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August 29, 2008 4:19 PM |
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Greening Terp Home Games McCain's VP Pick: UM Experts: Journalism Students Cover the Political Conventions UM Excels in U.S. News's 'Programs to Look For' |
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Highlighted News Items, August 29
Student Finds Calling in Learning Foreign Languages
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Maryland Moments, May 2008
(Graduation, Appointments, In the Community, New Programs, Honors)
Jennifer Stepanek, the mother of world-renowned poet and peacemaker Mattie Stepanek, received her Ph.D. in Early Childhood Special Education at graduation ceremonies. Stepanek is afflicted with the same rare and progressive neuromuscular disease that also took Mattie (in 2004) and his two brothers and one sister. She did much of her graduate work while she fought her disease. Under her care and guidance, Mattie made an impact on the world in his nearly 14 years of life that is still being felt today. The author of seven best selling books (six poetry books and an essay book written in collaboration with former President Carter), he served as the Muscular Dystrophy Association's Goodwill Ambassador and was in inspiration to millions. As for the future, Stepanek says she has a lot on her plate -- she's the voluntary national vice president of the Muscular Dystrophy Association, Chair of the Mattie J.T. Stepanek Foundation, and will continue traveling and speaking with 'a message of hope and peace and other things 'that really matter" in life.' She is even overseeing the creation of the Mattie J.T. Stepanek Park in Montgomery County -- which will be fully accessible to children with disabilities.
The first graduating class from the UM's distinctive real estate development program sees the world through green-colored glasses with their new master's degrees. Most are early or mid-career professionals with real-world experience, and their teachers say they are poised to change the field. "Our first graduates represent a new generation of professionals with a different way of thinking about development," says Margaret McFarland, director of the Masters in Real Estate Development (MRED) program, a part of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. "They hit the street at a moment of great opportunity - just as the private sector is beginning to embrace the imperatives of sustainable development." The Maryland MRED program emphasizes that the bottom line has four numbers, not one: profitability, of course, but also environmental and social responsibility, as well as beautiful design. There are six members in the first graduating class.
UM announced the appointment of G. 'Anand' Anandalingam, senior associate dean and Ralph J. Tyser Professor of Management Science at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, as dean of the College Park business school. Anandalingam succeeds Howard Frank. Anandalingam joined the Smith School in 2001; before that, he held academic and leadership positions at the University of Pennsylvania and its Wharton School of Business, and also was a faculty member at the University of Virginia. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical sciences from Cambridge University, England, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University in operations research with a minor in economics.
A 32-state, national security effort to train both teens and teachers in critical foreign languages more than doubles in size and scope this summer and includes younger students, says the program's coordinator at UM. The STARTALK Program -- administered by the university's National Foreign Language Center, with funding from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and the Department of Defense -- will offer 81 programs in five critical languages: Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Persian and Urdu, with space for more than 2,600 students and nearly 1,100 teachers. Last summer the program debuted with 34 programs in 21 states, taught only Arabic and Chinese, involved about one-third as many participants and did not include middle school-age students.
UM will be the home to North America's first, and the world's second, laboratory endorsed by the WiMAX Forum and dedicated to creating applications for WiMAX, a next generation technology for Web and other wireless communications. The MAXWell Lab, part of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (Computer, Mathematical & Physical Sciences), will provide developers of WiMAX compatible hardware and software with a large test bed and support of faculty and students at the highly-ranked computer science and computer and electrical engineering departments. ... University of Maryland President C.D. Mote, Jr. said, 'This new laboratory promises the development of path-breaking applications in wireless technology. The placement of this new facility at the University of Maryland is a tribute to the leadership of our faculty and programs in wireless communications, computer science and entrepreneurship.' "
Network World: "The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Maryland's Office of Information Technology (OIT) a $109,514 grant to establish a regional Digital Forensics Lab (DFL). The lab, which will be used to teach digital forensics starting next spring, will serve universities and other organizations belonging to the CyberWATCH consortium in the Washington, D.C. area. Virtual machines based at the University of Maryland at College Park will provide the technical foundation for the lab."
Economics professor Maureen Cropper was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) -- one of 72 new members and 18 foreign associates recognized for their distinguished, continuing achievement in original research. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors that can be accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer. Cropper joins the 35 other UM faculty members who have been elected to the three National Academies -- the NAS, the National Academy of Engineering and the Institute of Medicine. She is the sixth Maryland woman to receive the honor.
