After 7 years of relatively high returns, cattle producers by 1994 were experiencing steeply falling prices--mainly caused by abundant supplies of cattle destined for U.S. feedlots. Record-high grain prices and dry pastures amplified the problem. Because of the lengthy biological cycle governing cattle production, large numbers will be coming onto the market for some time, as producers undertake the slow process of curtailing herd expansion.

The Naval Petroleum Reserves (NPR)--consisting of the large Elk Hills Field in California and smaller fields at Buena Vista Hills (CA) and Teapot Dome (WY)--were established in the early 1900s. Congress authorized full production of the NPR in 1976. Production at Elk Hills, the most significant field, peaked at 181,000 barrels per day (b/d) in 1981; currently, it is 65,000 b/d. The Clinton Administration earmarked the NPR for sale in its FY1996 budget, estimating its gross value at $2.6 billion.

A nuclear test ban is the oldest item on the nuclear arms control agenda; Congress has debated the issue since the start of the nuclear age. Three treaties limit testing to underground only, with a maximum force equal to 150,000 tons of TNT.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification; Whether an interpreter for a deaf juror may accompany the juror into the jury room during deliberations (RQ-723)

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 pardonable conviction exists after the completion of "regular" or "shock" community supervision under Code of Criminal Procedure article 42.12, section 20 (RQ-860)

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 constable is authorized to collect on a bad check and related questions(ID# 37356).

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; Authority of the Commission on Jail Standards by rule to make county jail telephone services for inmates part of the jail commissary services provided for in Local Government Code section 351.0415 (ID# 35191)

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 person may simultaneously be employed as an unpaid peace officer and as a community supervision officer (ID# 34273)

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 community college may deduct outstanding cellular telephone charges from an employee’s salary (ID# 37464)

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 husband of the curriculum coordinator of the Upper Northeast Texas Tech Prep Consortium may serve on the governing board of the Northeast Texas Community College District and related questions (ID# 38812)

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 member of a city council or a board of directors of a drainage district may simultaneously serve as a director of the Clear Creek Watershed Regional Flood Control District (ID# 38869)

In this paper, we present a simple annealing procedure (which we refer to as ''flash-annealing'' because of short duration) that results in the formation of an ultralow friction surface film on vanadium diboride (VB{sub 2}) surfaces. This annealing is done in a box furnace at 800 C for a period of 5 min. During annealing, the exposed surface of the VB{sub 2} undergoes oxidation and forms a layer of boron oxide (B{sub 2}O{sub 3}). In open air, the B{sub 2}O{sub 3} layer reacts spontaneously with moisture and forms a boric acid (H{sub 3}BO{sub 3}) film. The friction coefficient of a 440C steel pin against this H{sub 3}BO{sub 3} film is {approx}0.05, compared to 0.8 against the as-received VB{sub 2}. Based on Raman spectroscopy and electron microscopy studies, we elucidate the ultralow friction mechanism of the flash-annealed VB{sub 2} surfaces.

The overall objective of this project is to develop regenerable sorbents for hot gas desulfurization in IGCC systems. The specific objective of the project is to develop durable advanced sorbents that demonstrate a strong resistance to attrition and chemical deactivation, and high activity at temperatures as low as 343 C (650 F). A number of formulations will be prepared and screened in a 1/2-inch fixed bed reactor at high pressure (1 to 20 atm) and high temperatures using simulated coal-derived fuel-gases. Screening criteria will include, chemical reactivity, stability, and regenerability over the temperature range of 343 C to 650 C. After initial screening, at least 3 promising formulations will be tested for 25-30 cycles of absorption and regeneration. One of the superior formulations with the best cyclic performance will be selected for investigating scale up parameters. The scaled-up formulation will be tested for long term durability and chemical reactivity.

High-Z, laser heated hohlraums can be made thick enough to contain thermal radiation, yet thin enough to let out x-rays >{approximately}6keV produced by hot, relatively dense blow-off plasma. The authors use such ``thin wall hohlraums`` to observe the physical location of hot, dense, laser produced hohlraum plasmas. This technique has allowed them to come to some understanding of laser transport/deposition, plasma stagnation and bulk plasma filling.

Experiments were performed on Nova at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to study the ablation and condensation process of National Ignition Facility (NIF) first wall materials. Plates of candidate first wall materials (SiO{sub 2}, B{sub 4}, and Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}) were exposed to x-rays from hohlraums in the Nova chamber. Ablated material was collected and measured on a receiving plate which was blocked form direct x-ray exposure. This article presents the results form these experiments and comparisons with predictions from numerical simulations The net condensation flux was calculated using the TSUNAMI code, which was modified to incorporate the feature of condensation boundaries.

Calculations of x-ray driven igniting implosions require several critical parameters which have been separately tested on Nova, viz., acceptable levels of SBS and SRS from plasmas equivalent to the plasmas in igniting hohlraums, quantitative understanding of radiation temperature in gas-filled hohlraums, demonstration of control of drive symmetry in gas-filled hohlraums, low levels of seeding of hydrodynamic instabilities from surfaces, especially cryogenic deuterium tritium ice, and quantitative understanding of the mix of cold fuel into a hot spot in high growth factor implosions. 14 refs.

