Ms. Camilla Hyman recently joined the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Staff as the Business Services Specialist for the department. Ms. Hyman has replaced Ms. Donna Meyers, who retired at the end of Spring 2011.

This summer, Camilla Hyman joined the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department as Business Services Specialist–a role that had been left vacant by Ms. Donna Meyers, who retired at the end of Spring 2011. Ms. Hyman, who has lived in Maryland her entire life, grew up just down the road from UMBC in Catonsville, MD and now lives in Baltimore City. Apart from being an expert at all things payroll, Ms. Hyman has served as a Girl Scout leader for the past seventeen years.

Before coming to UMBC, Ms. Hyman spent nine years working for the Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology (GEST) and Joint Center for Earth Sciences (JCET) departments at UMBC. Prior to that, she worked for the Division of Behavioral and Developmental Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine departments at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). With less than a month of CSEE office life under her belt, Ms. Hyman already says that she finds the position enjoyable. The best part about her job, she says, is learning about different cultures from the Graduate Students that she interacts with every day. 

Apparently something.

After discussing binge drinking and pot use statistics, the Fox News naysayer Bill O’Reilly brought up the government’s affordable birth control plan (one that removes co-pays and deductibles).

Take a look at this clip and let us know if you think any of the comments were out of line.

In another segment, a Fox News commentator suggested that, “If you can afford a $5 Frappucino at Starbucks, you can pay your $5 co-pay.” We’re not sure if this really reaches the demographic (not to mention not all co-pays are as inexpensive as $5).

The affordable birth control provisions are set to go into effect on August 1, 2012. It is still unclear how all of the costs will be handled, something left up to insurance companies. Regardless, many see this as a huge win for family planning, especially when considering that half of pregnancies are unplanned. This new provision could lead to decreased unwanted pregnancy rates, and subsequently, less terminations of pregnancy.

And as for the title above, you can let us know.

Whether or not you enjoy reality tv, it’s out there. People like yourselves are talking about it, watching it, making it, starring in it, and undoubtedly being affected by it.

There is one reality TV show whose high drama may have became too real for some.

The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills has aired its premiere episode of the second season. This despite the untimely death of a participant.

Last season rumors flew, sisters stopped speaking, husbands cheated, relationships fell apart. One of those unstable relationships was between Taylor Armstrong and her husband Russell.

Russell Armstrong committed suicide less than a month ago after telling a friend:

It’s funny how a reality show can ruin your entire life”.

Before the season premiere, the Real Housewives of New York (part of the Bravo series) shared their reaction to Russell’s death.

Kelly Bensimon disagreed with the widespread feeling that the show being taped could have been a contributing factor to Russell’s death:

I would never blame it on the show.”

Does reality TV need to adopt a code of ethics, like this article suggests, or should reality TV be left real in spite of the possible tragedies?

Ephesians 4:1-16 (NIV)

1As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to one hope when you were called ; 5one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

7But to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it. 8This is why it says:

“When he ascended on high,

he took many captives

and gave gifts to his people.”

9(What does “he ascended” mean except that he also descended to the lower, earthly regions? 10He who descended is the very one who ascended higher than all the heavens, in order to fill the whole universe.) 11So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

14Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Reflection

Time lapse videos enable us to see processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, such as snow storms or a flower blooming, and allow us to take a step back and see the big picture of how it all came to be. In this passage, Paul pictures Christ as the full-grown man and his church as the body of this full-grown man. However, the church is still in the process of growing up and being built up to the maturity and stature of Christ. Without time lapse, we might be stuck on the circumstances of the church at the current moment, forgetting what God has in store for the calling of his church. If we were to use time lapse to see the church, we would see the big picture in this passage. The aim of the church, what it is, how it works, and what we, the church, have received to do our amazing part. We are to be completely humble and gentle, be patient, bearing with one another in love. We are to keep unity of the Spirit and to attain unity because it is an ongoing process. We are to be equipped, fixing up the parts that are broken or lacking, and being fitted for God’s service. We are to be gifts that God gives to his people. With all this in store, can we see the big picture now? It is the church body that gives full expression of Christ and God’s plan for eternity.

Responding to the Transmission

We might be thinking about the next minute, the next day, the next week, the next year, but today let’s fast forward and look at God’s blueprint for eternity. Let’s pray that we would grow up and mature into how Christ has called us. Let’s pray for the humility, gentleness, patience, and love towards one another. Let’s pray that we would not be blown by the things of the present moment (struggles and difficulties) but be caught in the expressions of God’s love for each moment and plans for eternity.

EE Graduate Seminar

Analysis of Brain Network Connectivity
in fMRI Data using Spatial Dependence

Sai Ma
EE PhD Candidate, CSEE Dept, UMBC

11:30-12:45 Friday 9 September 2011, ITE 231

Due to low invasiveness and high spatial resolution, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has become popular in neuroimaging field to determine where activity occurs in brain as a result of performing cognitive tasks or merely being at rest.  One of the most active areas in current fMRI research involves exploring functional connectivity, i.e., statistical interactions, among distributed neural units. Understanding connectivity elucidates how functional systems process information in brain. More interestingly, disorganized connectivity has shown to be related to various kinds of mental disorder.

Data-driven methods, especially independent component analysis (ICA), have been successfully applied to fMRI data analysis and provided an opportunity to study brain functional connectivity on a network, hence multivariate scale. However, independence is a strong assumption which is not necessarily nor typically satisfied in real applications. For this reason, dependent component analysis (DCA) has emerged to generalize ICA by grouping components into independent subsets while within subset dependence is allowed.

Based on ICA and motivated by DCA, we aim to develop effective and efficient analysis schemes to extract, characterize, and quantify network connectivity pattern in fMRI data. We define functional network connectivity as spatial dependence among ICA-derived components, instead of second-order temporal correlation between time courses, to capture high-order statistics. According to this definition, we present our work on the study of network connectivity by several data-driven methods, including ICA, DCA, hierarchical clustering, hypothesis testing, and graph theoretical analysis.

seminar Host: Prof. Joel M. Morris