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164
Texas Patents
56
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44
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24
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534 Matching Results
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Illicit Tobacco: Various Schemes Are Used to Evade Taxes and Fees
A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Federal and state governments have raised excise taxes on tobacco products to discourage tobacco use and increase revenues. Cross-border and illicit trade in tobacco products can undermine these policy objectives by avoiding excise taxes and increasing the availability of these products to consumers at lower cost. On June 22, 2009, Congress passed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (Pub. L. No. 111-31), which directed GAO to report on cross-border and illicit trade in tobacco products. Crossborder trade is defined in the Act as trade across a U.S. border, state, territory, or Indian country. Illicit trade is defined in the Act as any practice or conduct prohibited by law which relates to or facilitates the production, shipment, receipt, possession, distribution, sale, or purchase of tobacco products. This report is the first of two GAO products that will respond to this mandate. This report examines (1) incentives that are important for understanding cross-border and illicit trade in tobacco products; and (2) different schemes used to generate profits from cross-border and illicit trade in tobacco products. GAO interviewed government officials, industry representatives, and other subject matter experts. …
Date:
March 7, 2011
Creator:
United States. Government Accountability Office.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Financing the U.S. Trade Deficit
The U.S. merchandise trade deficit is a part of the overall U.S. balance of payments, a summary statement of all economic transactions between the residents of the United States and the rest of the world, during a given period of time. Some Members of Congress and other observers have grown concerned over the magnitude of the U.S. merchandise trade deficit and the associated increase in U.S. dollar-denominated assets owned by foreigners. This report provides an overview of the U.S. balance of payments, an explanation of the broader role of capital flows in the U.S. economy, an explanation of how the country finances its trade deficit or a trade surplus, and the implications for Congress and the country of the large inflows of capital from abroad.
Date:
March 7, 2011
Creator:
Jackson, James K.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
International Criminal Court Cases in Africa: Status and Policy Issues
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has, to date, opened cases exclusively in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Statute of the ICC, also known as the Rome Statute, entered into force on July 1, 2002, and established a permanent, independent Court to investigate and bring to justice individuals who commit war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. As of October 2010, 114 countries-including 31 African countries, the largest regional block-were parties to the Statute. The United States is not a party. This report provides background on current ICC cases and examines issues raised by the ICC's actions in Africa.
Date:
March 7, 2011
Creator:
Arieff, Alexis; Margesson, Rhoda; Browne, Marjorie Ann & Weed, Matthew C.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Debt Limit: History and Recent Increases
This report discusses how the total debt of the federal government can increase, an historical overview of debt limits, and how the current economic slowdown has led to higher deficits and thereby a series of debt limit increases, as well as legislation related to these increases.
Date:
March 7, 2011
Creator:
Austin, D. Andrew & Levit, Mindy R.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) Status for Russia and U.S.-Russian Economic Ties
Granting Russia permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status requires a change in law because Russia is prohibited from receiving unconditional and permanent NTR under Title IV of the Trade Act of 1974. This provision includes the so-called Jackson-Vanik amendment. Extension of PNTR has implications for Russia's accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO). This report examines this legislative issue in the context of Russian accession to the WTO and U.S.-Russian economic ties.
Date:
March 7, 2011
Creator:
Cooper, William H.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation: Background and Analysis
This report discusses commercial ties between the United States and the 27-member European Union. These ties are substantial, growing, and mutually beneficial, but differences in regulatory approaches limit an even more integrated marketplace from developing. This report is intended to serve as an introduction and primer on this complicated, broad, and often highly technical set of issues.
Date:
March 7, 2011
Creator:
Ahearn, Raymond J.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Multilateral Development Banks: Overview and Issues for Congress
Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) are international institutions that provide financial assistance, typically in the form of loans and grants, to developing countries in order to promote economic and social development. This report provides an overview of the MDBs and highlights major current issues for Congress. The first section discusses the history of the MDBs, their operations, major donor contributions, and their organization. The second section discusses issues of particular interest to Congress, including the effectiveness of the MDBs; congressional legislation authorizing and appropriating U.S. contributions to the MDBs; congressional oversight of the MDBs; and U.S. commercial interests in the MDBs.
