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Maryland Moments, October, 2009 UM, Community Shanghai Daily: "The Chinese government will reinforce support for innovation in strategic industries and push technology to be commercialized as core efforts to sustain development in the world's third largest economy, the Pujiang Innovation Forum in Shanghai was told yesterday. Wan Gang, China's Minister of Science and Technology, said innovation in industries including new energy, biotechnology, information technology, new materials and advanced manufacturing had become cutting edge in powering current economic development. ... The two-day forum, sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology and the Shanghai municipal government, is the highest level international forum on innovation in China. This year's theme is 'Economic Globalization and Innovation.' ... Dan Mote, president of the University of Maryland in the United States, said innovation was the only answer to addressing the world's major problems, including climate change, the economy, poverty, education and food safety. 'A world-level cooperation in innovation should be encouraged because no single country can solve these problems alone,' Mote told the forum. 'Also, people should pay more attention to the culture of innovation.' He said such a culture should have strong leadership committed to innovation, minimal hierarchy in decision making, commitment to implementation, and support for disparate talents and their unconventional ideas." Baltimore Sun: "State economic development officials joined with leaders from the University of Maryland and China to open a new incubator and research park Friday near the College Park campus. The University of Maryland-China Research Park, the first Chinese-sponsored research park in the United States, aims to forge stronger ties between the campus, state business development leaders and companies in China that seek expansion in the U.S. C.D. Mote Jr., president of the University of Maryland, said Chinese officials had considered locating the park in other technology hubs in the United States, such as Southern California, North Carolina and Boston. But after many discussions, he convinced them that the University of Maryland -- with its proximity to Washington and the Chinese Embassy and research facilities -- is an ideal location. 'Doing something like this for the first time is always a challenge,' Mote said during a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday. Seven companies will initially operate at the incubator, which occupies 7,500 square feet in an office building near the campus. The goal is to accommodate 20 or more ventures in coming years." Capital News Service: "Fall foliage may be burning red, orange and yellow these days, but the University of Maryland, College Park is turning green. UM's 2008 Strategic Plan laid a course for the university to become a national green campus model and carbon neutral by 2050. The plan set a benchmark goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on campus 15 percent from 2005 levels by 2015. There's evidence that its efforts are paying off. The university has reduced its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 4.2 percent between 2005 and 2008, to 307,681 metric tons of carbon dioxide, according to a survey for the 2010 College Sustainability Report Card. That figure is equivalent to roughly 7.3 metric tons emitted per full-time student in 2008, down from 7.8 metric tons three years ago, the survey showed. ... University President C.D. Mote Jr. announced the University Senate's approval of the 73-page Climate Action Plan to the campus via e-mail Oct. 1. To ensure the climate plan's implementation, a University Sustainability Council of students, faculty, and staff was created 'to advise the Office of the President and the campus community,' Mote said in the e-mail." Inside Higher Ed: "Undergraduates here announced ... the findings of their year-long study to uncover the University of Maryland's slavery ties, discovering no evidence that slaves built or worked at the institution, even though many of its founders were themselves slaveholders. Students from a two-semester history research course led by Ira Berlin, a prominent slavery scholar, presented the culmination of hours of library and archival research, a 30-page report 'Knowing Our History: African American Slavery and the University of Maryland.'" Washington Post: "At 9, Madieu Williams immigrated to Prince George's County from Sierra Leone, one of the poorest nations on Earth. The move gave his family a sense of perspective. His mother told him over and over that if he ever found himself in a position to make a difference, he should do it. At 28, Williams finds himself in a relatively prosperous position: He plays free safety for the Minnesota Vikings. And Wednesday, he made a difference. In a morning news conference, the University of Maryland announced the creation of the Madieu Williams Center for Global Health Initiatives. The former UM star is providing a $2 million endowment. It is the largest gift to the flagship school from an African American alumnus and the largest sum donated by someone so young." Washington Post: "As a child growing up in Sierra Leone, Trevor Young had a life was circumscribed by an occasional three or four hours of electricity. That was on the good days, when his family could spring for fuel to run the generator outside their home. These days, the situation in Sierra Leone is even more dire; what infrastructure there was has crumbled under 11 years of brutal war. 