Wind turbines are massive, with a single turbine blade measuring up to 350 feet (about 110 meters), longer than the wingspan of some commercial airplanes. At its highest point, a blade can be 850 feet (260 meters) off the ground, almost reaching the height of Eiffel Tower. When UMBC engineer Soobum Lee looks up at these turbines, generating energy in fields and even offshore, he thinks about their size as an enormous opportunity, and also a challenge.

Lee, associate professor of mechanical engineering, studies energy harvesting, but not in a way that most casual observers would connect with wind turbines. He researches how vibrations can power portable devices on a very small scale, and he develops devices that convert those subtle vibrations into energy.

A few years ago, Lee began exploring how to harvest energy from the rotation of vehicle tires. This led him to begin looking at the spinning motion of wind turbines, and the additional small vibrations that turbines make as they spin continuously. He came up with a novel idea: using these small vibrations—not previously harnessed for energy—to power transmitters that could send sensor data to a wind turbine’s operation and maintenance systems.

Lee explains that wind turbines have sensors on their blades to alert their operators if the blade gets damaged, such as by birds or lightning, or if there is a malfunction or maintenance issue. For example, icicles can form on turbine blades, changing their aerodynamics. Or, the blade could be vibrating abnormally, indicating a more serious mechanical or structural issue in the blade.

Until now, these sensors have been powered by batteries that need to be changed every two years or so. Changing the batteries is time-consuming and can be dangerous for people maintaining the turbines, as they need to climb up the turbines, hundreds of feet in the air, to access multiple sensors on one blade.

“The sensors are to help with maintenance,” says Lee. “If they also create a maintenance need, it’s a problem.” He wondered, what if you could design a sensor that wouldn’t require new batteries?

Bringing research to consumers

Over the past 7 years, UMBC faculty from engineering and the sciences to the arts have worked to commercialize their research, to bring innovative technologies to companies and consumers. Knowing that this can be a challenging transition, UMBC and the State of Maryland have created a range of initiatives to help faculty pursue entrepreneurship opportunities. One core opportunity is the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII), established by the state and five research institutions, including UMBC, to promote research commercialization.

A unique feature of the MII program is the introduction of university “site miners” to facilitate the application process for faculty inventors. These commercialization experts support faculty with preparing proposals and advocate for projects in the review process. UMBC site miner David Fink, entrepreneur in residence, says, “The MII program is the most significant factor in the increased commercialization of UMBC-owned intellectual property.” Sixteen companies have been formed by UMBC faculty since the start of MII.

Since 2013, Lee has applied for three MII grants. His first two attempts were not successful but helped him grow his proposal. On his third try, he received a phase one grant to develop his vibration-powered sensor technology.

Through bwtech@UMBC, UMBC’s research and technology park, Lee connected with Pranay Kohli, an energy sector executive with experience working with companies and clients around the world. In 2018, Lee and Kohli founded ACTIVEcharge, LLC, a startup that develops solutions to autonomously monitor wind turbines.

“Soobum and I have benefited tremendously from the MII program. Although we had the technology and the business skills, what MII and bwtech provided us was the ecosystem of professionals who have guided us along the way,” says Kohli, CEO of ACTIVEcharge. “That has opened up so many doors for us as we move forward to commercializing the solution.”

Technology with an impact

Lee’s work has continued to move forward since he received the MII grant. In the lab, he and his students have developed a power management circuit and have integrated it with a power source, sensor, and data transmitter that is about six inches tall and weighs about two pounds.

The sensor provides the signal to the transmitter, and the transmitter sends the data to a receiver. This process uses the energy produced by the attached mechanical generator, powered by vibrations from turbine blades. No external source of energy is needed. It is also designed to sit inside the blades, so it is completely protected from the elements and does not interfere with the blade aerodynamics.

Lee and Kohli hope that, in the next two to four years, their integrated solution will be installed on turbine blades across the country and internationally. Their goal is to provide turbine maintenance crews with near-real-time data that can support their work in a way that doesn’t create additional labor or physical risk and prevents potential catastrophic events.

Sustainable energy projects are growing in the U.S., and now is an important moment to make technology improvements that will boost that growth further, Lee notes. He shares, “I want to make things even better than they are now.”

Banner image: Wind turbines. Photo by Kam Abbott, used under CC BY 2.0.

UMBC is proud to be named a 2019 – 2020 Fulbright Top Producing Institution, an honor granted by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The Fulbright program is the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program. Over 2,200 U.S. students are awarded Fulbright grants annually, from hundreds of colleges and universities. Only a small portion of these institutions are designated as top producers each year. UMBC is one of 45 doctoral universities nationwide and three in Maryland to receive a Fulbright Top Producing Institution designation for 2019 – 2020. Over 43% of UMBC’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program applicants earned awards. This is the third-highest proportion among all top-producing doctoral institutions, speaking to the quality of UMBC student applications.

“The Fulbright Top Producing Institution designation honors our entire UMBC community,” reflects President Freeman Hrabowski. “It recognizes how UMBC prepares students to get beyond their comfort zones and to tackle global challenges through engagement with communities around the world.”

