A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Financial Literacy and Education Improvement Act created, in December 2003, the Financial Literacy and Education Commission. Responding to the act's mandate that GAO assess the Commission's effectiveness, this report reviews its progress in (1) developing a national strategy; (2) developing a Web site and hotline; and (3) coordinating federal efforts and promoting partnerships among the federal, state, local, nonprofit, and private sectors. To address these objectives, GAO analyzed Commission documents, interviewed financial literacy representatives, and benchmarked the national strategy against GAO's criteria for such strategies."

The authors develop an embedded boundary finite difference technique for solving the compressible two- or three-dimensional Euler equations in complex geometries on a Cartesian grid. The method is second order accurate with an explicit time step determined by the grid size away from the boundary. Slope limiters are used on the embedded boundary to avoid non-physical oscillations near shock waves. They show computed examples of supersonic flow past a cylinder and compare with results computed on a body fitted grid. Furthermore, they discuss the implementation of the method for thin geometries, and show computed examples of transonic flow past an airfoil.

Document 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, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Meaning of Occupations Code requirement that a chiropractic license applicant complete 90 semester hours of college courses at a school other than a chiropractic school; scope of Board of Chiropractic Examiners’ rule-making authority (RQ-0494-GA)

Document 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, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a part-time deputy district clerk may be simultaneously employed by a private attorney (RQ-0485-GA)

Document 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, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Amendments made in 2003 to Family Code chapter 107 and the circumstances related to this changes in which a county may pay for the services of an amicus attorney, attorney ad litem, or guardian ad litem appointed in a private suit affecting the parent-child relationship (RQ-0493-GA)

Document 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, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether golf carts and tractors are “motor vehicles” for purposes of the Texas Tort Claims Act, chapter 101, Civil Practice and Remedies Code (RQ-0495-GA)

Document 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, Greg Abbott, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a district clerk must collect filing fees under both section 133.151 and section 133.152 of the Texas Local Government Code (RQ-0497-GA)

This report gives an overview of the concerns related to financing Federal election campaigning. The contents include Campaign finance practices and policy options to address campaign issues

At concentrations below 60%, wet hydrofluoric acid (HF) is extremely corrosive to steels, stainless steels and reactive metals, such as titanium, zirconium, and tantalum. In fact, only a few metallic materials will withstand wet HF at temperatures above ambient. Among these are the nickel-copper (Ni-Cu) and nickel-chromium-molybdenum (Ni-Cr-Mo) alloys. Previous work has shown that, even with these materials, there are complicating factors. For example, under certain conditions, internal attack and stress corrosion cracking (SCC) are possible with the Ni-Cr-Mo alloys, and the Ni-Cu materials can suffer intergranular attack when exposed to wet HF vapors. The purpose of this work was to study further the response of the Ni-Cr-Mo alloys to HF, in particular their external corrosion rates, susceptibility to internal attack and susceptibility to HF-induced SCC, as a function of alloy composition. As a side experiment, one of the alloys was tested in two microstructural conditions, i.e. solution annealed (the usual condition for materials of this type) and long-range ordered (this being a means of strengthening the alloy in question). The study of external corrosion rates over wide ranges of concentration and temperature revealed a strong beneficial influence of molybdenum content. However, tungsten, which is used as a partial replacement …

Certain types of infrastructure--critical infrastructure (CI)--play vital roles in underpinning our economy, security and way of life. These complex and often interconnected systems have become so ubiquitous and essential to day-to-day life that they are easily taken for granted. Often it is only when the important services provided by such infrastructure are interrupted--when we lose easy access to electricity, health care, telecommunications, transportation or water, for example--that we are conscious of our great dependence on these networks and of the vulnerabilities that stem from such dependence. Unfortunately, it must be assumed that many terrorists are all too aware that CI facilities pose high-value targets that, if successfully attacked, have the potential to dramatically disrupt the normal rhythm of society, cause public fear and intimidation, and generate significant publicity. Indeed, revelations emerging at the time of this writing about Al Qaida's efforts to prepare for possible attacks on major financial facilities in New York, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia remind us just how real and immediate such threats to CI may be. Simply being aware that our nation's critical infrastructure presents terrorists with a plethora of targets, however, does little to mitigate the dangers of CI attacks. In order …

