What's New @ IEEE-USA - Eye On Washington

1) CAPITOL HILL WATCH

• Outlook Grim: Hard Fought Immigration Reform Legislation Faces A Crowded Legislative Calendar As Well As "Ship-Jumpers."

• On the House Side: Doubtful There Will Be An Immigration Bill in Time for Action in July

• Is Lack of STEM Education Contributing to Offshoring of Jobs?

• YouTube: Not Just Much Fun for Law Firm Advocating H-1Bs

• Senate Passes Energy Legislation Sans Tax Incentives and a Renewable Electricity Mandate

• On the Other Side, Smaller Energy Tax Incentives Bill Passes House Committee

• And Still Further Action on Energy Legislation: House Committee Passes Legislation to Promote a Responsible Balance in Energy Reform

• Legislation to Promote Solar Energy Discussed in House

2) WHITE HOUSE & EXECUTIVE AGENCY WATCH

• Net Neutrality Backers Challenged In FCC Filings

3) REPORTS, SPEECHES & DOCUMENTS OF NOTE

• BHEF Report Urges Stakeholders to Address STEM Teaching Shortage

• Immigrant Entrepreneurs Emerge through Education

• GAO Reports

4) U.S. COURTS ACTIVITY

5) U.S. STATES WATCH

6) AWARDS & GRANTS

• National Science Foundation

7) CONFERENCES, FELLOWSHIPS, PROGRAMS & INTERNSHIPS FOR ENGINEERS, and STUDENTS and SCHOLARS OF ENGINEERING

8) LATEST IEEE-USA & IEEE ACTIVITIES

• Track IEEE-USA's Progress

• IEEE-USA In The News

9) U.S. COMPETITIVENESS & INNOVATION: WHO'S DOING WHAT TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE?

• IEEE-USA Resource Web Page - U.S. Competitiveness: The Innovation Challenge

10) OTHER ITEMS OF POSSIBLE INTEREST

1) CAPITOL HILL WATCH

• Outlook Grim: Hard Fought Immigration Reform Legislation Faces A Crowded Legislative Calendar As Well As "Ship-Jumpers."

Due to unresolved differences, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) pulled a previous version of the immigration bill (S 1348) from the floor on June 7th, and it now appears the new version of the bill (S 1639) introduced on June 18th , faces the same fate. (See Immigration Reform Dies in the Senate... For Now, in EOW, Vol. 2007, No. 6. 8 June 2007)

This week, Senate backers of the fragile deal drafted last-minute changes designed to sway colleagues concerned about border security and enforcement before the legislation returns to the floor. Reid set up a decisive vote to occur Friday, June 22nd, but the prospects of trying to finish the equally contentious energy legislation (HR 6) before then were doubtful. Thus, the immigration vote would be pushed to June 25 or 26. That means senators will be debating immigration in the days — and hours — before they leave for the week-long July 4th break.

Compounding matters is floundering support. Georgia Republicans Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss announced they would vote against moving the measure forward.  Both Senators helped broker the initial bipartisan deal. Isakson said that he and Chambliss had heard from voters that they lacked confidence in another measure that promises tougher border enforcement because past promises have yet to be fulfilled.

Senators critical of the current bill will aim 20 or so amendments at core elements of the bill, hoping to substantially alter or kill it. The amendments are evenly divided between the two parties, and go to the heart of a bipartisan deal that was negotiated behind closed doors and under the supervision of two Cabinet secretaries. Backers of the legislation repeatedly said that the basic tenets of the bargain must remain untouched for the group to hang together. Several amendments offered by both sides will test the influence of that group and determine whether the Senate can pass immigration legislation this year.

Democrats, aiming to appease constituency groups such as organized labor and Hispanics, intend to target the bill's merit-based visa system that favors skills, education and occupations over family ties. They also are looking to alter aspects of the bill that would allow businesses to employ temporary workers. Amendments include:

• Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) – amendment that more than doubles the number of green cards issued annually to parents of U.S. citizens, increasing the cap from 40,000 to 90,000; also increases the time frame that a parent of a U.S. citizen could stay in the country on a visa, from 30 days to 180 days.

• Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) – amendment to give family ties more weight in any point system that allows illegal immigrants to gain legal status.

• Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) – amendment to ban employers from hiring guest workers for a year if they fail to post those positions with state employment agencies; requires an employer to post the opening with such an agency 90 days before an application for a foreign worker is filed and for a period of one year after.

• Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – at least two amendments aimed at convincing GOP doubters that the current proposal — with some slight modifications — remains the best option for securing the border and stemming illegal immigration.

• Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.) – amendment to bar employers from hiring foreign workers if they have conducted mass layoffs. Visas for employment would not be approved until an employer has provided written certification, under penalty of perjury, to the secretary of Labor stating it has not had mass layoffs in the past 12 months. In the case where an employer has foreign workers at the time of a mass layoff, those visas would expire 60 days after notice has been sent.

• Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) – amendment allowing officials of federal, state or local government entities to question individuals about their immigration status if the officials have probable cause to believe the individuals lack legal status.

• Christopher Bond (R-Mo.) – amendment to prevent Z visa holders from earning green cards.

• John Thune (R-S.D.) – amendment to deny probationary benefits to the current illegal population until the bill's series of border security and enforcement triggers are met.

• John Ensign (R-Nev.) – amendment to strike a provision in the bill allowing illegal immigrants to petition in the first six months after the bill's passage to receive credit for Social Security taxes paid while using fraudulent identification to obtain work.

• On the House Side: Doubtful There Will Be An Immigration Bill in Time for Action in July

The House has yet to unveil a draft immigration bill. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is holding off on legislative action until the Senate passes its bill (S 1639) because she does not want to force a vote on a politically tough proposal if it will not become law.

"We had always hoped to have something done before the August recess," said Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the House Judiciary subcommittee that deals with immigration. "The longer the Senate takes, the more challenging that becomes."

Instead of committee mark-ups, Democratic leaders held "listening" sessions with rank-and-file lawmakers to discuss legislative options, but they may not have a bill ready before September. Pelosi has set a high bar for House consideration, including evidence of up to 70 Republican votes; important because bipartisan consensus means the bill can move quickly. However, estimates of the number of Republicans who would vote for a measure such as the one currently being considered by the Senate range from a dozen to three dozen, far less than the number that Pelosi wants to see.

Many caution that waiting until after the August recess means that the proximity of the 2008 election year and the rhetoric of the presidential campaign will add to the difficulty of clearing a major policy change on immigration law. "If it hasn't passed both houses by the end of July, it is toast," predicted Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) who wrote an immigration bill with Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.).

Democrats insist that Pelosi wants to pass an immigration bill and has made clear that she has little interest in bringing bills to the floor that divide Democrats. While the Democratic divisions have been obscured by Republican infighting, the reality is that the majority of House Democrats are likely to be at odds with swing-district colleagues, particularly freshmen worried about their new-found positions.

"I oppose the bill," said Jason Altmire, a freshman Democrat who unseated Republican Melissa Hart in western Pennsylvania's socially conservative 4th District. Being able to cast a vote against an immigration bill may not be a strong enough political shield for swing-district Democrats worried about 2008. "I wouldn't want this to be viewed as a Democratic initiative," Altmire said.

If the Senate does pass its version, supporters in both parties will pressure Pelosi to act quickly, which may explain the effort to build support through "listening" sessions before a bill has been unveiled.

• Is Lack of STEM Education Contributing to Offshoring of Jobs?

12 JUN: After listening to a diverse panel of experts on economic globalization explain why American high tech jobs are being offshored to other countries, Committee on Science and Technology Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX) noted, "Once upon a time it was thought that only low-skilled jobs were in danger of being offshored.  However, it seems that highly educated people in good paying jobs are now just as threatened."

Stressing the need for improved science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education Hall added, "In this global economy our children will be competing head to head with Chinese and Indian students, but they aren't taking the necessary classes or making their education work for them.  When our children graduate from high school they have taken consistently fewer classes in math and science than their contemporaries across the globe."