UMBC global ambassadors

In the last decade, UMBC has received over 60 Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards. In the 2019 – 2020 academic year, fourteen students and alumni earned awards to teach, conduct research, or pursue graduate studies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, South America, and Europe. 

“These Fulbrighters serve as citizen ambassadors for the United States in their host communities, and we will benefit from the skills, knowledge, and global connections they build on their exchanges long after they return home,” shares Marie Royce, assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs.

This year, 27 UMBC students and recent alumni, a record number, have been selected as Fulbright semifinalists. This selection recognizes their academic merit, leadership potential, and vision to create solutions and serve as leaders around the world. 

Support on the Fulbright journey

Each year students must complete a rigorous application process to apply for a Fulbright. They receive support from Brian Souders, M.A. ‘19, TESOL, and Ph.D. ’09, language, literacy and culture, UMBC’s Fulbright program advisor, as well as faculty and staff across campus. This process asks applicants in all majors to provide evidence of their academic excellence, commitment to global community partnerships, and a record of leadership through service. 

“Dedicated UMBC faculty and staff mentor students and alumni annually from across the campus, from film-making and anthropology to quantum physics to mechatronics,” says Souders. “They support them through the application process, and help them prepare their work to reflect their academic purpose and goals for this globally prestigious and life-changing award.” 

Study abroad as a pathway to Fulbright

Many future Fulbright recipients begin their international experience with study abroad through International Education Services. This UMBC office offers students opportunities to study and research internationally as early as the summer before their incoming year. In UMBC’s 2019 – 2020 Fulbright class, ten out of fourteen recipients had already pursued research and education abroad. For the 2018 – 2019 class, that number was six out of eight recipients. 

“Studying abroad gives students that first foundational taste of being in a new global environment,” shares Caylie Middleton, associate director of education abroad. “International academic, social, and cultural experiences help develop the curiosity and skills that prepare students for prestigious international opportunities in the future.”

Fulbrighters have also participated in other international opportunities, including with student organizations like Engineers Without Borders, class-based online international exchanges like Global Engineering, faculty-led study abroad courses, and online language exchanges, which UMBC offers in Spanish and Japanese. 

Souders is proud that so many Retrievers are accessing opportunities for international learning experiences, through Fulbright and a broad range of other UMBC international programs. The Top Producer accolade is a milestone that represents an important trend—more UMBC students and recent alumni are researching, learning, and teaching abroad each year.

“Retrievers have a deep understanding of the value of diverse experiences, identities, and cultures,” Souders says. “They know that the world they dream of can only be made possible by reaching together in mutual understanding.”

Feature image: Souders with UMBC’s 2019 – 2020 Fulbright U.S. Student recipients. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 unless otherwise noted.

by David Salkever, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, UMBC

If you thought workers’ hourly pay was finally rising, think again.

At first glance, the latest data – which came out on Feb. 7 – look pretty good. They show nominal hourly earnings rose 3.1% in January from a year earlier.

But the operative word here is nominal, which means not adjusted for changes in the cost of living. Once you factor in inflation, the picture changes drastically. And far from representing a “blue collar boom” – as the president put it in his State of the Union address – the real, inflation-adjusted data show most U.S. workers have not benefited from the growing economy.

As an economist who studies wage data, I think it’s paramount that we take a step back and look at what the data really show.

The effect of inflation and fringes

The Bureau of Labor Statistics comes out with two sets of data on wages.

Business journalists and financial markets tend to focus on the monthly data. These figures are only reported in nominal or current terms because the inflation data doesn’t come out until later.

A more complete set of wage and pay data is reported quarterly. The latest release came out in December for the third quarter. These figures are not only adjusted for inflation but also include fringe benefits, which account for just under a third of total compensation.

At first blush, it makes sense to focus primarily on the first set. Newer data is, well, newer, and market participants and companies prefer the latest information when making decisions about investments, hiring and so on.

But the effect of inflation means that the same US$1 bill buys less stuff over time as prices increase.

From December 2016 to September 2019, nominal wages rose 6.79% from $22.83 to $24.38. But after factoring in inflation, average wages barely budged, climbing just 0.42% in the period.

Incorporating fringe benefits into the picture adds another wrinkle.

The inflation-adjusted or real value of fringe benefits, which include compensation that comes in the form of health insurance, retirement and bonuses, declined 1.7% in the three-year period.

Altogether, that means total real compensation slipped 0.22% from the end of 2016 to September 2019.

Of course, workers in different sectors have fared differently. The Trump administration has singled out manufacturing workers – who it says are the main beneficiaries of its trade war and other policies intended to support the sector – as having benefited from a “blue collar boom” in wages.

The nominal data for manufacturing workers hardly support a boom but they do show an increase of 2.22% since Donald Trump took office.

The adjusted data, however, make it look more like a bust, with wages plunging 3.88% in the period. And, again, the situation is worse when we add in fringe benefits, which brings the decline to 4.33%.

