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In recent years, there have been various legislative efforts to modify or supplement the existing H-2A temporary agricultural program authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). Concern has centered on making the program easier for growers to use while still maintaining protections for domestic labor. Growers have made limited use of the program in the past and a few years ago program usage was in decline. Current trends, however, show an increase due in part to increased demand from tobacco growers. This report provides information on the H-2A program, illustrates current trends, discusses issues raised by the proposed changes, and tracks pending legislation.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the level of enrollment in the Qualified Medicare Beneficiary (QMB) program and the Specified Low-Income Medicare Beneficiary (SLMB) program, focusing on: (1) the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of: (a) Medicare beneficiaries who enroll as a QMB or SLMB; and (b) Medicare beneficiaries who qualify for QMB or SLMB but do not enroll; (2) reasons why eligible beneficiaries are not enrolled; and (3) strategies to increase enrollment."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the District of Columbia's compliance with Public Law 105-100, focusing on whether: (1) any District employees were authorized, as of September 1998, to take home official vehicles; and (2) these employees were aware of the statutory restriction on using District government vehicles for other than official business, including home-to-work transportation."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Federal Reserve System's (FRS) efforts to remedy the year 2000 problem for its internal computer systems."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the status of 10 federal agencies' efforts to implement the Brownfield National Partnership Action Agenda, focusing on: (1) comparing federal agencies' planned financial assistance to brownfields, which are abandoned, idle, or underused industrial facilities, to their actual spending for brownfields in fiscal years (FY) 1997 and 1998; (2) describing the purposes of these obligations; and (3) determining the extent to which agencies met the Partnership's goals and objectives."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Army's M939 series 5-ton tactical cargo truck, focusing on the: (1) extent to which accidents involving the truck have occurred; and (2) results of Army studies on the truck's design and its plans to address any identified deficiencies."

The National Ignition Facility Project The mission of the National Ignition Facility (NIF) is to produce ignition and modest energy gain in inertial confinement fusion (ICF) targets. Achieving these goals will maintain U.S. world leadership in ICF and will directly benefit the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) missions in national security, science and technology, energy resources, and industrial competitiveness. Development and operation of the NIF are consistent with DOE goals for environmental quality, openness to the community, and nuclear nonproliferation and arms control. Although the primary mission of inertial fusion is for defense applications, inertial fusion research will provide critical information for the development of inertial fusion energy. The NIF, under construction at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), is a cornerstone of the DOE's science-based Stockpile Stewardship Program for addressing high-energy-density physics issues in the absence of nuclear weapons testing. In pursuit of this mission, the DOE's Defense Programs has developed a state-of-the-art capability with the NIF to investigate high-energy-density physics in the laboratory with a microfusion capability for defense and energy applications. As a Strategic System Acquisition, the NIF Project has a separate and disciplined reporting chain to DOE as shown below.

During the PEP-II LER commissioning run in July 1998 the beam profile in the tune up dump profile monitor just before LER injection showed an anomalous parabolic shape. The sextupole component of the field of bend magnets B2 and B4 in the beginning of the south injection tunnel (SIT) was thought to be the cause of this. An off-line model of the B2/B4 bend magnet field was created using DIMAD. Results of particle tracking simulated in DIMAD were compared with on-line lattice diagnostic data and observations of the beam profile on the tune up dump screen.

Dynamic focusing has been proposed [1] as a way to eliminate a conventional collimation and final focus system in linear colliders, and is a scheme that is more readily extended to colliders at several TeV center-of-mass energy. In this paper we examine several outstanding issues, in particular, the optimization of the lens and main beam parameters. Simulations of the lens-lens, lens-main, and main-main beam collisions using a modified version of the GUINEAPIG beam-beam code are in progress.

One major function of the Tank Waste Remediation System (TWRS) is to characterize wastes in support of waste management and disposal activities at the Hanford Site. Analytical data from sampling and analysis and other information about a tank are compiled and maintained in a tank characterization report (TCR). This report and its appendices serve as the TCR for single-shell tank 241-BY-107. The objectives of this report are (1) to use characterization data in response to technical issues associated with 241-BY-107 waste, and (2) to provide a standard characterization of this waste in terms of a best-basis inventory estimate. Section 2.0 summarizes the response to technical issues, Section 3.0 provides the best-basis inventory estimate, and Section 4.0 makes recommendations about the safety status and additional sampling needs. The appendices contain supporting data and information.

Modeling and simulation in support of adaptive ecosystem management can be better accomplished through a dynamic, integrated, and flexible approach that incorporates scientific and technological components into a comprehensive ecosystem-modeling framework. The Integrated Dynamic Landscape Analysis and Modeling System (IDLAMS) integrates ecological models and decision support techniques, through a geographic information system (GIS)-based framework. The Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) sponsored the development of IDLAMS. Initially built upon a GIS framework, IDLAMS is migrating to an object-oriented (OO) architectural framework. An object-oriented architecture is more flexible and modular. It allows disparate applications and dynamic models to be integrated in a manner that minimizes (or eliminates) the need to rework or recreate the system as new models are added to the suite. In addition, an object-oriented design makes it easier to provide run-time feedback among models, thereby making it a more dynamic tool for exploring and providing insight into the interactions among ecosystem processes. Finally, an object-oriented design encourages the reuse of existing technology because OO-IDLAMS is able to integrate disparate models, databases, or applications executed in their native languages. Reuse is also accomplished through a structured approach to building a consistent and reusable object library. This reusability can …

We present a general analysis of the effective potential for neutrino propagation in matter, assuming a generic set of Lorentz invariant non-derivative interactions. We find that in addition to the known vector and axial vector terms, in a polarized medium also tensor interactions can play an important role. We compute the effective potential arising from a tensor interaction. We show that the components of the tensor potential transverse to the direction of the neutrino propagation can induce a neutrino spin-flip, similar to the one induced by a transverse magnetic field.

