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The article presents information on the fourth International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology held in Houston, Texas, on July 28-31, 2008. The conference was chaired by Dr. George A. Sorial, professor at University of Cincinnati. The objective of the conference is to provide a major interdisciplinary forum for presenting new approaches from relevant areas of environmental science and engineering.

This paper describes a human-centered design approach to investigate unmet adolescent sexual health wants and needs among youth of color in low-income and rural communities in Texas, North Carolina, and Connecticut (n = 149). The approach involved gathering qualitative data through in-depth interviews and other human-centered design activities between April 2016 and August 2016. Data were analyzed using thematic content analysis after each round of data collection. Themes were triangulated across multiple data sources to identify key insights. Results highlighted several important unmet wants and needs. Participants shared that schools were not the preferred place to learn about sexual health and healthy relationships, due to uncomfortable and sometimes even hostile environments. When discussing the potential to use internet- and technology-based sexual health resources, participants expressed concerns over privacy, safety, and credibility of information available. Similarly, participants preferred mobile apps over websites due to the privacy of the experience. Most importantly, key emotions impacting adolescents' access to and use of sexual health resources were identified. Results indicated a preference for consuming story-based information in a text message format that described diverse experiences related to sexual health topics. Together, these findings led to the development of an innovative, mobile health intervention for adolescents, the Real Talk mobile app. This human-centered approach can support researchers and practitioners in strengthening intervention development efforts to improve the reach, adoption, and implementation of sexual health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a concerted effort to build intelligent sea and numerous artificial intelligence technologies have been explored. At present, more and more people are engaged in the research of deep reinforcement learning algorithm, and its mainstream application is in the field of games. Reinforcement learning has conquered chess belonging to complete information game, and Texas poker belonging to incomplete information games. And it reached or even surpassed the highest player level of mankind in E-sports games with huge state space and complex action space. However, reinforcement learning algorithm still has great challenges in fields such as automatic driving. The main reason is that the training of reinforcement learning needs to build an environment for interacting with agents. However, it is very difficult to construct realistic simulation scenes, and there is no guarantee that we will not encounter the state that the agent has not seen. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the simulation scene first. Based on this, this paper mainly studies reinforcement learning in simulation scenario. There are huge challenges in migrating them to real scenario applications, especially in sea missions. Aiming at the heterogeneous multi-agent game confrontation scenario, this paper proposes a sea battlefield game confrontation decision algorithm based on multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient. The algorithm combines long short-term memory and actor-critic, which not only realizes the convergence of the algorithm in huge state space and action space, but also solves the problem of sparse real rewards. At the same time, imitation learning is integrated into the decision algorithm, which not only improves the convergence speed of the algorithm, but also greatly improves the effectiveness of the algorithm. The results show that the algorithm can deal with a variety of different tactical sea battlefield scenarios, make flexible decisions according to the changes of the enemy, and the average winning rate is close to 90%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we estimate a series of stochastic frontier cost functions for elementary schools, using a short panel of Texas data that allows us to account for student characteristics, input prices, environmental factors and student outcomes. Texas currently uses information about the share of students participating into the Free and Reduced Price Lunch (FRL) program to determine compensatory funding to provide to schools. The FRL measure has been criticized as a relatively poor measure of need. We consider a new, recently developed, measure of poverty, the Spatially Interpolated Demographic and Economic (SIDE) measure, as a possible complement or alternative to the FRL measure. SIDE uses the income of the neighborhood in which the school resides as the basis to assess need and poverty. We find that using both poverty metrics highlights the additional costs associated with serving high poverty populations in high poverty locations, i.e., neighborhood locations matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2 virus) pandemic has led to a substantial loss of human life worldwide by providing an unparalleled challenge to the public health system. The economic, psychological, and social disarray generated by the COVID-19 pandemic is devastating. Public health experts and epidemiologists worldwide are struggling to formulate policies on how to control this pandemic as there is no effective vaccine or treatment available which provide long-term immunity against different variants of COVID-19 and to eradicate this virus completely. As the new cases and fatalities are recorded daily or weekly, the responses are likely to be repeated or longitudinally correlated. Thus, studying the impact of available covariates and new cases on deaths from COVID-19 repeatedly would provide significant insights into this pandemic's dynamics. For a better understanding of the dynamics of spread, in this paper, we study the impact of various risk factors on the new cases and deaths over time. To do that, we propose a marginal-conditional based joint modelling approach to predict trajectories, which is crucial to the health policy planners for taking necessary measures. The conditional model is a natural choice to study the underlying property of dependence in consecutive new cases and deaths. Using this model, one can examine the relationship between outcomes and predictors, and it is possible to calculate risks of the sequence of events repeatedly. The advantage of repeated measures is that one can see how individual responses change over time. The predictive accuracy of the proposed model is also compared with various machine learning techniques. The machine learning algorithms used in this paper are extended to accommodate repeated responses. The performance of the proposed model is illustrated using COVID-19 data collected from the Texas Health and Human Services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The substitution of fossil fuels, especially coal, with renewable energy is a crucial step for the CO2 emissions reduction and the avoidance of Global Climate Change. The electric power generation industry is the first economic sector that will have to transition to renewable energy. However, wind and solar energy, the two most abundant renewable energy forms, are not dispatchable. The high penetration of these renewables in the energy market will create a demand–supply mismatch, which can only be alleviated with large-scale energy storage. This paper uses the case of Texas—a state that generates and consumes more