So next time you read a story about a rise in pay, try to see if it reports the wage data in nominal or real terms, and if it includes fringe benefits too. If it’s only nominal wages, the numbers may mean a lot less than they seem.

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David Salkever, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

by Karuna Pande Joshi, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, UMBC

You’re trailing bits of personal data – such as credit card numbers, shopping preferences and which news articles you read – as you travel around the internet. Large internet companies make money off this kind of personal information by sharing it with their subsidiaries and third parties. Public concern over online privacy has led to laws designed to control who gets that data and how they can use it.

The battle is ongoing. Democrats in the U.S. Senate recently introduced a bill that includes penalties for tech companies that mishandle users’ personal data. That law would join a long list of regulations worldwide, including the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard that regulates online credit card transactions, the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, the California Consumer Privacy Act that went into effect in January, and the U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act.

Internet companies must adhere to these regulations or risk expensive lawsuits or government sanctions, such as the Federal Trade Commission’s recent US$5 billion fine imposed on Facebook.

But it is technically challenging to determine in real-time whether a privacy violation has occurred, an issue that is becoming even more problematic as internet data moves to extreme scale. To make sure their systems comply, companies rely on human experts to interpret the laws – a complex and time-consuming task for organizations that constantly launch and update services.

My research group at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has developed novel technologies for machines to understand data privacy laws and enforce compliance with them using artificial intelligence. These technologies will enable companies to make sure their services comply with privacy laws and also help governments identify in real time those companies that violate consumers’ privacy rights.

Helping machines understand regulations

Governments generate online privacy regulations as plain text documents that are easy for humans to read but difficult for machines to interpret. As a result, the regulations need to be manually examined to ensure that no rules are being broken when a citizen’s private data is analyzed or shared. This affects companies that now have to comply with a forest of regulations.

Rules and regulations often are ambiguous by design because societies want flexibility in implementing them. Subjective concepts such as good and bad vary among cultures and over time, so laws are drafted in general or vague terms to allow scope for future modifications. Machines can’t process this vagueness – they operate in 1’s and 0’s – so they cannot “understand” privacy the way humans do. Machines need specific instructions to understand the knowledge on which a regulation is based.

One way to help machines understand an abstract concept is by building an ontology, or a graph representing the knowledge of that concept. Borrowing the concepts of ontology from philosphy, new computer languages, such as OWL, have been developed in AI. These languages can define concepts and categories in a subject area or domain, show their properties and show the relations among them. Ontologies are sometimes called “knowledge graphs,” because they are stored in graphlike structures.

When my colleagues and I began looking at the challenge of making privacy regulations understandable by machines, we determined that the first step would be to capture all the key knowledge in these laws and create knowledge graphs to store it.

Extracting the terms and rules

The key knowledge in the regulations consists of three parts.

First, there are “terms of art”: words or phrases that have precise definitions within a law. They help to identify the entity that the regulation describes and allow us to describe its roles and responsibilities in a language that computers can understand. For example, from the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, we extracted terms of art such as “Consumers and Providers” and “Fines and Enforcement.”

Next, we identified Deontic rules: sentences or phrases that provide us with philosophical modal logic, which deals with deductive behavior. Deontic (or moral) rules include sentences describing duties or obligations and mainly fall into four categories. “Permissions” define the rights of an entity/actor. “Obligations” define the responsibilities of an entity/actor. “Prohibitions” are conditions or actions that are not allowed. “Dispensations” are optional or nonmandatory statements.

To explain this with a simple example, consider the following:

• You have permission to drive.
• But to drive, you are obligated to get a driver’s license.
• You are prohibited from speeding (and will be punished if you do so).
• You can park in areas where you have the dispensation to do so (such as paid parking, metered parking or open areas not near a fire hydrant).

Some of these rules apply to everyone uniformly in all conditions; while others may apply partially, to only one entity or based on conditions agreed to by everyone.

Similar rules that describe do’s and don’ts apply to online personal data. There are permissions and prohibitions to prevent data breaches. There are obligations on the companies storing the data to ensure its safety. And there are dispensations made for vulnerable demographics such as minors.

My group developed techniques to automatically extract these rules from the regulations and save them in a knowledge graph.

Thirdly, we also had to figure out how to include the cross references that are often used in legal regulations to reference text in another section of the regulation or in a separate document. These are important knowledge elements that should also be stored in the knowledge graph.

Rules in place, scanning for compliance

After defining all the key entities, properties, relations, rules and policies of a data privacy law in a knowledge graph, my colleagues and I can create applications that can reason about the data privacy rules using these knowledge graphs.

These applications can significantly reduce the time it will take companies to determine whether they are complying with the data protection regulations. They can also help regulators monitor data audit trails to determine whether companies they oversee are complying with the rules.

This technology can also help individuals get a quick snapshot of their rights and responsibilities with respect to the private data they share with companies. Once machines can quickly interpret long, complex privacy policies, people will be able to automate many mundane compliance activities that are done manually today. They may also be able to make those policies more understandable to consumers.

