This document provides facts and statistics about Social Security that are frequently requested by Members of Congress and their staffs. Its purpose is to provide quick answers to basic questions about the program. It should not be treated as a guide to Social Security. The reader is advised to consult other publications for explanations of how eligibility and benefits are determined and how the program is financed. Among them are two pamphlets published by the Social Security Administration (SSA) entitled Basic Facts About Social Security and Understanding Social Security which are contained in the Congressional Research Service (CRS) Info Pack IP 153S, Social Security: An Introduction. SSA also issues numerous other pamphlets on various aspects of the program as well as a lengthy Handbook on Social Security. For other possible sources that provide data and basic descriptive material, see the references listed at the end of this document.

The availability of precise, real-time intelligence has been an integral part of a military technical revolution being implemented by the Department of Defense for post-Cold War conflicts and peacekeeping operations. Providing this intelligence requires new types of equipment, analysis and organizational relationships within the U.S. intelligence community.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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: Applicability of the disclosure requirements of section 5 of the article 342-705 of the Texas Banking Code to a savings and loan association (RQ-1903)

Other written product issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO presented a guide on its revised government auditing standards to audit officials and others interested in government auditing standards. The standards require auditors to document in the working papers the basis for assessing control risk at the maximum level for assertions that are significantly dependent on computerized systems."

A staff study issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided information on the three components needed to ensure compliance with international environmental agreements."

Guidance issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "This publication has been superseded by AIMD-00-21.3.1, Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, November 1999. GAO published a guide on internal control standards for executive agency managers as required by the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act. The standards apply equally to program implementation and administration as well as financial operations, and they are intended to help both program and financial managers."

A staff study issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO provided information on the surface transportation challenges facing the nation in the 21st century. To understand these challenges and assess the potential direction surface transportation policy could take to address them, GAO sponsored a conference that brought together transportation experts to discuss the future of surface transportation in the United States."

To evaluate groundwater and surface water contamination and migration near the Oak Ridge Y-12 plant, a Comprehensive Groundwater Monitoring Plan was developed. As part of the Maynardville exit pathways monitoring program, monitoring well clusters were ii installed perpendicular to the strike of the Maynardville Limestone, that underlies the southern part of the Y-12 Plant and Bear Creek Valley (BCV). The Maynardville Project is designed to locate potential exit pathways of groundwater, study geochemical characteristics and factors affecting the occurrence and distribution of water-bearing intervals, and provide hydrogeologic information to be used to reduce the potential impacts of contaminants entering the Maynardville Limestone.

In 1984, Congress and the Department of Energy (DOE) established the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program to enable the director of a national laboratory to foster and expedite innovative research and development (R and D) in mission areas. The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) continually examines these mission areas through strategic planning and shapes the LDRD Program to meet its long-term vision. The goal of the LDRD Program is to spur development of new scientific and technical capabilities that enable LLNL to respond to the challenges within its evolving mission areas. In addition, the LDRD Program provides LLNL with the flexibility to nurture and enrich essential scientific and technical competencies and enables the Laboratory to attract the most qualified scientists and engineers. The FY98 LDRD portfolio described in this annual report has been carefully structured to continue the tradition of vigorously supporting DOE and LLNL strategic vision and evolving mission areas. The projects selected for LDRD funding undergo stringent review and selection processes, which emphasize strategic relevance and require technical peer reviews of proposals by external and internal experts. These FY98 projects emphasize the Laboratory's national security needs: stewardship of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, responsibility for the …

This report, in three volumes, describes the ground water monitoring and corrective-action program at the M-Area Hazardous Waste Management Facility (HWMF) at the Savannah River Site (SRS) during the fourth quarter 1994 and first quarter 1995. Concise description of the program and considerable data documenting the monitoring and remedial activities are included in the document. Volume II includes Appendix I - water elevation and isoconcentration contour maps.

A study is made of the effects of stable stratification on the fine-scale features of the flow in an evolving stable boundary layer (SBL). Large-eddy simulation (LES) techniques are used so that spatially and temporally varying and intermittent features of the turbulence can be resolved; traditional Reynolds-averaging approaches are not well suited to this. The LES model employs a subgrid turbulence model that allows upscale energy transfer (backscatter) and incorporates the effects of buoyancy. The afternoon, evening transition, and nighttime periods are simulated. Highly anisotropic turbulence is found in the developed SBL, with occasional periods of enhanced turbulence. Energy backscatter occurs in a fashion similar to that found in DNS, and is an important capability in LES of the SBL. Coherent structures are dominant in the SBL, as the damping of turbulent energy occurs more at the smaller, less organized scales.

