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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 school district violates the law by installing a video surveillance camera in a student locker or gymnasium to identify students who allegedly are stealing property (ID# 31560)

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 an appraisal district is authorized to maintain and provide location information for the provision of 9-1-1 service (RQ-707)

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 Open Meetings Act, Government Code chapter 551, applies to an HIV health services planning council established pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 300ff-12 or an HIV care consortium established pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 300ff-22(a)(1).

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 152.031, the district judge who appoints the county auditor may include in the county auditor's salary a set car allowance.

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 appointed members of the Texas Peace Officers' Memorial Advisory Committee to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education continue to serve until replaced or reappointed.

This Engineering Study revision evaluated the alternatives to provide tank waste characterization analytical samples for a time period as recommended by the Tank Waste Remediation Systems Program. The recommendation of storing 40 ml segment samples for a period of approximately 18 months (6 months past the approval date of the Tank Characterization Report) and then composite the core segment material in 125 ml containers for a period of five years. The study considers storage at 222-S facility. It was determined that the critical storage problem was in the hot cell area. The 40 ml sample container has enough material for approximately 3 times the required amount for a complete laboratory re-analysis. The final result is that 222-S can meet the sample archive storage requirements. During the 100% capture rate the capacity is exceeded in the hot cell area, but quick, inexpensive options are available to meet the requirements.

This Acceptance Test Procedure (ATP) has been prepared to demonstrate that the Collection System Instrumentation & Control System for Project C-018H performs according to design. Specifically, this ATP is designed to verify the following overall system requirements: The input and outputs properly connected to the LCU terminal strips. The control system software conforms to the configuration specified by the logic diagrams, piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&ID), and the LERF operating philosophy. Testing will be performed using actual signals. If actual signals are not available, then simulated signals will be used to complete the tests.

The Liquid Effluent Monitoring Information System (LEMIS) is being developed as the organized information repository facility in support of the liquid effluent monitoring requirements of the Tri-Party Agreement. It is necessary to provide an automated repository into which the results from liquid effluent sampling will be placed. This repository must provide for effective retention, review, and retrieval of selected sample data by authorized persons and organizations. This System Architecture document is the aggregation of the DMR P+ methodology project management deliverables. Together they represent a description of the project and its plan through four Releases, corresponding to the definition and prioritization of requirements defined by the user.

As a cabinet level federal agency with a diverse range of missions and an infrastructure spanning the United States, the US Department of Energy (DOE) has extensive freight transportation requirements. Performance and management of this freight activity is a critical function. DOE`s Transportation Management Division (TMD) has an agency-wide responsibility for overseeing transportation activities. Actual transportation operations are handled by government or contractor staff at the field locations. These staff have evolved a diverse range of techniques and procedures for performing transportation functions. In addition to minimizing the economic impact of transportation on programs, facility transportation staff must be concerned with the increasingly complex task of complying with complex shipment safety regulations. Maintaining the department`s safety record for shipping hazardous and radioactive materials is a primary goal. Use of automation to aid transportation functions is not widespread within DOE, though TMD has a number of software systems designed to gather and analyze data pertaining to field transportation activities. These systems are not integrated. Historically, most field facilities have accomplished transportation-related tasks manually or with minimal computer assistance. At best, information and decision support systems available to transportation staffs within the facilities are fragmented. In deciding where to allocate resources for …

The design of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is based on conversion of 1.05 {mu}m wavelength light (1{omega}) into third harmonic light (3{omega}) by passage through KDP frequency conversion crystals. It is important for proper coupling of radiation into the targets that the final beam impinging upon the target should have little 1{omega} or 2{omega} light. It is also desirable to avoid direct line-of sight for neutrons between the target and the KDP crystals, in order to prevent damage. These issues can be overcome by employing diffraction gratings immediately before the final NIF focusing lens to direct the 3{omega} beam to the target. A single grating design is highly dispersive, and may introduce intolerable divergence into the beam. In order to overcome this limitation, we propose to use a grating pair. This will provide transverse offset of the beam and eliminate the dispersion while offering several other advantages.

