A weekly publication, the Texas Register serves as the journal of state agency rulemaking for Texas. Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents such as requests for proposals. After adoption, these rulemaking actions are codified into the Texas Administrative Code.

This report discusses many federal laws and regulations regarding fish and marine mammals that are important resources in open ocean and nearshore coastal areas. These lows and regulations guide their management as well as the management of their habitat.

This report discusses oversight issues and legislation introduced in the 111th Congress to address specific concerns related to how The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is implemented and how endangered and threatened species are managed.

This report discusses the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) Amendments of 1996, which authorized a drinking water state revolving loan fund (DWSRF) program. The program was intended to help public water systems finance infrastructure projects that were needed to comply with federal drinking water regulations and to meet the Act's health objectives. It includes an overview of funding, allotments and set-asides, drinking water infrastructure needs, program issues, and legislative activity.

Daily publication of the U.S. Office of the Federal Register contains rules and regulations, proposed legislation and rule changes, and other notices, including "Presidential proclamations and Executive Orders, Federal agency documents having general applicability and legal effect, documents required to be published by act of Congress, and other Federal agency documents of public interest" (p. ii). Table of Contents starts on page iii.

Correspondence issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "In November 2005, the President issued an executive order establishing the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Gulf Coast Rebuilding (OFC) with the broad mission of supporting recovery efforts following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Given their vast size and impact, these storms presented unprecedented rebuilding challenges to federal, state, and local officials which, combined with concerns about the lack of coordination in government's initial response to the disaster, precipitated the creation of the Office of the Federal Coordinator. To assist in Congress' ongoing oversight responsibilities of the recovery of the Gulf Coast, Congress asked us to: (1) describe the functions the Coordinator has performed, (2) obtain stakeholder perspectives regarding the office's operation, and (3) provide observations on issues to be considered for moving forward. We provided Congressional staff with summaries of our findings this past February to answer these questions as well as our observations, including extending the term of OFC. We have since updated some of the information in our briefing, using information that has subsequently become available including the President's decision to extend the operations of OFC through September 30, 2009."

This report presents a list of authoritative resources designed to assist in responding to a broad range of questions and concerns about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), P.L. 111-5. Links to the full text of the act, Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates, White House fact sheets, and federal, state, and municipal government websites are included, along with other useful information.

This report to describe the statutory provisions that authorize the National Intelligence Council (NIC), provide a brief history of its work, and review its role within the federal government. The report will focus on congressional interaction with the NIC and describe various options for modifying congressional oversight.

This report discusses congressional concerns about a projected inventory shortfall in Navy and Marine Corps strike-fighters. Some industry sources believe the shortfall is likely to be much larger than the Navy currently projects. Options for addressing the shortfall include extending strike-fighter service lives and increasing planned procurement of strike-fighters.

This report explores the reasoning behind the development of the new cruiser called the CG(X), the budgetary actions taking place to enable their development, selected technical specifics of their design, and various other information relating to defense procurement costs.

This report provides an examination of constitutional requirements and historical precedents associated with contingent election. It also identifies and evaluates contemporary issues that might emerge in the modern context.

The objectives are: (1) Estimate number and distribution of spring Chinook salmon Oncorhynchus tshawytscha redds and spawners in the John Day River subbasin; and (2) Estimate smolt-to-adult survival rates (SAR) and out-migrant abundance for spring Chinook and summer steelhead O. mykiss and life history characteristics of summer steelhead. The John Day River subbasin supports one of the last remaining intact wild populations of spring Chinook salmon and summer steelhead in the Columbia River Basin. These populations, however, remain depressed relative to historic levels. Between the completion of the life history and natural escapement study in 1984 and the start of this project in 1998, spring Chinook spawning surveys did not provide adequate information to assess age structure, progeny-to-parent production values, smolt-to-adult survival (SAR), or natural spawning escapement. Further, only very limited information is available for steelhead life history, escapement, and productivity measures in the John Day subbasin. Numerous habitat protection and rehabilitation projects to improve salmonid freshwater production and survival have also been implemented in the basin and are in need of effectiveness monitoring. While our monitoring efforts outlined here will not specifically measure the effectiveness of any particular project, they will provide much needed background information for developing context …