electricity than several large, industrialized nations—to quantitatively examine the required infrastructure for the decarbonization of the electricity generation industry, while satisfying the current electric power demand in the State. Among the parameters that are examined are: the additional solar and wind capacity; the necessary energy storage infrastructure; the energy dissipation in the storage/regeneration process; and the effect of decarbonization on the cost of electricity and the welfare of the citizens. The computations show that the technology is available for the transition to a decarbonized electric power sector but requires significant investment in new wind and photovoltaic units as well as substantial energy storage. This would increase the electricity prices by a factor between 2.9 and 3.7 and, would have a disproportionate impact on the citizens in the lower income brackets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) is a new seismic monitoring technology. DAS generates a large amount of data, necessitating the development of new technologies to allow for cost-effective processing and handling. The raw seismic data is noisy and must be processed. The curvelet transform is an excellent choice for processing seismic data due to its localized nature, as well as its frequency and dip characteristics. However, its capabilities are limited in case of noise other than white. This paper proposes a denoising method based on a combination of the curvelet transform and a whitening filter, as well as a procedure for estimating noise variance. The whitening filter is included to improve the performance of the curvelet transform in both coherent and incoherent noise cases, as well as to simplify the noise variance estimation method and make it easier to use standard threshold methodology without delving into the curvelet domain. Two data sets are used to validate the suggested technique. Pseudo-synthetic data set created by adding noise to the actual noise-free data collection from the Netherlands offshore F3 block and the on-site data set (with ground roll noise) from east Texas, USA. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves the best results under various types of noise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal for the next generation of terrestrial reference frames (TRF) is to achieve a 1-mm- and 0.1-mm/yr-accurate frame realization through the combination of reference station solutions by multi-technique geodetic observatories. A potentially significant source of error in TRF realizations is the inter-system ties between the instruments at multi-technique stations, usually independently determined through ground-based local surveying. The quality of local tie surveys is varied and inconsistent, largely due to differences in measurement techniques, surveying instruments, site conditions/geometries, and processing methods. The Global Geodetic Observing System (GGOS) has tried to address these problems by issuing guidelines for the construction and layout of future multi-technique observatories, promoting uniformity and quality while minimizing existing problems with local surveying that are exacerbated over longer baseline distances. However, not every observatory is going to be able to completely satisfy these guidelines, and in this work, a successful endeavor to satisfy the accuracy goals while exceeding the GGOS baseline guideline is detailed for the McDonald Geodetic Observatory (MGO) in the Davis Mountains of Texas, USA. MGO consists of a VLBI Geodetic Observing System (VGOS), infrastructure in place for a Space Geodesy Satellite Laser Ranging (SGSLR) telescope, and several Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) stations spanning a 900 m baseline and a 120 m elevation change. The results of the local ties between the GNSS stations across the near-kilometer baseline, as measured from their antenna reference points, show sub-mm precision and 1 mm accuracy validated through repeatability across several surveys conducted in 2021as well as 1 mm consistency with the monthly averaged daily solutions of the GNSS-based positioning. In this paper, we report these results as well as the framework of the surveys with sufficient detail and rigor in order to give confidence to the quality claims and to present the novel design and techniques employed in the procedure, processing, and error-budget analysis, which were determined through iterative research methods across repeated survey campaigns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expression invariant 3D face recognition systems have many computer vision applications such as human-computer interaction. Most 3D face recognition systems rely on rigid region features and a substantial amount of training data to achieve better accuracy. However, the computational cost of these systems is very high. In order to address the problem of compromising computational efficiency for accuracy, this paper presents a computationally efficient two-phase expression invariant 3D face recognition approach using fine-tuned VGG-16 and 3D-SIFT descriptors. In the first phase, the pre-trained VGG-16 is fine-tuned with the Texas database and the CASIA-3D database. The candidates are recognized using the fused features from the fine-tuned VGG-16 and landmarks-based angles. In the second phase, the 3D-SIFT descriptors are computed on the rigid component of the probe and candidate 3D faces. Then, the final identity is obtained based on the best 3D-SIFT keypoints' match score. Reporting competitive results in comparison to the state-of-the-art, the proposed method achieves 100% and 97.69% recognition rates respectively for the neutral-neutral and neutral-non neutral scenarios on the Bosphorus Database. Further, it requires only 1.27 seconds to identify a probe from a gallery with 105 faces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has recently been employed in various games, with which superhuman intelligence has been achieved, including Atari, Go, no-limit, and Texas hold'em. However, this technique has not been fully considered for Doudizhu which is a popular poker game in Asia and involves confrontation and cooperation among multiple players with imperfect information. In this paper we present a new deep reinforcement learning approach NV-Dou for the game Doudizhu. It adopts a variant of neural fictitious self-play to approximate the Nash equilibria of the game. The loss functions of the neural network integrate Q-Based policy gradient (mean actor critic) with advantage learning and proximal policy optimization. In addition, parametric noises are adopted for the fully connected layers in the neural network. The experimental results show that it needs only a few hours of training and achieves almost state-of-the-art performance comparing with the well-known open implementations RHCP, CQL, MCTS and others for Doudizhu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the problem of a principal (she) designing a contract for an agent (he) to form a short-lived partnership to exploit an asset before reselling, as in asset flipping. The agent possesses higher expertise than the principal in the sense that he can form a more-accurate assessment of the resale value of the asset before negotiating the dissolution of the partnership. By dissolving the partnership through a Texas shootout with the agent as proposer, the principal can "neutralize" her partner's informational advantage and have him disclose the resale value for free. Thus, in the optimal contract, the agent's superior expertise does not distort the structure of the partnership (i.e., the allocation of shares). The partners attain a higher aggregate surplus ex-ante if the principal commits to giving the asset away to the agent upon dissolving the partnership: She earns a lower revenue but lets