Memoir of Andrew A. Litzler containing anecdotes about his family members and experiences living in Texas.

Nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, and renewable energy (including biofuels) are the only energy sources capable of satisfying the Earth's need for power for the next century and beyond without the negative environmental impacts of fossil fuels. Substantially increasing the use of nuclear fission and renewable energy now could help reduce dependency on fossil fuels, but nuclear fusion has the potential of becoming the ultimate base-load energy source. Fusion is an attractive fuel source because it is virtually inexhaustible, widely available, and lacks proliferation concerns. It also has a greatly reduced waste impact, and no danger of runaway reactions or meltdowns. The substantial environmental, commercial, and security benefits of fusion continue to motivate the research needed to make fusion power a reality. Replicating the fusion reactions that power the sun and stars to meet Earth's energy needs has been a long-sought scientific and engineering challenge. In fact, this technological challenge is arguably the most difficult ever undertaken. Even after roughly 60 years of worldwide research, much more remains to be learned. the magnitude of the task has caused some to declare that fusion is 20 years away, and always will be. This glib criticism ignores the enormous progress that has occurred …

The ore pitchblende was discovered in the 1750's near Joachimstal in what is now the Czech Republic. Used as a colorant in glazes, uranium was identified in 1789 as the active ingredient by chemist Martin Klaproth. In 1896, French physicist Henri Becquerel studied uranium minerals as part of his investigations into the phenomenon of fluorescence. He discovered a strange energy emanating from the material which he dubbed 'rayons uranique.' Unable to explain the origins of this energy, he set the problem aside. About two years later, a young Polish graduate student was looking for a project for her dissertation. Marie Sklodowska Curie, working with her husband Pierre, picked up on Becquerel's work and, in the course of seeking out more information on uranium, discovered two new elements (polonium and radium) which exhibited the same phenomenon, but were even more powerful. The Curies recognized the energy, which they now called 'radioactivity,' as something very new, requiring a new interpretation, new science. This discovery led to what some view as the 'golden age of nuclear science' (1895-1945) when countries throughout Europe devoted large resources to understand the properties and potential of this material. By World War II, the potential to harness this …

Microbial communities are each a composite of populations whose presence and relative abundance in water or other environmental samples are a direct manifestation of environmental conditions, including the introduction of microbe-rich fecal material and factors promoting persistence of the microbes therein. As shown by culture-independent methods, different animal-host fecal microbial communities appear distinctive, suggesting that their community profiles can be used to differentiate fecal samples and to potentially reveal the presence of host fecal material in environmental waters. Cross-comparisons of microbial communities from different hosts also reveal relative abundances of genetic groups that can be used to distinguish sources. In increasing order of their information richness, several community analysis methods hold promise for MST applications: phospholipid fatty acid (PLFA) analysis, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (TRFLP), cloning/sequencing, and PhyloChip. Specific case studies involving TRFLP and PhyloChip approaches demonstrate the ability of community-based analyses of contaminated waters to confirm a diagnosis of water quality based on host-specific marker(s). The success of community-based MST for comprehensively confirming fecal sources relies extensively upon using appropriate multivariate statistical approaches. While community-based MST is still under evaluation and development as a primary diagnostic tool, results presented herein demonstrate its promise. …

This document provides information on the characterization of geomorphi units in the Alluvial Valleys and Channels of Gulf Coastal Plain Rivers in Texas.

Handbook describing medicaid policies, benefits, and procedures regarding children's services for use by health care providers.

Text describing the work completed by the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in various parks throughout Texas, with a brief background on the program.

Fall/spring performances program book from the 2009-2010 school year at the University of North Texas College of Music.

Fall/spring performances program book from the 2009-2010 school year at the University of North Texas College of Music.

Fall/spring performances program book from the 2009-2010 school year at the University of North Texas College of Music.

Fall/spring performances program book from the 2009-2010 school year at the University of North Texas College of Music.

Student performances program book from the 2009-2010 school year at the University of North Texas College of Music.

Student performances program book from the 2009-2010 school year at the University of North Texas College of Music.

First part of the Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST), a project to study school districts and campuses to find better ways of allocating resources. This section contains an executive summary of the project and results.

Third part of the Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST), a project to study school districts and campuses to find better ways of allocating resources. This section describes strategies and practices related to spending in Texas school districts.

Fourth part of the Financial Allocation Study for Texas (FAST), a project to study school districts and campuses to find better ways of allocating resources. This section describes methods used in universities and community colleges to save money, such as resource sharing and schedule stacking.