'Imagine a city full of cars with no electricity for traffic lights,' Young says. 'And no streetlights.' In many rural areas, there is no electricity to run an overhead light or plug in a radio, let alone charge a computer or power a plant. But Young intends to change all that. The 33-year-old senior at the University of Maryland in College Park has a plan to light up the developing world -- one rural village at a time. A pipe dream? Not according to the university, which gave him $5,000 in seed money and two of its top prizes, totaling $25,000, in its annual business plan competition." Baltimore Sun: "Forget the poor economy: Yesterday was a day for start-up dreaming at the University of Maryland. More than 500 people turned up for the university's ninth annual technology start-up boot camp. It was a full day of speakers and sessions dedicated to helping the university grow as a regional powerhouse for innovation and business incubation. The audience was dotted with graduate and undergraduate students, venture capitalists and local entrepreneurs. and faculty members, some of whom are involved in their own start-up businesses. ... One of the sessions featured Michael Chasen, founder and chief executive officer of Washington-based Blackboard Inc., a public company that sells software to education institutions. ... One of the students was Gregory Waldstreicher, 20, a junior accounting major from Stamford, Conn., who's looking to take his startup -- Refill Manager LLC -- to the next level. ... Another graduate student, Evan Ulrich, 27, was there looking for advice on how to advance his own start-up, after his breakthrough research resulted in a patent-pending design for a single-wing helicopter, or monocopter." Washington Post: "Khawar Malik had written just one 10-page paper in four years at DuVal High School in Lanham, and his teacher had given him an entire year to finish it. High school left him unprepared for college. So, Malik, 19, entered the University of Maryland through its Academic Achievement Programs division. He spent six summer weeks in the academic equivalent of boot camp, learning all the reading, writing, math and study skills he would need to keep pace with other freshmen. By the end of the sixth week, he had written another 10-page paper and several shorter ones. Today, he is an English major. 'If I didn't have this program, I wouldn't be here right now,' said Malik, a sophomore who has a 4.0 grade-point average. The federal Student Support Services program, launched during the Nixon administration, is part of a larger effort to help disadvantaged students overcome academic and cultural barriers to success in higher education." New York Times: "The University of Maryland, College Park and Rio Salado College in Tempe, Ariz., are expected to earn bragging rights for their green ambitions -- at least according to organizers of the 'America's Greenest Campus' contest, which pitted colleges and universities against one another to reduce their carbon footprints. The contest, which was funded by grants from the Department of Energy and various foundations, will award the two schools $5,000 each, to be put towards green initiatives on campus. In total, more than 460 schools and 20,000 people participated in the contest, which began in April and was created as a partnership between Smart Power, a nonprofit clean-energy marketing company, and Climate Culture, a clean-energy social networking site (think Facebook meets the Jenny Craig of carbon)." Chronicle of Higher Education: UM ranks No. 5 among all U.S. univeristies in graduating black Ph.D. students. Howard No. 1 (472), Nova Southeastern No. 2 (452), University of Michigan No. 3 (339), Walden University No. 4 (284), Maryland No. 5 (286). UM ranks No. 16 in producing Asian Ph.D. students (140). In Hiring, Uncle Sam Could Use Better HR -- and PR Washington Post: "The 40 people who met behind closed doors in the Ronald Reagan Building on Wednesday weren't in a position to make any decisions about fixing the federal government's recruitment and hiring process, but their discussion could have a lasting impact on federal policy. The Harvard Kennedy School, along with the University of Maryland and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), organized the six-hour meeting of administration officials, members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers, employee organization heads, private sector leaders, good government types and academics." Business Journals: "The faculty at University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business had been kicking around plans to establish a financial policy center for a couple of years. Then the economy pushed its hand. In September 2008 the federal government took over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in a move to rescue the struggling lending agencies. Then Wall Street began its long slide. Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11. The Federal Reserve moved quickly to prop up flagging American Insurance Group with an emergency $85 billion government loan. Monetary officials Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson struggled to get ahead of the cascading events and craft a solution. Much of the nation realized the financial system was so confusing that even those steeped in the industry could not explain it. The Smith faculty realized it was time to dust off its plans, and this fall the Center for Financial Policy opened its doors." Business Journals: "The Universities at Shady Grove have announced three new degree programs offered by partner schools. The University of Maryland, College Park will offer a bachelor's of science degree in public health science and a master's of science degree in elementary and middle school science. The public health science program was designed specifically for Universities at Shady Grove and is the first of its kind in the state. USG is also adding a bachelor's of science degree in early childhood education designed by Towson University. The program will allow professionals to work in Montgomery County Public Schools while pursuing their undergraduate degrees." Maryland Daily Record: "The University of Maryland Environmental Finance Center (National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education) and the Maryland Department of Agriculture cooperated to make a berth for local seafood on the Internet, at the university's virtual farmer's market, www.foodtrader.org. The Web site now accepts listings of local fish, crabs, oysters and similar products. This makes fresh seafood direct from watermen and aqua-farmers as easy as picking up the phone and placing an order. A free service to buyers and sellers, Foodtrader.org provides instantaneous listings of fresh foods available only from Maryland food producers, connecting consumers directly with local farmers and now the fishing industry." Web Wire: "Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced that the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) has awarded more than $11 million through the National Integrated Water Quality Program (NIWQP) to address critical water resource issues including water quality protection and water conservation. ... University of Maryland, College Park, Md., $600,000, Mid-Atlantic Water Program." Genome Web: "Tomatoes, corn, insect resistance in poplar trees, and switchgrass durability through climate change are just some of the focus areas of the $101.6 million that the National Science Foundation has granted this week for plant genome sequencing projects. Ranging broadly from $500,000 to $10.4 million, the 32 new NSF Plant Genome Research Program (PGRP) grants will support projects using sequencing and functional genomics to study gene function and interactions between genomes and the environment in a number of important crop plants, including cotton, corn, rice, soybean, tomato, and wheat. ... These grants will be spread among 53 institutions in 30 states and include funding for international groups from Africa, Asia, Europe, and in the Americas. First time winners of the PGRP awards include: Bowie State University; Brigham Young University; Central Michigan University; College of Wooster; Hamline University; Miami University; Montclair State University; New College of Florida; HudsonAlpha Institute; University of Buffalo; and the University of Maryland, College Park." Gazette Newspapers: "When greeting students and staff at Paint Branch Elementary School in College Park, it might work just as well to say 'ni hao' -- the Mandarin Chinese equivalent of 'hello' -- as it would to say hello in English. The school's yearlong 'One World, One Dream' program incorporates Chinese culture into virtually every aspect of the school's curriculum. It officially kicked off Oct. 15 with a visit from China's Hubei University Lion Dance and Martial Arts Troupe, which entertained students inside the school's gymnasium. 'The kids were literally amazed,' said Principal Jay Teston. 'It definitely has piqued their interest.' The program is run in accordance with the University of Maryland, College Park, and the Confucius Institute, a Beijing-based nonprofit organization that promotes Chinese education at universities throughout the world. The students at Paint Branch began learning about China last year and many said they cannot wait to learn more."s Swine Flu ABC News: "As Americans prepare for the height of flu season, health experts keep saying 'Wash your hands, wash your hands.' That's great advice, but we wanted more information. What should we wash with? Is antibacterial soap better than regular soap? And do hand sanitizers really work? 'Good Morning America' put them all to the test. We went to the University of Maryland, a world leader in food safety and microbiology, and did a small, informal test in which we basically washed our hands until they were raw. Caution: Not all soaps and sanitizers are created equal. 'Good Morning America' enlisted Jianghong Meng and his intrepid University of Maryland graduate students to do the experiment with us."
Washington Examiner: "[G]et the vaccine when it becomes available, said the University of Maryland's Steven Salzberg. 'The issue that just hasn't sunk in is that the vaccine is our best defense and it is perfectly safe, and some people just don't seem to believe that,' said Salzberg, director of the university's Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. 'It can't hurt to say that again and again.' While doses of the vaccine trickle in, the non-immune can take solace in the fact that the virus likely won't grow heartier or more vicious in coming months. 'Normally, infectious viruses get gradually less virulent or just stay the same,' Salzberg said. 'It always needs to be a concern, but there's no particular reason why this strain would be different.' "
