Texas Business reports: A Bryan firm won a $9.2 million defense contract change, according to the U.S. Department of Defense.  

Texas Business reports: BEAUMONT – Water restrictions in some parts of Texas and unseasonably cool temperatures that settled in earlier this year have had the state’s rice crop growing in a bit of uncertainty. 

Texas Business reports: A Garland firm won a $24.4 million weapon components contract, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Texas Business reports: DALLAS—The Balfour Beatty | McCarthy joint venture, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Health Facilities Planning Agency (HFPA) and Medical Command (MEDCOM) recently celebrated the official topping out for the Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center Replacement at Fort Hood, Texas. 

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Cousins Properties Incorporated began construction on Colorado Tower, a 371,000-square-foot, Class-A office development in downtown Austin.

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—HID Global, a worldwide leader in secure identity solutions, began construction of its operations center in Austin, Texas. 

Texas Business reports:  An Addison firm won a $12.8 million contract to support DC-9 aircraft for the military, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Texas Business reports:  A San Marcos firm won a $29.9 million contract to aircraft services, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Texas Business reports:  AirTran Airways, a wholly owned subsidiary of Southwest Airlines, launched new nonstop service between Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and San Jose Del Cabo/Los Cabos International Airport in Baja California, Mexico. 

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION – Is Texas still in a drought? It depends upon where you are and whom you talk to, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor and reports from Texas A&M extension service agents across the state. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—National Cooperative Bank (NCB), a financial services company that provides banking products to cooperatives nationwide, completed a $4.7 million loan for the Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin. 

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION – Recent hail storms in the Northern Plains were the final straw for much of the wheat there, but many areas still have the chance to make decent yields, according to a Texas A&M Extension Service agronomist. 

Texas Business reports: IRVING, Texas—Omni Hotels & Resorts today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to purchase and operate five well known resort properties from entities affiliated with KSL Capital Partners LLC. 

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin partnered with video game industry leaders Warren Spector and Paul Sams to create the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, the first video game program in the United States led and taught by gaming industry executives. 

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION, Texas—An innovative method for treating potentially fatal brain aneurysms by filling them with foam-like plastics is a step closer to clinical trials after demonstrating an ability to promote healing at unprecedented levels, said a Texas A&M University researcher who is developing the treatment. 

Texas Business reports: DALLAS—Dallas County Hospital District d/b/a Parkland Health and Hospital System (Parkland) settled allegations it violated the civil False Claims Act and Texas Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act, announced U.S. Attorney Sarah R. Saldaña of the Northern District of Texas. 

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—The Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation and Capstone National Partners won a $2 million grant from the United States Department of Defense (DOD) to further support the expansion of translational research to find treatments for individuals living with spinal cord injury, including servicemen and women. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission recently approved $5.7 million in federal grants for 33 recreational trail projects across the state. This is the largest amount of grant funds awarded from the Recreational Trail Grant Program in the 20-year history of the program in Texas.  

Texas Business reports:  BRAZORIA COUNTY – Four new paddling trail segments on the Brazos River comprising the Stephen F. Austin Paddling Trail have recently been added as official Texas Paddling Trails. 

Texas Business reports: WACO—At their spring meeting today, the Baylor University board of regents approved construction of phase one of a new on-campus track and field stadium and voted to move forward in developing the design for the proposed new School of Business building. 

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Ohio-based Cubbison Company took a step  in the graphic product identification and printed electronics fields with the acquisition of Drake Industries Inc. dba Drake Labels of Austin, Texas. 

Texas Business reports: PORTLAND, Ore.—Rentrak, a provider of multi-screen measurement serving the advertising, television and movie industries, reached a multi-year local TV ratings contract with KCWX-TV, San Antonio. 

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN, Texas — The University of Texas at Austin partnered with video game industry leaders Warren Spector and Paul Sams to create the Denius-Sams Gaming Academy, the first video game program in the United States led and taught by gaming industry executives. 

Texas Business reports: IRVING, Texas—Omni Hotels & Resorts today announced it has reached a definitive agreement to purchase and operate five well known resort properties from entities affiliated with KSL Capital Partners LLC. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—The Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission recently approved $5.7 million in federal grants for 33 recreational trail projects across the state. This is the largest amount of grant funds awarded from the Recreational Trail Grant Program in the 20-year history of the program in Texas.  

