This report discusses the visa security and visa policy questions, debated in the 112th Congress.. The policy questions center on whether immigration law needs to be strengthened, whether funding should be increased, and which agency should take the lead.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) allows eligible nationals from 36 member countries to travel to the United States for tourism or business for 90 days or less without a visa. In 2007, Congress required the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Secretary of State, to implement an automated electronic travel authorization system to determine, prior to travel, applicants' eligibility to travel to the United States under the VWP. Congress also required all VWP member countries to enter into an agreement with the United States to share information on whether citizens and nationals of that country traveling to the United States represent a security threat. In 2002, Congress mandated that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) review, at least every 2 years, the security risks posed by each VWP country's participation in the program. In this report, GAO evaluates (1) DHS's implementation of an electronic system for travel authorization; (2) U.S. agencies' progress in negotiating informationsharing agreements; and (3) DHS's timeliness in issuing biennial reports. GAO reviewed relevant documents and interviewed U.S., foreign government, and travel industry officials in six VWP countries."

This report provides roll call vote data identified by the Congressional Research Service for measures to adjust the statutory debt limit.

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "The Department of Defense (DOD) prepositions equipment to help ensure combat-ready forces receive equipment in days rather than the weeks it would take if it had to be moved from the United States to their location. Prepositioned stocks may also support activities including disaster relief and humanitarian assistance. As GAO's third report in response to Congress's annual reporting requirement, GAO assessed the extent to which DOD has (1) met the six reporting requirements in the annual report to Congress on its prepositioned stocks, and whether additional information may be needed related to those requirements; (2) developed effective departmentwide guidance on prepositioned stocks to achieve national military objectives; and (3) organized effectively to provide joint oversight over its prepositioning programs and achieve efficiencies. To meet these objectives, GAO reviewed relevant DOD reports, strategies, and policies, and met with DOD and service officials in the U.S., Kuwait, and Qatar."

"The purpose of this report is to describe the water quality of the Blaine Aquifer, particularly as compared with public drinking water standards, and to analyze, if possible, any changes in water quality over time."

Technology developed for the NLC and for recent high gradient research may help building advanced {approx}fs beam diagnostics.

Pamphlet providing information on Daingerfield State Park including descriptions of facilities, fees, and equipment rentals.

This report describes a hydrogen production cost analysis of a collection of optimized central wind based water electrolysis production facilities. The basic modeled wind electrolysis facility includes a number of low temperature electrolyzers and a co-located wind farm encompassing a number of 3MW wind turbines that provide electricity for the electrolyzer units.

Wind Powering America national technical director Ian Baring-Gould made this presentation about workforce development in the wind energy industry to an audience at the American Wind Energy Association's annual WINDPOWER conference in Anaheim. The presentation outlines job projections from the 20% Wind Energy by 2030 report and steps to take at all levels of educational institutions to meet those projections.

On April 21, 2011, an Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Land Use Committee meeting was convened to develop a wind farm recommendation for the Executive Council and a list of proposed actions for proceeding with the recommendation. In terms of land use, the INL Land Use Committee unanimously agrees that Site 6 is the preferred location of the alternatives presented for an INL wind farm. However, further studies and resolution to questions raised (stated in this report) by the INL Land Use Committee are needed for the preferred location. Studies include, but are not limited to, wind viability (6 months), bats (2 years), and the visual impact of the wind farm. In addition, cultural resource surveys and consultation (1 month) and the National Environmental Policy Act process (9 to 12 months) need to be completed. Furthermore, there is no documented evidence of developers expressing interest in constructing a small wind farm on INL, nor a specific list of expectations or concessions for which a developer might expect INL to cover the cost. To date, INL assumes the National Environmental Policy Act activities will be paid for by the Department of Energy and INL (the environmental assessment has only received partial funding). …

As the United States dramatically expands wind energy deployment, the industry is challenged with developing a skilled workforce and addressing public resistance. Wind Powering America?s Wind for Schools project addresses these issues by: 1) Developing Wind Application Centers (WACs) at universities; WAC students assist in implementing school wind turbines and participate in wind courses. 2) Installing small wind turbines at community 'host' schools. 3) Implementing teacher training with interactive curricula at each host school.