Date:
March 7, 2011
Creator:
Nelson, Rebecca M.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
The Endangered Species Act and Private Property
If the 103rd Congress embarks upon an effort to reauthorize the Endangered Species Act (ESA), it will run into an old acquaintance: the property rights issue. As now written, the ESA has at least the potential to curtail property rights (whatever its actual impact as implemented may be). This report explores the legal repercussions of those impacts, especially whether they constitute takings of property under the fifth amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Date:
March 7, 1993
Creator:
Meltz, Robert
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Market-Based Environmental Management: Issues in Implementation
Increasingly, efforts to protect integral features of the natural environment that are essential to human well being face a double challenge. First, the magnitude of some conventional and emerging threats to environmental quality is growing, despite solid progress in controlling some causes. This is particularly the concern on a global scale in terms of atmospheric changes and loss of biological diversity. Second, easily-implemented uniform control methods using feasible technologies or other direct regulatory approaches are already in place for many pollution and resource management problems in the United States. Additional progress with so-called command and control policies can be expensive and disruptive, and thus counter productive to overall economic well being. This type of dilemma is common where environmental deterioration results from diffuse and complex causes inherent in technically-advanced high-consumption industrial societies such as the U.S. Solutions to these types of environmental problems are complicated by the diffuse benefits which obscures the net gains of additional controls that have concentrated and highly visible costs. Given this double bind, many policy analysts and academics have for years advocated more cost-effective and flexible approaches relying on market forces to further some environmental management objectives. Although market-based theory and practical environmental policy are …
Date:
March 7, 1994
Creator:
Moore, John L.; Blodgett, John E.; Copeland, Claudia; Gushee, David E.; Mayer, Susan L.; McCarthy, James E. et al.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
B, D and K Decays
The present report documents the results of Working Group 2: B, D and K decays, of the workshop on Flavor in the Era of the LHC, held at CERN from November 2005 through March 2007. With the advent of the LHC, we will be able to probe New Physics (NP) up to energy scales almost one order of magnitude larger than it has been possible with present accelerator facilities. While direct detection of new particles will be the main avenue to establish the presence of NP at the LHC, indirect searches will provide precious complementary information, since most probably it will not be possible to measure the full spectrum of new particles and their couplings through direct production. In particular, precision measurements and computations in the realm of flavor physics are expected to play a key role in constraining the unknown parameters of the Lagrangian of any NP model emerging from direct searches at the LHC. The aim of Working Group 2 was twofold: on one hand, to provide a coherent, up-to-date picture of the status of flavor physics before the start of the LHC; on the other hand, to initiate activities on the path towards integrating information on NP …
Date:
March 7, 2008
Creator:
Artuso, M.; Asner, D. M.; Ball, P.; Baracchini, E.; Bell, G.; Beneke, M. et al.
Object Type:
Article
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Structures in Molecular Clouds: Modeling
None
Date:
March 7, 2006
Creator:
Kane, J. O.; Ryutov, D. D.; Remington, B. A.; Pound, M. & Mizuta, A.
Object Type:
Article
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Development and Implementation of an Ergonomics Program for Research Laboratories
None
Date:
March 7, 2006
Creator:
Roberts, T.; Yu, E. & Herbert, R.
Object Type:
Article
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Possible Rhic Upgrades With Superbunches.
None
Date:
March 7, 2006
Creator:
Fischer, W.; Blaskiewicz, M. & Wei, J.
Object Type:
Article
System:
The UNT Digital Library
On the Use of Rossi Alpha Critical Assembly Measurements for Validating and Constraining Nuclear Data
Critical assemblies are exquisitely sensitive to details of the microscopic nuclear reactions that govern neutron multiplication. For this reason experimental studies of critical assemblies represent a cornerstone in the process of validating nuclear data. Several different characteristics of a critical system can be measured. The most commonly considered is the so-called effective k eigenvalue, k{sub eff}. Another well-measured property of these systems is {alpha}{sub 0}, the inverse e-folding time of the neutron population in the absence of {beta}-delayed neutrons. Through Monte Carlo calculations and appear to perturbation theory they show that for fast critical systems {alpha}{sub 0} and k{sub eff} can be viewed as lying on a single straight line for any reasonable assumptions about the underlying nuclear data. This means that the two quantities provide the same constraint on nuclear data. In principle, {alpha}{sub 0} could be associated with a very small uncertainty, and this would make the measurements for neutron multiplication rates more useful than k{sub eff} for constraining nuclear data. In practice, though, uncertainties in k{sub eff} and {alpha}{sub 0} are dominated by uncertainties in the representation of the critical system, and not by pure measurement errors for these quantities. This, together with the linear relation between …
Date:
March 7, 2007
Creator:
Pruet, J & Sleaford, B
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
EOSN: A TOUGH2 module for noble gases
We developed a new fluid property module for TOUGH2, called EOSN, to simulate transport of noble gases in the subsurface. Currently, users may select any of five different noble gases as well as CO2, two at a time. For the three gas components (air and two user-specified noble gases) in EOSN, the Henry's coefficients and the diffusivities in the gas phase are no longer assumed constants, but are temperature dependent. We used the Crovetto et al. (1982) model to estimate Henry's coefficients, and the Reid et al. (1987) correlations to calculate gas phase diffusivities. The new module requires users to provide names of the selected noble gases, which properties are provided internally. There are options for users to specify any (non-zero) molecular weights and half-lives for the gas components. We provide two examples to show applications of TOUGH2IEOSN. While temperature effects are relatively insignificant for one example problem where advection is dominant, they cause almost an order of magnitude difference for the other case where diffusion becomes a dominant process and temperature variations are relatively large. It appears that thermodynamic effects on gas diffusivities and Henry's coefficients can be important for low-permeability porous media and zones with large temperature variations.
