Dedicated excise taxes finance only a small number of the many activities undertaken by the Federal Government. The fourteen trust funds and special funds currently financed by excise taxes can be grouped under four programmatic purposes: nature conservation and recreation, transportation, environmental cleanup, and health damage compensation. In close parallel, the products currently subject to taxation on behalf of trust and special funds can be classified under the categories of hunting and fishing equipment; cargo transport and air passenger transportation; motor fuels; and materials potentially hazardous to the environment or human health.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 proceeding to recover excess proceeds after a tax lien foreclosure requires a separate cause of action, and related question (RQ-456)

This report documents progress to date under a three-year contract for developing Methods for Testing Transport Models.'' The work described includes (1) choice of best methods for producing code emulators'' for analysis of very large global energy confinement databases, (2) recent applications of stratified regressions for treating individual measurement errors as well as calibration/modeling errors randomly distributed across various tokamaks, (3) Bayesian methods for utilizing prior information due to previous empirical and/or theoretical analyses, (4) extension of code emulator methodology to profile data, (5) application of nonlinear least squares estimators to simulation of profile data, (6) development of more sophisticated statistical methods for handling profile data, (7) acquisition of a much larger experimental database, and (8) extensive exploratory simulation work on a large variety of discharges using recently improved models for transport theories and boundary conditions. From all of this work, it has been possible to define a complete methodology for testing new sets of reference transport models against much larger multi-institutional databases.

Syngas is known to contain approximately 1 percent H[sub 2]S, along with CO[sub 2], C0[sub 2], H[sub 2] and CH[sub 4]. Similarly, the syngas may become contaminated with oxygen, particularly during reactor start-up and during maintenance. Previous studies with the water-gas shift bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum have shown that the bacterium is tolerant of small quantities of oxygen, but the effects of oxygen on CO-consumption are unknown. Similarly, R. rubrum is known to be tolerant of H[sub 2]S, with high concentrations of H[sub 2]S negatively affecting CO-uptake. Batch experiments were thus carried out to determine the effects of H[sub 2]S and O[sub 2] on CO-uptake by R. rubrum. The results of these experiments were quantified by using Monod equations modified by adding terms for CO, H[sub 2]S and O[sub 2] inhibition. The techniques used in determining kinetic expressions previously shown for other gas-phase substrate bacterial systems including R. rubrum were utilized.

This report documents progress to date under a three-year contract for developing ``Methods for Testing Transport Models.`` The work described includes (1) choice of best methods for producing ``code emulators`` for analysis of very large global energy confinement databases, (2) recent applications of stratified regressions for treating individual measurement errors as well as calibration/modeling errors randomly distributed across various tokamaks, (3) Bayesian methods for utilizing prior information due to previous empirical and/or theoretical analyses, (4) extension of code emulator methodology to profile data, (5) application of nonlinear least squares estimators to simulation of profile data, (6) development of more sophisticated statistical methods for handling profile data, (7) acquisition of a much larger experimental database, and (8) extensive exploratory simulation work on a large variety of discharges using recently improved models for transport theories and boundary conditions. From all of this work, it has been possible to define a complete methodology for testing new sets of reference transport models against much larger multi-institutional databases.

Syngas is known to contain approximately 1 percent H{sub 2}S, along with CO{sub 2}, C0{sub 2}, H{sub 2} and CH{sub 4}. Similarly, the syngas may become contaminated with oxygen, particularly during reactor start-up and during maintenance. Previous studies with the water-gas shift bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum have shown that the bacterium is tolerant of small quantities of oxygen, but the effects of oxygen on CO-consumption are unknown. Similarly, R. rubrum is known to be tolerant of H{sub 2}S, with high concentrations of H{sub 2}S negatively affecting CO-uptake. Batch experiments were thus carried out to determine the effects of H{sub 2}S and O{sub 2} on CO-uptake by R. rubrum. The results of these experiments were quantified by using Monod equations modified by adding terms for CO, H{sub 2}S and O{sub 2} inhibition. The techniques used in determining kinetic expressions previously shown for other gas-phase substrate bacterial systems including R. rubrum were utilized.

Hazardous debris includes objects contaminated with hazardous waste. Examples of debris include tree stumps, timbers, boulders, tanks, piping, crushed drums, personal protective clothing, etc. Most of the hazardous debris encountered comes from Superfund sites and other facility remediation, although generators and treaters of hazardous waste also generate hazardous debris. Major problems associated with disposal of debris includes: Inappropriateness of many waste treatments to debris; Difficulties in obtaining representative samples; Costs associated with applying waste specific treatments to debris; Subtitle C landfill space was being used for many low hazard debris types. These factors brought about the need for debris treatment technologies and regulations that addressed these issues. The goal of such regulation was to provide treatment to destroy or remove the contamination if possible and, if this is achieved, to dispose of the cleaned debris as a nonhazardous waste. EPA has accomplished this goal through promulgation of the Hazardous Debris Rule, August 18, 1992.

This project was initiated, in response to concerns that the observed excess of malignant melanoma among employees of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) might reflect the incidence of disease diagnostically different than that observed in the general population. LLNL sponsored a slide review project, inviting leading dermatopathology experts to independently evaluate pathology slides from LLNL employees diagnosed with melanoma and those from a matched sample of Bay Area melanoma patients who did not work at the LLNL. The study objectives were to: Identify all 1969--1984 newly diagnosed cases of malignant melanoma among LLNL employees resident in the San Francisco-Oakland Metropolitan Statistical Area, and diagnosed at facilities other than Kaiser Permanente; identify a comparison series of melanoma cases also diagnosed between 1969--1984 in non-Kaiser facilities, and matched as closely as possible to the LLNL case series by gender, race, age at diagnosis, year of diagnosis, and hospital of diagnosis; obtain pathology slides for the identified (LLNL) case and (non-LLNL) comparison patients for review by the LLNL-invited panel of dermatopathology experts; and to compare the pathologic characteristics of the case and comparison melanoma patients, as recorded by the dermatopathology panel.