Hearing witnesses discussed the need to increase the quality of U.S. STEM education.  While developing countries like China and India are producing increased numbers of PhDs and engineers, the U.S. has seen a relative decline in the last decade. Dr. Thomas Duesterberg, President and Chief Executive Officer of Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, said, "To put our own house in order, we need to ratchet up investment in the sciences and engineering disciplines so crucial to innovation and to attracting the domestic students to these fields.

"Our research shows a clear link of university research with innovation," he continued.  "The experience of the massive investment in sciences in the 1960s, when nearly 1 percent of GDP was devoted to federally funded, non-defense, scientific research, which led to many of the technological breakthroughs at the core of American manufacturing success in the 1980s and 1990s, should also guide our thinking."

Dr. Martin N. Baily, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and senior adviser to McKinsey Global Institute, suggested that "Congress could add to the size of the workforce by providing more graduate scholarships in science and technology subjects that are available to US citizens and permanent residents."

While the witnesses disagreed on the best ways to provide incentives to keep high-tech jobs in the U.S., they all recognized offshoring as a problem.  One common cause was the fact that technology has effectively decreased barriers to entry for many service-based industries. 

"Advances in electronic communications have decreased or obliterated the advantages of physical proximity in a wide variety of service jobs, where the work can now be performed abroad and the work products delivered to the US by telephone or computer networks," said Dr. Alan Blinder, Professor of Economics at Princeton University.  "While still in its infancy, electronic offshoring has already begun to move well beyond traditional low-end jobs, such as call center operators, to highly-skilled jobs such as computer programmers, scientists and engineers, accountants, security analysts, and some aspects of legal work—to name just a few."   

• YouTube: Not Just Much Fun for Law Firm Advocating H-1Bs

A law firm found itself in the hot seat when a taping of a seminar they conducted for clients on hiring workers found its way onto the YouTube video-sharing site.  The law firm has since pulled the video from YouTube, but not before others took it and re-uploaded the video with some editorializing.  View one here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCbFEgFajGU. Excerpts from a Lou Dobbs report about the video also appear at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bsp2V3ifZjM.

Since the video appeared, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Ia.) and Congressman Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) sent a letter to the law firm, expressing their concern over the huge loopholes revealed by the YouTube videos.  They also sent a letter to Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao. They said the clip on YouTube is evidence of abuse in the program and they want answers from the law firm featured in the footage.  They always want the Labor Department to probe "the law firm's unethical procedures and advice to clients."

The letter to the firm stated, "We would like you to please explain how this practice does not constitute outright discrimination based on nationality and why your firm so blatantly promotes this type of behavior."

Its been noted that that, unfortunately, the letters confuse H-1B with employer-sponsored green cards.  But the two are highly related, as it has typically been the case that H-1Bs are also sponsored by the employers of green card employees.

• Senate Passes Energy Legislation Sans Tax Incentives and a Renewable Electricity Mandate

After much debate during the last month, the Senate finally passed H.R. 6., the Clean Energy Act of 2007, by a large margin – 65-27. Feuding over a renewable electricity mandate and a $32.1 billion tax package had threatened progress on the bill.  And when a cloture motion failed – a procedural move that would have prevented further debate on these items and forced a vote on the bill - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said H.R. 6 would move ahead without the tax provisions or the renewable mandate. Without cloture, it is unlikely the bill would have come up for a vote if these items remained in the bill. Reid chastised Republicans for helping the oil and gas industry, which would have borne much of the cost of the tax incentives intended to boost alternative energy sources.

Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) introduced the federal mandate for renewable electricity, a proposal requiring utilities to produce 15 percent of their electricity from renewable fuels by 2020. This turned out to be a big impediment to passage. Opponents of the requirement, especially those from southeastern states said their region cannot produce sufficient wind power and argued that the mandate would favor states that can exploit wind energy.