all types of the agent enjoy a higher surplus. Thus, at the ex-ante stage, the agent could "bribe" the principal to implement this alternative. However, the additional surplus for lower types is insufficient to compensate the principal, so this higher ex-ante aggregate surplus is unattainable at the interim stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurate spatial estimation of extremes is an increasingly important topic in environmental research and risk assessment. Conditional bias (CB)-penalized kriging (CBPK) improves such estimation by minimizing linearly weighted sum of error variance and variance of Type-II error. However, CBPK requires skillful prescription of the weight for the CB penalty which is a significant challenge in practice. In this paper, we describe an extension of CBPK, referred to herein as adaptive conditional bias-penalized kriging (ACBPK), which objectively prescribes the weight for improved estimation of extremes without deteriorating performance in the unconditional mean squared error sense. For comparative evaluation in the real world, cross validation experiments were carried out for precipitation estimation using hourly rain gauge data in the Arkansas-Red River Basin (AB), central Texas (TX) and southeastern US (SE) areas. The results show that CB is detected for about 26, 24 and 25% of all data points in the AB, TX and SE cases, respectively, and that, given detection of CB, ACBPK reduces root mean square error of hourly precipitation exceeding 12.7 mm by 15, 21 and 9% and hourly precipitation exceeding 25.4 mm by 14, 26 and 10% relative to ordinary kriging (OK) for the AB, TX and SE cases, respectively. The overall findings indicate that, if accurate spatial estimation in the tails of the distribution is important or accurate modeling of spatiotemporally-varying correlation structure is a challenge, ACBPK should be favored over OK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely recognized that nitrogen (N) inputs from watersheds to estuaries are modified during transport through river networks, but changes within tidal freshwater zones (TFZs) have been largely overlooked. This paper sheds new light on the role that TFZs play in modifying the timing and forms of N inputs to estuaries by (1) characterizing spatial and temporal variability of N concentrations and forms in the TFZs of the Mission and Aransas rivers, Texas, USA, and (2) examining seasonal fluxes of N into and out of the Aransas River TFZ. Median concentrations of dissolved inorganic N (DIN) were lower in the TFZs than in upstream non-tidal river reaches and exhibited spatial gradients linked to locations of major N inputs. These spatial patterns were stronger during winter than summer. The forms of N also changed substantially, with DIN changing to organic N (primarily phytoplankton) within the TFZs. Discharge and N flux comparisons for the Aransas River TFZ demonstrated that secular tidal patterns modulate the timing of N export during baseflow conditions: N export far exceeded input during winter, whereas export and input were relatively balanced during summer. While more data are needed to build an annual N budget, our results show that TFZ can change the timing and form of N export immediately upstream of estuaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating residencies that produce psychiatrists who are skilled and interested in working in under resourced areas, especially in community and rural settings is challenging. State and private agency collaboration can be an effective approach to enhancing such training. These resources for education have the goals of improving access and services, addressing workforce shortages and improving physician retention. They can provide flexibility to implement innovations that enhance training and address community needs. This article describes the implementation of a psychiatry residency at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine. Funding was obtained from state and private initiatives. This paper describes the implementation. Feedback was positive at all levels. This program illustrates some of the advantages of utilizing alternate funding in creating high quality residencies that are integral to the community, produce skilled collaborative physicians, provide necessary care that addresses specific community needs and potentially address workforce issues in underserved areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces Simulink-based programs developed for dynamic analysis of electrical power systems. The program can be used for research studies or as a teaching tool. With the program, time-domain simulation, modal analysis, participation factor analysis and visualization, frequency response analysis, and design of conventional and intelligent controllers can be obtained. A special case of constant impedance load is also studied. IEEE 9-bus, IEEE 68-bus, Texas 2007-bus 282-machine, and the 25,000-bus northeastern US test systems are employed in this paper. The synchronous machines are assumed to be equipped with exciter, turbine, and stabilizer. Static var compensator is added using conventional and adaptive neuro-fuzzy controllers. Different types of disturbances are applied to the systems including generator-side and network-side disturbances. The program is free of algebraic loops that may increase the errors and slow down the simulation. All blocks and signals in the Simulink model are in vector form that can be used to simulate a power system of any size. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A spatially balanced sample can produce good estimates of finite population quantities when the study variable is dependent over a spatial region with respect to a super-population model. In many longitudinal surveys for monitoring natural resources, annual samples are taken in space to estimate both annual status and annual change. In this paper, we propose a spatiotemporal balanced sampling design with a repeated panel such that the sample for each year is spatially balanced, and the sample combined from consecutive years is also spatially balanced. We propose design-based regression estimators of the annual status and change, and the corresponding variance estimators are also derived. Simulation studies show that the spatial balance of a sample generated by the proposed spatiotemporal balanced sampling design is good, and design-based regression estimators work well. The proposed spatiotemporal balanced sampling design is tested on data from the National Resources Inventory rangeland on-site survey conducted in Texas from 2009 to 2013. For the study variable "average soil aggregate stability," the proposed sampling design and estimators are shown to have better performance compared with the original sample and estimators. Although the spatiotemporal balanced sampling design is proposed in a two-dimensional space, it can be generalized to higher dimensions easily. Supplementary materials accompanying this paper appear online. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a report of a design-based research project undertaken to build a blended teacher education program that focuses on cultivating teachers' competencies for personalized and blended learning in K-12 classrooms. Two iterations were designed and examined in total, with 10 teacher educators and two teacher candidate cohorts. Teacher educators collaborated with the project director to design and redesign online courses for two years, and each cohort took online teaching methods courses and trained at personalized learning schools in Texas over the course of a year. Using a mixed-methods design, teacher educators' and teacher candidates' perception data were collected and analyzed to evaluate the program's effectiveness and identify design implications and elements that inform the design and implementation of the program. The reflections and insights gained through this project offer an understanding of how blended teacher preparation can be designed to directly address the needs of K-12 schools for teachers trained in personalized and blended learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a state without a personal income tax that has experienced strong employment and population growth in the past, Texas was held up as the economic policy model for Kansas and Oklahoma to follow in recently cutting their personal income tax rates. Using microlevel data, this paper examines whether Texas has benefitted from its mix of public policies by examining the geographic patterns of estimated quality-adjusted wages and housing costs across the USA. The overall finding is the absence of significantly positive capitalized effects from the policies of Texas. The only significant capitalized policy effect found was lower quality of life in Texas nonmetropolitan areas relative to those in Oklahoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many parts of the USA, expansive soils pose a significant hazard to infrastructures. These kinds of soils owe their characteristics to the presence of swelling clay minerals. As they get wet, they swell; conversely, as they dry, they shrink. Many stabilization methods have been developed to mitigate the adverse effects of expansive soil. One of them is the use of the ionic additive. In this research, a liquid ionic product is evaluated as a non-traditional stabilizer. Soil samples from a specific construction site in Texas and soil samples from Oklahoma were utilized. The evaluation tests involve the suction measurements, swelling, and plasticity index for treated and untreated soils. Cyclic swelling tests were also carried out on reconstituted specimens. From laboratory tests and analysis, it was found that this additive is effective in reducing swelling of both Texas and Oklahoma soils. It reduces swelling of Texas soils by 0.4–6% and Oklahoma soil by 2–7.4%. The results of swelling cycles reveal a permanent effect of this stabilizer on mitigating the swelling behavior. After the 3rd swelling cycle, the swelling for Oklahoma soils was 5.58% lower than the natural soil, and for Texas soils, it was reduced by 6.02–8.49% for different concentrations of the additive. However, no definitive trend was observed for reducing the shrinkage potential. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hazard mitigation plans (HMP) inform residents and policymakers of the risks a community is vulnerable to, as well as prioritize measures implemented to minimize hazard damage. HMP development emphasizes the importance of creating plans with a strong fact base and analysis of risk exposure, while also facilitating participatory planning with residents. This paper discusses the intersection of citizen perception of extreme heat risk, policy implementation concerning extreme heat risk and actual extreme heat risk exposure in four coastal counties in Texas, Brazoria, Cameron, Galveston and Nueces Counties. Through surveying county residents and analyzing the counties' HMPs, it was observed that residents perceive extreme heat risk as very high but HMPs have very little information on extreme heat mitigation. By examining three major components of hazard mitigation planning (actual/projected risk exposure, policy implementation and citizen perception), planners can better understand possible disconnects and fallacies that decrease the efficacy of mitigation plans. As HMPs are updated, officials should ensure that resident perceptions, which may change over time and as the result of specific events, are reflected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores differences between the stated purpose and actual practice of electronically monitored home confinement as a prison-diversion strategy. Methods and data are triangulated to examine the difference between the stated purposes of electronic monitoring and its actual usage in two contexts: 1) the decision to imprison/probate; and 2) the actual use of electronically monitored home confinement. Sentencing information, along with data on employment, family, substance abuse, prior convictions, and type of offense, were collected on 391 felony offenders sentenced to probation in 1987-89 from three countries located in two large Metropolitan Statistical Areas in Texas. Information gathered from interviews with probation officials is also employed. This paper presents an analysis of this data and discusses its implications for future use and evaluation of electronically monitored home confinement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Both natural and manmade disasters have severely impacted the region of Southeast Texas over the past few decades, and this has negatively affected the socio-economic well-being of the region. The state of Texas has suffered 200–250 billion dollars in damages from natural and manmade disasters since 2010. Given the region's strategic importance to the nation's energy and security, developing resilience knowledge and multi-disaster resilience research focused on issues pertaining to the region is needed. This paper describes the structure and process of building a center for multi-disaster resilience at a regional public university. By utilizing a bottom-up approach, the Center's mission and design are broadly democratized through the participation of a variety of scholars and various stakeholders with whom they interact. Resilience needs specific to the Southeast Texas region are examined, as is the relationship between resilience and the academic disciplines of the stakeholders involved. The issues of resilience in the region are discussed as well as the future steps for the Center's continued growth and development for the study of resilience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus of this paper is a case study of a Texas-based school that implemented global projects to connect their students with many states and countries as a platform for integrating collaboration and communication skills, technology tools, and cultural diversity into an existing curriculum. The school introduced videoconferencing at every grade level K-8 in a school-wide initiative to bring the world to the classroom through the engagement of global learning projects with distant partners. A rubric is presented that provides a framework for improvement of interaction and engagement in videoconferencing experiences to develop best practices. For the purposes of this paper, the value of global projects in K-4 will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has been established that the carbon emissions of wind power depends on several factors, most importantly, the size, manufacturing location, operating location, and life expectancy of the turbine. However, there is significant variation in carbon emissions of wind power generation reported in the literature. This makes it necessary to study the emissions of a windmill of a given size operating in a given location. In this paper, we study the carbon intensity and energy intensity of wind generation from a Nordex 1.3 megawatts (MW) wind turbine located in the Panhandle of Texas. Our model has three components: (a) lifetime power generation model which uses Typical Meteorological Year 3 data from National Renewable Energy Laboratory, (b) process analysis model for raw materials used in manufacturing of the wind turbine, and (c) environmentally extended input–output analysis model for all other steps involved in the life cycle analysis of the windmill, including manufacturing, transportation, installation, operation, and maintenance of windmills. Our results show that a 1.3 MW windmill operating for 20 years in the Panhandle of Texas, generates 467 terra-Joules (TJ) of electricity while consuming 25.58 TJ of energy and producing 1870.52 million-grams (Mg) of CO2. The resulting carbon emission intensity of this turbine is estimated to be 14.45 gCO2/kWh. In 2019, the U.S. generated about 286.6 billion kWh of its electricity from the wind which amounts to 4.12 million ton (MT) of annual emissions and will increase substantially as deeper levels of wind generation is achieved in the next several decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper uses data from 68 United Way of Texas chapters with web presence to create three indicators for web-based accountability — (1) disclosure of performance information (2) responsiveness to stakeholders and (3) fiscal transparency— and to estimate their determinants using OLS regression. Among others, the study finds that web-based accountability determined by online disclosure of performance information is influenced by board size, whereas fiscal transparency is affected by paid staff. The study contributes to nonprofit accountability literature by showing the connectedness of web-based accountability indicators and the need for enhanced fiscal transparency in the nonprofit sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Curie point-depth, frequently related to the depth to the bottom of the magnetic source, is widely employed as an estimator of temperature at depth when borehole temperature data are not available. The Curie point-depth is calculated using the spectral analysis of the magnetic data derived from aeromagnetic or satellite surveys. In this paper, MATLAB user-friendly GUI are constructed to calculate the Curie Point Depth using the inversion of aeromagnetic data assuming 2D fractal magnetization and modeling the temperature at depth assuming a 1D steady-state conductive heat transfer model. The program, tested in synthetic and aeromagnetic data, is running under MATLAB 2020a or standalone application with these input parameters: Aeromagnetic data, fractal parameter, Curie temperature, surface temperature, thermal conductivity, surface radiogenic heat production and scaling length of surface radiogenic heat production. The radially averaged amplitude spectrum, scaled spectrum, modeled spectrum, Curie point-depth, and temperature profile at depth are the output parameters of the program. Finally, the program is tested with Texas aeromagnetic data, and the results of the Curie point-depth were compared with borehole data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transition-age youth (TAY, ages 14–26) diagnosed with serious mental health conditions are at high risk for vocational struggles. This paper examines the implementation and process evaluation of Individual Placement and Support (IPS) and Supported Employment enhanced to better meet developmental needs of TAY. Enhancements include the integration of a TAY development focus, engagement best-practices, Supported Education and Peer Support. Community mental health providers participated in a process evaluation to explore the feasibility of a larger scale implementation. Common organizational barriers were encountered across provider sites including: leadership support, agency structures and funding mechanisms; compounded by the complexity of bridging child and adult systems. Findings have implications for both child and adult community mental health providers as they adapt and integrate programming for TAY. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study on the impact of the size and location of wetlands on watershed-scale flood control utilizing the Cypress Creek Watershed in Houston, Texas as the study area. Wetlands of different sizes were implemented at different locations (upstream, midstream, and downstream) of the watershed and corresponding hydrologic and hydraulic simulations were performed to investigate the impact that wetland size and location parameters have on downstream flood conditions. This study used HEC-HMS as the hydrologic model for the watershed, and HEC-RAS as the hydraulic model for rivers within the watershed. Wetlands were implemented in the HEC-HMS model as reservoirs. Simulation results indicate the more upstream wetlands are located within the watershed, the smaller the flood area, the shallower the flood depth, and the shorter the flood duration at the downstream region of the watershed. In addition, the downstream flood area, flood depth, and flood duration decrease as the size (storage capacity) of wetlands increases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although hydraulic fracturing has been massively studied and applied as a key technique to enhance the gas production from tight formations, some problems and uncertainties exist to accurately predict and analyze the fracture behavior in complex reservoirs, especially in the naturally fractured reservoirs like shale reservoirs. This paper presents a full 3D numerical model (FLAC3D) to study hydraulic fracturing behavior under the impact of preexisting orthogonal natural fractures. In this numerical model, the hydraulic fracture propagation direction is assumed perpendicular to the minimum principal stress and activated only by tensile failure, whereas the preexisting natural fractures can be activated by tensile or shear failure or a combination of them, and only tensile failure can open the natural fracture as well. The newly developed model was used to study the impact of preexisting orthogonal natural fractures on hydraulic fracturing behavior, based on a multistage hydraulic fracturing operation in a naturally fractured reservoir from the Barnett Shale formation, northwest of Texas in USA. In this multistage operation, two more representative stages, i.e., stage 1 with a relatively large horizontal stress anisotropy of 3.3 MPa and stage 4 with a comparatively small one of 1.3 MPa, were selected to conduct the simulation. Based on the numerical results, one can observe that the interaction between hydraulic and natural fracture is driven mainly by induced stress around fracture tip. Besides, the horizontal stress anisotropy plays a key role in opening the natural fracture. Thus, no significant opened fracture is activated on natural fracture in stage 1, while in stage 4 an opened fracture invades to about 90 m into the first natural fracture. Conversely, the hydraulic fracture length in stage 1 is much longer than in stage 4, as some fluid volume is stored in the opened natural fracture in stage 4. In this work, the shear failure on natural fractures is treated as the main factor for inducing the seismic events. And the simulated seismic events, i.e., shear failure on natural fractures, are very comparable with the measured seismic events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An increasing number of toll projects are being considered across the country, and questions are often raised about the impact of toll roads on the economy and economic development in the region. This paper examines the effects of toll roads in a major metro area. Toll roads in Dallas County, Texas, are examined for their impacts on property values, one indicator for economic development impacts. Particular emphasis is placed on the temporal and spatial nature of the impacts. The paper examines impacts of existing toll roads using residential transactions data spanning a period of 20 years and a combination of traditional and spatial econometric approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilized early reading assessment data from a randomized trial of 210 urban and rural schools in Texas to examine contextual effects on risk prediction in first and second grade. The primary objective was to examine the roles of (a) individual differences, (b) the grade 1 classroom, and (c) the pairing of first and second grade teachers in determining grade 2 outcomes in word reading and