On August 5, 2004, the United States entered into the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). This permanent, comprehensive, and reciprocal trade agreement eliminates tariff and non-tariff barriers to two-way trade, building on unilateral trade preferences begun under the 1983 Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI). CAFTA-DR reinforces the idea that growth in trade correlates closely with policies that promote economic stability, private investment in production, public investment in education, infrastructure, logistics, and good governance in general.

This report analyzes National Science Foundation funding trends and selected closely related STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education policy issues in order to place conversations about FY2013 funding in broader fiscal and policy context. It concludes with an analysis of potential policy options.

This report discusses water quality legislation. A number of Clean Water Act issues have been the subject of congressional oversight and legislation, including the environmental and economic impacts of Chesapeake Bay restoration efforts, federal promulgation of water quality standards in Florida, regulation of surface coal mining activities in Appalachia, and other CWA regulatory actions. Congressional interest in several of these issues has been reflected in debate over policy provisions of legislation providing FY2012 appropriations for EPA (P.L. 112-74).

Daily newspaper from Sweetwater, Texas that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall in partial fulfillment of the Graduate Artist Certificate in Music Performance.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Master of Music (MM) degree.

A faculty recital performed at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall.

A percussion ensemble concert performed at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.

Percussion concert performed at the UNT College of Music Voertman Hall.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Little research exists on the effect of workplace safety incentive programs and other workplace safety policies on workers' reporting of injuries and illnesses, but several experts identified a link between certain types of programs and policies and reporting. Researchers distinguish between rate-based safety incentive programs, which reward workers for achieving low rates of reported injuries or illnesses, and behavior-based programs, which reward workers for certain behaviors, such as recommending safety improvements. Of the six studies GAO identified that assessed the effect of safety incentive programs, two analyzed the potential effect on workers’ reporting of injuries or illnesses, but they concluded that there was no relationship between the programs and injury and illness reporting. Experts and industry officials, however, suggest that rate-based programs may discourage reporting of injuries and illnesses. Experts and industry officials also reported that certain workplace polices, such as post-incident drug and alcohol testing, may discourage workers from reporting injuries and illnesses. Researchers and workplace safety experts also noted that how safety is managed in the workplace, including employer practices such as fostering open communication about safety issues, may encourage reporting of injuries and …

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The protection of data, particularly data that can be used to identify individuals, has become an issue of great concern to Congress. This report discusses relevant legislation regarding data security.

This report summarizes the President's budget estimates for each section of the CMS budget. Then, for each legislative proposal included in the President's budget, this report provides a description of current law and the President's proposal. The explanations of the President's legislative proposals are grouped by the following program areas: Medicare, Medicaid, program integrity, and health insurance programs.

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This slide-show discusses weapons dismantlement and disposal, issues related to classified waste and their solutions.

As part of regulatory requirements for shallow-water habitat (SWH) restoration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) completes periodic estimates of the quantity of SWH available throughout the lower 752 mi of the Missouri River. To date, these estimates have been made by various methods that consider only the water depth criterion for SWH. The USACE has completed estimates of SWH availability based on both depth and velocity criteria at four river bends (hereafter called reference bends), encompassing approximately 8 river miles within the lower 752 mi of the Missouri River. These estimates were made from the results of hydraulic modeling of water depth and velocity throughout each bend. Hydraulic modeling of additional river bends is not expected to be completed for deriving estimates of available SWH. Instead, future estimates of SWH will be based on the water depth criterion. The objective of this project, conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory for the USACE Omaha District, was to develop geographic information system methods for estimating the quantity of available SWH based on water depth only. Knowing that only a limited amount of water depth and channel geometry data would be available for all the remaining bends within the lower …

During the period of February 14 to 15, 2012, ORISE performed radiological confirmatory survey activities for the former Fuel Oil Tank Area (FOTA) and additional radiological surveys of portions of the Humboldt Bay Power Plant site in Eureka, California. The radiological survey results demonstrate that residual surface soil contamination was not present significantly above background levels within the FOTA. Therefore, it is ORISE’s opinion that the radiological conditions for the FOTA surveyed by ORISE are commensurate with the site release criteria for final status surveys as specified in PG&E’s Characterization Survey Planning Worksheet. In addition, the confirmatory results indicated that the ORISE FOTA survey unit Cs-137 mean concentrations results compared favorably with the PG&E FOTA Cs-137 mean concentration results, as determined by ORISE from the PG&E characterization data. The interlaboratory comparison analyses of the three soil samples analyzed by PG&E’s onsite laboratory and the ORISE laboratory indicated good agreement for the sample results and provided confidence in the PG&E analytical procedures and final status survey soil sample data reporting.

