This report discusses the issue of U.S. economic assistance to sub-Saharan Africa, highlighting the importance of continued assistance in light of U.S. national security and also various U.S.-led efforts to promote reform amongst African citizens themselves. U.S. assistance finds its way to Africa through a variety of channels, including the USAID-administered DA program, food aid programs, and indirect aid provided through international financial institutions and the United Nations.

The Air Force has expressed interest in developing a bomber variant of the F-22A Raptor to "bridge the gap" between today's bombers and a follow-on bomber in 2037. Questions exist regarding the FB-22's feasibility, cost, and combat potential.

Photograph of members of the Paschal High School Air Rifle Team lined up for practice. Several boys are seen, though the photo is focused on the boy in the front, who has a buzzed haircut and wears safety glasses. They each point air rifles, red and blue and tan in color, to the right of the photograph. They are preparing for a national tournament in Georgia.

Photograph of members of the Pascal High School Air Rifle Team taking aim during a practice before a national tournament. Several boys are seen, though the photo is focused on the boy in the front, who has a buzzed haircut and wears safety glasses. They each point air rifles, red and blue and tan in color, towards the right of the photograph. The team is made up of members of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. They are preparing for a national tournament in Georgia.

Fotografía de miembros del equipo de rifle aéreo del Cuerpo de Entrenamiento de Oficiales de la Reserva Junior en la Escuela Secundaria Paschal de Fort Worth durante una práctica. En la fotografía se ve a cuatro chicos, con el pelo cortado y con gafas de seguridad. Cada uno de ellos apunta con rifles de aire, de color rojo y azul y bronceado, a la derecha de la fotografía. Participan en un programa de educación premilitar que les permite viajar a Georgia para competir en un torneo nacional para ver si son los mejores del país.

Photograph of members of the Pascal High School Air Rifle Team taking aim during a practice before a national tournament. Several boys are seen, though the photo is focused on the boy in the front, who has a buzzed haircut and wears safety glasses. They each point air rifles, red and blue and tan in color, to the right of the photograph. The team is made up of members of the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps. They are preparing for a national tournament in Georgia.

Daily newspaper from Altus, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.

An archaeological survey report of the proposed site of the Lake Granbury Boat Ramp in Granbury, Texas to determine whether any cultural resources were in the area.

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

An analytical formulation of conductivity bounds by Bergman and Milton is used in a different way to obtain rigorous bounds on the real transport coefficients (electrical conductivity, thermal conductivity, and/or fluid permeability) of a fluid-saturated porous medium. These bounds do not depend explicitly on the porosity, but rather on two formation factors--one associated with the pore space and the other with the solid frame. Hashin-Shtrikman bounds for transport in random polycrystals of porous-material laminates will also be discussed.

Experimental methods of measuring intermolecular interactions have had several recent developments which have improved our understanding of chemical forces. First, they allowed direct exploration of the role that different functionalities, solvents and environmental variables play in shaping the strength of intermolecular interactions. Chemical force microscopy approach, in particular, became an extremely effective tool for exploring the contributions of each of these factors. Second, CFM studies clearly debunked the naive notion that intermolecular interaction strength is determined only by the nature of the interacting groups. These studies showed that the interaction strength between two chemical species must always considered in context of the environment surrounding these species. Third, CFM studies highlighted the critical role solvent plays in shaping intermolecular interactions in condensed phases. Emerging kinetic view of the intermolecular interactions introduced a completely new paradigm for understanding these interactions. Kinetic modeling showed that the measured interactions strength depends not only on the energy landscape of the system, but also on the loading history prior to the bond break-up. This new paradigm refocused our attention to the energy landscape as a fundamental characteristic of the interaction. Moreover, dynamic force spectroscopy, derived from kinetic models, allowed direct characterization of the geometry of the …

This report provides information about the Consumer Bankruptcy and Household Debt. The principal impetus behind bankruptcy reform is high number of consumer bankruptcy filings.

New corrosion-resistant, iron-based amorphous metals have been identified from published data or developed through combinatorial synthesis, and tested to determine their relative corrosion resistance. Many of these materials can be applied as coatings with advanced thermal spray technology. Two compositions have corrosion resistance superior to wrought nickel-based Alloy C-22 (UNS N06022) in some very aggressive environments, including concentrated calcium-chloride brines at elevated temperature. One of these compositions, SAM1651, is discussed in detail to illustrate the promise of this general class of materials.

Alloy 22 (N06022) is a nickel (Ni) based alloy containing nominally 22% Chromium (Cr), 13% Molybdenum (Mo) and 3% tungsten (W). Alloy 22 is highly resistant to general and localized corrosion such as pitting corrosion and stress corrosion cracking. Due to the formation of a stable passive film, when Alloy 22 is immersed in certain electrolytes, its corrosion potential (E{sub corr}) increases and its corrosion rate (CR) decreases as a function of the immersion time. This paper discusses the evolution of E{sub corr} and corrosion rate (CR) of creviced Alloy 22 specimens in six different mixtures of sodium chloride (NaCl) and potassium nitrate (KNO{sub 3}) at 100 C. Two types of specimens were used, polished as-welded (ASW) and as-welded solution plus heat-treated (ASW+SHT). The latter contained the black annealing oxide film on the surface. Results show that, for the two type of materials, as the immersion time increases, E{sub corr} increased and the CR decreased. Even for concentrated brine solutions at 100 C the CR was < 50 nm/year after more than 100 days immersion.

During the opening ceremony of the Dallas Cup 2005 the participating teams march onto the field.

During the opening ceremony of the Dallas Cup 2005 the participating teams march onto the field.