Successful operation of large-scale high-power lasers, such as those in use and planned at LLNL and elsewhere, require optical elements that can withstand extremely high fluences without suffering damage. Of particular concern are gratings used for pulse compression. Laser induced damage to bulk dielectric material originates with coupling of the electric field of the radiation to bound electrons, proceeding through a succession of mechanisms that couple the electron kinetic energy to lattice energy and ultimately to macroscopic structural changes (e.g. fracture, melting, ablation, etc.). The constructive interference that is responsible for the diffractive behavior of a grating or the reflective properties of a multilayer dielectric stack can enhance the electric field above values that would occur in unstructured homogeneous material. The presence of nonuniform electric fields, resulting from diffractive coherence, has the potential to affect damage thresholds We describe aspects of LLNL work directed towards understanding the influence of dielectric structures upon damage, with particular emphasis on electric fields within multilayer dielectric stacks.

Successful operation of large-scale high-power lasers, such as those in use and planned at LLNL and elsewhere, require optical elements that can withstand extremely high fluences without suffering damage. Of particular concern are dielectric diffraction gratings used for beam sampling and pulse compression. Laser induced damage to bulk dielectric material originates with coupling of the electric field of the radiation to bound electrons, proceeding through a succession of mechanisms that couple the electron kinetic energy to lattice energy and ultimately to macroscopic structural changes (e.g. melting). The constructive interference that is responsible for the diffractive behavior of a grating or the reflective properties of a multilayer dielectric stack can enhance the electric field above values that would occur in unstructured homogeneous material. Much work has been done to model damage to bulk matter. The presence of nonuniform electric fields, resulting from diffractive coherence, has the potential to affect damage thresholds and requires more elaborate theory. We shall discuss aspects of work directed towards understanding the influence of dielectric structures upon damage, with particular emphasis on computations and interpretation of electric fields within dielectric gratings and multilayer dielectric stacks, noting particularly the interference effects that occur in these structures.

The U.S. Department of Energy, Nevada Operations Office, Underground Test Area Operable Unit (UGTA) is drilling deep (>1500m) monitoring wells that penetrate both unsaturated (vadose) and saturated zones potentially contaminated by sub-surface nuclear weapons testing at the Nevada Test Site, Nye County, Nevada. Drill site radiological monitoring returns data on drilling effluents to make informed management decisions concerning fluid management. Because of rapid turn-around required for on-site monitoring, a representative sample will be analyzed simultaneously for {alpha}, {beta} and {gamma} emitters by instrumentation deployed on-site. For the purposes of field survey, accurate and precise data is returned, in many cases, with minimal sample treatment. A 30% efficient high purity germanium detector and a discriminating liquid scintillation detector are being evaluated for {gamma} and {alpha}/{beta} monitoring respectively. Implementation of these detector systems complements a successful on-site tritium monitoring program. Residual radioactivity associated with underground nuclear tests include tritium, activation products, fission products and actinides. Pulse shape discrimination (PSD) is used in {alpha}/{beta} liquid scintillation counting and is a function of the time distribution of photon emission. In particular, we hope to measure {sup 241}Am produced from {sup 241}Pu by {beta} decay. Because {sup 241}Pu is depleted in fissile bomb fuels, maximum …

Jumper connectors are used in the Hanford site for remotely connecting jumper pipe lines in the radioactive zones. The jumper pipes are used for transporting radioactive fluids and hazardous chemicals. This report evaluates the adequacy and the integrity of the 2-, 3-, and 4-in. single-port integral seal block (ISB) jumper connector assemblies, as well as the three-way 2-in. configuration. The evaluation considers limiting forces from the piping to the nozzle. A stress evaluation of the jumper components (hook, hook pin, operating screw, nozzle and nozzle flange, and block) under operational (pressure, thermal, dead weight, and axial torquing of the jumper) and seismic loading is addressed in the report.