None

The authors report the chemical influence of cleaning of the Ru capping layer on the extreme ultraviolet (EUV) reflector surface. The cleaning of EUV reflector to remove the contamination particles has two requirements: to prevent corrosion and etching of the reflector surface and to maintain the reflectivity functionality of the reflector after the corrosive cleaning processes. Two main approaches for EUV reflector cleaning, wet chemical treatments [sulfuric acid and hydrogen peroxide mixture (SPM), ozonated water, and ozonated hydrogen peroxide] and dry cleaning (oxygen plasma and UV/ozone treatment), were tested. The changes in surface morphology and roughness were characterized using scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy, while the surface etching and change of oxidation states were probed with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Significant surface oxidation of the Ru capping layer was observed after oxygen plasma and UV/ozone treatment, while the oxidation is unnoticeable after SPM treatment. Based on these surface studies, the authors found that SPM treatment exhibits the minimal corrosive interactions with Ru capping layer. They address the molecular mechanism of corrosive gas and liquid-phase chemical interaction with the surface of Ru capping layer on the EUV reflector.

This project was an integrated experimental/numerical effort to study pyrolysis and oxidation reactions and mechanisms for small-molecule hydrocarbon structures under conditions representative of combustion environments. The experimental aspects of the work were conducted in large-diameter flow reactors, at 0.3 to 18 atm pressure, 500 to 1100 K temperature, and 10<SUP>-2</SUP> to 2 seconds reaction time. Experiments were also conducted to determine reference laminar flame speeds using a premixed laminar stagnation flame experiment and particle image velocimetry, as well as pressurized bomb experiments. Flow reactor data for oxidation experiments include: (1)adiabatic/isothermal species time-histories of a reaction under fixed initial pressure, temperature, and composition; to determine the species present after a fixed reaction time, initial pressure; (2)species distributions with varying initial reaction temperature; (3)perturbations of a well-defined reaction systems (e.g. CO/H<SUB>2</SUB>/O<SUB>2</SUB> or H<SUB>2</SUB>/O<SUB>2</SUB>)by the addition of small amounts of an additive species. Radical scavenging techniques are applied to determine unimolecular decomposition rates from pyrolysis experiments. Laminar flame speed measurements are determined as a function of equivalence ratio, dilution, and unburned gas temperature at 1 atm pressure. Hierarchical, comprehensive mechanistic construction methods were applied to develop detailed kinetic mechanisms which describe the measurements and literature kinetic data. Modeling using well-defined and validated mechanisms …

This is the ninth annual report for a multi-year project designed to monitor and evaluate supplementation of endemic spring Chinook salmon in Catherine Creek and the upper Grande Ronde River. These two streams historically supported anadromous fish populations that provided significant tribal and non-tribal fisheries, but in recent years, have experienced severe declines in abundance. Conventional and captive broodstock supplementation methods are being used to restore these spring Chinook salmon populations. Spring Chinook salmon populations in Catherine Creek and the upper Grande Ronde River, and other streams in the Snake River Basin have experienced severe declines in abundance over the past two decades (Nehlsen et al. 1991). A supplementation program was initiated in Catherine Creek and the upper Grande Ronde River, incorporating the use of both captive and conventional broodstock methods, in order to prevent extinction in the short term and eventually rebuild populations. The captive broodstock component of the program (BPA Project 199801001) uses natural-origin parr collected by seining and reared to maturity at facilities near Seattle, Washington (Manchester Marine Laboratory) and Hood River, Oregon (Bonneville Hatchery). Spawning occurs at Bonneville Hatchery, and resulting progeny are reared in hatcheries. Shortly before outmigration in the spring, juveniles are transferred to …

