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August 20, 2008 9:37 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, October, 2006
President C.D. Mote Jr. launches a $1 billion development campaign; fully a third of the money will go to student aid. "Great Expectations" is the first billion dollar campaign for a Maryland public university. Washington Post: "C.D. Mote Jr., Maryland's president, said it costs a student paying in-state tuition about $20,000 a year to attend the school, which has been ranked as one of the nation's top 20 public universities. 'It's very clear going forward, outside of the entire tuition discussion, that the cost of coming here is going to be more and more difficult for students of modest means,' Mote said. 'And we have a lot of them. So we need to raise resources.... Our goal is that no student who has the capacity to come here and succeed will be barred from that.'... Brodie Remington, vice president for university relations, said the fundraising drive began silently two years ago, helping officials estimate how much they could raise. They began with a goal of $800 million, he said, but donations exceeded expectations, and they increased their goal to $1 billion." Baltimore Sun: "There is no asset this state has that is more important to its future than this campus,' (Mote) said."
Although the launching of the campaign was serious business, the gala atmosphere of the endeavor provided for memorable moments of colorful exuberance. President C.D. Mote Jr. appeared with Kermit the Frog to explain the ramifications of "Great Expectations." And the popular "Fear the Turtle" statues, which had been on dispaly across Maryland and on campus, were auctioned off. U.S. News & World Report: 'Connie Chung Pays $8,000 for Fiberglass Turtle' "The former news anchor plans to donate 'Testudo the Grad,' a fiberglass sculpture of a turtle with a graduation cap on his head, back to the University of Maryland. Less famous people, including the owner of Terrapin Chiropractic, an actual business, bought 29 other turtle sculptures auctioned at a fundraiser yesterday. The sculptures were originally created to celebrate the university's 150th anniversary. Where will all the fiberglass turtles go? 'This thing is tailgating with us in the parking lot,' one purchaser told the Diamondback."
NASA researcher John Mather, who is also an adjunct physics professor at UM, won the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics for measurements of cosmic background radiation that provided a clear look at the birth of the Universe. Mather, an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, shares the award with George F. Smoot of the University of California, Berkeley. First announced in 1992, their acclaimed findings were achieved using the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite built by NASA Goddard and launched in 1989. Mather is the second physicist to win a Nobel Prize while an adjunct professor at Maryland. In 1997, then adjunct William Phillips won the physics prize for work using lasers to cool and trap atoms that he conducted at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Phillips, now a Distinguished University of Maryland Professor of Physics and a NIST fellow, leads the university's atomic, molecular and optical physics research group. Last year, University of Maryland economist Thomas Schelling won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in game theory analysis. Maryland's fourth Nobel Laureate is Juan Ramon Jimenez, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1956.
Central China News Agency, Taiwan: "President Chen Shui-bian said he looks forward to the day that Taiwan becomes a powerhouse of solar energy industry. Chen made the remarks while meeting with a group of foreign and local participants to an Asian leadership forum, led by University of Maryland President C.D. Mote Jr. The forum focused on three themes -- energy, environmental protection and disease prevention and control. The participants discussed the three issues' possible impact on Asian political and economic development."
NASA announced that it has accepted the UM proposal to send the Deep Impact spacecraft on an extended mission to get a close-up look at Comet Boethin. The team that produced the spectacular Deep Impact mission, which smashed an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 in July, 2005, hopes new information gathered from Comet Boethin will help coalesce the vast array of new cometary information into solid ideas about the nature of comets, how they formed and evolved and if they have played a role in the emergence of life on Earth. "As we try to interpret the larger meaning for all comets of our results from Deep Impact at Tempel 1, we have realized more and more how important is the variation from comet to comet," said Deep Impact leader and University of Maryland astronomer Michael A'Hearn.
Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Prize winner and director-general of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency, delivered the annual Anwar Sadat Lecture for Peace at UM. Reuters: "A solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is within grasp if the international community commits to a blueprint and pursues dialogue, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog agency said on Tuesday. Speaking at the University of Maryland, Mohammed ElBaradei, executive director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, declared that conflicts like those in the Middle East 'cannot be solved through military force' and he called for a new broad approach focusing on human security rather than state security....'Because there is already a great deal of agreement on what that blueprint should look like, agreement is not far away,' he said in delivering the university's Sadat lecture for peace named after the assassinated former leader of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, who signed a peace treaty with Israel."
"The Joseph and Alma Gildenhorn Institute for Israel Studies was dediciated so that current and future Maryland students have opportunities to study with distinguished Israeli visiting professors. Washington Jewish Week: Alma Gildenhorn said that she and her husband hope to see the institute become 'the premier Israel studies institute ... [at] a major university.' Faculty and administration at the university have set a similar goal. They say that at Maryland, the Israel studies program will be fully integrated into the broader Middle East studies curriculum, unlike at a number of other universities, where Israel studies exist in a somewhat separate sphere from the study of the Arab and Muslim world."
The Clark School of Engineering's fire protection program celebrates its 50th year. Maryland Daily Record: " 'There is this tremendous demand' from employers for fire protection engineers, (Department Chair Marino) di Marzo said. 'We get a continuous flow of requests for our graduates.... ' There is more demand than ever before for fire protection engineers, who consult with architects and contractors on the construction and design of enormous buildings as well as the methods required for evacuating them in the event of an emergency, the experts said. 'Over the last number of years, there's been increasing attention paid to safety in our society in general,' said James Milke, associate chair of the department of fire protection engineering...and an associate professor."