(Baltimore Examiner): "The day after a deadly earthquake devastated central China, local Chinese-Americans put their grief aside and banded together to help in the relief effort. Halted by crumbled roadways, knocked-down phone lines and looming weather conditions, volunteers are struggling, said Jeannette Dai-Wang, 33, coordinator of the Institute for Global Chinese Affairs at the University of Maryland, College Park. 'Some people want to send rice and clothes, but no one knows where to send it right now,' Dai-Wang said. 'Everyone wants to get there and help, but all we have is where to wire money, so we need more information from the Chinese government.' Dai-Wang is originally from the Sichuan province, where the magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck just before 2:30 p.m. Monday. After frantically calling her family members in China, Dai-Wang reached them on a cell phone and learned they were not injured. ... The University of Maryland has more than 1,000 students from China, but Dai-Wang had not yet heard yet from anyone who suffered a personal loss. She said the Chinese Student Association is planning fundraising efforts and simplifying the donation process because students are busy with final exams."
Annapolis Capital: "Thirteen University of Maryland architecture graduate students spent the last several weeks designing the National Sailing Hall of Fame museum in Annapolis. The projects, completed as part of a studio course, included open glass buildings, wavy undulating roofs and variations on the spiraling Guggenheim Museum in New York. The students' designs, although not part of an official design project for the actual hall of fame museum, still provided a fresh look at possibilities for the museum."
Society & Culture
A video game to serve as educational tool and counterpoint to violent offerings. Cool School focuses on taking players through a school where just about everything (desks, books, and other objects) are alive and have their own personality. Over the course of ten levels and over 50 different situations designed by Professor Melanie Killen and then-doctoral student Nancy Margie (both of the University of Maryland). ... Killen isn't a stranger to video games; she specializes in human development and has spent over two decades focusing on peer conflict.
JTA (Jewish Telegraph AgencyP: "In the post-Sept. 11 world, when the cultural gap between the United States and the Middle East has clear political consequences, some might think that exposure to the best of American pop culture would sensitize the Arab and Muslim world to American lifestyles and values. Yet without the context to understand such globally pervasive American cultural phenomena, Arab and Muslim hostility to the United States will continue to grow and pose a security threat. Those are among the conclusions of a congressional report that found that America's public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim world needs an overhaul. 'Public diplomacy is about telling it the way it is, sometimes even if it means people won't like your ideas,' said Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland Middle East expert who was on the team (of researchers). 'When you look at our explanation for Iraq, overthrowing a ruthless dictator and bringing about a democracy -- that may have been a reason, but not the only reason or even the critical reason.' Extolling democracy leads to unrealistic expectations about a quick transition to self-rule and further reduces trust, Telhami said. Instead, he said, the United States should have explained the war primarily in terms of its strategic interest."
Palo Alto Daily News: "Stanford University scholars are working to create a more accurate way of measuring poverty than the federal government formulas in place since 1963. The only factors that have been used to determine the federal poverty index are income, family size and family composition. The proposed Stanford poverty index would also account for government benefits, such as food stamps and tax credits, and expenses, such as child care and heating bills. ... The new index, to be implemented by early next year, would provide the public easy access to poverty information through a Web site. ... Data already exists for most components of the new index. Since the National Academy of Sciences recommended a change in poverty measurement methods in 1995, the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics have been experimenting with new measurements. But that information is in 'rather obscure census publications,' said Barbara Bergmann, a member of the advisory board and professor emeritus of economics (Behavioral & Social Sciences) at the University of Maryland. This year, the advisory board will be deciding the best way to compose the index and collect data from other publications."
Associated Press: "A walk in the woods: priceless? Try $96. That's the value of the satisfaction one derives from a day trip to a Maryland state forest, according to a University of Maryland study... . By putting price tags on intangibles such as recreation and the simple knowledge that the trees exist, researchers hope to help the Department of Natural Resources make better decisions about logging and other uses of forested state land. The $70,000, peer-reviewed study, funded largely by the university's Harry R. Hughes Center for Agro-Ecology, also examined the rate at which different forest types sequester, or trap, carbon dioxide from the air, and at what stage of its life a forest removes this greenhouse gas most efficiently. ... 'These findings will benefit state land managers as they work to balance the needs of the state's growing population with the ecological and economic benefits of protected lands,' Executive Director Russell Brinsfield (said in a news release."
