Japan's current political instability began in July 1993, when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) -- in power since 1955 -- was voted out and replaced by a fragile multiparty coalition government under Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. The new government faced turmoil in April 1994, when Hosokawa suddenly resigned amid a personal financial scandal. Then-deputy prime minister/foreign minister Tsutomu Hata succeeded, but only at the head of a minority government after the Socialist party, a key coalition partner, quit the coalition. Although beset by its own internal squabbles, the LDP remained the single largest party in Japan's bicameral Diet, or parliament. In late June, Hata was forced to resign under threat of an LDP-led no confidence motion.

During the 105th Congress, the House considered H.R. 901, legislation which would give Congress a role in designating any new U.S. national parks and monuments of world significance added to the World Heritage List, a UNESCO administered list established by the 1972 World Heritage Convention. Sponsors of the bill are concerned that designation of a U.S. site to the U.N. list, which is currently done under Executive Branch authority, does not protect the rights of private property owners or the States. The Administration and opponents of the bill argue that the designation has no affect on property rights and does not provide the United Nations with any legal authority over U.S. territory. H.R. 901 passed the House on October 8, 1997. This paper describes the operation of the UNESCO Convention and H.R. 901. It will be updated as the legislation progresses through the House and Senate. Similar language concerning the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere Program has become law. For information on that legislation, see CRS Report 96-517 ENR, Biosphere Reserves: Fact Sheet.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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; Whether Mexican operators of motor vehicles used for commercial purposes must obtain Texas driver's licenses (RQ-1975)

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 county commissioners have the authority to set boundaries for wet/dry elections and other related questions (RQ-89)

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 a volunteer fighter may serve on a city council and vote on issues concerning the volunteer fire department (ID# 25437)

It is sometimes necessary to deploy, transport and store weapons containing high explosives (HE) in proximity. Accident analyses of these activities may include nearby explosion scenarios in which fragments from an exploding (donor) weapon impact a second (acceptor) weapon. Weapon arrays are designed to miti- gate consequences to potential acceptor weapons, but unless initiation of an accep- tor's HE is impossible, outcomes such as detonation must be considered. This paper describes an approach for estimating upper bound probabilities for fragment- dominated scenarios in which outcomes are expected to be rare events. Other aspectsl,z of nearby explosion problems were addressed previously. An example scenario is as follows. A donor weapon is postulated to detonate, and fragments of the donor weapon casing are accelerated outward. Some of the fragments may strike a nearby acceptor weapon whose HE is protected by casing materials. Most impacts are not capable of initiating the acceptor's HE. However, a sufficiently large and fast fragment could produce a shock-to-detonation transi- tion (SDT), which will result in detonation of the acceptor. Our approach will work for other outcomes of fragment impact, but this discussion focuses on detonation. Experiments show that detonating weapons typically produce a distribution of casing fragment …

The objective of this research program is to continue developing, editing, maintaining, utilizing and making publicly available the Oil and Gas Well History file portion of the Natural Resources Information System (NRIS) for the State of Oklahoma. The Oklahoma Geological Survey, working with Geological Information Systems at the University of Oklahoma Sarkeys Energy Center, has undertaken to construct this information system in response to the need for a computerized, centrally located library containing accurate, detailed information on the state`s natural resources. Particular emphasis during this phase of NRIS Well History development is being placed on oil and gas data for Osage County, which is under the authority of the Osage Tribal Council. Well History file processing, special projects are undertaken to add supplemental data to the file from well logs, scout tickets, and core and sample documentation.

New nuclear safety rules are being implemented at Department of Energy sites. This paper examines the impacts of these rules as each site decides where rules will be implemented, whether implementation activities will be centralized, and how the site management and staff will be introduced to the new rules.

