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Maryland Moments, May 2010 UM, Community Baltimore Sun: "Maryland set the stage perfectly to bring the NCAA women's lacrosse championship back to College Park for the first time since 2001. The Terrapins came in as the No. 1 seed, boasted the stingiest defense in the tournament and, being so close to their home turf in Towson, drew a mostly partisan crowd of red-clad fans. Facing five-time defending champion Northwestern, however, the Terrapins found themselves in a battle from the start as the No. 2-seeded Wildcats scored the first six goals. Once the Terps banished the jitters and got used to facing into the sun, they reigned all over Northwestern's title streak. Maryland rallied to tie the game just before the half and scored three of the last four goals, including Caitlyn McFadden's game winner with 5:47 left, for a 13-11 victory and the program's 11th national crown before an announced record crowd of 9,782 at Towson University's Johnny Unitas Stadium. The Terps (22-1) also quashed Northwestern's drive to match its record streak of seven women's titles between 1995 and 2001." Baltimore Sun: "The University of Maryland has selected David Cronrath as the new dean of its School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. Conrath is a registered architect and academic with experience in post-Katrina restoration and a commitment to building a sustainable future. Recognized as one of the 'Most Admired Architectural Educators of 2010,' Cronrath is currently dean of the Louisiana State University (LSU) College of Art and Design, and will begin his Maryland post in July. In Louisiana, Cronrath developed collaborations with environmental, engineering and business colleagues to help restore the Katrina-battered Lower Ninth Ward and to address the severe erosion that is rapidly damaging communities in the Mississippi Delta. 'I want to explore some of the similarities with communities in the Chesapeake Bay watershed that are threatened by erosion,' Cronrath says. 'Do we defend in place? Relocate? People's lives and livelihoods are involved, so we also need to consider the human impact from the regional scale down to the level of the community and the individual house.' " Gazette Newspapers: "The University of Maryland announced ... that David B. Mitchell, former Prince George's County Police Chief, will become its new Director of Public Safety and Chief of the University of Maryland Police Department. Mitchell brings more than 39 years of public safety experience, having served in three police departments in two states, including 24 years with the Prince George's County Police Department. Mitchell will lead a fully-sworn professional law enforcement organization that employs more than 150 officers and support staff, providing a complete array of law enforcement and related services to a university community of approximately 60,000 members, including a student population of 32,700. UM police officers are state certified and have all the same powers and authority as any other sworn police officer in Maryland; each officer is empowered by state law to make arrests, investigate crimes, and carry firearms. In addition, the University of Maryland Department of Public Safety is the primary agency responsible for policing property owned, operated, leased by, or under the control of the University of Maryland. The agency also provides police services to areas off campus through a concurrent jurisdiction agreement with the Prince George's County Police." Campus Issues Washington Post: Donald F. Kettl is dean of the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. "For a leader looking for a challenge, it's hard to beat the job of a college president. Take the roller-coaster stock market, which has crashed endowments. Add the pressure to hold down tuition increases. For the presidents of public universities, stir in the always lively relationship with state legislatures. Toss in alumni anxious about the football and basketball teams, faculty worried about salary increases and townspeople always nervous about how their neighbors behave. Learning itself is changing in unpredictable ways. Are laptops in the classroom a good idea? Do they help students capture the instructor's wise words -- or trade Facebook quips with friends when the lecture drags? Can online learning help students speed their way through basic material and save high-priced faculty for advanced study? Can universities create new intellectual capital fast enough to stay a step ahead of fast-changing trends -- and create a business model to make this work in such unpredictable times? It's impossible from the outside to fully appreciate the vast complexity of a college president's job. It's a meal on which only the brave dare dine. But it's a truly great job, especially now. We're now fundamentally redefining what higher education means. It's no longer enough to give students the skills to get a job. America's colleges aren't so much transferring facts to students as teaching them to learn, now and in the decades to come, because the future lies with those who can ride the edge of unpredictable waves. That requires a leader with the instincts to know where the world is heading and the skills to get sometimes stubborn university structures to move." Washington Post: "Most students don't think violent relationships are a problem at college, said Georgetown University senior Jared Watkins, who helps lead a group of men there who are concerned about sexual assault and violence. If students think about abuse at all, they picture an older married couple, maybe poor or alcoholic -- nothing like their friends at school. Then Yeardley Love was found dead. The death of the University of Virginia senior, and the murder charge against her classmate George Huguely, defied the stereotype for students who couldn't imagine such a brutal crime on a college campus. Now some students and school officials are wondering whether they are doing enough to prevent problems and recognize that dating violence can happen anywhere. ... The University of Maryland encourages events that raise the issue and offers programs designed to prevent violence, such as workshops with stories written by students." USA Today: "Tuition increases for undergraduates attending public colleges and universities in their home states appear to be all over the map this fall. The range so far -- from no change at Maine's community colleges to double digits at some Virginia and Arizona universities -- reflect the variety of strategies schools and states are trying to balance their economic challenges with those of students and parents. ... In most states, governing boards approve tuition rates for public institutions. But legislators and governors control state budgets, which influence tuition. ... Missouri's public universities, for example, agreed to freeze tuition for the second year in exchange for a promise by Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, to cut budgets no more than 5.2%. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, has proposed cutting state aid to public colleges that exceed a 4% tuition increase. He also proposes a 7.7% cut in higher education spending. In West Virginia, public two- and four-year colleges honored a plea by Gov. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, to freeze tuition; stimulus money will replace a 5% budget cut. Tuition freezes typically aim to ensure affordability at a time when many families are struggling. 'They are putting the needs of students first,' senior Antonio Cosme says of his school, Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, where tuition, fees and room and board will remain unchanged this fall. The plan assumes passage of a proposed 3.1% state budget cut. Tuition caps get mixed reviews. A freeze since 2007 at the University of Maryland state system has been praised for keeping costs down for families and blamed for limiting enrollments on some campuses. The freeze ends this year." Business Gazette: "Officials at the University of Maryland, College Park, want the Maryland Transit Administration to run its proposed Purple Line through a yet-to-be-built underground tunnel on campus, but planners insist an above-ground route along the campus' main road is still the project's only viable option. MTA officials have long favored running the Purple Line -- a proposed 16-mile, $1.5 billion light rail from New Carrollton to Bethesda -- along Campus Drive, the university's most-trafficked road, to make it more accessible for students and staff. UM officials objected, saying the train could hit pedestrians and interfere with nearby research equipment. The university now wants an underground route through campus, but state officials said at a Monday night public forum on campus that the route would drive up costs and endanger possible funding from the Federal Transit Administration. The FTA could decide this summer or fall whether to fund the project's next step, a two-year preliminary engineering phase. The project's 'absolute best-case scenario' is to break ground in 2013 and complete the project in 2016 or 2017, according to project planners. ... The MTA's proposed route would have stops at the College Park Metro station, East Campus, Campus Drive at UM's student union and West Campus near the University of Maryland, University College. The university's proposal would eliminate the Campus Drive stop and instead run an approximately 0.4-mile underground tunnel just south of UM's McKeldin Mall." Baltimore Sun: "University of Maryland police have charged six students with offenses ranging from disorderly conduct to arson in connection with the riots after a March 3 men's basketball win over Duke. The students could face expulsion, fines and jail time if convicted of the offenses, which included burning and destruction of property, according to police spokesperson Paul Dillon. The charges were the result of a near-two-month investigation by Lt. Jim Goldsmith, who reviewed footage from more than 350 security cameras and online video sources and interviewed witnesses and suspects, Dillon said. Dillon said the investigation should be taken as a sign of the seriousness with which police view the post-game riots that have plagued the College Park campus. 'Without a doubt, we are taking it very seriously,' he said. 