Friday, November 20

Highlighted News Items

• Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities: New Shakespeare Archive Launched (Oxford University)
• Darmody: Study -- Incubator Would Bring 1,900 Jobs to Prince George's (Business Gazette)
• Graduation Rates on the Rise (Inside Higher Ed)
• Downturn Stalls UM's Plans for Upscale East Campus District (Washington Post)
• Brown Honors Veterans in Ceremony at the University of Maryland (Capital News Service, Annapolis Capital)
• Sapkota: Dangerous Bacteria Found in Cigarettes (Toronto Star)
• Shneiderman: 'Augmented Reality' Fuses Your World and the Web (Washington Post)
• Tatarewicz: Big Bang Machine Near Restart After Repairs (Associated Press)
• Shinagawa: Cultural Factors Help Limit Recession's Impact (USA Today)
• Li: Speaking of Human Rights (Baltimore Sun)
• Lee: Americans Paying Attention to Health Care Debate? (CNN)

• UM--Higher Ed, Community
  • Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities: New Shakespeare Archive Launched
    (Oxford University)

    "The Shakespeare Quartos Archive has been officially launched today with a complete digital collection of rare early editions of Hamlet.  For the first time, all 32 existing quarto copies of the play held by participating UK and US institutions are freely available online in one place (www.quartos.org). This initiative is jointly led by the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, and the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, through a joint transatlantic grant from JISC in the UK and the National Endowment for the Humanities in the US.  Quarto is a technical term describing the format of a book, referring to the size of leaves produced from folding a full sheet of paper on which multiple pages of text were printed to form the individual sections of a book.  The new website features high-quality reproductions and searchable full text of surviving copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet in quarto in an interactive interface. Functions and tools - such as the ability to overlay images, compare them side-by-side, and mark and tag features with user annotations - facilitate scholarly research, performance studies, and new applications for learning and teaching. ... The Shakespeare Quartos Archive contains texts drawn from the British Library, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Huntington Library, the National Library of Scotland, and the University of Edinburgh Library, in addition to the Bodleian Library. These six institutions worked in conjunction with the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland, and The Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, to digitize and transcribe 32 copies of Hamlet."
    
    
    Source: Oxford University

  • Darmody: Study -- Incubator Would Bring 1,900 Jobs to Prince George's
    (Business Gazette)

    "The Prince George's County Planning Department of the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission has released its study on the viability of building a biotech incubator within the county, determining that such a facility could generate as many as 1,900 jobs and $4.4 million in annual tax revenues.  The Prince George's County Biotechnology Research and Development Center Study, two years in the making, was prepared by the Angle Technology Group of Charlottesville, Va. It recommends a multi-tenant flagship facility to offer wet lab space for young bioscience companies, accelerated business growth, workforce training programs for biotechs and research space for related university and federal lab programs to help users attract federal research funds. This would establish an identifiable focal point for the county's bioscience development, the study said. ... The Prince George's study recommends locating its biotech incubator at M-Square in College Park, the upcoming Konterra Business Campus in Laurel or near the Prince George's Plaza Metro in Hyattsville. Job and revenue numbers depend on the location, with the Plaza Metro site presenting the greatest possible benefits.  Limited space for startup biotech and a perceived lack of focus on the industry has made it difficult to retain the companies graduating from the University of Maryland, College Park's incubator programs, the study showed. To date, the county has eight biotech companies, encompassing about 1,500 employees. ... Alton Fryer, senior vice president and partner at Manekin, one of the developers working on M-Square, said the incubator is a project Manekin would be interested in but not as an investor.  Incubator projects are very capital intensive, Fryer said. ... Some organizations have their own preferences on the incubator's potential location.  'The proximity to other institutions is the leading way to do tech transfers,' said Brian Darmody, associate vice president of research and economic development for the university, referring to collaborations between the university and a county incubator.  While Darmody said the university would prefer a county incubator to locate near M-Square, he said the university partners with state incubators wherever they are. He added that the university's incubator can't offer a lot of wet lab space since those labs have many environmental regulations. Darmody said a partnership with the incubator could include faculty shares and joint approaches for federal research money."
    