An essential component to hybrid electric and electric vehicles is energy storage. A power assist device could also be important to many vehicle applications. This discussion focuses on the use of compressed gas as a system for energy storage and power in vehicle systems. Three possible vehicular applications for which these system could be used are discussed in this paper. These applications are pneumatically driven vehicles, series hybrid electric vehicles, and power boost for electric and conventional vehicles. One option for a compressed gas system is as a long duration power output device for purely pneumatic and hybrid cars. This system must provide enough power and energy to drive under normal conditions for a specified time or distance. The energy storage system for this use has the requirement that it will be highly efficient, compact, and have low mass. Use of a compressed gas energy storage as a short duration, high power output system for conventional motor vehicles could reduce engine size or reduce transient emissions. For electric vehicles this kind of system could lengthen battery life by providing battery load leveling during accelerations. The system requirements for this application are that it be compact and have low mass. The …

This work describes the design, finite-element analysis, and verifications performed by LLNL and Kaiser Aluminum for the prototype design of the CALSTART Running Chassis purpose-built electric vehicle. Component level studies, along with our previous experimental and finite-element works, provided the confidence to study the crashworthiness of a complete aluminum spaceframe. Effects of rail geometry, size, and thickness were studied in order to achieve a controlled crush of the front end structure. These included the performance of the spaceframe itself, and the additive effects of the powertrain cradle and powertrain (motor/controller in this case) as well as suspension. Various design iterations for frontal impact at moderate and high speed are explored.

While considerable progress has been made in recent years toward the development of multi-robot teams, much work remains to be done before these teams are used widely in real-world applications. Two particular needs toward this end are the development of mechanisms that enable robot teams to generate cooperative behaviors on their own, and the development of techniques that allow these teams to autonomously adapt their behavior over time as the environment or the robot team changes. This paper proposes the use of the Cooperative Multi-Robot Observation of Multiple Moving Targets (CMOMMT) application as a rich domain for studying the issues of multi-robot learning and adaptation. After discussing the need for learning and adaptation in multi-robot teams, this paper describes the CMOMMT application and its relevance to multi-robot learning. We discuss the results of the previously- developed, hand-generated algorithm for CMOMMT and the potential for learning that was discovered from the hand-generated approach. We then describe the early work that has been done (by us and others) to generate multi- robot learning techniques for the CMOMMT application, as well as our ongoing research to develop approaches that give performance as good, or better, than the hand-generated approach. The ultimate goal of …

Laser-based ultrasonic (LBU) measurement shows great promise for on-line monitoring of weld quality in tailor-welded blanks. Tailor-welded blanks are steel blanks made from plates of differing thickness and/or properties butt-welded together; they are used in automobile manufacturing to produce body, frame, and closure panels. LBU uses a pulsed laser to generate the ultrasound and a continuous wave (CW) laser interferometer to detect the ultrasound at the point of interrogation to perform ultrasonic inspection. LBU enables in-process measurements since there is no sensor contact or near-contact with the workpiece. The authors are using laser-generated plate (Lamb) waves to propagate from one plate into the weld nugget as a means of detecting defects. This paper reports the results of the investigation of a number of inspection architectures based on processing of signals from selected plate waves, which are either reflected from or transmitted through the weld zone. Bayesian parameter estimation and wavelet analysis (both continuous and discrete) have shown that the LBU time-series signal is readily separable into components that provide distinguishing features which describe weld quality. The authors anticipate that, in an on-line industrial application, these measurements can be implemented just downstream from the weld cell. Then the weld quality data …

'The direct grout alternative is a viable option for treatment/stabilization and disposal of salt waste containing Cs-137 concentrations of 1-3 Ci/gal. The significant difference between these waste solutions is that the high cesium salt solution will contain between 1 and 3 Curies of Cs-137 per gallon compared to a negligible amount in the current salt solution. This difference will require special engineering and shielding for a direct grout processing facility and disposal units to achieve acceptable radiation exposure conditions. The higher cesium concentrations in the direct grout also require that the cesium leaching be evaluated as a function of curing temperature. ANS 16.1 leaching results and distribution ratios (approximations of distribution coefficients) as a function of temperature are presented in this report.'

The purpose of this technical implementing procedure (TIP) is to describe the procedure that will be employed for user-calibration of a digital caliper used in the determination of specimen dimensions. A caliper is used for some of the activities of the Scientific Investigation Plan (SIP) Metal Barrier Selection and Testing (SIP-CM-01, WBS {number_sign} 1.2.2.5.1). In particular, it will be used for Activity E-20-50, Long-Term Corrosion Studies. This procedure describes the methodology for user calibration of a Fowler Ultra-Cal Mark III digital caliper. National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) traceable gauge blocks are employed in the calibration procedure.