Date:
March 7, 2003
Creator:
Shan, Chao & Pruess, Karsten
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Applications of Lagrangian Dispersion Modeling to the Analysis of Changes in the Specific Absorption of Elemental Carbon
We use a Lagrangian dispersion model driven by a mesoscale model with four-dimensional data assimilation to simulate the dispersion of elemental carbon (EC) over a region encompassing Mexico City and its surroundings, the study domain for the 2006 MAX-MEX experiment, which was a component of the MILAGRO campaign. The results are used to identify periods when biomass burning was likely to have had a significant impact on the concentrations of elemental carbon at two sites, T1 and T2, downwind of the city, and when emissions from the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) were likely to have been more important. They are also used to estimate the median ages of EC affecting the specific absorption of light, aABS, at 870 nm as well as to identify periods when the urban plume from the MCMA was likely to have been advected over T1 and T2. Values of aABS at T1, the nearer of the two sites to Mexico City, were smaller at night and increased rapidly after mid-morning, peaking in the mid-afternoon. The behavior is attributed to the coating of aerosols with substances such as sulfate or organic carbon during daylight hours, but such coating appears to be limited or absent at …
Date:
March 7, 2008
Creator:
Doran, J. C.; Fast, Jerome D.; Barnard, James C.; Laskin, Alexander; Desyaterik, Yury; Gilles, Marry K. et al.
Object Type:
Article
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Shared Technology Transfer Program
The program established a collaborative process with domestic industries for the purpose of sharing Navy-developed technology. Private sector businesses were educated so as to increase their awareness of the vast amount of technologies that are available, with an initial focus on technology applications that are related to the Hydrogen, Fuel Cells and Infrastructure Technologies (Hydrogen) Program of the U.S. Department of Energy. Specifically, the project worked to increase industry awareness of the vast technology resources available to them that have been developed with taxpayer funding. NAVSEA-Carderock and the Houston Advanced Research Center teamed with Nicholls State University to catalog NAVSEA-Carderock unclassified technologies, rated the level of readiness of the technologies and established a web based catalog of the technologies. In particular, the catalog contains technology descriptions, including testing summaries and overviews of related presentations.
Date:
March 7, 2008
Creator:
Griffin, John M. & Haut, Richard C.
Object Type:
Report
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Collider Aspects of Flavour Physics at High Q
This chapter of the report of the 'Flavour in the era of LHC' workshop discusses flavor related issues in the production and decays of heavy states at LHC, both from the experimental side and from the theoretical side. We review top quark physics and discuss flavor aspects of several extensions of the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry, little Higgs model or models with extra dimensions. This includes discovery aspects as well as measurement of several properties of these heavy states. We also present public available computational tools related to this topic.
Date:
March 7, 2008
Creator:
del Aguila, F.; Aguilar-Saavedra, J. A.; Allanach, B. C.; Alwall, J.; Andreev, Yu.; Aristizabal Sierra, D. et al.
Object Type:
Article
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Using Higher Order Modes in Superconducting Accelerating Cavities for Beam Monitoring
Dipole modes have been shown to be successful diagnostics for the beam position in superconducting accelerating cavities at the Free Electron Laser in Hamburg (FLASH) facility at DESY. By help of downmixing electronics the signals from the two higher order mode (HOM) couplers mounted on each cavity are monitored. The calibration, based on singular value decomposition, is more complicated than in standard position monitors. Position like signals based on this calibration are currently being in the process of being included in the control system. A second setup based on digitizing the spectrum from the HOM couplers has been used for monitoring monopole modes. The beam phase with respect to the RF has been thus monitored. The position calibration measurements and phase monitoring made at the FLASH are presented.
Date:
March 7, 2008
Creator:
Molloy, S.; Baboi, N.; Eddy, N.; Frisch, J.; Hendrickson, L.; Hensler, O. et al.
Object Type:
Article
System:
The UNT Digital Library
Adjustable Light Shade and Reflector.
Patent for a new adjustable light shade and reflector with "a shade and a support therefor so provided with joints that the shade may be given any desired angle of reflection, relative to the light, and its relative distance from the light may be regulated" (lines 13-17), which includes illustrations and instructions.
Date:
March 7, 1911
Creator:
Spivey, Lillian Hale
Object Type:
Patent
System:
The Portal to Texas History
Chimney Holder
Patent for chimney holder. This design is a "means for holding a chimney upon a burner of any kind for the purpose of preventing the accidental tilting of the chimney" (lines 11-13). Illustrations included.
Date:
March 7, 1911
Creator:
Elkins, Thomas M.
Object Type:
Patent
System:
The Portal to Texas History
Attachment for Diaphragm Face Plates
Patent for an attachment for diaphragm face plates. Illustration included.
Date:
March 7, 1911
Creator:
Labadie, Victor
Object Type:
Patent
System:
The Portal to Texas History
Carrier for Game
Patent for new and improved carrier for game. "The purpose of the invention is to provide a very light, simple, durable, economic, and effective device for carrying game adapted to be worn across the shoulder and which is held in place simply by the weight of the load". (lines 8-13). Includes description, instructions, and illustrations.
Date:
March 7, 1906
Creator:
Paul, James Mount
Object Type:
Patent
System:
The Portal to Texas History
Car Steps
Patent for rail car steps. Illustrations included.
Date:
March 7, 1911
Creator:
Collier, James Dallas
Object Type:
Patent
System:
The Portal to Texas History