The main economic benefit of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is that, over time, it is expected to increase productivity and incomes in the United States, Mexico and Canada. In the near term, some reallocation of resources occurs within each country, generating gains for some producers and workers and costs for others. Since the Mexican and Canadian economies are small relative to the U.S. economy, both the long-term benefits and short-term adjustment costs of the NAFTA to the United States are expected to be small. The data suggest that NAFTA has had a positive, but small, effect on U.S. trade with Mexico and that U.S. direct investment in Mexico remains very small relative to total U.S. investment abroad. NAFTA-related job losses of almost 100,000 since 1994 are also very small compared with U.S. employment of 130 million (no data exist on jobs created by NAFTA).

Many U.S. lumber producers have complained that subsidies to Canadian lumber producers give them an unfair advantage in supplying the U.S. market. The dispute has evolved through various forums over the past 15 years. Recent negotiations led to an agreement on May 28 to reduce Canadian lumber exports with a tariff rate quota (i.e., a tariff on imports above the quota) probably by about 9% from record 1995 levels, leading to expectations of trade harmony (at least on this issue) for the next 5 years.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 a tax assessor-collector may, without approval of the commissioners court of his county, expend funds accrued as interest under section 23.122, Tax 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 chapter 43 and section 243.003 of the Local Government Code violate article I, section 19 of the Texas Constitution when municipal annexation causes territory to be subject to a municipal ordinance regulating sexually oriented business that is less restrictive than that imposed by the county prior to annexation.

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 a parent or guardian who teaches a driver education course under section 7A of article 6687b, V.T.C.S., must be licensed under article 4413(29c), V.T.C.S., and related questions.

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 an indepedent school district located within a municipality is subject to a municpal ordinance governing garbage collection (RQ-857)

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 municipality may impose a “user fee” on the grant of building permits and donate the fees collected to a school district to build schools within the city limits (RQ-851)

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 clarificatio; Application to leased paging devices of Education Code section 21.309, requiring forfeiture of paging devices possessed by student on school property or at school activities, and related questions (RQ-702)

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: Effect of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act on the confidentiality of client records of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation.

Three-dimensional high-resolution simulations are performed of the Richtmyer- Meshkov (RM) instability for a Mach 6 shock, and of the passage of a second shock from the same side through a developed RM instability. The second shock is found to rapidly smear fine structure and strongly enhance mixing. Studies of the interaction of moderately strong shocks with a pre-existing turbulent field indicate amplification of transverse vorticity and reduction Of stream-wise vorticity, as well as the mechanisms for these changes.

We have designed a target to probe the use of the Pegasus Z-Pinch machine to image inertial instabilities that develop on cylindrical- convergent material interfaces. The Z-pinch is tailored so that the target, soft Al 1100-O, remains solid; instabilities and inertial effects are seeded by wire inclusions of different densities. We present here the first images and preliminary results from this experiment.

Objectives of this program are to provide an improved thermal barrier coating system with improved reliability and temperature capability. This report describes progress in manufacturing, bonding, deposition, non-destructive evaluation, repair, and maintenance.

Large-scale (>1 m) variability in hydraulic conductivity is usually the main influence on field-scale groundwater flow patterns and dispersive transport. Incorporating realistic hydraulic conductivity heterogeneity into flow and transport models is paramount to accurate simulations, particularly for contaminant migration. Sediment lithologic descriptions and geophysical logs typically offer finer spatial resolution, and therefore more potential information about site-scale heterogeneity, than other site characterization data. In this study, a technique for generating a heterogeneous, three- dimensional hydraulic conductivity field from sediment lithologic descriptions is presented. The approach involves creating a three-dimensional, fine-scale representation of mud (silt and clay) percentage using a stratified interpolation algorithm. Mud percentage is then translated into horizontal and vertical conductivity using direct correlations derived from measured data and inverse groundwater flow modeling. Lastly, the fine-scale conductivity fields are averaged to create a coarser grid for use in groundwater flow and transport modeling.

Concepts for producing tritium in an accelerator were translated into hardware for engineering studies of tritium generation, heat transfer, and effects of proton-neutron flux on materials. Small-scale target- blanket assemblies were fabricated and material samples prepared for these performance tests. Blanket assemblies utilize composite aluminum-lead modules, the two primary materials of the blanket. Several approaches are being investigated to produce large-scale assemblies, developing fabrication and assembly methods for their commercial manufacture. Small-scale target-blanket assemblies, designed and fabricated at the Savannah River Site, were place in Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) for irradiation. They were subjected to neutron flux for nine months during 1996-97. Coincident with this test was the development of production methods for large- scale modules. Increasing module size presented challenges that required new methods to be developed for fabrication and assembly. After development, these methods were demonstrated by fabricating and assembling two production-scale modules.

