On December 7, the UMBC Russian Club presented an evening of Russian song, cuisine, and fashion to promote cross-cultural understanding and to look beyond recent news headlines of strained diplomacy between the United States and Russia. The event was held in the University Center Ballroom, with support from the Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication (MLLI) department, the Russian Embassy, and the Russian Center for Science and Culture.

The event received news coverage from Russia Beyond the Headlines and Voice of America (article in Russian). Russian instructor Vira Zhdanovych and Elena Volosina ’15, MLLI, brought the event to UMBC to bring awareness to Russian culture and were featured in the news coverage along with MLLI Associate Professor Steven Young.

“I believe that the real culture of a nation, you can’t learn by watching the news or only paying attention to politics, but by talking to real people, eating food, listening to music,” said Volosina, president of the UMBC Russian Club. “From this conversation comes a deeper cultural understanding. This is how you introduce your culture to outsiders.”

In Voice of America, Zhdanovych and Volosina expressed the hope that “they have been able to initiate a new tradition to strengthen the mutual understanding of peoples through culture and beauty(translation).”

Fashion designer Evgenia Luzhina-Salazar headlined the evening and presented a collection of her work. The event featured musical interludes from the UMBC Russian Chorus, the Lada Children’s Theater, singer Victoria Sukhareva and Russian composer and virtuoso guitarist Sergey Kirichenko.

The ballroom was filled with UMBC students, faculty, and staff, as well as many people from off-campus, including representatives from the Russian Embassy and Russian Center for Science and Culture.

To read “Maryland university highlights connection with Russia in cultural evening,” click here. To read the article in Voice of America, click here (article in Russian).

Note: Randianne Leyshon, the author of the Russia Beyond the Headlines article, graduated from UMBC in 2009 with a B.A. in MLLI, magna cum laude.

In the December 2014 issue of AFCEA’s SIGNAL Magazine, CSEE’s Dr. Rick Forno comments on the likelihood of a destructive cyberattack on critical American infrastructure. He was one of several experts discussing US Cyber Command’s worry about such potential incidents and how it might respond.

He believes a major cyber attack against critical infrastructure is more likely from a rogue terrorist or criminal group than a nation-state. However, he says that although the possibility for a nation-state to launch attacks remains a valid concern, the probability of such an event remains fairly low. Moreover, Forno points out that a destructive attack could hinder an adversary’s own operations. “You can’t collect intelligence on an enemy or communicate if the Internet is down,” he says. “That may play into a nation-state’s calculus about what type of attack they might employ in a given situation.”

Juniors and Seniors, gain Psychology research experience with the Maton Lab!

Ideal candidates will have:

**SPSS Experience

**taken or be currently enrolled in PSYC 331

**GPA of 3.0 or higher

**interest in qualitative research

**excellent attention to detail

**ability to learn new tasks quickly

** At least 4 hours per week to commit (based on number of credits taken, 1-3)

EVENING HOURS are also available.

See an overview of Dr. Ken Maton's lab and research topics at

http://psychology.umbc.edu/people/corefaculty/maton-2/

Interested students should email:

1) letter of interest

2) Unofficial transcript

3) Resume or Curriculum Vitae (not required, but given priority)

to jhosler1@umbc.edu or sgodsa1@umbc.edu

Dr. Soobum Lee’s research group (Energy Harvesting and Design Optimization Lab.­­­­, EDLab) recently launched collaboration with Potomac Photonics for high precision prototyping of vibration energy harvester based on laser micromachining technology. The project laminates a piezoelectric energy-harvesting material onto a vibrating substrate and then stores the converted energy in a small battery. Vibrations in the real world are not fixed but rather occur randomly. In order to respond to this fluctuation, Lee’s group is prototyping substrates with sophisticated designs that require high precision structures to capture the random vibrations.

Please find the full story on the following link: http://www.potomac-laser.com/blog/potomacs-high-precision-laser-micromachining-advances-new-energy-harvesting-technique-umbc/