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August 07, 2008 7:38 PM |
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UM Wins International Robot Competition UM's Fall Semester to Focus on All Aspects Of War Anthrax /Bio-Chem Attacks Rare, Records Show 1925 Recording Makes National Archives Registry |
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Highlighted News Items, August 7
Building a More Responsible B-School
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Maryland Moments, July 2007
(Development Campaign, Honors, Special Programs)
The university's development campaign, Great Expectations, exceeds the $400 million mark. University Relations: "Gifts flowed in for a wide variety of objectives, including an endowed chair and center in health literacy for our anticipated School of Public Health; an endowed chair and student and programmatic support for Persian Studies; endowed professorships in Education and in the College of Computer, Mathematical and Physical Sciences; scholarships in music and a performance fund; the University Libraries; enhanced landscaping around the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center and the Robert H. Smith School of Business; and the renovation and new construction of Athletics facilities. Gifts from three faculty members represented $2.25 million of June's total."
Maryland continues to lead its U.S. News & World Report Top 25 public university peers in graduating African American students, according to ranking numbers distributed by Diverse Issues in Higher Education magazine.
Doctorates--
UM is No. 4, with 27 graduates, Among Traditionally White Institutions in the Diverse rankings, UM is No. 13.
Master's--
UM is No. 3, with 132 graduates. Among TWI schools in the Diverse rankings, UM is No. 66
Undergraduate--
UM is No. 1, with 636 graduates. Among TWI schools in the Diverse rankings, UM is No. 13.
Overall--
UM's total of 797 graduates is ahead of Ohio State (718) Florida (686), and Michigan (661)
President Bush presented Distinguished University Professor Rita Colwell and alumnus Tobin Marks '66, with National Medal of Science awards. According to a White House press release, "The National Medal of Science honors individuals for pioneering scientific research in a range of fields, including physical, biological, mathematical, social, behavioral, and engineering sciences, that enhances our understanding of the world and leads to innovations and technologies that give the United States its global economic edge."
Computerworld magazine celebrates its 40th year by looking ahead with a distinguished list that includes UM faculty member Min Wiu
TITLE: Holds five U.S. patents on media security and communications
ORGANIZATION: University of Maryland, College Park
AGE: 32
INDUSTRY: Education
30-second biography: Wu's research interests include information security and forensics, and multimedia signal processing and communications. She has published about 80 journal and conference papers and holds five U.S. patents on media security and communications. She has co-authored two books, Multimedia Data Hiding and Multimedia Fingerprinting Forensics for Traitor Tracing. Wu received bachelor's degrees in electrical engineering and in economics from Tsinghua University in Beijing, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University. Since 2001, she has been on the faculty of the electrical and computer engineering department and the Institute of Advanced Computer Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park, where she is currently an associate professor."
The Kapell International Piano Competition produces dramatic moments at every stage of its quadrennial rebirth. The Washington Post: "Sofya Gulyak was nervous but focused when she sat down to play Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Saturday night, in the final round of the 2007 William Kapell International Piano Competition. She recalls not taking much note of the crowd in the sold-out Dekelboum Concert Hall at the University of Maryland's Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. The 27-year-old Russian says she didn't even consider the money or the opportunities that might come her way if she won. She just thought about how best to play the concerto -- and her efforts earned her first prize in the prestigious competition and the $25,000 that comes with it."
UM, University System of Maryland, FDA Collaborate
Maryland Daily Record: "A new agreement lays the groundwork for collaborations between researchers and students in the entire University System of Maryland system and the Food and Drug Administration and could lead to more such agreements between the system and other federal agencies. ... The agreement covers such issues as intellectual property and sharing facilities in general terms, but leaves further details open to negotiation on a case-by-case basis for projects that require such specifics. Joint efforts can be as simple as an FDA expert speaking at a university event, or a university student visiting an agency laboratory, said William Bentley, a professor and chair of the A. James Clark School of Engineering�s Fischell Department of Bioengineering in College Park. Bentley said the agreement adds a significant amount of convenience to a process that, done the old way, likely dissuaded busy FDA scientists from working with the university."