Many approximate solutions for matched beam envelope functions with space charge have been developed; they generally have efforts of 2--10% for the parameters of interest and cannot be reliably improved. The new, systematic approach described here provides the K-V envelope functions to arbitrarily high accuracy as a power series in the quadrupole gradient. A useful simplification results from defining the sum and difference of the envelope radii; S = (a+b)/2 varies only slightly with distance z along the system axis, and D = (a-b)/2 contains most of the envelope oscillations. To solve the coupled equations for S and D, the quadrupole strength K(z) is turned on by replacing K with {alpha}K{sub 1} and letting {alpha} increase continuously from 0 to 1. It is found that S and D may be expanded in even and odd powers of {alpha}, respectively. Equations for the coefficients of powers of {alpha} are then solved successively by integration in z. The periodicity conditions and tune integration close the calculation. Simple low order results are typically accurate to 1% or better.

In order to better review licensing submittals for a High-Level Waste Repository, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff has expanded and improved its capability to conduct performance assessments. This report documents an initial demonstration of this capability. The demonstration made use of the limited data from Yucca Mountain, Nevada to investigate a small set of scenario classes. Models of release and transport of radionuclides from a repository via the groundwater and direct release pathways provided preliminary estimates of releases to the accessible environment for a 10,000 year simulation time. Latin hypercube sampling of input parameters was used to express results as distributions and to investigate model sensitivities. This methodology demonstration should not be interpreted as an estimate of performance of the proposed repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. By expanding and developing the NRC staff capability to conduct such analyses, NRC would be better able to conduct an independent technical review of the US Department of Energy (DOE) licensing submittals for a high-level waste (HLW) repository. These activities were divided initially into Phase 1 and Phase 2 activities. Additional phases may follow as part of a program of iterative performance assessment at the NRC. The NRC staff conducted Phase 1 activities …

This is the third volume of this comprehensive report of the inventory of radiological and nonradiological contaminants in waste buried or projected to be buried in the subsurface disposal area of the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory. Appendix B contains a complete printout of contaminant inventory and other information from the CIDRA Database and is presented in volumes 2 and 3 of the report.

The 1994 Site Environmental Report summarizes environmental activities at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL) for the calendar year (CY) 1994. The report strives to present environmental data in a manner that characterizes the performance and compliance status of the Laboratory`s environmental management programs when measured against regulatory standards and DOE requirements. The report also discusses significant highlight and planning efforts of these programs. The format and content of the report are consistent with the requirements of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Order 5400.1, General Environmental Protection Program.

This paper describes the successes and challenges associated with Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) permitting of the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory's (INEEL) Waste Experimental Reduction Facility (WERF) hazardous and mixed waste incinerator. Topics to be discussed include facility modifications and problems, trial burn results and lessons learned in each of these areas. In addition, a number of challenges remain including completion and final issue of the RCRA Permit and implementation of all the permit requirements. Results from the trial burn demonstrated that the operating conditions and procedures will result in emissions that are satisfactorily protective of human health, the environment, and are in compliance with Federal and State regulations.

This report contains an initial definition of the field tests proposed for the Yucca Mountain Project repository sealing program. The tests are intended to resolve various performance and emplacement concerns. Examples of concerns to be addressed include achieving selected hydrologic and structural requirements for seals, removing portions of the shaft liner, excavating keyways, emplacing cementitious and earthen seals, reducing the impact of fines on the hydraulic conductivity of fractures, efficient grouting of fracture zones, sealing of exploratory boreholes, and controlling the flow of water by using engineered designs. Ten discrete tests are proposed to address these and other concerns. These tests are divided into two groups: Seal component tests and performance confirmation tests. The seal component tests are thorough small-scale in situ tests, the intermediate-scale borehole seal tests, the fracture grouting tests, the surface backfill tests, and the grouted rock mass tests. The seal system tests are the seepage control tests, the backfill tests, the bulkhead test in the Calico Hills unit, the large-scale shaft seal and shaft fill tests, and the remote borehole sealing tests. The tests are proposed to be performed in six discrete areas, including welded and non-welded environments, primarily located outside the potential repository area. The …