Bingaman called the electricity mandate a core part of H.R. 6 and offered a compromise to assuage the critics – one that allowed utilities that reduce power consumption by up to 4 percent through efficiency to count that toward their 15 percent mandate, or to buy efficiency credits from other utilities instead. But Pete Domenici, Bingaman's fellow NM Senator and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee's ranking Republican, called the mandate a poison pill for the entire bill. "This proposal would still require that 11 percent of electricity come from a limited number of sources, largely just wind energy," he said.

Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) added that the option was a tax on electricity and a "transfer of wealth" from the southeast to other parts of the country. Bingaman countered that utilities have plenty of options for meeting the mandate, including biomass, which uses items such as wood chips and agricultural waste to fire power plants. Private negotiations failed to produce a compromise on the electricity mandate.

The tax package included $28.6 billion in new and extended incentives for conservation and alternative energy sources and provided benefits for clean-coal technology, wind energy, hybrid cars and technology for capturing carbon-dioxide emissions. Republicans objected largely to the fact that the oil and gas industry would have paid for the new and extended tax breaks via higher taxes. The tax package prohibited the major oil companies from claiming a deduction for domestic manufacturers, and added a new tax on oil and gas extracted from the Gulf of Mexico for those companies that signed royalty-free leases.

Another of the most contentious items the energy debates did pass. The Senate voted to increase fuel economy standards. Ted Stevens (R-Ak.) offered the amendment to increase Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for all passenger cars and light trucks by roughly 40 percent by 2020, an average of 35 miles per gallon. Increased CAFE standards are one step towards combating global warming through environmentally responsible transportation.  IEEE-USA recently released a new position statement on another – PHEVs.  Read, Plug-In Electric Hybrid Vehicles here: http://www.ieeeusa.org/policy/positions/PHEV0607.pdf.

H.R. 6 also,

• requires the use of 15 billion gallons of biofuels — mostly ethanol — annually by 2015,
• provides grants for biofuels that emit less greenhouse gas,
• outlaws petroleum price gouging during a "national energy emergency,"
• provides requirements for the designation of national interest electric transmission corridors,
• amends the Sherman Act to make oil-producing and exporting cartels illegal,
• promotes the development of technologies to capture and store carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and industrial facilities, and
• sets stricter energy efficiency standards for household appliances. 

• On the Other Side, Smaller Energy Tax Incentives Bill Passes House Committee

While the Senate's version of energy tax incentives legislation was dying, the House Ways and Means Committee passed a smaller, $16 billion package – H.R. 2776, the Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Act of 2007. The House bill will come to the House floor after the July Fourth recess.

"This is an innovative bill to help America address concerns about climate change and energy security through the increased production and use of renewable energy," said Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY). "We have crafted a package of tax incentives that will foster the development of new technologies and encourage responsible, energy-efficient purchases by American consumers. Through a combination of tax incentives and new partnerships with state and local governments, we will help our country move away from dependence on foreign oil while addressing the growing concerns about global climate change."

The House and Senate bills differ in some significant ways. The House bill extends the main tax credit for producing electricity from renewable sources for four years, instead of the five-year extension that was in the Senate tax package, and closes the "Hummer tax loophole." That provision allows businesses to claim a tax advantage by purchasing certain luxury sport utility vehicles. On the revenue side, though both bills draw money from the oil and gas industry, the Senate bill went further by relying on a new tax on oil and gas taken from the Gulf of Mexico. That provision was intended to require companies which signed royalty-free extraction contracts in the 1990s to pay more.

• And Still Further Action on Energy Legislation: House Committee Passes Legislation to Promote a Responsible Balance in Energy Reform

By a slim margin, the House Natural Resources Committee passed legislation designed to balance the U.S.' ever-growing demand for energy and the need to tackle the harmful effects of climate change. H.R. 2337, the Energy Policy Reform and Revitalization Act of 2007, provides a framework to reinstate public accountability and integrity in the Interior Department's energy programs, advance alternative fuels and efficient energy strategies, promote carbon sequestration, and tackle the impacts of climate change on fish and wildlife resources.

"The fact is that the American people expect the Congress to deal with energy in a responsible and honest matter. They want us to reduce our reliance on foreign energy – but they want us to do it in a reasoned way that takes into consideration the costs to our well-being, our way of life, the health and safety of our energy-producing communities, and the legacy we leave to our children and grandchildren. I am confident that this legislation sets forth an appropriate and measured path for us to achieve just that," said committee chairman Nick Rahall (D-WV).

