A senior recital presented at the UNT College of Music Kenton Hall.

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "A safe, efficient, and convenient transportation system is integral to the health of our economy and quality of life. Our nation's vast transportation system of airways, railways, roads, pipelines, transit, and waterways has served this need, yet it is under considerable strain from (1) increasing congestion, (2) the large costs to maintain and improve it, and (3) the human cost of over 44,000 people killed and over 2.5 million injured each year in transportation-related accidents. The Department of Transportation implements national transportation policy and administers most federal transportation programs. For fiscal year 2008, the department has requested $67 billion to carry out these and other activities. While the department carries out some activities directly, such as employing about 15,000 air traffic controllers to make certain that planes stay a safe distance apart, it does not have direct control over the vast majority of activities that it funds, such as local decisions on the priority and placement of airports, public transit, and roads. In other cases, such as railways and pipelines, the infrastructure is owned and operated by industry. This statement presents GAO's views on major transportation challenges facing …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Concerns over national security, environmental stresses, and economic pressures from increased fuel prices have led to the nation's interest in reducing oil consumption. Efforts to reduce oil consumption will need to include the transportation sector. For example, several Members of Congress have introduced bills proposing changes to the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) program. This program includes mile per gallon standards for light trucks and cars that manufacturers must meet for vehicles sold in this country. This testimony is based on ongoing work for this committee. This testimony describes (1) recent and proposed changes to CAFE standards; (2) observations about the recent changes, the existing CAFE program, and NHTSA's (National Highway Traffic Safety Administration) capabilities to further restructure CAFE standards; and (3) initial observations about how the CAFE program fits in the context of other approaches to reduce oil consumption. To address these issues, we reviewed program legislation, rule makings, and operational documents. Also, we interviewed officials from NHTSA, the Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Agency, the auto industry, labor unions, and the insurance industry. Finally, we contacted several recognized experts in fuel economy and safety. Our report …

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The United States Air Force has described aerial refueling as a key capability supporting the National Security Strategy and military warfighters on a daily basis. Currently, the Air Force uses two aircraft for aerial refueling: the KC-135 and the KC-10. While the KC-10 fleet has an average age greater than 20 years, the KC-135 fleet averages more than 46 years and is the oldest combat weapon system in the Air Force inventory. Consequently, the Air Force intends to replace or recapitalize the KC-135 first. The Air Force began its KC-135 recapitalization efforts in fiscal year 2004, and officials presented a KC-135 recapitalization program to joint military decision makers in November 2006. This program proposed the inclusion of a passenger and cargo capability, which exists to some extent in the current aircraft, in the replacement air refueling aircraft. According to Air Force officials, the recapitalization process may cost between $72 billion and $120 billion and will span decades. This recapitalization takes place at a time when the Air Force faces fiscal constraints over the next few years, forcing officials to reconfigure the service's short- and long-term priorities in its …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Medicare's current system of spending targets used to moderate spending growth for physician services and annually update physician fees is problematic. This spending target system--called the sustainable growth rate (SGR) system--adjusts physician fees based on the extent to which actual spending aligns with specified targets. In recent years, because spending has exceeded the targets, the system has called for fee cuts. Since 2003, the cuts have been averted through administrative or legislative action, thus postponing the budgetary consequences of excess spending. Under these circumstances, policymakers are seeking reforms that can help moderate spending growth while ensuring that beneficiaries have appropriate access to care. For today's hearing, the Subcommittee on Health, House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is exploring options for improving how Medicare pays physicians, asked GAO to share the preliminary results of its ongoing study related to this topic. GAO's statement addresses (1) approaches taken by other health care purchasers to address physicians' inefficient practice patterns, (2) GAO's efforts to estimate the prevalence of inefficient physicians in Medicare, and (3) the methodological tools available to identify inefficient practice patterns programwide. GAO ensured the reliability of the …

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The federal government is facing new and more complex challenges in the 21st century because of long-term fiscal constraints, changing demographics, evolving governance models, and other factors. Strategic human capital management, which remains on GAO's high-risk list, must be the centerpiece of any serious change management and transformation effort to meet these challenges. However, federal agencies do not consistently have the modern, effective, economical, and efficient human capital programs, policies, and procedures needed to succeed in their transformation efforts. In addition, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) must have the capacity to successfully guide human capital transformations. This testimony, based on a large body of GAO work over many years, focuses on strategic human capital management challenges that many federal agencies continue to face."