The Los Angeles Times: "It was time for the robotics squad from the University of Maryland to put Tortuga through its underwater paces. 'We need to put a diagnostic on the board so we know the pressure at the surface,' said Stepan Moskovchenko, 20. Joseph Gland, 24, questioned the way the craft was descending in the practice pool. 'That's not the desired angle; that's a weird, secondary, shadowed angle,' he said. 'It's trying to yaw a lot,' warned Joseph Lisee, 21, as he monitored readings on a laptop. And so it went in warm-ups for the Super Bowl of underwater robotics: the 10th annual Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Student Competition (in San Diego), sponsored by the Office of Naval Research and co-hosted with the Assn. for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, a trade group of manufacturers."
Society & Culture
United Press International: "Professor Ronald Walters, a lecturer at the University of Maryland, USA ... urged Africans to realize their potential and forge ahead with the unity of the continent from the grassroots level 'where the pressure is high.' He said the struggle for an economically developed Africa was on the wrong paradigm and that some countries would 'out run others' African unity was based on economic development. Prof Walters, who is also the director of the African-American Leadership Institute (at UM) was addressing a Colloquium at the University of Cape Coast as part of activities of the 8th edition of Pan-African Historical Theatre Festival. The Colloquium is under the theme 'Pan-Africanism in the context of Africa's political, socio-economic development' and is being attended by participants drawn from Ghana, Botswana, South Africa, Nigeria, Surinam, Italy, Austria, the Caribbean and the US."
UM Startalk administrators visit an Irvine, Calif. facility. Los Angeles Times: "Startalk, a national security program to develop Chinese and Arabic speakers, is being tested at the nation's largest Chinese cultural center. ... The school, at the newly opened, $12-million, 44,000-square-foot South Coast Chinese Cultural Center, is the country's largest site for the Startalk program. Funded by the Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Startalk aims to lure students into learning languages deemed critical to national security and the economy. ... 'In the U.S., foreign languages have always taken a backseat to other disciplines, and we want to change that,' said Betsy Hart, associate director of the National Foreign Language Center at the University of Maryland and head of Startalk. 'This is a pilot year, and we are testing to see which models will be most effective.' "
Time magazine writes of the recent terror scares in Great Britain and asks for UM research help in making a point. "Terrorists are less inclined to seek the newest or most sophisticated method of attack than to fall back on pragmatic solutions. The car bomb has been a part of British life longer than the Internet. Since 1970, terrorists of one stripe or another have deployed at least 756 vehicle bombs around the world, according to research conducted for Time by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. At least 101 appeared in the U.K., many of them planted by the IRA. (From 1998 to 2004, the top car-bomb perpetrator worldwide was ETA, the Basque separatist group; al-Qaeda came in fourth.)"
Frederick Post: "Maryland drivers seem to be intensely interested and engaged in issues surrounding driving these days. Perhaps that's a comment on how bad things have gotten on area roadways when it comes to such issues as traffic congestion, road rage, distracted and impaired driving, and traffic code violations. ... Safety, in one way or another, is at the center of all these issues and concerns, and the University of Maryland's Department of Public and Community Health is tapping into the public's interest in driving safety in an attempt to discover which issues are of the greatest concern. The vehicle the department is using is an online survey that will collect public opinions on a range of important traffic concerns. The survey will be available for public participation from July 6 to August 15. According to the survey website, it takes about 10 minutes and participants' input is confidential. The information gleaned from the survey will help state and local highway safety directors provide better services to the public. We encourage our readers to take this test."
Science & Technology
William Phillips, Nobel prize winner, professor of physics and a researcher at the Joint Quantum Institute (UM and the National Institute of Standards and Technology), leads a group of researchers that induced thousands of atoms trapped by laser beams to swap 'spins' with partners simultaneously. The repeated exchanges, like a quantum version of swinging your partner in a square dance but lasting a total of just 10 milliseconds, might someday carry out logic operations in quantum computers, which theoretically could quickly solve certain problems that today's best supercomputers could not solve in years. The atomic dance, described in a July issue of Nature, advances prospects for the use of neutral atoms as quantum bits (qubits) for storing and processing data in quantum computers.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) has been singled out as having special properties that make Americans fatter than sugar and other energy sources with identical calorie contents. But an analysis by the University of Maryland Center for Food, Nutrition, and Agriculture Policy, appearing online in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, says there isn't enough research to conclude that high fructose corn syrup contributes to weight gain any more than any other energy source, such as sucrose (sugar.) The CFNAP study team, led by Richard Forshee, recommends that more research be conducted on HFCS, including whether HFCS is metabolized differently than sucrose.
