05Oct99 is National Techies Day, sponsored by CNET, Compaq, FedEx, Information Week, and others. The emphasis is on education and role modeling to interest young people in becoming techies to solve national problems. A company activity kit is available at -- host your own Dorito fest or field teams to local schools. [Halsey Minor , 20Aug99. Bill Park.]

Ralph Kuntz of Hamilton Scientific is looking for CPU cycles to help analyze medical data -- specifically factors affecting the success of urinary incontinence treatments -- via genetic algorithms coded in Java. Participants could finish a processing chunk in a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Contact . [comp.ai.neural-nets, 25Aug99.] (He says that he could use an in-house workstation cluster, but the Internet community approach allows a larger search space and may improve chances of publishing in a major medical journal.)

----- "I used to think that my brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this." -- Unknown. [Brandon Laws, 19Aug99.] -----