'We have to try to do something to act as a deterrent.' The charged students face hearings in Hyattsville District Court in late May and early June. They are: Joseph McQuillen, 22; John Winters, 19; Joseph Margot, 20; Omar Aly, 20; Alex MacKay Spina, 19; and John Celmer, 22." Washington Post: "This spring, some colleges in the Washington region have assembled waiting lists that rival the size of their incoming freshman classes, a measure of their uncertainty at a volatile time in higher education. The University of Virginia has offered admission to 6,900 students and wait-listed 3,750, a group large enough to fill the 3,240 spots for the Class of 2014. The College of William and Mary placed 1,415 students on a wait list for a freshman class of about 1,400. Most of the other top national universities in the Washington area, including Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, the University of Maryland and Virginia Tech, are tending deep wait lists of their own. ... Local deans say this year's admission cycle, although tricky, was somewhat easier to predict than last year's, a time of plummeting endowments and plunging stock prices. Colleges may empanel a wait list by a rough mathematical formula -- say, one wait-listed student for every two admits. They don't usually have a set number in mind. Georgetown put 1,177 students on its wait list this year to plug holes in a class of 1,580. UM, which usually gets by without a wait list, revived it last year. This year's list holds nearly 1,000 students. Virginia Tech has 1,350 students wait-listed. William and Mary's list is longer than last year's by 142 students. Wait lists at U-Va. and Virginia Tech are shorter. At Georgetown and U-Md., they are about the same length. ... Neither UM nor Hopkins admitted a single student from its wait list last year. So many admitted students chose to attend Hopkins, in fact, that the university had to lease a hotel and transform it into a residence hall for the year. Hopkins officials confirmed that they have a wait list this year but would not divulge its length." Washington Post: "The 21st century economic engine is STEM innovation. All of us, venture capitalists included, will benefit from entrepreneurs, 50 percent of whom are potentially female, strongly focused and educated in STEM. We can't maximize growth and potential without half our population's energy, expertise, creativity and ingenuity. Simply put, if we want to take complete advantage of the creative resources we have available to us, we have to support girls in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math. It just makes economic sense. ... All over the mid-Atlantic region, organizations committed to STEM education are encouraging, supporting and promoting 50 percent of your future entrepreneurs. Here are a few examples: -- Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS) clubs/conferences in the Fairfax County Public Schools. The American Association of University Women started a GEMS conference 20 years ago and has touched thousands of girls in their efforts to promote long-term study of STEM subjects. Building on that success, teachers across the school system run after-school clubs for girls. They do it on a shoestring, but they hold the key to our future innovators. One club has its own Web site with extensive resources: http://www.gemsclub.org -- Computer Mania Day: This Saturday program for girls sponsored by the Multinational Development for Women in Technology (MDWIT), with a special outreach to disadvantaged girls, focuses on developing their interest in STEM fields, not just as users, but as developers, designers, entrepreneurs and leaders in these disciplines. It involves hands-on experiences with female role models in a wide variety of real-world sciences and technologies and makes a connection to innovation, entrepreneurship, leadership and critical thinking. -- A. James Clark School of Engineering Women in Engineering Program at the University of Maryland: This organization conducts programs for girls in kindergarten through 12th grade, undergraduates and graduate students that include summer camps, mentoring, job shadowing and Saturday hands-on events." Portfolio: "The Worldwide Leader in Sports is once again shelling out billions to a college sports conference for television rights, but, in the process is becoming the de-facto spot for the biggest names in college sports. ESPN has landed the television rights to Atlantic Coast Conference football and basketball in a 12-year, $1.86 billion deal, according to the SportsBusiness Journal. The price tag of $155 million a year was driven up by a late push by Fox Sports, who sent Rupert Murdoch's right-hand man, Chase Carey, to help pitch the proposal. The deal is a win for both the ACC and ESPN. First, the ACC gets more than double its previous per-year TV rights deal, which was paying out $72 million a year. The real winner, however, is ESPN. Consider that the ACC deal, when coupled with the blockbuster 15-year, $2.25 billion deal ESPN signed with the Southeastern Conference in 2008, gives ESPN two of the biggest properties in college sports: SEC football, which has produced the last four national champions, and ACC basketball, which has produced the last two and three of the last six national champions." Baltimore Sun: "Katie Staso's optimism was fading. The University of Maryland senior had mailed 30 resumes in September to give employers time to peruse her internships and solid grades as a chemical engineering major. But as spring approached, she hadn't heard a peep. The St. Mary's City native thought she might become another casualty of the recession. Instead, she and other graduating seniors around Maryland are finding that, if they have a little patience and flexibility, there are employment opportunities in a job market that has improved slightly for the first time since 2008. In late March, Staso got an interview call from one of her original job targets. Others have followed. Staso is actually holding off on accepting an offer, because she's so confident in her prospects. 'I'm excited,' she said. ... Seniors have heard all the bad news: the 10 percent unemployment rate, economists' predictions that long-term joblessness will become a plague in this country, studies that say college graduates who enter the job market during a recession never make as much money as those who enter in better times. But hiring trends are positive for the first time in almost two years, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. ... A December survey of winter graduates at College Park found that 50 percent had already accepted full-time jobs and that 72 percent said they were engaged in their first choice for post-college work, whether it was a job, graduate school or some form of service. William Jones Jr., a counselor in the campus career center, said 'we were all kind of shocked' at how good the numbers looked. 'It seems as though the economy is thawing,' said Ashley Lenz, a Calvert County native who serves as the executive chair of UM's Senior Council. 'There are a lot of people who do have jobs.' She's not one of them, but Lenz is graduating a year ahead of schedule, so she figures she has wiggle room. Like many of her peers, she's deciding whether to look for her own apartment or return home to save money." On Campus Fortune magazine: "In most college classes, you get yelled at if you play with your cellphone. At the University of Maryland this semester, you're in trouble if you don't. That's because the school now dedicates an entire computer science course to iPhone programming. Taught by a visiting Apple engineer, CMSC498I is a twice-a-week series of practical lectures and labs; 25 students (all but two are men) learn to create basic apps that, for example, aid in navigating around campus or seeing local dining options. The course focuses on the iPhone, but its programming language will also apply to the new iPad, and its principles extend to other smartphones, like Google's (GOOG, Fortune 500) Android devices. 'The market has exploded, says UM professor Adam Porter, who oversees the course, 'and this class gives students the chance to work with cutting-edge technology.' The University of Maryland is one of several schools teaching apps technology. Stanford, in the heart of Silicon Valley and just up the freeway from Apple (AAPL, Fortune 500), has had oversubscribed courses since last year; its lectures are videotaped and available free on both iTunes and YouTube. The University of Washington's continuing-education evening class includes Boeing engineers in their sixties, a pharmacist, and former savings-and-loan employees. The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology has a course too. Once upon a time, if you were a computer major, you learned to program mainframes and then PCs; you aspired to be the next Bill Gates, developing code that might revolutionize an industry. Now a single-purpose app, like a silly program that fogs up the screen like a bathroom mirror, can net the author a fortune. Such gold rush possibilities make iPhone development a very enticing academic offering." Daily Beast: The 29 most powerful tech colleges are listed. Overarching story. "It's never too early to start planning world domination. For the next generation of would-be titans of high tech, this time of year brings a potentially life-altering decision: Which college to attend? Sure, Steve Jobs is a college dropout, and so is Bill Gates. But for most who of those want to be a CEO or covet an IPO, getting a BA or BS is mandatory. And when it comes to producing whiz kids, not all schools are created equal. Peek into the corner offices in Silicon Valley, and some names crop up more than others on the undergraduate diploma on the wall or that college-logo coffee mug on the desk. But which schools really represent a pipeline to the top jobs? To find out, The Daily Beast scoured the biographies of hundreds of key technology executives from the nation's biggest companies and some of its hottest startups, too. Our goal was to identify which colleges, compared student-for-student (undergraduate enrollment data courtesy of the National Center for Education Statistics), have turned out the most undergraduates destined for high-tech greatness. While our results included many prestigious names, the rankings produced surprises as well. At the top of the list is a spot nearly 3,000 miles away from Silicon Valley." 26. University of Maryland Undergraduate Enrollment: 26,475 Notable Alums: Gary Swart, CEO oDesk; Bhatia Gaurav, co-founder iMO Tech Feature: The Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute recently announced finalists for its business plan competition, which included three entrants in the category of High Technology. The winning plan will win $75,000. Alumni Innovation: Sergey Brin, half of the team behind Google and the search engine revolution, received his B.S. from the University of Maryland in 1993. Clark School: Virtual Rider EdTech: "Colleges use desktop virtualization to streamline software deployment, upgrades and maintenance. ... The move to desktop virtualization that Ridley-Lowell began last year is one that other colleges and universities are doing in droves -- and for many of the same reasons. It comes down to this: IT departments are overworked and understaffed, and anything that can lighten their management load is most welcome." Virtual Maintenance. "Although the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering is just starting down the road to desktop virtualization, James Zahniser, executive director of information technology for the school, already anticipates benefits for his staff. The division converted one of its engineering labs to a desktop virtualization setup, using streaming technology from Citrix Provisioning Services for Desktops to deliver a single image that is managed centrally. 'It allows us to add applications easily and quickly, which is important because there are times when the faculty doesn't give us much notice to get the lab up and running with a specific application,' he says. Zahniser says it used to take several hours to image a lab, whereas now the IT staff can do it in a matter of minutes. In addition, Zahniser says he notices fewer security issues, because each time a machine is rebooted, it creates a clean image. There is so much potential that he plans to roll out the desktop virtualization infrastructure to additional labs." Tuscon Sentinel: "No matter how teachers train or arrive on the job, though, big questions remain about how effective they are. Recent research suggests that teachers prepared in alternative programs aren't any better -- or worse -- than those who follow more traditional routes. Despite the challenges she faced as a first-year kindergarten teacher, Arroyo-Montano didn't go in cold -- she spent a year training before getting her own classroom. It just wasn't the type of classroom she was prepared for, she says. Solomon, the Boston program's director, says future teachers need to have 'a close approximation to doing the work without being alone, isolated,' and at the expense of kids. That's an experience the University of Maryland, College Park hopes to provide when it begins its Maryland Science Mathematics Resident Teacher program (MSMaRT) in June. The program offers a compromise between full immersion in the classroom and giving up a paying job to work on a master's in education. It will allow career-changers to work on .job-shares. -- two people will be in charge of a single classroom, splitting their time in county middle schools while completing coursework for certification." Washington Post: "A revival of interest in Confucius and other aspects of what Mao Zedong vilified as China's noxious feudal past has been underway for years, spawning best-selling novels, television dramas and films set in the Imperial Era. The Communist Party, tapping into a deep vein of cultural nationalism, has encouraged the trend, in part as an antidote to Western ways. Overseas, Confucius has become China's standard-bearer, with dozens of state-sponsored Confucius Institutes, including one at the University of Maryland, promoting the study of Chinese language and culture. But a Confucian revival sanctioned and initially steered by the party has grown into something more vibrant and also more unpredictable. It has become a quest for alternative ideas that challenge not only foreign imports such as democracy but also some of the homegrown results of China's dash to modernity." Washington Post: "Tournament Director Teo Sodeman announced that Under Armour will be a presenting sponsor for the tournament. He said the move to the University of Maryland after three years at Country Club of Woodmore has led to 'very good interest from corporate sponsorship. It's increased substantially.' 