 |
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||
|
| |
||||||||||||||
|
Maryland Moments, September, 2005 University Initiatives An Anniversary Year UM starts a year-long celebration of its 150th anniversary, which will center around a birthday celebration in March, 2006. The first month saw the creation of a Web site [http://www.150years.umd.edu/], the resurrection of the Maryland-Navy football rivalry, the Postal Service's issuance of stamps at Maryland honoring alumnus Jim Henson and the Muppets, and a call for local artists to create designs for 4-and-a-half-foot turtle forms that will be displayed throughout the region. The theme is "Fear the Turtle." President Mote Named to FBI Education Board President C.D. Mote Jr. is appointed to the National Security Higher Education Board, a Federal Bureau of Investigation initiative to advise the bureau on improving relationships with universities. Mote is one of 16 college presidents selected. Engineering, a Home for All Disciplines "The new, $56 million, state-of-the-art Jeong H. Kim building, housing the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, is intended to foster cross-disciplinary partnerships within the school. It was nine years in the making, features 27 laboratories and a 15,000-square-foot clean room for the university's expanding nanotechnology program. The 160,000-square-foot-building is named for Kim, a university professor and president of Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs. Lease Is Signed to Allow NOAA's Move to M Square Research Park The US General Services Administration locks in space to house the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, or as it is more commonly known, the National Weather Service. The 268,762-square-foot-building will occupy 10 acres of UM's 130-acre M-Square research complex. The building will also house the National Environmental Satellite Data and Information Systems. Hurricane Katrina: Gulf Students Find a Home Higher education's support of students who were in New Orleans and other battered areas left in the wake of Hurricane Katrina is reflected by UM's admission of over 100 students from the region. The hurricane hit just as school was beginning, allowing admission of many students, especially from Maryland. UM Student-Built House Part of DOE's Solar Decatholon at National Mall UM's entry in the annual contest to build the most efficient and functional solar-powered house moves to the National Mall in late September. The decathlon, which takes place from Oct. 7 through 16, is for original designs and construction of livable homes powered entirely by solar energy. Business Students to Get Scholarships from Bank A $2 million endowment from Chevy Chase Bank provides scholarships for business students who transfer from Montgomery College to the University of Maryland, College Park or to the Shady Grove campus in Rockville. President C.D. Mote Jr. declared the gift will help the university further financial assistance for students and provide access to the university for Montgomery College students. "A throng of wide-eyed University of Maryland, College Park freshmen descended upon community organizations Monday ready to hammer, paint, pickup trash or do anything else asked of them as part of a program to introduce first-year students to the area." The Gazette Newspapers report on the annual clean-up rite performed by College Park Scholars to start the school year. "At the Adelphi-Langley Park Family Support Center on Riggs Road, about 20 students restored the playground, said Danitza Simpson-Esca�o, the center's director.... 'We get this done once a year, and this group of folks help us maintain it,' Simpson-Esca�o said. 'We wait patiently every year for this.' " The Washington Post: "Nancy Drew, fictional girl sleuth and hero to millions in the 1930s and 1940s, lives on in a University Libraries exhibit. 'She speaks in the first person,' said Ann Hudak, an assistant curator, standing amid a new exhibit she organized at Hornbake Library. The exhibit -- Nancy Drew and Friends: Girls' Series Books Rediscovered, runs through the end of the year." Society & Culture UM Experts Contribute to Dialogue after Katrina and Rita The unprecedented disaster of Hurricane Katrina brought forth a torrent of comment, about a wide range of issues, from engineering to sociology to political science to public health to technology. Two UM experts were especially qualified to comment: George Galloway, professor of civil and environmental engineering and retired Brigadier General in the Army Corps of Engineers, who wrote the White House report on the Midwest's Great Flood of '93, which involved the Mississippi and Missouri River valleys and New Orleans; and R. Scott Fosler, visiting professor in public policy, who was president of the National Academy of Public Administration in 1993 when his organization warned of management problems at the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Legendary Slave Story Might be Part Fiction, UM Author Says The Baltimore Sun: "In his eloquent autobiography, Olaudah Equiano describes in gripping detail his boyhood in Africa, his capture by slave traders and the hellish Middle Passage voyage in a slave ship across the Atlantic. The book became a sensation in 18th-century Britain and greatly aided that nation's abolition movement. Two centuries later, it became a classic text in African-American studies, a rare first-person account of the cruelties of slavery. The author is virtually a national hero in Nigeria, the land he claimed as his birthplace. But now a book written by a scholar at the University of Maryland, College Park says Equiano was almost certainly born in South Carolina, not Africa. And the vivid account of Equiano's boyhood in a vale among the Igbo people, and of his violent capture at age 11, is probably fiction, said Vincent Carretta, an English professor. His conclusions, contained in Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man, is scheduled to be published (in October) by the University of Georgia Press. Poll: Americans Doubt Democracy Makes World Safer The Program on International Policy Attitudes, which is affiliated with the School of Public Policy, releases the results of a poll that finds U.S. citizens doubtful about their government's drive to plant democracy overseas. The Associated Press: "The American public has doubts about whether the Bush administration policy of promoting democracy internationally will make the world a safer place. A poll done at the University of Maryland found that just over a fourth, 28 percent, say they think the world is safer when there are more democracies, while more than twice as many, 68 percent, say democracy may make