The Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (ACIR) is a permanent, independent, bipartisan intergovernmental agency established by Public Law 86-380 in 1959. As it was established, ACIR's mission is:To strengthen the American federal system and improve the ability of federal, state, and local governments to work together cooperatively, efficiently, and effectively.

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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 Bexar County Commissioners Court may house its veterans service office with its Department of Housing and Human Services (ID# 38643)

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: Applicability of section 11.31(a), Tax Code, to a commercial injection well that is operated solely for the purpose of treating and disposing of waste generated by third parties (ID# 38908)

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;Disposition of property seized by a sheriff and forfeited under chapter 59 ,Code of Criminal Procedure(ID# 38374).

Salary information was collected for July 1996 for personnel working as nuclear engineers and health physicists. The salary information includes personnel at the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. levels with zero, one, three, four to seven, and eight to ten years of professional work experience. Information is provided for utilities and non-utilities. Non-utilities include private sector organizations and U.S. Department of Energy contractor-operated facilities. Government agencies, the military, academic organizations, and medical facilities are excluded. In previous years the salary data have been collected for October. In 1996, the data were collected for July; thus, some caution must be exercised in making annual salary trend comparisons.

Currently, the Morgantown Energy Technology Center, is actively investigating alternative hot fuel gas desulfurization sorbents for application to the Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC). A sorbent must be highly active towards sulfur at high temperatures and pressure`s, and under varying degrees of reducing atmospheres. Thus, high conversion of the metal oxide and low hydrogen sulfide exit partial pressures. Also, it must regenerate nearly ideally to maintain activity over numerous cycles. Furthermore, regeneration must yield a sulfur product which is economically recoverable directly or indirectly. This cyclic process requires a holistic approach as any one criteria may eliminate a candidate sorbent from further consideration. Over fifty induration campaigns have been conducted among the fifteens Mn-based sorbent formulations. All indurated sorbents has been tested for crush strength and chemical analysis. Also, fifteen sorbent formulations have been tested in a TGA for at least on e induration condition. Subsequently described are the three main groups of formulations tested. They are the MnCO{sub 3} supported with TiO{sub 2} (with or without bentonite), MnCO{sub 3} supported with Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} (with or without porosity enhancers), and MnO{sub 2} ore supported with alundum (with and without bentonite).

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This interim submittal is an updated 1996 overview of the Master Plan based on the 1995 LLNL Site Development Plan, illustrating the future land use considerations, and the locations of proposed facilities as documented through the line item development process and keyed to the summary table. The following components in addition to the line-item proposals remain key elements in the implementation strategy of the Master Plan: personnel migration, revitalization, space reduction, classified core contraction, utility systems, and environmental restoration.

The Petroleum Supply Monthly (PSM) is one of a family of four publications produced by the Petroleum Supply Division within the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reflecting different levels of data timeliness and completeness. The other publications are the Weekly Petroleum Status Report (WPSR), the Winter Fuels Report, and the Petroleum Supply Annual (PSA). Data presented in the PSM describe the supply and disposition of petroleum products in the United States and major US geographic regions. The data series describe production, imports and exports, inter-Petroleum Administration for Defense (PAD) District movements, and inventories by the primary suppliers of petroleum products in the United States (50 States and the District of Columbia). The reporting universe includes those petroleum sectors in primary supply. Included are: petroleum refiners, motor gasoline blenders, operators of natural gas processing plants and fractionators, inter-PAD transporters, importers, and major inventory holders of petroleum products and crude oil. When aggregated, the data reported by these sectors approximately represent the consumption of petroleum products in the United States. Data presented in the PSM are divided into two sections: Summary Statistics and Detailed Statistics.

This program was geared to support the Fossil Energy Material Sciences Program with respect to several areas of interest in efficient production and utilization of energy. Carbon molecular sieves have great potential for economically purifying gases; i.e. removal of carbon dioxide from natural gas without having to resort to cryogenic techniques. Microporous carbons can be tailored to serve as adsorbents for natural gas in on-board storage in automotive applications, avoiding high pressures and heavy storage tanks. This program is a laboratory study to evaluate production methodologies and activation processes to produce porous carbons for specific applications. The Carbon Materials Technology Group of Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) is engaged in developmental programs to produce activated carbon fibers (ACF) for applications in fixed beds and/or flowing reactors engineering applications.