'We haven't been active in the golf space, but we're changing that,' said Leon Duncan, Under Armour's brand director for football and golf. 'Everyone knows about the strong ties we have here at the University of Maryland. It just makes sense.' " 2010 U.S. Physics Team Welcomed to Training Camp Physics Today: "They came from Iowa and Ohio, Oregon and Massachusetts. Five came from California, two from New Jersey, and one from Connecticut. Students from the Northeast, the Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, the Southwest, and the Pacific coast are beginning ten days of rigorous academic training, interactive learning, and friendship building as they prepare to test themselves on the world stage. They are the top twenty high school physics students in the United States, selected through an examination process that included such upper level skills as the Lagrangian Formula of Mechanics, Differential Calculus for Electricity and Magnetism, and Complex Variables, skills usually learned at the end of the undergraduate experience. They were welcomed to the University of Maryland, College Park campus by AAPT Executive Officer, Warren Hein and AIP Executive Director, Fred Dylla. Officers and staff from AAPT, AIP, APS, and the University of Maryland were on hand for the camp kick off. ... In addition to learning a year of physics in two weeks, the team members will visit their congressional representatives on Capitol Hill, tour the National Air and Space Museum, and visit the Albert Einstein statue at the National Academy of Science. At the end of the camp, they will be tested again and five of the team members will be selected to travel to Zagreb, Croatia, representing the United States in the International Physics Olympiad, July 17 - 25, 2010." Washington Post: "Talk about tough subjects. Liz Lerman Dance Exchange is creating a multimedia performance about physics and the nature of beginnings, using the Manhattan Project as one of the artistic themes. While dance dominates the first act, the second will be a colloquium with the audience as the company re-creates a famous teahouse where the Los Alamos scientists gathered. The ambitious work, called 'The Matter of Origins' and centered on the development of the atomic bomb, will have its world premiere Sept. 10 at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, which commissioned the piece. For its 2010-11 season, which the University of Maryland-based center is officially announcing Tuesday, the organizers have tied everything together under the title 'Opening the I[dea].' 'A lot of that concentration had to do with Liz. The work reads as something hard to understand. We want people to have a view into the process,' said Susie Farr, the center's executive director. Lerman, who received a MacArthur Fellow award in 2002, is based in Takoma Park, and her company received a $25,000 grant from the center. The center, in its eighth year, has devised a successful formula of presenting theater, dance, music and individual performances for the public and university students. Many of the artists spend weeks with the students so they can see the creative work and its results and receive coaching in their disciplines." Chronicle of Higher Education: "Scott E. Highhouse, a professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University, has studied the enduring popularity of the traditional, unstructured interview in employment settings. 'They are so unreliable that the absence of validity is almost assured,' he says. In a 2008 article in Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Mr. Highhouse explained that while people may like to think that they can predict human behavior, actually doing so is difficult. He also explained the 'myth of expertise' in hiring: the belief that, with time and experience, people can become skilled in making intuitive determinations of an applicant's potential for success. ... William E. Sedlacek, a professor emeritus of education at the University of Maryland, College Park, agrees with at least some of Mr. Highhouse's conclusions about interviews. 'Any two people doing them won't agree very well,' he says. 'Without a lot of training, interviews will give you a scatter-gun kind of assessment.' Mr. Sedlacek is an expert on noncognitive traits, which, he believes, can and should be considered in admissions. He has advised several colleges and universities on ways to incorporate noncognitive variables into their evaluations of applicants. But without proper training, he says, an interview won't necessarily help a college meet a stated enrollment goal, such as increasing the diversity of its applicant pool. For one thing, an interview might end up serving the strengths of some students but not others. 'It depends on what you're interviewing for,' he says. 'If that's sort of vague, it will just give you a watered-down version of what the SAT gives you, benefiting verbally bright, upper-middle-class people who really know how to do this kind of thing better.' " Yahoo! News: "The University of Maryland today announces the new Warren Citrin Graduate Fellowship program, which supports graduate students in the A. James Clark School of Engineering conducting research in the broad area of sustainability. Made possible by a $560,000 gift from Warren Citrin, co-founder of Solipsys Corp. (now Raytheon Solipsys), the program, commencing fall 2011, will provide four first-year students with $35,000 and additional financial support through the completion their doctoral degrees. The Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) will manage the program. 'Solutions to the many daunting problems facing the global community will come from first rate science, engineering and technology research institutions,' says Citrin, who is also co-founder and board member of Gloto. 'I can think of no better way to invest in our collective future than to invest in the Clark School of Engineering.' Interested graduate students will complete an application process to enter the program. A committee will select the best candidates." WTTG-TV (Washington): "Can't find your parked car? Forgot to set your DVR at home? Wonder who sings that song on the radio? No problem. As they say, there's an app for that. More than 65,000 applications are offered in the Apple store alone. And who hasn't dreamed of that perfect app to make life easier. Some students at the University of Maryland don't have to dream anymore. 'We come up with ideas everyday here. Applications that don't even exist,' explains Computer Science Professor Adam Porter. He's the guy in charge of 'Programming the I-Phone', a new Computer Science course where students use cutting-edge technology to create their owns apps for smart phones. We want to come to the students the way they live now. Their mobile, their social networking systems,' says Porter. He teaches the class along with an Apple employee. Rayhan Hasan is a Computer Science major. He says, 'The class is pretty rigorous and so it's a little more challenging than I expected.' Hasan is working on an application that would allow anyone to listen and communicate with the campus radio station. 'You'll be able to browse a schedule, listen to the latest show.' " Yahoo! News: "The Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech) ... announces the winners of the University of Maryland $75K Business Plan Competition. Winners were selected from nine finalists who presented their venture concepts on May 7 to teams of judges from the startup venture community in three categories: high technology, biotechnology, and undergraduate, while three teams also received Warren Citrin Social Impact Awards." "Omnispeech LLC, a company developing speech extraction technology for cellular and other communications, won the high technology category and $25,000. The company also won a $15,000 Warren Citrin Social Impact Award. ... 'We are honored to be selected for these awards among distinguished competitors,' says Carol Espy-Wilson, professor of electrical and computer engineering and founder of Omnispeech. 'We plan to leverage the credibility that comes with winning this competition and the funding to rapidly get our product to market.' Omnispeech's team also includes Tarun Pruthi, a research associate in the department of electrical and computer engineering." "Aeramatics won the biotechnology category and $15,000. The company is developing a spirometer, which measures the volume of air inspired and expired by the lungs, that reduces post-operative complications by reminding patients to use it, tracks usage, and sets targets. Aeramatics' team includes Eranga Fernando, an undergraduate in the department of criminology and criminal justice, and Himali Fernando, a 2009 alumnus of the Fischell Department of Bioengineering." "DoseSpot won the undergraduate category and $10,000. The company also won a $5,000 Warren Citrin Social Impact Award. The company has developed an easy- to- use and easy- to- integrate Web-based medication prescribing system that connects medical technology vendors to the SureScripts electronic prescribing network. DoseSpot's team includes Greg Waldstreicher, a Hinman CEOs Program undergraduate student in the department of accounting & information assurance, and Gideon Platt." "CloudSolar also won a $5,000 Warren Citrin Social Impact Award. The company is developing a system to capture solar thermal energy to heat swimming pools, with plans to later enter additional markets. CloudSolar's team includes: Michael Armani, a Ph.D. student in the Fischell Department of Bioengineering; Ramik Chopra, a UM alumnus from the department of electrical and computer engineering and current UM MBA student; and Danny Lee, a 1989 UM alumnus." Yahoo News: "Social Growth Technologies, an online digital payment company, took home $15,000 as the top winner at the fifth annual Cupid's Cup business competition, hosted on May 7 by the University of Maryland's Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the Robert H. Smith School of Business. The competition highlights the center's success starting and growing firms 'from the back of the napkin to the first million dollars in financing' and is sponsored by alumnus Kevin Plank, founder and CEO of sports apparel maker Under Armour. More than 400 people attended Cupid's Cup and the pre-competition BB&T Business Invitational at the university's Stamp Student Union. The BB&T-sponsored showcase highlighted University of Maryland and regional start-ups; UM Entrepreneurship organizations, including the Dingman Center and Mtech; and economic development organizations, such as the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development and the Maryland Technology Development Corp. Attendees voted for the best student and the best non-student company, with the winners - board game maker North Star Games and green energy services company Clean Currents, respectively -- taking home awards of $2,000 each." Off Campus Nature: "It hasn't always been easy to get the White House to lead on climate change, so for years the question of how to incorporate global warming into long-range planning and public infrastructure in the United States has fallen to cities, states and individual federal agencies. Now, the Obama administration is looking to fold these independent efforts into a comprehensive adaptation strategy for the entire country. Last week, about 150 experts gathered in Washington DC to swap ideas and information about exisiting adpatation plans across the country and to consider how the federal government should coordinate and encourage further steps. Ordered last year by John Holdren, Obama's chief science adviser, the three-day National Climate Adaptation Summit served as a brainstorming session where users and providers of 'climate services' could talk about their needs and capabilities. The gathering took place just a week after the National Research Council called on the government to develop a national strategy for dealing with the impacts of a changing climate. 