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 recently enacted Government Code section 551.126, and Open Meeting Act provision authorizing governmental bodies to hold meetings by videoconference call, applies to a governing board of an institution of higher education, and related questions (RQ-1040)

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 Education Code section 51.306, which requires basic skills test for students at public universities, may be applied to students at proprietary schools (RQ-978)

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 individual convicted of a prior federal offense may apply for restoration of civil rights forfeited in the state as a result of the federal conviction if the individual has also been convicted of a misdemeanor offense (RQ-1072)

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 commissioners court may establish a neighborhood road pursuant to Transportation Code section 251.053 (RQ-1209)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has initiated remediation for stored high-level radioactive wastes. At the DOE Hanford site in southeastern Washington, 149 large underground tanks contain such wastes, generated by various chemical processes during the manufacture of plutonium for nuclear weapons. One of the key steps in this remediation effort is to characterize the waste stored in these tanks so that it can be treated properly and safely. A number of samples have been extracted from a subset of the tanks and analyzed for various chemical and radiological constituents. The analytical results were used to cluster tanks into groups with similar waste compositions. The tank groups determined by clustering of the analytical data are compared to tank groups determined using process-based historical models. Agreement between the two grouping strategies may reduce the number of samples required to characterize the waste in a tank, and perhaps support the use of the historical models to characterize tanks that have not been sampled. A successful implementation of this approach with one tank group is described here. This particular case yielded DOE significant savings of characterization resources.

Department of Energy (DOE) Policy (P) 450.4, Safety Management System Policy, commits to institutionalization of an Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS) throughout the DOE complex. The DOE Acquisition Regulations (DEAR, 48 CFR 970) requires contractors to manage and perform work in accordance with a documented Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS). Guidance and expectations have been provided to PNNL by incorporation into the operating contract (Contract DE-ACM-76FL0 1830) and by letter. The contract requires that the contractor submit a description of their ISMS for approval by DOE. PNNL submitted their proposed Safety Management System Description for approval on November 25,1997. RL tentatively approved acceptance of the description pursuant to a favorable recommendation from this review. The Integrated Safety Management System Verification is a review of the adequacy of the ISMS description in fulfilling the requirements of the DEAR and the DOE Policy. The purpose of this review is to provide the Richland Operations Office Manager with a recommendation for approval of the ISMS description of the Pacific Northwest Laboratory based upon compliance with the requirements of 49 CFR 970.5204(-2 and -78); and to verify the extent and maturity of ISMS implementation within the Laboratory. Further the review will provide a model …

This report investigates the solidification process used at 100-N Basin to solidify the N Basin sediment and assesses the N Basin process for application to the K Basin sludge residue material. This report also includes a discussion of a solidification process for stabilizing filters. The solidified matrix must be compatible with the Environmental Remediation Disposal Facility acceptance criteria.

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 section 321.406, Tax Code, limits the frequency of elections held under chapter 334 of the Local Government Code (RQ-1148)

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; Requirements of a verified complaint filed with the Court Reporters Certification Board (RQ-1088)

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 commissioners court is required to vest management of the county law library in a committee of the local bar association (RQ-1125)

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 sheriff of a county with a population of less than 110,000 that has not established a bail bond is authorized to adopt bail bond licensing rules modeled on article 2372p-3, V.T.C.S. (RQ-1138)

This report summarizes and compares the 11 substitute amendments to campaign finance reform bills that have passed the House and Senate.

The Federal False Claims Act provides for the judicial imposition of civil monetary penalties and treble damages for the knowing submission of false claims to the United States Government. This report contains information on the background of the Federal False Claims Act, current False Claims Act provisions, and health care fraud and the False Claims Act.

This report reviews major banking and finance issues that are receiving congressional attention in the 2nd session of the 105th Congress.

