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August 20, 2008 8:44 AM |
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H9N2 Avian Flu Strain Has Pandemic Potential Back To School Experts - 2008 Edition UM Wins International Robot Competition UM's Fall Semester to Focus on All Aspects Of War |
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Highlighted News Items, August 15
College Presidents Seek Debate on Drinking Age
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Maryland Moments, February, 2005
University Initiatives
(New Programs, Milestones)
President C.D. Mote Jr. calls the combined $60 million in gifts from two of UM's most distinguished alumni the 'most historic moment' since the university's founding. "We are blessed to have two [alumni] with a lifelong commitment to creating our future. They believe in the necessity of building the highest-quality university." Previously each man had donated $15 million to create the Clark School of Engineering and the Smith School of Business. The gifts were announced at a news conference that was also attended by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., House Speaker Michael Busch and Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller.
On the heels of his extraordinary gift to the university, A. James Clark is elected to the National Academy of Engineering. The academy selected but 74 Members and 10 Foreign Associates for this year.
Douglas Gill, professor of biology, appears on Maryland Public Television's Outdoors Maryland to talk about a unique gift of nature for state residents, Chino Farms. MPT: "The largest land set-aside deal in Maryland's history has created a living laboratory in Kent County on Maryland's Eastern Shore. 5200-acre Chino Farms is now home to a number of natural resource experiments that include restoring an ancient prairie and the Sparrows that once lived there. Dr. Doug Gill has a Massachusetts M.D. to thank for his success at Chino Farms--Henry Sears, who continued to buy up the Chester River waterfront propertywith the sole goal of preserving it forever for the people of Maryland."
The National Security Education Program of the Department of Defense announces a National Flagship Language Initiative program in Arabic. Grants are given to the University of Maryland and Georgetown University to develop advanced curriculum programs. They are the first intensive Arabic programs offered for a full academic year at U.S. universities, and will begin enrolling students as early as fall 2005.
The Clark School of Engineering's Maryland Industrial Partnership Program, which encourages collaboraton between univesity researchers and corporations, provides funds for 18 projects, including a new method for producing alternative fuel, a high-tech commuter ferry for the Chesapeake Bay, a precision weapon system,and potential treatments for cancer, brain injury, diabetes and nerve damage. $2.1 million in funds come from Maryland companies and $1.1 million from the university.
Research--persistent, ingenious, arduous, beneficial--done in laboratories that don't generally earn notice affect many Marylanders. An example is the work of Martin Lo, associate professor of food bioprocess engineering, whose research benefits a happy band of Eastern Shore farmers. The Washington Post reports four years ago Lo set out to find a variety of wheat bakers could use that would grow on the east side of the Chesapeake, where native soil normally denies such growth. Underwritten by the Maryland Industrial Partnerships, Lo and his students three years later produced an answer that not only has superior taste, but is low in carbs, And is producing a new product for farmers.
The Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library assumes the role of primary caretaker of the video collection of James Taylor, who created the Washington Area Performing Arts Video Archive. Taylor, who is ill with cancer, will be honored at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center's Kogod Theatre on March 28.
Science & Technology
Douglas Hamilton, associate professor of astronomy, plays a key role in the exploration of Saturn's mysterious rings. NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures images of a radiation belt inside the rings and gathers "the clearest picture yet of the planet's giant magnetosphere, according to a mid-year report of the spacecraft published in the journal Science." Hamilton comments on the properties of the main radiation belts, one of the more significant Cassini findings. "It's comprised mostly of oxygen and water products.... That is most likely the result of the bombardment of the planet's rings and the icy moons by the radiation trapped in Saturn's magnetic field. And by this bombardment, the water is released and it becomes charged." Hamilton led the instrument team measuring the composition.
Matthias Ruth, Weston Chair in Natural Economics and director of the Environmental Policy Program in Public Policy, and fellow researchers from Tufts and Boston Universities, release results from a five-year study that predicts soggy problems for Boston. Included in the report, which was commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency, are stunning computer graphics concerning the havoc which could be wreaked on the city, earning media exposure on cable news channels.
Working in the harsh conditions of Antarctica, UM researchers, as well as scientists from universities from around the world, create new ways of detecting cosmic rays, high energy particles that bombard the Earth from beyond our solar system. Greg Sullivan, associate professor of physics, Kara Hoffman, assistant professor, and Jordan Goodman, physics chair, participate in IceCube, which features a "neutrino telescope" made of a cubic kilometer of clear ice embedded with optical sensors that will look up through the Earth to detect cosmic neutrinos coming from beyond our galaxy. Sullivan and Hoffman spend the winter months by going south to Antarctica.
Kerry Shaw, associate professor of biology, and Lehigh University's Tamra Mendelson, discover an Hawaiian cricket is the fastest-growing invertebrate. Writing in the journal Nature, the researchers report: "Theory predicts that sexual behaviour in animals can evolve rapidly, accelerating the rate of species formation. Here we estimate the rate of speciation in Laupala, a group of forest-dwelling Hawaiian crickets that is characterized primarily through differences in male courtship song. We find that Laupala has the highest rate of speciation so far recorded in arthropods, supporting the idea that divergence in courtship or sexual behaviour drives rapid speciation in animals."
