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Maryland Moments, November 2008 President C.D. Mote Jr. was part of the AAU delegation that traveled to Iran from November 13 to November 21. From the Association of American Universities: "Six presidents of U.S. research universities will visit Iranian universities in November on a trip organized by the Association of American Universities (AAU). AAU President Robert M. Berdahl, who will accompany the delegation, said the trip is in response to an invitation by the president of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, which will host the visit. The group will visit Tehran University and several other Iranian universities, as well. The visit complements a series of exchange visits by U.S. scientists to Iran under the sponsorship of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. Under the National Academies' program, Iranian scientists and engineers have also visited U.S. universities and participated in meetings structured around specific topics of mutual scientific interest. The university presidents traveling to Iran are: Jared Cohon, Carnegie Mellon University; David Leebron, Rice University; J. Bernard Machen, University of Florida; C. D. Mote, Jr., University of Maryland, College Park; David Skorton, Cornell University; and Larry Vanderhoef, University of California, Davis." The Students and The Election Washingtonpost.com filed five reports from campus covering Tuesday, Nov. 4, reflecting the importance of the election and youth vote. A sampling: From "At UM, Students Rush to Polls": "As polls closed at the University of Maryland, College Park, the line of students waiting to vote swelled. One student leader organized an impromptu game of bingo for the students, while Lauren Kim, 21, a senior art history major, reminded the students that they couldn't get out of line after 8 p.m. -- even to use the bathroom. 'One minute to vote!' Kim yelled down to students in the food court. 'Yo!' cried Stephan Saunders, 26, a graduate student in psychology. He was the last student to enter the line, having rushed over from dance practice." From "College Park Students Primed to Vote--and Party": "At the Adele H. Stamp Student Union at the University of Maryland, College Park, students were lined up to vote and primed to party. Posters advertising an election night fete decorated the halls and a long line of talking students waited for what was for most their first chance at the ballot box in a presidential race. The students overwhelmingly supported Obama, who had visited the university before. 'He is a transformative leader,' said Kameahle Christopher, 20, a junior majoring in African American studies and government. 'I just hope everything he says he's going to do, he's going to do.' " From "King's Dream Has Come True": "The crowd of college students in the University of Maryland student union counted down the seconds to the polls closing on the West Coast. When Sen. Barack Obama was immediately declared the winner, the ballroom exploded in a frenzy of joy. A young man grabbed a cardboard cutout of Obama and ran with it in circles around the room, shouting the candidate's name. ... People wept and called their friends. The screams of joy were deafening. Ciara Johnson, 21, a communications studies major, wiped tears from her face. 'Oh my God,' she said. 'I'm just so excited. I just feel like Martin Luther King's dream has come true.' " The Oprah Factor; Friend and Ally ABC News visited campus the day after the election to interview economics graduate student Tim Moore. He and fellow student Craig Garthwaite had researched a way to measure the effect of Oprah's support of Barack Obama for president. And from the Washington Times): "During the past eight years, conservatives have relished the sight of sulking Democratic celebrities making their never-kept vows to rid the country of themselves. This time, it seems endorsements by the famous made a difference, at least at the margins. Call the roll ... 1. Oprah Winfrey -- The much-admired talk-show host, who threw her support behind Barack Obama last year, had never endorsed a presidential candidate before. Although her description of the Illinois senator as 'The One' became fodder for Republican attacks, two economics students at the University of Maryland (Tim Moore, Craig Garthwaite) concluded in a study that Miss Winfrey's public support secured Mr. Obama 1 million votes during the Democratic primary." News Channel 8: "Students at a local university are making sure 18-25 year olds vote, since the large group of voters could decide the outcome of the election. The University of Maryland campus is already covered with flyers reminding students to vote. Student groups have been preparing for election day since the primaries. In October, they registered over 2,000 new voters and anticipate a record turnout for the election. Student organizations at the University of Maryland are making the final push to get out the vote. In front of the student union, dozens of people signed a pledge to show up at the polls. 'I'm really excited. I'm so excited to make history,' said one student. The campus is making history of its own. "We formed a coalition in June. It started out as 4 or 5 people in a room just kind of talking, then it expanded to a big conference room then a bigger conference room,' said Jonathan Sachs, Student Government Association president. The group, called TerpsVote, is a movement to get thousands of registered voters to the polls Election Day. As motivation, dorms will be competing for a prize, which will be determined by the turnout. 