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 Information published in the Texas Register includes proposed, adopted, withdrawn and emergency rule actions, notices of state agency review of agency rules, governor's appointments, attorney general opinions, and miscellaneous documents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 is designed to introduce congressional staff to selected governmental and nongovernmental sources that are useful in tracking and obtaining information federal legislation and regulations. It includes governmental sources such as the Legislative Information System (LIS), THOMAS, the Government Printing Office's Federal Digital System (FDsys), and U.S. Senate and House websites. Nongovernmental or commercial sources include resources such as HeinOnline and the Congressional Quarterly (CQ) websites. It also highlights classes offered by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and the Library of Congress Law Library.

Report that surveys the various authorities governing immigration detainers, including the standard detainer form (Form I-247) sent by ICE to other law enforcement agencies. The report also discusses key legal issues raised by immigration detainers.

Report that describes the declaration process of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act and the types of declarations that can be made under the Stafford Act.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Several information security threats exist that can exploit vulnerabilities in active implantable medical devices, but experts caution that efforts to mitigate information security risks may adversely affect device performance. Threats to active devices—that is, devices that rely on a power source to operate—that also have wireless capability can be unintentional, such as interference from electromagnetic energy in the environment, or intentional, such as the unauthorized accessing of a device. Several experts consider certain threats to be of greater concern than others; for example, experts noted less concern about interference from electromagnetic energy than other threats. Incidents resulting from unintentional threats have occurred, such as a malfunction resulting from electromagnetic interference, but have since been addressed. Although researchers have recently demonstrated the potential for incidents resulting from intentional threats in two devices—an implantable cardioverter defibrillator and an insulin pump—no such actual incidents are known to have occurred, according to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Medical devices may have several such vulnerabilities that make them susceptible to unintentional and intentional threats, including untested software and firmware and limited battery life. Information security risks resulting from certain threats …

Agency strategic plan for the Texas Board of Architectural Examiners describing the organization's planned services, activities, and other goals during fiscal years 2013 through 2017.

Combined annual financial report of the entire University of Texas System for fiscal year 2012, including information about system-level administration and financial statements as well as reports from the institutions within the larger system.

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This report explains the five-month waiting period for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits and its legislative history. Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) is authorized by Title II of the Social Security Act and provides income replacement for eligible individuals who are unable to work due to a longterm injury or illness that is expected to last at least one year or result in death.

Grand Rapids, Michigan is striving to reduce it environmental footprint. The municipal government organization has established environmental sustainability policies with the goal of securing 100% of its energy from renewable sources by 2020. This report describes the process by which the City of Grand Rapids evaluated, selected and installed solar panels on the Water/Environmental Services Building. The solar panels are the first to be placed on a municipal building. Its new power monitoring system provides output data to assess energy efficiency and utilization. It is expected to generate enough clean solar energy to power 25 percent of the building. The benefit to the public includes the economic savings from reduced operational costs for the building; an improved environmentally sustainable area in which to live and work; and increased knowledge about the use of solar energy. It will serve as a model for future energy saving applications.

The efficiency comparison for measured and simulated responses of a 10B-lined proportional counter and a 3He proportional counter in a close, symmetrical geometry are presented. The measurement geometry was modeled in MCNPX to validate the methods used for simulating the response of both the 3He and 10B-lined tubes. The MCNPX models agree within 1% with the 3He tube measurements and within 3% for the 10B-lined tubes when a 0.75-µm boron-metal lining is used.

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Aquion Energy received a $5.179 million cooperative research agreement under the Department of Energy’s Smart Grid Demonstration Program – Demonstration of Promising Energy Storage Technologies (Program Area 2.5) of FOA DE-FOE-0000036. The main objective of this project was to demonstrate Aquion’s low cost, grid-scale, ambient temperature sodium ion energy storage device. The centerpiece of the technology is a novel hybrid energy storage chemistry that has been proven in a laboratory environment. The objective was to translate these groundbreaking results from the small-batch, small-cell test environment to the pilot scale to enable significant numbers of multiple ampere-hour cells to be manufactured and assembled into test batteries. Aquion developed a proof of concept demonstration unit that showed similar performance and major cost improvement over existing technologies. Beyond minimizing cell and system cost, Aquion built a technology that is safe, environmentally benign and durable over many thousands of cycles as used in a variety of grid support roles. As outlined in the Program documents, the original goals of the project were to demonstrate a unit that: 1. Has a projected capital cost of less than $250/kWh at the pack level 2. A deep discharge cycle life of > 10,000 cycles 3. A volumetric …