In the early part of this workshop, I believe Dr. Bergles made a statement indicating that certain schools in America are planning to take the traditional heat transfer and fluid mechanics courses out of their curriculum and that some may have already done so. That statement created some excitement, and I did respond to that in some fashion and make some suggestions. Then Dr. Bergles said ''well maybe these matters should be included in a separate discussion period,'' which is this forum. Because I am working at the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, I have the opportunity to witness the type of research being done in high technology areas today with the most advanced x-rays, which gives me some sort of advantage for telling you what I see as future research directions. Hence, I would like to reflect on all of this along a different avenue, and really my presentation will stress the educational side: essentially engineering education and what our role should be at the universities in teaching the next generation of students coming in and also what our role should be in retraining researchers for the demands of the emerging fields and markets.

Combustion systems that take advantage of a periodic combustion process have many advantages over conventional systems. Their rate of heat transfer is greatly enhanced and their pollutant emissions are lower. They draw in their own supply of fuel and air and they are self-venting. They have few moving parts. The most common type of pulse combustor is based on a Helmholtz resonator - a burning cycle drives a resonant pressure wave, which in turn enhances the rate of combustion, resulting in a self-sustaining, large-scale oscillation. Although the basic physical mechanisms controlling such a process were explained by Rayleigh over a century ago, a full understanding of the operation of a pulse combustor still does not exist. The dominant processes in such a system--combustion, turbulent fluid dynamics, acoustics--are highly coupled and interact nonlinearly, which has reduced the design process to a costly and inefficient trial-and-error procedure. Several recent numerical and experimental studies, however, have been focused towards a better understanding of the basic underlying physics. Barr et al. [l] have elucidated the relative roles of the time scales governing the energy release, the turbulent mixing, and the acoustics. Keller et al. [5] have demonstrated the importance of the phase relation between …

This report details the efforts by engineers at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) of Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) to evaluate the reliability of water-cooled radiation absorbers used in the NSLS X-ray ring. These absorbers are part of the 16 dipole vacuum chambers which comprise the arc sections of the ring. They are located at the intersections (crotch) of the beamline exit ports with the electron beam chamber, and are commonly referred to as "crotches". The purpose of these efforts was to demonstrate the reliability of the crotches under operating conditions that the crotches will be subjected to over the entire expected life of the ring. The efforts described include engineering calculations, finite element analysis, conceptual design for a reliability test, test implementation and descriptions, results and conclusions related to these analyses and tests.

An experiment to study the effects of RF pulsed heating on copper has been developed at SLAC. The experiment consists of two circularly cylindrical cavities operating in the TE{sub 011} mode at a resonant frequency of 11.424 GHz. These cavities are connected by a magic tee and driven by a 50 MW X-band klystron. Each cavity receives an input pulse of 20 MW with a pulse length of 1.5 {micro}s. This input corresponds to a maximum temperature rise of 350 K on the copper surface. The details of the experimental setup will be described.

We show that the asymmetry in the fractional energy of charm versus anticharm jets produced in high energy diffractive photoproduction is sensitive to the interference of the Odderon (C = {minus}) and Pomeron (C = +) exchange amplitudes in QCD. We predict the dynamical shape of the asymmetry in a simple model and estimate its magnitude to be of the order 15% using an Odderon coupling to the proton which saturates constraints from proton-proton vs. proton-antiproton elastic scattering. Measurements of this asymmetry at HERA could provide firm experimental evidence for the presence of Odderon exchange in the high energy limit of strong interactions.

The ability to accurately and rapidly measure nuclear material within drums and examine their contents without having to unpack the drums saves time, reduces characterization costs and minimizes radiation exposure. Over the past two years, Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has developed and fielded a suite of mobile nondestructive assay and examination systems for use primarily on its own transuranic (TRU) waste but that also have application to low level, mixed and hazardous wastes. It has become obvious that systems like these are generally useful and have applications at other Department of Energy (DOE) production and environmental technology sites. Mobile capabilities present a potential cost savings where waste drums have to be transported to a fixed NDA facility. In other cases they fill a void where there is no fixed facility available because construction costs are prohibitive (as in the case of small quantity sites) or the available facilities may not meet current or evolving safety standards. Rather than bringing waste to a facility to be characterized, one can bring the characterization capability to the waste. The three systems described are: (1) mobile radiography system; (2) mobile segmented/tomographic gamma scanner; and (3) mobile passive/active neutron assay system.

The computer codes at LLNL with capabilities for numerical analysis for multiphase flow; phenomenology and constitutive theory and modeling; advanced diagnostics, advanced test beds, facilities, and data bases; and multiphase flow applications are listed, with brief descriptions.

The generation of a stable colloidal suspension in geologic materials has a number of environmental implications. Mobile colloids may act as vectors for the transport of adsorbed contaminants through soils and within aquifers and can cause serious problems related to well monitoring and formation permeability in an injections well system. Colloid-facilitated transport has been implicated in the migration of contaminants from seepage basins on the Department of Energy`s Savannah River Site (SRS) at a rate greater than was predicted in two- phase transport models. From 1955 to 1988, seepage basins overlying the water-table aquifer received acidic wastes containing high levels of Na+ and nitric acid, as well as trace radionuclides and metals from the nuclear materials processing facilities. Numerical simulations predicted that metal contaminants would not reach the water table, but measurable quantities of these contaminants have been detected in monitoring wells down gradient from the basins. Lack of agreement between predicted and observed contaminant migration in this and other studies has been attributed to both local non equilibrium situation, preferential flow paths within the geologic material, and to transport of the contaminant in association with a mobile solid phase, i.e. dispersed colloids. Additionally, the association of contaminants with a …