A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the next several years, implementation of the Department of Defense's (DOD) Integrated Global Presence and Basing Strategy will result in the realignment of U.S. forces and the construction of new facilities costing billions of dollars at installations overseas. The Senate and House reports accompanying the fiscal year 2004 military construction appropriation bill directed GAO to monitor DOD's overseas master plans and to provide congressional defense committees with assessments each year. The Senate report accompanying the fiscal year 2007 military construction appropriation bill directed GAO to review DOD's master planning effort for Guam as part of these annual reviews. This report, first, examines how the overseas plans have changed and the extent to which they address the challenges faced by DOD and, second, assesses the status of DOD's planning effort and the challenges associated with the buildup of military forces and infrastructure on Guam."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The U.S. relies on infrared satellites to provide early warning of enemy missile launches and protect the nation, its military forces, and allies. In 1996, the Department of Defense (DOD) initiated the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) program to replace the nation's current missile detection system and provide expanded capabilities to support intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions. DOD expected to field SBIRS by 2004 at a cost of about $4.2 billion. However, over the past 11 years, SBIRS has proven to be technically challenging and substantially more costly. In an effort to stem cost increases and schedule delays, DOD has restructured the program multiple times, including revising program goals. SBIRS is now estimated to cost over $10.4 billion, and the first satellite launch is expected in 2008. Because of continuing problems with SBIRS, DOD began a parallel alternative effort in 2006 known as the Alternative Infrared Satellite System (AIRSS), to compete with SBIRS and ensure that the nation's missile-warning and defense capabilities are sustained, or possibly provide a follow-on capability to SBIRS. Congress requested that GAO assess both SBIRS and AIRSS. As agreed with your office, with respect …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "To better assist veterans with service-connected disabilities seeking employment, in 2005, the Departments of Labor (Labor) and Veterans Affairs (VA) signed an agreement to coordinate employment services for disabled veterans. Around the same time, VA rolled out a redesigned employment program for these veterans, known as the Five-Track program, which also established an employment coordinator position and job resource labs. To help Congress understand the status of these initiatives, GAO was asked to provide information on (1) the progress in implementing the 2005 agreement and challenges to implementation, (2) the status of implementation of VA's Five-Track program and challenges posed by recently returning veterans, and (3) the role of employment coordinators and job resource labs in serving veterans. To obtain this information, GAO interviewed Labor and VA officials and national veterans' service organizations, and conducted site visits in five states."

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress established the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) to encourage U.S. exports. Congress has directed Ex-Im to consider the economic impact of its work and not to fund activities that will adversely affect U.S. industry. In this context, GAO reviewed (1) Ex-Im's policies and procedures for determining economic impact, (2) the extent to which Ex-Im appropriately identifies and analyzes projects that could cause adverse economic impact, and (3) the extent to which Ex-Im's process is transparent. To conduct this work, GAO reviewed Ex-Im's procedures, data on projects applicable for the economic impact process, and detailed economic impact analyses. GAO also interviewed Ex-Im and reviewing agency officials and industry representatives."

This technical bulletin documents measured peak equipment load data from 39 laboratory spaces in nine buildings across five institutions. The purpose of these measurements was to obtain data on the actual peak loads in laboratories, which can be used to rightsize the design of HVAC systems in new laboratories. While any given laboratory may have unique loads and other design considerations, these results may be used as a 'sanity check' for design assumptions.

