Newsletter of the Texas Department of Health discussing the news, activities, and events of the organization and other information related to health in Texas. This newsletter includes information on outbreaks of cyclospora infections, Encephalitis, upcoming changes to school and day care immunization requirements, and a diseases in nature conference.

Newsletter of the Texas Board of Professional Engineers discussing information about the Board as well as news, events, legal regulations, and other relevant information.

We construct T-duality on K3 surfaces. The T-duality exchanges a 4-brane R-R charge and a O-brane R-R charge. We study the action of the T-duality on the moduli space of O-branes located at points of K3 and 4-branes wrapping it. We apply the construction to F-theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau 4-fold and study the duality of N = 2 SU(N{sub c}) gauge theories in four dimensions. We discuss the generalization to the N = 1 duality scenario.

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This report describes new technologies being developed to help detect and clear anti-personel landmines, the programs that are developing them, and discusses related issues for congressional consideration.

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The report discusses national defense foreign affairs. It also points out defense budget trends, key budget and policy issues and legislation.

Protecting a structure against earthquake excitation by supporting it on laminated elastomeric bearings has become a widely accepted practice. The ability to perform accurate simulation of the system, including FEA of the bearings, would be desirable--especially for key installations. In this paper attempts to model the behavior of elastomeric earthquake bearings are outlined. Attention is focused on modeling highly-filled, low-modulus, high-damping elastomeric isolator systems; comparisons are made between standard triboelastic solid model predictions and test results.

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Task 4 experimental testing was continued. Six first-stage one-liter autoclave tests were made at reduced severity conditions. A device to reduce the in-line filter diameter proved difficult to use and resulted in little usable filtration data. Its use was discontinued. The second-stage reactor system was overhauled and used to process Wilsonville Run 263J resid. Resid conversion and yields were commensurate with expected results. The economic and engineering evaluation of the Novel Concept process, based on Task 2 and Task 3 experimental data, was begun. The design of a conceptual commercial plant was completed. The economic and engineering evaluation illuminated components of the process operating and capital cost estimates which, if appropriately altered, could significantly reduce the cost of product (gasoline) from the process. This provided direction for the Task 4 experimental program.

This report is intended to serve as a status report, which essentially transmits the data that have been collected to date on the Large Block Test (LBT). The analyses of data will be performed during FY98, and then a complete report will be prepared. This status report includes introductory material that is not needed merely to transmit data but is available at this time and therefore included. As such, this status report will serve as the template for the future report, and the information is thus preserved. The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is investigatinq the suitability of Yucca Mountain (YM) as a potential site for the nation's first high-level nuclear waste repository. As shown in Fig. 1-1, the site is located about 120 km northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, in an area of uninhabited desert.

The APT program has been examining both normal and superconducting variants of the APT linac for the past two years. A decision on which of the two will be the selected technology will depend upon several considerations including the results of ongoing feasibility experiments, the performance and overall attractiveness of each of the design concepts, and an assessment of the system-level features of both alternatives. The primary objective of the Assessment of Alternative RF Linac Structures for APT study reported herein was to assess and compare, at the system-level, the performance, capital and life cycle costs, reliability/availability/maintainability (RAM) and manufacturing schedules of APT RF linear accelerators based upon both superconducting and normal conducting technologies. A secondary objective was to perform trade studies to explore opportunities for system optimization, technology substitution and alternative growth pathways and to identify sensitivities to design uncertainties.

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The North Disposal Trench, located north of the eastern most lagoon, was installed in 1963 to receive solid waste and construction debris from the Operation Roller Coaster man camp. Subsequent to Operation Roller Coaster, the trench continued to receive construction debris and range cleanup debris (including ordnance) from Sandia National Laboratories and other operators. A small hydrocarbon spill occurred during Voluntary Corrective Action (VCA) activities (VCA Spill Area) at an area associated with the North Disposal Trench Corrective Action Site (CAS). Remediation activities at this site were conducted in 1995. A corrective action investigation was conducted in September of 1996 following the Corrective Action Investigation Plan (CAIP); the detailed results of that investigation are presented in Appendix A. The Roller Coaster Lagoons and North Disposal Trench are located at the Tonopah Test Range (TTR), a part of the Nellis Air Force Range, which is approximately 225 kilometers (140 miles) northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, by air.