    
    Source: Business Gazette

  • Graduation Rates on the Rise
    (Inside Higher Ed)

    UM's general graduation rate (82%) and its athletics graduation rate (66%) are listed in this analysis.  "Whichever way you choose to count, athletes in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I and II are graduating at higher rates.  The NCAA on Wednesday published its annual graduation rates reports, in which the association is increasingly focusing on its measure of choice, the NCAA-created Graduation Success Rate, which association officials say more accurately portrays the actual performance of athletes than does the federal graduation rate, because it includes students who transfer in to a particular institution and excludes those who transfer out of that college in good academic standing."
    
    
    Source: Inside Higher Ed

  • Downturn Stalls UM's Plans for Upscale East Campus District
    (Washington Post)

    "The University of Maryland has suffered a setback in its plan for East Campus, a proposed district of upscale restaurants, shops and housing that it hopes will build a stronger sense of a college town in College Park.  The university and developer Foulger-Pratt/Argo Investment have ended their exclusive negotiations, the two organizations said in a joint statement released Friday.  'Despite best efforts, the current economic downturn and difficult financial and real estate markets preclude an East Campus development on the schedule and scale the parties envisioned,' the release states.  The university selected the developer in 2007 to build East Campus, billed as a $700 million project covering 38 acres, twice the size of the corridor first redeveloped in downtown Silver Spring. There were plans for an upscale grocery store such as Whole Foods, a 500-seat music venue, an art house movie theater, a luxury hotel, a bookstore and assorted sit-down restaurants. The area, east of U.S. 1 near the university's fraternity row, includes old student housing, abandoned research greenhouses and maintenance buildings.  University officials pledge to press on with East Campus. They said Friday that the developer had 'accomplished much in the predevelopment phase that will be central to the future success' of the initiative.  University spokesman Millree Williams said economic shifts compelled the school to break the project into smaller pieces."
    
    
    Source: Washington Post

  • Brown Honors Veterans in Ceremony at the University of Maryland
    (Capital News Service, Annapolis Capital)

     "Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown and the University of Maryland honored student, staff and alumni veterans in a memorial service on campus.  'It is because of your service,' Brown said in remarks at the university's Memorial Chapel, 'that our nation remains the greatest nation in the world, and we owe you debt and gratitude that we will never be able to fully repay.'  Brown also thanked the university for its outreach programs to veterans, which include scholarships and the community support group TerpVets. ... Brown was a fitting representative for Wednesday's ceremony. He is a colonel in the Army Reserves, and has deployed on tours of duty in Germany and Iraq. He is the highest-ranking elected official who has served in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Staff and student veterans appeared at the event to share stories and remembrances of their tours of duty."
    
    
    Source: Capital News Service (Annapolis Capital)

  • UM Shouldn't Sacrifice Ideals During Hard Times
    (Washington Post)

    Columnist Robert McCartney:  "Perched on a rise at the northern tip of campus, near the arena where the Terps play basketball, is a small forest known as the Wooded Hillock where University of Maryland students jog, study and smoke the occasional joint.  Now, after prolonged but apparently insufficient study, the school wants to bulldoze nine acres of the hillock's 22 to make room for equipment sheds, a parking lot and other maintenance facilities. Administrators say it's the only affordable site for those operations, and the move is critical to the school's ambitious (although stalled) East Campus redevelopment plan aimed at making College Park a more fun, cool place to go to school.  The university should look again. I'm willing to raze trees when necessary for the sake of smart growth, such as to build the light rail Purple Line linking College Park to Bethesda. But this plan contradicts the university's numerous, solemn pledges to become a national leader in protecting the environment. ... 'Ultimately we are left with bad choices,' Nariman Farvardin, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost, told a spirited session of the University Senate on Thursday. 'How can we cut without hurting some part of the university?'   Farvardin said the university remains committed to diversity but warned that more spending cuts are coming. Budget and diversity issues dominated Thursday's debate and took so much time that a planned motion to preserve the hillock didn't reach the floor.  The economic pressures might provide a reprieve for the trees, at least temporarily. That's because they must go only if it's necessary to move facilities being displaced by East Campus -- and that project's future is uncertain."
    
