Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Congress and the administration set forth energy objectives for federal fleets with 20 or more vehicles. Agencies are to (1) acquire alternative fuel vehicles (AFV) as 75 percent of all new light-duty vehicle acquisitions; (2) use only alternative fuel in AFVs, unless granted a waiver; (3) increase overall alternative fuel use by 10 percent annually; (4) reduce petroleum consumption by 2 percent annually through 2015; and (5) purchase plug-in hybrid electric vehicles when available and at a reasonable cost. The first two objectives are requirements in the Energy Policy Acts (EPAct) of 1992 and 2005. The last three are goals set by Executive Order 13423. GAO was asked to determine agencies' compliance with these objectives for fiscal year 2007 and how agencies are poised to meet them in the future. GAO obtained and analyzed information from the Department of Energy's (DOE) automotive database and other sources and interviewed agency officials."

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "As the military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq--known as Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), respectively--have progressed, increasing numbers of OEF/OIF servicemembers have transitioned to veteran status and have begun receiving care from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). VA data show that as of March 2008, over 868,000 OEF/OIF servicemembers, including National Guard and Reserve members, had left active duty and become eligible for VA health care, and over 340,000-- about 40 percent--had accessed VA health care services. Returning OEF/OIF veterans may have a range of health care needs, such as treatment for mental health conditions like posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), treatment for traumatic brain injury (TBI) or other injuries, or counseling to address difficulties readjusting from wartime military service to civilian life. Family members can play an important role in helping and supporting OEF/OIF veterans. For example, family members may notice symptoms the veteran has, such as anxiety or difficulty sleeping, and encourage the veteran to seek care. They may also help the veteran identify health care services and ensure that the veteran receives needed services. Family members may also provide emotional support--such …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "For decades, numerous federal reports have described serious weaknesses in USDA's civil rights programs--in particular, in resolving discrimination complaints and providing minority farmers with access to programs. In 2002, Congress authorized the position of Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights (ASCR) at USDA to provide leadership for resolving these long-standing problems. GAO was asked to assess USDA's efforts to (1) resolve discrimination complaints, (2) report on minority participation in farm programs, and (3) strategically plan its efforts. GAO also reviewed experiences of other federal agencies to develop options for addressing the issues. This report is based on new and prior work, including analysis of ASCR's discrimination complaint management, strategic planning, and interviews with officials of USDA and other agencies, as well as 20 USDA stakeholder groups."

New and advanced methodologies have been developed to characterize the nano and microstructure of cement paste and concrete exposed to aggressive environments. High resolution full-field soft X-ray imaging in the water window is providing new insight on the nano scale of the cement hydration process, which leads to a nano-optimization of cement-based systems. Hard X-ray microtomography images on ice inside cement paste and cracking caused by the alkali-silica reaction (ASR) enables three-dimensional structural identification. The potential of neutron diffraction to determine reactive aggregates by measuring their residual strains and preferred orientation is studied. Results of experiments using these tools will be shown on this paper.

I present three recent results from searches for exotic physics at the BABAR/PEP-II B-factory. These results span many of the samples produced at the B-factory, including B mesons, {tau} leptons, and {Upsilon}(3S) mesons. We have searched for CPT-violation in B{sup 0} mixing and find no significant deviation from the no-violation hypothesis. We have also searched for lepton-flavor-violating decays of the {tau} using {tau}{sup -} {yields} {omega}{ell}{sup -} and {tau}{sup -} {yields} {ell}{sup -}{ell}{sup +}{ell}{sup -} and their charge conjugates. We find no evidence for these processes and set upper limits on their branching fractions. Finally, we have searched for a low-mass Higgs boson in the decay {Upsilon}(3S) {yields} {gamma}A{sup 0}, where the Higgs decays invisibly. We find no evidence for such a decay and set upper limits across a range of possible Higgs masses.

Presented at the Association of Industrial Metallizers, Coaters and Laminators (AIMCAL) Fall Technical Conference 2008 and 22nd International Vacuum Web Coating Conference held October 19-22, 2008 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. This presentation discusses PV in the world energy portfolio, PV basics, PV technologies, and vacuum web-coating applications in PV.

Many of the important challenges facing humanity, including developing alternative sources of energy and improving health, are being addressed by advances that demand the improved understanding and control of matter. While the visualization, exploration, and manipulation of macroscopic matter have long been technological goals, scientific developments in the twentieth century have focused attention on understanding matter on the atomic scale through the underlying framework of quantum mechanics. Of special interest is matter that consists of natural or artificial nanoscale building blocks defined either by atomic structural arrangements or by electron or spin formations created by collective correlation effects (Figure 1.1). The essence of the challenge to the scientific community has been expressed in five grand challenges for directing matter and energy recently formulated by the Basic Energy Sciences Advisory Committee. These challenges focus on increasing our understanding of, and ultimately control of, matter at the level of atoms, electrons, and spins, as illustrated in Figure 1.1. Meeting these challenges will require new tools that extend our reach into regions of higher spatial, temporal, and energy resolution. Since the fundamental interaction that holds matter together is of electromagnetic origin, it is intuitively clear that electromagnetic radiation is the critical tool in …