* * * * *

Header image by rupixen.com on Unsplash.

Karuna Pande Joshi, Assistant Professor of Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

UMBC’s Interactive Systems Research Center (ISRC) has obtained new equipment designed for the precise study of human movement, perception, and emotion. The User Studies Lab, which includes the Motion Lab and the Perception Lab, has installed new technology through a National Science Foundation grant including a Vicon motion capture system. The Vicon system records a subject’s movement using infrared cameras and small, wearable markers affixed with tape that the cameras can track. Andrea Kleinsmith, principal investigator, explains that with this system, tiny, lightweight reflective markers illuminate when the cameras flash. The cameras then capture the reflected light and transmit the information so location and movement can be extrapolated and researchers can study a subject’s movement.

This lab is a shared research space, primarily used by the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT), but also open to others across the university. Other equipment includes wearable research tools such as virtual reality headsets, wristbands that record physiological signals, and eye-tracking sensors that are both fixed and wearable. 

Kleinsmith, an assistant professor of information systems, explains that the newly outfitted User Studies Lab will enable students and faculty to expand the collaborative research being done across COEIT departments. 

Helena Mentis, associate dean for academic programs and learning in COEIT, and associate professor of information systems, anticipates that the 793 square foot space will also be valuable resources for students and faculty university-wide. In particular, she sees the labs as helping faculty to integrate teaching and research, and to think more expansively about their work. 

These spaces “will help increase interdisciplinarity and build bridges across ideas,” Mentis said at the kick-off celebrating the new equipment. 

During the event, Briana Norwood ’20, dance, demonstrated how the motion-capture system works. Affixed to her clothes were 39 small, wearable, retroreflective markers. Around the room, near the ceiling, 12 infrared cameras tracked the 3D position of the markers as Norwood moved throughout the space. 

As Norwood danced in the room, a colorful model of a person moved in unison on a computer screen in the adjacent control room. Kleinsmith explained how the precise 3D coordinate data transmitted to that computer could be analyzed in any number of ways. 

During the opening event, Foad Hamidi, assistant professor of information systems, and his students also provided tours of another ISRC-affiliated lab, the Designing pARticipAtory futurEs (DARE) lab. They offered an overview of the 3D printing tools in the lab, also available for use by other researchers on campus, and explained current research that utilizes those tools.

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This new equipment in the User Studies Lab represents a next step in the ongoing growth of interactive systems research infrastructure in the Interactive Systems Research Center (ISRC) at UMBC. Prior to this recent award, faculty received NSF funding in 2007 for biometric research equipment and a COEIT Strategic Plan Instrumentation Grant in 2016 to revitalize the User Studies Lab. 

“Motion and sensing of motion is all around us,” says Vandana Janeja, interim chair and professor of information systems. “This lab enables us to harness the precise study of movement and perception, which will open up doors of collaborations across many different disciplines that are interested in its study. Collaborative work through this lab will bring us closer in our joint pursuit of knowledge of human behavior and interaction with and through technology.”

Banner image: Briana Norwood demonstrates the newly-installed technology during the User Studies Lab event. All photos by Britney Clause ’11.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching has honored UMBC with its distinguished Carnegie Community Engagement Classification. This classification acknowledges UMBC faculty, staff, students, and community partners for their deep commitment to strengthening the bonds between campus and community. 

UMBC is one of only 67 public colleges and universities in the U.S. just announced as receiving this honor. To date, 359 U.S. institutions hold this classification. These institutions “are doing exceptional work to forward their public purpose in and through community engagement that enriches teaching and research while also benefiting the broader community,” says Mathew Johnson, executive director of Brown University’s Swearer Center for Public Engagement, the administrative and research home for the classification. 

This achievement required a rigorous self-study of UMBC’s work with communities in Greater Baltimore and beyond. That process involved more than 120 members of the UMBC community as well as dozens of community partners. 

This recognition is a testament to UMBC’s unwavering support for increasing equity in the Baltimore region and in communities nationally and internationally through work that honors existing sources of community strength, fosters investments in communities, and actively works to address disparities in health outcomes, education, and other core issues. 

Preparing public servants

The Shriver Center has stood at the center of UMBC’s community engagement work for decades, preparing and connecting faculty, staff, and students from all academic programs with community partners. The Shriver Center’s applied learning experiences have helped thousands of students to develop as community-minded agents of change and hundreds of partner organizations to meet their goals. 

“Carnegie’s definition of community engagement emphasizes the importance of reciprocity and mutual benefits in the partnerships that are created,” explains Michele Wolff, director of the Shriver Center. “Shriver Center programs ask us to think about how we can make our partnerships more authentic, to effectively meet the needs of all involved. In this way, the longstanding approach of the Shriver Center also reflects the Carnegie Foundation’s principles of reciprocity and mutuality.”