Amy Brown, associate professor of entomology, and Kalapurakkal Menon, research graduate assistant in kinesiology, publish widely-read research suggesting "it would be prudent to increase efforts to educate parents about recommended procedures for use of repellents on children." Of concern is DEET (N,N-diethyl-meta-toluamide), which is used by approximately one third of Americans.
Time wasted deleting junk e-mail costs American businesses nearly $22 billion a year, according to new research from the Smith School's Center for Excellence in Service and the National Technology Readiness Survey, which is produced by Rockbridge Associates. The Associated Press article reporting the research was published internationally: "The average spam messages per day is 18.5 and the average time spent per day deleting them is 2.8 minutes. The loss in productivity is equivalent to $21.6 billion per year at average U.S. wages."
Francois Guimbretiére, associate professor of computer science, and graduate researchers Kevin Conroy and Dave Levin create the software program "ProofRite." Technology Research News: "Researchers at the University of Maryland are trying to bridge the considerable gap between paper and computers by allowing users to import annotation marks made on paper back into a word processor. 'While proofreading printed documents is [common] among word processor users... no word processing programs support the transfer of information from paper back into the computer,' said Kevin Conroy."
Society & Culture
Ira Berlin, distinguished university professor of history, is among the experts called to a five day seminar in Natchez, Mississippi, Between Two Worlds: Free Blacks in the Antebellum South. The Associated Press" 'Many people, perhaps most people, don't know there were black people who were free in the slave South or if they believe they were, think there were a couple of them,' Berlin said. More than a quarter of a million blacks were free in the South during the years preceding the Civil War. 'There were actually more free blacks in the South than there were in the North during these years. They are very important to understand something about American society and something about black society.' "
William Falk, chair of the department of sociology, makes the subject of blacks staying home in the rural South and other blacks migrating back a page-turner of a book: Rooted in Place: Family and Belonging in a Southern Black Community. Falk is in demand as speaker, op/ed columnist and featured author at book signings. Falk in the Baltimore Sun: ""While millions of black people never left the region, it is clear that they are increasingly being joined by people either returning to it or moving there for the first time because it is, essentially, a new 'Promised Land' (a term of both social and religious significance used historically with reference to the North). It is place of reverence for those whose family ties are well known and, interestingly, might be a place of reverence for those with few family ties because of its unique racial history and importance to them, a kind of collective memory for all African- Americans. Maryland might continue to play an interesting role in this, offering its own conflicting versions of a Promised Land."
Harvey Cohen, lecturer in history, is author of both a Washington Post retrospective of the 1940s debut of musician Duke Ellington's Black, Brown & Beige: A Tone Parallel to the History of the Negro in America, and the forthcoming book, Duke Ellington's America.
Isabelle Gournay, associate professor of architecture, and Mary Corbin Sies, associate professor of American Studies, continue to lead efforts to preserve historic buildings in the region. They earn notice in the region's Gazette Newspapers for their work to save the Lustine car dealerships in Hyattsville on Route 1 and the COMSAT Laboratories building in Montgomery County.
The Voice of America reports on a Trade Conference in Washington that focused on the U.S.-China trade relationship, in which China has a huge and growing surplus. "Experts say traditional bipartisan support in Congress of free trade is being eroded by China's unwillingness to take measures to redress the trade imbalance.... Much of the discontent relates to China's refusal to adjust its fixed rate currency linkto the dollar that has been unchanged for 10 years. 'I think China will be a target and should be a target as far as the exchange rate is concerned because this policy really is contributing to trade disequilibrium,' said Mac Destler, an economist at the University of Maryland, who is among the many experts who believe the currency peg keeps the yuan undervalued and gives an advantage to Chinese products in the U.S market."
For Valentine's Day, the Washington Post publishes a love letter of its own to the love letters between one of the 20th century's most famous couples, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. "Jackson Bryer and Cathy Barks teach at the University of Maryland and edited the Fitzgerald letters into the book Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda. The majority of the letters, especially Zelda's, had never been published. Bryer says, 'I was attracted to Fitzgerald because, temperamentally, the person I am...' he shrugs. 'I'm a romantic.' According to Barks: 'Usually, the deeper you dig, the more unappealing these writers become. With the Fitzgeralds, it's the opposite. The bad stuff was all right there on the surface. Whereas in their letters you find deeper reflections on life, more generosity, more self-awareness.' "
Melanie Killen, professor of human development, and doctoral students Alaina Brenick and Alexandra Henning research the effects of video games on the young. The Washington Post: "A study by Maryland Prof. Melanie Killen suggests that many young adults are oblivious to the impact of raunch and gore rendered in ever-crisper detail by the current crop of video games. And the more hours they play, the less sensitive they are to the potential consequences."
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