Abstract submitted to the
         International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics
                  July 12 - 18, 2001, Budapest, Hungary
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          Measurement of the neutral current cross section and F_2 
       structure function for deep inelastic e^+p scattering at HERA

                    
                               ZEUS Collaboration



                                    Abstract


        The cross section and the proton structure function F_2 for
        neutral current deep inelastic e^+p scattering have been 
        measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated 
        luminosity of 30 pb^{-1}. The data cover the kinematic range 
        2.7 < Q^2 < 30000 GeV^2 and 6x10^{-5} < x < 0.65. The variation 
        of F_2 with x and Q^2 is well described by next-to-leading-order 
        perturbative QCD as implemented in the DGLAP evolution equations.