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Maryland Moments, September, 2008 A National Science Foundation report reveals the University of Maryland is a leader in producing black undergraduates who go on to earn Ph.D.'s in science and engineering. Among Traditionally White Institutions, only Harvard, with 73 Ph.D. recipients from its undergraduate programs, eclipsed Maryland, which had 72. The University of California-Berkeley (64), the University of Virginia (63), University of Michigan (62), MIT (58) and the University of North Carolina (54) followed. Baltimore Sun: "The nation that gave the world the Internet and the microchip, the lithium-ion battery and the laser, is at risk of falling behind in scientific achievements. That's the warning from University of Maryland officials and a high-tech industry task force with a goal at once modest and audacious: to hold federal leaders to a promise they made to increase funding for basic scientific research. ... [G]overnment funding for basic research has been stagnant for decades, the innovation task force has found -- despite the fact that about half the nation's gains in gross domestic product since World War II can be traced to such work. In fact, federal investment in physical sciences and engineering as a share of gross domestic product fell by half between 1970 and 2005. Meanwhile, nations around the world, and particularly in Asia, are vastly increasing their support for research. That's why the first challenge, says C.D. 'Dan' Mote Jr., president of the University of Maryland, College Park, is getting people to realize that 'we have a problem that needs to be fixed.' America simply cannot rest on its past greatness as a scientific powerhouse. Mr. Mote cites the problems of climate change and the need for new sources of energy in a world that is running out of oil. If we want scientists in Maryland and across America to be the ones harnessing new technologies to solve these vexing problems -- rather than outsourcing the work to Japan, China, Ireland and Israel -- then honoring the commitment of the America Competes Act should be a first, not a last, step." The National Science Foundation awarded the Joint Quantum Institute $12.5 million over five years to create and operate a Physics Frontier Center at the University of Maryland. The Joint Quantum Institute is a partnership between the university and the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The center will pursue cutting-edge investigations of quantum science -- the bizarre behavior of matter and energy at nature's smallest scales -- with an emphasis on the fundamental physics of quantum information and quantum computing. The Physics Frontier Center (PFC) award, effective September 1, will fund 17 graduate students, seven postdoctoral scientists and seven undergraduates as well as an extensive and highly cross-disciplinary research program under the general title. M Square Research Park Signs on 2 New Tenants Washington Business Journal: "Corporate Office Properties Trust announced two leases for its new 750,000-square-foot project at M Square Research Park near the University of Maryland in College Park. The Joint Global Changes Research Institute will take 12,000 square feet. The institute, which is a collaboration between Battelle Pacific Northwest Division and the University of Maryland, works on global climate change solutions. In addition, Fraunhofer USA's Center for Experimental Software Engineering will take 9,000 square feet. That entity is affiliated with the University of Maryland and the Fraunhofer Institute for Software Engineering in Germany. Fraunhofer USA performs applied research for federal and state governments, multi-national corporations and small- and medium-sized companies." PC World: "While Sprint officially launches commercial WiMAX services for the first time in Baltimore this month, one college campus 30 miles to the south will be building its own mobile WiMAX network that will be used to test next-generation applications for mobile broadband services. The A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland is deploying WiMAX nodes, routers, base stations and other equipment on its campus to create a large testing ground for next-generation mobile broadband capabilities. The lab, which is being built in collaboration with the industry group the WiMAX Forum, will give students the opportunity to test applications on a mobile broadband service that is not expected to be available in most of the United States until 2009. As one of only two WiMAX Forum labs in the world -- the other is in Taiwan -- expectations are high that it will spark a wave of innovation that will showcase WiMAX's strength as a mobile data standard." UM part of College Portrait: Two groups representing the nation's public colleges are expanding a year-old system for providing comparable data on student test results from member institutions, calling it proof of their commitment to public accountability. Fifty-eight percent of the four-year colleges represented by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges and the American Association of State Colleges and Universities have agreed to participate in the new system, which makes public the information compiled as part of the Voluntary System of Accountability created by the two organizations in 2006. The College Portrait system, now encompassing more than 300 colleges, is now being placed on a single Web site to allow easier access and provide a wider menu of information and user options. The Salzburg Academy on Media and Global Change, an initiative of the Salzburg Global Seminar and the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda (ICMPA) at UM, launched an online set of tools, lesson plans, case studies and curricula to teach secondary and university students around the world about the vital role of media in building and supporting civil society. "There is no global issue or political arena in which the statement of problems and the framing of possible solutions are not influenced by media coverage," said Susan Moeller, the director of ICMPA and the lead professor of the Salzburg Academy . "Students in both the developed and the developing world need to understand the different ways media shape our world - and the essential roles media can play in fostering civil society