'There's a sense that this is a moment to put everything together and figure out what we are going to do to prepare,' says Richard Moss, a senior scientist at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Maryland, and former director of the US Global Change Research Program. 'And I give the administration credit for holding this meeting and asking for ideas, rather than just rolling out an answer.' " Dallas Morning News: "Debt experts warned a bipartisan White House panel Wednesday that federal borrowing could slow or stall recovery from the recession. Several members of the Fiscal Responsibility Commission then said they should find ways to cut the debt rather than stabilize it. University of Maryland economic historian Carmen Reinhart said that, over the last two centuries, countries have seen debt drag down growth once it reaches 90 percent of national income. Federal debt owed to public creditors and government trust funds is close to that mark at nearly $13 trillion, while GDP is about $14.6 trillion. She also told the panel that private debt owed by consumers and businesses has reached the highest levels since records began in 1914. 'Essentially, the needle is hitting the red zone with respect to economic growth,' said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas." Baltimore Sun: "As Congress inches closer to acting on climate-change legislation, a trio of new reports by a broad array of scientists and technical experts says the evidence that we're altering our climate is strong enough to warrant prompt action. The National Research Council, the working arm of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering, issued the reports ... making the case for the United States to act now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to develop a national strategy for adapting to climate-change impacts that will be unavoidable. While acknowledging that the scientific case is never closed and there's always more to learn, the council's first report says there are multiple lines of evidence supporting the prevailing scientific understanding of climate change. ... Among the scientist-authors of the reports is Antonio J. Busalacchi Jr., professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences at the University of Maryland, College Park. The research council's climate-change studies are being coordinated by a steering committee that includes another Marylander, Donald F. Boesch, president of UM's Center for Environmental Science. It's doubtful they'll sway anyone who's already decided climate change is a hoax, but the reports are part of a series requested by Congress." Washington Post: "A group of the world's science academies announced the makeup of a 12-member panel that will conduct an independent review of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has come under fire for mistakes in its 2007 report to policymakers on global warming. Harold T. Shapiro, an economist who served as president of Princeton University and the University of Michigan, will chair the committee established by the InterAcademy Council. The group will report back to the U.N. on the IPCC's procedures by Aug. 30; it will review the panel's procedures for data quality assurance and control; the type of literature that may be cited in IPCC reports; expert and government review of IPCC materials; handling of the full range of scientific views; and correction of errors that are identified after a report is done. ... The review committee, which will hold its first meeting May 14 to 15 in Amsterdam, will be vice-chaired by Roseanne Diab, executive officer of the Academy of Science of South Africa and professor emeritus of environmental sciences and honorary senior research associate at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. The other committee members include ... Maureen Cropper, professor of economics at the University of Maryland, senior fellow at Resources for the Future in Washington and former lead economist at the World Bank." Scripps-Howard News Service: "A panel of academic and government economists, convened by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association Restoration Center and ARD, a consulting company that specializes in water resources, have come up with several suggestions for the completion of the project. They include focusing research on specific regions where restoration projects are already in place or planned. (Duke's Linwood) Pendleton said the availability of such information would be a major step, not just as a tool for ecological policy but also as a tool for economic policy and development. 'The next question is how does that value change because of our policy of our restoration?' he said. 'Wetlands are valuable -- we get that. But the real question is what are we going to do to make them more valuable? Which wetlands produce the greatest value, and what value are we going to lose if we don't do wetland management correctly?' University of Maryland Professor Andrew H. Baldwin added that the economic potential of wetlands should not just be an interest of scientists and policy makers. An understanding of the benefits of wetland management is beneficial to everyday citizens. 'There's a lot of opportunity for community involvement, and that's how you can wind up preserving and protecting these [wetland],' he said. 'Get the community involved in monitoring and understanding the wetland and preserving it and taking a stock in it. It becomes more important to the community and increases its value even more.' " 'Mapping Beauty' Is 35-Year Retrospective for Artist and World Traveler Claudia DeMonte Mobile Press-Register: "Claudia DeMonte has devoted more than three decades examining the roles and images of women throughout the world. She has become what the New Yorker would term a 'peripatetic observer ' traveling to far-flung locales for lectures, exhibitions and inspiration. Using a variety of media, materials and artistic approaches, DeMonte offers a sobering perspective on the status of women worldwide, but also a body of work characterized by hope and humor. 'Claudia DeMonte: Mapping Beauty will remain on view through July 11 at the Mobile Museum of Art in west Mobile. This extraordinary retrospective fulfills the artist's goal of challenging traditional, sometimes antiquated notions about women's everyday lives and the concept of beauty in global culture. ... DeMonte remains fascinated with why people create art. 'African (artworks) that we think of and exhibit as sculpture were often made for use and not made as display objects,' she says. 'We see them out of context.' That perspective led DeMonte to develop a course at the University of Maryland, where she taught for 33 years and was named Distinguished Scholar Teacher. The course was titled 'Art Making in the Global Village.' DeMonte says she attaches stories and memories to everything, 'which is why I have trouble throwing anything out,' she says. 'Everything has meaning!' " Gazette Newspapers: "During a press conference at College Gardens Elementary School to discuss the state's efforts to provide healthy food for its students, University of Maryland, College Park farm management specialist Jim Hanson seemed astounded by the questions from the young reporters in the crowd. 'Would it help if we showed them the raw data? Would it help if we actually showed them what we're eating in school?' said fifth-grader Veeraj Majethia. 'We need you at the university,' Hanson said. Veeraj is one of more than 100 fifth-graders at the Rockville school that participated in the student press conference May 12 to learn about the benefits of eating locally produced food and Maryland's Jane Lawton Farm to School Program. The school organized the event with help from the Audubon Naturalist Society's GreenKids educational outreach program. The students had done their research and were ready with questions." Gazette Newspapers: "Springbrook High School graduate David Compres knew he had limited options for college. Average grades and the high cost of many universities seemed to put his dream of becoming an engineer out of reach. David reached a critical crossroads: compete for an entry-level job with his high school diploma or enroll in the engineering program at his local community college. Like David, Montgomery County now stands at a crossroads. The county can take the path of short-term reductions to balance the budget today. Or, despite the severe fiscal challenges, the county can choose the path that leads to economic recovery by investing in its community college. David chose Montgomery College, where he found affordable tuition, scholarship support, small classes, caring professors and a unique mentoring program for promising engineering students. In January, David transferred to the mechanical engineering program at the University of Maryland with a 3.76 grade point average. Clearly, he opted for the path that would improve his economic future. David is one of the thousands of students who enroll at Montgomery College each year -- students who understand the value of a college education." Cornell Daily Sun: "Campus Life's Residential Programs division is currently reviewing a report by two external reviewers containing recommendations for Cornell's program houses, the University announced Thursday.The report makes recommendations for improving the program houses, while noting the existing strength of the facilities, according to Susan Murphy '73, vice president for student and academic services. The University will not make any decisions regarding the recommendations this summer, Murphy said. Instead, Residential Programs will respond to the report and the University will prepare to discuss the recommendations with the Cornell community in the fall, she said. ... The two reviewers, Larry Roper, vice provost for student affairs at Oregon State University and Karen Inkelas, assistant professor (ind education) at the University of Maryland, spent three days at the University in February to examine the program houses and speak to students, faculty and staff, said Murphy. The reviewers released a 15-page document to the University in April, Murphy said. The document included five to seven overarching areas of recommendations." Reuters: "Green-collar jobs are often touted as a way to help lift the U.S. out of its recession especially in those areas hardest hit by the economic downturn. But progress on this front by most measures has been slow and scattered. Then there is the story of Cleveland, Ohio, which has woven a green business initiative into its economic development plan for the inner-city area called University Circle, home to major institutions including University Hospital, Case Western University and Cleveland Clinic. Key stakeholders have focused on greening elements of the supply chain of the anchor institutions, albeit incrementally, to bring jobs to the surrounding community which is beset with poverty, high unemployment and declining property values. Steve Dubb, Research Director of the Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland, described this initiative as he spoke at the Social Enterprise Summit held in San Francisco last week. ... The Evergreen Cooperative Development Fund, a revolving loan fund, will provide seed capital to future green businesses and a percentage of profits from each will be reinvested; each employee will also share in ownership, receive a percentage of the profits and engage in a participatory management process." Vibrant State Business Journals: "A new public-private initiative will advance the U.S. strategy of defending against contaminated food imports at the source, rather than the border. The University of Maryland and the Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) will build and operate the first U.S.