Texas Business reports:  BRAZORIA COUNTY – Four new paddling trail segments on the Brazos River comprising the Stephen F. Austin Paddling Trail have recently been added as official Texas Paddling Trails. 

Texas Business reports: IRVING, Texas—Vericrest Financial, Inc., a financial services company specializing in the servicing of residential mortgage loans, changed its corporate name to Caliber Home Loans Inc.  

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Luminex Corporation extended its global supply and distribution agreement with EMD Millipore—the Life Science division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. 

Texas Business reports: PORTLAND, Ore.—Rentrak, a provider of multi-screen measurement serving the advertising, television and movie industries, reached a multi-year local TV ratings contract with KCWX-TV, San Antonio. 

Texas Business reports: WACO—When their schools are near fast-food restaurants, black and Hispanic adolescents are more likely to be overweight and receive less benefit from exercise than Asian or white students, according to a study published in the current issue of Journal of Public Policy & Marketing. 

On “bottle special” Thursdays, The Library Bar in downtown Austin can go through nearly 80 cases of beer – that’s 1,920 bottles. The bottles are dumped into the trash receptacles behind the East Sixth Street bar, along with half-eaten pizzas, broken plastic cups and other garbage. Like most other downtown bars, The Library recycles only cardboard. 

Texas Business reports: DALLAS—Texas will give $864,000 to Kohl's Department Stores, which is opening a customer service operations center in Dallas. 

Texas Business reports: Retail sales improved notably in May, according to business executives responding to the Texas Retail Outlook Survey. The sales index climbed back into positive territory, gaining 16 points to reach 11.6. Inventories were largely unchanged. 

The difference between the actual and potential output of an economy—widely known as the output gap—is so critical to central bank policy that scholars and policymakers devote a great deal of time and effort to estimating it and, accordingly, deciding how much to adjust various monetary instruments. Correctly gauging the output gap is particularly difficult because an economy’s potential output is not directly observable. 

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—ExxonMobil will fund a $500,000 workforce training program to enable Houston’s leading community colleges to prepare thousands of local residents for jobs in the local chemical manufacturing industry. 

Since the 2010 U.S. census, the number of naturalized citizens has increased substantially in Texas, and the state's immigrants account for significant purchasing power and economic output, according to an analysis by a Washington-based think tank urging immigration reform. 

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—ClearCorrect LLC, a manufacturer of clear aligners, announced plans to relocate its corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility from Houston to Round Rock, Texas later this year. 

The difference between the actual and potential output of an economy—widely known as the output gap—is so critical to central bank policy that scholars and policymakers devote a great deal of time and effort to estimating it and, accordingly, deciding how much to adjust various monetary instruments. Correctly gauging the output gap is particularly difficult because an economy’s potential output is not directly observable. 

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—If the climate continues to evolve as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United States stands little to no chance of satisfying its current biofuel goals, according to a new study by Rice University and the University of California at Davis.

LULING — Amid the dry weeds on a 470-acre ranch here, a rusted head of steel pokes up, a vestige of an oil well abandoned decades ago. Across the field stand two huge, old wooden oil tanks, one of them tilting like a smokestack on the Titanic. 

Texas Business reports:  IRVING—Today the United States and the state of Arkansas filed a joint enforcement action against ExxonMobil Pipeline Company and Mobil Pipe Line Company (ExxonMobil) in federal district court in Little Rock, Ark. 

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—In 2013, CenterPointEnergy will add 35 natural gas vehicles to its fleet across Arkansas, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas. Additionally, the company expects to provide natural gas service to at least 17 new compressed natural gas fueling stations built in the company's service territory. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—National Cooperative Bank (NCB), a financial services company that provides banking products to cooperatives nationwide, completed a $4.7 million loan for the Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin. 

Texas Business reports: The First National Bank of Seymour headquartered in Seymour, Texas, was issued a state bank charter by Texas Banking Commissioner Charles G. Cooper, effective May 31. 

Texas Business reports: HARLINGEN—Harlingen-based Texas State Bankshares Inc. and McAllen-based Border Capital Group Inc. agreed to merge Border Capital Bank with Texas Regional Bank, pending regulatory and shareholder approval. 

Texas Business reports: VALLEY VIEW, Texas – The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cited PumpCo Energy Services Inc. for 14 safety and health workplace violations for exposing workers to hazards at the company's maintenance facility in Valley View. 