Inter Press Service: "The basic democratic principle that 'the will of the people should be the basis for the authority of government' is supported by overwhelming majorities throughout the world, according to a major new survey of more than 17,000 adults in 19 countries released here Monday. Large majorities in most of those countries also believe that their own governments are not living up to that principle, according to the poll which was conducted and published by WorldPublicOpinion.org (Public Policy). 'The perception that governments are not responsive to the popular will appears to be contributing to the low levels of confidence in government found around the world,' noted Steven Kull, who directs both the WPO and its parent organisation, the University of Maryland's Programme on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA). 'Most see their governments as primarily serving big interests rather than the people as a whole,' he added."
Reuters: "People in Argentina, Mexico, Egypt and China are more likely than those in the United States to say it is very important for the news media to be free from government control, a survey found. The survey of 20 countries by World Public Opinion.org, a project at the University of Maryland (Public Policy), found strong support worldwide for a free press and opposition to government restrictions on access to the Internet. But in the United States, where residents said they believed the news media already had significant freedoms, many people did not support further protections for the press, the survey showed."
Science & Technology
Washington Post, international coverage> "The scientific assessment by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which was commissioned by the Agriculture Department and carried out by 38 scientists inside and outside the government, provides the most detailed look in nearly eight years at how climate change is reshaping the American landscape. The report, which runs 193 pages and synthesizes a thousand scientific papers, highlights how human-generated carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels have already translated into more frequent forest fires, reduced snowpack and increased drought, especially in the West. Anthony Janetos, director of the Joint Global Change Research Institute of the University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, said the document aims to inform federal resource managers and dispel the public's perception that global warming will not be felt until years from now. 'They imagine all these ecological impacts are in some distant future,' said Janetos, one of the lead authors, who noted that many animals and plants have shifted their migratory and blooming patterns to reflect recent changes in temperature. 'They're not in some distant future. We're experiencing them now.' "
NASA: "On April 25, NASA's Swift satellite picked up the brightest flare ever seen from a normal star other than our Sun. The flare, an explosive release of energy from a star, packed the power of thousands of solar flares. It would have been visible to the naked eye if the star had been easily observable in the night sky at the time. The star, known as EV Lacertae, isn't much to write home about. It's a run-of-the-mill red dwarf, by far the most common type of star in the universe. It shines with only one percent of the Sun's light, and contains only a third of the Sun's mass. At a distance of only 16 light-years, EV Lacertae is one of our closest stellar neighbors. But with its feeble light output, its faint magnitude-10 glow is far below naked-eye visibility. 'Here's a small, cool star that shot off a monster flare. This star has a record of producing flares, but this one takes the cake,' says Rachel Osten, a Hubble Fellow at the University of Maryland, College Park and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. 'Flares like this would deplete the atmospheres of life-bearing planets, sterilizing their surfaces.' "
WJZ-TV, Baltimore: "Chesapeake crabs and people most often come together over backyard tables. But soon crabs might play a part on the operating tables, as well as the battlefield. ... The golden hour that separates life from death most often involves trauma and severe blood loss. It's becoming clear that thick liquid might buy more time. 'Treating severe injuries. We've shown bandages of this material are able to stop extreme bleeding injuries,' said Matthew Dowling, UM graduate student (Fischell Department of Bioengineering). Dowling is the young CEO of a small company developing that blood clotting chemical while working with University of Maryland researchers, physicians and crabs. They treat discarded crab shells, and the enzyme chitosan is extracted. 'It has the ability to interact with tissue and to actually stop bleeding, and that's been shown for companies who make the hemostatic bandage that's used in Iraq right now,' said Dr. Greg Payne, UM Biotech Institute."
While scientists have developed methods to predict aspects of fish diversity in specific river locations, a model to understand what factors may drive a comprehensive suite of fish biodiversity patterns in a large and complex system of rivers has been elusive. A group of researchers, including UM ecologist William Fagan, now report success using a so-called 'neutral model' to study fish diversity in the sprawling Mississippi-Missouri River System. Their study appears Nature. "That a simple model with a minimal set of parameters can capture the observed biodiversity patterns in complex landscapes suggests that effective monitoring of environmental change is possible, and could contribute to resource management and conservation strategies."
Asian News International: "Scientists are working on the development of new cell-based sensors, which would have the capability to detect explosive devices. Pamela Abshire, Benjamin Shapiro, and Elisabeth Smela, three faculty researchers in the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, are working upon the technology. Today's biochemical detectors are slow and produce an unacceptable number of false readings. They are easily fooled because they often cannot distinguish subtle differences between deadly pathogens and harmless substances, and cannot fully monitor or interpret the different ways these substances interact with biological systems. To solve this problem, the Clark School researchers are learning how to incorporate real cells into tiny micro-systems to detect chemical and biological pathogens."
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