Report on the results of the power performance test that the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) conducted on Entegrity Wind System Inc.'s EW50 small wind turbine.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) Wireless Roadside Inspection (WRI) Program is researching the feasibility and value of electronically assessing truck and bus driver and vehicle safety at least 25 times more often than is possible using only roadside physical inspections. The WRI program is evaluating the potential benefits to both the motor carrier industry and to government. These potential benefits include reduction in accidents, fatalities and injuries on our highways and keeping safe and legal drivers and vehicles moving on the highways. WRI Pilot tests were conducted to prototype, test and demonstrate the feasibility and benefits of electronically collecting safety data message sets from in-service commercial vehicles and performing wireless roadside inspections using three different communication methods. This report summarizes the design, conduct and results of the Tennessee CMRS WRI Pilot Test. The purpose of this Pilot test was to demonstrate the implementation of commercial mobile radio services to electronically request and collect safety data message sets from a limited number of commercial vehicles operating in Tennessee. The results of this test have been used in conjunction with the results of the complimentary pilot tests to support an overall assessment of the feasibility and benefits of WRI in …

"In this report the goal of the project was to develop implementation guidance that the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) can use to make better decisions regarding when and where to use positive protection in work zones and when to consider exposure control and other traffic control measures that could improve work zone safety."

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This document is a reference guide to the Xyce Parallel Electronic Simulator, and is a companion document to the Xyce Users Guide. The focus of this document is (to the extent possible) exhaustively list device parameters, solver options, parser options, and other usage details of Xyce. This document is not intended to be a tutorial. Users who are new to circuit simulation are better served by the Xyce Users Guide. The Xyce Parallel Electronic Simulator has been written to support, in a rigorous manner, the simulation needs of the Sandia National Laboratories electrical designers. It is targeted specifically to run on large-scale parallel computing platforms but also runs well on a variety of architectures including single processor workstations. It also aims to support a variety of devices and models specific to Sandia needs. This document is intended to complement the Xyce Users Guide. It contains comprehensive, detailed information about a number of topics pertinent to the usage of Xyce. Included in this document is a netlist reference for the input-file commands and elements supported within Xyce; a command line reference, which describes the available command line arguments for Xyce; and quick-references for users of other circuit codes, such as Orcad's …

This manual describes the use of the Xyce Parallel Electronic Simulator. Xyce has been designed as a SPICE-compatible, high-performance analog circuit simulator, and has been written to support the simulation needs of the Sandia National Laboratories electrical designers. This development has focused on improving capability over the current state-of-the-art in the following areas: (1) Capability to solve extremely large circuit problems by supporting large-scale parallel computing platforms (up to thousands of processors). Note that this includes support for most popular parallel and serial computers; (2) Improved performance for all numerical kernels (e.g., time integrator, nonlinear and linear solvers) through state-of-the-art algorithms and novel techniques. (3) Device models which are specifically tailored to meet Sandia's needs, including some radiation-aware devices (for Sandia users only); and (4) Object-oriented code design and implementation using modern coding practices that ensure that the Xyce Parallel Electronic Simulator will be maintainable and extensible far into the future. Xyce is a parallel code in the most general sense of the phrase - a message passing parallel implementation - which allows it to run efficiently on the widest possible number of computing platforms. These include serial, shared-memory and distributed-memory parallel as well as heterogeneous platforms. Careful attention has …

With limited natural resources, a crippling illiteracy rate, and high population growth, Yemen faces an array of daunting development challenges that some observers believe make it at risk for becoming a failed state in the next few decades. As the country's population rapidly rises, resources dwindle, and terrorist groups take root in the outlying provinces, the Obama Administration and the 111th Congress are left to grapple with the consequences of Yemeni instability. As President Obama and the 111th Congress reassess U.S. policy toward the Arab world, the opportunity for improved U.S.-Yemeni ties is strong, though recurring tensions over counterterrorism cooperation and lack of U.S. interest in Yemen within the broader foreign policy community persist.

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