life better within a country but does not make the world safer. The poll... was conducted by the university's Program on International Policy Attitudes and was done in association with the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations." Obesity Rate for Low Income Children Not Higher While America's lowest income adults have a higher incidence of obesity compared to higher income adults, surprisingly the same isn't true for low income children, according to a university study. The lowest income children do not have a higher rate of obesity. The study also found that federal food programs, including the Food Stamp and National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs, do not affect the incidence of obesity in the poorest children. The study appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. "These findings were counter to our hypotheses," says Sandra Hofferth, professor of family studies. UM Partners with India's National Council of Applied Economic Research The National Institutes of Health funds research on the quality of life in 925 New Delhi houses; it is the first of its kind in India's capital city. The project aims at three key parameters � education, health and economic well-being. Sociology professors Sonalde Desai, and Reeve Vanneman participated in the study. Most 'Problem Drinkers' Don't Get Post DWI-Help More than half the people who are determined to be "problem drinkers" after a drunk-driving arrest in Maryland are not receiving alcohol-abuse treatment even though the programs are effective in cutting the number of subsequent offenses, according to The Center for Substance Abuse Research (CESAR). The report comes less than a month after federal statistics showed a 12 percent increase in Maryland's fatal crashes involving drunk drivers last year. State officials said it could provide a basis for proposed legislation in the General Assembly session that begins in January. Science & Technology Brain Still May Be Evolving, Studies Hint The New York Times: "Two genes involved in determining the size of the human brain have undergone substantial evolution in the last 60,000 years, researchers say, leading to the surprising suggestion that the brain is still undergoing rapid evolution. The discovery adds weight to the view that human evolution is still a work in progress, since previous instances of recent genetic change have come to light in genes that defend against disease and confer the ability to digest milk in adulthood. It had been widely assumed until recently that human evolution more or less stopped 50,000 years ago." The findings touch off a debate. Later in the article: "Sarah Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Maryland and a co-author of both (Science)studies, said the statistical signature of selection on the two genes was 'one of the strongest that I've seen.' But she, like (Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute) said that 'we don't know what these alleles (genes)are doing' and that specific tests were required to show that they in fact influenced brain development or were selected for that reason." Voyager I: Messages from the Edge NASA's Voyager 1 passes into the border region at the edge of the solar system and now sends back information about this never-before-explored area, scientists Maryland announced. "We have confirmed, for the first time, that Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock on Dec. 16, 2004," said Frank McDonald, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and a coauthor on two of four Voyager 1 papers published in Science. The termination shock marks the beginning of a transition region at the edge of the solar system that is known as the heliosheath." Deep Impact Comet Is Rich in Carbon When NASA's Deep Impact projectile hit Comet Tempel 1, it produced a giant plume of gas and dust far richer than expected in carbon compounds, reinforcing the view that comets may have contributed the chemical raw materials that produced life on Earth. Astronomy's Michael A'Hearn, lead scientist for the NASA mission, was among those expecting the first-ever complete profile of the substances that comets may have brought to Earth 4.5 million years ago. "This will be the biggest contribution we will make," said A'Hearn. "Many hydrocarbons are in higher abundance than one would expect, and there are many others we haven't identified yet." Scientists Discover Liquid Magnetic State Yiming Qiu, research associate in materials science and engineering, co-authors a research paper appearing in Science. United Press International: "Japanese and U.S. scientists have discovered a material that may demonstrate a highly unusual liquid magnetic state at very low temperatures. Scientists at Kyoto University in Japan synthesized the material, nickel gallium sulfide -- NiGa2S4. The Japanese team -- along with researchers from Johns Hopkins University, the University of Maryland and the U.S. Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology, studied its properties." Satellite Data Provides Rapid Analysis of Amazon NASA: "The Amazon, a vast tropical forest stretching across South America, is so large that it is virtually impossible to study the evolving landscapes within the basin without the use of satellites.... Researchers from the University of Maryland, College Park, Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE) of Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, and South Dakota State University, compared multiple years of data from NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites to data collected from the high-resolution Landsat satellite. They found that MODIS images can rapidly and reliably detect changes in Amazon land cover." Technology Monitors Wildlife Habitats from the Air NASA: "Two rare species, California spotted owls in the Sierra Nevada and the Delmarva fox squirrel in the mid-Atlantic U.S. have something in common. Using NASA technology, scientists have been able to identify habitats to help forest managers monitor and protect these species and other wildlife. The recent research shows that airborne laser scanning with Light Detecting And Ranging (LiDAR) can be especially valuable in ensuring that forests and other lands continue to be diverse, healthy, and productive, while still meeting the needs of society and the environment. The study was funded by the NASA/University of Maryland Vegetation Canopy LiDAR (VCL) mission and a NASA Interdisciplinary Science (IDS) Program.
|
 |
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
 Information provided by the Office of University CommunicationsEmail University Communications at emailum@umd.edu |
|||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
