EPA appropriations are included in the annual VA-HUD-Independent Agencies Appropriation Bill. Two major issues were whether Superfund cleanups should be accelerated in the absence of statutory reforms and whether the requested state assistance funds are adequate. Because the House and Senate were in agreement on not granting the requested 50% increase in Superfund and in passing increased state funds, the chief conference issue focused on the roughly $225 million difference between the House and Senate versions.

This report discusses increases in the productivity of American firms to maintain competitiveness in the international marketplace.

Since Dayton Peace Accords, the civilian side of peace implementation has been challenged by the scope of the tasks, and by the lack of commitment demonstrated by the Bosnian parties to various aspects of the peace agreement. In addition, issues such as International Framework for peace implementation, formation of governmental institution, election, civil police task force and displaced persons are discussed in this report.

This report focuses on the exchange-rate system set up at Bretton Woods, its breakdown in the 1970s, the current system of managed floating and, finally, proposals to return part or all the way to a more fixed-rate system.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 "GAO provided information on: (1) opportunities for increasing the number of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) single-parent families receiving child support and for improving the reporting of such support to the Social Security Administration (SSA); (2) the potential for reducing SSI payments by increasing the extent to which SSI children in single-parent families are served by the Child Support Enforcement (CSE) program and have support collected for them and the extent to which support collected by CSE programs is reported by custodial parents to SSA."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the Corporation for the Promotion of Rifle Practice and Firearms Safety's administration of the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP), focusing on: (1) whether CMP's conversion to a private corporation and the Corporation's subsequent firearms sales were conducted in accordance with the 1996 National Defense Authorization Act; (2) the types and value of federal support provided to the Corporation; and (3) the types and number of firearms the Army transferred to the Corporation and was storing for potential transfer."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO provided information on the: (1) number and dollar value of business assistance loans approved by the Department of Agriculture's Rural Business-Cooperative Service (RBS); (2) federal government's costs associated with the agency's loans; and (3) financial condition of the agency's loan portfolio, including the losses incurred."

Kaon electroproduction on deuterium and hydrogen targets has been measured at beam energies of 3.245 and 2.445 GeV and momentum transfer Q{sup 2}=0.38 and 0.5 GeV{sup 2}. Associated {Lambda} production off a proton in the deuteron exhibits a quasifree production mechanism. The production of {Sigma}{sup {minus}} off the neutron could be extracted for the first time with reasonable errors.

The room-temperature elastic moduli, fracture strength, and fracture toughness of dense, fine-grained, pure Ce{sub 0.9}Gd{sub 0.1}O{sub 1.95} and composites containing 1.3 and 9.1 wt. % Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} were investigated. Addition of 9.1 wt.% Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} to Ce{sub 0.9}Gd{sub 0.1}O{sub 1.95} changed the fracture mode from intergranular to transgranular and increased room-temperature fracture strength from 65 to 125 MPa and fracture toughness from 1.3 to 1.6 MPam{sup 1/2}. In addition, steady-state compressive creep was measured for Ce{sub 0.9}Gd{sub 0.1}O{sub 1.95} and the Ce{sub 0.9}Gd{sub 0.1}O{sub 2{minus}x} + 9.1 wt.% Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} composite. The stress exponent {approx}1.3 and the activation energy {approx}480 kJ/mole for Ce{sub 0.9}Gd{sub 0.1}O{sub 1.95} suggested diffusional flow controlled by the cations. There was no difference in creep rate between Ce{sub 0.9}Gd{sub 0.1}O{sub 2{minus}x} and the composite.