Failure mechanisms under tensile loading of unidirectional fiber composites comprising of Weibull fibers embedded in a matrix are studied using Monte-Carlo simulations. Two fundamental mechanisms of failure are recognized--stress concentration driven failure and strength driven failure. It is shown that the cumulative distribution function for composite strength predicted by the stressconcentration-driven failure and strength-driven failure form apparent upper and lower bounds respectively and also that failure mechanism switches from one to the other as fiber strength variability changes.

The purpose of this document is to provide guidance for qualifying a DOT-7A Type A packaging for use. WHC qualifies DOT-7A packaging for two purposes. The first is to provide packages for use by WHC (manufacturer-qualified). The second is to provide a contracted service in support of DOE/EM-76 (DOE-qualified). This document includes descriptions of the performance tests, the personnel involved and their qualifications, appropriate safety and quality assurance considerations, and the procedures to be followed when WHC performs the tests (either as the manufacturer, or on behalf of the DOE`s certification program).

Project SEED is an innovative career development activity administered by ACS for economically disadvantaged high school students. SEED students spend 10 weeks during the summer in an academic, industrial, or governmental research laboratory working under the supervision of a researcher. Intent is to attempt to overcome obstacles which have excluded the economically disadvantaged from professional careers. Students are required to prepare a technical summary, give presentations to their sponsoring groups, and design and display a poster session. Each student also completed a pre- and post-program survey.

Polymer Filtration (PF) is an innovative, selective metal removal technology. Chelating, water-soluble polymers are used to selectively bind the desired metal ions and ultrafiltration is used to concentrate the polymer-metal complex producing a permeate with low levels of the targeted metal ion. When applied to the treatment of industrial metal-bearing aqueous process streams, the permeate water can often be reused within the process and the metal ions reclaimed. This technology is applicable to many types of industrial aqueous streams with widely varying chemistries. Application of PF to aqueous streams from nuclear materials processing and electroplating operations will be described.

The Facility Assessment Summary Report (FSAR) is a key element in the systems engineering document hierarchy, and provides an evaluation overview of the physical conditions and requirements for upgrading facility systems, subsystems, and/or components (SSC). This Project W- 314 FASR was prepared to address the evaluations, inspections, and assessments conducted on the Tank Farm facilities associated with the preliminary Project W-314 scope, and to provide requirements for specifying necessary upgrades.

The formation of adducts among analyte species is a well known phenomenon in electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS). The presence of salts usually promotes the formation of adducts by electrostatic and van de waalse bonds among various ions present in solution. In this study, the authors describe a simple mathematical model to explain the patterns for mass distribution and peak intensity for adducts formed by magnesium chloride and various fatty acid anions.

Determination of low-molecular-weight organic sulfonates (e.g. taurine and cysteic acid) in aqueous solutions is important in many applications of biological, environmental and pharmaceutical sciences. These compounds are difficult to be determined by commonly used reversed-phase liquid chromatographic separation combined with UV-Visible detection because of their high solubility and the lack chromophoric moieties. Here the authors report a method combining ion-pair liquid chromatography and electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (IPLC/ESI-MS/MS)for determining sulfonates. The ability of low-molecular-weight sulfonates to form ion-pairs with quaternary ammonium cations in aqueous solutions allowed LC separation with a C{sub 18} column. Detection of the sulfonates was accomplished with ESI-MS that lends a universal mode of mass detection for polar, water soluble compounds. An in-source collision induced dissociation (CID) was applied to eliminate the adduct peaks in mass spectra. Characteristic marker ions showed in the second stage mass spectra lent a method for identifying sulfonates.

In 1946, President Harry Truman, in a document currently on display at the entrance to this auditorium, approved a directive to the National Academy of Sciences-National Research Council (NAS-NRC) to initiate a long-term investigation of the health effects associated with exposure to radiation from the atomic bombs. With funding provided by the Atomic Energy Commission, now the Department of Energy, NAS-NRC established the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) in March 1947. The government of Japan through the Japanese National Institute of Health, became a partner in that endeavor in 1948. In 1975, the Radiation Effects Research Foundation (RERF) was established and assumed the responsibilities of ABCC. This symposium commemorates 50 years of ABCC/RERF. It is dedicated to the many survivors and their families without whose cooperation we would not have learned as much as we have about the effects of radiation. It is also dedicated to the thousands of employees of RERF and scientists around the world who have contributed through the years to the analysis and interpretation of the information emerging from this unique study.