Contact:
Dinah Winnick
Communications Manager
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
410-455-8117
dwinnick@umbc.edu

A year after the February 2010 North American blizzards and in the wake of recent storms, government and business leaders are asking how we can better deal with extreme weather. UMBC faculty researchers offer important perspectives on severe storms and Mid-Atlantic meteorology, emergency/disaster preparedness and response and the impacts of school closures on learning.

Jeffrey B. Halverson is associate professor of geography and environmental systems and associate director-academics at the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET). He has expertise on severe storms, mesoscale meteorology and meteorology/climatology of the Mid-Atlantic region and he helped pioneer the first system to take direct measurements in the eye of a mature hurricane from 70,000 feet. Halverson has worked at both NASA Headquarters and the Goddard Space Flight Center. He has appeared in hurricane specials on The Discovery Channel and NOVA, and has written columns for Weatherwise Magazine and the Baltimore Sun. Contact him at jeffhalv@umbc.edu or 410-455-3350 (o).

Richard A. Bissell, associate professor and graduate program director in emergency health services, is an expert on emergency preparedness and response and EMS system development, with specialties in rural and international EMS. Bissell’s work in emergency health epidemiology and disaster services planning/evaluation has taken him to over 40 countries. He has served on the advisory boards of the American Red Cross and World Health Organization, and as principal investigator on a multi-million dollar U.S. Public Health Service project to train clinicians and logistics personnel in medical response to disasters and terrorism. Contact him at bissell@umbc.edu or 410-455-3776 (o).

Dave E. Marcotte, professor and graduate program director in public policy, can offer insight on how resources impact student performance in primary and secondary education, including the effects of snow days on learning. His research has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, Baltimore Sun, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, The Economist, Education Week, Christian Science Monitor and more. For details, see the Education Next article “Time for School.” Contact him at marcotte@umbc.edu or 410-455-1455 (o).

Cell numbers available upon request.

The Feb. 11 episode of PBS's Need to Know will look at the Meyerhoff Scholars Program and curriculum changes at UMBC that have helped more students succeed in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The segment is part of a one-hour special on education. It is scheduled to air on Maryland Public Television MPT2 at 11 p.m. and, in the greater Washington area, on WETA HD and TV 26 at 10:30 p.m. The program also will be available on the Need to Know website.

The program “highlights three dramatic stories of academic transformation – focusing on literacy, physical education and science education.” The segment on UMBC is titled, “Reinventing science education at one Maryland university.”

Contact:
Dinah Winnick
Communications Manager
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
410-455-8117
dwinnick@umbc.edu

Chelsea Haddaway
Communications Manager
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)
410-455-6380
chaddaway@umbc.edu

UMBC faculty experts on social media and social/political movements in the Middle East have turned their attention to recent protests in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and across the region. They offer insight into the role of digital communications in coordinating protest efforts, representations of Egypt in the non-Western media, transnational Islamist movements, U.S. foreign and security policy, democratization and transitional justice.

Zeynep Tufekci, assistant professor of sociology, is an expert on how digital communications play a role in political change, social organizing and community dynamics. Her analysis on the role of social media in Tunisia and Egypt has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chronicle of Higher Education, and on public radio. The UN Dispatch described her writing on Twitter and Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution as "the best, most balanced analysis of the role of social media in ousting Ben Ali." Tufekci is well-regarded for her blog Technosociology.org and recent columns in The Atlantic on Wikileaks and Morosov’s "The Net Delusion." Contact her at zeynep@umbc.edu or on Twitter @techsoc.

Rebecca Adelman, assistant professor of media and communication studies, can discuss the media’s visual representations of the protests in Egypt. She is especially interested in how these images fit with historic and contemporary visual rhetoric about Middle Eastern nations. Adelman is currently teaching a class on globalized mass media and media practices in non-Western countries and working on an interdisciplinary project that integrates political and cultural studies to discuss how images are created, defined and used in America’s war on terror. Contact her at adelman@umbc.edu or 410-455-2772 (o).