The layered perovskite double sheet La{sub 1.2}Sr{sub 1.8}Mn{sub 2}O{sub 7} crystals have shown an unusual magnetic behavior. They are found to be fully ferromagnetic below 120 K, with a small ferromagnetic component ({le} 0.3% by volume) persisting above 120 K and extending up to 320 K along with a paramagnetic phase and becoming fully paramagnetic above 320 K. A large magnetoresistance is seen around 120 K. Ion channeling investigations in these crystals show clearly a change of 1.5 picometer in the atomic displacement from 70 to 150 K, which is twice than that expected due to the change in the thermal vibrational amplitude and the lattice parameters a and c, observed by neutron diffraction. This provides a clear indication of dynamic distortion occurring around the ferromagnetic transition. Even in the wide temperature region between 120 to 320 K, anomalous displacement of ions can be seen, correlating well with the features observed in magnetization measurements. These displacements are again larger than those due to thermal motion, thereby supporting the idea of dynamic fluctuations in the Jahn-Teller distorted MnO{sub 6} octahedra playing an important role at the magnetic phase transitions in this material. There is a large magneto-crystalline anisotropy with the hard …

A seaport simulation model, PORTSIM, has been developed for the Department of Defense (DOD) at Argonne National Laboratory. PORTSIM simulates the detailed processes of cargo loading and unloading in a seaport and provides throughput capability, resource utilization, and other important information on the bottlenecks in a seaport operation, which are crucial data in determining troop and equipment deployment capability. There are two key problems to solve in developing the HLA-compliant PORTSIM model. The first is the cargo object ownership transfer problem. In PORTSIM, cargo items, e.g. vehicles, containers, and pallets, are objects having asset attributes. Cargo comes to a seaport for loading or unloading. The ownership of a cargo object transfers from its carrier to the port and then from the port to a new carrier. Each owner of the cargo object is responsible for publishing and updating the attributes of the cargo object when it has the ownership. This creates a unique situation in developing the PORTSIM federate object model, that is, the ownership of the object instead of the attributes needs to be changed in handling the cargo object in the PORTSIM federate. The ownership management service provided by the current RTI does not directly address this issue. …

The US Department of Energy (DOE) proposes to construct and operate the National Ignition Facility (NIF). The goals of the NIF are to (1) achieve fusion ignition in the laboratory for the first time by using inertial confinement fusion (ICF) technology based on an advanced-design neodymium glass solid-state laser, and (2) conduct high-energy-density experiments in support of national security and civilian applications. The primary focus of this paper is worker-public health and safety issues associated with postulated chemical accidents during the operation of NIF. The key findings from the accident analysis will be presented. Although NIF chemical accidents will be emphasized, the important differences between chemical and radiological accident analysis approaches and the metrics for reporting results will be highlighted. These differences are common EIS facility and transportation accident assessments.

The transport of atoms or molecules over surfaces has been an important area of study for several decades now, with its progress generally limited by the available experimental techniques to characterize the phenomena. A number of methods have been developed over the years to measure surface diffusion yet only very few systems have been characterized to this day mainly due to the physical limitations inherent in these available methods. Even the STM with its astonishing atomically-resolved images of the surface has been limited in terms of its capability to determine mass transport properties. This is because the STM is inherently a ``slow`` instrument, i.e., a finite time is needed for signal averaging in order to produce the image. A need exists for additional surface diffusion measurement techniques, ideally ones which are able to study varied systems and measure a wide range of diffusion rates. The STM (especially because of its highly local nature) presents itself as a promising tool to conduct dynamical studies if its poor time resolution during ``normal operation`` can somehow be overcome. The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce a new technique of using the STM to measure adatom mobility on surfaces -- one with a …

Operations and maintenance continued this month at the Electric Power Research Institute's (EPRI�s) Environmental Control Technology Center (ECTC). Testing for the month involved the Dry Sorbent Injection (DSI) test block with the Carbon Injection System. The 1.0 MW Cold-Side Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) unit, the 0.4 MW Mini-Pilot Wet Scrubber, and the 4.0 MW Pilot Wet Scrubber remained idle this month in a cold-standby mode and were inspected regularly. These units remain available for testing as future project work is identified.

This study is designed to provide improvements in advanced reservoir characterization techniques and is applied to the study of the Tensleep Sandstone reservoir in Wyoming. Investigations were performed on CO{sub 2} flooding.