fluency. A second objective was to investigate whether the administration format of the assessment (paper, paper plus desktop, handheld plus desktop) or the level of teacher support (web mentoring, no mentoring) moderated the prediction. These moderator variables proved not to be significant. Subsequent analyses found that a combination of student pretest and mean of pretest classroom was a better predictor than student pretest alone. Additionally, the effect of student scores varied by teacher-pair. On average, intraclass correlations (ICCs) ranged from 6% to 17%. Differences in ICCs at the classroom level were much greater than at the school level, and differences in urban schools were twice that of rural schools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many hydrometeorological studies have evaluated the impact of climate variability on hydrologic extremes. Recent studies have shown that the varying state of climatic cycles has intensified the regional hydrologic cycle within a wide range of geographical regions in the state of Texas. These climatic cycles define numerous sea surface temperature and pressure anomalies which lead to heavy precipitation in a region. The objective of this paper is to quantify the impact of five major Atlantic and Pacific Ocean related climatic cycles, including (i) Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), (ii) North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), (iii) Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), (iv) Pacific North American Pattern (PNA), and (v) Southern Oscillation Index (SOI), on maximum daily precipitation within a year in various climate regions of Texas, using a weighted correlation approach incorporating Leave-One-Out Test (LOOT). The uncertainty in the estimated correlation coefficient is factored in by determining the sample correlation coefficient at the 95% confidence interval. The influence of these global scale climatic cycles on the regional hydrologic cycle is found to be governed by the integrated hydrometeorological properties of weather stations, including (i) station elevation, (ii) average temperature, and (iii) average total precipitation, in the months of extremes. Results of this study will help regional water boards prepare for extreme hydrometeorological events in a changing climate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multistage hydraulic fracturing in horizontal wells is a critical technique for developing unconventional oil and gas resources. Stress interactions among neighboring fractures cause immature fracture development. The Texas two-step fracturing (TTSF) method is a new technique that aims to enhance fracture complexity and conductivity. This paper compares the fracture development of consecutive fracturing and the TTSF. The fracturing sequence in the multistage fracturing method has a significant effect on the fracture length, fracture width and injection pressure. The consecutive fracturing results in relatively uneven fracture length and width. Certain fractures in consecutive fracturing are restrained to be closed due to the strong stress shadowing effect. In contrast, TTSF has considerable potential for alleviating the negative effects of stress interactions and producing a larger stimulated reservoir volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article previews the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society 2006, the 135th Annual and Meeting and Exhibition which will be held in San Antonio, Texas on March 12, 2006 to March 16, 2006. It includes information on the schedule of presentation and programs as well as the keynote speakers and chairman and issues that will be addressed at each presentation and a list of exhibitors.

Many political practitioners believe that voters are more likely to approve propositions listed at the top than the bottom of the ballot, potentially distorting democratic decision making, and this belief influences election laws across the United States. Numerous studies have investigated ballot order effects in candidate elections, but there is little evidence for direct democracy elections, and identification of causal effects is challenging. This paper offers two strategies for identifying the effect of ballot order in proposition elections, using data from California during 1958-2014 and Texas during 1986-2015. The evidence suggests that propositions are not advantaged by being listed at the top compared to the bottom of the ballot. Approval rates are lower with more propositions on the ballot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Freshwater mussels preserve valuable information about hydrology, climate, and population dynamics, but developing seasonal chronologies can be problematic. Using clumped isotope thermometry, we produced high-resolution reconstructions of modern and historic (~ 1900) temperatures and δ18Owater from mussel shells collected from an impounded river, the Brazos in Texas, before and after damming. We also performed high-resolution growth band analyses to investigate relationships between mussel growth rate, rainfall, and seasonal temperature. Reconstructed δ18Owater and temperature vary little between the modern (3R5) and historic shell (H3R). However, a positive relationship between reconstructed δ18Owater and growth rate in H3R indicates that aside from diminished growth in winter, precipitation and flow rate are the strongest controls on mussel growth in both modern and pre-dam times. Overall, our results demonstrate (1) the impact, both positive and negative, of environmental factors such as flow alteration and temperature on mussel growth and (2) the potential for clumped isotopes in freshwater mussels as a paleohydrology and paleoclimate proxies in terrestrial environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human perceptions under unstructured forms contain valuable information for ecological restoration (ER). To aid in ER, this paper introduces a working process to analyze the unstructured information for the case study of black bear restoration (BBR) in East Texas where understanding of the perceptions of stakeholders at a community level is needed. We identified the current situation, revealed stakeholders and their interactions, and developed actions for change for BBR. Our techniques included recording discussions in meetings, Soft Systems Methodology, and stakeholder analysis. Results indicated the current situation of BBR with human-bear and human-human conflicts. We figured out that information exchange was interrupted in the public, a potential cause for conflicts. Through a systemization, results showed various roles of key stakeholders and constraints for BBR. We found that local state agencies and local residents (particularly landowners) are the key decision-makers for BBR success. Their collaboration can result in a small portion of success (1/9) that can be increased by more cooperation. The SSM framework introduced in this study can be used for modeling community perceptions in ecological restoration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flash flooding occurs when low-lying geographic areas are rapidly flooded and is mainly caused by heavy rains. Urban road networks are the primary structures affected by flood inundation, which causes disruption to transportation and reduces the efficiency of rescue services. This paper proposes a physically based spatiotemporal method of analyzing flood impacts on urban road networks that considers both the physical parameters of flooding and the susceptibility of the transportation network. The results indicate that the proposed method provides reasonable spatiotemporal and synthetic estimates of impacts to the road network of Austin, Texas, USA, under flash flooding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comprehensive