"From the start, the Committee took a different approach to considering energy legislation than in years past. We held 14 hearings leading up to the bill's introduction, heard from countless Administration officials, gave interested parties ample time to dissect the provisions of the legislation, conducted an open markup process that saw no less than 47 amendments offered by both Democrats and Republicans, and afforded every Member the opportunity to speak as we let the markup run its full course over a three-day period," he continued.

The legislation reflects the opinions and recommendations of over 100 witnesses who appeared before the Committee since January 2007, on issues ranging from climate change to the need to develop a more balanced national energy policy. H.R. 2337:

• Gives the federal government real enforcement authority to challenge those companies who do not pay federal oil and gas royalties as they should according to law. These provisions have no impact on the vast majority of companies that pay their royalties in full and on time.
• Authorizes a combination of voluntary guidelines and enforcement mandates for siting wind farms– a need affirmed by the Fish and Wildlife Service – to help ensure that the wind energy industry is able to develop and grow in a responsible manner.
• Initiates a framework for sequestering carbon dioxide under the ground to insure the future use of fuels, such as coal, in an environmentally responsible fashion – helping to mitigate the impact of global warming and addressing worldwide climate change.
• Adds a $1700 fee for the processing of an application for a permit to drill on federal lands.
• Extends the timeline for processing permits to drill on public lands from 30 to 90 days, giving the Bureau of Land Management the flexibility to issue permits as it is able.
• Eliminates the arbitrary deadlines of the western energy corridor process, and allows for a study to ensure that officials look at where congestion exists, and give consideration to those special places that should not have pipelines or wires.
• Provides for more responsible development of oil shale resources.
• Helps protect the right to healthy lands and waters for surface owners in split estate situations – areas in which the surface rights belong to private individuals, while the rights to the oil and gas resources under the surface are publicly held and managed by the government.
• Encourages the development of renewable resources through establishment of an innovative program to more effectively use woody biomass derived from brush, hazardous fuel reduction, and ecological restoration on federal forest lands. The bill also sets up a process for generating between 4 and 25 gigawatts of concentrating solar power on federal lands.
• Establishes a national ocean observation system to detect daily changes in the ocean.
• Directs the Secretary of the Interior to develop a national strategy to assist wildlife populations and their habitats in adapting to the impacts of climate change, and provides states with new funding opportunities to assist wildlife.

• Legislation to Promote Solar Energy Discussed in House

The House Science and Technology Subcommittee on Energy and Environment held a hearing on legislation promoting solar technologies. Witnesses representing the solar industry discussed H.R. 2774, the Solar Energy Research and Advancement Act of 2007 sponsored by Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).  The bill has bipartisan support but some are concerned about pushing the legislation without first addressing unanswered questions.

"As we discuss this proposal today, and move to markup, I hope we give adequate time to make the bill as good as it can be," said Subcommittee Ranking Member Bob Inglis (R-SC).  "America's scientists, engineers, inventors, and entrepreneurs realize the potential of solar power and other renewable sources, and I hope we can set policies that facilitate the development of these sources."

Ralph Hall (R-TX), Ranking Member of the full Science Committee, also stressed his support for researching a wide range of renewables, while also expanding our domestic fossil fuel capacity.  Hall said, "Renewable energies such as solar and wind show great potential, and we must continue to research technologies to advance them.  But while we figure out ways to better store renewable energy, we must also continue to expand our domestic fossil fuel capacity and figure out how to make these fuels cleaner and more efficient."

Witnesses agreed that barriers remain before the energy from renewable sources can replace fossil fuels on a widespread scale.  When asked about current barriers, Dr. Daniel Arvizu, Director of the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, lamented lack of storage saying, "Storage has continued to be the Achilles heel of renewable energy, and progress is slow." (On a side note, one of the 2007 WISE interns is working on this very issue.)

