Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Transportation's (DOT) performance plan for fiscal year (FY) 2000, focusing on whether the plan provided information on: (1) the desired end results; (2) the results of programs and activities that are expected to lead to end outcomes; and (3) products and services that are typically based on the numbers of activities or products that result from internal effort."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the U.S. Transportation Command's (TRANSCOM) year 2000-related end-to-end testing activities, focusing on TRANSCOM's management of its end-to-end test of its ability to plan and execute joint major theater war (MTW) deployment operations."

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a legislative requirement, GAO reviewed the Health Care Financing Administration's (HCFA) new rule on Medicare Program revisions to payment policies under the physician fee schedule for calendar year 2000. GAO noted that: (1) the rule would make several changes affecting Medicare Part B payment; (2) the changes include, among others, implementation of resource-based malpractice insurance relative value units (RVU), refinement of resource-based practice expense RVUs, and payment for physician pathology and independent laboratory services; and (3) HCFA complied with applicable requirements in promulgating the rule."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on federal child care funding, focusing on: (1) programs and services funded at the federal and state levels that directly provide early childhood care and education for the general population of low-income children up to age 5; (2) state and local assessments of the relative difficulty low-income parents face in obtaining care for their children; and (3) the collaborative efforts among child care officials and early childhood education officials to address these parents' difficulties."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the Department of Defense's management of various year 2000-related end-to-end testing activities, focusing on: (1) the U.S. Space Command's management of its end-to-end test of space control systems essential to major theater war; and (2) what the results of this test show with respect to operational risks and readiness."

The objective of this program was to differentiate and quantitate the effects of various hydrogen bonding functionalities on the viscosity of coal liquids. Emphasis was on separating and measuring the individual effect of phenolic (acidic) and aromatic amino (basic) hydrogen bonding functionalities on the viscosity of coal liquids. The elimination of both acidic and basic hydrogen bondings was attempted by using trifluoroacetyl chloride and butyric acid in derivatization; and the elimination of basic hydrogen bondings was attempted by using only trifluoroacetyl chloride in derivatization. The selectivity toward hydrogen bondings' elimination offered by these derivatizations was proven to be feasible from a study of model compounds' derivatizations. Nine narrow-boiling-range coal distillates were obtained from distilling the coal liquids of Wilsonville Run 245 and were used as coal liquid samples. 6 figs.

High-spin states in the actinides have been studied using Coulomb- excitation, inelastic excitation reactions, and one-neutron transfer reactions. Experimental data are presented for states in {sup 232}U, {sup 233}U, {sup 234}U, {sup 235}U, {sup 238}Pu and {sup 239}Pu from a variety of reactions. Energy levels, moments-of-inertia, aligned angular momentum, Routhians, gamma-ray intensities, and cross-sections are presented for most cases. Additional spectroscopic information (magnetic moments, M{sub 1}/E{sub 2} mixing ratios, and g-factors) is presented for {sup 233}U. One- and two-neutron transfer reaction mechanisms and the possibility of band crossings (backbending) are discussed. A discussion of odd-A band fitting and Cranking calculations is presented to aid in the interpretation of rotational energy levels and alignment. In addition, several theoretical calculations of rotational populations for inelastic excitation and neutron transfer are compared to the data. Intratheory comparisons between the Sudden Approximation, Semi-Classical, and Alder-Winther-DeBoer methods are made. In connection with the theory development, the possible signature for the nuclear SQUID effect is discussed. 98 refs., 61 figs., 21 tabs.

The major accomplishments of this year include (1) building and debugging a new set of coincidence electronics for our laboratory setup, (2) performing a series of detector experiments in the dry glove-box aimed at improving the performance of NaI(Tl) position-sensitive detectors, (3) modifying and debugging a Monte Carlo simulation code to test reconstruction algorithms and predict overall performance of a large solid angle PET scanner, (4) significant progress in the 3-D reprojection reconstruction algorithm and comparison to the 2-D single-slice algorithm and a 3-D multi-slice rebinning algorithm, (5) performance comparisons of the two PENN-PET scanners, which lead to a design for a large solid angle scanner with a 25-cm axial extent.

Viewing one dimensional deconvolution as a matrix inversion problem, we compare a neural network backpropagation matrix inverse with LMS, and pseudo-inverse. This is a largely an exercise in understanding how our neural network code works. 1 ref.

