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August 07, 2008 8:09 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, August, 2007
University Initiatives
(Research, Rankings, New Programs)
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports: "The National Science Board proposed on Wednesday a 'national action plan' intended to spur major improvements in the teaching of science and mathematics at all educational levels but especially elementary and secondary schools. The goal is to enhance the quantitative skills and scientific literacy of workers generally, because jobs increasingly will require technical knowledge, the plan says. Universities and colleges would play an important role by producing schoolteachers better trained in the content of science and in effective ways to teach it. ... The draft plan released on Wednesday incorporates the major recommendations of an advisory commission set up by the board last year." (President C.D. Mote Jr. was among the authors of that advisory commission's report: "Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing America for a Brighter Economic Future.")
UM reaches a new zenith in attracting outside research dollars. The $407 million in grants raised outstrips the previous year's sum by 14 percent, or $57 million. Maryland Daily Record: "The grants, mostly from federal and private sources, are earmarked for various faculty research projects, from studying the effects of microscopic plant life on climate change to examining foreign languages."
The Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University releases its annual list of the leading research universities in the world.
UM is No. 37 in the world.
Among U.S. public universities it is No. 11. (Since 2004, UM vaulted 20 places in the world standings.)
1. University of California, Berkeley
2. University of California, Los Angeles
3. University of California, San Diego
4. University of Washington, Seattle
5. University of Wisconsin, Madison
6. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
7. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
8. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
9. University of Colorado, Boulder
10. University of California, Santa Barbara
11. University of Maryland, College Park
12. University of Texas, Austin
13. Pennsylvania State University, University Park
14. University of California, Davis
15. University of California, Irvine
UM maintains its No. 18 ranking among the nation's public universities. It is No. 54 among National Universities.
Two undergraduate subjects, business and engineering, are ranked.
Business is No. 21
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Business Management No. 21
Entrepreneurship No. 11
Management Information Systems No. 7
Supply Chain Management/Statistics No. 7
Production Operations Management No. 16
Finance No. 18
Management No. 18
Quantitative Analysis No. 18
Marketing No. 18
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Aerospace No. 10
Computer No. 20
In addition to numerical rankings, U.S. News's college issue contained Honor Rolls regarding the campus experience. UM ranks among the top schools in five of eight areas surveyed:
Academic Programs: First-year Experiences
Academic Programs: Service Learning
Academic Programs: Study Abroad
Academic Programs: Learning Communities
Academic Programs: Undergraduate Research / Creative Projects
UM, Michigan and Wisconsin were the only state flaghship campuses designated in five lists.
Maryland is named one of the top 15 Green Colleges by Grist magazine. "Students at this College Park campus recently sent a loud-and-clear message about sustainability: some 91 percent of undergrads voted to raise student fees in order to pay for clean energy, when tuition and fees are already at record highs. If implemented, the fee increase would eventually raise enough money to make UM the largest higher-ed purchaser of renewable energy in the U.S." UM is the only state flagship university on the list that also includes schools in other countries.
Baltimore Business Journal: "The University of Maryland announced investments of $1.5 million in 23 technology research projects at local companies. Through the university's industrial partnerships program (Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, Clark School of Engineering), companies like Bethesda-based ADF Solutions Inc. and Gaithersburg-based Promogen Inc. will pitch in a combined $2.1 million. In return, they get not only some of the funding but also access to university researchers who can help them develop biotech products or technologies related to homeland security. With $77,525, Bethesda-based APC Biotechnologies Inc. is developing a fertility test for dairy cattle that could aid in commercial breeding that will help meet the U.S. demand for milk and milk products. Rockville-based HeMemics Biotech is spending $107,278 on developing preserved, dried cellular products for therapeutic applications in the veterinary market. With $232,146, Bethesda-based RegeneRx Biopharmaceuticals Inc. is developing a treatment for heart-attack patients to prevent damage and accelerate the healing of cardiac tissue. Of the 23 companies involved, 14 are startups."
Science & Technology
Through UM's Technology Extension Service, a state business assessement program regarding radio frequency identification tagging is launched. Baltimore Sun: "A business development division within the University of Maryland, College Park said yesterday that it's launching a new program to help state companies assess whether radio frequency identification (RFID) -- a system used to track products and locate individuals -- is right for them. Such RFID chips, which can emit detectable signals, are already being used to pay tolls through E-ZPass and track inventory and supplies at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and the Defense Department. ... 'These tags are actually talking to a computer without manual intervention,' cutting down on labor costs, said Paul Vinikoor, a certified RFID technologist, electrical engineer and manager of the university's Maryland Technology Extension Service, which provides business assistance to state companies."
Engineering's Ed Link continues to play a major role in repairing New Orleans levees. Washington Post: "A $3 million experiment by the Army Corps of Engineers ... will simulate the conditions that caused critical levee failures during Hurricane Katrina, leading to disastrous flooding. In the test, engineers will gradually pump water into a section of the London Avenue Canal, one of two canals whose flood walls toppled in the storm two years ago, allowing in most of the inundation in the main part of the city. ... There have been three major engineering investigations into the disaster. The most ambitious, a $25 million effort, was sponsored by the Army Corps of Engineers and reviewed by the American Society of Civil Engineers. ... Ed Link of the University of Maryland, who directed the Corps-sponsored report, said that although 'there's lots more to learn and lots more analysis to be done, I don't see a lot of benefit in rehashing what's already being done. Fundamentally, there's a lot of agreement' about what happened in Katrina."