-based laboratory for training foreign food producers -- an important step to increase the foreign scientific capacity needed to uncover contamination before commodities ship. At the new facility, they'll be taught U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved microbiological and chemical analytical procedures. 'Inspection at the border is not an option,' says Jianghong Meng, who directs the Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), the University of Maryland-FDA center that will operate the lab and conduct the training. http://agnr.umd.edu/directory/Bio.cfm?ID=jmeng 'We import so much food from other countries that the FDA can only inspect about one percent of it,' Meng explains. 'The answer is to control contamination at the source.' The new facility -- the International Food Safety Training Laboratory (IFSTL) -- will teach an estimated 200 foreign food and government workers per year. It will be based in College Park at the University of Maryland, and is expected to open in July 2011. With an investment valued at more than $4 million, the Waters Corporation will build and equip the facility and assist in designing the program. Waters is a major manufacturer of laboratory equipment used to detect and measure the presence of chemical contaminants in food. Its investment is an essential driving force in the project. http://www.waters.com/ JIFSAN will be responsible for curriculum and training at IFSTL, and operate the lab as a self-supporting facility. http://jifsan.umd.edu. Baltimore Sun: "Improving minority health and advancing research on frustrating health gaps between whites and minorities are the focus of two new initiatives at the University of Maryland. The School of Public Health has recruited Stephen B. Thomas from the University of Pittsburgh to lead the new Maryland Center for Health Equity. Thomas and a team of new recruits will focus on community-level research and outreach to minority populations in Maryland. Thomas, who launched a program that brought prostate cancer screenings to barbershops -- you read that correctly -- plans to start similar projects here. Key to the effort will be breaking down barriers of distrust. 'You'd think that communities lacking the most basic health care would welcome outside help,' said Thomas in a statement. 'However, the burdens of race and history cannot be ignored. The reality is that we have to build trust and overcome cultural barriers first.' Meanwhile, a project at the School of Medicine will offer free community seminars aimed at improving health in Baltimore neighborhoods and tackling minorities' historic distrust about participating in clinical trails." UM Newsdesk: "More than a dozen academic institutions and other partners are banding together to meet Maryland's growing need for health professionals in medically underserved urban and rural communities, and provide a working model for other states committed to expanding and diversifying their health workforce. As a member of the new Maryland Alliance to Transform the Health Professions, the University of Maryland School of Public Health will contribute its expertise in prevention research and community outreach. The parties met today in Baltimore to sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU). ... 'We are committed to preparing a diverse group of public health professionals to address the state's major health needs,' says Dr. Robert Gold, dean of the University of Maryland School of Public Health, who signed the MOU. 'We've made community outreach and prevention research a major initiative at the School, and we'll bring that experience to this project.' " WJZ-TV: "Submarines are frequently named after fish, but researchers at the University of Maryland want to do better than that. Alex DeMetrick reports they're trying to make miniature submarines that actually swim like fish. The University of Maryland has a unique tank designed to test robotic space vehicles. Miniature submarines are something new, and so is the project students in the Aerospace Engineering department are taking on. 'In particular, we're looking at a combination of biological systems that exhibit collective behavior. Like schooling fish, for instance, and how we can replicate that behavior in our submarines,' said Dr. Derek Paley. They are trying to get lots of mini-subs moving like a school of fish without control from the surface. So the project has been recording fish in a lab, breaking down movements based on sight and water pressure and trying to duplicate it on a computer board. The breakthrough would be subs that run themselves, doing things like charting currents and water quality. In the testing pool, remote control is possible, but in the ocean, radio waves aren't efficient. The mini-sub study is being funded by a five-year grant by the National Science Foundation. The goal is to get a school of 25 submarines to swim on their own." Science Daily: "One of the biggest obstacles in microscopy and in micro-fabrication is the so-called diffraction limit. This basic law says that the resolution (or sharpness) of an image cannot be better than approximately half the wavelength of the light waves being used to make it. Similarly, when light is used to inscribe patterns on microchips -- a standard process known as lithography -- these features can't get much more narrow than about a quarter the wavelength of the light. Now scientists at the University of Maryland have pushed this limit, achieving pattern features with a size as small as one-twentieth of the wavelength. They do this by a clever use of two laser beams racing through a polymer solution. One beam triggers polymerization (long molecules start to link up into even longer molecules) while the other beam turns the process off. Polymerization of very narrow pillars -- much narrower than the wavelength of the light -- occurs in a tiny overlap region between the beams. The leader of this effort, John Fourkas, says that the size of the tiny polymer structures probably represents the smallest fraction of the incoming radiation wavelength ever realized in the laboratory. ... The work is being reported at the 2010 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics/Quantum Electronics and Laser Science Conference (CLEO/QELS) May 16-21 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, Calif., where researchers from around the world are presenting the latest breakthroughs in electro-optics, innovative developments in laser science, and commercial applications in photonics." Business Journals: "A $1 million endowment from the Henry and Elaine Kaufman Foundation will support a new fellowship in business history at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business. 'Business and financial history are no longer integral parts of business school education, and that is a major lapse,' said Henry Kaufman in announcing he endowment. The business history fellowship will be affiliated with the school's new Center for Financial Policy, which was launched last fall. University of Maryland history professor David Sicilia has been appointed the first Henry Kaufman Fellow in Business History and will be responsible for developing programs and courses for students that highlight the implications of business history." Baltimore Sun: "In response to a national call for homegrown, Earth-friendly fuels to fill Americans' gas tanks, a couple of University of Maryland researchers are planting trees. Fuel derived from the hardy, fast-growing common poplar could eventually replace some of the billions of gallons of petroleum-based fuel now pumped a year, say biologist Gary Coleman and engineer Ganesh Sriram, who have partnered to help turn the woody plant into a widely used biofuel. 'Oil is a finite resource,' said Coleman, a professor of plant science in the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. 'I don't think there is any doubt in 10 years people will be using advanced biofuels.' The Obama administration has made development of biofuels a priority, citing the national security and environmental concerns with petroleum-based fuel -- a problem driven home by the devastating oil spill along the Gulf Coast. The president toured the Midwest last week to tout renewable energy development, and the U.S. government already has mandated that biofuel production reach 36 billion gallons by 2022, tripling current levels. Most biofuel now comes from corn in the form of ethanol, which is added to gasoline to increase its octane and decrease its harmful emissions. But the government is moving away from corn kernels, a food source, and has called for at least 60 percent of new biofuel to be derived from other sources. A portion will come from cellulosic, or fiber-based, biofuel -- the kind that comes from trees. To that end, millions in federal funds have been dedicated to research and processing plant construction." "The University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business announced it has received a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to operate its Center for International Business Education and Research (CIBER). Funds are awarded in a national competition held every four years and the current grant will fund the center until 2014. The grant is a renewal of U.S. Department of Education funds awarded in 2006 for the Smith School's CIBER. The center supports a number of student programs - including courses abroad, internships, and language training - designed to equip students with the skills and knowledge needed to negotiate fast-changing international terrain and lead globally. The center also supports faculty research and helps educators bring global experiences to the classroom. The Smith School collaborates with CIBER programs at other educational institutions to pool and share expertise on internationalization." Future Lab: "A simpler version of Superbot is LEGO Mindstorms, but Mindstorms cannot self-reconfigure; it requires programming. However, the act of programming is a useful skill for students to develop. This approach opens up a raft of other possibilities -- those where control is awarded to the children rather than the machine. Mindstorms is used by learners of all ages -- from eight-year-old children to learned professors. It is essentially engines and sensors fitted into LEGO pieces, so children can put objects together that can then be programmed from a computer to operate in whatever way is required. Rather than putting sensors in building blocks, Dr Allison Druin from the University of Maryland is putting them in icons -- toys or parts of toys that act in a way that a child would expect them to, because of how they look, such as a toy's hand that waves. Dr Druin is looking at how robotic technologies can be used to enable collaboration, storytelling and learning. However she adds a note of caution: 'The thing with many of these robot toys and tools that give you the control you actually need to make them useful, is that they are very expensive individually, so it's cost-prohibitive to give a school a tonne of them. On the other hand, kids can learn powerful things from these robots and we will start to see much cheaper robotic devices being developed in the near distant future.' " Physics World: "Researchers in the US have gained important new insights into how electrons travel through nanoscale metal wires. They discovered that the force with which electrons push atoms around in these structures is much stronger than previously thought -- which could help improve next-generation nanoelectronic components. As electronic devices become ever smaller, researchers need to better understand how electrical currents affect the atomic structure of tiny circuits. In particular, the electromigration of atoms in a nanowire could alter its electronic properties -- or even cause it to fail. On a positive note, this movement of atoms could be used to assemble tin structures. Ellen Williams and colleagues at the University of Maryland began their study by creating a range of different nanoscale structures, such as islands and 'steps' (that contain between 100 and 100,000 atoms), on top of very thin silver wires measuring 2 to 50 nm across. The researchers then used a scanning tunnelling microscope to observe how the structures moved or changed shape when a current was sent through the wire. 