The CRA Bulletin has an item on an NSF brief describing the state of Science and Engineering graduate enrollment.

“While overall graduate enrollment in science and engineering programs reached an all-time high in fall 2003, it actually declined 3 percent in computer science. CS was the only field to see a drop and this was its first decrease since 1995. In addition, CS experienced the biggest drop (23 percent) among S&E fields in the number of full-time students with temporary visas who were enrolled for the first time.”

The Semantic Web And Policy Workshop (SWPW) will be held on 7 November 2005 at the 4th International Semantic Web Conference in Galway, Ireland. The workshop will cover policy-based frameworks for the semantic web as well as the use of semantic web technologies in policy frameworks for other application domains such as multiagent systems, grid computing, networking, and storage systems. Ora Lassila will give an invited talk entitled “Applying Semantic Web in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing: Will Policy-Awareness Help?”. Papers should be submitted electronically by 25 July 2005.

The Computing Research Association has been publishing and distributing by email a quarterly newsletter, the CRA Bulletin, containing links to items of interest to the computing research community. The CRA Bulletin has now been refactored as a blog complete with an RSS feed.

PITAC, the US President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, has released a report on Cyber Security: a Crisis of Prioritization. Free hard copies can be requested.

Vital to the Nation’s security and everyday life, the information technology (IT) infrastructure of the United States is highly vulnerable to disruptive domestic and international attacks, the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) argues in a new report. While existing technologies can address some IT security vulnerabilities, fundamentally new approaches are needed to address the more serious structural weaknesses of the IT infrastructure.

In Cyber Security: A Crisis of Prioritization, PITAC presents four key findings and recommendations on how the Federal government can foster new architectures and technologies to secure the Nation’s IT infrastructure. PITAC urges the Government to significantly increase support for fundamental research in civilian cyber security in 10 priority areas; intensify Federal efforts to promote the recruitment and retention of cyber security researchers and students at research universities; increase support for the rapid transfer of Federally developed cyber security technologies to the private sector; and strengthen the coordination of Federal cyber security R&D activities.