The purposes of Argonne's Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program are to encourage the development of novel concepts, enhance the Laboratory's R D capabilities, and further the development of its strategic initiatives. Among the aims of the projects supported by the Program are establishment of engineering proof-of-principle''; development of an instrumental prototype, method, or system; or discovery in fundamental science. Several of these project are closely associated with major strategic thrusts of the Laboratory as described in Argonne's Five Year Institutional Plan, although the scientific implications of the achieved results extend well beyond Laboratory plans and objectives. The projects supported by the Program are distributed across the major programmatic areas at Argonne. Areas of emphasis are (1) advanced accelerator and detector technology, (2) x-ray techniques in biological and physical sciences, (3) advanced reactor technology, (4) materials science, computational science, biological sciences and environmental sciences. Individual reports summarizing the purpose, approach, and results of projects are presented.

We report photocurrent transients arising from the pulsed laser excitation of the dipolar first excited singlet sate S{sub 1} of trans 4-dimethyl-amino-4{prime}-nitrostilbene (DMANS) in toluene solution. The currents arise from rotational reorientation of DMANS dipoles with respect to the axis of an applied electric field. The method appears to offer a simple and general approach to the measurement of the change in dipole moment upon electronic excitation of a molecule. In another experiment, durene (1,2,4,5-tetramethylbenzene) dissolved in n-hexane was photoionized by 35 psec pulses at 266 nm. Transient absorption at 1064 nm arising chiefly from geminate electrons was detected and used to monitor the recombination of the electron-cation pairs produced by two-photon ionization. An excellent fit to the recombination kinetics was obtained by assuming that the distribution of initial electron-cation separations was of the form r{sup 2}EXP = r{sup 2}/(2L{sup 3})exp({minus}r/L) with a mean radius 3L = 5.7 nm.

We have synthesized and completed characterization of permeability and selectivity properties of a group of polysulfones and polyether ketones with the potential for higher use temperatures, as well as members of a series of polyesters derived from spirobiindane bisphenol monomer in conjunction with meta and para substituted diacid chlorides. We have also synthesized and characterized the gas transport and thermal properties of diphenyl substituted polyphenylene oxide. The diphenyl substituted material has a potential for higher temperature applications than the standard dimethyl substituted polymer. The temperature dependence of the gas transport properties for the oxygen/nitrogen system was characterized over the range from 35 to 65{degree}C for both of these analog materials.

Experiment E769 at Fermilab obtained charm hadroproduction data during the 1987-88 Fixed Target running period with a 250 GeV hadron beam incident on thin target foils of Be, Al, Cu, and W. From an analysis of 25% of the recorded 400M trigger sample we have explored the Feynman x, p{sub t}{sup 2} and the atomic number dependence of charm quark production using samples of D{sup +} and D{sup 0} mesons. 7 refs., 4 figs.

This paper reports on the work being performed for the ship wake detection effort. We show that improvements in the detectability of line features in noisy images, using the correlation-spectral line detector, can be achieved through the judicious choice of a wedge filter in the Fourier power spectrum (FPS) domain. 3 refs., 7 figs.

This November 15, 1990, Strategic Petroleum Reserve Quarterly Report describes activities related to the site development, oil acquisition, budget and cost of the Reserve during the period July 1, 1990, through September 30, 1990. 4 tabs.

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 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, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Validity of a bid solicitation which does not comply with the publishing requirements of section 262.025(a) of the Texas Local Government Code (RQ-2050)

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 Bexar County Commissioners Court may house its veterans service office with its Department of Housing and Human Services (ID# 38643)

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: Applicability of section 11.31(a), Tax Code, to a commercial injection well that is operated solely for the purpose of treating and disposing of waste generated by third parties (ID# 38908)

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, Jim Mattox, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Opinion regarding a rider to article 5, section 8 of the current General Appropriations Act.

Ozone plays a critical role in both the chemistry and radiation balance of the troposphere. Understanding the factors controlling tropospheric ozone levels is critical to our understanding of a variety of issues in global chemistry and climate change. Chlorine atoms have the potential to contribute significantly to the ozone balance in the free troposphere. They can react directly with ozone or alternately, with organics and may actually lead to the formation of ozone in the presence of sufficient NO. Reactions of alkali halides in sea salt particles are a potential source of atomic chlorine, hence reactions of these alkali halides, especially those producing precursors to atomic chlorine, are of great interest. Finally, the mechanisms, intermediates and products of the Cl-biogenic reactions are unknown; these could serve as unique markers of chlorine atom chemistry in the troposphere, and hence are important to define.