'It was amazing -- when we changed the direction of the current, we found that we could the move the structures back and forth,' Williams told physicsworld.com." Washington Post: "Telecommunications companies and government contractors dominate the Dulles Toll Road corridor in Virginia, and biotechnology firms line the corridor along Interstate 270 in Maryland. What's next? Walter P. Havenstein, chief executive of SAIC, predicts it could be a cybersecurity corridor along the Interstate 95 corridor between Washington and Baltimore. The government is doing its part by relocating the Defense Information Systems Agency from Falls Church to Fort Meade, Md. and establishing U.S. Cyber Command and the Navy's U.S. Fleet Cyber Command at Fort Meade. The base, just south of Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport, is already home to the National Security Agency. The southern anchor could be the new Department of Homeland Security headquarters going up in southeast Washington. In between, sits NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, off the Baltimore Washington Parkway, and the University of Maryland's College Park campus." Baltimore Sun: "I was in Jessup, Md. earlier today to watch several business leaders leaders and innovators in the state's technology community mark a milestone: the investment by TEDCO into its 200th portfolio company. The lucky company that received TEDCO's support ($75,000) is American Dynamics Flight Systems, a six-year-old company that's working on a vertical-launching unmanned aerial vehicle, or remote-controlled drone (see photo of life-sized model above). This drone, when complete, will be able to launch from a standstill position, with engines that rotate to give it vertical and then horizontal thrust. TEDCO is a quasi-public agency that moves quickly to fund all sorts of technology start-ups in Maryland. The entity, which was enacted by law through the General Assembly, has been around for 12 years and 82 percent of the 200 companies it's invested in are still in business, TEDCO officials say. It helped lure American Dynamics to Howard County three years ago, according to company CEO Wayne Morse. Morse cited three reasons for moving his company to Maryland from Long Island, NY: 1) Closer to the customer: Morris's big customer he's targeting is the Pentagon. 2) University of Maryland: Morris works closely with the school's aerospace program. 3) TEDCO's support for companies working on advanced technologies. Said Morse: 'I couldn't be happier.' " Global Community CBS News: "Turns out that not all black holes are created equal. Astronomers have long wondered why some black holes -- roughly one percent -- emit vast amounts of energy -- as much as 10 billion suns. Now NASA astronomers have come up with a theory about these active galactic nuclei (or AGN). Actually, it's a confirmation of a theory they harbored; based on data collected by NASA's orbiting Swift satellite, scientists now trace the answer to the collision and merger of different galaxies. 'Theorists have shown that the violence in galaxy mergers can feed a galaxy's central black hole,' said Michael Koss, the study's lead author and a graduate student at the University of Maryland in College Park. 'The study elegantly explains how the black holes switched on.' During a press conference they held Wednesday afternoon, the scientists announcing the discovery noted that about 60% of active galaxies are fated to undergo mergers with other galaxies. But talk about the long term - this process will take place over the next billion years. In a statement, NASA described what it called a smoking gun of black hole activation, referring to the 'intense emission from galaxy centers, or nuclei,' near a supermassive black hole as containing 'between a million and a billion times the sun's mass.' The mergers were detected by observing the distortion of galaxy shapes, which change as they destroy each other and thus feed the black star. The full findings are published in the 20 June issue of The Astrophysical Journal." UPI Asia: "Women in Bangladesh who wear saris are literally wearing the answer to better health for themselves and their families, U.S. researchers said. One of the researchers, Rita Colwell of the University of Maryland in College Park, said women who use a sari to filter household water protect their households from cholera -- and even protect neighbors who don't filter their water. In 2003, Colwell and colleagues showed that teaching village women to filter water through folded cotton sari cloth reduced the incidence of cholera by 48 percent. The follow-up study conducted five years later showed 31 percent of the village women continued to filter water for their households, with both an expected and an unexpected benefit, Colwell said in a statement. More than 7,000 village women in Bangladesh were selected from the same population used in the previous study. Five years later, 31 percent continued to filter their water. Twenty-six percent of the control group, women not instructed to get any training in the first study, now filter their water. In addition, households that did not filter their water with saris, but were located where water filtration was regularly practiced by others also had a lower incidence of cholera, Colwell says. The findings are published in the inaugural issue of mBio, an online, open-access journal." CIO Magazine: "One of the biggest complaints about the federal government's H-1B and L-1 visa programs is that they could be used by corporations to hire skilled workers born outside the U.S. at wages lower than the U.S. market rate. Indeed, anti-H-1B visa activists say the program depresses American IT workers' salaries and robs them of jobs. But new research from the University of Maryland seems to contradict anti-H-1B visa activists' claims about the immigration program's impact on American wages. In fact, the research suggests that foreign-born IT professionals with temporary skilled worker visas actually earn more than their American counterparts, not less. ... Hank Lucas, professor of information systems at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, and assistant professor Sunil Mithas examined the effect of immigration policies on IT salaries using data from online salary surveys conducted from 2000 to 2005 by InformationWeek and management consultancy Hewitt Associates. " UM, Community AOL News: "Steven Kull, director of the Center on Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland, says these types of questions are not unusual for Americans to be asking. His center studies public opinion on issues such as foreign aid. Despite our philosophical quandaries, he says, Americans overwhelmingly support giving to other countries -- especially, and almost universally -- after devastating events like earthquakes. In 2006, a study from the Public Agenda Foundation found that 97 percent of Americans believe it is important to help other countries when they are struck by natural disasters. ... Kull says the public's enthusiasm for international aid can be dampened by reports of corruption and concerns that money is not reaching the people in need. But support for international aid is still very high, even when older, endemic problems in the country mean that humanitarian relief money shifts to longer-term solutions such as economic development, as it will in Haiti. In focus groups, Kull says, this is a concept everyone understands. 'Like clockwork, you can be sure that within the first half hour someone will give the story about teaching a man to fish and everyone nods with great seriousness,' he said. 'The principal of economic development is one they embrace totally. The question in their mind is: How much of the aid is being corrupted? How much are you really helping the people who need it?' " Engaged Students Seven University of Maryland students and five alumni have been awarded Fulbright grants for 2010-11. UM's Fulbright recipients will be studying or teaching English in a wide array of countries, including China, Chile, Peru, Finland, Norway, Italy, Germany, Hungary and Turkey. The recipients include seniors Susan Davidson, Ian Gross, Mary McMenamin and Christopher Tabisz; graduate student Daniel Sender; doctoral candidates Sarah Cantor and Christopher Stevens; and alumnus Natasha Basu ('09), Christian Benefiel ('08), Benjamin Block ('07), Jane Hall-Williams ('08), and Megha Rajagopalan ('08). Four additional students are currently alternates for Fulbright grants. 'Across campus, enthusiasm and interest in the student Fulbright program continues to build,' said Jonathan Auerbach, professor of English and UM's Fulbright program advisor. 'With nearly twice as many applicants and winners as the previous year, our successful candidates will be pursuing fascinating projects in environmental studies, law, fine arts foundry design, journalism, anthropology, art history, music performance and English teaching around the globe.' The Fulbright U.S. Student Program enables qualified undergraduates, graduate students and recent alumni to design their own study or research plans or to teach English in over 140 countries. Washington Post: "A sophomore snapped that splitting the money would be a cop-out. Someone interrupted her to argue that if the cash were divided, they could double the number of charities helped. 'Can we just vote?' another student pleaded. 'We're running out of time!' After a semester's worth of research, heated arguments and painful negotiations, it had come to this. Twenty-five sophomores had to decide how best to use $10,000, real money that could help local children if they chose wisely. The philanthropy class, new this year, is one of a small but growing number in which donors write big checks to help students learn how to give. Philanthropy is relatively new as an academic field; for 25 years or so, some universities have offered graduate-level programs. More recently, driven in part by the surge in volunteerism and social engagement of today's college students, many schools are adding undergraduate options. The latest twist, at schools including the University of Mary Washington and Georgetown, Brown, Cornell, Brandeis and New York universities, is to push philanthropy studies from the theoretical into the real world. With cash." Gazette Newspapers: "In 2006, Onyinyeche Eke, 22, of Lanham came to the United States from Nigeria. In the time since, she has not only graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park, but her hard work and determination paid off as she was chosen to address 7,100 of her fellow graduates at the school's May 20 commencement. 