cancer centers are an important community resource for cancer prevention education in their catchment areas. Colorectal cancer remains one of the most commonly diagnosed cancers in the United States, making prevention a priority. Colorectal cancer prevention targets include lifestyle modifications that are influenced by cultural norms, such as diet change, physical activity and screening behavior. Cancer centers must tailor prevention efforts to multiethnic catchment areas. This paper describes the development and feasibility of a comprehensive cancer center’s approach to community-based colorectal cancer prevention in Houston, Texas, specifically targeting Hispanic and Asian populations. Sites were recruited through a city-wide network of partnerships between the community relations department in the hospital and community organizations. The program consisted of three workshop-style classes per community site. Each class had a similar overall structure, but cultural and site-specific adaptations were made for each group. A total of 33 classes were taught at nine distinct community sites to 1054 participants over 9 months. This program structure may be adapted for the future dissemination of other cancer prevention tools to communities in the area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, there has been a rapid growth in the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) to recover unconventional oil and gas in the Permian Basin of southeastern New Mexico (NM) and western Texas. Fracking generates enormous quantities of wastes that contain technologically enhanced naturally occurring radioactive materials (TENORM), which poses risks to human health and the environment because of the relatively high doses of radioactivity. However, very little is known about the chemical composition and radioactivity levels of Permian Basin fracking wastes. Here, we report chemical as well as radiochemical compositions of hydraulic fracking wastes from the Permian Basin. Radium, the major TENORM of interest in unconventional drilling wastes, varied from 19.1 ± 1.2 to 35.9 ± 3.2 Bq/L for 226Ra, 10.3 ± 0.5 to 21.5 ± 1.2 Bq/L for 228Ra, and 2.0 ± 0.05 to 3.7 ± 0.07 Bq/L for 224Ra. In addition to elevated concentrations of radium, these wastewaters also contain elevated concentrations of dissolved salts and divalent cations such as Na+ (31,856–43,000 mg/L), Ca2+ (668–4123 mg/L), Mg2+ (202–2430 mg/L), K+ (148–780 mg/L), Sr2+ (101–260 mg/L), Cl− (5160–66,700 mg/L), SO42− (291–1980 mg/L), Br− (315–596 mg/L), SiO2 (20–32 mg/L), and high total dissolved solid (TDS) of 5000–173,000 mg/L compared to background waters. These elevated levels are of radiological significance and represent a major source of Ra in the environment. The recent discovery of large deposits of recoverable oil and gas in the Permian Basin will lead to more fracking, TENORM generation, and radium releases to the environment. This paper evaluates the potential radiation risks associated with TENORM wastes generated by the oil and gas recovery industry in the Permian Basin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding low flow variability is critical for assessing water quality and health of riverine ecosystems in a river basin. Low flows are dependent on human water abstraction as well as the climate variability. This paper investigates the changing nature of low flows and their association with large-scale climate variability for different watersheds in the State of Texas, USA. For this purpose, we employed trend, wavelet analysis and linear as well as nonlinear correlations to identify important changes in low flow characteristics for three stream-gauging stations selected from different (i.e. Brazos, Colorado and Trinity) river basins located in Texas for the time period of 1916-1959 and 1960-2003. We also investigated the teleconnections between low flow variables and the large-scale climate indices (NINO 3.4, SOI and PDO) using cross wavelet analysis as well as their linear and non-linear correlation relationship. Our results indicated that the low flow magnitudes have shown considerable different characteristics for selected river basins during two separate time periods (1916-1959 and 1960-2003). Based on cross wavelet analysis, we identified that the low flows in selected stations of Colorado and Trinity River basins are likely to be influenced by all three large-scale climate indices. In addition to that, we identified that low flows are more nonlinearly associated with climate indices. Among the selected River basins, the stronger association between low flows and large scale climate indices are observed for Trinity River basin. The results from this study can help in better understanding of low flow hydrology and their potential relationship with large scale indices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid urbanization, climate change, and aging infrastructure pose significant challenges to achieving sustainability and resilience goals in urban building energy use. Although retrofitting offers a viable solution to mitigate building energy use, there has been limited analysis of its effects under various weather conditions associated with climate change in urban building energy use simulations. Moreover, certain parameters in energy simulations necessitate extensive auditing or survey work, which is often impractical. This research proposes a framework that integrates various datasets, including building footprints, Lidar data, property appraisals, and street view images, to conduct neighborhood-scale building energy use analysis using the Urban Modeling Interface (UMI), an Urban Building Energy Model (UBEM), in a coastal neighborhood in Galveston, Texas. Seven retrofit plans and three weather conditions are considered in the scenarios of building energy use. The results show that decreasing the U-value of building envelopes helps reduce energy use, while increasing the U-value leads to higher energy consumption in the Galveston neighborhood. This finding provides direction for coastal Texas cities, like Galveston, to update building standards and implement retrofit measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This study evaluates hydrology and hydrological extremes under future climate change scenarios. The climate change scenarios were developed from multiple Global Circulation Models (GCMs), Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenarios, and statistical downscaling techniques. To ensure hydrological model robustness, the Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was calibrated and validated using the Differential Split Sample Test (DSST) approach. The model was also calibrated and validated at the multi-gauges of the watershed. Future climate change scenarios revealed a reduction in precipitation (in the order of −9.1% to 4.9%) and a consistent increase in maximum temperature (0.34°C to 4.10°C) and minimum temperature (−0.15 °C to 3.7°C) in different climate model simulations. The climate change scenarios triggered a reduction of surface runoff and streamflow and a moderate increase in evapotranspiration. Future climate change scenarios projected a decrease in high flow (Q5) and low flow (Q95). A higher reduction of Q5 and annual minimum flow is also simulated in future climate scenarios, whereas an increase in annual maximum flow is simulated in climate change scenarios developed from the RCP8.5 emission scenario. The study suggests optimal water management structures which can reduce the effect of change in high and low flows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the adult imprisonment outcomes of a cohort of serious and violent juvenile offenders released from Texas state juvenile correctional facilities during their transition from adolescence to early adulthood. We distinguish incarceration