U.S.-China economic ties have expanded substantially over the past several years. China is now the third largest U.S. trading partner, its second largest source of imports, and its fourth largest export market. However, U.S.-China commercial ties have been strained by a number of issues, including a surging U.S. trade deficit with China, China's refusal to float its currency, and failure to fully comply with its World Trade Organization (WTO) commitments, especially its failure to provide protection for U.S. intellectual property rights (IPR). This report explores these issues in detail, especially concerning the lack of protection for U.S. IPR.

An island nation located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore's economic and strategic importance far exceeds its small size. Known for its excellent harbor -- the world's busiest by shipping tonnage -- the country has prospered as a center for financial services, manufacturing, tourism, and oil refining. Despite friction over trade and human rights issues, U.S.-Singapore relations are important to the promotion of regional trade, development, and security.

Chirped pulse amplification is increasingly used to produce intense ultrashort laser pulses. When high-efficiency gratings are the dispersive element, as in the LLNL Petawatt laser, their susceptibility to laser induced damage constitutes a limitation on the peak intensities that can be reached. To obtain robust gratings, it is necessary to understand the causes of short-pulse damage, and to recognize the range of design options for high efficiency gratings. Metal gratings owe their high efficiency to their high conductivity. To avoid the inevitable light absorption that accompanies conductivity, we have developed designs for high efficiency reflection gratings that use only transparent dielectric materials. These combine the reflectivity of a multilayer dielectric stack with a diffraction grating. We report here our present understanding of short-pulse laser induced damage, as it applies to dielectric gratings.

The Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program at LLNL is beginning the design of a 1.8 Megajoule, 0.35-{mu}m, laser system called the National Ignition Facility (NIF). In order to reduce cost, and increase performance, high damage threshold optics are essential. As a result of damage initiating defects, only a small percentage of current as-deposited optical coatings can meet the required damage threshold specification. Work has been conducted in the area of understanding the causes of these nodular defects and how they are related to laser damage. While it is not yet possible to produce defect-free coatings, it has been found that the damage threshold of some coatings can be increased by as much as 2 or more times as a result of pre-illumination at incrementally increasing fluences. This process, termed laser conditioning, has been associated with the ejection of the damage-initiating defects. With current damage thresholds, mirrors and polarizers for the NIF will have to be laser conditioned in order to meet the laser requirements for fluence propagation. LLNL has constructed a system dedicated to laser conditioning of meter-sized HfO{sub 2}/SiO{sub 2} multilayer polarizers and mirrors. The optic is moved in a raster pattern through a stationary 10-Hz rep-rated, 1.064 {mu}m …

Although welding is an established technology used in many industrial settings, it is least understand terms of the phases that actually exist, the variation of their spatial disposition with time, and the rate of transformation from one phase to another at various thermal coordinates in the vicinity of the weld. With the availability of high flux and, more recently, high brightness synchrotron x-radiation sources, a number of diffraction and spectroscopic methods have been developed for structural characterization with improved spatial and temporal resolutions to enable in-situ measurements of phases under extreme temperature, pressure and other processing conditions not readily accessible with conventional sources. This paper describes the application of spatially resolved x-ray diffraction (SRXRD) for in-situ investigations of phase transformations in the heat affected zone (HAZ) of fusion welds. Results are presented for gas tungsten (GTA) welds in commercially pure titanium that show the existence of the high temperature bcc {beta}-phase in a 3.3 {plus_minus} 0.3 mm wide HA band adjacent to the liquid weld pool. Phase concentration profiles derived from the SRXRD data further show the co-existence of both the low temperature hcp ({alpha}-phase and the {beta}-phase in the partially, transformed region of the HA. These results represent the …

Inorganic acids are commonly used for surface cleaning and finishing of metals. The acids become unuseable due to contamination with metals or diluted and weakened. Diffusion dialysis has become a way to recover the useable acid and allow separation of the metals for recovery and sale to refineries. This technique is made possible by the use of membranes that are strong enough to withstand low ph and have long service life.

Letter from Robert Sielken Jr. of Sielken Inc. to Sylvia Amaya of the Texas Natural Resources Commission on May 26,1995, containing his answers to questions for a book review of "Human Health Work Group: Food Safety"