NSF's Office of Science and Technology Infrastructure (OSTI) has been restructured and renamed the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA). [NSF Bulletin, Jun98.]

NSF's Phase 2 Digital Libraries Initiative announcement can be found at . Funding partners include DARPA, NLM, LoC, NASA, NEH, the National Archives, and the Smithsonian Institution. Proposals are due 15Jul98. [08May98.]

NSF's Faculty Early Career (CAREER) proposals are due 22Jul98. and . [Maria Zemankova , dbworld, 08May98.]

Other upcoming NSF deadlines include Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR; NSF 98-54), 12Jun98, or (703) 306-1390; Integration of Research and Education at Baccalaureate Institutions, 17Jun98; Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training Program (IGERT) preproposals, 01Jul98; Human Cognition and Perception, 15Jul98; Linguistics, 15Jul98; Science and Technology Studies, 01Aug98; Instrumentation Grants for Research in CISE, 05Aug98; Special Projects in Networking, 15Aug98; Decision, Risk, and Management Science, 15Aug98; Methodology, Measurement, and Statistics (MMS), 15Aug98. [grants, 18May98.]

The FY 1999 NSF Regional Grants Conference will be at UKansas (Lawrence) this year, 13-15Oct98. Workshops include special programs, proposal preparation, merit review, and awards administration. or (703) 306-1243. [grants, 18May98.]

If you are responding to a request for proposal (RFP) or other grant/contract solicitation, note the evaluation criteria. You can help your reviewers by listing the requirements with references to proposal pages and paragraphs where supporting text can be found. [Rebecca Claycamp, Fedix OA, May98.]

The President's Committee on the National Medal of Science is soliciting nominations. . [Maria Zemankova , dbworld, 21May98.] (Maria would like to see nominations from computer and information science and engineering, to bring favorable attention to our field.)

The Alan T. Waterman Award is presented annually to an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering. Nominations are due 31Oct98. Contact Susan Fannoney at NSB, (703) 306-1096. [grants, 18May98.]

Ed Lowry is offering a $5K prize to anyone who can refute his claim that, in the limit of a sufficiently large and diverse set of applications, total complexity of language plus applications code is minimized by a particular tree-like data structure with pointers to at most a parent, two siblings, and two children. , . [Edward S. Lowry , dbworld, 15May98.]

Luciano Floridi is requesting comments on a draft book chapter, "Artificial Intelligence: A Light Approach" from "Philosophy and Computing." HTML and PostScript formats, . [, comp.ai.philosophy, 17May98.]

Johns Hopkins U. APL (Laurel, MD): PhD asst. supervisor in HCI, HPC, intelligent DB, cognitive modeling, information warfare, etc.

Florida Atlantic U. (Boca Raton): MS/PhD CS prof/instructor.

USL/SUBR (Lafayette/Baton Rouge, LA): prof in multimedia IR and geo-referenced digital libraries.

Xaim (Colorado Springs): BS programmer in NN.

CA: Prolog developers in DB, KR.

Sunnyvale, CA: MS/PhD in Java, constraint reasoning, search engines.

The City U. (UK): research students in partitioned feed-forward NN.

USheffield (UK): PhD students in fuzzy logic, NN, GA, adaptive control.

UPlymouth (Devon, UK): grad students in evolutionary/adaptive computing, computational intelligence.

UYork (UK): grad students in AI, automated reasoning, natural language learning.

East Anglia, UK: developer in AI, NN, artificial life.

UWest of England (Bristol, UK): PhD bursaries in GA, ML, NN.

UWales (Aberystwyth): EU PhD studentships in bioinformatics, model-based reasoning, AI.

UEdinburgh (Scotland): PhD studentship in learning, inductive logic programming.

Carmen Systems (Gothenburg, Sweden): programmer in optimization, constraint programming.

"Programming with {SETS}" is a new Web site and forum for computational uses of set theory. , or in Europe. [Logic Programming Research Association , comp.constraints, 18May98. David Joslin.]

bioinf is a scientific discussion list for bioinformatics and any related fields. Send a "subscribe your@address" message to , or see the archives at . You may also sign up at . [, NEW-LIST, 13Nov97.]

For fuzzy logic in biomedical applications, or anything to do with biomedicine, try searching the National Library of Medicine database at . [William Siler , comp.ai.fuzzy, 12May98.]

Java-Mapping is a list for developers of Java-based mapping software and non-commercial GIS class libraries. Send a "join java-mapping your name" message to . . [new-lists, 02Apr98.]

Chadwick Investment Group is offering 10MB of free historical time series at , for currencies, bonds, and commodities. The S&P 500 data file is the daily open/high/low/close/volume/open interest from 21Apr82 to 20Mar98. It's a 200KB zip file of comma-separated ASCII, which expands to a 4,025-row spreadsheet. [, misc.invest.options, 31May98. Bill Park.]

A CMU study found that 22% of students, faculty, and staff report symptoms of repetitive stress injury (RSI). Harvard, MIT, and other universities are also reporting increased incidence of RSI. Students are learning bad typing habits in elementary school and high school. [Washington Post, 17May98. EduP.]

RSI comes from *repetitive* stress, especially small typing motions that don't lubricate your tendon sheaths. Use large motions, with frequent pauses. Keep your fingers curved and wrists straight while typing, and avoid click-and-drag motions of your mouse. Let your forearms float while typing, but use a wrist or forearm rest at other times. Don't keep any muscle tense for more than three minutes without a break, and stop every now and then to bend your fingers backwards or to shake your hands and restore circulation. (The traditional Indian "Namaste" greeting is a good hand stretch. Perhaps your computer will work better if you occasionally acknowledge the divinity within it.) You might also pull on your fingers occasionally to realign the joints. If trouble develops, try ice packs and slowly applied stretches, with warm-down stretches after typing sessions.

"Balance applies to our mind, body and emotions, to all levels of our being. It reminds us that anything we do, we can overdo or underdo." -- Dan Millman. [QotD, 19May98.]

dadslist (formerly dadlist) is about men staying home to be children's primary caregiver. Send a "subscribe dadslist your name" message to . . [Hal Levy , NEW-LIST, 03Apr98.]

The Intellectual Discussion List is an unmoderated general discussion for college-level participants. Send a "sub intellect" message to , or visit . Archives are on . [Adam An-tAthair-Siorai , NEW-LIST, 04Apr98.]

SF Bay Area bookstores are seeing a dramatic surge in sales of spiritual titles: paganism, near-death, inspiration, self-discovery, creativity, Zen, Taoism, Feng Shui, Buddhism, yoga, bodywork, meditation, etc. Author events at East/West Bookshop (Mountain View) have drawn 900 people at $30 each. Many of the 23 spirituality bookstores in SF and the Peninsula are now having trouble competing with mainstream bookstores. Ditto for Shambhala, Sunrise, and Lewin's Metaphysical in Berkeley, and Ram Metaphysical Bookstore in San Jose. Many baby boomers are now moving from Robert Ringer's "Winning Through Intimidation" to Laurence Boldt's "Zen and the Art of Making a Living." The new popularity is drawing in new authors, over half of them with advanced degrees. [Eric Johnson, SJM, 25Apr98, 1E.]

-- Ken