in the adult prison system as resulting from a new offense or as the result of a revocation for a technical supervision violation. Of the sample (n = 709), 37% were incarcerated in Texas' adult prison system within two years following their release from state juvenile incarceration—16% were incarcerated for a new offense and 21% were incarcerated for revocation as a result of a technical violation of supervision. Results indicate that race, being a sexual offender, gang affiliate, engaging in violent institutional misconduct as a juvenile ward, being under supervised release, and age at initial juvenile incarceration were determinants of adult incarceration for any reason. Similar determinants of incarceration were found examining incarceration for offenders released under community supervision. Prior placements as a juvenile and gang affiliation were correlated with incarceration for a new offense. Research and policy implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep is a pillar of human health and wellbeing. In high- and middle-income countries, there is a great reliance on heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems (HVAC) to control the interior thermal environment in the bedroom. However, these systems are expensive to buy, maintain, and operate while being energy and environmentally intensive—problems that may increase due to climate change. Easily-accessible passive and low-energy strategies, such as fans and electrical heated blankets, address these challenges but their comparative effectiveness for providing comfort in sleep environments has not been studied. We used a thermal manikin to experimentally show that many passive and low-energy strategies are highly effective in supplementing or replacing HVAC systems during sleep. Using passive strategies in combination with low-energy strategies that elevate air movement like ceiling or pedestal fans enhances the cooling effect by three times compared to using fans alone. We extrapolated our experimental findings to estimate heating and cooling effects in two historical case studies: the 2015 Pakistan heat wave and the 2021 Texas power crisis. Passive and low-energy strategies reduced sleep-time heat or cold exposure by 69–91%. The low-energy strategies we tested require one to two orders of magnitude less energy than HVAC systems, and the passive strategies require no energy input. These strategies can also help reduce peak load surges and total energy demand in extreme temperature events. This reduces the need for utility load shedding, which can put individuals at risk of hazardous heat or cold exposure. Our results may serve as a starting point for evidence-based public health guidelines on how individuals can sleep better during heat waves and cold snaps without relying on HVAC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the theories and methods involved in the study of the impact of private governance on residents in two distinct kinds of middle class housing schemes: gated community residents in New York and Texas living in single family attached and detached houses, and cooperative apartment dwellers in New York City. The studies employed a range of methodologies drawing on the disciplines of anthropology, psychology and political science. An attempt was made to understand residents lived experiences through a number of disciplinary lenses: theories of community and culture; theories of rationalization and psychological resistance, and theories of moral minimalism and representation. Each of these disciplinary layers added to the analysis, while at the same time, creating epistemological disjunctures and concerns that had to be addressed by the research team on an ongoing basis. The paper concludes with an evaluation of the benefits of this approach in terms of the production of new knowledge about private governance, while offering cautionary comments about undertaking interdisciplinary projects of this nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The motivation for regional association rule mining and scoping is driven by the facts that global statistics seldom provide useful insight and that most relationships in spatial datasets are geographically regional, rather than global. Furthermore, when using traditional association rule mining, regional patterns frequently fail to be discovered due to insufficient global confidence and/or support. In this paper, we systematically study this problem and address the unique challenges of regional association mining and scoping: (1) region discovery: how to identify interesting regions from which novel and useful regional association rules can be extracted; (2) regional association rule scoping: how to determine the scope of regional association rules. We investigate the duality between regional association rules and regions where the associations are valid: interesting regions are identified to seek novel regional patterns, and a regional pattern has a scope of a set of regions in which the pattern is valid. In particular, we present a reward-based region discovery framework that employs a divisive grid-based supervised clustering for region discovery. We evaluate our approach in a real-world case study to identify spatial risk patterns from arsenic in the Texas water supply. Our experimental results confirm and validate research results in the study of arsenic contamination, and our work leads to the discovery of novel findings to be further explored by domain scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the possible storm surge damage from a major hurricane to hit the Houston Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA.) Using storm surge analysis on a unique data set compiled from the Texas Workforce Commission (QCEW), the paper estimates the expected industry-level damage for each county in the Houston MSA. The advantages of using GIS to analyze the expected storm surge damage estimation is that it provides an accurate estimation of the number of affected employees and probable wages losses, by industry and county, based on QCEW data. The results indicate that the 'Basic Chemical Manufacturing' and 'Oil and Gas Extraction' industries incur the highest employee and payroll losses while the 'Restaurants and Eateries' has the largest establishment damage if a major hurricane were to hit the Houston MSA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the US, the rise in motorized vehicle travel has contributed to serious societal, environmental, economic, and public health problems. These problems have increased the interest in encouraging non-motorized modes of travel (walking and bicycling). The current study contributes toward this objective by identifying and evaluating the importance of attributes influencing bicyclists’ route choice preferences. Specifically, the paper examines a comprehensive set of attributes that influence bicycle route choice, including: (1) bicyclists’ characteristics, (2) on-street parking, (3) bicycle facility type and amenities, (4) roadway physical characteristics, (5) roadway functional characteristics, and (6) roadway operational characteristics. The data used in the analysis is drawn from a web-based stated preference survey of Texas bicyclists. The results of the study emphasize the importance of a comprehensive evaluation of both route-related attributes and bicyclists’ demographics in bicycle route choice decisions. The empirical results indicate that travel time (for commuters) and motorized traffic volume are the most important attributes in bicycle route choice. Other route attributes with a high impact include number of stop signs, red light, and cross-streets, speed limits, on-street parking characteristics, and whether there exists a continuous bicycle facility on the route. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]