Washington Examiner: "Vaccination seasons in the coming years likely will feel far less chaotic as the swine flu replaces the seasonal flu as the illness to reckon with. 'Over the course of the next year or two, H1N1 will likely supplant the seasonal flu,' said Steven Salzberg, director of the University of Maryland's Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. He added that a similar virus 'replacement' happened after the 1967-68 flu pandemic. When a new virus comes along, he said, old flu strains tend to die off. 'In a pretty short time, we'll be back to vaccinating only once,' Salzberg said. At that point, states and counties will be back to mundane dispersal of ample vaccinations, as opposed to the endless lines and daily shortages characterizing this flu season. The current seasonal flu vaccination fends off three strains with a common ancestor in the 1918 flu pandemic that lasted two years and killed more than 50 million people worldwide. 'The new H1N1 has been in pigs till this year, while the other strains have been in humans,' Salzberg said." People Science: "Does the United States need another high-powered panel recommending ways to improve how students learn science and math? The President's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) thinks the answer is yes. Late last week, the presidentially appointed body heard from two expert panels and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about what governments, academic institutions, and the private sector are doing to raise the quality of teachers, improve the curriculum, and close the achievement gap between rich and poor students. Council members pressed witnesses to explain the theory behind their efforts and provide evidence to back up any reported successes. They also solicited advice on how PCAST might make a unique contribution to the raft of existing reports and analyses. PCAST would like to get a report to the president within 6 months, says Eric Lander, head of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who will be leading the effort along with Jim Gates, a physics professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. 'We have a lot of issues on our plate, but this one is too important to ignore,' Lander said after the 2-day meeting, which ended on Friday." PR Log: "The Deafness Research UK Pauline Ashley Prize 2010 has been awarded to Nick Leach,PhD student at the University of Oxford, for his highly commended and ongoing research into how the hearing brain adapts to different sounds. The prize was established in memory of the charity's founder, Lady Pauline Ashley, and aims to encourage the most promising young scientists to start or continue research into hearing and deafness. Awarded annually to an exceptional young scientist near the beginning of their career in hearing research, the prize enables them to gain valuable research experience in a leading research centre overseas, so that knowledge gained will be brought back to the UK to the benefit of the British deafness research community. Nick will travel to Shihab Shamma's lab at the University of Maryland in the USA to conduct his research. He will be investigating whether a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine affects the brain's ability to learn and re-learn behaviour." Maryland Daily Record: "The University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, and its student-run Supply Chain Management Society, named John T. 'Jock' Menzies, chairman of the Terminal Corp., a Baltimore-based warehouse, trucking and distribution company, as the 2009 'Person of the Year.' Menzies was applauded not only for his role at the head of a major mid-Atlantic logistics company but also for his leadership in philanthropic efforts. Menzies is a director and the first president of the American Logistics Aid Network, an organization formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to provide efficient distribution of humanitarian aid for disaster relief." Washington Post: "Two-thirds of Pell recipients have family incomes of $30,000 or less, according to a College Board analysis. Two-fifths are surpassing their parents by entering college, and one-tenth are single parents, according to federal statistics. Sarah Pollard, 20, raised by a single mother in Silver Spring, is the first in her family to go to college. She works part time at a Nordstrom, studies full time at Montgomery College and draws the maximum Pell grant. The aid 'enabled me to do everything that I'm doing today,' Pollard said. Dylan Winslow, 24, transferred to the University of Maryland this fall from Temple University. To cover $8,000 a year in tuition and fees, he holds two part-time jobs, earning $8.50 an hour as a lab assistant in the geography department and $25 an hour as a bouncer at a bar in College Park. He also has a student loan and the maximum Pell grant. 