shell strengths of -0.3-0.5 at this excitation energy). AH = 103, the best fit to the data is given by the Fig. 2 shows a plot of total kinetic energy release liquid drop calculation with zero shell strength. versus fragment mass, again compared with model *Work supported in part by the U.S. Department of predictions. Although the data indicate the Energy. possibility of some anomalous behavior in the region of 1 ) B.D. Wilkins, et al., Phys. Rev. C 14, 1832 (1978). CALCULATIONS OF HIGH-SPIN FISSION FOR A=200 H. J. Karwowski and S.E. Vigdor Indiana University Cyclotron Facility, Bloomington, Indiana 47405 One of the long term hopes of heavy-ion studies has been the use of heavy-ion induced fusion-fission processes to extract information on the evolution of fission barriers (Bf) with increasing angular momentum (J). Existing re~ultsl'~ have produced a wide range of conclusions concerning the comparison between values of Bf(J) deduced from experiment and barrier heights obtained from rotating liquid drop model (RLDM) predictions. The differences in conclusions in Refs. 1-6 may reflect in part a real mass-dependence in the validity of the RLDM (specifically in the importance of corrections associated7 with surf ace diffuseness and the finite range of the nuclear force), as stressed recently by Blann and Komoto. Nevertheless, nagging discrepancies persist between the conclusions of different workers for selected similar-mass systems, and these cast doubt on the general significance of nuclear properties deduced from fusion-fission studies. Recently, results have become available for three quite different systems, all leading to compound nuclei (CN) around *OOpb: our own measurements and analysis6 for 6Li + lg7~uS6 and those of Hinde et ala8 for 19F + lsl~a and 30~i + 1703r. The data for these different entrance channels provide a useful "case history" in which to probe the origin of discrepancies between different studies. The results for 6Li-induced fusion i n the bombarding energy range from 75 to 95 MeV (for lal~a,194*198~t, and *08pb targets as well as lg7~u) were interpreted6 as completely consistent (to within -5%) with nuclear structure predictions of the RLDM and noninteracting Fermi gas (NIFG) model; in contrast, Hinde e t a ~ . ~ claim that the data for heavier projectiles appear to require -20% reductions to RLDM fission barrier heights. It should be noted that the c o r r e c t i o n s t o RLDM structure arising from dif fuse-surf ace and finite-range effects are expected7 to be negligible for A=200. The differences in conclusions between the two studies6s8 might arise in principle from a variety of sources: e.g., different experimental techniques for defining the total fusion cross section ofus; contributions to fission from mechanisms other than complete fusion, which would yield an effective entrance-channel dependence of the extracted nuclear structure parameters; different underlying assumptions and philosophy in the statistical model analysis. In order to explore the latter possibility, we have recently performed statistical model calculations under a variety of assumptions for a l l three systems above. We have previously urged9 the comparison of fission results for such widely differing entrance channels to