Brigid Starkey, lecturer in political science, has expertise on transnational Islamist movements in the Middle East, international negotiation, American foreign policy and security issues. She is the lead author of "International Negotiation in a Complex World," heralded as an “engaging book [that] moves us to a new era of international relations characterized by global diplomacy, nonstate actors, and complex, interlinked issues” by Daniel Druckman of the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Contact her at starkey@umbc.edu or 410-744-0706 (o).

Devin Hagerty, professor and chair of political science, focuses on Iran and South Asia and can provide a comparative perspective on regional dynamics over time. He also has expertise on protest movements in the broader context of U.S. foreign and security policy. Hagerty is co-author of "Fearful Symmetry: Indo-Pakistani Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons" and editor of "South Asia in World Politics." Contact him at dhagerty@umbc.edu or 410-455-2185 (o).

Brian Grodsky, assistant professor of political science, is an expert on democratization and the forms of transitional justice that outgoing leaders can face after they leave power. He is the author of the new book “The Costs of Justice” and the manuscript “Social Movements and the State.” A three-minute video on his current book is available online. Contact him at grodsky@umbc.edu or 410-455-8047 (o).

Cell numbers available upon request.

From the NIH Office of Biotechnology Activities (OBA): http://oba.od.nih.gov/oba/index.html

NIH Guidelines Revised to Exempt Most Experiments Involving the Breeding of Transgenic Rodents Housed Under BL1 Conditions - Under the revisions to the NIH Guidelines for Research Involving Recombinant DNA Molecules effective January 19, the breeding of transgenic rodents that may be housed under BL1 containment conditions is exempt from the NIH Guidelines with the exception of:

• Breeding experiments involving transgenic rodents that contain more than 50 percent of the genome of an exogenous eukaryotic virus from a single family, in order to prevent inadvertent reconstitution of an exogenous virus in the resultant transgenic rodent; and
  
• Breeding experiments in which the transgenic rodent's transgene is under the control of a gammaretroviral long terminal repeat (LTR), in order to address the small risk of recombination with endogenous retroviruses which could potentially result in mobilization of the transgene via a replication-competent mouse retrovirus.

The above two types of experiments must still be registered with, and eventually approved by, an IBC under Section III-E of the NIH Guidelines.

A full description of these changes can be found in the January 19, 2011 Federal Register (76 FR 3150)

Contact:
Dinah Winnick
(410) 455-8117
dwinnick@umbc.edu

Marsha Willis
(410) 455-6383
mwillis@hilltop.umbc.edu

The Hilltop Institute at UMBC has released two significant publications this week on health care topics. Hilltop’s Hospital Community Benefit Program posted its first issue brief in a series funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Entitled “Hospital Community Benefits after the ACA: The Emerging Federal Framework,” the brief provides historical background on federal hospital community benefit policy; outlines the new requirements described in the Affordable Care Act (ACA); and identifies new challenges and opportunities for state and federal decision-makers as they begin to develop responses to the new federal requirements.

Hilltop’s other new issue brief—“Overcoming Interagency Data-Sharing Barriers: Lessons from the Maryland Kids First Act”—describes interagency data-sharing barriers that researchers and state officials encountered as they implemented and evaluated the Maryland Kids First Act outreach initiative. It provides an overview of strategies used to identify uninsured children who are eligible for public insurance programs; an update on Maryland’s tax-based outreach program, including a description of the interagency data-sharing barriers encountered and their resolution; a discussion of new data-sharing and outreach opportunities outlined in the ACA; and a discussion of lessons for other states.

The Maryland Health Care Reform Coordinating Council (HCRCC) also released its final report this week, for which Hilltop’s researchers conducted an in-depth analysis of the provisions of the ACA and developed a financial model to project Maryland’s costs and savings associated with implementing health reform. The HCRCC was created by Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley to make recommendations regarding Maryland’s implementation of the ACA, and this final report sets a blueprint for that implementation. Learn more about this initiative and view the interim and final reports at the HCRCC website.

The Institute for Laboratory Animal Research has published the Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals. The Office of Laboratory Animal Welfare now expects compliance with the new "Guide". A PDF version of the Guide is available free for download on the OLAW Web site at http://olaw.nih.gov.  To browse or purchase the Guide, go to http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12910. 

This is also available under IACUC Policies, Procedures and Regulations in the Animal Care & Use page.