CRA-Women is accepting applications for the 2014 Graduate Cohort for Women. Cohort activities will kick off with a workshop 11-12 April 2014 in Santa Clara, CA. This workshop is the cornerstone of CRA-W’s efforts to increase the ranks of senior women in computing by building and mentoring nationwide communities of women during their graduate studies.

Women students in their first, second, and third year of graduate school in computer science and engineering or a closely related field, who are studying at a U.S. or Canadian institution. Travel expenses, meals and lodging will be provided for students chosen to participate in this program.

At the Grad Cohort Workshop, women graduate students in their first year of graduate school will be welcomed into the community of computing researchers and professionals by providing them with a broad range of strategies and role models. Strategies and mentoring for students in their second and third years of graduate school will also be provided.

All of the students will meet for two days with ~20 senior computing researchers and professionals who will share pertinent information on graduate school survival skills, as well as more personal information and insights into their experiences. The rewards of a research career will be emphasized. This workshop will include a mix of formal presentations and informal discussions and social events. Through the workshop, students will be able to build mentoring relationships and develop peer networks that will form the basis for ongoing activities during their graduate careers. Also, participants will be able to network with our generous sponsors to learn about career and internship opportunities they have available.

See http://bit.ly/crawgcw for more information about the Grad Cohort program. Apply by December 4, 2013.

CRA-Women is accepting applications for the 2014 Graduate Cohort for Women. Cohort activities will kick off with a workshop 11-12 April 2014 in Santa Clara, CA. This workshop is the cornerstone of CRA-W’s efforts to increase the ranks of senior women in computing by building and mentoring nationwide communities of women during their graduate studies.

Women students in their first, second, and third year of graduate school in computer science and engineering or a closely related field, who are studying at a U.S. or Canadian institution. Travel expenses, meals and lodging will be provided for students chosen to participate in this program.

At the Grad Cohort Workshop, women graduate students in their first year of graduate school will be welcomed into the community of computing researchers and professionals by providing them with a broad range of strategies and role models. Strategies and mentoring for students in their second and third years of graduate school will also be provided.

All of the students will meet for two days with ~20 senior computing researchers and professionals who will share pertinent information on graduate school survival skills, as well as more personal information and insights into their experiences. The rewards of a research career will be emphasized. This workshop will include a mix of formal presentations and informal discussions and social events. Through the workshop, students will be able to build mentoring relationships and develop peer networks that will form the basis for ongoing activities during their graduate careers. Also, participants will be able to network with our generous sponsors to learn about career and internship opportunities they have available.

See http://bit.ly/crawgcw for more information about the Grad Cohort program. Apply by December 4, 2013.

CSEE Professor and director of the chess program Alan Sherman with the team that will represent UMBC at the 2013 Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship next month in Lubbock, Texas.  The top four qualifying schools from the PanAms go on to compete in the Final Four of college chess, held in the spring. The winner is considered national champion and takes home the President’s Cup.

M.S. Thesis Defense
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Fabrication and Characterization of a

Pd Nanowire-based Glucose Biofuel Cell

Kweku Amoah

10:30-12:30 Monday, 25 November 2013, ITE 346

The use of glucose as a biofuel has received a lot of attention in part due to the potential applications of such systems. In addition to the being a clean energy alternative, it provides a pathway for implantable microelectronic devices such as pacemakers to be powered by interstitial fluid and eliminate the need for batteries. Furthermore, using interstitial fluid as power sources will drastically reduce necessary invasive surgeries to replace batteries. Additionally, cost to such patients will be reduced while quality of life enhanced. The research presents a unique platform for harvesting energy from glucose. Using semiconductor cleanroom techniques, electrically conductive palladium nanowires are grown on anodized aluminum oxide (AAO) templates using silicon and glass as supporting substrates. Photolithography is used to create two non-continuous gold windows and contact pads on the substrates. AAO templates are attached to the two gold windows and palladium nanowires are electrochemically grown on the AAO templates. Glucose oxidase and catalase are immobilized on the anode and laccase on the cathode. In the presence of glucose, electrons are released that generate voltage and current. The current-voltage behavior of the fuel cell, as well as electrochemical properties, is characterized using standard performance metrics. In 0.5 moles per liter of glucose solution with a neutral pH of 7.3, the open circuit voltage obtained was 335 mV and the short circuit current of 6 µA to yield a maximum power output of 2.01µW.