    
    Source: Washington Post

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• Science and Technology
  • Sapotka Study: Cigarettes Harbor Many Pathogenic Bacteria
    (Phys.org)

    "Cigarettes are 'widely contaminated' with bacteria, including some known to cause disease in people, concludes a new international study conducted by a University of Maryland environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France.  The research team describes the study as the first to show that 'cigarettes themselves could be the direct source of exposure to a wide array of potentially pathogenic microbes among smokers and other people exposed to secondhand smoke.' Still, the researchers caution that the public health implications are unclear and urge further research.  'We were quite surprised to identify such a wide variety of human bacterial pathogens in these products,' says lead researcher Amy R. Sapkota, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland's School of Public Health.  'The commercially-available cigarettes that we tested were chock full of bacteria, as we had hypothesized, but we didn't think we'd find so many that are infectious in humans, explains Sapkota, who holds a joint appointment with the University's Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics.  'If these organisms can survive the smoking process -- and we believe they can -- then they could possibly go on to contribute to both infectious and chronic illnesses in both smokers and individuals who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke,' Sapkota adds. 'So it's critical that we learn more about the bacterial content of cigarettes, which are used by more than a billion people worldwide.' "
    
    
    Source: UM Release (Phys.org)

  • Sapkota: Dangerous Bacteria Found in Cigarettes
    (Toronto Star)

    "A U.S. study suggests that as bad as you think they are, cigarettes may be even worse for your health than you feared.  Researchers at the University of Maryland have discovered hundreds of strains of bacteria dwelling within cigarettes, some of which are connected to lung and blood infections, and food-borne illness.  'We feel they can play a role in infectious and possible chronic disease,' said Amy Sapkota, public health expert and lead researcher on the study. 'There's plenty of literature that shows that the respiratory tracts of smokers are colonized with higher levels of pathogens.'  As yet, the researchers can't link the pathogens with disease in smokers. It has yet to be determined if the bacteria can survive the burning of a cigarette. But Sapkota and her colleagues believe they can.  'That's the hypothesis we're going on,' Sapkota said.  If that's the case, the bacteria could be dangerous not only to smokers, but to those near enough to inhale second-hand smoke."
    
    
    Source: Toronto Star

  • Sapkota: Ciggies Contaminated with Disease Causing Bacteria
    (Asian News International)

    "A University of Maryland environmental health researcher and microbial ecologists at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon in France conducted the research.  The study found 'cigarettes themselves could be the direct source of exposure to a wide array of potentially pathogenic microbes among smokers and other people exposed to secondhand smoke.'  Lead researcher Amy R. Sapkota, an assistant professor in the University of Maryland's School of Public Health, said: 'We were quite surprised to identify such a wide variety of human bacterial pathogens in these products.  The commercially-available cigarettes that we tested were chock full of bacteria, as we had hypothesized, but we didn't think we'd find so many that are infectious in humans.  If these organisms can survive the smoking process -- and we believe they can -- then they could possibly go on to contribute to both infectious and chronic illnesses in both smokers and individuals who are exposed to environmental tobacco smoke.' 
    
    
    Source: Asian News International (Times of India)

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  • Shneiderman: 'Augmented Reality' Fuses Your World and the Web
    (Washington Post)

    "Not all of these programs are tremendously helpful. When I fired up Yelp on an iPhone in the middle of downtown Vienna, it popped up so many links that I couldn't find a restaurant one block away. But the potential is almost mind-bending, especially if you extrapolate other things that smartphones could do with added processing power.  University of Maryland computer-science professor Ben Shneiderman threw out some possibilities in an e-mail: recognizing paintings in a museum to display their provenance and artists' biographies, identifying flowers and trees during a nature hike, even looking up the names of people in your vicinity.  At that point, we could have a market for yet another visionary AR program: a database of streetlights, parking meters and telephone poles to warn distracted pedestrians when they're about to walk into one."
    