Texas Business reports:  IRVING—Today the United States and the state of Arkansas filed a joint enforcement action against ExxonMobil Pipeline Company and Mobil Pipe Line Company (ExxonMobil) in federal district court in Little Rock, Ark. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Ryan Law, a national firm specializing in state and local tax, acquired Brusniak & Associates, a Texas property tax law firm.  

Texas Business reports:  HOUSTON—ClearCorrect LLC, a manufacturer of clear aligners, announced plans to relocate its corporate headquarters and manufacturing facility from Houston to Round Rock, Texas later this year. 

As Austin has grown and changed in the past few years, so has the stretch of Barton Springs Road between South Lamar Boulevard and Zilker Park. New restaurants, including a microbrewery, have moved in to the popular restaurant row, as well as condominium and apartment developments. Amid this changing landscape, however, is a relic of Austin’s past: the Pecan Grove RV Park. 

Texas Business reports: COLLEGE STATION, Texas—An innovative method for treating potentially fatal brain aneurysms by filling them with foam-like plastics is a step closer to clinical trials after demonstrating an ability to promote healing at unprecedented levels, said a Texas A&M University researcher who is developing the treatment. 

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Scientists at Rice University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have advanced on the goal of two-dimensional electronics with a method to control the growth of uniform atomic layers of molybdenum disulfide (MDS). 

Texas Business reports:  A Fort Worth firm won a $104.7 million contract change for military computing products, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Texas Business reports: FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla—iTalk Inc., a provider of advanced communications and mobile broadband services, acquired ITG, Inc., an established 17-year-old Texas-based international telecommunications company. 

Texas Business reports: EL PASO, Texas—U.S. Army and Lockheed Martin officials commissioned the first U.S. Department of Defense grid-tied microgrid integrating both renewable resources and energy storage at Fort Bliss, Texas. The project was funded by the DoD's Environmental Security Technology Certification Program. 

Texas Business reports: CHENGDU, China—Texas Instruments Incorporated outlined its long-term strategy for manufacturing facilities in Chengdu, China. Future plans include a new assembly/test operation and the expansion of its existing wafer fabrication factory. 

Texas Business reports:  AUSTIN—Luminex Corporation extended its global supply and distribution agreement with EMD Millipore—the Life Science division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. 

Texas Business reports: Immigrants, Latinos, and Asians account for growing shares of the economy and electorate in Texas, according to the Immigration Policy Center. Immigrants (the foreign-born) make up roughly 1 in 6 Texans, and one-third of them are naturalized U.S. citizens who are eligible to vote. 

Texas Business reports:  A Houston-area firm won a $16 million contract change, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Texas Business reports: A Boerne firm won a $16.7 million wood products contract, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Texas Business reports:  A Boerne firm won a $16.7 million to provide wood products, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. 

Texas Business reports: PLANO, Texas—ViewPoint Bank appointed Arcilia Acosta to the bank's board of directors.

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—VAALCO Energy Inc. named James B. Jennings as a new member of the company's board of directors.  

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—The Baylor College of Medicine Board of Trustees named business leader James T. Hackett as its chair. 

Texas Business reports:  PLANO, Texas—Working Solutions, a provider of custom contact center solutions, named Thomas Kim as chief financial officer. 

Texas Business reports: FORT WORTH—Approach Resources Inc. named Troy A. Hoefer as vice president – reservoir engineering. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Mirna Therapeutics named Sinil Kim vice president of oncology and chief medical officer. 

Texas Business reports: AUSTIN—Campus Advantage, a student housing company, has made Michael Orsak a shareholder and promoted him to senior vice president of investments where he will manage the company's portfolio of real estate and corporate investments, provide guidance on new investment opportunities and reach out to potential new business partners and investors. 

Texas Business reports: HOUSTON—Baker Hughes Incorporated named Mike Sumruld vice president and treasurer. 

Texas Business reports: DALLAS—Haggar Clothing Co. named Don Schneider as vice president director of sales. 

Texas Business reports: Chemists, biologists and engineers at The University of Texas at El Paso are developing a treatment to remove endocrine disrupting compounds (EDCs) in reclaimed water and drinking water. 

Texas Business reports: Texas factory activity increased sharply in May, according to business executives responding to the Texas Manufacturing Outlook Survey. The production index, a key measure of state manufacturing conditions, rose from -0.5 to 11.2, indicating a notable pickup in output.