Quantitation and organic geochemical characterization of petroleum-like materials found on an undisturbed beach of the Padre Island National Seashore

On June 3, 1979 the IXTOC I well in the Bay of Campeche 'blew out' with the subsequent release of 3 to 4 million barrels of oil. A major portion of that oil is known to have escaped recovery or was deliberately dispersed into the environment. This catastrophic source appears to be a major contributor to coastal water petroleum residues of the Gulf. Two questions which arise are: 1) What quantities of this petroleum-like material are being deposited annually on the south Texas beaches? And 2), is there a single source of beach tar (seeps) or are there multiple sources (spilled or dumped crudes as well as seeps)? This study is part of an effort to find answers to these questions.A report submitted to: United States Department of the Interior, National Park Service, Southwest RegionMarine Scienc

Examination of Sedentary Time, Physical Activity, and Body Mass Index (BMI) in College-Aged Students

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Political Participation and Quality of Life

Theoretical literatures on procedural utility and the psychological benefits of political participation suggest that people who participate in political activities will be more satisfied with their lives because of the resulting feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Individual-level data from Latin America show—in one dataset under study but not in another—a positive and statistically significant relationship between voting and life satisfaction. Variation in desire to vote as measured in Costa Rica, however, suggests that the causal arrow may run from happiness to voting. The use of multilevel models further reveals a consistent—but untheorized—cross-country negative relationship between enforced compulsory voting and happiness. Only preliminary results are found regarding the relationship between some other forms of political participation and life satisfaction.

Laser spectroscopy of hyperfine structure in highly-charged ions: a test of QED at high fields

An overview is presented of laser spectroscopy experiments with cold, trapped, highly-charged ions, which will be performed at the HITRAP facility at GSI in Darmstadt (Germany). These high-resolution measurements of ground state hyperfine splittings will be three orders of magnitude more precise than previous measurements. Moreover, from a comparison of measurements of the hyperfine splittings in hydrogen- and lithium-like ions of the same isotope, QED effects at high electromagnetic fields can be determined within a few percent. Several candidate ions suited for these laser spectroscopy studies are presented.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure, 1 table. accepted for Canadian Journal of Physics (2006

Political participation and quality of life

Theoretical literatures on procedural utility and the psychological benefits of political participation suggest that people who participate in political activities will be more satisfied with their lives because of the resulting feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Individual-level data from Latin America show - in one dataset under study but not in another - a positive and statistically significant relationship between voting and life satisfaction. Variation in desire to vote as measured in Costa Rica, however, suggests that the causal arrow may run from happiness to voting. The use of multilevel models further reveals a consistent - but untheorized - cross-country negative relationship between enforced compulsory voting and happiness. Only preliminary results are found regarding the relationship between some other forms of political participation and life satisfaction

The core structure of presolar graphite onions

Of the ``presolar particles'' extracted from carbonaceous chondrite dissolution residues, i.e. of those particles which show isotopic evidence of solidification in the neighborhood of other stars prior to the origin of our solar system, one subset has an interesting concentric graphite-rim/graphene-core structure. We show here that single graphene sheet defects in the onion cores (e.g. cyclopentane loops) may be observable edge-on by HREM. This could allow a closer look at models for their formation, and in particular strengthen the possibility that growth of these assemblages proceeds atom-by-atom with the aid of such in-plane defects, under conditions of growth (e.g. radiation fluxes or grain temperature) which discourage the graphite layering that dominates subsequent formation of the rim.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figures, 11 refs, see also http://www.umsl.edu/~fraundor/isocore.htm

Adjusted State Teacher Salaries and the Decision to Teach

Using the 3-year sample of the American Community Survey (ACS) for 2009 to 2011, we compute public school teacher salaries for comparison across U.S. states. Teacher salaries are adjusted for state differences in teacher characteristics, cost of living, household amenity attractiveness and federal tax rates. Salaries of non-teaching college graduates, defined as those with occupations outside of education, are used to adjust for state household amenity attractiveness. We then find that state differences in federal tax-adjusted teacher salaries relative those of other college graduates significantly affects the share of education majors that are employed as teachers at the time of the survey