A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) Act of 2000 established VEF as an independent agency of the executive branch. A 13-member board of directors provides primary oversight. VEF also receives guidance from other entities in carrying out its mission to further bilateral relations between the United States and Vietnam through educational exchanges in science, technology, and other fields. In light of challenges identified in managing VEF's operations, GAO was asked to examine the extent to which VEF has implemented a framework for internal control. To address this objective, GAO analyzed VEF's financial statements, audits, board meeting minutes, and policies and procedures, and conducted interviews with past and current board members, as well as VEF management and staff. GAO's Standards for Internal Control were used to assess this information"

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This letter in response to congressional direction accompanying the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2008 reports on the Coast Guard's Deployable Operations Group. Specifically, we are reporting on the extent to which the Deployable Operations Group achieved its intended benefits and the challenges it faces as it continues to mature. Based on the results of our review, we are not making any recommendations for congressional consideration or agency action."

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.

Photograph of Andreea Popa, one of the 2009 recipients of the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship, shaking the hand of Dr. John Quintanilla, the co-director of the Teach North Texas program. They are standing by the refreshments table and two other attendees are behind Nichols.

Photograph of Andreea Popa, one of the 2009 recipients of the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship, standing between Dr. Mary Harris and Dr. John Quintanilla, the co-directors of the Teach North Texas program. They are standing in front of plaques and Popa is holding a smaller one with her name on it.

Photograph of the recipients of the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship standing in a line and holding up decorated sugar cookies that read "GTF" and "NOYCE". The recipients are Chad Dozier, Blair Probst, Andreea Popa, Karon Boyd, Danielli Costa, Kalynne Tweedie, and Matt Wolodzko.

Photograph of a cookie arrangement for the students at the Teach North Texas scholarship reception. They are sugar cookies in the shapes of stars and apples decorated with "NOYCE" and "GTF".

Photograph of Andreea Popa, one of the recipients of the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship, holding up her award plaque for a picture. By her sides are Kalynne Tweedie and Chad Dozier. Dozier is holding a plate with food on it.

Photograph of the recipients of the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship, standing, or sitting between Jerry Thomas, dean of the College of Education, and Warren Burggren, Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs. The recipients are Danielli Costa, Andreea Popa, Chad Dozier, Kalynne Tweedie, Matt Wolodzko, Karon Boyd, and Blair Probst.

Photograph of the recipients of the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship standing in a line and showing decorated sugar cookies that read "GTF" and "NOYCE". The recipients are Chad Dozier, Blair Probst, Andreea Popa, Karon Boyd, Danielli Costa, Kalynne Tweedie, and Matt Wolodzko.

Photograph of the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship recipients in 2010 standing behind the refreshments table with their cookie arrangements. They are Kalynne Tweedie, Karon Boyd, Danielli Costa, and Andreea Popa.

Photograph of a plaque with the names of students who received the Greater Texas Foundation Scholarship. The scholarship is through the Teach North Texas program at UNT and the names of recipients for 2009-10 are Christopher Barthold, and Gregory Granowski. The ones who received the scholarship in 2009 are Christina Korenek, Andreea Popa, Lauren Thomas, and Matt Wolodzko. The recipients in 2010 are Karon Boyd, Danielli Costa, Samantha Nichols, and Kalynne Tweedie.

Here we review experimental data and models of the ignition of aluminum (Al) particles and clouds in explosion fields. The review considers: (i) ignition temperatures measured for single Al particles in torch experiments; (ii) thermal explosion models of the ignition of single Al particles; and (iii) the unsteady ignition Al particles clouds in reflected shock environments. These are used to develop an empirical ignition model appropriate for numerical simulations of Al particle combustion in shock dispersed fuel explosions.