The micro-structure of an atmospheric pressure, opposed flow, methane diffusion flame has been studied using heated micro-probe sampling and chemical kinetic modeling. Mole fraction profiles of major products as well as trace aromatic, substituted aromatic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH up to C{sub 16}H{sub 10}, e.g. pyrene) were quantified by direct gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) analysis of samples withdrawn from within the flame without any pre-concentration. Mole fractions range from 0.8 to 1.0 {times} 10{sup {minus}7}. The experimental measurements are compared to results from a newly-developed chemical kinetic model that includes chemistry for the production and consumption of aromatics and PAH species. The model predictions are in reasonable agreement with the experimental data for the major species profiles and for the peak concentrations of many of the trace aromatics and PAH species. 36 refs.

This document discusses the organization, process management, and performance assessment and improvement of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. Topics discussed include: policy; planning; organizational structure; staff proficiency; communication processes; hazards and risks in the work process; process control; documents and records management; self assessments and corrective actions.

The authors investigate the cosmological constraints on exotic stable matter states which arise in realistic free fermionic superstring models. These states appear in the superstring models due to a ``Wilson-line`` breaking of the unifying non-Abelian gauge symmetry. In the models that they consider the unifying SO(10) gauge symmetry is broken at the string level to SO(6) x SO(4), SU(5) x U(1) or SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1). The exotic matter states are classified according to the patterns of the SO(10) symmetry breaking. In SO(6) x XO(4) and SU(5) x U(1) type models one obtains fractionally charged states with Q{sub e.m.} = {+-}1/2. In SU(3) x SU(2) x U(1) type models one also obtains states with the regular charges under the Standard Model gauge group but with ``fractional`` charges under the U(1){sub z{prime}} symmetry. These states include down-like color triplets and electroweak doublets, as well as states which are Standard Model singlets. By analyzing the renormalizable and nonrenormalizable terms of the superpotential in a specific superstring model, the authors show that these exotic states can be stable. They investigate the cosmological constraints on the masses and relic density of the exotic states. They propose that, while the abundance and the masses …

The safe management of surplus weapons plutonium is a very important and urgent task with profound environmental, national and international security implications. In the aftermath of the Cold War, Presidential Police Directive 13 and various analysis by renown scientific, technical and international policy organizations have brought about a focused effort within the Department of Energy to identify and implement paths forward for the long term disposition of surplus weapons usable plutonium. The central, overarching goal is to render surplus weapons plutonium as inaccessible and unattractive for reuse in nuclear weapons, as the much larger and growing stock of plutonium contained in civilian spent reactor fuel. One disposition alternative considered for surplus Pu is immobilization, in which plutonium would be emplaced in glass, ceramic or glass-bonded zeolite. This option, along with some of the progress over the last year is discussed.

The main objective of this project is to devise an effective re- development strategy to combat producibility problems related to the Repetto turbidite sequences of the Carpinteria Field. The lack of adequate reservoir characterization, high-water cut production, and scaling problems have in the past contributed to the field`s low productivity. To improve productivity and enhance recoverable reserves, the following specific goals are proposed: develop an integrated database of all existing data from work done by the former ownership group; expand reservoir drainage and reduce sand problems through horizontal well drilling and completion; operate and validate reservoir`s conceptual model by incorporating new data from the proposed trilateral well; and transfer methodologies employed in geologic modeling and drilling multilateral wells to other operators with similar reservoirs. Pacific Operators Offshore, Inc. received pre-award authorization for this project effective May 9, 1995 and final approvals were obtained effective September 1, 1995 and as such began work on the database tasks set forth in the proposal. To date a significant amount of progress has been made on development of a database, which includes production data (project task 1.1.1), well log data (project task 1.1.2), well completion data (task 1.1.3) well test and PVT data (project …

A traffic congestion forecasting model (ATOP), developed in the present investigation, is described briefly. Several macroscopic models, based on the solution of the partial differential equation of conservation of vehicles by the finite difference method, were tested using actual traffic data. The functional form, as well as the parameters, of the equation of state which describes the relation between traffic speed and traffic density, were determined for a section of the Long Island Expressway. The Lax method and the forward difference technique were applied. The results of extensive tests showed that the Lax method, in addition to giving very good agreement with the traffic data, produces stable solutions.