United Press International: "They're furry and alien, and now they might be having babies. Scientists have confirmed 10 sightings of the Chinese mitten crab in the Chesapeake Bay and Delaware Bay in the past couple of years, and the most recent finds set off alarm bells. ... Scientists at the Smithsonian center, including University of Maryland graduate student Paula Rodgers, examined the crabs and found that both had mated and had sperm in their storage organs. The Delaware crab showed evidence that she was producing eggs. ... Mitten crabs, Eriocheir sinensis, are yellow-brown crustaceans with thick brown fur on their claws. White claw tips poke out from the fur. They're native to Asia, but they've spread to other parts of the world, sometimes causing damage. In the San Francisco Bay, they've clogged intake pipes for water-pumping stations. In other places, they've burrowed into riverbanks, causing levees and dikes to fail."
Baltimore Sun: "NASA scientists hope to celebrate Independence Day a few days late this year, with a spectacular launch of the Dawn -- the world's first flight to the mysterious dwarf planet Ceres and the asteroid Vesta. It is an ambitious enterprise -- the first from Earth to orbit two celestial bodies in succession. The journey is possible only because of Dawn's exotic ion-propulsion engine. Its astonishing efficiency will carry it 3 billion miles on less than 72 gallons of fuel. That has led some to dub the spacecraft 'the Prius of space.' 'I'm excited, but I don't want to get too excited until I see the rocket take off,' said University of Maryland astronomer Lucy McFadden, co-investigator and education director for the $449 million project. The launch window for Dawn opens at 4:09 p.m. Saturday at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, with more opportunities each day until July 23."
Associated Press: "The encore performances of the Deep Impact and Stardust probes allow the space agency to further its solar system exploration for a fraction of the cost it would take to start a mission from scratch. ... Scientists plan to activate Deep Impact later this year for a two-part mission that includes collecting data on extrasolar planets to determine whether they have rings, moons or other features. Deep Impact will become an observatory looking at distant stars already known to be orbited by giant planets. After that, Deep Impact will pass the comet 85P/ Boethin in December 2008. It will be the first spacecraft to explore Boethin, a small comet discovered in 1975 that orbits the sun every 11 years. ... The Deep Impact team proposed $40 million for the encore mission, but NASA only allotted $30 million, said principal investigator Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland. While A'Hearn was disappointed with the budget, he did not want to pass up a chance to reuse the Deep Impact spacecraft. 'Clearly, I still want to fly the mission,' he said." Michael A'Hearn was principal investigator for NASA's Deep Impact mission to the comet Tempel 1.
A UM study in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America reports that high powered sonar, like that used by U.S. Navy ships, did not harm test fish, including their hearing, in a controlled setting. The research team, headed by Arthur Popper, biology professor and expert in fish hearing, and Michele Halvorsen, Ph.D., University of Maryland Research Associate, found that exposure to high intensity, low frequency sonar did not kill rainbow trout used for testing, nor did it damage the fishes' auditory systems, other than for a small and presumably temporary decline in hearing sensitivity. It is a finding that Popper says 'should not be extrapolated to other fish species or the effects of other sound sources.' "
According to the first global assessment of forest fire control effectiveness in tropical parks, poverty and corruption correlate closely with lack of fire protection in tropical moist forests. A better understanding of the links between corruption, poverty and park management will help conservationists and policy makers create sophisticated strategies to conserve tropical ecosystems. The survey is published in the July issue of Ecological Application. UM geographer Diane Davies conducted the research, with S. Joseph Wright, staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute; and Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa and Carlos Portillo-Quintero from the University of Alberta.
Wired: "For years, the American Physical Society employed Robert (Bob) Park, a physicist who enjoys lambasting missile defense, imaginary hafnium bombs, and a long list of other ideas he says are far-fetched and unsound. Long before there were blogs, there was Park's What's New, a weekly e-mail newsletter that incorporates brief news items, often focused on deriding 'voodoo science.' Park announced in his newsletter ... that he is no longer with the American Physical Society; What's New has already been moved to University of Maryland, where he has been a professor for several decades."
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