'To be a candidate is one thing, but being a speaker is huge,' said Eke, who was chosen from several students invited to audition weeks earlier, on the strength of her grades, extracurricular activities and personal story. 'It's a great honor.' Eke spent in her formative years in Nigeria, where she lived with her mother and six siblings. Her father worked as a college professor in the U.S., and sent home enough money to give his family a comfortable living. Nonetheless, he decided that the family would be better off together in the U.S. The family moved into a one-bedroom apartment in Lanham and Eke enrolled at Montgomery College shortly after arriving on U.S. soil. She excelled immediately, and was within a year enrolled at the University of Maryland, where she maintained high marks in the school's physiology and neurobiology programs. 'When I saw the academic work she'd done in other people's classes, it was nearly flawless,' said UM associate biology professor Eric Haag. 'People don't come to the U.S. and learn the system that quickly very often.' " WTOP Radio: "A group of recent University of Maryland graduates is making a clean sweep across the country. The group, called Pick Up America is walking across the U.S., cleaning up trash and educating people about reducing plastic waste in communities and waterways. The group will clean a stretch of Route 28 in Manassas over Memorial Day weekend. 'We're trying to bring the conversation of sustainability and zero waste to as many people as possible,' says campaign coordinator Davey Rogner. The group started its initiative in March on Assateague Island and will cross 13 states, ending in San Francisco. 'We think we will be finished in November 2011,' says Rogner. The group has picked up more than 24,500 pounds of trash since the beginning of the project. Rogner says the group always welcomes volunteers. For more information on volunteering, visit Pick Up America's Web site." Boston Globe: "A four-member team from Stanford University that created a film coating for electronic screens won a $200,000 grant and first prize yesterday in MIT's third Clean Energy Entrepreneurship competition. Incorporated under the name C3Nano Inc., the team created thin film photovoltaic electrodes -- the basic components of electronic screens for devices ranging from cellphones to solar panels -- that are made of plastic instead of the usual glass. The plastic electrodes are cheap to make, more durable, and even more transparent than conventional electrodes. ... In the final round of this year's competition, C3Nano beat four teams: Harvard University's C-Crete Technologies, which nano-engineered a stronger, environmentally friendlier concrete; Enertaq, from the University of Maryland, created a device that tracks electrical demands of large buildings and adjusts the supply accordingly; Oscomp Systems, with students from Harvard and MIT, invented a compression technology that reduces the cost of natural gas production; and viaCycle, from Georgia Institute of Technology, created a digital lock system for fleets of community bicycles." Top News: "The MMC or Mobile Microrobotics Challenge is an initiative of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society and the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology). Seven teams from various universities have taken part in this challenge. They are ETH, Zurich, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, FEMTO-ST Institute and the Institut des Systemes Intelligents et de Robotique, ISIR-Paris, Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, The University of Maryland, Maryland, Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, The University of Waterloo, Ontario and The U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, Maryland. These teams are competing with their micron-scale robots for three tasks. The robots have to sprint down on a pin headed size of track in a dash of two-millimeter. Then the robots have to insert the pins into their respective holes. Finally there will be a demonstration of a high level of autonomy, system's reliability, high task complexity and ultra low power consumption." WUSA-TV: "An inside job. An after-hours heist. And a unique crime-solving tool. Thief detection powder may seem straight out of an episode of CSI, but it's a popular tool for businesses that want to stop serial criminals in their tracks. Private investigator Bill Leighton's company specializes in electronic fingerprinting, but when it comes to catching crooks who are stealing from their company or their clients, invisible thief detection powder is his tool of choice. ... Leighton spent 15 years with the Maryland State Police before overseeing internal investigations at a major retail store. Sometimes it took a planted bill to catch a thief. 'You can certainly put some powder on a $100 bill or whatever and plant it underneath the cash drawer, said Leighton. 'Then check individuals at the end of the shift.' To witness thief powder in action, 9NEWS NOW visited a University of Maryland criminology class that was analyzing grisly evidence in each of six dollhouses. 'The who, what, where, when, why and how,' said Criminology Professor Thomas Mauriello. 'If there's a crime, what kind of crime? If there's a body, how did they die? The manner of death. Is it a homicide, suicide, accident?' All semester, the students have studied forensic techniques. 'If the suspect is a construction worker, and we find signs of cement, lyme, sawdust on the victim or at the crime scene, those are pieces of trace evidence,' Professor Mauriello told his students. Preparing a real-life lesson in trace evidence before class, their professor had surreptitiously placed the thief detection powder on every dollhouse lid, ensuring that at least one student in each group would walk away with undeniable trace evidence, visible under an ultraviolet light. With the light glowing above them, several students were 'busted.' If this were a real crime, the thief would be caught with evidence on his hands. One student even had the evidence on his lips." WUSA-TV: "How difficult is it to be a good witness? We enlisted the help of respected University of Maryland criminology professor Tom Mauriello and his unsuspecting students-about to be eyewitnesses to a crime we staged in their lecture hall. The lights went out suddenly. The blood-curdling scream of a woman cut through the silence. As the lights returned, the class saw a white man stealing the laptop of a black woman. As often happens, the perpetrator of the crime was only visible to startled eyewitnesses for a matter of seconds. The students' recollections were varied: 'He seems Caucasian to me. I was more focusing on her because she was the one screaming.' "I jumped back and I was disoriented. Lights were off. Very confused what was going on. By the time I realized, I think I could have seen his face had I not been so nervous.' 'I couldn't really see what he looked like. More, the screams were overwhelming from the victim.' Many students focused entirely on the victim. 'She appeared to be white.' 'She had blondish hair, midway down her back.' 'I'm not sure if it was a tattoo but I don't know if her pants dipped too low, but I did see maybe her underwear hanging out, or maybe it was a tattoo, I'm not sure.' Or, the students remembered what the suspect was wearing. 'The guy was caucasian and he had a darkish color baseball cap, grey shirt and jeans from what I could tell.' Proximity to the crime didn't guarantee a better description of the suspect. 'I was sitting probably less than five feet away. I didn't catch a glimpse of anything.' " Washington Post: "Students at the University of Maryland are dropping down to their drawers Tuesday night to raise money and clothes for College Park's homeless. Beginning at 8 p.m., students will take the clothes off their backs and donate them to Shepherd's Table, a local homeless shelter. And because they're college students, they'll then run across campus -- in their underwear. (Rain is forecast for Tuesday night with lows in the mid 50s. Areas of fog also may make visibility poor, or welcome depending on your point of view.) The undie run is part of a cross-campus competition among students at 10 universities to raise money and clothing for local charities that serve the homeless. The run will start at UMd.'s McKeldin Library at Route 1 and Paint Branch Parkway. We're not certain this is why our mothers told us to always wear clean underwear." Honors Patriotic Vanguard, Sierra Leone: "Sierra Leone's Annual Awards and forty-ninth Independence Anniversary Gala hosted by the National Organization of Sierra Leoneans in North America (NOSLINA) successfully ended last Saturday at the Best Western Capital Beltway Hotel in Lanham, Maryland. Widely regarded as Sierra Leone's 'Golden Globes' or 'Academy Awards' in North America, this annual event is one that Sierra Leoneans across continental USA and Canada and friends of Sierra Leone look forward to with great pride and anticipation. ... The NOSLINA 2010 non-competitive Special Distinguished Award was awarded to Madieu Williams, National Football League -- Minnesota Vikings player for his numerous accomplishments on and off the football field and for his recent donation of $2 million to the University of Maryland to establish the Madieu Williams Centre for Global Health. 'A lot of people are caught up on the numbers of what this investment is. But honestly, you cannot put a number on the number of lives that we can change,' Madieu said." People Jehan Sadat, Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development at UM, writes a blog for Foreign Policy: "As the widow of Anwar Sadat, I cannot count myself an objective analyst of his policies; but I am not the only one who believes that the world is poorer for his absence, nor am I the first to note that statesmen of Sadat's caliber are in short supply. Perhaps then, it is not so surprising that nearly 29 years after his death, Anwar Sadat still has leadership lessons to impart. Indeed, today we would be well served to apply Sadat's principles for peace: Accept that People Want Peace: Sadat pursued peace, because he knew it was what most Egyptians, who were exhausted by war and desperate to turn their energies toward less destructive pursuits, wanted. Likewise, he knew it was in Egypt's, and the region's, best interests. He put peace before his own political position, personal popularity, physical safety, or relationship with his fellow heads of state. Although the details of the Arab-Israeli conflict have changed, this fundamental truth -- that people want peace -- remains the same. Poll after poll confirms that majorities of Israelis and Palestinians alike support a peaceful two state solution, though they believe that the other side is unwilling or unready to meet them. The fact that peace is in the interest of both sides is undeniable." Science: Jim Gates answers five key questions: "Is science education broken in the United States? And if so, how should the country fix it? A working group of the President�s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has been investigating these long-standing questions and is expected to issue a report on its policy recommendations this month. Science News Contributing Editor Alexandra Witze spoke with the working group's cochair, physicist S. James Gates Jr. of the University of Maryland in College Park. Gates also serves on the Board of Trustees of Society for Science & the Public, the parent organization of Science News." Gazette Newspapers: "In 1991, Adelphi resident Walter Mietus and a group of fellow World War II veterans decided that to preserve their memory, they would donate a yearly scholarship to the University of Maryland, College Park. They founded the 76th Infantry Division Memorial Scholarship Fund, which still gives two annual scholarships: $3,000 for a student in the university's Army ROTC program and $2,000 for one in the Air Force ROTC. In 20 years, the program has given varying amounts, totaling about $60,000 in scholarships to 30 students. '[These students] are a different breed, because the ROTC ingrains into them discipline,' said Mietus, who taught industrial technology at UM for 27 years before retiring in 1991. 