Narcisse is a graphics package developed by our French colleagues at Centre d`Etudes de Limeil Valenton of the Commissariat d`Energie Atomique. Narcisse is quite comprehensive; it can do two-, three-, and four-dimensional plots (the latter meaning that the surface is colored according to the values of an arbitrary function). One can open and send plots to a Narcisse window on a distant machine. Narcisse has a user-friendly graphical user interface (GUI) which, once a graph has appeared, allows the user to change its characteristics interactively. This enables one to find the best appearance for a particular plot without having to graph it repeatedly from the user program. Previously created files in various formats can also be imported directly into the Narcisse GUI and manipulated from there. Narcisse runs independently, as a graphics server. The user program communicates with Narcisse via Unix sockets. This communication is quite low level and very complex. The appearance of a plot is controlled by nearly 150 parameters for determining such things as the color palette, type of shading, axis scales, curve and surface labels, titles, angle and distance of view (for three- and four-dimensional graphs), hidden line removal, etc. Most end users do not wish …

The Refrigerant Database is an information system on alternative refrigerants, associated lubricants, and their use in air conditioning and refrigeration. it consolidates and facilitates.access to property, compatibility, environmental, safety, application and other information. It provides corresponding information on older refrigerants, to assist manufacturers and those using alternative refrigerants, to make comparisons and determine differences. The underlying purpose is to accelerate phase out of chemical compounds of environmental concern.

Experimentation was conducted to determine the nature of bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) pressure fluctuations. The goal of the experiments was to explain the physical phenomena that governs the structure of pressure fluctuations. A study of the effect of the differential pressure tap spacing was conducted. The results confirmed the hypothesis that spatial aliasing can significantly distort expected fluctuation structure. The behavior of bubbling bed fluctuations was compared to previously published theories that predicted the natural frequency of incipiently fluidized beds. A modified theory was derived for fluidized systems which better predicts the observed frequency in shallow fluidized beds. This theory not only predicts the natural frequency of bed oscillations, but also explains the second order system behavior observed in bubbling fluidized bed Bode plots. The effect of bubble coalescence in deep bed acts both to decrease the frequency of bed oscillations and to complicate the observed frequency response with multiple peaks.

During the week of the impacts of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 into Jupiter, we used a speckle imaging camera mounted on the Lick Observatory 3 meter Telescope to record a continuous stream of images of the planet. Because the speckle imaging technique compensates for atmospheric blurring, the resulting images were most likely the highest resolution of any taken from the ground. These images compliment the Hubble Space Telescope data by covering time periods when Hubble was not observing Jupiter. We collected full planet 1024 by 1024 pixel CCD images taken 20 per minute for 4 hours per night over 6 nights July 15 to 22. Only a portion of this raw data has been reduced to high resolution images to date.

Detection of weak patterns in radar ocean RCS images is complicated by the fact that signals and noise are interactive rather than additive and the ambient noise background is non Gaussian or even strongly non Gaussian at low grazing angles. This paper addresses this difficult problem with the aid of two simplifying assumptions: (1) the signal modulation is weak, and (2) departure from Gaussianity is small. In situations where this departure is large, an approach is suggested for reducing this non Gaussianity. The relevant weak signal detection theory, based on the Likelihood ratio, is reviewed and adapted for use in the analysis. The approach to this problem, similar to that previously used for complex images, is facilitated by approximating the multivariate probability distributions as a composite integral involving underlying processes which are assumed to be Gaussian. This formulation, subject to the approximations in the analysis, permits derivation of an ideal detection statistic (which determines the form of optimum receiver) and a signal/noise ratio which characterizes detection performance in the weak signal limit. Implications for image processing are discussed and directions for future analysis are suggested.

The primary objective of this Clean Coal Technology project is to evaluate the use of Gas Reburning and Low NO{sub x} Burners (GR-LNB) for NO{sub x} emission control from a wall fired boiler. This project is being conducted in three phases at the host site, a 172 MW{sub e} wall fired boiler of Public Service Company of Colorado, Cherokee Unit 3 in Denver, Colorado: Phase I, design and permitting has been completed on June 30, 1992; Phase II, construction and start-up has been completed on September 1991; and Phase III, operation, data collection, reporting and disposition. Phase III activities during this reporting period involved the following: compilation, analysis and assembly of the final report and initiation of restoration activities; restoration of the gas reburning system involving removal of the flue gas recirculation system (permanent Second Generation Gas Reburning); and participants meeting and reburning workshop. Long term testing of the equipment demonstrated an average NO{sub x} reduction of 65% using 18% gas heat input. After removing the flue gas recirculation system, (Second Generation GR), an average NO{sub x} of 64% was achieved using 13% gas heat input. The project goal of 70% reduction was achieved, but no on an average basis …