A large variety of corrosion resistant alloys are used regularly in the chemical process industry (CPI). The most common family of alloys include the iron (Fe)-based stainless steels, nickel (Ni) alloys and titanium (Ti) alloys. There also other corrosion resistant alloys but their family of alloys is not as large as for the three groups mentioned above. All ranges of corrosive environments can be found in the CPI, from caustic solutions to hot acidic environments, from highly reducing to highly oxidizing. Stainless steels are ubiquitous since numerous types of stainless steels exist, each type tailored for specific applications. In general, stainless steels suffer stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in hot chloride environments while high Ni alloys are practically immune to this type of attack. High nickel alloys are also resistant to caustic cracking. Ti alloys find application in highly oxidizing solutions. Solutions containing fluoride ions, especially acid, seem to be aggressive to almost all corrosion resistant alloys.

As a part of Bulk vitrification (BV) performance enhancement tasks, Laboratory scoping tests were performed in FY 2004-2005 to explore possible ways to reduce the amount of soluble Tc in the BV waste package. Theses scoping tests helped identify which mechanisms play an important role in the migration of Tc in the BV process (Hrma et al. 2005 and Kim et al. 2005). Based on the results from these scoping tests, additional tests were identified that will improve the understanding of Tc migration and to clearly identify the dominant mechanisms. The additional activities identified from previous studies were evaluated and prioritized for planning for Tasks 29 and 30 conducted in FY2006. Task 29 focused on the improved understanding of Tc migration mechanisms, and Task 30 focused on identifying the potential process changes that might reduce Tc/Re migration into the castable refractory block (CRB). This report summarizes the results from the laboratory- and crucible-scale tests in the lab for improved Tc migration mechanism understanding utilizing Re as a surrogate performed in Task 29.

The AAA+ proteins are remarkable macromolecules that are able to self-assemble into nanoscale machines. These protein machines play critical roles in many cellular processes, including the processes that manage a cell's genetic material, but the mechanism at the molecular level has remained elusive. We applied computational molecular modeling, combined with advanced sequence analysis and available biochemical and genetic data, to structurally characterize eukaryotic AAA+ proteins and the protein machines they form. With these models we have examined intermolecular interactions in three-dimensions (3D), including both interactions between the components of the AAA+ complexes and the interactions of these protein machines with their partners. These computational studies have provided new insights into the molecular structure and the mechanism of action for AAA+ protein machines, thereby facilitating a deeper understanding of processes involved in DNA metabolism.

Colleagues of mine have asked me few times why we have today so much interest in Fixed-Field Alternating-Gradient (FFAG) accelerators when these were invented a long time ago, and have always been ignored since then. I try here to give a reply with a short history of FFAG accelerators, at least as I know it. I take also the opportunity to clarify few definitions.

We propose a microscopic CFT description of magnetically charged black holes in IIA compactifications on elliptic fibrations based on the Fourier-Mukai transform. The physical derivation of this model involves a chain of string duality transformations including the 4D/5D black hole correspondence. We compute the asymptotic behavior of the microstate degeneracy in a certain limit of large charges and show that it agrees with the macroscopic entropy formula. An interesting aspect of this setup is that the attractor points are situated deep in a hybrid phase of the quantum Kaehler moduli space.

The Taiwan-America Occultation Survey (TAOS) aims to determine the number of small icy bodies in the outer reach of the Solar System by means of stellar occultation. An array of 4 robotic small (D=0.5 m), wide-field (f/1.9) telescopes have been installed at Lulin Observatory in Taiwan to simultaneously monitor some thousand of stars for such rare occultation events. Because a typical occultation event by a TNO a few km across will last for only a fraction of a second, fast photometry is necessary. A special CCD readout scheme has been devised to allow for stellar photometry taken a few times per second. Effective analysis pipelines have been developed to process stellar light curves and to correlate any possible flux changes among all telescopes. A few billion photometric measurements have been collected since the routine survey began in early 2005. Our preliminary result of a very low detection rate suggests a deficit of small TNOs down to a few km size, consistent with the extrapolation of some recent studies of larger (30-100 km) TNOs.