    
    Source: Washington Post

  • Tatarewicz: Big Bang Machine Near Restart After Repairs
    (Associated Press)

    "Scientists have repaired the world's largest atom smasher and plan by this weekend to restart the machine that was launched with great fanfare last year before its spectacular failure from a bad electrical connection, a spokesman said Tuesday.  This time the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is taking a cautious approach with the super-sophisticated equipment, said James Gillies. It cost about $10 billion, with contributions from many governments and universities around the world.  Scientists expect to send beams of protons around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) circular tunnel housing the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, but they have refrained from setting a date. That stands in stark contrast with the hype of the Sept. 10, 2008, launch, when the startup was televised globally. ... Joseph N. Tatarewicz, a science historian with the University of Maryland, said technology was now so complex to push the limits of science that it takes a long time and large budgets to develop and run them.  The United States' Hubble telescope 'took nearly three years after launch before it became so productive and even beloved,' Tatarewicz said."
    
    
    Source: Associated Press (Washington Post)

  • Colwell: Dengue Fever Slips Across the Border
    (Miller-McCune)

    "Stories of the potential consequences of climate change have been used to motivate politicians, shame deniers and educate the broader public on how an abstract scientific concept could breed concrete disasters. There are, of course, the rising sea levels and warmer temperatures, migrating species and shrinking ice caps.  Less frequently cited, it turns out, is another concern: dengue fever.  Public health experts now warn that climate change could come with a host of complications that have seldom figured prominently in all the talk of emissions reductions and treaty negotiations. More obvious among the concerns -- both in sanitation-poor Third World countries and in the U.S. -- are heat-related strokes or deaths. Respiratory illnesses like asthma are another likely consequence of continued air pollution. But a report recently released by the United States Global Change Research Program also warned of the possible increase in waterborne pathogens and diseases carried by insects and rodents. ... In another illustration of the relationship between unusual weather patterns and deadly diseases, Rita Colwell, a former director of the National Science Foundation and now a professor at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University, recalled a hantavirus outbreak in the American Southwest in the early 1990s. Heavy rainfall from the 1991-92 El Ni?o led to a dramatic increase in deer mice populations in the Four Corners area. Researchers later traced the simultaneous outbreak of a deadly disease -- once thought to be the result of bioterrorism -- to the mice who carried the hantavirus."
    
    
    Source: Miller-McCune

  • Kantor: Getting the Facts About Your Food
    (Wall Street Journal)

    "Although the representatives are consumer-relations specialists and not nutritionists or dieticians, they receive extensive training and can discuss a product's nutritional information and give advice on how to prepare it, according to the companies. We ran the responses past Mark Kantor, an expert on nutrition and food safety and an associate professor at the University of Maryland's Department of Nutrition and Food Science.  When we called the consumer number for frozen raw Tyson boneless, skinless chicken breasts, we barely had time to put the phone to our ear before a representative, David, was on the line. We asked if we could thaw a piece of frozen raw chicken in the refrigerator and refreeze it without cooking it. 'Safety wise, it's perfectly fine to do that,' he said. And according to Dr. Kantor, David's advice was accurate.  We asked if handling frozen raw chicken was safer than handling fresh chicken. 'You're certainly going to have less bacteria count,' David said. 'In that respect it would be safer.'  Dr. Kantor said freezing typically just puts bacteria 'into a state of suspended animation,' but he acknowledged some bacteria may be killed in the freezing process, so David's statement was technically correct."
    
    
    Source: Wall Street Journal

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• Society and Culture
  • Moore, Garthwaite: Liberace, Cruise, Palin Among Winfrey's Highlights
    (Associated Press)

    "Oprah Winfrey has racked up memorable moments during her long television reign. Some were moving, some embarrassing - to her or others -- and a handful became pop-culture landmarks. Here are highlights through the years:
    --Barack Obama's presidential campaign gets the Winfrey seal of approval, and a University of Maryland study finds her endorsement may have netted him about 1 million votes in the Democratic primary, 2008. She's seen weeping in the crowd during his Nov. 4 election night victory speech in downtown Chicago."   The UM research data was reported by economists Tim Moore and Craig Garthwaite.
    
