Recovery Act: States' and Localities' Uses of Funds and Actions Needed to Address Implementation Challenges and Bolster Accountability (open access)

Recovery Act: States' and Localities' Uses of Funds and Actions Needed to Address Implementation Challenges and Bolster Accountability

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This report responds to two ongoing GAO mandates under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act). It is the latest in a series of reports on the uses of and accountability for Recovery Act funds in 16 selected states, certain localities in those jurisdictions, and the District of Columbia (District). These jurisdictions are estimated to receive about two-thirds of the intergovernmental assistance available through the Recovery Act. This report also responds to GAO's mandate to comment on the jobs estimated in recipient reports. GAO collected and analyzed documents and interviewed state and local officials and other Recovery Act award recipients. GAO also analyzed federal agency guidance and spoke with individual federal officials."
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
National Airspace System: Setting On-Time Performance Targets at Congested Airports Could Help Focus FAA's Actions (open access)

National Airspace System: Setting On-Time Performance Targets at Congested Airports Could Help Focus FAA's Actions

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Flight delays have beset the U.S. national airspace system. In 2007, more than one-quarter of all flights either arrived late or were canceled across the system, according to the Department of Transportation (DOT). DOT and its operating agency, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), are making substantial investments in transforming to a new air traffic control system--the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen)--a system that is expected to reduce delays over the next decade. This requested report explains the extent to which (1) flight delays in the U.S. national airspace system have changed since 2007 and the contributing factors to these changes, and (2) actions by DOT and FAA are expected to reduce delays in the next 2 to 3 years. We analyzed DOT and FAA data for FAA's Operational Evolution Partnership (OEP) airports because they are in major metropolitan areas, serving over 70 percent of passengers in the system. We reviewed agency documents and interviewed DOT, FAA, airport, and airline officials and aviation industry experts."
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Recovery Act: States' and Localities' Uses of Funds and Actions Needed to Address Implementation Challenges and Bolster Accountability, an E-supplement to GAO-10-605SP (Appendixes) (open access)

Recovery Act: States' and Localities' Uses of Funds and Actions Needed to Address Implementation Challenges and Bolster Accountability, an E-supplement to GAO-10-605SP (Appendixes)

Other written product issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "This supplementary report to GAO-10-605SP provides individual state appendixes for 16 states and the District of Columbia for GAO's work on the sixth of its bimonthly reviews of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act)."
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Herbal Dietary Supplements: Examples of Deceptive or Questionable Marketing Practices and Potentially Dangerous Advice (open access)

Herbal Dietary Supplements: Examples of Deceptive or Questionable Marketing Practices and Potentially Dangerous Advice

Testimony issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Recent studies have shown that use of herbal dietary supplements--chamomile, echinacea, garlic, ginkgo biloba, and ginseng--by the elderly within the United States has increased substantially. Sellers, such as retail stores, Web sites, and distributors, often claim these supplements help improve memory, circulation, and other bodily functions. GAO was asked to determine (1) whether sellers of herbal dietary supplements are using deceptive or questionable marketing practices and (2) whether selected herbal dietary supplements are contaminated with harmful substances. To conduct this investigation, GAO investigated a nonrepresentative selection of 22 storefront and mail-order retailers of herbal dietary supplements. Posing as elderly consumers, GAO investigators asked sales staff (by phone and in person) at each retailer a series of questions regarding herbal dietary supplements. GAO also reviewed written marketing language used on approximately 30 retail Web sites. Claims were evaluated against recognized scientific research published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). GAO also had an accredited lab test 40 unique popular single-ingredient herbal dietary supplements for the presence of lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, organichlorine pesticides, and organophosphorous pesticides."
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Internal Revenue Service: Assessment of Budget Justification for Fiscal Year 2011 Identified Opportunities to Enhance Transparency (open access)

Internal Revenue Service: Assessment of Budget Justification for Fiscal Year 2011 Identified Opportunities to Enhance Transparency