'They get 12 seats at the athletics seat at the big 10 ACC challenge,' said Sachs." WUSA-TV, Washington: "There are 250 students in the Muslim Association at the University of Maryland at College Park. On Tuesday they told 9NEWS NOW, following a prayer session, that Colin Powell, former Secretary of State, finally said what they had hoped the two Presidential candidates should have said on behalf of Muslims in this country. Powell ... endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President over his friend and fellow Republican John McCain. Powell criticized his party members for how they responded to rumors that Obama was Muslim or Arab. 'The correct answer,' said Powell, 'should have been and what if he is?' Hana Elhattab, a third year Physiology and Neurobiology student thought Powell's comment was long overdue and should have been made by Obama, earlier in the campaign. Sana Javed, a fourth year Government and Politics Major, said while most Muslim students support Obama because of his position on the Iraqi war, Obama doesn't get a pass. His campaign had two Muslim women removed from the stage within camera view months ago during a campaign speech in Michigan. Jamal Aladdin, a second year Government and Politics Major says he might want to run for President someday and his being Muslim should not be a deterrent." Baltimore Business Journal: "The State of Maryland is supporting a new annual fund that supports startups with technologies that improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley announced at the Chesapeake Executive Council Meeting in Washington, D.C. The Chesapeake Bay Seed Capital Fund, administered by the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, or Mtech, a unit of the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland, will invest $250,000 annually over a three-year period into Maryland-based startup companies with innovative technologies that may help improve water quality in the Chesapeake Bay. Fund recipients are jointly selected by Mtech and Maryland Department of Natural Resources staff. 'This fund is an incentive for our most talented researchers and entrepreneurs to find man-made solutions to the man-made problems of our Bay,' says O'Malley. 'Collectively we must continue to escalate efforts to improve the Chesapeake Bay watershed and reduce nutrient run-off as quickly as possible.' " UM National Science Foundation funding for its first ever Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program. Maryland's new IGERT grant is the first ever awarded to a program based in linguistics. The $3 million grant was awarded to the university's new Biological and Computational Foundations of Language Diversity program, an interdisciplinary program that will train young scientists and engineers to understand language diversity by combining the tools of behavioral, computational and biological research. NSF gives the highly competitive IGERT awards only to programs dedicated to highly interdisciplinary research. This year out of some 500 applicant teams from around the nation, 20 received awards. Baltimore Business Journal: "A University of Maryland professor and doctoral student team who invented a new material that halts wound bleeding won the attention of a group of venture capitalists and the title of 'Best Inventor Pitch for Bioscience Day 2008,' held on Nov. 12. Sponsored by the university's Office of Technology Commercialization, the College of Chemical and Life Sciences, and the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute, or Mtech, the second annual 'Professor Venture Fair' gave faculty and inventors the opportunity to pitch their new technologies to a team of five venture capitalists and entrepreneurs from the region. Presenters were judged based upon clarity of pitch and commercial viability. Fischell Department of Bioengineering doctoral student Matthew Dowling and chemical and biomolecular engineering professor Srinivasa Raghavan won for nano-velcro, a new, patent-pending bio-material they're developing into two products: a sponge that is applied directly to a wound to stop hemorrhaging, and a spray that halts blood loss and seals tissue in a variety of situations, from minor surgical bleeding to life-threatening arterial punctures. Both products can be gently removed after wounds heal." Washington Business Journal: "The northern side of Eighth Street SE is home to Barracks Row, featuring revitalized restaurants, shops and taverns. On the southern edge, a new neighborhood, The Yards, is planned. In between lies a mostly barren two-block stretch between the Southeast Expressway and the Navy Yard. But a dozen graduate students from the UM's School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation are trying to figure out how to change that. They are spending the semester surveying businesses, city officials, residents and visitors to see how the corridor can be improved. ... The students gave a presentation Oct. 29 to discuss their early findings and intend to do a final presentation in December. Their study augments ongoing efforts to make the corridor a key connection between Capitol Hill and the Anacostia River." Prince George's Sentinel: "There's a saying that goes, if you build it, they will come. The folks at the Anacostia Trails Heritage Area, Inc. know that and they're already making plans. ... For the Port Towns and surrounding areas, the everyday is its presence in America's history. ... The history of the Plummer family is historic gem of the Edmonston and Riverdale. Adam Plummer was a slave worker of the Calvert Family who lived in at the Riverdale Plantation. In Bladensburg, there's the Bostwick House. Built during colonial times, it is the oldest surviving structure in Bladensburg. Bladensburg has teamed up with the University of Maryland, College Park to maintain its claim to fame. 