and ensuring transparency and accountability." Washington Times: "A group of area high school seniors got lessons Saturday in what it takes to succeed in college. ... They learned to work hard, to look out for each other, and to pull themselves up by, well, by rope ladders and such. The Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund, a D.C. nonprofit that provides social, financial and academic assistance to city students who hope to attend college, kicked off its new academic school year at the Geary F. Eppley Recreation Center at the University of Maryland, College Park. About 50 seniors from five D.C. high schools participated Saturday in a climbing course and other activities hosted by the D.C. nonprofit Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund. The program's entering class of about 80 high school seniors scaled a daunting and byzantine 50-foot-high obstacle course of ropes, logs and walls, several of which were suspended in mid-air." CESAR: Community Resources Web Site Maryland Daily Record: "The Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland, College Park announced a statewide expansion of resources listed on the Maryland Community Services Locator, www.mdcsl.org, an interactive online directory that enables users to obtain contact information for community services statewide, map resources by location and get instant directions to programs. The Web site now lists more than 3,400 services and programs that cover such topics as substance abuse services, short-term housing, job readiness, adult education, health and mental health services, emergency food assistance, victim services and others." First year college students believe that occasional nonmedical use of prescription pain killers and stimulants is less risky than cocaine, but more risky than marijuana or consuming five or more alcoholic beverages every weekend, according to a new study published in the September issue of Prevention Science, the peer-reviewed journal of the Society for Prevention Research. This is the first study to describe college students' perceptions about the potential harmfulness of nonmedical use of prescription pain killers and stimulants. Previous studies with high school students show that beliefs about harmfulness of illicit drugs are related to drug use. The study by Amelia Arria, Ph.D., of the Center for Substance Abuse Research at the University of Maryland, also found that college students who can be described as 'sensation-seekers' are more likely to use prescription drugs nonmedically; irrespective of how harmful they may perceive the drugs to be." Washington Business Journal: "Under Armour Inc. and the University of Maryland have inked a five-year, $17.5 million deal that will make the Baltimore sports apparel company the official outfitter of the school's entire 27-team athletic department. Under Armour CEO Kevin A. Plank -- a former University of Maryland football player -- unveiled the deal and the new uniforms at a news conference Tuesday afternoon in Gossett Team House on the College Park campus. Terrapins head football coach Ralph Friedgen and men's and women's basketball coaches Gary Williams and Brenda Frese were in attendance." Science & Technology Chronicle of Higher Education: "Like hundreds of other physicists across the United States, Nicholas Hadley isn't planning on getting much sleep this Wednesday. Instead, at 5 a.m. Eastern time, this physics professor at the University of Maryland, College Park will be sipping champagne at a party to celebrate the start-up of a huge scientific experiment -- a particle-smashing machine called the Large Hadron Collider. The corks must pop so early in the United States because the collider is located more than 3,500 miles away, at the European particle-physics laboratory known as CERN, near Geneva. The $10-billion machine is by many measures the biggest experiment ever conceived. ... The distance has already begun to take a toll on Sarah Eno, another physics professor at Maryland, who flies to CERN for a week out of every month. 'It's a killer. My poor body -- it refuses to sleep while I'm there,' she says." Wired Magazine: "After centuries of giving humanity little more than nicotine and death, the tobacco plant may be the wellspring of a revolution in gene therapy. Scientists are using a modified tobacco virus to deliver delicate gene therapies into the heart of diseased cells, with the potential to treat most cancers, viruses and genetic disorders. ... The tobacco mosaic virus, which plagues the plant but is harmless to humans, is hollowed out and filled with 'small interfering RNA' molecules, or siRNA, which some scientists consider to be the most significant development in medicine since the discovery of vaccines. The virus' tubular shell provides a safe way to slip the delicate siRNA drugs into cells, serving as both a protective coating and a Trojan horse. 'This tobacco mosaic virus is literally a nano-sized syringe,' says William Bentley, a professor of bioengineering at the University of Maryland, who is leading the study of the virus." Popular Science: "Though we may often think of cholera as a disease of the past, virtually eradicated when John Snow famously linked an 1854 outbreak of the epidemic in London to an infected water well on Broad Street, it still poses a threat in almost every single developing country in the world. Over 150 years after Snow essentially founded modern epidemiology, a team of American scientists are using remote satellite imaging to predict cholera outbreaks before they occur. Cholera is historically an episodic disease, so the ability to predict its next move before it strikes would hopefully spur pre-emptive, rapid public health initiatives to attempt to mitigate the fatal effects of the infection. ... The team at the University of Maryland, College Park, is led by Professor Rita Colwell, who argues that this research will increasingly help explain how climate change affects human health, especially as many other epidemic disease are also associated with the same or similar environmental factors." BBC News: "The Swift space telescope detected a gamma-ray burst some 12.8 billion light-years from Earth -- a record. These intensely bright but fleeting flashes of very high-energy radiation signal some of the Universe's most violent happenings. This blast, designated GRB 080913, probably originated in the catastrophic explosion of a massive star. 