We are pleased to report important progress in experimentally characterizing and numerically modeling the transformation into plasma of walls subjected to pulsed megagauss magnetic fields. Understanding this is important to Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) because an important limitation to the metal liner approach to MTF comes from the strong eddy current heating on the surface of the metal liner. This has intriguing non-linear aspects when the magnetic field is in the megagauss regime as needed for MTF, and may limit the magnetic field in an MTF implosion. Many faculty, students, and staff have contributed to this work, and, implicitly or explicitly, to this report. Contributors include, in addition to the PIs, Andrey Esaulov, Stephan Fuelling, Irvin Lindemuth, Volodymyr Makhin, Ioana Paraschiv, Milena Angelova, Tom Awe, Tasha Goodrich, Arunkumar Prasadam, Andrew Oxner, Bruno Le Galloudec, Radu Presura, and Vladimir Ivanov. Highlights of the progress made during the grant include: • 12 articles published, and 44 conference and workshop presentations made, on a broad range of issues related to this project; • An ongoing experiment that uses the 1 MA, 100-ns Zebra z-pinch at UNR to apply 2 5 megagauss to a variety of metal surfaces, examining plasma formation and evolution; • …

One of the most reliable experimental methods for measuring the kinetic parameters of a subcritical assembly is the Sjoestrand method applied to the reaction rate generated from a pulsed neutron source. This study developed a new analytical methodology for characterizing the kinetic parameters of a subcritical assembly using the Sjoestrand method, which allows comparing the analytical and experimental time dependent reaction rates and the reactivity measurements. In this methodology, the reaction rate, detector response, is calculated due to a single neutron pulse using MCNP/MCNPX computer code or any other neutron transport code that explicitly simulates the fission delayed neutrons. The calculation simulates a single neutron pulse over a long time period until the delayed neutron contribution to the reaction is vanished. The obtained reaction rate is superimposed to itself, with respect to the time, to simulate the repeated pulse operation until the asymptotic level of the reaction rate, set by the delayed neutrons, is achieved. The superimposition of the pulse to itself was calculated by a simple C computer program. A parallel version of the C program is used due to the large amount of data being processed, e.g. by the Message Passing Interface (MPI). The new calculation methodology has …

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Bi-weekly student newspaper from Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas that includes local, state and campus news along with advertising.

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 Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Texas that includes campus and local 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 Government Code chapter 552, the Public Information Act, prohibits the disclosure of a vehicle identification number if the number is not accompanied by or identified with any personal information about any individual (RQ-0704-GA)

This report contains a list of about 150 congressional liaison offices intended to help congressional offices in placing telephone calls and addressing correspondence to government agencies.

This report provides an overview of legislative developments in the 110th Congress regarding campaign finance laws.

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Free weekly newspaper that includes business and classified advertising.

In 2007, the National Nuclear Security Administration's Office of Nonproliferation and International Security (NA-24) completed a yearlong review of the challenges facing the international safeguards system today and over the next 25 years. The study found that without new investment in international safeguards, the U.S. safeguards technology base, and our ability to support International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, will continue to erode and soon may be at risk. To reverse this trend, the then U.S. Secretary of Energy, Samuel Bodman, announced at the 2007 IAEA General Conference that the Department of Energy (DOE) would launch the Next Generation Safeguards Initiative (NGSI). He stated 'IAEA safeguards must be robust and capable of addressing proliferation threats. Full confidence in IAEA safeguards is essential for nuclear power to grow safely and securely. To this end, the U.S. Department of Energy will seek to ensure that modern technology, the best scientific expertise, and adequate resources are available to keep pace with expanding IAEA responsibilities.' To meet this goal, the NGSI objectives include the recruitment of international safeguards experts to work at the U.S. national laboratories and to serve at the IAEA's headquarters. Part of the latter effort will involve enhancing our existing efforts …

The Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe has a vision to become self-sufficient in its energy needs and to maintain its culture and protect Mother Earth with respect and honor for the next seven generations. To achieve this vision, green energy sources such as solar, wind and biomass energy are the best energy paths to travel. In this feasibility study the Tribe has analyzed and provided data on the nature of the renewable resources available to the Tribe and the costs of implementing these technologies.

We study dependence of jet quenching on matter density, using 'tomography' of the fireball provided by RHIC data on azimuthal anisotropy v{sub 2} of high p{sub t} hadron yield at different centralities. Slicing the fireball into shells with constant (entropy) density, we derive a 'layer-wise geometrical limit' v{sub 2}{sup max} which is indeed above the data v{sub 2} < v{sub x}{sup max}. Interestingly, the limit is reached only if quenching is dominated by shells with the entropy density exactly in the near-T{sub c} region. We show two models that simultaneously describe the high p{sub t} v{sub 2} and R{sub AA} data and conclude that such a description can be achieved only if the jet quenching is few times stronger in the near-T{sub c} region relative to QGP at T > T{sub c}. One possible reason for that may be recent indications that the near-T{sub c} region is a magnetic plasma of relatively light color-magnetic monopoles.

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