He continued, "If we had a better storage system, converting wind and solar energy into some kind of energy carrier, such as hydrogen or compressed air, would really change the economic equation of renewables considerably."

2) WHITE HOUSE & EXECUTIVE AGENCY WATCH

• Net Neutrality Backers Challenged In FCC Filings

In newly released FCC comments on whether network neutrality regulation is warranted to prevent hi-speed Internet services from potentially acting as content gatekeepers, the agency accuses companies such as Google – which support a "neutral" Internet - of prioritizing Web traffic in ways similar to those they are seeking to block for telecommunications and cable providers.

AT&T, a target of neutrality proponents, turned the tables in its FCC comments by emphasizing that Google, Microsoft and others, already benefit from priority treatment. "Applications and content providers that can afford access to the content distribution networks of Akamai, CacheLogic and others - or that can build their own such networks, as Google and Microsoft have done - enjoy marked performance advantages over rivals that cannot afford the use of such networks," AT&T added that no one considers those arrangements to be problematic or requiring regulation.

The National Cable and Telecommunications Association made a similar argument, asserting that "discrimination" at the Internet's content layer is pervasive. "Akamai speeds up content from favored sources like Google, Amazon and eBay," NCTA emphasized.

A Google spokesman responded that the firm does not equate reliance on services such as Akamai, which use caching technology to enable Web pages to download faster, with the discriminatory practices it is seeking to prohibit.

Art Brodsky, a spokesman for Public Knowledge, an advocacy group that supports net neutrality rules, agreed. He noted that consumers have ample choices for search engines and other Web content but not for broadband providers. "It's a total red herring -- a total diversion," he said of the AT&T and NCTA arguments. "The issue plain and simply is duopoly control over the provision of broadband."

Major telecom and cable companies want to establish priority Internet lanes featuring faster downloads accessible to entities for a fee. Critics say that would result in a two-tiered Internet that favors deep-pocketed players, so they are seeking legislation barring discriminatory behavior. Discord over net neutrality stalled telecom reform legislation last year; Congressman Rick Boucher (D-Va.) recently suggested it is delaying fresh telecom bills this year.

3) REPORTS, SPEECHES & DOCUMENTS OF NOTE

• Immigrant Entrepreneurs Emerge through Education

Immigrants who originally came to the U.S. to study and work have been a key driving force in America's technology and engineering startups for the last decade. A new study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation shows that more than half of the foreign-born founders of U.S. businesses in these areas initially came to the United States to study and nearly 40 percent entered the country following job opportunities. Only 1.6 percent came to the U.S. with the sole purpose of starting a company. The study demonstrates a strong link between entrepreneurship and educational attainment, particularly in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields. It shows that 96 percent of immigrant founders of technology and engineering companies held bachelor's degrees and 74 percent held graduate or postgraduate degrees – 75 percent of the highest degrees were in STEM fields. Overall, immigrant-founded companies produced $52 billion in sales and employed 450,000 workers in 2005. The countries most represented are India, United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, Japan and Germany. Access additional information about the report, Education, Immigration and Entrepreneurship: America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Part II.

• BHEF Report Urges Stakeholders to Address STEM Teaching Shortage

A new report by The Business-Higher Education Forum (BHEF) says, with a projected national shortage of more than 280,000 math and science teachers by 2015, key stakeholders must begin initiating strategies to recruit, retain and renew the nation's teaching workforce. The report provides a comprehensive action plan to transform the quality of the teaching workforce and address the growing shortfall of math and science teachers. The authors say the annual turnover rate for math teachers is the highest of all subject areas at 16.4 percent, followed by science teachers at 15.6 percent. In addition, U.S. students are losing ground to their international counterparts in math and science performance - areas imperative to American economic competitiveness.