    
    Source: Associated Press (Washington Post)

  • Kratochvil: Urban Grain Bin Brings Corn Fuel Out of Boondocks
    (Capital News Service)

    "Primary heating with corn costs members between $500 and $1,000 a season, several hundred dollars less than a standard heating bill, said Ikle-Khalsa. These savings allow members to pay off the cost of their stoves -- which retail from $1,500 to $4,000, depending on size -- in roughly five years.  More than 20 states now boast corn stove manufacturers.  Despite favorable reviews from co-op members, Associate Professor Robert J. Kratochvil, who specializes in agronomic crop production at the University of Maryland, College Park, doesn't see corn stove heating becoming a widespread trend within the foreseeable future. The availability and cost of the feed corn is too unpredictable for a large population, he said.  Kratochvil said he believes the stoves will be more popular in smaller niche communities -- like Takoma Park and Mt. Rainier -- that are at the forefront of eco-friendly living."
    
    
    Source: Capital News Service (Annapolis Capital)

  • Shinagawa: Cultural Factors Help Limit Recession's Impact
    (USA Today)

    "Many Asians gravitate toward jobs that carry greater job security. A large number of Filipinos, for example, work as nurses, teachers and postal employees. ... Health care is one of only two economic sectors to grow in the recession. The other is education.  Many Asians are doctors, nurses or technicians. Since the start of the recession, health care has added 597,000 jobs.  'Asian Americans are far more into the area of science technology and business in the corporate financial banking sector,' says Larry Shinagawa, director of Asian American Studies at the University of Maryland. 'They are ensconced in government and education, though a significant portion are in small business.' "
    
    
    Source: USA Today

  • Morici: In China, Obama Meets America's Lender
    (CBS News)

    "When President Obama meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao, there may be less lecturing and more listening because it is hard to talk tough on trade, Taiwan, and Tibet when you're sitting across the table from your biggest lender.  The Chinese own more U.S. government debt than any other nation - about $800 billion worth. And the U.S. pays China $50 billion a year just in interest.  'President Obama is concerned about taking China on on trade, the environment, and a whole host of issues,' said University of Maryland economist Peter Morici, 'because he's concerned China won't buy our bonds.'  'China is carefully watching how the Obama administration spends money on bank bailouts, expanding health care, and combating climate change -- as any big investor would.  'Today, Beijing is asking the Americans very detailed questions about the health care reform, wanting to know how we spend every nickel they lend,' Morici said."
    
    
    Source: CBS News

  • Li: Speaking of Human Rights
    (Baltimore Sun)

    'Here's the speech President Obama should give when he meets President Hu Jintao'  -- written by Xiaorong Li, research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy & Public Policy in Public Policy:  "My administration has put climate change at the top of our diplomatic agenda. This is especially true when it comes to our relationship with China. Our two large nations share the title of top consumers of energy and the biggest polluters on earth. None of us can escape the impact of climate change. The security and stability of our nations and our peoples -- our prosperity, our health, our safety -- are in jeopardy.  Yet, we cannot meet this challenge unless all the largest emitters of greenhouse gases, including China, act together. The U.S., as one of the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our environment over the last century, has a responsibility to lead. China, as a rapidly developing nation that will produce a large share of global carbon emissions in the decades ahead, must do its part."
    
    
    Source: Baltimore Sun

  • Lee: Americans Paying Attention to Health Care Debate?
    (CNN)

    "November and December tend to be a typically slow time for Congress as it wraps up business before a new session begins.   But not this year.  The Senate is expected to soon return to health care reform, the legislative lightning rod of 2009. Most analysts expect it to be an engaging debate.  But will Americans be paying attention as they carve the Thanksgiving turkey and shop for the holidays?  Analysts say yes -- and that Americans are more tuned in than ever.  'I do think the audience for this debate will go beyond "inside baseball," though it won't extend beyond the already politically engaged electorate,'says Frances Lee, a political scientist with the University of Maryland. ' would expect this debate to be equally engaging, though it will also be far longer.'  Lee says the Senate debate is 'ure to draw a big audience by the normal standards for such things.' "
    
    
    Source: CNN