This report describes all time and frequency analysis parameters measured with the new Nuclear Weapons Identification System (NWIS) processor with three input channels: (1) the {sup 252}Cf source ionization chamber; (2) a detection channel; and (3) a second detection channel for active measurements. An intuitive and physical description of the various functions is given as well as a brief mathematical description and a brief description of how the data are acquired. If the full five channel capability is used, the number of functions increases in number but not in type. The parameters provided by this new NWIS processor can be divided into two general classes: time analysis signatures including multiplicities and frequency analysis signatures. Data from measurements with an 18.75 kg highly enriched uranium (93.2 wt%, {sup 235}U) metal casting for storage are presented to illustrate the various time and frequency analysis parameters.

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Order 430.1, Life Cycle Asset Management, begins to focus DOE Programs and Projects on the total system life cycle instead of looking at project execution or operation as individual components. As DOE begins to implement this order, the DOE Management and Operating contractors must develop a process to control not only the contract baseline but also the overall life cycle baseline. This paper presents an integrated process that is currently being developed on the Yucca Mountain Project for DOE. The process integrates the current contract/project baseline management process with the management control process for design and the configuration management change control process.

Under the Characterization, Monitoring, and Sensor Technology Crosscutting Program, the authors have designed and built a K-edge heavy-metal detector that measures the level of heavy-metal content inside closed containers in a nondestructive, non-invasive way. They have applied this technique to measurement of the amount of uranium in stacks of reactor fuel plates containing nuclear materials of different enrichments and alloys. They have obtained good agreement with expected uranium concentrations ranging from 60 mg/cm{sup 2} to 3,000 mg/cm{sup 2}, and have demonstrated that the instrument can operate in a high radiation field (> 200 mR/hr).

Multi-keV x-ray microscopy will be an important laser-produced plasma diagnostic at future megajoule facilities such as the National Ignition Facility (NIF).In preparation for the construction of this facility, we have investigated several instrumentation options in detail, and we conclude that near normal incidence single spherical or toroidal crystals may offer the best general solution for high-energy x-raymicroscopy at NIF and at similar large facilities. Kirkpatrick-Baez microscopes using multi-layer mirrors may also be good secondary options, particularly if apertures are used to increase the band-width limited field of view.

This Appendix contains material from the LLNL Health and Safety Manual as listed below. For sections not included in this list, please refer to the Manual itself. The areas covered are: asbestos, lead, fire prevention, lockout, and tag program confined space traffic safety.

The Construction Safety Program (CSP) for NIF sets forth the responsibilities, guidelines, rules, policies and regulations for all workers involved in the construction, special equipment installation, acceptance testing, and initial activation and operation of NIF at LLNL during the construction period of NIF.

A high-frequency, high-resolution electromagnetic (EM) imaging system has been developed for environmental geophysics surveys. Some key features of this system include: (1) rapid surveying to allow dense spatial sampling over a large area, (2) high-accuracy measurements which are used to produce a high-resolution image of the subsurface, (3) measurements which have excellent signal-to-noise ratio over a wide bandwidth (31 kHz to 32 MHz), (4) elimination of electric-field interference at high frequencies, (5) large-scale physical modeling to produce accurate theoretical responses over targets of interest in environmental geophysics surveys, (6) rapid neural network interpretation at the field site, and (7) visualization of complex structures during the survey. Four major experiments were conducted with the system: (1) Data were collected for several targets in our physical modeling facility. (2) The authors tested the system over targets buried in soil. (3) The authors conducted an extensive survey at the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory (INEL) Cold Test Pit (CTP). The location of the buried waste, category of waste, and thickness of the clay cap were successfully mapped. (4) The authors ran surveys over the acid pit at INEL. This was an operational survey over a hot site. The interpreted low-resistivity region correlated closely with …

New target designs for the Omega upgrade laser and ignition targets in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) require thick (80 - 100 {micro}m) cryogenic fuel layers. The Omega upgrade target will require cryogenic handling after initial fill because of the high fill pressures and the thin capsule walls. For the NIF indirectly driven targets, a larger capsule size and new materials offer hope that they can be built, filled and stored in a manner similar to the targets used in the Nova facility without requiring cryogenic handling.