Investing in change

BreakingGround is one long-standing UMBC community engagement initiative with significant impacts, both on and off-campus. This initiative supports work by students, staff, and faculty to address issues they care about, as innovative coalition builders, problem solvers, and agents of social transformation. Examples of projects funded by BreakingGround include environmental justice initiatives and work to improve Baltimore City’s aging water infrastructure.

The work of BreakingGround now fits within UMBC’s Center for Democracy and Civic Life, launched in late 2018.

The Baltimore Traces project, a collaborative teaching initiative in the arts and humanities, amplifies the community voices of Baltimore residents and neighborhoods through various media. This key example of community-engaged teaching, which has been recognized by the National Humanities Alliance, has produced short video documentaries, a website, an interactive map, and radio programming that aired on Baltimore’s WEAA 88.9 FM.

Scholarship and teaching rooted in community engagement also play a significant role in the social sciences at UMBC. In the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program, for example, students spend years honing their skills as future public servants and advocates in local, national, and international communities. Recent UMBC graduate Maheen Haq, global studies and economics, is a Sondheim Scholar who has worked to support communities facing discrimination, from Syria to Baltimore.

UMBC also trains future scientists and engineers to conduct community-based research. The National Science Foundation-supported Bahama Oriole Project, a collaborative research initiative with Bahamian scientists and conservationists, works to save the critically endangered Bahama Oriole. An affordable infant incubator that originated in a UMBC engineering course is now in clinical trials in India and recently won the 2019 Global Health Research Award from the Academic Pediatric Association. And UMBC’s Engineers Without Borders student group has taken trips to Kenya and Costa Rica, working collaboratively with local communities and local university students to improve access to clean water. 

UMBC is also invested in the local community immediately surrounding campus. Recently, the university celebrated the opening of OCA Mocha, the brainchild of students in an entrepreneurship class. OCA stands for Opportunities for Community Alliances. The coffee house and community activity space is located a few minutes from UMBC’s main campus and has already found success hosting UMBC and non-university groups and bringing them together in conversation.

“Thanks to the Carnegie application process, we know the extent and the depth of the community-engaged work that UMBC students, faculty, and staff have achieved over the last five decades,” shares Scott Casper, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. “The Carnegie classification is an opportunity to celebrate that work. It’s also an opportunity to keep growing—coordinating this work to understand better the impacts of our community-engaged partnerships for our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and our partners.”

“Community engagement and a strong sense of purpose are at the heart of UMBC teaching, learning, and research,” says President Freeman Hrabowski. “The Carnegie Community Engagement Classification is a reflection of our values and our character. It affirms that together we can achieve great things locally, nationally, and internationally.”

Featured photo: Sherman STEM Teacher-Scholar, Vanessa Gonzalez ’19, American studies, works with Lakeland Elementary/Middle School students. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC unless noted.

By Weihong Lin, Professor of Biological Sciences, and Rakaia Kenney, Research Assistant, UMBC

Millions of Americans are vaping, and some are getting sick. Since June 2019, 2,711 have been hospitalized and 60 have died due to EVALI (e-cigarette-associated lung injury), the devastating lung disease linked to e-cigarettes.

Five million users are middle and high school students. Some are as young as 11, although it’s illegal to sell vaping products to anyone under 21.

Especially for kids, much of the lure is flavor. E-cigarettes offer attractive smells and tastes. Fruit, mint, candy and dessert flavors are the favorites, and studies suggest they ignite the desire to vape. That’s why the Trump administration just banned the sale of those sweet flavors from cartridge-based e-cigs, the delivery method most popular with teens.

One of us (Weihong) is a chemosensory neurobiologist, and the other (Rakaia) is a research assistant in my lab. Put simply, we study how the sensory systems and brain react to chemical stimulation. With e-cigarettes, we are focusing on how the enticing flavors ensnare our children.

But our studies have shown that the effect of flavor goes beyond the pleasure they may bring – the flavorings themselves may actually harm tissue.

Flavors enhance e-cig appeal

The tobacco industry has long been using flavorings make their products more palatable; it added menthol to cigarettes nearly a century ago.

Today, the allure of flavors in e-cigarettes bring potential health consequences, and kids are particularly vulnerable. E-cigarettes can put adolescents at risk for respiratory, cardiopulmonary diseases, brain disorders and cancers.

About 20,000 flavored e-liquids are on the market – countless combinations of hundreds of flavoring molecules extracted from natural ingredients or artificially made. The vast majority are volatile odor chemicals, perceived not by taste, but by smell.

Your olfactory system, with far more sensitivity than your taste buds, can distinguish more than 10,000 smells. During vaping, a flavoring enters our nose, and like any agreeable scent, immediately evokes the fond memories and pleasant emotions associated with the aroma. Vanillin, a popular e-cigarette flavoring, smells like dessert; ethyl maltol, a flavoring used in many foods, has a candy-like odor. The user, comforted and calmed, savors the moment – then goes back for more.

But e-cigarette vapor also contains nicotine, heavy metals and formaldehyde, as pungent as they are harmful. Mixing in delectable flavorings disguises their unpleasantness, much like the cherry additive that camouflages the otherwise medicinal taste of children’s cough syrup.