This report describes the history and the issues involved in the longstanding differences between Congress and the executive branch over U.S. policy toward the Indonesian military (ABRI). The report describes two past episodes when these differences broke out: the period of Indonesian radicalism under President Sukarno in the early 1960s and the initial years of the Indonesian military occupation of East Timor in the late 1970s. It outlines the different views of the Indonesian military between its congressional critics and executive branch officials who have promoted close U.S. relations with it.

This report describes how the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Program (CMAQ) and enhancement programs function, examines the policy issues surrounding them, and summarizes relevant provisions in major legislation to reauthorize ISTEA in the 105th Congress.

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This engineering note documents the Dzero Superconducting Solenoid Platinum RTD, Carbon Glass RTD, and Helium level gage instrumentation values upon receipt at Fermilab. This note is concerned with the internal instrumentation, the external instrumentation can easily be repaired if any problems arise. The Solenoid was Purchased from Toshiba and shipped from the Kehin Works in Japan. The Solenoid was received at Dzero May 12, 1997. The Solenoid was shipped in three large components. They are the Solenoid, Control Dewar, and Chimney. There are 2 main instrumentation port areas where all the internal instrumentation is available to the outside world. These 2 places are the top of the Control Dewar and the North end of the Solenoid. These two instrumentation feedthrough area's have Cyocera hermetic feedthrough port connectors welded into place. The Cyocera connector can and does mate with the Burndy Bantom cable end connector of the same pin/socket number. Since the Hermetic feedthrough and cable connector are different manufacturers, the pin layout pattern is not the same. The Toshiba drawings show both manufacturers pin numbers. The Dzero engineering notes show only the Burndy pin numbers.

The US Department of Energy, Richland Operations Office (RL) uses this Hanford Site Environmental Management Specification (Specification) to document top-level mission requirements and planning assumptions for the prime contractors involved in Hanford Site cleanup and infrastructure activities under the responsibility of the US Department of Energy, Office of Environmental Management. This Specification describes at a top level the activities, facilities, and infrastructure necessary to accomplish the cleanup of the Hanford Site and assigns this scope to Site contractors and their respective projects. This Specification also references the key National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA), Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act of 1980 (CERCLA), and safety documentation necessary to accurately describe the cleanup at a summary level. The information contained in this document reflects RL`s application of values, priorities, and critical success factors expressed by those involved with and affected by the Hanford Site project. The prime contractors and their projects develop complete baselines and work plans to implement this Specification. These lower-level documents and the data that support them, together with this Specification, represent the full set of requirements applicable to the contractors and their projects. Figure 1-1 shows the relationship of this Specification to the other basic …

The IBM ASCI Blue-Pacific System is a scalable, distributed/shared memory architecture designed to reach multi-teraflop performance. The IBM SP pieces together a large number of nodes, each having a modest number of processors. The system is designed to accommodate a mixed programming model as well as a pure message-passing paradigm. We examine a number of applications on this architecture and evaluate their performance and scalability.

The results of pyrite oxidation in mining areas are very low pH and elevated concentrations of iron and sulfate in the groundwater. Pyrite oxidation is therefore the main cause for acid mine drainage production. One approach to prevent AMD production is microencapsulation of pyrite crystals with an iron-oxide/silica coating (Zhang and Evangelou, 1998). Coating prevents diffusion of oxygen and Fe{sup 3+} to the crystal's surface and they are no longer able to oxidize it. The objective of this portion of the study was to test the hypothesis that fly ash is able to provide the necessary silica for iron-oxide/silica coating formation on the pyrite surfaces thus, decreasing pyrite oxidation and diminishing acid mine drainage production.

Self-organization processes in Xe nanocrystals embedded in Al are observed with in-situ high-resolution electron microscopy. Under electron irradiation, stacking fault type defects are produced in Xe nanocrystals. The defects recover in a layer by layer manner. Detailed analysis of the video reveals that the displacement of Xe atoms in the stacking fault was rather small for the Xe atoms at boundary between Xe and Al, suggesting the possibility of the stacking fault in Xe precipitate originating inside of precipitate, not at the Al/Xe interface.

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.