Key components of federal policies to reduce fuel consumption include the promotion of alternatives to petroleum fuels and the promotion of more efficient vehicles. This report provides an overview of current issues surrounding alternative fuels and advanced technology vehicles — issues discussed in further detail in other CRS reports referred to in each section.

Federal and state law enforcement authorities have amassed large collections of DNA samples and the identifying profiles derived from them. These databases help to identify the guilty and to exonerate the innocent, but as the databanks grow, so do fears about civil liberties. The research reported here discusses three legal and social policy issues that have been raised in regard to these biobanks—the choice of loci to type for identifying individuals, the indefinite retention of DNA samples, and the use of the DNA samples or the identifying profiles for research purposes. It also considers the possible value of the databases for research into the genetics of human behavior and the ethics of using them for this purpose. It rejects the broad claim that such research is inherently unethical but proposes procedures for ensuring that the value of the proposed research justifies any psychosocial or other risks to the subjects of the research.

In summary our update contains: (1) Perfect speedup sustaining 19.3% of peak for the Wilson D D-slash Dirac operator. (2) Measurements of the full Conjugate Gradient (CG) inverter that inverts the Dirac operator. The CG inverter contains two global sums over the entire machine. Nevertheless, our measurements retain perfect speedup scaling demonstrating the robustness of our methods. (3) We ran on the largest BG/L system, the LLNL 64 rack BG/L supercomputer, and obtained a sustained speed of 59.1 TFlops. Furthermore, the speedup scaling of the Dirac operator and of the CG inverter are perfect all the way up to the full size of the machine, 131,072 cores (please see Figure II). The local lattice is rather small (4 x 4 x 4 x 16) while the total lattice has been a lattice QCD vision for thermodynamic studies (a total of 128 x 128 x 256 x 32 lattice sites). This speed is about five times larger compared to the speed we quoted in our submission. As we have pointed out in our paper QCD is notoriously sensitive to network and memory latencies, has a relatively high communication to computation ratio which can not be overlapped in BGL in virtual node …

Congress has long been concerned about whether U.S. policy advances the national interest in reducing the role of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles that could deliver them. China has taken some steps to mollify U.S. concerns about its role in weapons proliferation. Skeptics question whether China's cooperation in weapons nonproliferation has warranted President Bush's pursuit of stronger bilateral ties. This report discusses the national security problem of China's role in weapons proliferation and issues related to the U.S. policy response, including legislation, since the mid-1990s.

Congress has long been concerned about whether U.S. policy advances the national interest in reducing the role of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles that could deliver them. China has taken some steps to mollify U.S. concerns about its role in weapons proliferation. Skeptics question whether China's cooperation in weapons nonproliferation has warranted President Bush's pursuit of stronger bilateral ties. This report discusses the national security problem of China's role in weapons proliferation and issues related to the U.S. policy response, including legislation, since the mid-1990s.

This report discusses relevant congressional actions that lead to the passing of Defense budgets for FY2007.

Issues and legislation related to foreign students continue to arise. The funding and English-language competency of foreign students have raised concerns with some universities, advocacy groups, and other observers. Additionally, some recent legislation has focused on attracting foreign students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Legislation passed in the Senate (S. 2611) would create pathways to citizenship for foreign students in the STEM fields of study. Although there are provisions in this legislation for undergraduate students, the major focus has been on students obtaining advanced degrees.

This report examines various issues pertaining to foreign students in the United States. Since the Immigration Act of 1924, the United States has expressly permitted foreign students to study in U.S. institutions. Most foreign students are at least 18 years old and are enrolled in higher education programs. Foreign students are generally considered to enrich cultural diversity of the educational experience for U.S. residents as well as enhance the reputation of U.S. universities as world-class institutions. Concerns have arisen in recent years that have caused Congress to take a new look at the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) provisions that govern their admission.

Members of the armed forces on duty in designated combat areas can send personal correspondence, free of postage, to addresses in the United States. There has never been a comparable provision of free postage for letters or packages sent from family members in the United States to loved ones in wartime service overseas. This report discusses two bills (H.R. 923 and H.R. 2874) that were introduced in the 109th Congress that would have allowed family members and, in the case of H.R. 2874, certain charities to send letters and packages to servicemen and women in combat zones free of postage.

This report provides background and discussion of policy issues relating to U.S. ethanol production, especially ethanol made from corn.

This report discusses the Global Environment Facility (GEF), serves as a primary source of funding for several major international environmental concerns. It was designed to provide incremental additional funding for development projects, in order to allow incorporation of environmental considerations in four specified areas: climate change, ozone depletion, biological diversity, and international waters. In recent years, land degradation and persistent organic pollutants have been added to its agenda. The GEF has provided funding to more than 1,300 projects in 140 nations. Although the United States has participated in the GEF since its inception, its level of contributions to the GEF has varied widely, from $30 million in 1994 to a high of $167 million in 1999, and to $80 million in 2006.

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This report will attempt to illustrate the difference between the concepts of "monopoly" and "monopolization" by touching on the monopoly/monopolization thinking in the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

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The 1607-F7, 141-M Building Septic Tank waste site was a septic tank and drain field that received sanitary sewage from the former 141-M Building. Remedial action was performed in August and November 2005. The results of verification sampling demonstrate that residual contaminant concentrations support future unrestricted land uses that can be represented by a rural-residential scenario. These results also show that residual concentrations support unrestricted future use of shallow zone soil and that contaminant levels remaining in the soil are protective of groundwater and the Columbia River.

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A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program was created to increase the use of small businesses to meet federal research needs and commercialize the results of this research. To monitor the program, the Small Business Administration (SBA) requires participating agencies to provide, in a standard format, specific data on all SBIR awards they make. SBA then compiles these data into a database known as Tech-Net. Congress also required SBA to create, by 2001, a restricted and more comprehensive database that would provide information for government agencies to use in evaluating the program. GAO was asked to identify the (1) types of data that agencies report to SBA for inclusion in the Tech-Net database, (2) extent to which these data are provided in a standard format, (3) extent to which SBA has established the government-use database, and (4) extent to which SBIR agencies have developed and implemented techniques to track commercialization of SBIR projects. GAO reviewed 8 of the 11 agencies participating in SBIR."

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