Committee: Drs. Gymama Slaughter (Chair), Fow-Sen Choa and Joel Morris

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.

To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot

Playstation 4: The Review http://depot.ly/r5ARW

Nice: #WordPress Admin Theme Redesign http://depot.ly/r5yWF

“How I Got My First 1000 Users in 1 Day” – Ryan Friedman, founder of Popcorn Messaging http://depot.ly/r4YsX

Gratisography: Fresh Service for Free Photos http://depot.ly/r4Yix  via @NoupeMag

Bright, bizarre and brilliant illustrations from John Chae http://depot.ly/r2QlK

Buck Web Design Trends: Tips for Finding New Design Inspiration http://depot.ly/r0yVi  via @justcreative

Great list of free Photoshop extensions for web designers http://depot.ly/r0wV3  via @speckyboy

WebGL With Three.js: Basics http://depot.ly/r0umF  via @nettuts

Get inspired by @DigitalMagAward ‘s Cover of the Year 2013 http://depot.ly/r0r4l

Let your ugly sweater fantasies run wild at Coke Zero’s new site http://depot.ly/r0pmO

Google opens Winter Wonderlab pop-up shops showcasing latest gadgets http://depot.ly/qYdUR  via @verge

So here’s a guide on how not to suck online – http://www.howtonotsuckonline.com

Case Study: The Atomic Design process for the new responsive TechCrunch site http://depot.ly/qY92e

Interesting read: ​How to Train Google Now to Give You Better Suggestions http://depot.ly/qVQVX

The Future Of Video In Web Design http://depot.ly/qVQiA  via @smashingmag

This is rad: 1mm Spencerian signature http://depot.ly/qVPwv

A good lesson on how to use #CSS filters http://depot.ly/qVP9P

Nice tutorial from Simon Tofield (Simon’s Cat) on how to draw a hedgehog http://depot.ly/qVCtj

Want more? No problem! Keep track of all our tweets by following us @DesignerDepot

Webtones: 1,000 Multimedia Sound Effects Library – only $27!

               Alcoholics, it goes without saying, aren’t exactly the highest-esteemed members of society. At best, they’re regarded as lost souls; at worst, they’re viewed as cretins and screw-ups.

                 Well in the Netherlands, the alcoholic’s moment of respectability and worth seems to have finally arrived. And the best part? They don’t even have to change.

               Thanks to collaboration with a charity known as the Rainbow Foundation, the Amsterdam government has launched a program employing alcoholics to clean its streets. Only instead of a paycheck, these fellows receive…beer.

               Leave it to the Dutch to think of something so deviously clever.

               Morally questionable? Certainly. Tasteless? Maybe. After all, quite a few would object to the idea of enabling men with a serious addiction.

               But hey, the Dutch get clean streets, and the alcoholics are now apparently more aid than bane to their fellow citizens.

               And to be fair, the Western Hemisphere isn’t exactly free of substance-abusing public servants. Ahem, gentlemen?

What’s all this talk about a “nuclear option,” you ask?

Is it the Russians? The Iranians? Is the Cold War back with a vengeance?

No, it’s probably just the media trying its hardest to make a story about parliamentary procedure sound interesting.

Yes, there has been intense media sensationalism surrounding the change in the Senate Filibuster rule.

This change will require only a majority of votes for executive and non-Supreme-Court judicial nominations (in contrast to the 60% required now).

Majority doesn’t seem so bad, right?  Some are not so sure… the rule change is likely to cause major changes in the way the Senate does business, during this Congress and those elected in the future.

For one, many long-standing vacancies on federal courts and agencies will now be filled. Hopefully, this will allow the government and the court system to run more efficiently.

But many political analysts believe the rule change will have broader more precarious consequences.

According to Ezra Klein of the Washington Post, the filibuster for legislation might be on the way out as well:

The filibuster now exists in what you might call an unstable equilibrium. It theoretically forces a 60-vote threshold on important legislation. But it can — and now, in part, has —been undone with 51 votes. Its only protection was the perceived norm against using the 51-vote option. Democrats just blew that norm apart. The moment one party or the other filibusters a consequential and popular bill, that’s likely the end of the filibuster, permanently.

Is this really “the end of the filibuster?”

Should pure majority rule come to the Senate, as it exists in the House?

