This report discusses legislation establishing national generic promotion ("check-off') programs for 20 specified farm commodities. Thirteen of the 20 authorized programs are now in effect.

The Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 is the product of legislative efforts stretching back well over a decade and stimulated to passage in part by the tragedies in Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center. This report summarizes the six titles of the Act, its sources, and related legislation.

A rationale for federal financial support to Amtrak has been that rail service conserves energy, compared to other forms of intercity passenger transportation. The numbers presented in this report suggest that the rationale might not be valid with regard to some alternative modes of transportation, and the report discusses some public policy implications that could follow from that conclusion.

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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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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.

The objective of this project is to develop environmentally sound and cost-effective remediation techniques for crude oil contaminated soils. By providing a guidance manual to oil and gas operators, the Ohio Division of Oil and Gas regulatory authority hopes to reduce remediation costs while improving voluntary compliance with soil clean-up requirements. This shall be accomplished by conducting a series of field tests to define the optimum range for nutrient and organic enhancement to biologically remediate soils contaminated with brines and crude oil having a wide rage of viscosity.

For years, contamination has been known to degrade the performance of optics and to sometimes initiate laser-induced damage to initiate. This study has W to quantify these effects for fused silica windows used at 355 mm Contamination particles (Al, Cu, TiO{sub 2} and ZrO{sub 2}) were artificially deposited onto the surface and damage tests were conducted with a 3 ns NdYAG laser. The damage morphology was characterized by Nomarski optical microscopy. The results showed that the damage morphology for input and output surface contamination is different. For input surface contamination, both input and output surfaces can damage. In particular, the particle can induce pitting or drilling of the surface where the beam exits. Such damage usually grows catastrophically. Output surface contamination is usually ablated away on the shot but can also induce catastrophic damage. Plasmas are observed during illumination and seem to play an important role in the damage mechanism. The relationship between fluence and contamination size for which catastrophic damage occurred was plotted for different contamination materials. The results show that particles even as small as 10 {micro}m can substantially decrease the damage threshold of the window and that metallic particles on the input surface have a more negative …

Final Report for Tank 241-BY-106; Rotary Mode Cores 64 and 65.

This is the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) Functions and Requirements Document derived from the TWRS Technical Baseline. The document consists of several text sections that provide the purpose, scope, background information, and an explanation of how this document assists the application of Systems Engineering to the TWRS. The primary functions identified in the TWRS Functions and Requirements Document are identified in Figure 4.1 (Section 4.0) Currently, this document is part of the overall effort to develop the TWRS Functional Requirements Baseline, and contains the functions and requirements needed to properly define the top three TWRS function levels. TWRS Technical Baseline information (RDD-100 database) included in the appendices of the attached document contain the TWRS functions, requirements, and architecture necessary to define the TWRS Functional Requirements Baseline. Document organization and user directions are provided in the introductory text. This document will continue to be modified during the TWRS life-cycle.

This paper describes an innovative and unique autonomous vehicle being developed at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) for versatile use in hostile environments. Conventional vehicles used in decommissioning and decontaminating, police activity, and unmanned military operations typically are designed with four-wheels or track in contact with the environment. Although four-wheel and track vehicles work well, they are limited in negotiating saturated terrain, steep hills and soft soils. The Spiral Track Autonomous Robot (STAR) is a versatile and maneuverable multi-terrain mobile vehicle that uses the latest available computer technology and two Archimedes screws, in contact with the local environment to intelligently negotiate a hostile environment.

We describe an infeasible-interior-point algorithm for monotone variational inequality problems and prove that it converges globally and superlinearly under standard conditions plus a constant rank constraint qualification. The latter condition represents a generalization of the two types of assumptions made in existing superlinear analyses; namely, linearity of the constraints and linear independence of the active constraint gradients.

We have demonstrated a technique for diagnosing the growth of subresolution-scale perturbations by the appearance of longer-wavelength, coupled modes once the growth has proceeded into the nonlinear regime. Comparison of the growth rate of this larger scale feature with numerical simulations can then be used to infer the growth rates of the initial perturbations. This experiment was conceived as an analog of large-scale computer simulations where the large eddy approximation is applied. There a subgrid-scale model is used to represent the effects of small scales on large-scale motion, which is directly numerically simulated.

The process for making an in-situ whisker reinforced glass-ceramic that is up to 1.5 times as strong as conventional glass-ceramics was developed at Virginia Tech and patented in 1993. This technology has been identified as having commercial potential for use in high temperature heat exchanger applications for the electric power generation field by the National Center for Appropriate Technology (NCAT). This technology was licensed by MATVA, Inc., a small Virginia business, for further development. In particular, the goal of this project was to develop a property database and conduct initial testing of heat exchanger prototypes to demonstrate its potential application. This final report describes how the glass precursor was formed, physical properties of the glass-ceramic, techniques for making heat exchanger prototypes.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has designed, constructed, and fielded a compact CCD camera system for use on the Six Inch Manipulator (SIM) at the Nova laser facility. The camera system has been designed to directly replace the 35 mm film packages on all active SIM-based diagnostics. The unit`s electronic package is constructed for small size and high thermal conductivity using proprietary printed circuit board technology, thus reducing the size of the overall camera and improving its performance when operated within the vacuum environment of the Nova laser target chamber. The camera has been calibrated and found to yield a linear response, with superior dynamic range and signal-to-noise levels as compared to T-Max 3200 optic film, while providing real-time access to the data. Limiting factors related to fielding such devices on Nova will be discussed, in addition to planned improvements of the current design.

Progress are reported on several tasks on drying of lumber in a kiln. Data are given for the heat transfer rate vs wet bulb temperature for heat exchangers with various profiles.