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The financing of the federal government depends importantly on the effectiveness of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) ability to administer the tax laws, including achieving its goals of providing taxpayer services to make voluntary compliance easier and enforcing tax laws to ensure everyone meets their obligations to pay taxes. The President requested $12.6 billion to fund IRS's fiscal year (FY) 2011 operations, including $5.8 billion for enforcement, $4.1 billion for operations support, and $2.3 billion for taxpayer services. Another $387 million is for IRS's Business Systems Modernization (BSM) program, IRS's ongoing effort to improve the agency's tax processing systems. In addition to its annual appropriation, IRS projects that it will also collect and have available to use about $339 million in offsetting collections, including user fees and reimbursable programs. IRS's Strategic Plan 2009-2013 guides budget and program decisions and emphasizes IRS's goals. It recognizes the increasing complexity of tax laws, changing business models, expanding use of electronic data and related security risks, accelerating growth in international tax activities, and growing human capital challenges. With all of these competing priorities for spending in IRS programs, limited resources make it …
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Texas Attorney General Opinion: GA-0779 (open access)

Texas Attorney General Opinion: GA-0779

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; Authority of Spindletop Mental Health Mental Retardation Services to sell or lease certain real property under House Bill 1759 and House Bill 1023 (RQ-0845-GA)
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Texas. Attorney-General's Office.
Object Type: Text
System: The Portal to Texas History
Topological Insulators and Nematic Phases from Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in (open access)

Topological Insulators and Nematic Phases from Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking in

We investigate the stability of a quadratic band-crossing point (QBCP) in 2D fermionic systems. At the non-interacting level, we show that a QBCP exists and is topologically stable for a Berry flux {-+}2{pi}, if the point symmetry group has either fourfold or sixfold rotational symmetries. This putative topologically stable free-fermion QBCP is marginally unstable to arbitrarily weak shortrange repulsive interactions. We consider both spinless and spin-1/2 fermions. Four possible ordered states result: a quantum anomalous Hall phase, a quantum spin Hall phase, a nematic phase, and a nematic-spin-nematic phase.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Sun, K.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Mechanics of Individual, Isolated Vortices in a Cuprate Superconductor (open access)

Mechanics of Individual, Isolated Vortices in a Cuprate Superconductor

None
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Auslaender, O.M.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
RegPredict: an integrated system for regulon inference in prokaryotes by comparative genomics approach (open access)

RegPredict: an integrated system for regulon inference in prokaryotes by comparative genomics approach

RegPredict web server is designed to provide comparative genomics tools for reconstruction and analysis of microbial regulons using comparative genomics approach. The server allows the user to rapidly generate reference sets of regulons and regulatory motif profiles in a group of prokaryotic genomes. The new concept of a cluster of co-regulated orthologous operons allows the user to distribute the analysis of large regulons and to perform the comparative analysis of multiple clusters independently. Two major workflows currently implemented in RegPredict are: (i) regulon reconstruction for a known regulatory motif and (ii) ab initio inference of a novel regulon using several scenarios for the generation of starting gene sets. RegPredict provides a comprehensive collection of manually curated positional weight matrices of regulatory motifs. It is based on genomic sequences, ortholog and operon predictions from the MicrobesOnline. An interactive web interface of RegPredict integrates and presents diverse genomic and functional information about the candidate regulon members from several web resources. RegPredict is freely accessible at http://regpredict.lbl.gov.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Novichkov, Pavel S.; Rodionov, Dmitry A.; Stavrovskaya, Elena D.; Novichkova, Elena S.; Kazakov, Alexey E.; Gelfand, Mikhail S. et al.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Axial Anomaly, Dirac Sea, and the Chiral Magnetic Effect (open access)