Yet perceptions of irritation and pain in the nose, mouth, and throat serve as warning signals, the body’s cautionary bells and whistles evolved over millions of years. A bitter taste might originate from a toxic plant; irritation in the nose or respiratory tract indicates the inhaled substance is potentially harmful.

But now that flavorings in e-cigarette mask the warning signals, many consumers have been lulled into believing vaping is benign. They rate mint flavors as safer, though they are not. And instead of irritation from the e-cigarette prompting a cough – an action that removes harmful stimuli from the airway – the flavorings instead dampen the user’s sensory alarms and protective reactions. The risk of chemically induced injury, along with nicotine abuse, is increased.

How flavors themselves may be toxic

Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged some flavorings as “safe for consumption,” its label dodges a critical distinction. Safe for consumption does not mean safe for inhalation. While scientists still haven’t confirmed the inhalation toxicity for all flavorings, the latest research reveals some disturbing evidence.

2se inflammation, cell death, free radical formation and DNA damage. One class of compounds, known as furfurals, trigger tumor growth in mice.

Flavor molecules, reacting with the propylene glycol in the e-liquid, can produce metabolites, or intermediate substances that are part of metabolic reactions, that are irritating to the respiratory system. Long-term exposure to irritants can lead to chronic cough; inflammation; hyper-reactive airway (wheezing, shortness of breath); edema (swelling in the arms, hands, legs or feet); and acute lung damage.

Some flavorings, inhaled chronically or at high levels, are already known to cause serious and sometimes deadly respiratory illnesses. Diacetyl, a buttery flavor used in processed foods – notably some popcorn products – causes “popcorn lung,” an irreversible disease that affects factory workers exposed daily to the compound.

Many e-liquids contain diacetyl; an analysis found the substance in 39 out of 51 tested e-cigarette samples. In about half the samples, the estimated daily consumption was above safety limits.

Patients with EVALI exhibit a significant number of these symptoms, and all were attributed to vaping. In one survey, users reported cough (40.0%); dry or irritated mouth or throat (31.0%); dizziness or lightheadedness (27.1%); headache or migraine (21.9%); or shortness of breath (18.1%).

Similar health problems have been reported by patients with chemically induced sick building syndrome. This implies that e-cigarette users share common health problems with those suffering from chemical exposure.

What about long-term vaping?

Ongoing chemical exposure, especially at high doses, can cause olfactory dysfunction, including a reduced sense of smell. This encourages chronic e-cigarette users to choose stronger-flavored e-liquids to receive a sufficient buzz. In turn, more potent e-liquids generate more irritation and damage to the nose, lungs and lower airway.

The health effects of e-cigarette exposure go beyond the sensory and respiratory systems. Mint and candy flavors are more than chemical accessories that enhance a harmless experience. They shape our behavior, perhaps for a lifetime.

Our government is making progress towards keeping teens away from e-cigarettes. Now, long-term research is needed to fully comprehend the adverse health effects and toxicity of flavorings and other chemical substances in the e-cigarette vapor to prevent the potentially catastrophic effects of vaping.

* * * * *

Header Image: A vape shop in New York City shows a line of flavorings on Jan. 2, 2020.  Mary Altaffer/AP Photo, CC BY-SA

Weihong Lin, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Rakaia Kenney, Research assistant, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The U.S. Army recently selected UMBC Training Centers as the sole recipient of an award to develop a novel cybersecurity curriculum for soldiers. The 70-week-long program will train soldiers for a new military role, as cyberspace capabilities developer technicians. 

Several companies and institutions were invited to apply for the award, but UMBC was the only recipient selected, explains Kent Malwitz, president of UMBC Training Centers. This relatively rare move by the Army affirms the quality of UMBC Training Centers’ proposal and existing programs. 

This new project builds on UMBC Training Centers’ long history of providing world-class technical training to the military and intelligence community. It follows recent work in delivering similar programs to support cybersecurity operations at Fort Meade in Maryland, and Fort Gordon in Georgia. 

Expanding programs to meet demand for cyber experts

The new course of study will expand upon existing programs that UMBC Training Centers has  presented to soldiers in shorter time frames. In 2013, the Training Centers piloted an intensive 11-week program, says Homer Minnick, director of the Department of Defense programs at UMBC Training Centers. In order to excel in that course, Minnick explains, students need to have a deep understanding of programming languages. There was interest in longer courses that could give students more hands-on lab experience with programming and fulfill the Army’s skill requirements.

Two years later, UMBC Training Centers launched the Tool Developer Qualification Course (TDQC), a 32-week version of the prior pilot program. In addition to a full 22 weeks of classroom instruction, the expanded program provides 10 weeks of project work, including a robust capstone component. 

The 32-week long program has produced 90 graduates, and there are currently 20 students enrolled in the seventh cohort from the Army and Marine Corps. Minnick notes that students have the opportunity to develop a cybersecurity foundation and also to apply the skills they learn in the classroom to situations they may encounter in the world. The new 70-week program will yield graduates with even more highly advanced skills and extensive experience. 