My 2.5-yr Master'™s project accomplished the objectives of estimating lesser prairie-chicken (LPC) lek density and abundance in the Texas occupied range and modeling anthropogenic and landscape features associated with lek density by flying helicopter lek surveys for 2 field seasons and employing a line-transect distance sampling method. This project was important for several reasons. Firstly, wildlife managers and biologists have traditionally monitored LPC populations with road-based surveys that may result in biased estimates and do not provide access to privately-owned or remote property. From my aerial surveys and distance sampling, I was able to provide accurate density and abundance estimates, as well as new leks and I detected LPCs outside the occupied range. Secondly, recent research has indicated that energy development has the potential to impact LPCs through avoidance of tall structures, increased mortality from raptors perching on transmission lines, disturbance to nesting hens, and habitat loss/fragmentation. Given the potential wind energy development in the Texas Panhandle, spatial models of current anthropogenic and vegetative features (such as transmission lines, roads, and percent native grassland) influencing lek density were needed. This information provided wildlife managers and wind energy developers in Texas with guidelines for how change in landscape features could impact …

Phase space manipulation is a process to rearrange beam's distribution in 6-D phase space. In this paper, we give an overview of the techniques for tailoring beam distribution in 2D, 4D, and 6D phase space to meet the requirements of various applications. These techniques become a new focus of accelerator physics R&D and very likely these advanced concepts will open up new opportunities in advanced accelerators and the science enabled by them.

The Graduate Automotive Technology Education (GATE) Program at The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) was established in October 1998 pursuant to an award from the U.S. Department of Energy (U.S. DOE). The focus area of the Penn State GATE Program is advanced energy storage systems for electric and hybrid vehicles.

The magnetorotational instability is a fluid instability that causes the onset of turbulence in discs with poloidal magnetic fields. It is believed to be an important mechanism in the physics of accretion discs, namely in its ability to transport angular momentum outward. A similar instability arising in systems with a helical magnetic field may be easier to produce in laboratory experiments using liquid sodium, but the applicability of this phenomenon to astrophysical discs is unclear. To explore and compare the properties of these standard and helical magnetorotational instabilities (MRI and HRMI, respectively), magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) capabilities were added to Dedalus, an open-source hydrodynamics simulator. Dedalus is a Python-based pseudospectral code that uses external libraries and parallelization with the goal of achieving speeds competitive with codes implemented in lower-level languages. This paper will outline the MHD equations as implemented in Dedalus, the steps taken to improve the performance of the code, and the status of MRI investigations using Dedalus.

Air Products set out to investigate the impact of additives on the deposition rate of both µCSi and αSi-H films. One criterion for additives was that they could be used in conventional PECVD processing, which would require sufficient vapor pressure to deliver material to the process chamber at the required flow rates. The flow rate required would depend on the size of the substrate onto which silicon films were being deposited, potentially ranging from 200 mm diameter wafers to the 5.7 m2 glass substrates used in GEN 8.5 flat-panel display tools. In choosing higher-order silanes, both disilane and trisilane had sufficient vapor pressure to withdraw gas at the required flow rates of up to 120 sccm. This report presents results obtained from testing at Air Products’ electronic technology laboratories, located in Allentown, PA, which focused on developing processes on a commercial IC reactor using silane and mixtures of silane plus additives. These processes were deployed to compare deposition rates and film properties with and without additives, with a goal of maximizing the deposition rate while maintaining or improving film properties.

This project dealt with the development of a range of educational resources dealing with wind energy and wind energy integration in the electric grid. These resources were developed for a variety of audiences including; a) high school student, b) undergraduate electrical engineering students, c) graduate electrical engineering students, and d) practicing engineers in industry. All the developed material is available publicly and the courses developed are being taught at the two participating universities, Arizona State University and Iowa State University.

Closeout report on Advanced Accelerator Physics program at UCLA Physics & Astronomy

Since 1980, under the grant DEFG02-96ER40949, the Department of Energy has supported the educational and research work of the University of Maryland Dynamical Systems and Accelerator Theory (DSAT) Group. The primary focus of this educational/research group has been on the computation and analysis of charged-particle beam transport using Lie algebraic methods, and on advanced methods for the computation of electromagnetic fields and multiparticle phenomena. This Final Report summarizes the accomplishments of the DSAT Group from its inception in 1980 through its end in 2011.

This report provides some preliminary data for the consolidation of chalcogen-based aerogels. The chalcogels tested to date at PNNL show great promise as iodine sorbents and preliminary consolidation research shows that they can be melted into a phase-pure glass at moderate temperatures. The preliminary consolidation experiments show that these materials might attack fused quartz so an alternative crucible material will likely need to be used to prevent this. The next steps will be to • Consider melting other chalcogel chemistries, e.g., Sn-Sb-S, Ge-Sn-S chalcogels • Consider melting chalcogels with adsorbed iodine to monitor iodine loss during melting • Optimize the consolidation temperatures to minimize the iodine loss and volatilization