Microsoft has two generous graduate fellowship programs that are open to full-time students in all three of the core CSEE graduate programs: Computer Science, Computer Engineering and Electrical Engineering. These will provide support starting with the 2012-13 academic year and have application deadlines of October 6, 2011. The nominations come from the University, must be endorsed by the Department chair and at most three students per department can be nominated to each program. The programs are:

• The Graduate Women’s Scholarship Program, which is open to women starting their graduate studies in 2011-12.
• The Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship Program which is open to students starting the second or third year of their PhD program in 2011-12.

If you are interested in being considered, please read the descriptions of the programs, confirm your eligibility, discuss the opportunity with your advisor and inform your graduate director (Prof. Joshi for CS, Prof. Carter for CE and EE) of your interest by September 7. The graduate directors will select nominees by September 12 and inform the students, who will prepare their material by September 30.

• Test-taking techniques
• Time-saving methods
• Improving logical reasoning
• Practicing with sample tests
• Enhancing reading comprehension
• Reducing test anxiety

• Providing students with successful test management techniques
• Familiarizing students with question types specific to the GRE
• Teaching the logical, rhetorical, and mathematical problem-solving techniques relevant to the GRE
• Teaching essential grammatical and mathematical concepts and techniques in application to real test problems
• Identifying the specific problems posed by the GRE, and analyzing common test-taking errors
• Improving performance and reducing test anxiety through practice testing

The Associated Press and Google announced a scholarship program to foster digital and new media skills in student journalists. The AP-Google Journalism and Technology Scholarship program will provide $20,000 to six undergraduate or graduate students pursuing or planning to pursue degrees at "the intersection of journalism, computer science and new media during the 2012-2013 academic year."

The program is open to U.S. citizens who are college sophomores or higher with at least one year of full-time undergraduate or graduate study remaining. Applicants must submit a project or concept that explains how his or her strategy moves digital journalism forward. Applications are due by 27 January 2012.

Thanks to the L.A. Times!

Think before you click? Group boycotts Amazon over online sales tax.

Michele Bachmann wishes Elvis a happy birthday. Oh, wait…

Flash robbed: Mob cleans out Maryland convenience store.

Time to pay the consequences. U.K. begins to press charges against rioters.

And, 1 in 8 people use cell phones to avoid talking to other…we would have guessed more.

Image from International Business Times

It seems like all of the presidential candidates are taking a page out of Sarah Palin’s handbook because this week, everybody is on a bus.

While the GOP’s top tier members ride through early primary states, President Obama is taking his case to the Midwest .

The bus tour gives the “campaigner in chief” a chance to be seen beyond his day-to-day Washington backdrop.

Of course, not everybody is impressed.

The RNC describes the president’s effort to engage in a public dialogue about job growth and the economy at town halls and economic forums as ‘a totally non-political taxpayer-funded administration event that just happens to criss-cross several battleground states critical to the president’s re-election’ in the Obama critique, which is disguised as a briefing book.”

No word yet on their reaction to Rick Perry’s new ride.