This work gives a proof of convergence for a randomized learning algorithm that describes how anoles (lizards found in the Carribean) learn a foraging threshold distance. This model assumes that an anole will pursue a prey if and only if it is within this threshold of the anole`s perch. This learning algorithm was proposed by the biologist Roughgarden and his colleagues. They experimentally confirmed that this algorithm quickly converges to the foraging threshold that is predicted by optimal foraging theory our analysis provides an analytic confirmation that the learning algorithm converses to this optimal foraging threshold with high probability.

Using a thin flame model with a constant density ratio across the flame and a constant burning velocity, numerical simulations of flame propagation into defined, non-decaying turbulent-like flow reveals a succession of growth rate behaviors. Starting with laminar growth, the flame length then acquires an exponential growth rate when the turbulence distorts the early flame so that an inner flame radius is a small fraction of the largest outer radius. As the flame continues to grow, the difference between the inner radius and the outer radius, referred to as the flame zone thickness L{sub Z}, becomes constant and small compared to the flame size--this yields a constant growth rate, but with magnitude much larger than the initial laminar value. The flame size, using either the average radius or the maximum radius, grows like R {approximately} V{sub C} t, where the flame convection V{sub C} is created by volume expansion distributed throughout the flame zone L{sub Z}. This constant growth rate appears to evolve into a power-law growth rate, R {approximately} t{sup 1+q}, where q > 0, similar to the growth of the flame length, L{sub F} {approximately} t{sup 1+p}, where p > q. which follows its exponential growth period. This …

Two scenarios were examined for small-scale electricity production from biomass using a gasifier/fuel cell system. In one case, a stand-alone BCL/FERC gasifier is used to produce synthesis gas that is reformed and distributed through a pipeline network to individual phosphoric acid fuel cells. In the second design, the gasifier is integrated with a molten carbonate fuel cell stack and a steam bottoming cycle. In both cases, the gasifiers are fed the same amount of material, with the integrated system producing 4 MW of electricity, and the stand-alone design generating 2 MW of electricity.

The papers in this special issue have been selected from the systems and balance-of- systems sessions at the 1998 Photovoltaic Performance and Reliability Workshop. The workshop was held November 3-5, 1998 and hosted by the Florida Solar Energy Center, Cocoa Beach, Florida under sponsorship of the US National Center for Photovoltaics (National Renewable Energy Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories). The topics and issues addressed by these papers were identified in an invited review paper on PV systems by the guest editors. Their work was published earlier this year in Volume 7, Number 1 of Progress in Photovoltaics ('Photovoltaic Systems: An End-of-Millennium Review'). Experts in the PV community were asked to make presentations on these topics at the workshop. The papers that follow are the results of that effort. The papers are organized by topic: (1) codes and standards; (2) reliability; (3) design issues; and (4) commercialization.

Article 690, Solar Photovoltaic Power Systems, has been in the National Electrical Code (NEC) since 1984. An NFPA-appointed Task Group for Article 690 proposed changes to Article 690 for both the 1996 and 1999 codes. The Task Group, supported by more than 50 professionals from throughout the photovoltaic (PV) industry, met seven times during the 1999 code cycle to integrate the needs of the industry with the needs of electrical inspectors and end users to ensure the safety of PV systems. The Task Group proposed 57 changes to Article 690, and all the changes were accepted in the review process. The performance and cost of PV installations were always a consideration as these changes were formed but safety was the number-one priority. All of the proposals were well substantiated and coordinated throughout the PV industry and with representatives of Underwriters Laboratories, Inc (UL). The most significant changes that were made in Article 690 for the 1999 NEC along with some of the rationale are discussed in the remainder of this article.

The microstructural evolution of heavily deformed polycrystalline Cu is simulated by coupling a constitutive model for polycrystal plasticity with the Monte Carlo Potts model for grain growth. The effects of deformation on boundary topology and grain growth kinetics are presented. Heavy deformation leads to dramatic strain-induced boundary migration and subsequent grain fragmentation. Grain growth is accelerated in heavily deformed microstructures. The implications of these results for the thermomechanical fatigue failure of eutectic solder joints are discussed.