Trade and trade-related issues are prominent parts of the agenda of the 103rd Congress. The Congress has already acted on some issues, in particular the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It will have to consider legislation to implement the trade agreements reached during the Uruguay Round of the GATT, which was completed on Dec. 15,1993.

On August 27, 1993, Israel and the Palestinians announced that Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) official Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen) had initialed a landmark agreement on August 19 in Oslo, Norway on a Declaration of Principles on interim self-government for the West Bank and Gaza Strip. On September 9, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin exchanged letters unprecedented mutual recognition. On September 10, President Clinton welcomed the agreement, thanked Congress for its support, and announced that the United States would resume its dialog with the PLO. The Declaration was signed at the White House on September 13. This report provides summaries of the Declaration and the letters.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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

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 person related to a district judge within the degree prohibited by the nepotism statute, V.T.C.S. article 5996a, can take employment with a community supervision and corrections department without causing a violation of the nepotism statue in light of provision of article 42.131 of the Code of Criminal Procedure (RQ-473)

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 the former employee of the Public Utility Commission who goes to work for an affiliate of a regulated utility violates section 6 of article 1446c, V.T.C.S. (RQ-118)

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 county’s single-employer, self-funded medical benefit plan is subject to certain provisions of the Insurance Code, and related questions (RQ-508)

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 Commission of Human Rights Act, V.T.C.S. article 5221k, authorizes local commissions to file civil actions in state district court (RQ-453)

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: Regulations governing state funding of retirement programs provided for junior college faculty members (ID# 18188)

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: Authority of the San Patricio County Commissioners Court to take certain actions in winding up the Taft Hospital District (RQ-531)

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: Clarification of Attorney General Opinion DM-136 (1992) (ID# 16818)

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 individuals employed by a sheriff pursuant to section 85.005 of the Local Government Code to ensure the safekeeping of prisoners are “county law enforcement officials” for purposed of article III, section 52e, of the Texas Constitution and related question (ID# 20391)

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; Appointment of a fire department head under Government Code section 419.032, appointment of and temporary fil-in workof a part-time fire protection employee under Government Code section419.0321, and rule-making authority to define duties related to fire suppression as used in Government Code section 419.0321 (ID# 22316)

The nuclear fission of actinides in reactor fuel produces large quantities of Kr and Xe as fission products. Because of the high levels of fission Kr and Xe, sample collection and analysis of noble gases for spent fuel diagnostic measurements is a simple, straight-forward technique. In modern reprocessing plants with continuous dissolvers, it will not be possible to use traditional methods for isolating input batches of fuel. This study investigates the feasibility of using noble gas isotope abundance measurements (isotope correlation techniques - ICT) to solve safeguards requirements. Noble gas measurements might be able to provide an independent analysis of Pu contained within dissolves fuel, on an individual fuel assembly basis. The isotopic composition of Kr and Xe in spent fuel reflects both the composition (isotope abundance ratios) of the fission products and the effects of neutron capture on those fission products. We have reviewed the available literature for noble gas analyses of spent reactor fuel. While references are made to noble gas isotope correlations over the last 20 years, we have found little if any detailed analysis of large data sets. The literature search did find several useful reports. Of these papers, one is particularly useful for evaluating noble …

The goal of this work was to show the utility of using finite-element simulations to ascertain the quality of superconducting tape, created by the repeated rolling of an initially round wire. Steady-state simulations of the rolling reductions of a two, material superconducting wire were performed using ISAIAH, a three-dimensional nonlinear finite-element code. The simulations were done in conjunction with Dave Korzekwa at Los Alamos National Laboratory to produce results that could be compared with experimental findings. Results indicate that ISAIAH is capable of producing potentially useful data, but further work is necessary to obtain meaningful quantitative comparisons between simulations and experiments. This report describes the simulations that have been conducted to date and also indicates several directions for the future development of this research.

The Pulse Waveform Standard is designed to be operated in a laboratory environment in which the temperature is controlled and maintained at 22 C. The temperature controller of the Pulse Waveform Standard must be set to operate at 30 C. This report gives information for calibrating and maintaining the temperature control electronics. Temperature controller circuit diagrams and temperature controller circuit board layouts are included.