Serving active-duty military and beyond

An increased demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals within the military means that training opportunities for service members in these areas are more important than ever, says Minnick. He explains, “The Army has recognized the need for this program, and the importance of making it an institutional program.” 

UMBC Training Centers is a not-for-profit owned by UMBC that offers professional and technical training in areas such as data science, cybersecurity, cloud computing, software development, project management and leadership and innovation. Training Centers has long served the United States military, including active duty and transitioning soldiers, veterans, and their family members seeking to begin or advance their careers in technology. 

In addition to scaling the 32-week program up to 70 weeks, Minnick looks forward to modifying existing intensive programs to meet the changing needs of the Army and to support the learning of enlisted soldiers and others.

Training Centers’ Certified Cyber Analyst Operator program was initially developed to help the military build its cybersecurity capabilities, and is now being offered to soldiers who are preparing to exit the military and begin the next phase of their careers, as well as to civilians changing careers. 

Coming soon this year, UMBC Training Centers will launch a certificate in software development to provide people careers or changing careers with “an accelerated way to enter the field of software development,” says Malwitz. In addition to working with enlisted soldiers, he looks forward to helping retired military personnel and others access “the opportunity to begin a career in this high demand, financially lucrative field.”

Banner image: The UMBC Training Centers. Photo courtesy of UMBC Training Centers.

When Caitlin Beckjord stepped onto campus for the first time as a UMBC student in fall 2019, she felt energized and prepared to succeed, thanks to a unique, new summer program on urban forestry.

Earlier in the summer, six Howard Community College (HCC) students, including Beckjord, participated in the Baltimore Forest Patches Summer Research Collaboration. This unique pilot project between UMBC and HCC is designed to expand research opportunities for community college students, provide important data on urban forests, and ease students’ transition to UMBC. It also serves to build and strengthen the kinds of relationships that were forged between UMBC and HCC faculty during the STEM Transfer Student Success Initiative (t-STEM).

During the provost-funded pilot, HCC students enrolled in research courses instructed by HCC faculty Will Gretes and Cheryl Campo. Then they participated in fieldwork under the mentorship of UMBC faculty and graduate students. Once they learned about research design and forest ecology in the classroom, they headed outdoors to work in patches of green space across Baltimore City. During their fieldwork, they participated in a practicum course through UMBC’s Shriver Center to help them reflect on their experience.

The students are encouraged to return to this forest project for multiple summers, developing more expertise and taking more responsibility each time. Those who transfer to UMBC come in already engaged in a research project and connected to members of the campus community. 

“It’s a great example of the relationships we’re building with the community colleges,” says Sarah Jewett, director of transfer innovations in research and practice. “What I love about this program is that it utilizes curricular infrastructure that’s in place at the community colleges, and networks and research expertise here at UMBC. We’re really drawing on the assets at both institutions to make this work.” In particular, Howard Community College’s Dean of Science, Engineering, and Technology Patti Turner was an instrumental partner who made the pilot possible and continues to collaborate with UMBC on a variety of projects. 

At home in the forest

The experience opened students’ eyes to the life of an urban forest. After learning about what species they might find, the students took inventory of the plants present and their abundance in forest patches across Baltimore City. Carol Frimpong, who is studying life science and computer science at HCC, became particularly interested in fungi and bacteria along the way.

“This introduced me to environmental microbiology,” she says. “I didn’t realize there was a subfield of microbiology that focuses on the environment. So I hope to go into more of that.” 

For Laura Wortman, the experience has changed her relationship with nature. “I feel like I know more about the forest,” she shares, “and I feel more at home there now that I know different trees and groundcovers.”

Matthew Baker, professor of geography and environmental systems (GES) at UMBC, mentored the students in the program. “Hearing these stories is the best part of my job,” he says. “Most professors get involved in the work that they do because they want to see others be inspired the way they were. It’s really rewarding to listen to students who have found something they enjoyed in this experience.”

Connections across campuses

The program created opportunities for faculty, graduate student mentors, and participating students to build meaningful relationships with one another. For Beatriz Shobe, who is in the GES Ph.D. program at UMBC, the program confirmed her interest in teaching and fieldwork. “I found that teaching in an interactive, hands-on way is a good skill to have that can be beneficial for both traditional classroom teaching as well as community outreach and engagement,” Shobe says.

Shobe’s teaching resonated with Wortman. “Just hearing Beatriz talk about her research was really interesting, because I’d never talked to someone in a casual context before about their research,” Wortman says. “She told us what had gone wrong with her research, and how that changed the entire trajectory of the project.” She explains, “I learned all this stuff that you wouldn’t hear from someone just presenting on their paper, and that was really enlightening.”

As a result of participating in the program, Wortman is now interested in transferring to UMBC to pursue a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree in GES.