'This semester we are actually teaching a course at Bostwick,' said Don Linebaugh, director of the Historic Preservation Program. Graduate students in the Bostwick seminar actually meet at the house and discuss ways to preserve the house and its other structures such as a chicken coop. 'The students' work will actually inform the actual [renovation] work,' he said." Gazette Newspapers: "Five graduates of Prince George's County public schools, who are now students at the University of Maryland, College Park, have been chosen for study-abroad scholarships that will allow them to visit South Africa, El Salvador, France and Chile. The students chosen for the Prince George's County International Ambassador Scholarship are Dekebra Arrington of Hyattsville (South Africa), Cindy Hernandez of Laurel (El Salvador), Ritchell Madikaegbu of Hyattsville (France), Isimemen Ojeabulu of Greenbelt (Chile) and Abisoye Oki of Greenbelt (South Africa). The scholarships, valued at between $1,000 and $1,500 per student and funded by the Office of the County Executive, are given to defray the cost of studying abroad." Baltimore Sun: "A German architecture firm with a reputation for creating visually striking buildings that are also environmentally friendly has won an international competition to design a $107 million law school for the University of Baltimore. Behnisch Architekten of Stuttgart, in partnership with Ayers/Saint/Gross of Baltimore, heads a team that was selected over architects from France, Britain and the United States to design the new John and Frances Angelos Law Center, planned for the northeast corner of Charles Street and Mount Royal Avenue. ... Design competition adviser Roger Lewis, professor emeritus in the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland, College Park and an award-winning designer and architecture critic, said the choice was difficult. The decision followed an all-day review of the five firms selected this fall as finalists. ... 'The competition was successful in producing five diverse and imaginative concepts, Lewis said. 'The quality of each presentation intensified the challenge of reaching consensus. Our deliberations were daunting.' " Students across UM's campus joined millions of other young people across the world in a quest to embrace innovation and creativity, and turn their ideas into reality. The quest, from Nov. 17-23, was a university-wide celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week led by the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech), a unit of the Clark School of Engineering, and the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. Science & Technology An international research project conceived by UM physicist Eun-Suk Seo discovered an unexpected surplus of cosmic ray high energy electrons that appear to come from a previously unidentified and relatively nearby cosmic source. The discovery was made using an instrument conceived and modeled by Seo, an associate professor in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology and the department of physics at UM. Called the Advanced Thin Ionization Calorimeter, or ATIC, this instrument was flown high above the Antarctic on-board a NASA balloon as part of an ATIC collaboration led by John P. Wefel, a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at LSU. In the November 20 issue of the journal Nature, Wefel, Seo and other project scientists report finding an unexpected surplus of cosmic ray electrons with a high energy of 300 - 800 Giga electron volts. This source for these electrons they write would need to be within 1 kilo parsec (3,260 light years) of the sun and could be an exotic object such as a pulsar, mini-quasar, supernova remnant or even an intermediate mass black hole. The University of Maryland-led Milagro collaboration, comprised of scientists from 16 institutions across the United States, has discovered two nearby regions with an unexpected excess of cosmic rays. This is the second finding of a source of galactic cosmic rays relatively near Earth announced in the past week. In the November 20 issue of the journal Nature, ATIC, an international experiment lead by LSU scientists and conceived by a University of Maryland physicist announced finding an unexpected surplus of cosmic-ray electrons from an unidentified, but relatively close source. These two results may be due to the same, or different, astrophysical phenomenon, said Jordan Goodman, a University of Maryland professor of physics and principal investigator for Milagro. Lancaster New Era: "Weird as it seems, the work of a coral reef is being replicated on the rocky banks of the Susquehanna River near Holtwood. Here at the Muddy Run Pumped Storage