The objectives of this project are to develop a new catalyst, the kinetics for this catalyst, reactor models for trickle bed, slurry and fixed bed reactors, and simulate the performance of fixed bed trickle flow reactors, slurry flow reactors, and fixed bed gas phase reactors for conversion of a hydrogen lean synthesis gas to isobutylene. The six main accomplishments for the quarter are the following: (1) activity testing with the 7% (wt) Ce-ZrO{sub 2}, (2) activity testing the same catalyst with CO from an aluminum cylinder, (3) preparation of ZrO{sub 2} by heating zirconyl nitrate, (4) preparation of an active zirconia prepared by a modified sol gel procedure and evaluation of the catalytic activity of a commercial zirconia and the catalysts prepared by the sol gel procedure, (5) determining the effect of separator temperatures and oil flow rate on the performance of a trickle bed reactor, and (6) calculation of the equilibrium composition of the C{sub 2} to C{sub 5} olefins, and initiation of the development of a macrokinetic model. The details of each of these accomplishments are discussed.

Preliminary investigations of these manganese oxide materials show that the different oxides exhibit different selectivity toward methanol and other products. It seems that there is a correlation between the initial O/Mn ratio of the oxide and methanol selectivity. These conclusions are supported by the results displayed in Figures 1 and 2. The main product of the manganese oxide-catalyzed CO hydrogenation is methanol except on Mao, which shows the lowest methanol selectivity, but the highest CO[sub 2] yield. Preliminarily, the results suggest that the higher the O/Mn ratio of the precursor oxide, the higher will be the methanol selectivity, while the CO[sub 2] and methane selectivities will be lower. The higher CO[sub 2] and C[sub 2], C[sub 3] and C[sub 4] hydrocarbon selectivities over the Mao catalyst compared to the other manganese oxides tested, indicates that Mao acts more like a water-gas shift and Fischer-Tropsch catalyst.

Two separation techniques were investigated for the clean-up of typical radioactive mixed waste samples requiring elemental analysis by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Atomic Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-AES) or Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry (ICP-MS). These measurements frequently involve regulatory or compliance criteria which include the determination of elements on the EPA Target Analyte List (TAL). These samples usually consist of both an aqueous phase and a solid phase which is mostly an inorganic sludge. Frequently, samples taken from the waste tanks contain high levels of uranium and thorium which can cause spectral interferences in ICP-AES or ICP-MS analysis. The removal of these interferences is necessary to determine the presence of the EPA TAL elements in the sample. Two clean-up methods were studied on simulated aqueous waste samples containing the EPA TAL elements. The first method studied was a classical procedure based upon liquid-liquid extraction using tri-n- octylphosphine oxide (TOPO) dissolved in cyclohexane. The second method investigated was based on more recently developed techniques using extraction chromatography; specifically the use of a commercially available Eichrom TRU[center dot]Spec[trademark] column. Literature on these two methods indicates the efficient removal of uranium and thorium from properly prepared samples and provides considerable qualitative information on the extraction behavior of …

Resolution of microscopic analytical methods has greatly improved over the past decade, and it is now possible to examine periodic variations in structure and chemistry at a scale much finer than the spacing typical of eutectic structures (1-5 [mu]m). During the current year, studies were completed on ZrO[sub 2]-NiO and ZrO[sub 2]-MnO eutectic systems, and study was initiated on microchemical variation in two spinodal systems: Cu-Ni-Sn and SnO[sub 2]-TiO[sub 2]. Work was also initiated on metal/oxide interface microchemistry, in particular the corrosion interface resulting during oxidation of Cu-Sn alloys. 6 figs.

This project is a continuing multidisciplinary study of middle to Upper Cretaceous marine carbonate and clastic rocks in the Utah-Colorado-Kansas corridor of the old Cretaceous seaway that extended from the Gulf Coast to the Arctic during maximum Cretaceous transgressions. It is collaborative between in the US Geological Survey (W.E. Dean, P.I.) and University researchers led by The Pennsylvania State University(M.A. Arthur, P.I.) and funded by DOE and the USGS, in part. Research focusses on the Greenhom, Niobrara and lower Pierre Shale units and their equivalents, combining biostratigraphic/paleoecologic studies, inorganic, organic and stable isotopic geochemical studies, mineralogical investigations and high-resolution geophysical logging. This research requires unweathered samples and continuous smooth exposures'' in the form of cores from at least 4 relatively shallow reference holes (i.e. < 1000m) in transect from east to west across the basin. The major initial effort was recovery in Year 1 of the project of continuous cores from each site in the transect. This drilling provided samples and logs of strata ranging from pelagic sequences that contain organic-carbon-rich marine source rocks to nearshore coal-bearing units. This transect also will provide information on the extent of thermal maturation and migration of hydrocarbons in organic-carbon-rich strata along a burial …