A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Ten states concentrated in the western, midwestern, and southeastern United States—all areas where the housing market had experienced strong growth in the prior decade—experienced 10 or more commercial bank or thrift (bank) failures between 2008 and 2011. The failures of the smaller banks (those with less than $1 billion in assets) in these states were largely driven by credit losses on commercial real estate (CRE) loans. The failed banks also had often pursued aggressive growth strategies using nontraditional, riskier funding sources and exhibited weak underwriting and credit administration practices. The rapid growth of CRE portfolios led to high concentrations that increased the banks’ exposure to the sustained real estate and economic downturn that began in 2007. GAO’s econometric model revealed that CRE concentrations and the use of brokered deposits, a funding source carrying higher risk than core deposits, were associated with an increased likelihood of failure for banks across all states during the period. Several state regulatory and community banking association officials told GAO that in some cases, the losses failed banks incurred on their CRE loans were caused by declines in the value of the …

This report discusses the Domain Name System (DNS), which is the distributed set of databases that contain address numbers mapped to corresponding domain names, making it possible to send and receive messages and to access information on the Internet. The report includes background on the DNS and the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that manages the servies, as well as related issues for the 113th Congress.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Port Aransas, Texas on Mustang Island that includes local, state and national news along with extensive advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

This report provides information on the history, mission, and operational considerations for each of these organizations as well as a brief discussion of current issues associated with the Unified Command Plan (UCP) and these commands.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

None

The Debye sheath is shown to be unstable under general conditions. For surface materials with sufficient secondary electron emission (SEE) yields, the surface's current-voltage characteristic has an unstable branch when the bulk plasma temperature (Te ) exceeds a critical value, or when there are fast electron populations present. The plasma-surface interaction becomes dynamic where the sheath may undergo spontaneous transitions or oscillations. Using particle-in-cell simulations, we analyze sheath instabilities occurring in a high Te plasma slab bounded by walls with SEE. As the plasma evolves, whenever the sheath enters an unstable state, its amplitude rapidly collapses, allowing a large flux of previously trapped electrons to hit the wall. These hot electrons induce more than one secondary on average, causing a net loss of electrons from the wall. The sheath collapse quenches when the surface charge becomes positive because the attractive field inhibits further electrons from escaping. Sheath instabilities influence the current balance, energy loss, cross-B-field transport and even the bulk plasma properties. Implications for discharges including Hall thrusters are discussed. More generally, the results show that common theories that treat emission as a fixed (time-independent) "coefficient" do not capture the full extent of SEE effects.

None

N/A

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

The project addressed the need for improved multijunction solar cells as identified within the Solar America Initiative program. The basic Ge/InGaAs/InGaP triple-junction structure that has led to record commercial efficiencies remains unoptimized due to excess current in the germanium component. Furthermore, its deployment cannot be scaled up to terawatt-level applications due to bottlenecks related to germanium’s cost and abundance. The purpose of the program was to explore new strategies developed at Arizona State University to deposit germanium films on much cheaper silicon substrates, largely eliminating the germanium bottleneck, and at the same time to develop new materials that should lead to an improvement in multijunction efficiencies. This included the ternary alloy SiGeSn, which can be inserted as a fourth junction in a Ge/SiGeSn/InGaAs/InGaP structure to compensate for the excess current in the bottom cell. Moreover, the possibility of depositing materials containing Sn on Si substrates created an opportunity for replacing the bottom Ge cell with a GeSn alloy, which, combined with new III-V alloys for the top cells, should enable 4-junction structures with perfectly optimized band gaps. The successes of the program, to be described below, has led to the developments of new strategies for the growth of high-quality germanium …

Weekly newspaper from Cooper, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Electra, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

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

Weekly newspaper from De Leon, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Albany, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Kermit, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from McGregor, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Canton, Texas that includes local, state and national news along with some advertising.

Weekly newspaper from Olney, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.