Axial Anomaly, Dirac Sea, and the Chiral Magnetic Effect

Gribov viewed the axial anomaly as a manifestation of the collective motion of Dirac fermions with arbitrarily high momenta in the vacuum. In the presence of an external magnetic field and a chirality imbalance, this collective motion becomes directly observable in the form of the electric current - this is the chiral magnetic effect (CME). I give an elementary introduction into the physics of CME, and discuss the experimental status and recent developments.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Kharzeev, D.E.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Data Reduction Processes Using FPGA for MicroBooNE Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber (open access)

Data Reduction Processes Using FPGA for MicroBooNE Liquid Argon Time Projection Chamber

MicroBooNE is a liquid Argon time projection chamber to be built at Fermilab for an accelerator-based neutrino physics experiment and as part of the R&D strategy for a large liquid argon detector at DUSEL. The waveforms of the {approx}9000 sense wires in the chamber are continuously digitized at 2 M samples/s - which results in a large volume of data coming off the TPC. We have developed a lossless data reduction scheme based on Huffman Coding and have tested the scheme on cosmic ray data taken from a small liquid Argon time projection chamber, the BO detector. For sense wire waveforms produced by cosmic ray tracks, the Huffman Coding scheme compresses the data by a factor of approximately 10. The compressed data can be fully recovered back to the original data since the compression is lossless. In addition to accelerator neutrino data, which comes with small duty cycle in sync with the accelerator beam spill, continuous digitized waveforms are to be temporarily stored in the MicroBooNE data-acquisition system for about an hour, long enough for an external alert from possible supernova events. Another scheme, Dynamic Decimation, has been developed to compress further the potential supernova data so that the storage …
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Wu, Jinyuan
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Light-Front Quantization Approach to the Gauge Gravity Correspondence and Hadron Spectroscopy (open access)

Light-Front Quantization Approach to the Gauge Gravity Correspondence and Hadron Spectroscopy

We find a correspondence between semiclassical QCD quantized on the light-front and a dual gravity model in anti-de Sitter (AdS) space, thus providing an initial approximation to QCD in its strongly coupled regime. This correspondence - light-front holography - leads to a light-front Hamiltonian and relativistic bound-state wave equations that are functions of an invariant impact variable {zeta} which measures the separation of the quark and gluonic constituents within hadrons at equal lightfront time. The eigenvalues of the resulting light-front Schrodinger and Dirac equations are consistent with the observed light meson and baryon spectrum, and the eigenmodes provide the light-front wavefunctions, the probability amplitudes describing the dynamics of the hadronic constituents. The light-front equations of motion, which are dual to an effective classical gravity theory, possess remarkable algebraic and integrability properties which are dictated by the underlying conformal properties of the theory. We extend the algebraic construction to include a confining potential while preserving the integrability of the mesonic and baryonic bound-state equations.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: de Teramond, Guy F.; U., /Costa Rica & Brodsky, Stanley J.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Fermi surface of SrFe2P2 determined by de Haas-van Alphen effect (open access)

Fermi surface of SrFe2P2 determined by de Haas-van Alphen effect

We report measurements of the Fermi surface (FS) of the ternary iron-phosphide SrFe{sub 2}P{sub 2} using the de Haas-van Alphen effect. The calculated FS of this compound is very similar to SrFe{sub 2}As{sub 2}, the parent compound of the high temperature superconductors. Our data show that the Fermi surface is composed of two electron and two hole sheets in agreement with bandstructure calculations. Several of the sheets show strong c-axis warping emphasizing the importance of three-dimensionality in the non-magnetic state of the ternary pnictides. We find that the electron and hole pockets have a different topology, implying that this material does not satisfy a ({pi},{pi}) nesting condition.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Analytis, J.G.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Quantum Oscillation Studies of the Fermi Surface of LaFePO (open access)