'Any extra dollar will help,' Winslow said. Under the House bill, the grants would rise with the consumer price index, plus 1 percentage point, starting in 2011. The estimated maximum award in 2019 would be $6,900." Brisbane Times, Australia: "Ashley Wells, 26, is also a recent recruit, although she says the military has always been part of her life plan after she finishes her physical sciences degree at the University of Maryland in May. She has applied to be an intelligence analyst, but she is also planning to be part of the airborne division, which means high-level parachuting and combat training at Fort Benning in Georgia. 'My dad, my grandfather, my uncles have all been in the army: I have cousins in the marines and the air force, so it's always something that I have been around,' she said. 'I really believe in what the army stands for. I believe in standing up and defending your country and I love the opportunities. That camaraderie, training together, being with soldiers and going overseas if you have to, that's something you can't get in an ordinary job,' she said. As for deploying to Afghanistan, Ms Wells reckons she has only a moderate chance given her chosen specialty, which would probably mean being based in the United States." Business Journals: "Lockheed Martin Corporation (NYSE: LMT) today announced that its Board of Directors has elected Christopher E. Kubasik to serve as president and chief operating officer, effective Jan. 1, 2010. ... Currently, Kubasik serves as executive vice president of Lockheed Martin's Electronic Systems business area, with 2008 sales of $11.6 billion, a portfolio of more than 1,400 programs and customers in 43 nations. Prior to his appointment to that position in 2007, he was the corporation's executive vice president and chief financial officer, responsible for financial strategies, processes and operations. Kubasik received an Executive Engineering Certificate from Carnegie Mellon University in 2008 and has attended an Executive Program at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Business. He also completed the Systems Acquisition Management Course for Flag Officers at the Defense Acquisition University, Fort Belvoir, Va. He received his bachelor's degree (magna cum laude) from the University of Maryland in 1983." Science & Technology Live Science: "Since the 1950s, researchers have been trying to create a stable, unmanned aerial vehicle that could mimic a maple seed's flight. But their attempts have been unsuccessful, typically because of instability. Until now, the vehicles have been just a single component, and so the entire craft -- wing and propeller -- had to twist and turn as one unit. The result was an unstable vehicle that would crash with even a slight nudge from the wind. A team from the University of Maryland's Clark School of Engineering got around this problem by separating the wing from the propeller and electronics package into two attached components. That way the wing could tilt up or down without moving the rest of the vehicle. 'We found that it behaved a lot more like a helicopter and it was highly stable even in the presence of wind,' said graduate student and study team member Evan Ulrich. 'The team also tweaked the shape of the wing to match that of a maple seed, where the bulk of the surface area sits toward the tip, away from the center of rotation. 'For natural maple seeds, it allows them to fall more slowly,' Ulrich told LiveScience. 'For ours, it allows it to hover for longer and more stably.' Depending on which way a maple seed is tilted it will fall in one of two modes: It either carves out a small helix shape as it falls, essentially spiraling straight down, or it carves out a giant helix shape during descent. 'The difference between those two flight patterns is the wing pitch. And so by variation of the wing pitch you can control how big the helix is you're descending in,' Ulrich said." New York Times: "The next generation of computer scientists has to think in terms of what could be described as Internet scale. Facebook, for example, uses more than 1 petabyte of storage space to manage its users' 40 billion photos. (A petabyte is about 1,000 times as large as a terabyte, and could store about 500 billion pages of text.) It was not long ago that the notion of one company having anything close to 40 billion photos would have seemed tough to fathom. Google, meanwhile, churns through 20 times that amount of information every single day just running data analysis jobs. In short order, DNA sequencing systems too will generate many petabytes of information a year. 'It sounds like science fiction, but soon enough, you'll hand a machine a strand of hair, and a DNA sequence will come out the other side,' said Jimmy Lin, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, during a technology conference held here last week. The big question is whether the person on the other side of that machine will have the wherewithal to do something interesting with an almost limitless supply of genetic information. At the moment, companies like I.B.M. and Google have their doubts. ... Mr. Lin has encouraged his students to illuminate data with the help of Hadoop, an open-source software package that companies like Facebook and Yahoo use to split vast amounts of information into more manageable chunks. One of these projects included a deep dive into the reams of documents released after the government's probe into Enron, to create an analysis system that could identify how one employee's internal communications had been connected to those from other employees and who had originated a specific decision. Mr. Lin shares the opinion of numerous other researchers that learning these types of analysis techniques will be vital for students in the coming years. 