I discuss a number of novel phenomenological features of QCD in high transverse momentum reactions. The presence of direct higher-twist processes, where a proton is produced directly in the hard subprocess, can explain the 'baryon anomaly' - the large proton-to-pion ratio seen at RHIC in high centrality heavy ion collisions. Direct hadronic processes can also account for the deviation from leading-twist PQCD scaling at fixed x{sub T} = 2 p{sub T}/{radical}s. I suggest that the 'ridge' --the same-side long-range rapidity correlation observed at RHIC in high centrality heavy ion collisions is due to the imprint of semihard DGLAP gluon radiation from initial-state partons which have transverse momenta biased toward the trigger. A model for early thermalization of the quark-gluon medium is also outlined. Rescattering interactions from gluon-exchange, normally neglected in the parton model, have a profound effect in QCD hard-scattering reactions, leading to leading-twist single-spin asymmetries, diffractive deep inelastic scattering, diffractive hard hadronic reactions, the breakdown of the Lam-Tung relation in Drell-Yan reactions, nuclear shadowing--all leading-twist dynamics not incorporated in the light-front wavefunctions of the target computed in isolation. Anti shadowing is shown to be quark flavor specific and thus different in charged and neutral deep inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering. I …

The importance of Arctic mixed-phase clouds on radiation and the Arctic climate is well known. However, the development of mixed-phase cloud parameterization for use in large scale models is limited by lack of both related observations and numerical studies using multidimensional models with advanced microphysics that provide the basis for understanding the relative importance of different microphysical processes that take place in mixed-phase clouds. To improve the representation of mixed-phase cloud processes in the GISS GCM we use the GISS single-column model coupled to a bin resolved microphysics (BRM) scheme that was specially designed to simulate mixed-phase clouds and aerosol-cloud interactions. Using this model with the microphysical measurements obtained from the DOE ARM Mixed-Phase Arctic Cloud Experiment (MPACE) campaign in October 2004 at the North Slope of Alaska, we investigate the effect of ice initiation processes and Bergeron-Findeisen process (BFP) on glaciation time and longevity of single-layer stratiform mixed-phase clouds. We focus on observations taken during October 9th-10th, which indicated the presence of a single-layer mixed-phase clouds. We performed several sets of 12-hour simulations to examine model sensitivity to different ice initiation mechanisms and evaluate model output (hydrometeors concentrations, contents, effective radii, precipitation fluxes, and radar reflectivity) against measurements from …

We present an auto-tuning approach to optimize application performance on emerging multicore architectures. The methodology extends the idea of search-based performance optimizations, popular in linear algebra and FFT libraries, to application-specific computational kernels. Our work applies this strategy to a lattice Boltzmann application (LBMHD) that historically has made poor use of scalar microprocessors due to its complex data structures and memory access patterns. We explore one of the broadest sets of multicore architectures in the HPC literature, including the Intel Xeon E5345 (Clovertown), AMD Opteron 2214 (Santa Rosa), AMD Opteron 2356 (Barcelona), Sun T5140 T2+ (Victoria Falls), as well as a QS20 IBM Cell Blade. Rather than hand-tuning LBMHD for each system, we develop a code generator that allows us to identify a highly optimized version for each platform, while amortizing the human programming effort. Results show that our auto-tuned LBMHD application achieves up to a 15x improvement compared with the original code at a given concurrency. Additionally, we present detailed analysis of each optimization, which reveal surprising hardware bottlenecks and software challenges for future multicore systems and applications.

EM-21 is the Waste Processing Division of the Office of Engineering and Technology, within the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Environmental Management (EM). In August of 2008, EM-21 began an initiative to develop a Retrieval Knowledge Center (RKC) to provide the DOE, high level waste retrieval operators, and technology developers with centralized and focused location to share knowledge and expertise that will be used to address retrieval challenges across the DOE complex. The RKC is also designed to facilitate information sharing across the DOE Waste Site Complex through workshops, and a searchable database of waste retrieval technology information. The database may be used to research effective technology approaches for specific retrieval tasks and to take advantage of the lessons learned from previous operations. It is also expected to be effective for remaining current with state-of-the-art of retrieval technologies and ongoing development within the DOE Complex. To encourage collaboration of DOE sites with waste retrieval issues, the RKC team is co-led by the Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Two RKC workshops were held in the Fall of 2008. The purpose of these workshops was to define top level waste retrieval functional areas, …

