Density-functional formalism is applied to study the ground state properties of {gamma}-U-Zr and {gamma}-U-Mo solid solutions. Calculated heats of formation are compared with CALPHAD assessments. We discuss how the heat of formation in both alloys correlates with the charge transfer between the alloy components. The decomposition curves for {gamma}-based U-Zr and U-Mo solid solutions are derived from Ising-type Monte Carlo simulations. We explore the idea of stabilization of the {delta}-UZr{sub 2} compound against the {alpha}-Zr (hcp) structure due to increase of Zr d-band occupancy by the addition of U to Zr. We discuss how the specific behavior of the electronic density of states in the vicinity of the Fermi level promotes the stabilization of the U{sub 2}Mo compound. The mechanism of possible Am redistribution in the U-Zr and U-Mo fuels is also discussed.

This report discusses the two main groups of spending reductions in the Budget Control Act of 2011: (1) discretionary spending caps and (2) an automatic $1.2 trillion spending reduction process that comes into effect on January 02, 2012. It also looks at projected effects of the Act.

Following a lengthy debate over raising the debt limit, the Budget Control Act of 2011 (BCA; P.L. 112-25) was signed into law by President Obama on August 2, 2011. To provide context for this debate, this report discusses the effects of the BCA on spending and the deficit, assuming that the January 2013 automatic spending reductions proceed as scheduled.

This report provides information about the Compensated Work Sharing Arrangements (Short-Time Compensation) as an Alternative to Layoffs. STC is a program within the federal-state unemployment compensation system.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) has trained thousands of personnel on the use of biometrics since 2004, but biometrics training for leaders does not provide detailed instructions on how to effectively use and manage biometrics collection tools. The Office of the Secretary of Defense, the military services, and U.S. Central Command each has emphasized in key documents the importance of training. Additionally, the Army, Marine Corps, and U.S. Special Operations Command have trained personnel prior to deployment to Afghanistan in addition to offering training resources in Afghanistan. DOD’s draft instruction for biometrics emphasizes the importance of training leaders in the effective employment of biometrics collection, but existing training does not instruct military leaders on (1) the effective use of biometrics, (2) selecting the appropriate personnel for biometrics collection training, and (3) tracking personnel who have been trained in biometrics collection to effectively staff biometrics operations. Absent this training, military personnel are limited in their ability to collect high-quality biometrics data to better confirm the identity of enemy combatants."

In 2010, the Department of Energy (DOE) Chief of Nuclear Safety and Office of Health, Safety and Security (HSS), with the support of industry experts in atmospheric sciences and accident dose consequences analysis, performed detailed analyses of the basis for the dry deposition velocity (DV) values used in the MACCS2 computer code. As a result of these analyses, DOE concluded that the historically used default DV values of 1 centimeter/second (cm/s) for unfiltered/unmitigated releases and 0.1 cm/s for filtered/mitigated releases may not be reasonably conservative for all DOE sites and accident scenarios. HSS recently issued Safety Bulletin 2011-02, Accident Analysis Parameter Update, recommending the use of the newly developed default DV, 0.1 cm/s for an unmitigated/unfiltered release. Alternatively site specific DV values can be developed using GENII version 2 (GENII v2) computer code. Key input parameters for calculating DV values include surface roughness, maximum wind speed for calm, particle size, particle density and meteorological data (wind speed and stability class). This paper will include reasonably conservative inputs, and a truncated parametric study. In lieu of the highly-conservative recommended DV value (0.1cm/s) for unmitigated/unfiltered release, GENII v2 has been used to justify estimated 95th percentile DV values. Also presented here are …

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music MEIT in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree.

Lecture Recital presented at the UNT College of Music in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree.

On August 5, 2004, the United States entered into the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). This permanent, comprehensive, and reciprocal trade agreement eliminates tariff and non-tariff barriers to two-way trade, building on unilateral trade preferences begun under the 1983 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). CAFTA-DR reinforces the idea that growth in trade correlates closely with policies that promote economic stability, private investment in production, public investment in education, infrastructure, logistics, and good governance in general.

A new music recital performed at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "U.S. agencies engaged in export controls use various compliance activities to prevent the diversion or misuse of exported items against U.S. interests or allies and reduce illicit transshipment risk. Compliance activities include (1) vetting transactions prior to export, (2) analyzing shipping data and monitoring the end use of items, and (3) educating companies and foreign governments about illicit transshipment risks. To vet transactions, agencies review license applications for the export of controlled items, consult multiple lists of entities known or suspected of violating export control laws or regulations, and screen foreign end users to determine their eligibility to receive items without a license. Agencies also review shipping records to identify patterns of abuse and to plan end-use checks—visiting foreign companies to verify the approved use and location of exported items on both licensed items and those eligible for export without a license. From 2008 to 2010, Commerce conducted 56 percent of its end-use checks on unlicensed exports. In the 13 transshipment countries, unlicensed exports accounted for about 94 percent of unfavorable end-use check determinations, which indicates that the end use or end user of an export …

For more than a decade, various experts have expressed concerns about information-system security-often referred to as cybersecurity-in the United States and abroad. This report discusses that framework and proposals to amend more than 30 acts of Congress that are part of or relevant to it.