We report a theoretical study on the role of shallow d states in the screened-exchange local density approximation (sX-LDA) band structure of binary semiconductor systems.We found that inaccurate pseudo-wavefunctions can lead to 1) an overestimation of the screened-exchange interaction betweenthe localized d states and the delocalized higher energy s and p states and 2) an underestimation of the screened-exchange interaction between the d states. The resulting sX-LDA band structures have substantially smaller band gaps compared with experiments. We correct the pseudo-wavefunctions of d states by including the semicore s and p states of the same shell in the valence states. The correction of pseudo-wavefunctions yields band gaps and d state binding energies in good agreement with experiments and the full potential linearized augmented plane wave sX-LDA calculations. Compared with the quasi-particle GW method, our sX-LDA results shows not only similar quality on the band gaps but also much better d state binding energies. Combined with its capability of ground state structure calculation, the sX-LDA is expected to be a valuable theoretical tool for the II-VI and III-V (especially the III-N) bulk semiconductors and nanostructure studies.

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

Daily student newspaper from the University of North Texas in Denton, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas that includes campus news and commentaries along with advertising.

Weekly student newspaper from Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local news along with advertising.

Letter from Al Daniels to TSDC Executive Board and Membership on September 12, 2007 discussing meeting minutes dated on June 18, 2004.

Email from Al Daniels to "TSDC Executive Board and Membership" on September 12, 2007, regarding reconstructed Minutes of the June 18, 2004 Executive Board and General Membership meetings.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Unexploded ordnance (UXO)-contaminated sites often include ordnance filled with inert substances that were used in dummy rounds. During UXO surveys, it is difficult to determine whether ordnance is filled with explosives or inert material (e.g., concrete, plaster-of-paris, wax, etc.) or is empty. Without verification of the filler material, handling procedures often necessitate that the object be blown in place, which has potential impacts to the environment, personnel, communities and survey costs. The Department of Defense (DoD) needs a reliable, timely, non-intrusive and cost-effective way to identify filler material before a removal action. A new technology that serves this purpose would minimize environmental impacts, personnel safety risks and removal costs; and, thus, would be especially beneficial to remediation activities.

Initial-state and final-state interactions which are conventionally neglected in the parton model, have a profound effect in QCD hard-scattering reactions. The effects, which arise from gluon exchange between the active and spectator quarks, cause leading-twist single-spin asymmetries, diffractive deep inelastic scattering, diffractive hard hadronic reactions, and the breakdown of the Lam-Tung relation in Drell-Yan reactions. Diffractive deep inelastic scattering also leads to nuclear shadowing and non-universal antishadowing of nuclear structure functions through multiple scattering reactions in the nuclear target. Factorization-breaking effects are particularly important for hard hadron interactions since both initial-state and final-state interactions appear. Related factorization breaking effects can also appear in exclusive electroproduction reactions and in deeply virtual Compton scattering. None of the effects of initial-state and final-state interactions are incorporated in the light-front wavefunctions of the target hadron computed in isolation.

The object of this project has been to combine novel synthetic methods to produce much more active anode catalysts for fuel cells, and the use of spectroscopy to develop a molecular-level understanding of chemical physics principles of the fuel cell catalyst operation. We have made tremendous recent progress as evidenced by our 25 journal articles and 6 patents listed in Section 3.7 page 7. We have developed the most active catalysts for Direct Formic Acid Fuel Cells and discovered a correlation between spectroscopy (Pd 3d binding energy) and performance. We have observed the largest effect of particle size on fuel cell performance found to date where 3 nm palladium particles give an order of magnitude higher steady state current per exposed metal atom than 6 nm particles. We discovered a series of as yet unexplained support effects where Pd on V{sub 2}O{sub 5} gives an order of magnitude more current than pure palladium. We have verified the results in operating fuel cells and are closing in on the DOE targets of anode catalysts for portable fuel cells (costing less than $1/watt). Table 1 page 2 summarizes where these findings are described in the proposal for the reviewers reference. Generally, our …