Core activities of the Grande Ronde Endemic Spring Chinook Supplementation Program (GRESCSP) are funded through the authority of the Lower Snake River Fish and Wildlife Compensation Plan (LSRCP). The LSRCP program was approved by the Water Resources Development Act of 1976, PL 94-587, Section 102, 94th Congress substantially in accordance with the Special Report, LSRCP, June 1975 on file with the Chief of Engineers. The LSRCP was prepared and submitted in compliance with the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1958, PL 85-624, 85th Congress, August 12, 1958 to mitigate for the losses of fish and wildlife caused by the construction of dams on lower Snake River. The GRESCSP is an artificial propagation program that was initiated by Bonneville Power Administrations Fish and Wildlife program in the mid 1990's. The intent of this program was to change the mitigation aspect of the LSRCP program (harvest mitigation) to an integrated supplementation program; inasmuch as, hatchery produced fish could be experimentally used as a recovery tool and fish surplus to mitigation would be available for in-place and in-kind harvest. Fish production is still authorized by the LSRCP with the original mitigation return goal of 5,860 adult spring Chinook to the project area. …

Average particle number concentrations and size distributions from {approx}61,000 light-duty (LD) vehicles and {approx}2500 medium-duty (MD) and heavy-duty (HD) trucks were measured during the summer of 2006 in a San Francisco Bay area traffic tunnel. One of the traffic bores contained only LD vehicles, and the other contained mixed traffic, allowing pollutants to be apportioned between LD vehicles and diesel trucks. Particle number emission factors (particle diameter D{sub p} &gt; 3 nm) were found to be (3.9 {+-} 1.4) x 10{sup 14} and (3.3 {+-} 1.3) x 10{sup 15} kg{sup -1} fuel burned for LD vehicles and diesel trucks, respectively. Size distribution measurements showed that diesel trucks emitted at least an order of magnitude more particles for all measured sizes (10 &lt; D{sub p} &lt; 290 nm) per unit mass of fuel burned. The relative importance of LD vehicles as a source of particles increased as D{sub p} decreased. Comparing the results from this study to previous measurements at the same site showed that particle number emission factors have decreased for both LD vehicles and diesel trucks since 1997. Integrating size distributions with a volume weighting showed that diesel trucks emitted 28 {+-} 11 times more particles by volume than …

We discuss the design and implementation of CAD tools for creating decorative solids that tile 3-space in a regular, isohedral manner. Starting with the simplest case of extruded 2D tilings, we describe geometric algorithms used for maintaining boundary representations of 3D tiles, including a Java implementation of an interactive constrained Delaunay triangulation library and a mesh-cutting algorithm used in layering extruded tiles to create more intricate designs. Finally, we demonstrate a CAD tool for creating 3D tilings that are derived from cubic lattices. The design process for these 3D tiles is more constrained, and hence more difficult, than in the 2D case, and it raises additional user interface issues.

Synthetic supramolecular host assemblies can impart unique reactivity to encapsulated guest molecules. Synthetic host molecules have been developed to carry out complex reactions within their cavities, despite the fact that they lack the type of specifically tailored functional groups normally located in the analogous active sites of enzymes. Over the past decade, the Raymond group has developed a series of self-assembled supramolecules and the Bergman group has developed and studied a number of catalytic transformations. In this Account, we detail recent collaborative work between these two groups, focusing on chemical catalysis stemming from the encapsulation of protonated guests and expanding to acid catalysis in basic solution. We initially investigated the ability of a water-soluble, self-assembled supramolecular host molecule to encapsulate protonated guests in its hydrophobic core. Our study of encapsulated protonated amines revealed rich host-guest chemistry. We established that self-exchange (that is, in-out guest movement) rates of protonated amines were dependent on the steric bulk of the amine rather than its basicity. The host molecule has purely rotational tetrahedral (T) symmetry, so guests with geminal N-methyl groups (and their attendant mirror plane) were effectively desymmetrized; this allowed for the observation and quantification of the barriers for nitrogen inversion followed by …