Quantum Oscillation Studies of the Fermi Surface of LaFePO

We review recent experimental measurements of the Fermi surface of the iron-pnictide superconductor LaFePO using quantum oscillation techniques. These studies show that the Fermi surface topology is close to that predicted by first principles density functional theory calculations, consisting of quasi-twodimensional electron-like and hole-like sheets. The total volume of the two hole sheets is almost equal to that of the two electron sheets, and the hole and electron Fermi surface sheets are close to a nesting condition. No evidence for the predicted three dimensional pocket arising from the Fe d{sub z}{sup 2} band is found. Measurements of the effective mass suggest a renormalisation of around two, close to the value for the overall band renormalisation found in recent angle resolved photoemission measurements.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Carrington, A.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Search for lepton flavor violating decay τ<sup>-</sup> →ℓ<sup>-</sup>ℓ<sup>+</sup>ℓ<sup>-</sup>ℓ = e, μ at BaBar (open access)

Search for lepton flavor violating decay τ<sup>-</sup> →ℓ<sup>-</sup>ℓ<sup>+</sup>ℓ<sup>-</sup>ℓ = e, μ at BaBar

The Standard Model (SM) is one of the most tested and verified physical theories of all time, present experimental observations are consistent with SM expectations. On the other hand SM can not explain many physical observations: the cosmological observations possibly infer the presence of dark matter which is clearly beyond the SM expectations; the SM Higgs model, while explaining the generation of fermion masses, can not explain the hierarchy problem and a non natural fine tuning of SM is needed to cancel out quadratic divergences in the Higgs boson mass. New physics (NP) beyond SM should hence be investigated: rising the energy above NP processes thresholds, and detecting new particles or new effects not predicted by the standard model directly, is one of the possible approaches; another approach is to make precision measurements of well known processes or looking for rare processes which involve higher order contribution from NP processes, this approach need higher luminosities with respect to the previous approach but lower beam energies. Search for Lepton Flavor Violation (LFV) in charged lepton decays is promising: neutrino physics provides indeed a clear and unambiguous evidence of LFV in the neutral lepton sector via mixing processes, which have been observed …
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Cervelli, Alberto
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Quantum Oscillations in the Parent pnictide BaFe2As2 : Itinerant Electrons in the Reconstructed State (open access)

Quantum Oscillations in the Parent pnictide BaFe2As2 : Itinerant Electrons in the Reconstructed State

We report quantum oscillation measurements that enable the direct observation of the Fermi surface of the low temperature ground state of BaFe{sub 2}As{sub 2}. From these measurements we characterize the low energy excitations, revealing that the Fermi surface is reconstructed in the antiferromagnetic state, but leaving itinerant electrons in its wake. The present measurements are consistent with a conventional band folding picture of the antiferromagnetic ground state, placing important limits on the topology and size of the Fermi surface.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Analytis, J.G.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library

Wind Turbine Manufacturers in the United States: Locations and Local Impacts

Suzanne Tegen's presentation about U.S. wind energy manufacturing (presented at WINDPOWER 2010 in Dallas) provides information about challenges to modeling renewables; wind energy's economic "ripple effect"; case studies about wind-related manufacturing in Colorado, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana; manufacturing maps for the Great Lakes region, Arkansas, and the United States; sample job announcements; and U.S. Treasury Grant 1603 funding.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Tegen, S.
Object Type: Presentation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Silicon Detector Letter of Intent (open access)

Silicon Detector Letter of Intent

This document presents the current status of SiD's effort to develop an optimized design for an experiment at the International Linear Collider. It presents detailed discussions of each of SiD's various subsystems, an overview of the full GEANT4 description of SiD, the status of newly developed tracking and calorimeter reconstruction algorithms, studies of subsystem performance based on these tools, results of physics benchmarking analyses, an estimate of the cost of the detector, and an assessment of the detector R&amp;D needed to provide the technical basis for an optimised SiD.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Aihara, H.; Burrows, P. & Oreglia, M.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Topological change of the Fermi surface in ternary iron-pnictides with reduced c/a ratio: A dHvA study of CaFe2P2 (open access)

Topological change of the Fermi surface in ternary iron-pnictides with reduced c/a ratio: A dHvA study of CaFe2P2