This report summarizes the results of studies sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and conducted by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory to evaluate the biological performance (likelihood of injury to fish) from an advanced design turbine installed at Unit 8 of Wanapum Dam on the Columbia River in Washington State in 2005. PNNL studies included a novel dye technique to measure injury to juvenile fish in the field, an evaluation of blade-strike using both deterministic and stochastic models, and extended analysis of the response of the Sensor Fish Device to strike, pressure, and turbulence within the turbine system. Fluorescein dye was used to evaluate injuries to live fish passed through the advanced turbine and an existing turbine at two spill discharges (15 and 17 kcfs). Under most treatments the results were not significantly different for the two turbines, however, eye injury occurred in nearly 30% of fish passing through Unit 9 but in less than 10% of those passing through Unit 8 at 15 kcfs. Both deterministic and stochastic blade-strike models were applied for the original and new AHTS turbines. The modeled probabilities were compared to the Sensor Fish results (Carlson et al. 2006) and the biological studies using juvenile …

We have built and successfully tested a novel particle identification detector called Focusing DIRC. The prototype's concept is based on the BaBar DIRC with several important improvements: (a) much faster pixilated photon detectors based on Burle MCP-PMT and Hamamatsu MaPMT, (b) mirror allowing to make the photon detector smaller and less sensitive to background in future applications, (c) electronics allowing to measure the single photon resolution to better than {sigma} {approx} 100-200ps, which allows a correction of the chromatic error. While testing the timing resolution limits of a 64-pixel MCP-PMT with 10 mm MCP holes, we have achieved a timing resolution of {sigma} {approx} 30ps with single photoelectrons. In this paper we further investigate limits of the timing resolution with this particular detector.

In the past 10 years our knowledge of the parameters {rho} and {eta} of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa matrix has improved substantially. This article reviews the measurements that contributed to this advance, and discusses their implication in terms of understanding CP violation in the Standard Model and beyond.

Galaxy pairs provide a potentially powerful means of studying triggered star formation from galaxy interactions. We use a large cosmological N-body simulation coupled with a well-tested semi-analytic substructure model to demonstrate that the majority of galaxies in close pairs reside within cluster or group-size halos and therefore represent a biased population, poorly suited for direct comparison to 'field' galaxies. Thus, the frequent observation that some types of galaxies in pairs have redder colors than 'field' galaxies is primarily a selection effect. We use our simulations to devise a means to select galaxy pairs that are isolated in their dark matter halos with respect to other massive subhalos (N= 2 halos) and to select a control sample of isolated galaxies (N= 1 halos) for comparison. We then apply these selection criteria to a volume-limited subset of the 2dF Galaxy Redshift Survey with M{sub B,j} {le} -19 and obtain the first clean measure of the typical fraction of galaxies affected by triggered star formation and the average elevation in the star formation rate. We find that 24% (30.5 %) of these L* and sub-L* galaxies in isolated 50 (30) h{sup -1} kpc pairs exhibit star formation that is boosted by a factor …

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

In situ radionuclide migration experiments, followed by excavation and sample characterization, were conducted in a water-conducting shear zone at the Grimsel Test Site (GTS) in Switzerland to study diffusion paths of radionuclides in fractured granite. In this work, we employed a micro-scale mapping technique that interfaces laser ablation sampling with inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (LA/ICP-MS) to measure the fine-scale (micron-range) distribution of actinides ({sup 234}U, {sup 235}U, and {sup 237}Np) in the fracture-granite interface zones. Long-lived {sup 234}U, {sup 235}U, and {sup 237}Np were detected in flow channels, as well as in the adjacent rock matrix, using the sensitive, feature-based mapping of the LA/ICP-MS technique. The injected sorbing actinides are mainly located within the advective flowing fractures and the immediately adjacent regions. The water-conducting fracture studied in this work is bounded on one side by mylonite and the other by granitic matrix regions. These actinides did not penetrate into the mylonite side as much as the relatively higher-porosity granite matrix, most likely due to the low porosity, hydraulic conductivity, and diffusivity of the fracture wall (a thickness of about 0.4 mm separates the mylonite region from the fracture) and the mylonite region itself. Overall, the maximum penetration depth detected with …

Student newspaper from St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas that includes campus news along with advertising.