Letter opinion 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, Dan Morales, regarding a legal question submitted for clarification: Whether a police officer employed by the City of Houston may simultaneously serve as a paid city commissioner in the City of Galena Park (ID# 19167)

The positron decay partial half-lives of {sup 143}Pm and {sup 144}Pm are needed to assess the viability of elemental Pm as a cosmic-ray clock. We have conducted experiments to measure the {beta}{sup +} branches of these isotopes; we find {beta}{sup +} branches of these isotopes; we find {beta}{sup +} branches of <5.7 {times}10{sup {minus}8} for {sup 143}Pm and <8{times}10{sup {minus} 7} for {sup 144}Pm. Through these branches are a factor of 20 lower than the previous experimental limits, the resulting partial half-lives are still too uncertain to permit any firm conclusions.

The positron decay partial half-lives of [sup 143]Pm and [sup 144]Pm are needed to assess the viability of elemental Pm as a cosmic-ray clock. We have conducted experiments to measure the [beta][sup +] branches of these isotopes; we find [beta][sup +] branches of these isotopes; we find [beta][sup +] branches of <5.7 [times]10[sup [minus]8] for [sup 143]Pm and <8[times]10[sup [minus] 7] for [sup 144]Pm. Through these branches are a factor of 20 lower than the previous experimental limits, the resulting partial half-lives are still too uncertain to permit any firm conclusions.

This report briefly discusses progress on the following topics: isospin breaking in the pion-nucleon system; direct capture of pions into deeply bound atomic states; knock out of secondary components in the nucleus; study of the radii of neutron distributions in nuclei; the hadronic double scattering operator; transparency in pion production; asymmetry in pion scattering and charge exchange from polarized nuclei; the mechanism of pion absorption in nuclei; the neutron-proton charge-exchange reaction; modification of the fundamental structure of nucleons in nuclei; and antiproton annihilation in nuclei.