The primary objective of this study was to examine the levels of strontium-90 ({sup 90}Sr) in deer antlers collected from near previously active reactor sites and distant from the reactor sites along that portion of the Columbia River which borders the Hanford Site. A second objective was to analyze the movements and home-ranges of mule deer residing within these areas and determine to what extent this information contributes to the observed {sup 90}Sr concentrations. {sup 90}Sr is a long-lived radionuclide (29.1 year half life) produced by fission in irradiated fuel in plutonium production reactors on the Hanford Site. It is also a major component of atmospheric fallout from weapons testing. Concentrations of radionuclides found in the developed environment onsite do not pose a health concern to humans or various wildlife routinely monitored. However, elevated levels of radionuclides in found biota may indicate routes of exposure requiring attention.

The initial risk assessment for the East Fork Poplar Creek (EFPC) floodplain in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a superfund site heavily contaminated with mercury, was based upon a reference dose for mercuric chloride, a soluble mercury compound not expected to be present in the floodplain, which is frequently saturated with water. Previous investigations had suggested mercury in the EFPC floodplain was less soluble and therefore less bioavailable than mercuric chloride, possibly making the results of the risk assessment unduly conservative. A bioavailability study, designed to measure the amount of mercury available for absorption in a child`s digestive tract, the most critical risk endpoint and pathway, was performed on twenty soils from the EFPC floodplain. The average percentage of mercury released during the study for the twenty soils was 5.3%, compared to 100% of the compound mercuric chloride subjected to the same conditions. Alteration of the procedure to test additional conditions possible during soil digestion did not appreciably alter the results. Therefore, use of a reference dose for mercuric chloride in the EFPC risk assessment without inclusion of a corresponding bioavailability factor may be unduly conservative.

Borehole geophysical logging for site characterization in the volcanic rocks at the proposed nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, requires data collection under rather unusual conditions. Logging tools must operate in rugose, dry holes above the water table in the unsaturated zone. Not all logging tools will operate in this environment, therefore; careful consideration must be given to selection and calibration. A sample suite of logs is presented that demonstrates correlation of geological formations from borehole to borehole, the definition of zones of altered mineralogy, and the quantitative estimates of rock properties. We show the results of an exploratory calculation of porosity and water saturation based upon density and epithermal neutron logs. Comparison of the results with a few core samples is encouraging, particularly because the logs can provide continuous data in boreholes where core samples are not available. 9 refs., 4 figs.

Coal liquefaction involves cleavage of methylene, dimethylene and ether bridges connecting polycyclic aromatic units and the reactions of various oxygen functional groups. The selected compound for model coal liquefaction reactions are 4-(1-naphthylmethyl)bibenzyl (NMBB) and anthrone. This report describes hydrodeoxygenation of O-containing polycyclic model compounds using novel organometallic catalyst precursors and activity and selectivity of dispersed Fe catalysts from organometallic and inorganic precursors for hydrocracking of 4-(1-Naphthylmethyl) bibenzyl. For hydrodeoxygenation, model compound studies were performed using multi-ring systems, or those of comparable molecular weight, to investigate the capabilities of the dispersed catalysts. The model compounds selected include anthrone (carbonyl); dinaphthyl ether (aryl-aryl ether); xanthene (heterocyclic ether); and 2,6-di-t-butyl-4-methylphenol (hydroxyl). The catalyst precursors used were (NH{sub 4}){sub 2}MoS{sub 4}, [Ph{sub 4}P]{sub 2}[Ni(MoS{sub 4}){sub 2}] and Cp{sub 2}Co{sub 2}Mo{sub 2}(CO){sub 2}S{sub 4}. To examine what determines the activity and selectivity of Fe catalysts for hydrogenation and hydrocracking, various molecular precursors with Fe in different chemical environments have been tested in this work to help understand the influence of precursor structure and the effect of sulfur addition on the activity and selectivity of resulting Fe catalysts in model reactions of 4-(naphthylmethyl)bibenzyl. The authors have examined various precursors, including a thiocubane type cluster Cp{sub 4}Fe{sub …