We report a de Haas-van Alphen effect study of the Fermi surface of CaFe{sub 2}P{sub 2} using low temperature torque magnetometry up to 45 T. This system is a close structural analogue of the collapsed tetragonal non-magnetic phase of CaFe{sub 2}As{sub 2}. We find the Fermi surface of CaFe{sub 2}P{sub 2} to differ from other related ternary phosphides in that its topology is highly dispersive in the c-axis, being three-dimensional in character and with identical mass enhancement on both electron and hole pockets ({approx} 1.5). The dramatic change in topology of the Fermi surface suggests that in a state with reduced (c/a) ratio, when bonding between pnictogen layers becomes important, the Fermi surface sheets are unlikely to be nested.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Coldea, Amalia I.; Andrew, C. M. J.; U., /Bristol; Analytis, J. G.; /SIMES, Stanford /SLAC /Stanford U., Phys. Dept.; McDonald, R. D. et al.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Gluon Evolution and Saturation Proceedings (open access)

Gluon Evolution and Saturation Proceedings

Almost 40 years ago, Gribov and colleagues at the Leningrad Nuclear Physics Institute developed the ideas that led to the Dokhsitzer-Gribov-Altarelli-Parisi the Baltisky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov equations. These equations describe the evolution of the distributions for quarks and gluon inside a hadron to increased resolution scale of a probe or to smaller values of the fractional momentum of a hadronic constituent. I motivate and discuss the generalization required of these equations needed for high energy processes when the density of constituents is large. This leads to a theory of saturation realized by the Color Glass Condensate
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: McLerran, L. D.
Object Type: Article
System: The UNT Digital Library
Iran Sanctions (open access)

Iran Sanctions

This report focuses on the United States' relationship with Iran and how the Obama Administration is handling prior administration's economic sanctions against Iran. The Obama Administration's policy approach toward Iran has contrasted with the Bush Administration's by attempting to couple the imposition of sanctions to an active and direct U.S. effort to negotiate with Iran on the nuclear issue.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Katzman, Kenneth
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Democratic Reforms in Taiwan: Issues for Congress (open access)

Democratic Reforms in Taiwan: Issues for Congress

Taiwan, which its government formally calls the Republic of China (ROC), is a success story for U.S. interests in the promotion of universal freedoms and democracy. Taiwan's people and their leaders transformed politics from rule imposed from the outside with authoritarian abuses to the relatively peaceful achievement of self-government, human rights, and democracy. This report succinctly discusses Taiwan's transformation and current concerns, paying particular attention to the role of Congress and implications and options for U.S. policy.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Kan, Shirley A.
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
U.S. International Trade: Trends and Forecasts (open access)

U.S. International Trade: Trends and Forecasts

The U.S. trade deficit was shrinking through June 2009 because of the global financial crisis but has begun to increase again. The crisis caused U.S. imports to drop faster than U.S. exports. The global simultaneous recession, however, implies that exporting countries cannot rely on increased foreign demand to make up for slack demand at home. Even though U.S. imports are down considerably from 2008, companies competing with imports still face diminishing demand as the domestic economy has been hit by recession. This report provides an overview of the international trade climate and U.S. trade policy. The report also discusses common perceptions about the deficit and trade balances.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: Nanto, Dick K. & Donnelly, J. Michael
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library
Navy SSBN(X) Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress (open access)

Navy SSBN(X) Ballistic Missile Submarine Program: Background and Issues for Congress

This report discusses the Navy's plan to develop and design a class of 12 next-generation ballistic missile submarines, or SSBN(X)s, as replacements for the 14 Ohio class SSBNs currently in operation. The report explores certain related issues for Congress, including the affordability of the project and its potential impact on other Navy shipbuilding programs, alternatives to the program, and which shipyard or shipyards will build the proposed ships.
Date: May 26, 2010
Creator: O'Rourke, Ronald
Object Type: Report
System: The UNT Digital Library