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Over the past two decades there has been a noticeable shift in the types of plans employers are offering employees. Employers are increasingly moving away from traditional defined benefit plans to what has become the most dominant and fastest growing type of defined contribution plan, the 401(k). As more workers participate in 401(k) plans, they bear more of the responsibility for funding their retirement. Given the choices facing participants, specific information about the plan and plan options becomes more relevant than under defined benefit plans because participants are responsible for ensuring that they have adequate income at retirement. While information on historical performance and investment risk for each plan option are important for participants to understand, so too is information on fees because fees can significantly decrease participants' retirement savings over the course of a career. As a result of employees bearing more responsibility for funding their retirement under 401(k) plans, Congress asked us to talk about the prevalence of 401(k) plans today and to summarize our recent work on providing better information to 401(k) participants and the Department of Labor (Labor) on fees. GAO's remarks today will …

We investigate the ellipticity of the point-spread function (PSF) produced by imaging an unresolved source with a telescope, subject to the effects of atmospheric turbulence. It is important to quantify these effects in order to understand the errors in shape measurements of astronomical objects, such as those used to study weak gravitational lensing of field galaxies. The PSF modeling involves either a Fourier transform of the phase information in the pupil plane or a ray-tracing approach, which has the advantage of requiring fewer computations than the Fourier transform. Using a standard method, involving the Gaussian weighted second moments of intensity, we then calculate the ellipticity of the PSF patterns. We find significant ellipticity for the instantaneous patterns (up to more than 10%). Longer exposures, which we approximate by combining multiple (N) images from uncorrelated atmospheric realizations, yield progressively lower ellipticity (as 1/{radical}N). We also verify that the measured ellipticity does not depend on the sampling interval in the pupil plane using the Fourier method. However, we find that the results using the ray-tracing technique do depend on the pupil sampling interval, representing a gradual breakdown of the geometric approximation at high spatial frequencies. Therefore, ray tracing is generally not an …

It is well known that an activity expansion of the grand canonical partition function works well for attractive interactions, but works poorly for repulsive interactions, such as occur between atoms and molecules. The virial expansion of the canonical partition function shows just the opposite behavior. This poses a problem for applications that involve both types of interactions, such as occur in the outer layers of low-mass stars. We show that it is possible to obtain expansions for repulsive systems that convert the poorly performing Mayer activity expansion into a series of rational polynomials that converge uniformly to the virial expansion. In the current work we limit our discussion to the second virial approximation. In contrast to the Mayer activity expansion the activity expansion presented herein converges for both attractive and repulsive systems.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

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

Concurrent resolution introduced by the Texas Senate and House of Representatives granting the legislature permission to adjourn for more than three days during the period beginning on Wednesday, February 28, 2007, and ending on Monday, March 5, 2007.

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; Constitutionality of provisions of the Occupations Code, which prohibit the fitting and dispensing of hearing instruments ordered by mail by an unlicensed individual and the sale of a hearing instrument by mail (RQ-0524-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 municipality may prohibit registed sex offenders from living in certain locations withing the municipality (RQ-0526-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 machine that records a player’s winning onto a stored-value debit card is a “gambling device” for purposes of section 47.01(4)(B) of the Penal Code (RQ-0529-GA)

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This report identifies selected websites that provide general and statistical information on immigration topics. Selected government and organizational website addresses are included. As with all statistics, it is important to note the source and methodology when consulting immigration statistics, taking into account any organizational bias.

This report is organized in three parts. First, it discusses the extent of GHG emissions associated with the U.S. agriculture sector, and cites current and potential estimates for U.S. agricultural soils to sequester carbon and partly offset national GHG emissions. Second, the report describes the types of land management and farm conservation practices that can reduce GHG emissions and/or sequester carbon in agricultural soils, highlighting those practices that are currently promoted under existing voluntary federal agricultural programs. Third, the report discusses the types of questions that may be raised regarding the role of the U.S. agriculture sector in the broader climate change debate, and also discusses the role of climate-related issues (e.g., GHG emissions reductions and carbon sequestration) in the context of farm program legislation that the 110th Congress may consider.

This report provides information about the Presidential Declarations, Eligible Activities, and Funding on Federal Stafford Act Disaster Assistance. Congress appropriates money to DRF for disaster assistance authorized by the Stafford Act, which is administered by FEMA.