In the fourth quarter of calendar year 1995 the installation and checkout of the 20 MMBtu/hr combustor and auxiliary equipment in Philadelphia was completed. The task 5, Site Demonstration Testing, combustor-boiler tests on gas, oil, and coal were initiated. The task 5 effort involves testing the combustor over extended periods under conditions that fully simulate commercial operation and that meet the combustion and environmental specifications for this project. To meet this project objective within the current work scope requires up to 500 hours of testing. The focus of this testing will be on the component and environmental performance of combustor, boiler, coal preparation and feeding, and the stack gas equipment. The facility can be converted to a 500 kW power plant by the addition of a steam turbine, condenser, and cooling tower. However, this added effort is beyond the current work scope and its implementation will depend on recovering the added costs by placing the steam production from the boiler to beneficial use. During the present quarterly reporting period, all the components needed to implement the initial 100 hours of testing under task 5 were installed at the test site, and checkout of this equipment was performed. Since the present …

Froth flotation technique is an effective and efficient process for recovering of ultra-fine clean coal. Economical dewatering of an ultra-fine clean coal product to a 20% level moisture will be an important step in successful implementation of the advanced cleaning processes. This project is a step in the Department of Energy`s program to show that ultra-clean coal could be effectively dewatered to 20% or lower moisture using either conventional or advanced dewatering techniques. The cost-sharing contract effort is for 36 months beginning September 30, 1994. This report discusses technical progress made during the quarter from January 1- March 31, 1996.

In this article the authors study effects of microbunch cooperative electromagnetic radiation in a bend on transverse beam dynamics. An overtaking radiative interaction between different parts of the bunch results in three major forces variable along the bunch. Longitudinal force leads to energy loss and causes the bunch emittance growth in the bend due to the dispersion effect. Radial force consists of logarithmically large ``Talman`` centrifugal force and smaller centripetal force. Due to general radius-energy dependence in the bend, the ``Talman`` force does not affect beam dynamics while the centripetal force leads to projected emittance growth. Finally, radial and vertical focusing forces lead to trajectory distortions which vary along the bunch. These cooperative forces significantly affect the dynamics of short high-populated bunch in bends.

A computer based system for performing probabilistic safety assessments (PSAs) of aircraft crashes to ground structures is under development. The system called ACRA (aircraft crash risk assessment) employs a GIS (geographical information system) for locating, mapping, and characterizing ground structures; and a multiparameter data base system that supports the analytical PRA (probabilistic risk assessment) model for determining PSAs for aircraft crashes. The Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) is being employed as the base case for study and application of ACRA and evaluation of the projected safety assessment.

The overall contract objectives are to: (1) demonstrate repeatability of performance and preparation procedure of two high activity, high alpha iron Fischer-Tropsch catalysts synthesized at Texas A&M University (TAMU); (2) seek potential improvements in the catalyst performance through variations in process conditions, pretreatment procedures and/or modifications in catalyst synthesis; (3) investigate performance of catalysts in a small scale bubble column slurry reactor, and (4) investigate feasibility of producing catalysts on a large scale in collaboration with a catalyst manufacturer. In order to achieve these objectives the work is divided into ten tasks, which are described and their accomplishments are reported.

Azimuthal correlations have been studied in heavy ion reactions over a wide range of beam energies. At low incident energies up to 100 MeV/nucleon where collective effects like the directed sidewards flow are generally small, azimuthal correlations provide a useful tool to determine the reaction plane event by event. In the energy regime of the BEVALAC (up to 1 GeV/nucleon for heavy ions) particular emission patterns, i.e. azimuthal correlations of nucleons and light nuclei with respect to the reaction plane, have been associated with the so called squeeze out and sidesplash effects. These effects are of particular interest because of their sensitivity to the equation of state at the high baryon density which is build up during the collision process. Angular distributions similar to the squeeze out have been observed for pions at the SIS in Darmstadt as well as from the EOS - collaboration. Recently also the sideward flow was measured for pions and kaons. However, the origin of the signal in the case of produced mesons is thought to be of a different nature than that for the nucleon flow. At the AGS, azimuthally anisotropic event shapes have been reported from the E877 collaboration for the highest available …

The Site Systems Engineering Management Plan (SEMP) is the Westinghouse Hanford Company (WHC) implementation document for the Hanford Site Systems Engineering Policy, (RLPD 430.1) and Systems Engineering Criteria Document and Implementing Directive, (RLID 430.1). These documents define the US Department of Energy (DOE), Richland Operations Office (RL) processes and products to be used at Hanford to implement the systems engineering process at the site level. This SEMP describes the products being provided by the site systems engineering activity in fiscal year (FY) 1996 and the associated schedule. It also includes the procedural approach being taken by the site level systems engineering activity in the development of these products and the intended uses for the products in the integrated planning process in response to the DOE policy and implementing directives. The scope of the systems engineering process is to define a set of activities and products to be used at the site level during FY 1996 or until the successful Project Hanford Management Contractor (PHMC) is onsite as a result of contract award from Request For Proposal DE-RP06-96RL13200. Following installation of the new contractor, a long-term set of systems engineering procedures and products will be defined for management of the Hanford …

This web site provides an up-to-date report on the radioactive solid waste expected to be managed at Hanford`s Solid Waste (SW) Program from onsite and offsite generators. It includes: an overview of Hanford-wide solid waste to be managed by the SW Program; program- level and waste class-specific estimates; background information on waste sources; and Li comparisons with previous forecasts and with other national data sources. The focus of this web site is on low- level mixed waste (LLMW), and transuranic waste (both non-mixed and mixed) (TRU(M)). Some details on low-level waste and hazardous waste are also provided. Currently, this site is reporting data current as of 9/96. The data represent a life cycle forecast covering all reported activities from FY97 through the end of each program`s life cycle.