power plant, two scientists are convinced they have found a proven way to, at last, clean up the Chesapeake Bay and, at the same time, provide a renewable alternative fuel to oil. The goals may be huge but the technology for this 'ecological engineering' is fairly basic. Algae. Simply put, river water flows in surges downhill on two narrow, 300-foot-long raceways. The running water and sunlight cause algae to form on a screen. The algae absorbs phosphorus and nitrogen, two nutrients that are excessive in the Susquehanna and choke the Chesapeake Bay just downriver. ... [A]s time runs out on deadlines to clean up the Chesapeake and a nation desperately searches for alternatives to oil, scientists Walter Adey of the Smithsonian Institution and Patrick Kangas (associate professor of environmental science and technolgy) of the University of Maryland think Pennsylvania may be the breakthrough that leads to mainstream use of algae-growth systems to clean water and produce bio-fuel for vehicles." Researchers at UM's Clark School of Engineering iscovered a new lead-free material, bismuth samarium ferrite (BSFO), for use in products ranging from biomedical imaging devices to airbag sensors to inkjet printers. If implemented commercially, it could replace a common lead-based material found in these and other electronic devices, keeping lead out of landfills and the ecosystem. "One of the reasons it's so hard to let go of lead is because it's so useful," explained A. Ichiro Takeuchi, associate professor in the department of materials science and engineering. 'Its properties make it ideal for use in electronic devices. Discovery Channel: "Mega wind farms of the future could have a major impact on weather, clearing up cloudy skies and even steering storm systems, according to new research. In the United States, wind power still only accounts for a little over 1 percent of electricity generation. But the industry is growing fast, from 17 gigawatts of installed capacity at the end of 2007 to 21 through the end of September. And the U.S. Department of Energy is upping the ante even further, with plans for the country to generate 20 percent of its electricity through wind by 2030. Wind turbines could soon be carpeting the countryside wherever there is a steady breeze. To find out what effects, if any, large scale wind farms might have on wind patterns, Daniel Barrie (graduate student, atmospheric and oceanic science) and Daniel Kirk-Davidoff (assistant professor of atmospheric and oceanic science) of the University of Maryland concocted an experiment. They took the pattern of expanding turbine fields to an extreme, and used a computer model to calculate what might happen if all the land from Texas to central Canada, and from the Great Lakes to the Rocky Mountains were covered in one massive wind farm." A golfer's lust for distance leads to the supercomputer: "At the 61st Meeting of the American Physical Society's Division of Fluid Dynamics this week, a team of researchers from Arizona State University and the University of Maryland is reporting research that may soon give avid golfers another way to improve their game. Employing the same sort of scientific approach commonly used to improve the design of automobiles, aircraft, ships, trains, and other moving objects, the team has used a supercomputer to model how air flows around a ball in flight and to study how this flow is influenced by the ball's dimples. ... Nikolaos Beratlis, a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland, and his advisor Elias Balaras have been developing highly efficient algorithms and software to solve these equations on parallel supercomputers, which can reduce the simulation time to the order of hours. The number crunching for a typical computation, for example, takes approximately 300 hours using 500 fast processors running in parallel (normal desktop computers may have one or two slower processors)." New York Times: UM economist Peter Morici, of the Smith School of Business, turns media rock star with an appearance before a Congressional committee that hosted, at one table, the CEOs of Detroit's Big Three and Morici. "Detroit's automakers have 'very fine engineers' and no shortage of creativity, Professor Morici says. So why have they been losing out for years to Japanese companies? Because of the Detroit companies' high labor costs, which keep the companies from spending as much as they should on product development, he says. Though his words will not be popular with union workers, he says the Detroit companies can't recover completely until their labor costs are 'absolutely in line' with those of their overseas competitors. Mr. Morici is the only member of the panel not connected to the automobile industry. A professor at the University of Maryland, he's known among the business media for offering his opinions unasked, including essays that he e-mails to reporters with his view of things. But given the vast need for pundits who can talk about the auto industry, he's popped up on cable television, on NPR, and now at the witness table." NPR: All Things Considered: "When U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson first announced the plan for saving the American economy, it called for using $700 billion to buy up so-called toxic assets. The idea was for the government to remove the mortgage-backed securities that were sinking banks' balance sheets. That got one pair of economists very excited. Larry Ausubel and Peter Cramton of the University of Maryland knew just how to carry out Paulson's plan -- with an approach known as a reverse auction. Ausubel and Cramton had run these auctions before, and on a large scale. They began working on a plan with officials at the Treasury Department. Then Paulson changed his strategy, deciding instead to buy stocks directly in banks. Ausubel wasn't happy with the move toward these capital injections. 