The FY 94 Defense Appropriations Bill _is_ loaded with earmarks, but only $197M or so can be considered academic earmarks. (UPittsburgh gets $70M. House subcommittee chair John Murtha is from PA and an alumnus of UPittsburgh.) Efforts by George Brown (D-CA) helped protect competitive academic awards. [Robert L. Park (opa@aps.org), WHAT'S NEW, 11/26/93.]

The draft of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) treats research as a domestic subsidy. Government cost sharing in industry partnerships (e.g., SEMATECH) would be limited to 50% of basic industrial research or 25% of applied research. (These limits were set at the insistence of the Bush Administration.) The language is opposed by Bush's senior technology officials and by the Clinton Administration. [Robert L. Park (opa@aps.org), WHAT'S NEW, 11/26/93.]

NSF will hold three regional briefings about the NSF/ARPA/NASA Research on Digital Libraries initiative (NSF-93-141): Washington, DC, 10-12 am on 12/6/93 at the NAS auditorium, 2100 C Street NW; NCSA, UIllinois, 9-11 am on 12/20/93 (call Jim Bottum, jb@ncsa.uiuc.edu, 217-244-6832); and SDSC, UC San Diego, 9-11 am on 12/21/93 (reception@sdsc.edu, 619-534-5000). For information on the initiative, contact Gwen Barber (gbarber@nsf.gov), IRIS, (703) 306-1930. [Y.T. Chien (ytchien@nsf.gov), ciselist, 11/30/93.]

I don't know the source of funds, but the Centre for Image and Sound Research (Vancouver) is requesting proposals for online art, multimedia and telecommunications projects, interfaces, navigational aids, collaborative creative environments, etc. The Centre can provide hardware resources. Derek_Dowden @mindlink.bc.ca, (604) 737-3626, (604) 682-7909 Fax. [alt.wired, 11/23/93. Bill Park.]

Enterprise Integration Technologies (Menlo Park) and Smart Valley, Inc. have won an ARPA TRP grant of up to $4M/year for two years (plus matching state and private funds/equipment) to build CommerceNet, an "industrial strength" Internet using ISDN and multimedia software for commercial information exchange. Also involved are BARRNet and Stanford's Center for Information Technology (CIT), plus 20 industrial participants. CommerceNet is not directly targeted to defense needs. Security, white-pages directories, and billing systems will be high priorities. [Allan M. Schiffman (ams@eit.com), com-priv, 11/24/93. net-hap. Also Lee Gomes, SJM, 11/25/93.]