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The No Child Left Behind act allows secondary science teachers to obtain certification in General Science and subject-specific fields. The Texas Examination of Educator Standard in General Science has low life science contents (30 percent) while the subject-specific exam is higher (75 percent). The state presumes both groups of teachers would teach biology with equal efficacy if candidates did not earn an undergraduate degree in biology or a related field. This study assessed the Personal Efficacy and Outcome Expectancy of the generalist and subject-specific certified teachers for 562 biology teachers in Texas public high schools using adapted Science Teaching Efficacy Belief Instrument. While controlling for undergraduate degree major and teaching experience, a hierarchical multiple regression analysis showed that subject-specific and General Science certifications did not yield significant differences. An undergraduate major in teaching subject, biological science, predicted a higher level of each sub-construct than a major in a different field. 

The current three sigma tension in the unitarity test of the Cabbibo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix is a notable problem with the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. A long-standing goal of the study of free neutron beta decay is to better determine the CKM elementV_udthrough measurements of the neutron lifetime and a decay correlation parameter. The Nab collaboration intends to measurea, the neutrino-electron correlation, with accuracy sufficient for a competitive evaluation ofV_udbased on neutron decay data alone. This paper gives a status report and an outlook.