'Instead of conducting transparent auctions, the Treasury is going to instead distribute suitcases of cash,' he says. But Ausubel and Cramton have not given up hope. With a new administration coming in, they think buying up toxic assets remains a smart and viable choice. Last month, they did a dry run of an auction, with graduate students playing the role of banks." Asian News International: "Before tackling any of their party's broad, long-term legislative priorities, President-elect Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress should focus on rebuilding Americans' basic trust in government, according to a new report by the centrist Democratic group Third Way. 'In recent years anti-government ire has cooled, but that does not mean that there has been a huge surge in support for its opposite," said William Galston, a former Clinton administration official and University of Maryland professor who co-authored the report. While Democrats are right to interpret their electoral victories as a mandate for change, Galston said: 'The obvious question from this is, how broad is that authorization?' Galston and his co-author, Harvard professor and fellow Clinton White House alum Elaine Kamarck, argue that the Bush administration undermined the public's faith in government because of its bumbling response to Hurricane Katrina and its overly optimistic assessments of early progress in Iraq." Global coverage for this UM research: "A new study by sociologists at the University of Maryland concludes that unhappy people watch more TV, while people who describe themselves as 'very happy' spend more time reading and socializing. The study appears in the December issue of the journal Social Indicators Research. Analyzing 30-years worth of national data from time use studies and a continuing series of social attitude surveys, the Maryland researchers report that spending time watching television may contribute to viewers' happiness in the moment, with less positive effects in the long run. 'TV doesn't really seem to satisfy people over the long haul the way that social involvement or reading a newspaper does,' says University of Maryland sociologist John Robinson, the study co-author and a pioneer in time use studies. It's more passive and may provide escape -- especially when the news is as depressing as the economy itself. The data suggest to us that the TV habit may offer short-run pleasure at the expense of long-term malaise.' " "Time poor" single mothers come surprisingly close in the number of hours they spend caring for their children compared to married mothers, and the difference is explained almost entirely by socio-economic factors and the kind of jobs they hold, say University of Maryland sociologists in a new study. The researchers conclude public policy focuses too heavily on the mother's marital status. The study, published in the December issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family, is the first to provide a detailed look at the amount and quality of time single mothers are able to give their children. Based on data from time use diaries, the study finds that single mothers who may lack a large support network still manage to provide 83 to 90 percent of child-rearing time as their married counterparts. While the difference is statistically significant, the researchers expected a greater gap. "We were surprised that these women managed to pull it off so well, often working long hours with little help, yet devoting up to 90 percent of the time to their children that married women do," says Sarah Kendig, a doctoral student at the University of Maryland and the principal researcher. The research served as Kendig's master's thesis. Suzanne Bianchi, University of Maryland chair of sociology and Kendig's advisor, co-authored the article. South China Morning Post: "Outcomes-based learning in universities needs to be developed from the bottom up or it is 'bound to fail', a Fulbright visiting scholar told a University of Hong Kong seminar .... 'Learning outcomes are owned by the faculty and as such they have to be developed by the faculty,' said Spencer Benson, director of the University of Maryland's Centre for Teaching Excellence (Cell Biology & Molecular Genetics). 'Having someone tell you what your learning outcomes are or ought to be, simply doesn't work. The whole thing unravels.' The university is in the third year of its first four-year cycle of learning outcomes assessment, the fruition of a reform process that began in 2004. Dr. Benson said building up a 'critical mass' of teaching staff from across all of the university's faculties had been crucial to a smooth implementation of the change."
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 Information provided by the Office of University CommunicationsEmail University Communications at emailum@umd.edu |
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