Scientists set up shop on the Washington mountain, to record how nature rebuilds itself. Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "Using a $428,000, five-year award from the National Science Foundation, (John) Bishop and colleagues from the University of Maryland have lately begun to focus on the effect of a nonnative type of beetle that's invaded [Mt. St. Helens] pumice plain. During a field expedition at the end of July, the beetle was mainly evident from what it left behind: Dead willow branches, and piles of sawdust-like frass. In the stark and open environment of the pumice plain, scientists consider the willow and alpine lupine to be 'ecosystem engineers' because they fix nitrogen in the developing soil. This, in turn, sparks a succession of life forms: Moths and other herbivores that eat the lupines, followed by predators such as spiders that feast on them. Anything that constrains the growth of willows and lupines effectively short-circuits the ecological procession. At 4,000 feet above sea level, plants and animals must overcome winter snow and 80 inches of annual precipitation. In normal terrain, even dead plants offer the spark of life to the next generation by leaving behind basic elements such as nitrogen and phosphorus." Working with Bishop, of the University of Washington-Vancouver, is UM's William Fagan, associate professor of biology.
Space.com: "Einstein's predicted warping of space-time has been discovered around neutron stars, the most dense observable matter in the universe. The warping shows up as smeared lines of iron gas whipping around the stars, University of Michigan and NASA astronomers say. The finding also indicates a size limit for the celestial objects. The same distortions have been spotted around black holes and even around Earth, so while the finding may not be a surprise, it is significant for answering basic questions of physics, said study team member Sudip Bhattacharyya of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. and the University of Maryland, College Park."
United Press International: "Food experts have discovered U.S. consumers are confused about seafood safety with many having differing and often conflicting beliefs. In a survey conducted by the University of Maryland's Center for Food Nutrition and Agriculture Policy, consumers listed tuna, salmon and shrimp as the seafood containing the highest mercury levels. But when they were asked which fish had the lowest levels of mercury their responses were identical: tuna, salmon and shrimp. 'On one hand, we want pregnant women to eat fish, as there are plenty of benefits to the fetus in terms of cognitive development and other factors,' said university researcher Maureen Storey, 'But on the other hand, there is confusion about the risks, so there are a lot of conflicting messages that have been misunderstood.' For the record, Storey -- who presented the survey during the annual meeting of the Institute of Food Technologists -- said the fish containing the highest levels of mercury are large predatory, such as shark and swordfish."
Society & Culture
The Baltimore Sun devotes a feature story to a UM faculty member. " Peter Levine followed the pattern that he now sees as basic to getting involved in civic life. As an undergraduate at Yale, he was president of the student government. Later, after he got his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University --where he was a Rhodes scholar -- Levine did not retreat into the ivory tower of academia; he joined the civic-based lobbying group Common Cause. There was only one problem he found there. 'The median age was very high,' he says. Surrounded by people of a certain age who had grown up assuming that you were supposed to be engaged with your community and with politics and such, Levine became concerned about the apparent lack of civic involvement among young people. Levine, 40, came to the University of Maryland's Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) when it was founded in 2001. He became its director last year. 'The Pew Charitable Trust was starting a large strategy of focusing on young people and CIRCLE was basically its research arm,' Levine says. 'We have since diversified our funding, but have continued to be the research arm of the youth civic engagement movement.' "
Reuters: "Maintaining competition between Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp by awarding each company work on new refueling tankers could slash U.S. Air Force costs about 30 percent, a former top Pentagon weapons buyer has concluded in a new study. Jacques Gansler, defense undersecretary for acquisitions during the Clinton administration, said his study was partially funded by one of the suppliers, but declined to say which. Now at the University of Maryland, Gansler described himself as an independent third party and said he had no preference for which company won. He said historical data from previous arms deals showed the government could save over $10 billion in just the first phase of the program by keeping both in the running."
The Philadelphia Inquirer: "Adam and Eve, Noah and the Flood, Moses and the Ten Commandments -- these are some of the best-known stories of the Old Testament. But tug at the obscure Bible story of Joseph and his bones, says scholar Jerome Segal, and there emerges a startling new way to read the first books of Jewish scripture. In his new book, Joseph's Bones: Understanding the Struggle Between God and Mankind in the Bible, Segal proposes that the Torah and the Book of Joshua are a sly, close-to-blasphemous account of mankind's effort to tame and ethicize the jealous, impulsive character of God. 'God has his own very specific project, not made fully clear, that has to do with creating something in his image that will come to know him,' Segal, a scholar-in-residence at the University of Maryland, said in a recent interview."
A UM faculty member, as art sleuth, nets India a prize painting. The Times of India: "In a newly-built conservation studio of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya (Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai, a huge canvas lies wrapped in specially-imported silicon impregnated paper. No outsider is allowed to get close. This is a grand venture to salvage a 200-year-old French painting, mutilated and yet the jewel that crowns the museum's entire collection. Museum director Sabyasachi Mukherjee says The Sword of Damocles probably ranks highest among the most prized of the 50,000 artefacts housed in the building. 'We realised its importance when Dr. Richard Spear of the University of Maryland visited in 2004 to study our European display. Believing this oil-on-canvas work to be important, he got restoration consultant Abraham Joel to remove the darkened varnish over the painting. On cleaning it, we discovered the signature of French artist Antoine Dubost on the footstool in the painting,' says Mukherjee. In rapture over the discovery, the team of foreign experts will be back in Mumbai in October to undertake thorough cleaning and restoration."
Fall '07 :
'08 :
Information provided by the Office of University Communications