'Science these days has basically turned into a data-management problem,' Mr. Lin said." Business Journals: "A new Facebook application has been launched to help educate, motivate and mobilize people to prevent the spread of Humanpapilloma Virus (HPV). 'Fact Check: HPV' (www.hpvfactcheck.org) allows users to take an interactive, educational quiz about HPV, find additional resources, and commit to take action, while even allowing concerned friends to anonymously share the application with peers. The application was developed by Partnership for Prevention and the University of Maryland's College of Information Studies with input from the School of Public Health. The project was funded by the Fund to Prevent Cervical Cancer. ... Use of social networking sites has quadrupled over the last four years from 8 percent in 2005 to over 35 percent in 2008. Over 75% of young adults, age 18-24, have a profile page, the vast majority of whom check it at least weekly. 'Young adults trust information recommended by friends, however, friends are often reticent to share information about stigmatized illnesses such as STDs, mental illnesses, or substance abuse. This project tests a novel strategy that spreads sensitive information through friendship networks, while still retaining anonymity.' said Derek Hansen, PhD, Assistant Professor at University of Maryland's College of Information Studies. 'It also helps us learn how the application spreads through the network and identify misperceptions about HPV based on quiz results.' " Pick: Scientists Create Diabetic Fruit Flies United Press International: "University of Maryland medical researchers say they have created fruit fly models of diabetes to study the genetics involved in the disease. While sedentary lifestyles and diets high in sugar and fat contribute significantly to the rise in diabetes rates, genetic factors may make some people more vulnerable than others to developing diabetes, researchers said. Associate Professor Leslie Pick and her team said they altered genes in fruit flies to model the loss of insulin production as seen in human Type 1 diabetes. 'These mutant flies show symptoms that look very similar to human diabetes,' Pick said. 'They have the hallmark characteristic, which is elevated blood sugar levels. They are also lethargic and appear to be breaking down their fat tissue to get energy, even while they are eating -- a situation in which normal animals would be storing fat, not breaking it down. 'We can use these genetically manipulated flies as a model to understand defects underlying human diabetes and to identify genes and target points for pharmacological intervention,' said Pick, who is also using flies to study Type 2 diabetes and other syndromes of insulin resistance. The study that included researchers Hua Zhang, Jingnan Liu and Caroline Li, Associate Professor Bahram Momen and former Johns Hopkins University Associate Professor Ronald Kohanski appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.": Red Orbit: "Most land-use changes occurring in the continental United States reduce vegetative cover and raise regional surface temperatures, says a new study by scientists at the University of Maryland, Purdue University, and the University of Colorado in Boulder. The study, which will appear in the Royal Meteorological Society's International Journal of Climatology, found that almost any change that makes land cover less 'green' contributes to warming. However, a less intuitive finding is that conversion of any land to agricultural use results in cooling, even land that was previously forested. Derived using a University of Maryland developed analytical approach known as OMR, the findings build on previous research and add significant weight to a growing recognition among climate scientists for the need to more fully incorporate land use change into computer models that are designed to forecast future changes in climate conditions. 'We found that most land-use changes, especially urbanization, result in warming,' said University of Maryland Professor Eugenia Kalnay, one of the study's co-authors. 'A clear exception is conversion of land from other uses to agriculture, which produces relative cooling, presumably because of increased evaporation,' said Kalnay, who developed the now widely used OMR (observation minus reanalysis) method with former Maryland colleague Ming Cai, now an associate professor at Florida State University. 'The study's results also confirm the robustness of the OMR method, particularly in providing an estimate of the impact of local and regional land cover changes on temperature trends,' said Kalnay, a professor in Maryland's department of atmospheric and oceanic science." Scientific American: "Did you know birds sing in dialect? They do. The song of a great tit from the countryside is a far cry from that of his city cousin. And some song dialects can change nearly as fast as human slang -- the Indigo Bunting changes tune from year to year. To investigate the cultural evolution of such songs researchers have recently completed a study of adjacent White-crowned sparrow dialects from 1969 to 1998 in San Francisco. Biologist David Luther of the University of Maryland and ornithologist Luis Baptista of the California Academy of Sciences hypothesized that the pressures of urban noise would tend, over time, to eliminate the lower ranges of the bird's song and cause the sparrows to prefer to learn songs at the higher range. Simply put, birds that sang too low would be drowned out by rumbling buses, honking cars, or other typical city noises. And that's exactly what they found." Asian News International: "A new study by geologists at the University of Toronto and the University of Maryland, has suggested that the wealth of some minerals that lie in the rock beneath the Earths surface may be extraterrestrial in origin. 