BHEF hopes to emulate the success of past influential reports that have spurred Congress to introduce legislation to support improved teacher preparation, professional development and recruitment incentives. An American Imperative: Transforming the Recruitment, Retention, and Renewal of Our Nation's Mathematics and Science Teaching Workforce is available from BHEF at: http://www.bhef.com/

• GAO Reports

Rebuilding Iraq:  Integrated Strategic Plan Needed to Help Restore Iraq's Oil and Electricity Sectors  (GAO-07-677) 15 May 2007

Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07677high.pdf

Science and Technology:  Information on Federal Programs and Interagency Efforts That Support Small Businesses Engaged in Manufacturing (GAO-07-714) 18 May 2007

http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-07-714

Highlights - http://www.gao.gov/highlights/d07714high.pdf

4) U.S. COURTS ACTIVITY

No items at this time.

5) US STATES WATCH

No items at this time.

6) AWARDS & GRANTS

• National Science Foundation

The Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Talent Expansion Program (STEP) seeks to increase the number of students (U.S. citizens or permanent residents) receiving associate or baccalaureate degrees in established or emerging fields within science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Type 1 proposals are solicited that provide for full implementation efforts at academic institutions. Type 2 proposals are solicited that support educational research projects on associate or baccalaureate degree attainment in STEM.

For more information: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07570/nsf07570.htm

• AAAS Grant Site

The American Association for the Advancement of Science has a service called GrantsNet Express.  Each week GrantsNet will provide a listing of science funding opportunities from private foundations and organizations, and new U.S. government grant announcements in the sciences. AAAS will send GrantsNet by e-mail to AAAS member subscribers. The weekly emails will include: — New science funding programs, divided into opportunities for postdocs/graduate students and undergraduates — Submission deadlines for funding opportunities scheduled in the upcoming week — New listings of funding for science-related research.

7) CONFERENCES, FELLOWSHIPS, PROGRAMS & INTERNSHIPS FOR ENGINEERS, and STUDENTS & SCHOLARS OF ENGINEERING

No items at this time.

8) LATEST IEEE-USA & IEEE ACTIVITIES

• Track IEEE-USAs Progress

Review IEEE-USA's year-to-date progress in working for the IEEE U.S. members at the new IEEE-USA Year-in-Review Web page. Check out what IEEE-USA activities and programs helped the IEEE U.S. members in 2004 at the new IEEE-USA Annual Report online. And find out what's on IEEE-USA's agenda through 2009, with the new, online IEEE-USA Strategic & Operational Plan.

For the IEEE-USA Year-in-Review, go to: http://www.ieeeusa.org/about/yearinreview.asp

For the IEEE-USA Annual Report, go to: http://www.ieeeusa.org/about/Annual_Report/2004.pdf

For the IEEE-USA Strategic & Operational Plan, go to:

http://www.ieeeusa.org/volunteers/strategicplan/index.html

Read a full listing of IEEE-USA lobbying activities on our web site at: http://ieeeusa.com/policy/policy/index.html

Many newly approved position statements are now available online at:

http://ieeeusa.com/policy/positions/index.html

• IEEE-USA In The News

For more IEEE-USA in the News items, see: http://ieeeusa.org/communications/inthenews/default.asp.

9) U.S. COMPETITIVENESS & INNOVATION: WHO'S DOING WHAT TO ADDRESS THE ISSUE?

• IEEE-USA Resource  Web Page

U.S. Competitiveness: The Innovation Challenge  - A comprehensive list of reports and activities can be found at http://ieeeusa.org/policy/issues/innovation/index.asp

10) OTHER ITEMS OF POSSIBLE INTEREST

None at this time.

Top of Page | What's New@IEEE | EyeOnWash Archive | IEEE-USA

What's New @ IEEE-USAs Eye on Washington highlights important federal legislative and regulatory developments that affect U.S. engineers and their careers. In addition to this biweekly newsletter, subscribers receive legislative bulletins and action alerts on IEEE-USA priority issues, including: retirement security, employment benefits, research & development funding, computers and information policy, immigration reform, intellectual property protection and privacy of health/medical information.

You can change your IEEE-USA Eye on Washington subscription status by using the forms at http://whatsnew.ieee.org/ or at http://www.ieeeusa.org/emailupdates/.

Copyright © 2007, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.  Permission granted to copy for personal use or for non-commercial republication with appropriate attribution.

Updated: 22 June 2007