported on: (1) actions taken through the Defense Reform Initiative (DRI) management structure to facilitate achieving the program's objective; and (2) progress the Department of Defense (DOD) made in implementing individual reform initiatives."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the: (1) potential costs associated with the compliance and enforcement of a mandatory country-of-origin labeling requirement at the retail level for fresh produce; (2) potential trade issues associated with such a requirement; (3) potential impact of such a requirement on the ability of the federal government and the public to respond to outbreaks of illness caused by contaminated fresh produce; and (4) consumers' views of country-of-origin labeling."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO identified the water utility sector's vulnerability to year 2000 problems, focusing on: (1) the reported status of year 2000 readiness; and (2) activities being undertaken to address this issue."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) non-master file (NMF), which IRS established to process taxpayer accounts that cannot be processed on its master file, focusing on: (1) the basic differences between the master file and the NMF; (2) known problems that IRS and taxpayers have been experiencing with the NMF, including the sources of such problems; and (3) recent IRS proposals and actions intended to address these problems."

A statement of record issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed S.746, the Regulatory Improvement Act of 1999, focusing on: (1) the effectiveness of previous regulatory reform initiatives; (2) agencies' cost-benefit analysis practices and the trigger for the analytical requirements; (3) peer review of agencies' regulatory analyses; and (4) the transparency of the regulatory development and review process."

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO provided information on the number of Haitian nationals who have applied and been approved for adjustment of their status to legal permanent residence."

The Emergency Evacuation and Notification System provides information to the PFP Building Emergency Director to assist in determining appropriate emergency response, notifies personnel of the required response, and assists in their response. The report identifies the equipment in the Safety Envelope (SE) for this System and the Administrative, Maintenance, and Surveillance Procedures used to maintain the SE Equipment.

Recent developments in the application of synchrotrons radiation to materials science are discussed, using techniques which exploit the high brilliance of the newer synchrotrons sources, such as microbeam techniques and correlation spectroscopy. These include studies of environmental systems, residual stress, slow dynamics of condensed matter systems and studies of liquid surfaces and thin magnetic films.

A silicon microgripper with a large gripping force, a relatively rigid structural body, and flexibility in functional design is presented. The actuation is generated by Ni-Ti-Cu shape memory alloy (SMA) films and the stress induced can deflect each side of the microgripper up to 55 {mu}m for a total gripping motion of 110 {mu}m. When fully open, the force exerted by the film corresponds to a 40 mN gripping force on the tip of the gripper.

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Calcium oxide injected in a slagging combustor reacts with the sulfur from coal combustion to form sulfur-bearing particles, which are deposited on the liquid slag layer on the combustor wall. Due to the low solubility of sulfur in slag, it must be rapidly drained from the combustor to limit sulfur gas re-evolution. Analysis indicated that slag mass flow rates in excess of 400 lb/hr should limit sulfur re-evolution. The objective of this 36 month project was to perform a series of tests to determine the factors that control the retention of the sulfur in the slag. 19 days of testing were completed prior to 9/30/97. In the present quarterly reporting period ending 12/31/97, 13 tests days were completed on co-firing coal and a high ash, rice husk biomass, which was selected to produce a high slag flow rate. Most of the test effort focussed on developing methods for feeding the very low density rice husks into combustor. Various levels of mineral matter from coal ash, rice husk ash, calcium sulfate, and calcium oxide was injected in the combustor during these 13 tests. The peak mineral matter, injection rate was 592 lb/hr for a period of about one-hour. No significant sulfur …

Construction of the National Ignition Facility laser at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory features a large distributed control system constructed using object-oriented software engineering techniques. Control of 60,000 devices is effected using a network of some 500 computers that run software written in Ada and communicating through CORBA. The project has completed its final design review; implementation of the first of five planned increments will be delivered at the end of fiscal year 1998. Preliminary measures of the distributed controls performance confirm the design decisions reported in this paper, and the measurement and supporting simulation of full system performance continue.

The mission of the Spent Nuclear Fuel (SNF) Project is to remove the fuel currently located in the K-Basins 100 Area to provide safe handling and interim storage of the fuel. The spent nuclear fuel will be repackaged in multi-canister overpacks, partially dried in the Cold Vacuum Drying Facility (CVDF), and then transported to the Canister Storage Building (CSB) for further processing and interim storage. The CVDF, a subproject to the SNF Project, will be constructed in the 100K area. The CVDF will remove free water and vacuum dry the spent nuclear fuel, making it safer to transport and store at the CSB. At present, the CVDF is approximately 90% complete with definitive design. Part of the design process is to conduct Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (FMECA). A four-day FMECA session was conducted August 18 through 21, 1997. The purpose of the session was to analyze 16 subsystems and operating modes to determine consequences of normal, upset, emergency, and faulted conditions with respect to production and worker safety. During this process, acceptable and unacceptable risks, needed design or requirement changes, action items, issues/concerns, and enabling assumptions were identified and recorded. Additionally, a path forward consisting of recommended actions …

Modern software development methods combined with key generalizations of standard computational algorithms enable the development of a new class of electromagnetic modeling tools. This paper describes current and anticipated capabilities of a frequency domain modeling code, EIGER, which has an extremely wide range of applicability. In addition, software implementation methods and high performance computing issues are discussed.

The purpose of this report is to advise managers on the status of Year 2000 readiness at the Laboratory and provide a summary of critical issues to be addressed in order to ensure that the Year 2000 date rollover will not disrupt Laboratory Operations. The Laboratory`s Year 2000 council members are in the first phase of Year 2000 plans: gathering data and assessing the status of their divisions or programs. This first snapshot of the Laboratory Year 2000 readiness assessment is expected to grow and change over time as more refined assessments, plans, and schedules are developed and as more information becomes available. Here are findings to date: (1) Embedded systems` status not known. (2) Preliminary cost estimates for Year 2000 repairs, testing, and implementation are estimated to be at least $5.9 million, not including embedded systems. (3) The Laboratory is required to make unavoidable purchases of Year 2000-compliant products. (4) The Year 2000 short-term issue forces some long-term transition plans to be set aside. (5) The Laboratory is at risk for the following consequences if they can`t demonstrate an active Year 2000 program: risk of system failures; potential funding freezes by the OMB and DOE; legal liabilities; and risk …