Caitlin Beckjord ‘22, geography and environmental systems, already knew she was passionate about research when she joined the program, and it helped her make connections at UMBC. “Meeting with Dr. Baker and Dr. Jewett allowed me to ask questions about UMBC’s classes and opportunities, and get more in-depth campus tours where I was introduced to several other UMBC professors, students, and advisors,” she shares. 

This fall, Beckjord transferred to UMBC, and the experience continues to offer benefits. “Learning how to identify trees and ground cover and work with soils has put me at an advantage in my forest ecology class at UMBC,” she says. Beckjord also has a built-in community on campus; she connects with students and faculty she met during the program on a daily basis.

Commitment to conservation

In addition impacting the students and educators involved, this program also contributes to scientists’ understanding of urban forests, through the data the students collect. 

Baker has been working for the last seven years “to study urban forest patches and understand their composition, their structure, how they’re managed, and how these factors will affect their future,” he says. “We work to provide information to the public through Baltimore Green Space so that they can inform forest stewards and local community members,” such as private landowners whose property includes forest patches. “At the same time, we’ve been asking questions about urban forest patches in general, and developing techniques for studying them and mapping them in concert with the USDA Forest Service.”

This work is important because urban green space and cohabitation of humans with wildlife are critical to modern environmental conservation. Sometimes the research manifests as big findings about the makeup of urban woods and how to preserve or restore them. At other times, the results are more personal. 

As they were gathering important scientific data and learning about research methods, the students in this program also enjoyed the chance to connect with nature in their daily lives. Growing evidence suggests this kind of experience is critical for our physical and mental health, and for growing the next generation’s commitment to conservation.

“I often go on walks, and there is this one beautiful tree I always sit under, but I never knew what it was before this summer,” Frimpong shares. “But then I looked at it recently and I realized it was a red maple.” She’s also learned the names of local birds and, with her new interest in fungi, mushrooms. Growing thoughtful, she shares, “It’s good to know them by name.”

Banner image: A scene from Patapsco Valley State Park in Baltimore County. Photo by Matthew Beziat, used under CC BY-NC 2.0.

All other photos are courtesy of Caitlin Beckjord.

UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) is pleased to announce the launch of a fourteen-month initiative to promote diversity, inclusion, and social justice in the public humanities, supported by a $125,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project, Strengthening UMBC’s Public Humanities Infrastructure: The Baltimore Field School, will create a framework for faculty to collaborate with community organizations in building ethical and sustainable research and teaching projects focused on public humanities. 

A new view of public humanities

The Baltimore Field School is coordinated by UMBC’s Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community, and Culture and led by Nicole King, associate professor of American Studies and director of the Orser Center, and CAHSS Dean Scott Casper. It aims to advance UMBC’s humanistic scholarship and teaching, rooted in deep and meaningful engagement with communities and neighborhoods. 

“We want to think differently about how public humanities work can be done by reflecting on what ethical community-university partnerships look like,” says King. 

“This collaborative process takes a great deal of time, listening, and building trust,” King explains. “The people living and working in city neighborhoods and building grassroots organizations should be centered in the process of defining challenges and ways to address them in Baltimore and cities like it.”

The field school’s three pillars

This new initiative is rooted in three pillars. First, it seeks to enhance the understanding and visibility of communities in South and Southwest Baltimore, including their cultures and the challenges they face, from a variety of humanities-centered methods. Second, it will cultivate a national model of effective ethical humanities research, teaching, and learning about Baltimore and cities like it. Finally, it will expand UMBC’s infrastructure of engagement for public humanities research and teaching based in Baltimore. 

This project builds on previous innovative humanities work at UMBC, supported by The Mellon Foundation. In 2017, The Mellon Foundation provided a five-year, $750,000 grant for UMBC’s Dresher Center for the Humanities and CAHSS to create the Inclusion Imperative. The project was designed to grow a regional community of scholars committed to diversity in the humanities. It has also sought to expand community-engaged humanities research and teaching around issues of race, equity, inclusion, and justice.

“Faculty, staff, and students in the humanities have for many years been at the forefront of UMBC’s engagement with communities in and around Baltimore,” says Casper. “Thanks to this support from The Mellon Foundation, we look forward to deepening our work and strengthening its foundations across disciplines and beyond individual projects.”

To meet these goals, the Orser Center’s advisory committee and graduate students will convene, listen to, and plan with community organizations on an ongoing basis. They will also work with community partners to develop ethical principles for public humanities research and teaching. This information will be used to develop and execute a planning pilot of the Field School in summer 2020 and a Community Fellows Program in public humanities in fall 2020. 

“The Baltimore Field School is a powerful standard for our community-focused work across campus and part of UMBC’s vision to Extend Beyond,” shared President Freeman Hrabowski, in voicing his support for the project. “It is rooted in UMBC’s proud history of diversity, inclusion, and social justice, and it helps us put those commitments into action in our local communities.”

Banner image: Discover Baltimore group tour of historic Lexington Market, UMBC summer session 2017, by Marylana Demond ’11 for UMBC. All other photos are courtesy of Bill Shewbridge, media and communications studies, from the Baltimore Traces project, unless otherwise noted.