[en] This progress report covers the technical work performed during the initial funding period of the contract, May 24-October 1, 1983. The contract presently includes work on three tasks: T-M Transition studies on EBT-S, pulsed high density experiments on EBT-S, and theoretical studies of ion rings in EBT. The work on Task 2 consisted of developing a preliminary plan for the pulsed experiments and some exploratory experimental runs on EBT-S. Within the Task 3 effort considerable work was accomplished on ion ring formation. This work was able to benefit from previous research and code development done at MDAC. This report also covers preliminary results on investigation of stabilization of ballooning and interchange modes by high energy rings. This investigation is particularly important for ion rings because, should stabilization properties depend on ion energy in the rings, the required ion energies could be important in power balance considerations