Initiated in 1992, the DECOVALEX project is an international collaboration for advancing the understanding and modeling of coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) processes in geologic systems. The project has made important scientific achievements through three stages and is progressing in its fourth stage. It has played a key role in the development of mathematical modeling and in situ testing of coupled THM processes in fractured rock and buffer/backfill materials, a subject of importance for performance assessment of radioactive waste geologic repositories. This paper summarizes studies under the most recent stage of the project, DECOVALEX III (2000-2003). These studies include those of two major field experiments: (a) the FEBEX experiment at Grimsel, Switzerland, investigating coupled THM processes in a crystalline rock-bentonite system, and (b) the Drift Scale Test (DST) experiment at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, investigating coupled THM processes in unsaturated tuff. These are two of the largest multiyear heater tests undertaken to date for the study of coupled THM processes in geological systems. In addition, three so-called benchmark tests are also studied to evaluate the impact of coupled THM processes under different scenarios and geometries. Within the DECOVALEX project, multiple research teams participated in each of the studies, using different approaches and computer …

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) is an Army program that plans for the use of a private-sector contractor to support worldwide contingency operations. Examples of the types of support available include laundry and bath, food service, sanitation, billeting, maintenance, and power generation. LOGCAP has been used extensively to support U.S. forces in recent operations in southwest Asia, with more than $15 billion in estimated work as of January 2005. While we issued two reports on LOGCAP since 1997 that made recommendations to improve the Army's management of the contract, broader issues on coordination of LOGCAP's contract functions were beyond the scope of our earlier work. This report assesses the extent to which the Army is taking action to improve the management and oversight of LOGCAP and whether further opportunities for using this contract effectively exist."

In-situ x-ray diffraction studies of iron under shock conditions confirm unambiguously a phase change from the bcc ({alpha}) to hcp ({var_epsilon}) structure. Previous identification of this transition in shock-loaded iron has been inferred from the correlation between shock wave-profile analyses and static high-pressure x-ray measurements. This correlation is intrinsically limited because dynamic loading can markedly affect the structural modifications of solids. The in-situ measurements are consistent with a uniaxial collapse along the [001] direction and shuffling of alternate (110) planes of atoms, and in good agreement with large-scale non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations.

Recital presented at the UNT College of Music Recital Hall in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) degree.

To qualify the performance of non-actinic inspection tools, a novel EUV mask inspection system has been installed at the Advanced Light Source (ALS) synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Similar to the older generation actinic mask inspection tool, the new system can operate in scanning mode, when mask blanks are scanned for defects using 13.5-nm in-band radiation to identify and map all locations on the mask that scatter a significant amount of EUV light. By modifying and optimizing beamline optics (11.3.2 at ALS) and replacing K-B focusing mirrors with a high quality Schwarzschild illuminator, the new system achieves an order of magnitude improvement on in-band EUV flux density at the mask, enabling faster scanning speed and higher sensitivity to smaller defects. Moreover, the system can also operate in imaging mode, when it becomes a zone-plate-based full-field EUV microscope with spatial resolution better than 100 nm. The microscope utilizes an off-axis setup, making it possible to obtain bright field images over a field-of-view of 5 x 5 {micro}m.

The effect of zirconia phase on the activity and selectivityof Cu/ZrO2 for the hydrogenation of CO has been investigated. Relativelypure t-ZrO2 and m-ZrO2 were prepared with high surface areas (~; 145m2/g). Copper was then deposited onto the surface of these materials byeither incipient-wetness impregnation or deposition-precipitation. For afixed Cu surface area, Cu/m-ZrO2 was tenfold more active for methanolsynthesis than Cu/t-ZrO2 from a feed of 3/1 H2/CO at 3.0 MPa andtemperatures between 473 and 523 K. Cu/m-ZrO2 also exhibited a higherselectivity to methanol. Increasing the Cu surface area on m-ZrO2resulted in further improvement in activity with minimal change inselectivity. Methanol productivity increased linearly for both Cu/t-ZrO2and Cu/m-ZrO2 with increasing Cu surface area. The difference in inherentactivity of each phase paralleled the stronger and larger CO adsorptioncapacity of the Cu/m-ZrO2 as quantified by CO-TPD. The higher COadsorption capacity of Cu/m-ZrO2 is attributed to the presence of a highconcentration of anionic vacancies on the surface of m-ZrO2. Suchvacancies expose cus-Zr4+ cations, which act as Lewis acid centers andenhance the Bronsted acidity of adjacent Zr-OH groups. The presence ofcus-Zr4+ sites and adjacent Bronsted acidic Zr-OH groups contributes tothe adsorption of CO as HCOO-Zr groups, which are the initial precursorsto methanol.

The Subcontract Statement of Work consists of two major tasks. This report is the Final Report in fulfillment of the contract deliverable for Task 1. The purpose of Task 1 was to evaluate existing and emerging protocols and standards for interfacing sensors and controllers for communicating with integrated lighting control systems in commercial buildings. The detailed task description follows: Task 1. Evaluate alternative sensor/field buses. The objective of this task is to evaluate existing and emerging standards for interfacing sensors and controllers for communicating with integrated lighting control systems in commercial buildings. The protocols to be evaluated will include at least: (1) 1-Wire Net, (2) DALI, (3) MODBUS (or appropriate substitute such as EIB) and (4) ZigBee. The evaluation will include a comparative matrix for comparing the technical performance features of the different alternative systems. The performance features to be considered include: (1) directionality and network speed, (2) error control, (3) latency times, (4) allowable cable voltage drop, (5) topology, and (6) polarization. Specifically, Subcontractor will: (1) Analyze the proposed network architecture and identify potential problems that may require further research and specification. (2) Help identify and specify additional software and hardware components that may be required for the communications …

Daily newspaper from Chickasha, Oklahoma that includes local, state, and national news along with advertising.