A heterogeneous continuum model is proposed to describe the dispersion of a dense Aluminum particle cloud in an explosion. Let {alpha}{sub 1} denote the volume fraction occupied by the gas and {alpha}{sub 2} the fraction occupied by the solid, satisfying the volume conservation relation: {alpha}{sub 1} + {alpha}{sub 2} = 1. When the particle phase occupies a non-negligible volume fraction (i.e., {alpha}{sub 2} > 0), additional terms, proportional to {alpha}{sub 2}, appear in the conservation laws for two-phase flows. These include: (i) a particle pressure (due to particle collisions), (ii) a corresponding sound speed (which produces real eigenvalues for the particle phase system), (iii) an Archimedes force induced on the particle phase (by the gas pressure gradient), and (iv) multi-particle drag effects (which enhance the momentum coupling between phases). These effects modify the accelerations and energy distributions in the phases; we call this the Dense Heterogeneous Continuum Model. A characteristics analysis of the Model equations indicates that the system is hyperbolic with real eigenvalues for the gas phase: {l_brace}v{sub 1}, v{sub 1} {+-} {alpha}{sub 1}{r_brace} and for the 'particle gas' phase: {l_brace}v{sub 2}, v{sub 2} {+-}{alpha}{sub 2}{r_brace} and the particles: {l_brace}v{sub 2}{r_brace}, where v{sub i} and {alpha}{sub i} denote the …

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Phase diagrams of refractory metals remain essentially unknown. Moreover, there is an ongoing controversy over the high pressure (P) melting temperatures of these metals: results of diamond anvil cell (DAC) and shock wave experiments differ by at least a factor of two. From an extensive ab initio study on tantalum we discovered that the body-centered cubic phase, its physical phase at ambient conditions, transforms to another solid phase, possibly hexagonal omega phase, at high temperature (T). Hence the sample motion observed in DAC experiments is not due to melting but internal stresses accompanying a solid-solid transformation, as explained in more detail in our work. In view of our results on tantalum and previous work on molybdenum, as well as other published data, it is highly plausible that high-PT polymorphism is a general feature of Groups V and VI refractory metals.

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

Knowledge of poloidal velocity is necessary for the determination of the radial electric field, Er, which along with its gradient is linked to turbulence suppression and transport barrier formation. Recent measurements of poloidal flow on conventional tokamaks have been reported to be an order of magnitude larger than expected from neoclassical theory. In contrast, recent poloidal velocity measurements on the NSTX spherical torus [S. M. Kaye et al., Phys. Plasmas 8, 1977 (2001)] are near or below neoclassical estimates. A novel charge exchange recombination spectroscopy diagnostic is used, which features active and passive sets of up/down symmetric views to produce line-integrated poloidal velocity measurements that do not need atomic physics corrections. Local profiles are obtained with an inversion. Poloidal velocity measurements are compared with neoclassical values computed with the codes NCLASS [W. A. Houlberg et al., Phys. Plasmas 4, 3230 (1997)] and GTC-Neo [W. X. Wang, et al., Phys. Plasmas 13, 082501 (2006)], which has been updated to handle impurities. __________________________________________________

The report provides a brief background section on the significance of trade in services to the U.S. economy. It then explains briefly the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the structure and agenda of the services negotiations in the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) round, including U.S. objectives in the negotiations. The report concludes with a status report on the negotiations and an examination of potential results.

This report provides an overview of the Greek debt crisis; outlines the major causes of the crisis, focusing on both domestic and international factors; examines how Greece, the Eurozone members, and the IMF have responded to the crisis; and highlights the broader implications of Greece's debt crisis, including for the United States.

This report explains the role the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) plays in U.S. global health assistance, highlights how much the agency has spent on global health efforts from FY2001 to FY2010, and discusses how funding to each of its programs has changed during this period.

This report discusses moratoria measures for the outer continental shelf (OCS) which establish bans or restrictions on oil and gas exploration and development in federal ocean areas. It includes a background of offshore oil and gas development, the sources of U.S. moratorium policy, the background of ocean governance, U.S. moratoria in international areas, and related issues for Congress.

Stop Loss is a frequently misunderstood DOD force management program that retains servicemembers beyond their contractually agreed-to separation date. Because of the involuntary nature of this extension, some critics have referred to the program as a "backdoor draft" or "involuntary servitude". This report outlines the history of Stop Loss, current issues relating to Stop Loss, and the possible future directions of the program.