Conformal symmetry provides a systematic approximation to QCD in both its perturbative and nonperturbative domains. One can use the AdS/CFT correspondence between Anti-de Sitter space and conformal gauge theories to obtain an analytically tractable approximation to QCD in the regime where the QCD coupling is large and constant. For example, there is an exact correspondence between the fifth-dimensional coordinate of AdS space and a specific impact variable which measures the separation of the quark constituents within the hadron in ordinary space-time. This connection allows one to compute the analytic form of the frame-independent light-front wavefunctions of mesons and baryons, the fundamental entities which encode hadron properties and allow the computation of exclusive scattering amplitudes. One can also use conformal symmetry as a template for perturbative QCD predictions where the effects of the nonzero beta function can be systematically included in the scale of the QCD coupling. This leads to fixing of the renormalization scale and commensurate scale relations which relate observables without scale or scheme ambiguity. The results are consistent with the renormalization group and the analytic connection of QCD to Abelian theory at N{sub C} {yields} 0. I also discuss a number of novel phenomenological features of QCD. Initial- …

Metallic amorphous alloys or metallic glasses have been studied extensively for the last three decades due to their unique characteristics, including superior mechanical properties and corrosion resistance. Iron-based amorphous alloys have in general better corrosion resistance than their polycrystalline cousins such as the austenitic 18-8 stainless steel series (e.g. 316L SS). Fe-based amorphous alloys have even higher localized corrosion resistance than the nickel-based Alloy 22 under many laboratory tested conditions. Electrochemical laboratory tests have shown that when polycrystalline alloys such as Alloy 22 are anodically polarized in hot concentrated chloride brines, they dissolve unevenly following patterns associated with their crystalline character. However, amorphous alloys, when polarized to even higher potentials than the polycrystalline alloys, they dissolve in a desirable uniform manner. This is because the amorphous Fe-based alloys do not offer defects in the metal that can be preferentially attacked. Comparative studies will also be presented on the dissolution modes of Ni-gadolinium and borated stainless steels.

The authors present measurements of CP-violating asymmetries in the decays B{sup 0} {yields} a{sub 1}{sup {+-}}(1260){pi}{sup {-+}} with a{sub 1}{sup {+-}}(1260) {yields} {pi}{sup {-+}}{pi}{sup {+-}}{pi}{sup {+-}}. The data sample corresponds to 384 x 10{sup 6} B{bar B} pairs collected with the BABAR detector at the PEP-II asymmetric B-factory at SLAC. They measure the time- and flavor-integrated charge asymmetry A{sub CP}{sup 1{sub 1}{+-}} = -0.07 {+-} 0.07 {+-} 0.02, the mixing-induced CP violation parameter S{sub a{sub 1}{pi}} = 0.37 {+-} 0.21 {+-} 0.07, the direct CP violation parameter C{sub a{sub 1}{pi}} = -0.10 {+-} 0.15 {+-} 0.09, and the parameter {Delta}C{sub a{sub 1}{pi}} = 0.26 {+-} 0.15 {+-} 0.07 and {Delta}S{sub a{sub 1}{pi}} = -0.14 {+-} 0.21 {+-} 0.06. From these measured quantities they extract the angle {alpha}{sub eff} = 78.6{sup o} {+-} 7.3{sup o}.

On November 22, 2005, the Manager of the Plutonium Finishing Plant (PFP) in Richland, WA issued an Occurrence Report involving a potential Pu-Fe eutectic failure mechanism for the stainless steel (SS) 3013 cans containing plutonium (Pu) metal. Four additional reports addressed nuclear safety concerns about the integrity of stainless steel containers holding plutonium during fire scenarios. The reports expressed a belief that the probability and consequences of container failure due to the formation of a plutonium-iron eutectic alloy had been overlooked. Simplified thermal model to address the Pu-Fe eutectic concerns using axisymmetric model similar to the models used in the 9975 SARP were performed. The model uses Rocky Flats configuration with 2 stacked Pu buttons inside a 3013 assembly. The assembly has an outer can, an inner can, and a convenience can, all stainless steel. The boundary conditions are similar to the regulatory 30 minutes HAC fire analyses. Computer simulations of the HAC fire transients lasting 4 hours of burn time show that the interface between the primary containment vessel and the Pu metal in the 9975 package will not reach Pu-Fe eutectic temperature of 400 C.