High gain targets for inertial confinement fusion (ICF) contain a layer of deuterium-tritium (DT) ice which surrounds a volume of DT gas in thermal equilibrium with the solid. The roughness of the cryogenic fuel layer inside of ICF targets is one of the sources of imperfections which cause implosions to deviate from perfect one dimensional performance. Experiments at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have shown that applying a heat flux across the inner surface of a hydrogen layer such as that inside an ICF target reduces the intrinsic roughness of the surface. We have developed a technique to generate this heat flux by applying and electric field to the DT vapor in the center of these shells. This vapor has a small but significant conductivity due to ionization caused by beta decay of tritium in the vapor and the solid. We describe here experiments using a 1.15 GHz cavity to apply an electric field to frozen DT inside of a sapphire test cell. The cell and cavity geometry allows visual observation of the frozen layers.

We have developed a streaked imaging capability to make time-resolved measurements of the emission size for low density foam z-pinches. By lens coupling visible emission from the z-pinch target to an array of fiber optics we obtained the emission profile in the visible as a function of time with radial resolution of 300 {mu}m. To measure the emission at temperatures greater than {approx}40 eV the source was slit-imaged or pin-hole imaged onto an x-ray filtered scintillator. Non-uniformities in both visible and x-ray emission were observed. We describe the diagnostics, the image unfold process, and results from the instrument for both visible and x-ray measurements.

Two stirred tank slurry reactor tests of catalysts with nominal compositions 100 Fe/3Cu/4 K/2 Ca/16 SiO{sub 2} (run SB-3115) and 100 Fe/5 Cu/6 K/24 SiO{sub 2} (run SA-3155) were completed under task 5, The Effect of Source of Potassium and Basic Oxide Promoter, during the reporting period. Our assessment of the effects of addition of CaO promoter to our baseline catalysts B and C and the use of potassium silicate as the source of potassium promoter is as follows: in general, the addition of CaO promoter did not result in improved performance of the baseline catalysts; the use of CaO promoter may be best suited for operation at higher reaction pressures; the baseline procedure utilizing impregnation of Fe-Cu-SiO{sub 2} precursor with aqueous solution of KHCO{sub 3} as the source of potassium promoter is the preferred method of preparation; and the procedure which utilizes aqueous K{sub 2}SiO{sub 3} solution as the source of potassium also provides satisfactory results, and may be used as an alternative. A slurry reactor test (run SB-3425) was completed during the reporting period, following the catalyst pretreatment with H{sub 2} at 250{degrees}C for 4 h (Task 6. Pretreatment Effect Research). This pretreatment resulted in higher catalyst activity …

Continuous, high quality profiles of water vapor, free of systematic bias, and of moderate temporal and spatial resolution are fundamental to the success of the ARM CART program. In addition, these should be acquired over long periods at low operational and maintenance cost. The development and verification of realistic climate model parameterizations for clouds and net radiation balance, and the correction of other CART site sensor observations for interferences due to the presence of water vapor are critically dependent on water vapor profile measurements. To date, application of profiles have been limited by vertical resolution and uniqueness and high operating cost, or diminished daytime performance, lack of eye-safety, and high maintenance cost. Recent developments in infrared laser and detector technology make possible compact IR differential absorption lidar (DIAL) systems at eye-safe wavelengths. In the studies reported here, we develop DIAL system performance models and examine the potential of solving some of the shortcomings of previous methods using parameters representative of current technologies. These simulations are also applied to determine the strengths and weaknesses unique to the DIAL method for this application.

We have studied the effect of B and H on the charge density in Ni{sub 3}Al employing first-principles electronic structure calculations based on the FLMTO method. The changes in the electronic structure induced by B result from hybridization of d states of the nearest neighbor Ni atoms with adjacent B-{ital PP} states. Thus, boron prefers to occupy Ni-rich octahedral interstices [X(7)]. Boron greatly enhances the intraplanar metallic bonding between the Ni atoms, enhances the interplanar bonding between the NiAl layers in [001] direction, and reduces the bonding-charge directionality near the Ni(3) atoms. It is concluded that B acts to increase crystal cohesion. Hydrogen enhances the bonding-charge directionality near Ni(3) atoms and has virtually no interstitial charge enhancement, suggesting that H does not promote local cohesion. When both B and H are present, the dominant changes in the electronic structure induced by B and H seems to have little effect.

The primary goal of this project was to demonstrate the use of Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) to reduce NO{sub x} emissions from pulverized-coal utility boilers using medium- to high-sulfur US coal. The prototype SCR facility, built in and around the ductwork of Plant Crist Unit 5, consisted of three large SCR reactor units (Reactors A, B, and C), each with a design capacity of 5,000 standard cubic feet per minute (scfm) of flue gas, and six smaller reactors (Reactors D through J), each with a design capacity of 400 scfm of flue gas. The three large reactors contained commercially available SCR catalysts as offered by SCR catalyst suppliers. These reactors were coupled with small-scale air preheaters to evaluate (1) the long-term effects of SCR reaction chemistry on air preheater deposit formation and (2) the impact of these deposits on the performance of air preheaters. The small reactors were used to test additional varieties of commercially available catalysts. The demonstration project was organized into three phases: (1) Permitting, Environmental Monitoring Plan (EMP) Preparation, and Preliminary Engineering; (2) Detail Design Engineering and Construction; and (3) Operation, Testing, Disposition, and Final Report Preparation. Section 2 discusses the planned and actual EMP monitoring for …