We develop conservation laws for coupled hydro-mechanical processes in unsaturated porous media using three-phase continuum mixture theory. From the first law of thermodynamics, we identify energy-conjugate variables for constitutive modeling at macroscopic scale. Energy conjugate expressions identified relate a certain measure of effective stress to the deformation of the solid matrix, the degree of saturation to the matrix suction, the pressure in each constituent phase to the corresponding intrinsic volume change of this phase, and the seepage forces to the corresponding pressure gradients. We then develop strong and weak forms of boundary-value problems relevant for 3D finite element modeling of coupled hydro-mechanical processes in unsaturated porous media. The paper highlights a 3D numerical example illustrating the advances in the solution of large-scale coupled finite element systems, as well as the challenges in developing more predictive tools satisfying the basic conservation laws and the observed constitutive responses for unsaturated porous materials.

The Council Fire is the student handbook of McMurry University in Abilene, Texas and includes information about the rules and regulations of the school as well as general information about student governance and campus life.

This chapter will address some of the many issues associated with the identification of signatures based on genomic DNA/RNA, which can be used to identify and characterize pathogens for biodefense and microbial forensic goals. For the purposes of this chapter, we define a signature as one or more strings of contiguous genomic DNA or RNA bases that are sufficient to identify a pathogenic target of interest at the desired resolution and which could be instantiated with particular detection chemistry on a particular platform. The target may be a whole organism, an individual functional mechanism (e.g., a toxin gene), or simply a nucleic acid indicative of the organism. The desired resolution will vary with each program's goals but could easily range from family to genus to species to strain to isolate. The resolution may not be taxonomically based but rather pan-mechanistic in nature: detecting virulence or antibiotic-resistance genes shared by multiple microbes. Entire industries exist around different detection chemistries and instrument platforms for identification of pathogens, and we will only briefly mention a few of the techniques that we have used at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) to support our biosecurity-related work since 2000. Most nucleic acid based detection chemistries involve …

Vitrification is currently the most widely used technology for the treatment of high level radioactive wastes (HLW) throughout the world. Most of the nations that have generated HLW are immobilizing in either borosilicate glass or phosphate glass. One of the primary reasons that glass has become the most widely used immobilization media is the relative simplicity of the vitrification process, e.g. melt waste plus glass forming frit additives and cast. A second reason that glass has become widely used for HLW is that the short range order (SRO) and medium range order (MRO) found in glass atomistically bonds the radionuclides and governs the melt properties such as viscosity, resistivity, sulphate solubility. The molecular structure of glass controls contaminant/radionuclide release by establishing the distribution of ion exchange sites, hydrolysis sites, and the access of water to those sites. The molecular structure is flexible and hence accounts for the flexibility of glass formulations to waste variability. Nuclear waste glasses melt between 1050-1150 C which minimizes the volatility of radioactive components such as Tc{sup 99}, Cs{sup 137}, and I{sup 129}. Nuclear waste glasses have good long term stability including irradiation resistance. Process control models based on the molecular structure of glass have been …

"The Docs is the story of four Navy Corpsmen deployed to Iraq. While some events in the novel are specific to Operation Iraqi Freedom, this graphic novel is not intended to depict any specific time period or conflict. Rather, it represents a more general view of military life within a combat zone. The intent is to highlight challenges faced by Corpsmen in all wars. The commitment of Corpsmen to meeting these challenges is, like the story itself, timeless" (p. 5).

Handbook describing procedures for medical providers regarding durable medical equipment, medical supplies, and nutritional products.

Climate change projections from three General Circulation Models were used to adjust the temperature and precipitation in 2030 and 2080 in each of five ecological provinces in Tennessee to estimate the direct economic effects of the projected changes on recreation using the Tourism Climatic Index. The indirect effects on recreation were evaluated qualitatively, based on current demand for the unique values associated with current conditions. The results of the direct impact evaluation reveal that climate change will have variable effects on recreational activities in Tennessee. The magnitude and direction of the effects vary by the recreational activity involved, patterns of precipitation and temperature regimes, and specific location in Tennessee. Recreational activities such as rock climbing, winter activities independent of snow, and whitewater boating are likely to benefit from projected climate changes due to increased temperatures in the winter months. Summer-based activities such as lake recreation and camping are likely to decline with increasing seasonal temperatures. The indirect effects of climate change on recreation are likely to have a larger effect than the direct impacts of climatic variables.

This document provides rules, regulations, and responsibilities of contractors that have been given approved Edwards Aquifer protection plans or Contributing Zone plans and approval letters. (p. 1).