Will Congress be more or less dysfunctional post-nuke?

Let us know what you think in the comments section below.

Nestled in a small valley, the Bosnian town of Zenica is pretty grim.

Chimney smoke bellowing from a steel plant pollutes the air, and the number of cancer patients doubled between 2002 and 2011.

Couldn’t get worse than that, right?

Imagine you are in a prison in this town.

This past week, Vice Magazine took a look inside the largest incarceration facility in Bosnia, which is located in Zenica. With the enormous pollution problem and a low prison-maintenance budget, you can imagine how terrible life is for the inmates.

Check out some of these scary stories:

• An inmate who was diagnosed with several psychological disorders swallowed a rusty spoon that ripped through the muscles in his stomach to receive medical attention for the tumor on his abdomen. After his request wasn’t granted, the inmate swallowed another spoon.
• Many of the inmates have nicknames based on the objects they’ve used to harm themselves, such as razorblades, scissors and needles.
• An inmate spent a freezing cold night in a tree while his fellow prisoner’s cheered him on below. 
• One inmate, who was jailed for stealing food for his orphaned siblings, was promised a stack of cigars in exchange for sex. He sought legal counsel after he was raped instead. Even though the inmate didn’t receive the cigars, the legal officials “concluded that the sexual act couldn’t qualify as rape because it was part of an agreed transaction of goods.”

Furthermore, the prison guards seem to view escape attempts as “acts of attention seeking.”  Here’s a description from the reporter who visited the prison:

The officers tend to have a pretty shallow understanding of prisoners’ behavior; they receive a minimal amount of training and any instructional sessions they get while on the job are organized sporadically by NGOs. There are also rumors that—as with many other professions in Bosnia’s public sector—you can buy a position as a prison guard. I don’t expect every guard to be an empathetic superhuman with a psychology degree, but clearly this isn’t a situation that attracts the best candidates for the job.

We are aware that prisons are not meant to be 4 star hotels. But how bad is too bad when it comes to a prison’s living conditions? Is this a rightful punishment, or is this a violation of human rights?

Since the 1970s, China has been defined by its one-child policy.

Since last Friday, the Chinese government is now allowing parents to have a second child if one of the parents is themselves a single-child.

The new ruling was released by the Communist Party Central Committee and dubbed by the Wall Street Journal “the most dramatic policy change out of leaders’ recent party conclave”.

 Don’t expect a huge spike yet. Wang Pei’an, deputy director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC), noted that the new policy will not apply to a huge portion of the population.

Currently, the population 60 years and older makes up 14.3% of the population. In 2050, over one third of the Chinese population is expected to be over 60.

With this growing age group, labor shortages are inevitable. The loosened one-child policy may be a response to this looming crisis.

If anything, we can guarantee at least one thing- Chinese family reunions might now need a little extra food.

Picture courtesy of the Canada Free Press

Once again, the United States and Russia are competing for influence in the Middle East.

In a Cold War-like dynamic, Russia has swooped into Egypt, filling the void that the U.S. has left.

Marking the highest level visit to Egypt by a Russian delegation in years, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigui began talks with Egyptian officials in mid-November over possible arms deals and defense cooperation – which are rumored to be worth as much as $2 billion. 

In October, the U.S. cut military and economic aid to Egypt in response to the crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.  Now, Russia is brokering a weapons deal with Egyptian defense officials.

Coincidence? We think not. 

Don’t let the headlines fool you, however.  The U.S. didn’t cut all aid to Egypt – rather, a relatively small portion of the $1.55 billion it gives to Egypt annually – by withholding  tanks, fighter aircraft, and missiles, as well as $260 million in economic cash aid. 

(Here is a breakdown of the aid the United States gives to Egypt.)

The U.S. has been criticized for sending a mixed message. The small cuts in aid were largely symbolic – by no means did the cuts constitute a crippling sanction intended to force a peaceful, democratic process, nor was the warning serious enough to take Egyptian officials aback. 

Egypt has remained a vital interest for the United States because of its peace treaty with Israel and access to the Suez Canal – both of which the U.S. has risked by cutting aid. 

As with Syria, Russian officials have expressed that they do not believe in intervening in Egyptian Affairs.  Here lies their advantage: it’s just business. 

Should the U.S. proceed with “hands off” to keep its influence?