This proposal describes the proposed renewal of a theoretical research program on the structure and reactivity of molecules adsorbed on transition metal surfaces. A new direction of the work extends investigations to interfaces between solid surfaces, adsorbates and aqueous solutions and includes fundamental work on photoinduced electron transport into chemisorbed species and into solution. The goal is to discover practical ways to reduce water to hydrogen and oxygen using radiation comparable to that available in the solar spectrum. The work relates to two broad subject areas: photocatalytic processes and production of hydrogen from water. The objective is to obtain high quality solutions of the electronic structure of adsorbate-metal-surface-solution systems so as to allow activation barriers to be calculated and reaction mechanisms to be determined. An ab initio embedding formalism provides a route to the required accuracy. New theoretical methods developed during the previous grant period will be implemented in order to solve the large systems involved in this work. Included is the formulation of a correlation operator that is used to treat localized electron distributions such as ionic or regionally localized distributions. The correlation operator which is expressed as a two-particle projector is used in conjunction with configuration interaction.

Funeral program for Ernest Johnson, Jr., born October 22, 1945 and died April 15, 2012. The funeral was held April 23, 2012 at Calvary Baptist Church, officiated by Rev. Kevin Nelson. Funeral arrangements were made through Sutton-Sutton & Woodard's Mortuary, Inc. and he was buried in Fort Sam Houston National Cemetery near San Antonio, Texas.

The goal of this work is to investigate methods in which anisotropy could be induced in fine-grained alloys. We have identified two general processing routes to creating a fine, textured microstructure: form an amorphous precursor and devitrify in a manner that induces texture or form the fine, textured microstructure upon cooling directly from the liquid state. Since it is possible to form significant amounts of amorphous material in RE-Fe-B alloys, texture could be induced through biasing the orientationof the crystallites upon crystallization of the amorphous material. One method of creating this bias is to form glassy material and apply uniaxial pressure during crystallization. Experiments on this are presented. All of the work presented here utilizes melt-spinning, either to create precursor material, or to achieve a desired final microstructure. To obtain greater control of the system to process these materials, a study was done on the effects of heating the wheel and modifying the wheel’s surface finish on glass formation and phase selection. The second general approach—creating the desired microstructure directly from the liquid—can be done through directional rapid solidification. In particular, alloys melt-spun at low tangential wheel speeds often display directional columnar growth through a portion of the ribbon. By …

Student newspaper of the University of Oklahoma in Norman, Oklahoma that includes national, local, and campus news along with advertising.

We report variations in the currents of CdZnTe semiconductor crystals during exposure to a series of light emitting diodes of various wavelengths ranging from 470 to 950 nm. The changes in the steady-state current of one CdZnTe crystal with and without illumination along with the time dependence of the illumination effects are discussed. Analysis of the de-trapping and transient bulk currents during and after optical excitation yield insight into the behaviour of charge traps within the crystal. Similar behaviour is observed for illumination of a second CdZnTe crystal suggesting that the overall illumination effects are not crystal dependent.

Progress is highlighted in these areas: 1. Model of magnetic reconnection induced by three-dimensional Kelvin Helmholtz (KH) modes at the magnetospheric flank boundary; 2. Quantitative evaluation of mass transport from the magnetosheath onto closed geomagnetic field for northward IMF; 3. Comparison of mass transfer by cusp reconnection and Flank Kelvin Helmholtz modes; 4. Entropy constraint and plasma transport in the magnetotail - a new mechanism for current sheet thinning; 5. Test particle model for mass transport onto closed geomagnetic field for northward IMF; 6. Influence of density asymmetry and magnetic shear on (a) the linear and nonlinear growth of 3D Kelvin Helmholtz (KH) modes, and (b) three-dimensional KH mediated mass transport; 7. Examination of entropy and plasma transport in the magnetotail; 8. Entropy change and plasma transport by KH mediated reconnection - mixing and heating of plasma; 9. Entropy and plasma transport in the magnetotail - tail reconnection; and, 10. Wave coupling at the magnetospheric boundary and generation of kinetic Alfven waves.

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

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 the receipt of a nondisclosure order requires the Board of Nursing to redact information relating to a licensee’s criminal history record (RQ-0997-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: Approval of expenditures from asset forfeiture fund of a district attorney (RQ-1004-GA)

The report contains the Texas state expenditures by county for fiscal year 2011.

Two major U.S. trade remedies are antidumping (AD) law, which combats the sale of imported products at less than their fair market value, and countervailing duty (CVD) law, which aims to offset foreign government subsidization of imported goods. This report discusses these two law's impact on U.S. foreign relations.

Although the United States has complied with adverse rulings in many past World Trade Organization (WTO) disputes, there are currently 14 cases in which rulings have not yet been implemented or the United States has acted and the dispute has not been fully resolved. Nine unresolved cases involve trade remedies. The report discusses all fourteen cases in detail, which include antidumping, aircraft subsidies, cotton subsidies, online gambling restrictions, music copyright law, and trademark infringement.