'This is the most amazing burst Swift has seen,' said lead scientist Dr Neil Gehrels. 'It's coming to us from near the edge of the visible Universe,' explained the researcher from the US space agency's (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center." Neil Gehrels is adjunct professor of astronomy (Computer, Mathematical & Physical Sciences). Environmental Expert: "Despite widespread concern about climate change, annual carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and manufacturing cement have grown 38 percent since 1992, from 6.1 billion tons of carbon to 8.5 billion tons in 2007. At the same time, the source of emissions has shifted dramatically as energy use has been growing slowly in many developed countries but more quickly in some developing countries, most notably in rapidly developing Asian countries such as China and India. These are the findings of an analysis completed by the Department of Energy's Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. ... While this national distribution of emissions is significant in the context of international agreements like the Kyoto Protocol, its practical significance is less clear in a world linked by international commerce, co-author Jay Gregg of the University of Maryland (geography), noted." Society & Culture Climate change will cost the Maryland economy billions of dollars, and the state is particularly vulnerable to a "cascade" of economic consequences, says a new report from the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research. Even though the chief impact will come from rising sea levels along the state's coast, the researchers predict that the effects will be transmitted throughout the entire state's economy to a significant degree. "The pain will be felt statewide," says UM public policy professor Matthias Ruth, who coordinated the research and directs the Center for Integrative Environmental Research. Ruth and his team conducted the research for the Maryland Commission on Climate Change. The report appears as a prefatory chapter in the Commission's Climate Action Plan, which was transmitted to Governor O'Malley in late August. Washington Post: "Many middle-class parents say they feel pressure to give their sons and daughters every opportunity -- violin, soccer, ballet, Scouts -- and then worry that their children are overextended to the point of harm. 'I found the opposite of what I expected,' said Sandra Hofferth, director of the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland, College Park and lead author of a research paper released this year that will be part of a book. Hofferth said she had 'started out with a pretty solid belief that lots and lots of activities are bad for children.' But she said the data showed otherwise: A higher level of activity was not linked to such stress symptoms as depression, anxiety, alienation and fearfulness. 'We just don't find that the children who are more active are more stressed,' she said. Parental stress, on the other hand, might be another matter. 'One thing I do think is that parents are having trouble with it, and they're the ones who are having a hard time trying to figure out how to manage children's lives as well as their own,' Hofferth said." Toronto Star: "Maybe clothes don't make the man. Or the boy, either. As a culture, we've long accepted the belief that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. A visit to the infants section at a department store reveals how thoroughly we take the rule for granted. On one side, a sea of pink. On the other -- an ocean of blue. ... 'You can believe that there are two genders, male and female, and you have to pick a team, or that there is some kind of continuum, with some kids at either extreme, and some in the middle,' says costume historian Jo Paoletti, a University of Maryland professor (American studies) who is writing a book on the whole pink and blue mythology. And it is mythology. 'This is something cultural,' explains Paoletti. 'It's part of the assumption that it's important, that it has an impact on the child. Gender is a big part of the lesson plan for children, especially for young children. Once gender is secure and they're on the path to what we think they ought to be, it's okay for a boy to have long hair, or for a girl to dress like a tomboy.' " BBC News: "The US 'war on terror' has failed to weaken its prime target, al-Qaeda, according to people in 22 out of 23 countries surveyed in a new poll for the BBC World Service. On average only 22% believe that al-Qaeda has been weakened, while three in five believe that it has either had no effect (29%) or made al-Qaeda stronger (30%). And while negative views of al-Qaeda are most common in nearly all of the countries surveyed, this is not the case in Egypt and Pakistan -- both pivotal nations in the conflict with al-Qaeda. ... 'Despite its overwhelming military power, America's war against al-Qaeda is widely seen as having achieved nothing better than a stalemate and many believe that it has even strengthened al-Qaeda,' comments Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Public Policy). ... The results are drawn from a survey of 23,937 adult citizens across 23 countries conducted for the BBC World Service by the international polling firm GlobeScan together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA) at the University of Maryland." The influential Program on International Policy Attitudes releases an international poll. Press Trust of India: "The survey was conducted in Egypt, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Indonesia, and the Palestinian Territories, plus the Muslim population of Nigeria. Asked about globalisation, especially the increasing interlinking of economies, majorities in six of the seven nations polled said that it is 'mostly good' for their countries. ... The poll of 5,216 respondents was conducted by WorldPublicOpinion.Org, a collaborative research project involving research centres from around the world, managed at the University of Maryland in the US."
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 Information provided by the Office of University CommunicationsEmail University Communications at emailum@umd.edu |
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