'The extreme temperature at which the Earth�s core formed more than four billion years ago would have completely stripped any precious metals from the rocky crust and deposited them in the core,' said James Brenan of the Department of Geology at the University of Toronto and co-author of the study. ... Geologists have long speculated that four and a half billion years ago, the Earth was a cold mass of rock mixed with iron metal which was melted by the heat generated from the impact of massive planet-sized objects, allowing the iron to separate from the rock and form the Earth''s core. Brenan and colleague William McDonough of the University of Maryland recreated the extreme pressure and temperature of this process, subjecting a similar mixture to temperatures above 2,000 degrees Celsius, and measured the composition of the resulting rock and iron." New Nation, Bangladesh: "An Aquaculture Food Safety Centre (AFSC) is going to be set up in Bangladesh to provide training on good aquaculture practices (GAPs). Good Aquaculture Practices apply a set of management approaches based on International Principles of Responsible Aquaculture in an effort to ensure food safety, environmental sustainability, labour standards and other issues of social acceptability. These principles are to be applied at all levels of the shrimp value chain. The Bangladesh Shrimp and Fish Foundation (BSFF), Joint Institute of Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN), University of Maryland, USA, Katalyst, US AID supported PRICE project will sign a Memorandum of Understanding soon to develop the centre which will be affiliated with the Fisheries Product Business Promotion Council, the leading private-public aquaculture entity under the Ministry of Commerce." Phys.org: "Investigating mysterious data in ultracold gases of rubidium atoms, scientists at the Joint Quantum Institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the University of Maryland and their collaborators have found that properly tuned radio-frequency waves can influence how much the atoms attract or repel one another, opening up new ways to control their interactions. As the authors report in an upcoming issue of Physical Review A, the radio-frequency (RF) radiation could serve as a second "knob," in addition to the more traditionally used magnetic fields, for controlling how atoms in an ultracold gas interact. Just as it is easier to improve reception on a home radio by both electronically tuning the frequency on the receiver and mechanically moving the antenna, having two independent knobs for influencing the interactions in atomic gases could produce richer and more exotic arrangements of ultracold atoms than ever before." Society & Culture Spectrum IEEE: "A report issued on Oct. 19 by the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine estimates damages to public health and the immediate physical environment from power plant and vehicular emissions. The overall effect is to reduce estimates of how many deaths result from power plant pollution by a factor of three or four. But the numbers are still shockingly high, and total estimated economic damages are very substantial. The national cost of power plant emissions in 2005 is put at $62 billion, and the damage from automotive emissions -- from light vehicles, as well as medium- and heavy-duty trucks -- at $56 billion. Given the report's valuation of a premature human death at $6 million, those estimates imply that about 10,000 people die each year from exposure to coal power plant emissions, and about 10,000 from vehicular emissions. ... Maureen L. Cropper, an economist at the University of Maryland (College Park) and Resources for the Future (Washington D.C.) who co-chaired the National Academies' panel, says because of improved methodology -- and perhaps also because of differences in data sets, baselines, and comparisons -- the National Academies' estimates of fatalities are significantly lower than EPA's. They are lower by a factor of about four, even though the Academies took a wider range of damage into account, she notes. At the same time, acknowledging that total estimated damages are still high, Cropper feels that tightening air regulations beyond what is anticipated by the 1990 Clean Air Amendments probably is warranted." Baltimore Sun: "That's the conclusion of the study by University of Maryland scholars who lead the institute the former governor founded to promote the policy. The idea behind Maryland's celebrated smart-growth program seemed sound: To ease traffic jams and air and water pollution and preserve farmland, development would be focused into dense, urban settlements near train and bus stations. The state would stop subsidizing sprawl and instead direct money for roads, sewer lines and other investments to urban areas. Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government called the idea one of the country's 10 'most innovative' public policies after Glendening muscled it through the General Assembly in 1997. Other states followed suit with similar programs. But scholars at the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education found that over a decade, smart growth has not made a dent in Maryland's war on sprawl." Baltimore Sun: A multi-year study hosted by the University of Maryland and including several area groups concludes that faith-based organizations can better weather an economic downturn by building stronger ties with the ministries the congregations that support them. From a press release: "Particularly during an economic downturn, faith-based organizations tied only to one or two congregations, especially if those were not thriving congregations, had the most trouble raising resources and some shut down. While single-congregation support of a program might be considered more authentic, faith-based organizations supported by a wider umbrella or an interfaith base fared better. 'We compared everything from small food pantries directly connected to a congregation to national hospital systems and their local affiliated hospitals,' said Maryland Associate Professor Jo Anne Schneider, who led the project. 'Congregation-focused models work well for mainline Protestants, Quakers and African American churches, but only if several congregations provide support or the sponsoring congregation is sufficiently active with enough resources to support the nonprofit. Jewish and Catholic systems rely on their communities as a whole with the Jewish Federation, Archdiocese, or Order providing centralized support. Some thriving evangelical organizations rely on networks with no formal connections to congregations.' " Reuters: "Older people who hold temporary or part-time jobs after retirement enjoy better physical and mental health than those who stop working entirely, according to a U.S. study released on Tuesday. Those who continue to work in their original field also have better mental health than those who change fields, according to a study published in the October issue of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology published by the American Psychological Association. The researchers interviewed 12,189 participants, aged 51 to 61, every two years over a six-year period beginning in 1992 about their health, finances, employment and retirement. The findings are particularly significant, given how many older workers are continuing to work due to the economic downturn, said co-author Mo Wang, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland. 'Because of the economy, a lot of people don't have enough money to retire,' he said. The retirees who continue to work in temporary or part-time jobs, called bridge employment, suffer 17 percent fewer major diseases than those who stopped working completely, according to the study. Ranked on a mental health scale, those who continued to work had a 31 percent higher score than those who stopped working, Wang said." Associated Press: "Clearly we are facing an overload of activities, and I want to make sure we find the right balance for our family. I want to make sure I don't go crazy and that my role isn't exclusively as a taxi service. ... A new study titled 'The "Hurried' Child: Myth vs. Reality" ' found that in contrast to what most people think, kids are doing quite well in activities, and that it's the parents who are stressed. The study's author, Sandra Hofferth, director of the Maryland Population Research Center at the University of Maryland, College Park, said she found that children who had the most problems -- low self esteem and withdrawn -- were the ones not involved in any activities. Hofferth said I am just entering the age of activity overload. The amount of activities tends to peak around ages 9-12. 'There's no evidence that having lots of activities is associated with children being stressed, socially immature or having low self-esteem,'' she said." Inside Bay Area: "The Berkeley school board is considering creating an alternative high school or charter school proposed by one of its high school principals for 500 kids who are falling behind. Victor Diaz, principal of Berkeley Technology Academy, said the school would serve kids from grades six through 12 who traditionally fall behind: students of color scoring well below their white counterparts. Berkeley schools have the largest gap between well performing white students and students of color in the entire State of California, according to schools spokesman Mark Coplan. Diaz said he has developed a curriculum for the new school based partly on project-based learning and immersive technology with professors from UC Berkeley, Harvard and the University of Maryland. If the school board decides to create a charter run within the school district, called a dependent charter, the new school would get money from state and federal sources and would pay the Berkeley school district for facilities and administrative services, he said."
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 Information provided by the Office of University CommunicationsEmail University Communications at emailum@umd.edu |
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