THERMAL is designed to calculate neutron thermal scattering that is elastic and isotropic in the center of mass system. At low energy thermal motion will be included. At high energies the target nuclei are assumed to be stationary. The point of transition between low and high energies has been defined to insure a smooth transition. It is assumed that at low energy the elastic cross section is constant in the relative system. At high energy the cross section can be of any form. You can use this routine for all energies where the elastic scattering is isotropic in the center of mass system. In most materials this will be a fairly high energy, e.g., the keV energy range. The THERMAL method is simple, clean, easy to understand, and most important very efficient; on a SUN SPARC-10 workstation, at low energies with thermal scattering it can do almost 6 million scatters a minute and at high energy over 13 million. Warning: This version of THERMAL completely supersedes the original version described in the same report number, dated February 24, 1995. The method used in the original code is incorrect, as explained in this report.

This document presents sampling data resulting from the November 11, 1994, sampling of SST 241-BY-110 using the vapor sampling system.

This paper presents the Advanced Computing Lab Message Passing Library (ACLMPL). Modeled after Thinking Machines Corporation`s CMMD, ACLMPL is a high throughout, low latency communications library for building message passing applications. The library has been implemented on the Cray T3D, Thinking Machines CM-5, SGI workstations, and on top of PVM. On the Cray T3D, benchmarks show ACLMPL to be 4 to 7 times faster than MPI or PVM.

Westinghouse Hanford Company has initiated investigation into the use of a standard moisture gauge for measurement of in-formation moisture content from cased wells. The presence of air in the borehole does not destroy the instrument response, in fact, the response is very sensitive to formation moisture from steel-cased boreholes. Calibration of the prototype instrument configuration and some experimental characterization for various borehole constructions have been performed and reported. Recommendations for future study are also provided.

We are investigating the amination of electrophilic aromatic systems through the use of Vicarious Nucleophilic Substitution (VNS) chemistry. This research has led to a new synthesis of 1,3,5-Triamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene (TATB) and 1,3-diamino-2,4,6-trinitrobenzene (DATB) which uses 2,4,6-trinitroaniline (picramide) or 1,3,5-trinitrobenzene as starting materials. We also describe the development of a new class of VNS aminating reagents based on quarternary hydrazinium halides. 1,1,1-Trimethylhydrazinium iodide (TMHI), available from the methylation of the surplus propellant uns-dimethylhydrazine (UDMH), was used in a new synthesis of TATB. The advantages, scope and limitations of the VNS approach to the synthesis of TATB and other amino-substituted nitroarenes are discussed.

This paper defines a class of evolutionary algorithms called evolutionary pattern search algorithms (EPSAs) and analyzes their convergence properties. This class of algorithms is closely related to evolutionary programming, evolutionary strategie and real-coded genetic algorithms. EPSAs are self-adapting systems that modify the step size of the mutation operator in response to the success of previous optimization steps. The rule used to adapt the step size can be used to provide a stationary point convergence theory for EPSAs on any continuous function. This convergence theory is based on an extension of the convergence theory for generalized pattern search methods. An experimental analysis of the performance of EPSAs demonstrates that these algorithms can perform a level of global search that is comparable to that of canonical EAs. We also describe a stopping rule for EPSAs, which reliably terminated near stationary points in our experiments. This is the first stopping rule for any class of EAs that can terminate at a given distance from stationary points.

The objective of this research program is to continue developing, editing, maintaining, utilizing and making publicly available the Oil and Gas Well History file portion of the Natural Resources Information System (NRIS) for the State of Oklahoma. This grant funds that ongoing development work as a continuation of earlier grant numbers DE-FG19-88BC14233, DE-FG22-89BC14483, and DE-FG22-92BC14853. The Oklahoma Geological Survey, working with Geological Information Systems at the University of Oklahoma Sarkeys; Energy Center, has undertaken to construct this information system in response to the need for a computerized, centrally located library containing accurate, detailed information on the state`s natural resources. Particular emphasis during this phase of NRIS Well History development is being placed on oil and gas data for Osage County, which is under the authority of the Osage Tribal Council.

This document supports the development and presentation of the following accident scenario in the TWRS Final Safety Analysis Report: HEPA Filter Failure - Exposure to High Temperature or Pressure. The calculations needed to quantify the risk associated with this accident scenario are included within.