A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the electric power industry's vulnerability to year 2000 problems and the reported status of the industry's year 2000 readiness."

The goal of this test was to measure pump operating characteristics for three different gases and a wider range of conditions than for the vendor data. Test results will be used by Engineering Development Section for incorporation in a computer model of the pump train.

A new optical technique for quantitatively measuring the spectral density of passive scalar fluctuations in a turbulent flow has been developed. The technique exploits the photorefractive properties of BaTiO{sub 3} to separate the optical signal of the turbulent field from the coherent illumination background. It is a major improvement over existing techniques in that it is non-intrusive, has excellent frequency response and spatial resolution, and is capable of simultaneously measuring two components of the three-dimensional spectral density, {Phi}{theta}({kappa}). The technique is thus especially well suited to the directly study of anisotropic flows. We have applied this technique to study the spectrum of temperature fluctuations in a fully developed turbulent channel flow with heat addition. The flow is highly anisotropic, yet the spectrum in directions transverse to the flow is seen to exhibit an inertial--convective subrange behavior which is characteristic of isotropic flows. The spectral behavior in the flow direction, due to the direct influence of the mean strain rate, is observed to be markedly different. 17 refs., 7 figs.

The development of the immobilization process for graphite fines has proceeded through a series of experimental programs. The experimental procedures and results from each series of experiments are discussed in this report.

The APS prototype undulator U-5 has been installed at NSLS VUV ring. Its effects on the beam behaviour have been simulated with tracking codes TEAPOT and RACETRACK. The tune shift, the distortion of betatron function, the chromaticity, the transverse coupling, and some of the amplitude-dependent effects on the VUV ring have been compared and are presented in this paper.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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

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 Texas National Guard is subject to the Hazard Communication Act, chapter 502 of the Health and Safety Code (RQ-951)

The Savannah River Technical Center visually examined several axial piston pump wear plates from Delta-Q Corporation in an effort to determine the cause of the scratches. The investigation found the material and hardness to be approximately consistent with vendor specifications. The visual examination revealed gouges and tears on plates 1 - 4, silicon and aluminum contamination on plates 2 & 3 and a heavy inclusion content in the base metal. The scratches were most likely attributable to either metal debris created by the protruding metal around the gouges and tears or the silicon and aluminum contamination. The heavy inclusion content may have contributed by providing sites for the gouges and tears to develop during fabrication. It is recommended that tighter controls be introduced during procurement to ensure cleaner, inclusion controlled, steel and controlling the silicon and aluminum contamination during process assembly of the pumps. Specific surface texture requirements may also be considered for final machining.

Volume Visualization is becoming an important tool for understanding large 3D datasets. A popular technique for volume rendering is known as splatting. With new hardware architectures offering substantial improvements in the performance of rendering texture mapped objects, we present textured splats. An ideal reconstruction function for 3D signals is developed which can be used as a texture map for a splat. Extensions to the basic splatting technique are then developed to additionally represent vector fields.

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-249 (1993):tuition rate for non-resident scholarship students(ID# 24128).

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: Whether a general law municipality may fund a longevity pay system for its employees.

Work continued as planned and scheduled. Total expenditures are below budget. Task 2 is complete. Task 3 is complete except for R, D & T Plan -- Phase II. Task 4 is currently slightly behind schedule but is projected to finish on or ahead of schedule. Task 5 was started early. The following major deliverables were issued: (1) Technical Paper for `93 International Joint Power Generation Conference. (2) Technical Paper for IEA Second International Conference, and (3) Topical Report by EAR on Air Toxics. Subtask 4.1 -- Engineering Analysis in support of the CGU design is nearly complete and partial design specifications are being employed in Task 5. Subtask 4.2 -- Experimental Research efforts consisted of the first series of Drop Tube Furnace tests. Data is being analyzed. Subtask 4.3 -- Modeling work to data resulted in input files for Boiler Simulation Facility and flow pattern convergence was attained. Particle combustion is the next step. This work will be reported on at the next Quarterly Project Review meeting. Task 5 was started early to facilitate Task 6 schedule and quality. Integration of the SNO{sub x} Hot Scheme into the boiler and turbine/feedwater train was optimized and design work on the …

Flow volumes are the volumetric equivalent of stream lines. They provide more information about the vector field being visualized than do stream lines or ribbons. Presented is an efficient method for producing flow volumes, composed of transparently rendered tetrahedra, for use in an interactive system. The problems of rendering, subdivision, sorting, rendering artifacts, and user interaction are dealt with.

This report summarizes the proposals that have emerged and the issues surrounding them.

This report discusses criteria to consider when judging the quality of an internet site and the best strategies for locating information on the World Wide Web. There are two ways to search the Internet. The first is to use subject guides (e.g., Yahoo, Galaxy, or WWW Virtual Library), which are compiled by human indexers. These present an organized hierarchy of categories so a searcher can “drill down” through their links. The second option is to use a search engine (e.g., Alta Vista, Hotbot, or InfoSeek), an automated software robot which indexes Web pages and retrieves information based on relevancy-ranked algorithms. This report describes how search engines index the World Wide Web, as well as various features common to most search engines. In addition, the report suggests searching tips for retrieving the most precise information. Finally, the report discusses Usenet news groups, email discussion lists, gophers, and miscellaneous Web resources.