'They do all their work and never complain.' Mietus, 87, spent the last two decades encouraging fellow veterans to donate to the scholarship fund, which he said has about $150,000 in a university-run savings account. He said the high balance is kept to ensure the fund's long-term survival despite economic uncertainty." Washington Post: "On Monday, former Maryland basketball player Len Elmore will take over as CEO of iHoops, according to multiple reports including this one from the Associated Press and this one from the Indianapolis Star. The NBA and the NCAA initiated iHoops in June 2009 as a means to make basketball opportunities more prevalent for America's youth. Elmore, a college basketball analyst for CBS and ESPN, previously served on the organization's board of directors. He replaces Pac-10 Chief Operating Officer Kevin Weiberg, who stepped down from his iHoops post in March. 'This is layered on top of the television work and in many ways it will be integrated into it,' Elmore, 58, told the Associated Press. 'It's still about communicating to the stakeholders, and it's about visibility. We want to be the go-to resource for youth basketball.' After graduating from Maryland in 1974 as the men's basketball program's all-time leading rebounder (1,053), Elmore played eight seasons in the NBA and two in the ABA. He earned a law degree from Harvard in 1987 and currently serves on the University of Maryland Foundation board of directors." Kevin Weiberg is former associate director of athletics at Maryland. Baltimore Sun: "Wimpy Kid fans (and parents of Wimpy Kid fans), rejoice! The latest installment of the hugely popular series by University of Maryland grad Jeff Kinney is scheduled for a November 1 release. There aren't many details known about book number five -- except that the cover will be purple. Kinney, who was a cartoonist for the university newspaper, has based his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series on the trials of middle schooler Greg Heffley. The books also have spawned a movie, further spreading the franchise (can an amusement park be far behind?). How popular are Kinney's books? The last one, which was published in October 2009, had an initial press run of four million copies." The Academy WTOP Radio: "The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico could reach Delmarva's beaches "later in the summer," a University of Maryland geography professor says. Michael Kearney, a geography professor at the University of Maryland, says if the oil could make its way up the Atlantic coast. It's reached the gulf current surrounding Florida's coasts. 'There's never been a time when we've had a spill into a major loop like that at the Gulf of Mexico,' Kearney says. Kearney says a if a storm north of the Florida peninsula strikes, the winds out of the Florida keys could accelerate the movement of the oil. With the currents splitting as they head up the East Coast, a number of different scenarios could occur. The gulf stream could pull the oil up the coast up to the Outer Banks and the Delmarva beaches and Chesapeake Bay, or the current could take the oil toward Europe. He says it's a wait-and-see situation. Should the oil make its way close enough to the Chesapeake Bay, Kearney says one of two things would push it into the bay -- either a tropical storm or a late fall nor'easter, the northeast winds of which would drive the water to the southwest. Of the two, Kearney says a nor'easter is the more likely scenario. 'We have those every year. We don't have tropical storms every year.' " WUSA-TV: "Barring a hurricane or strong storm, mid-Atlantic beaches should be safe from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a University of Maryland researcher. The Gulf Stream heads away from the continental shelf north of North Carolina's Cape Hatteras and that means oil carried by the stream should be carried away from the coasts of Maryland, Delaware and Virginia, said Jim Carton, chairman of the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science at the University of Maryland. The oil is now entering the gulf's loop current, and is expected to eventually make its way into the Gulf Stream, said Carton, who estimated oil from the spill could be off the Maryland coast in less than three weeks. 'Somebody asked whether this Memorial Day could be affected by this, and I figure there's no way,' Carton said. 'But it could be a summer issue for parts of the East Coast.' Florida would be hit first, and beaches in New England that are often bathed by warm eddies from the Gulf Stream also are more likely to see oil, Carton said. However, the researcher said winds from storm systems could blow tar balls ashore in Maryland. 'It's entirely possible,' Carton said. Carton added that Florida's Gulf Coast beaches, which are closer to the spill, are less likely to see oil than beaches on the Sunshine State's Atlantic coast because of the unique way the currents flow." Los Angeles Times: "Underage drinking is a widespread problem and includes risky behaviors like drinking and driving or being a passenger in a car with a driver who is impaired. But a study shows that college-age youths take even more alcohol-related driving risks than underage drinkers. The study found a sharp uptick when students turned 21 years old, the legal age for purchasing alcohol. Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Public Health recruited 1,253 first-year college students to participate in a four-year study examining drinking behaviors. They found that, among 20-year-olds, 8% drove after drinking any alcohol, 20% drove while intoxicated and 43% rode with an intoxicated driver. At age 21, 63% drove after drinking any alcohol, 25% drove while intoxicated and 49% rode with an intoxicated driver. Other studies have shown that freshmen in college tend to drink more than upper-classmen. However, risky driving behavior related to alcohol appears to increase with age among college students, perhaps due to reaching the legal drinking age or more access to cars. The study should be considered in the national debate about lowering the legal drinking age to 18, said the lead author of the study, Amelia M. Arria, director of the Center on Young Adult Health and Development at the University of Maryland School of Public Health." Scripps-Howard News Service: "Every year in America, 6,000 killers get away with murder. The percentage of homicides that go unsolved in the United States has risen alarmingly even as the homicide rate has fallen to levels last seen in the 1960s. Despite dramatic improvements in DNA analysis and forensic science, police fail to make an arrest in more than one-third of all homicides. National clearance rates for murder and manslaughter cases have fallen from about 90 percent in the 1960s to below 65 percent in recent years. The majority of homicides now go unsolved at dozens of big-city police departments, according to a Scripps Howard News Service study of crime records provided by the FBI. ... In 2008, police solved 35 percent of the homicides in Chicago, 22 percent in New Orleans and 21 percent in Detroit. Yet authorities solved 75 percent of the killings in Philadelphia, 92 percent in Denver and 94 percent in San Diego. 'We've concluded that the major factor is the amount of resources police departments place on homicide clearances and the priority they give to homicide clearances,' said University of Maryland criminologist Charles Wellford, who led a landmark study into how police can improve their murder investigations. The Scripps study found enormous variation in clearance rates for homicides around the nation. The police departments with the most dramatic improvements made concerted and conscious efforts to change." Associated Press: "Another failed terrorist plot. Another mass sigh of relief. The Times Square car bombing attempt last weekend was just the latest in a long list of schemes that for nearly two decades have placed New York City squarely at the center of a sinister target. A breed of hardened wariness has taken hold for many New Yorkers -- the price they must pay to live in the nation's largest city. 'I've never felt as though I was out of a bull's-eye,' said Lee Ielpi, a retired firefighter whose son, also a firefighter, died in the Sept. 11 attacks. 'The event did not end on 9/11. The event has continued right on. ... These people are going to come back. Saturday just reinforces that.' There have been at least nine planned terrorist attacks in the city since Sept. 11, 2001. The terrorists involved hoped variously to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge, to blow up financial institutions, to smuggle explosive materials into the city, to detonate explosives on the subway, to release cyanide into the subway system, to ignite an airport jet fuel pipeline and to collapse commuter train tunnels at ground zero. ... From 1970 to 2007, New York was targeted in more terrorist attacks than Washington, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles combined. Of the 1,347 attacks during that time in the U.S., 21 percent happened in New York City and 70 percent of those used bombs or explosives, according to a report by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism. The University of Maryland-based group defines a terrorist attack as 'the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation.' " Annapolis Capital: "The effects of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill could reach as far as your dinner table. The massive amounts of oil gushing from a busted BP well have thrown a monkey wrench into seafood markets and could affect the price of fresh seafood. ... Federal scientists are sampling the water and the seafood in the area to check whether conditions are safe for fishing. ... Even though scientists and regulators are keeping a close watch on seafood health issues in the gulf, consumers might not be convinced, said Douglas W. Lipton, a seafood expert with the University of Maryland, College Park. 'It's just easier for a consumer to just say, "Well, I won't eat seafood, it may be tainted," and substitute it with some other product,' said Lipton, an associate professor of agriculture and natural resources. Ultimately, the lack of confidence from consumers might do more to affect seafood prices than the physical damage from the oil spill, Lipton said. He compared the oil spill to the Pfiesteria 'hysteria' of 1997, when Eastern Shore watermen were sickened by a toxic algae. Even though no local seafood was harmed or could cause people to get sick, plenty of people, Lipton said, swore off seafood that summer -- even salmon, which isn't caught in the Chesapeake Bay. Lipton said seafood lovers shouldn't worry about oil-damaged fish, shrimp or crabs ending up on their dinner table. 'I'm confident that they're not trying to peddle tainted seafood or anything like that. What is available from the gulf will be from waters have not been tainted,' Lipton said. 'With the scrutiny going on down there ... they're very aware of not destroying their credibility by opening areas that shouldn't be opened.' '"
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