The Wall Street Journal reports on the success in China of the television show, Win in China, a Sino version of NBC's The Apprentice that featured the corporate gadabout Donald Trump. For the top five Win in China contestants a scholarship to UM is a prize. "Over the next two months, the 12 finalists will compete in a series of weekly reality shows by performing real business tasks for real companies.... The five top finalists will jet to New York to visit NASDAQ -- and win scholarships to study at the University of Maryland."
Show Biz, Biz Shows: This item comes following the above Wall Street Journal story. Maryland Daily Record: "The Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, College Park, said it is staging its own version tonight of 'American Idol Meets the Apprentice,' as undergraduate business school students pitch ideas for new business ventures to a panel of judges, as part of a new, undergraduate entrepreneurship fellows program. Those selected will each get $200 in startup funds from the Smith School, with the goal of getting their businesses launched by the end of the semester."
The Washington Post: "The Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at UM is the new headquarters of the Electronic Literature Organization. The organization completed its transfer from the University of California at Los Angeles to Maryland over the summer. The nonprofit Electronic Literature Organization investigates how computers can be used for literary expression and to expand the literary tradition." The institute is a collaboration between Arts and Humanities, University Libraries and the Office of Information Technology.
Science & Technology
James Drake, professor of physics, leads a group of researchers who discover how ultra high-speed electrons produced by solar flares and magnetospheric storms get their high energy. The group solves a key remaining mystery about how the interaction of magnetic fields produce the explosive releases of energy seen in solar flares, storms in the Earth's magnetosphere and many other powerful cosmic events. Drake says that from a practical standpoint these new findings can help scientists to better predict which solar storms pose the greatest threat to communications and satellites.
UM's Craig Markwardt, research associate in astronomy also based at NASA Goddard, performs some key detective work. From NASA: "NASA scientists using the Swift satellite have conducted the first complete census of galaxies with active, central black holes, a project that scanned the entire sky several times over a nine-month period. The all-sky survey contains more than 200 supermassive black holes called Active Galactic Nuclei, or AGN, and provides a definitive census of black hole activity in the local universe. The team uncovered many new black holes that were previously missed, even in well-studied galaxies, and other surprises as well. 'The Swift black hole catalogue can be used in a thousand ways,' said Craig Markwardt of Goddard and the University of Maryland, who combined the nine-month Swift data into all-sky images. 'It's hard to believe the whole sky is peppered with black holes. You need powerful X-ray vision like Swift's to see them.' "
Larry Douglass, lecturer in animal and avian sciences, contributes to the creation of a "Ground Beef Calculator." From the FDA: ""A new computer program, the Ground Beef Calculator, is now available online free of charge at the Agricultural Research Service's Nutrient Data Laboratory (NDL) web site.... Users simply type in the percent fat or lean of any one of five product types: raw ground beef, broiled patty, pan-broiled patty, pan-browned crumbles or baked loaf.... The calculator was produced by the Agricultural Research Service's lead nutritionist Juliette Howe and colleagues at the Nutrient Data Laboratory, which is part of the Beltsville (Md.) Human Nutrition Research Center. They collaborated with researcher Dennis Buege with the University of Wisconsin, and statistician Larry Douglass with the University of Maryland."
Discovery Channel News: "Lucy Yu, a professor of nutrition and food science at the University of Maryland, and colleagues looked at the antioxidant properties of several spices and flavorings. Cinnamon ranked first in antioxidant strength among the tested flavorings. Rong Tsao, one of Yu's research assistants, told Discovery News, 'Our findings could potentially be used for dietary supplement developers to help determine what spices and herbs could be used in their products for improved antioxidant properties.' "
Society & Culture
New York Times: "Despite the surge of women into the work force, mothers are spending at least as much time with their children today as they did 40 years ago, and the amount of child care and housework performed by fathers has sharply increased, researchers say in a new study, based on analysis of thousands of personal diaries. 'We might have expected mothers to curtail the time spent caring for their children, but they do not seem to have done so,' said one of the researchers, Suzanne Bianchi, chairwoman of the department of sociology at the University of Maryland. 'They certainly did curtail the time they spent on housework.... The findings are set forth in a new book, Changing Rhythms of American Family Life, published by the Russell Sage Foundation and the American Sociological Association... The book's two other co-authors, Prof. John Robinson and Melissa Milkie, are also sociologists at the University of Maryland."
UM's Couples Abuse Prevention Program (CAPP) offers counseling to area couples who experience frustrating and hurtful communication or physical aggression. Based at the campus Family Service Center, which is a leading center for the development and evaluation of treatments for relationship problems, CAPP offers low-cost therapy to couples in the greater Washington D.C. area. "CAPP is designed to help couples resolve conflicts in constructive ways and enhance the quality of their relationships before they become physically abusive," says Norman Epstein, professor and director of the university's Marriage and Family Therapy Program. "The therapy sessions focus on improving communication skills, building trust, managing anger and enhancing the couple's ability to enjoy their time together. CAPP is not intended for couples in which physical acts have led to injuries."
The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement released a study on civic involvement among the young that garners national attention. Reuters: "Nearly two-thirds of young Americans are disengaged from political and civic life and only a quarter regularly vote, a survey...showed. The study also found an increase in anti-immigrant sentiment among Americans age 15 to 25 over the past four years and a drop in acceptance of homosexuals. The survey of 1,700 people was carried out by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at the University of Maryland between April 27 and June 11.... 'Young people are working in many ways to improve their communities and the nation by volunteering, voting, protesting and raising money for charity and political candidates,' the center said in a statement."
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Information provided by the Office of University Communications