At the Savannah River Site (SRS), there remains approximately 35 million gallons of High Level Waste (HLW) that was mostly created from Purex and SRS H-Area Modified (HM) nuclear fuel cycles. The waste is contained in approximately forty-nine tanks fabricated from commercially available carbon steel. In order to minimize general corrosion, the waste is maintained as very-alkaline solution. The very-alkaline chemistry has caused hydrated metal oxides to precipitate and form a sludge heel. Over the years, the sludge waste has aged, with some forming a hardened crust. To aid in the removal of the sludge heels from select tanks for closure the use of oxalic acid to dissolve the sludge is being investigated. Developing an optimized process strategy based on laboratory analyses would be prohibitively costly. This research, therefore, demonstrates that a chemical equilibrium based software program can be used to develop an optimized process strategy for oxalic acid cleaning of the HLW tanks based on estimating resultant chemistries, minimizing resultant oxalates sent to the evaporator, and minimizing resultant solids sent to the Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF).

Graphical presentations of energy flows are widely used within the industrial sector to depict energy production and use. PNNL developed two energy flow maps, one each for the residential and commercial buildings sectors, in response to a need for a clear, concise, graphical depiction of the flows of energy from source to end-use in the building sector.

Turbine blades in coal derived syngas systems are subject to oxidation and corrosion due to high steam temperature and pressure. Thermal barrier coatings (TBCs) are developed to address these problems. The emphasis is on prime-reliant design and a better coating architecture, having high temperature and corrosion resistance properties for turbine blades. In Phase I, UES Inc. proposed to develop, characterize and optimize a prime reliant TBC system, having smooth and defect-free NiCoCrAlY bond layer and a defect free oxide sublayer, using a filtered arc technology. Phase I work demonstrated the deposition of highly dense, smooth and defect free NiCoCrAlY bond coat on a single crystal CMSX-4 substrate and the deposition of alpha-alumina and yttrium aluminum garnet (YAG) sublayer on top of the bond coat. Isothermal and cyclic oxidation test and pre- and post-characterization of these layers, in Phase I work, (with and without top TBC layer of commercial EB PVD YSZ) revealed significant performance enhancement.

Interview with Debbie Denmon, local news media personality and third-generation descendant of residents of Quakertown, as part of the Quakertown Oral History Project. The interview includes Denmon's personal experiences about childhood and education in Denton, having a career in broadcast journalism, and reporting on local efforts to capture Quakertown history. Denmon also speaks about memories of her great-grandmother Othella Hill, great-grandfather "Dollar Bill" Hill, and grandmother Norvell Williams Reed.

The experimental Mn K-edge x-ray absorption spectra of La{sub 1-x}Sr{sub x}MnO{sub 3}, x = 0 - 0.7 are compared with the band structure calculations using spin polarized density functional theory. It is explicitly shown that there is a correspondence between the inflection point on the absorption edge and the center of gravity of the unoccupied Mn 4p-band. This correspondence has been used to separate the doping and size contributions to edge shift due to variation in number of electrons in valence band and Mn-O bond lengths, respectively when Sr is doped into LaMnO{sub 3}. Such separation is helpful to find the localization behavior of charge carriers and to understand the observed transport properties and type of charge carrier participating in the conduction process in these compounds.

Daily newspaper from Baytown, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Funeral program for Clarence Smith, Sr., born October 4, 1924 and died November 25, 2006. The funeral was held December 4, 2006 at Dodd Field Chapel, officiated by Bishop Donny Banks. Funeral arrangements were made through the Lewis Funeral Home and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas. Includes a letter of tribute from the family.

Funeral program for Frank R. Norvel, Sr., born December 28, 1917 and died November 25, 2006. The funeral was held Monday, December 4, 2006 at St. Paul United Methodist Church, officiated by Reverend Dr. Marcus A. L. Freeman, II. Funeral arrangements were made through Lewis Funeral Home and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.