We present a search for the radiative leptonic decays B{sub +} {yields} e{sup +} {nu}{sub e}{gamma} and B{sup +} {yields} {mu}{sup +}{nu}{sub {mu}}{gamma} using data collected by the BABAR detector at the PEP-II B factory. We fully reconstruct the hadronic decay of one of the B mesons in {Upsilon}(4S) {yields} B{sup +}B{sup -} and then search for evidence of the signal decay within the rest of the event. This method provides clean kinematic information on the signal's missing energy and high momentum photon and lepton, and allows for a model-independent analysis of this decay. Using a data sample of 465 million B-meson pairs, we obtain sensitivity to branching fractions of the same order as predicted by the Standard Model. We report a model-independent branching fraction upper limit of {Beta}(B{sup +} {yields} {ell}{sup +}{nu}{sub {ell}}{gamma}) < 15.6 x 10{sup -6} ({ell} = e or {mu}) at the 90% confidence level.

We present the most recent searches for lepton-flavor-violating (LFV) {tau} decays in BABAR. We find no evidence of {tau} decaying to three charged leptons or to a charged lepton and a neutral meson (K{sub S}{sup 0}, {rho}, {phi}, K*{sup 0}, {bar K}*{sup 0}), and set upper limits on the corresponding branching fractions (BF) between 1.8 and 19 x 10{sup -8} at 90% confidence level (CL).

The main purpose of this talk is to describe how far one might push the state of the art in storage ring design. The talk will start with an overview of the latest developments and advances in the design of synchrotron light sources based on the concept of an 'ultimate' storage ring. The review will establish how bright a ring based light source might be, where the frontier of technological challenges are, and what the limits of accelerator physics are. Emphasis will be given to possible improvements in accelerator design and developments in technology toward the goal of achieving an ultimate storage ring. An ultimate storage ring (USR), defined as an electron ring-based light source having an emittance in both transverse planes at the diffraction limit for the range of X-ray wavelengths of interest for a scientific community, would provide very high brightness photons having high transverse coherence that would extend the capabilities of X-ray imaging and probe techniques beyond today's performance. It would be a cost-effective, high-coherence 4th generation light source, competitive with one based on energy recovery linac (ERL) technology, serving a large number of users studying material, chemical, and biological sciences. Furthermore, because of the experience accumulated …

This report documents progress made on all LDRD-funded projects during fiscal year 2011. The following topics are discussed: (1) Advanced sensors and instrumentation; (2) Biological Sciences; (3) Chemistry; (4) Earth and space sciences; (5) Energy supply and use; (6) Engineering and manufacturing processes; (7) Materials science and technology; (8) Mathematics and computing sciences; (9) Nuclear science and engineering; and (10) Physics.

Objectives: To synthesize and characterize a C-Dot silica-based nanoparticle containing 'clickable' groups for the subsequent attachment of targeting moieties (e.g., peptides) and multiple contrast agents (e.g., radionuclides with high specific activity) [1,2]. These new constructs will be tested in suitable tumor models in vitro and in vivo to ensure maintenance of target-specificity and high specific activity. Methods: Cy5 dye molecules are cross-linked to a silica precursor which is reacted to form a dye-rich core particle. This core is then encapsulated in a layer of pure silica to create the core-shell C-Dot (Figure 1) [2]. A 'click' chemistry approach has been used to functionalize the silica shell with radionuclides conferring high contrast and specific activity (e.g. 64Cu and 89Zr) and peptides for tumor targeting (e.g. cRGD and octreotate) [3]. Based on the selective Diels-Alder reaction between tetrazine and norbornene, the reaction is bioorthogonal, highyielding, rapid, and water-compatible. This radiolabeling approach has already been employed successfully with both short peptides (e.g. octreotate) and antibodies (e.g. trastuzumab) as model systems for the ultimate labeling of the nanoparticles [1]. Results: PEGylated C-Dots with a Cy5 core and labeled with tetrazine have been synthesized (d = 55 nm, zeta potential = -3 mV) reliably and …

This project had goals of advancing the performance capabilities of the numerical general circulation model EULAG and using it to produce a fully operational atmospheric global climate model (AGCM) that can employ either static or dynamic grid stretching for targeted phenomena. The resulting AGCM combined EULAG's advanced dynamics core with the 'physics' of the NCAR Community Atmospheric Model (CAM). Effort discussed below shows how we improved model performance and tested both EULAG and the coupled CAM-EULAG in several ways to demonstrate the grid stretching and ability to simulate very well a wide range of scales, that is, multi-scale capability. We leveraged our effort through interaction with an international EULAG community that has collectively developed new features and applications of EULAG, which we exploited for our own work summarized here. Overall, the work contributed to over 40 peer-reviewed publications and over 70 conference/workshop/seminar presentations, many of them invited.

In this paper we discuss two mechanisms by which high energy electrons resulting from dark matter annihilations in or near the Sun can arrive at the Earth. Specifically, electrons can escape the sun if DM annihilates into long-lived states, or if dark matter scatters inelastically, which would leave a halo of dark matter outside of the sun. Such a localized source of electrons may affect the spectra observed by experiments with narrower fields of view oriented towards the sun, such as ATIC, differently from those with larger fields of view such as Fermi. We suggest a simple test of these possibilities with existing Fermi data that is more sensitive than limits from final state radiation. If observed, such a signal will constitute an unequivocal signature of dark matter.