The USS Hopper, a 500-foot destroyer using stealth technology, is one of the most capable warships ever built. This is only the second US Navy ship named after a woman, computing pioneer and COBOL developer Rear Adm. Grace Murray Hopper. The ship is affectionately nicknamed "Amazing Grace," also after the admiral. [SJM, 06Sep97. EduP.] (Contrary to media reports, the moth that her aide pulled out of their computer relays and taped to a trouble report was not the first bug in electronic equipment. A more interesting incident was when her team replace "jump" with "sprunge" and likewise for other COBOL keywords. When they offered a demo, Pentagon brass were so upset at the idea of an American computer "speaking German" that she had to claim it was a hoax.)

President Clinton has named 60 young researchers to receive up to $500K each, over five years, through the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) program. Awards are given through the Departments of Agriculture (3), Commerce (4), Defense (7), Energy (7), Veterans' Affairs (2), and Transportation, the EPA, NIH (11), NASA (6), and NSF (20). [The White House, 23Oct97. Maria Zemankova , IRLIST, 03Nov97.] (Congratulations to Renee J. Miller of Ohio State University/CIS, among the other NSF winners. Her winning project is "Managing Schematic Heterogeneity in Database Management Systems." .)

UMichigan's DRDA website posts NSF program announcements for the current month. ("What's New"). [Kathy Adams , umich.eecs.announce, 03Nov97.]

The City of Los Angeles Private Industry Council is sponsoring 1-year graduate fellowships at the USC Integrated Media Systems Center beginning Jan98, for MS degrees with specialization in multimedia and creative technologies. Applicants must be "dislocated" engineers or computer scientists. 19Nov97 deadline. , (213) 740-8415, . [Ken Stuart , la.jobs, 04Nov97.]