The Low-NO{sub x} Cell{trademark} Burner operates on the principle of staged combustion. The lower burner of each two-nozzle cell is modified to accommodate all the fuel input previously handled by two nozzles. Secondary air, less than theoretically required for complete combustion, is introduced to the lower burner. The remainder of secondary air is directed to the upper port'' of each cell to complete the combustion process. B W/EPRI have thoroughly tested the LNCB{trademark} at two pilot scales (6 million Btu per hour and 100 million Btu per hour), and tested a single full-scale burner in a utility boiler. Combustion tests at two scales have confirmed NO{sub x} reduction with the low-NO{sub x} cell on the order of 50% relative to the standard cell burner at optimum operating conditions. The technology is now ready for full unit, full-scale demonstration.

In the summer of 1990 a study was carried out to determine the-internal pressure, relative humidity, and chemical composition of the gas within the free volume of four canistered waste forms produced at TNX in May of 1988. Three of these canistered waste forms were sealed only by temporary seals and subsequently stored in the TNX boneyard' with no protection. The fourth canister was sealed by upset resistance welding. All three canisters with temporary seals were decontaminated by aqueous frit blasting. It was important to remeasure the leak rates of these seals to ensure that leaktightness had not deteriorated during canister handling and storage prior to the time the experiment were performed. This paper details the results of two separate measurements of the leak rates of these seals.

The audit disclosed that Sandia`s pension plans had $588.9 million in excess assets as of December 31, 1990, on a current value basis. If plan terminations and spin-offs occurred, at least $408.8 million of this amount could be returned to the Government without affecting the pension benefits that Sandia employees and retirees have earned. We recommended that Albuquerque take the necessary action to reduce the excess assets in the pension plans and recover the Government`s share. However, Albuquerque disagreed with the recommendation. Albuquerque justified leaving the excess assets in the pension plans to fund future plan amendments; to avoid future funding contributions; to avoid the costs and time-consuming administrative steps associated with taking action; and to prevent damaging effects on employee morale. We analyzed these points, and concluded that they should not prevent the Department from initiating action to return excess assets to the Government. Actuarial analysis of the pension plans showed that, even if certain plan adjustments were made, the plans were overfunded by $256 million as of December 31, 1991 (on an actuarial value basis).

The Low-NO{sub x} Cell{trademark} Burner operates on the principle of staged combustion. The lower burner of each two-nozzle cell is modified to accommodate all the fuel input previously handled by two nozzles. Secondary air, less than theoretically required for complete combustion, is introduced to the lower burner. The remainder of secondary air is directed to the upper ``port`` of each cell to complete the combustion process. B&W/EPRI have thoroughly tested the LNCB{trademark} at two pilot scales (6 million Btu per hour and 100 million Btu per hour), and tested a single full-scale burner in a utility boiler. Combustion tests at two scales have confirmed NO{sub x} reduction with the low-NO{sub x} cell on the order of 50% relative to the standard cell burner at optimum operating conditions. The technology is now ready for full unit, full-scale demonstration.

Models that address the impacts to forests of climate change are reviewed by four levels of biological organization: global, regional or landscape, community, and tree. The models are compared as to their ability to assess changes in greenhouse gas flux, land use, maps of forest type or species composition, forest resource productivity, forest health, biodiversity, and wildlife habitat. No one model can address all of these impacts, but landscape transition models and regional vegetation and land-use models consider the largest number of impacts. Developing landscape vegetation dynamics models of functional groups is suggested as a means to integrate the theory of both landscape ecology and individual tree responses to climate change. Risk assessment methodologies can be adapted to deal with the impacts of climate change at various spatial and temporal scales. Four areas of research development are identified: (1) linking socioeconomic and ecologic models, (2) interfacing forest models at different scales, (3) obtaining data on susceptibility of trees and forest to changes in climate and disturbance regimes, and (4) relating information from different scales.

The objective of this work was to establish operating conditions for a hydrothermal pre-processing scheme for municipal solid wastes that produce a good slurry product for conversion in a Texaco gasifier. Work was carried out with model components such as wood, paper, and paper/plastic mixtures.

Fe substitution for Cu in YBa{sub 2}Cu{sub 3}O{sub y} can give information about the local environment on the two crystallographic Cu sites through Mossbauer effect measurements. In this paper, we explore the possibility of forcing larger amounts of Fe onto the Cu (2) site which represents the CuO planes. At values near y = 6, the chain Cu (1) site is characteristic for Cu{sup +} in its linear 0 coordination and should preclude Fe occupation. We therefore prepared materials at elevated temperatures under N{sub 2} where y {approximately}6. Oxygenation to y {approximately}7 was achieved at temperatures where metal diffusion is minimized. We used Mossbauer spectroscopy to determine the Fe site occupancy. Site preference can be expressed in terms of a distribution ratio r = MCul/ MCu2. Creating materials with low r allows studying the effects of spatially constrained Fe on T{sub c}, separating influences from the spatially more complex Cu (1) site.

The APS prototype undulator U-5 has been installed at NSLS VUV ring. Its effects on the beam behaviour have been simulated with tracking codes TEAPOT and RACETRACK. The tune shift, the distortion of betatron function, the chromaticity, the transverse coupling, and some of the amplitude-dependent effects on the VUV ring have been compared and are presented in this paper.