The use of failure-prone components in critical applications has been traditionally governed by removing such components from service prior to the expiration of their predicted life expectancy. Such early retirement of materials does not guarantee that a particular sample will not fail in actual usage. The increasing cost of such life expectancy based operation and increased demand for improved reliability in industrial settings has necessitated an alternate form of quality control. Modern applications employ nondestructive evaluation (NDE), also known as nondestructive testing (NDT), as a means of monitoring the levels and growth of defects in a material throughout its operational life. This thesis describes the modifications made to existing instrumentation used for magnetic measurements at the Center for Nondestructive Evaluation at Iowa State University. Development of a new portable instrument is also given. An overview of the structure and operation of this instrumentation is presented. This thesis discusses the application of the magnetic hysteresis and Barkhausen measurement techniques, described in Sections 1.3.1 and 1.3.2 respectively, to a number of ferromagnetic specimens. Specifically, measurements were made on a number of railroad steel specimens for fatigue characterization, and on specimens of Damascus steel and Terfenol-D for materials evaluation. 60 refs., 51 figs., …

Correspondence issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "GAO examined the Department of Defense's fiscal year (FY) 2000 budget request and prior years' appropriations for selected weapon system procurement and research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) programs."

A letter report issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO examined various issues involving consumers' dealings with funeral-related or death care industries, which include businesses that provide funeral and cemetery goods or services, focusing on: (1) the availability of information on the nature and extent of consumer complaints about death care industries; (2) the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) efforts to ensure compliance with its Funeral Rule; and (3) selected state governments' roles in protecting consumers in their death care transactions."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) efforts to increase revenues from alternative sources as a way to supplement its medical care appropriations, focusing on trends in third-party collections."

Testimony issued by the General Accounting Office with an abstract that begins "Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO discussed the availability of blood to meet the nation's requirements as well as recent and proposed policy changes regarding blood donation that may affect the future supply."

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) developed and tested a portable, high-quality seismic recording system for monitoring underground nuclear explosions. The configurable seismic monitoring system (CSMS) was designed to satisfy the designated seismic station (DSS) requirements for instrumentation to be deployed in a vault as set forth in the protocol of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT). As a proof-of-concept test under treaty monitoring conditions, two configurations of this system were built, and each was deployed at a different seismic station to record the Nevada Test Site (NTS) event Bexar. Both configurations successfully recorded this event, demonstrating the flexibility and the operation of the basis design. 3 refs., 8 figs.

Savannah River Site supernatant liquid waste samples are periodically taken and analyzed for corrosive and inhibiting species concentrations as part of the waste tank chemistry control program. These samples are taken at or near the surface of the waste. This is the preferred location for sampling since the liquid phase at this location is the most corrosive liquid phase in the tank as a result of the highest nitrate to nitrite ratio and the lowest hydroxide concentration. This report discusses the sampling of high-level radioactive wastes at the Savannah River Site.

The universal drift instability and other drift instabilities driven by density and temperature gradients in a toroidal system are investigated in both linear and nonlinear regimes via particle simulation. Runs in toroidal and cylindrical geometry show dramatic differences in plasma behavior, primarily due to the toroidicity-induced coupling of rational surfaces through the poloidal mode number m. In the toroidal system studied, the eigenmodes are seen to possess (i) an elongated, nearly global radial extent (ii) a higher growth rate than in the corresponding cylindrical system, (iii) an eigenfrequency nearly constant with radius, (iv) a global temperature relaxation and enhancement of thermal heat conduction. Most importantly, the measured Xi shows an increase with radius and an absolute value on the order of that observed in experiment. On the basis of our observations, we argue that the increase in Xi with radius observed in experiment is caused by the global nature of heat convection in the presence of toroidicity-induced mode coupling.

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 a justice court may issue a tax warrant under Tax Code section 33.22(a) in excess of $5,000 (ID# 38763)

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 local taxing authority may, without foreclosing on the property , accept an amount that is less than the total amount of delinquent taxes owed on real property with "serious environmental problems" (RQ-880)

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 county civil service system the personnel of a county attorney's even though Government Code section 41.105 deems the county attorney's personnel terminable at will (RQ-891)

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 physician's employee who is not certified under the Medical Radiologic Technologist Certification Act, V.T.C.S. art. 4512m, is authorized to perform sinus and skull x-rays under the supervision of the physician (ID# 38836)

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; Effect of provision of chapter 611, Health and Safety Code, authorizing mental health professional to disclose confidential information about a patient in response to a subpoena (ID# 38823)

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;Regulation of Kinesiotherapists under article 4512e V.T.C.S and related questions(ID# 38920)

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 Beeville-Bee County Redevelopment Authority Corporation is subject to the Open Meetings Act, Gov’t Code ch. 551 (ID# 38963)

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, under Probate Code section 887, a debtor pay pay money to a county clerk for the benefit of a creditor if the creditor is owed, from all sources, a total greater than $25,000 and related question (ID# 38724)

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 is liable for the payment of medical expenses that a county jail inmate who is not an eligible county resident under chapter 61 of the Health and Safety Code incurs (RQ-685, ID#27238)

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 state constitutionally may implement , as part of its vehicle emissions inspection and maintenant program, a federal requirement that the state temporarily may suspend station or inspector licenses immediately upon finding a violation of the program or equipment failure (RQ-894)

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 practice of acupuncture is within the scope of practice for a licensed Texas chiropractor and related questions (RQ-853)

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 Texas Optometry Board may adopt a rule authorizing a therapeutic optometrist to administer cocaine eye drops for diagnostic purposes (RQ-877)

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 Government Code section 822.201(c) constitutionally excludes from salary and wages, for purposes of determining member contributions to and computation of benefits from the Teacher Retirement System, "payments recieved... for teaching a driver education and traffic safety course" (RQ-859)

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 section 44.031 of the Education Code, enacted by act of May 27, 1995, 74th Leg., R.S., ch. 260, ∫ 1, 1995 Tex. Sess. Law Serv. 2207, 2425-26, changes the conclusion reached in Attorney General Opinion DM-347 (1995) and related questions (RQ-836)

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 Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corporation may garnish the wages of a county employee for the purpose of collecting a federally guaranteed student loan (RQ-803)