A roundup of the most interesting stories from other sites, collected by the staff at MIT Technology Review.

In Space, Pee Is for Power
Could urine be turned into electricity on space stations?
—Colby Wheeler, manager of information technology

Bob Pfeiff  ’82, economics, was a quiet, slightly home-sick freshman from rural Southern Maryland. Patti Kattowski ’81, health science and policy and sociology, was a bubbly sophomore from New Jersey. They met and fell in love at UMBC.

Both Bob and Patti lived in the same residence hall on a campus that, in the 70’s, was limited to just three dormitories – which were still called Dorms One, Two, and Three.

“We traveled in the same circles. It was a really tight group of people who lived together in the dorm,” Patti recalls.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) their dramatic personality differences, the two undergraduates were drawn to each other. “Bob was so shy, and I was so out there,” Patti says.

Patti and Bob began to date by the spring of his freshman year. As neither one of them had a car on campus, their social activities were limited to activities on or near campus. “Going home wasn’t an option,” Patti says. “You found your fun.”

That they did. They swam laps together; frequented the ‘party room’ of Dorm Three; watched men’s lacrosse games. (Patti played both field hockey and lacrosse for UMBC.) Occasionally, by bus or borrowed car, they ventured into downtown Baltimore or Georgetown.

“If there was anything happening on campus, a performance of any sort, we went,” Patti says.

In 1981, not long after Bob and Patti graduated from UMBC, they got engaged. For their “honeymoon,” they drove to Pensacola, where Bob reported to Navy flight training after having been commissioned by the U.S. Navy. He then spent ten years as a naval officer, managing weapons and control systems at sea.

After Bob retired from the Navy, the couple settled in Fairfax, VA and raised a son, now 19. Bob has worked for a number of technology companies; currently, he is a senior software architect at Microsoft. Patti has worked in both several industries, including restaurant and real estate. Now, she is employed at a private boys’ school in Bethesda as the headmaster’s executive assistant.

Bob and Patti still recall their undergraduate days as a significant part of their lives together.

“It’s part of our history,” Bob says.

Patti, effervescent as ever, comments: “It’s been a fun ride.”

Read the full issue of the Winter 2014 UMBC Magazine.

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month and there are many controversial topics that come from the discussion of sexual assault. This includes sexual assault being gender blind, hypermasculinity and victim blaming.  The article below discusses cultural differences as an explanation for why, what Americans consider to be obviously unacceptable, some may consider to be dismissible. 

Article link:  http://www.stopvaw.org/sexual_assault_and_cultural_norms

Almost 18,680 people asked for more time to sign up for insurance through the state's health exchange because they had trouble with the website during open enrollment, but exchange officials said Tuesday that many have already had their issues addressed.

About 4,000 of those have been enrolled in person or on the phone by an agent hired by the exchange, many others likely have enrolled on their own online, and officials assume that some on the list are duplicates.

But everyone left on the list to be enrolled has been contacted by phone or email, and the majority should be helped by April 18, in time for insurance to begin May 1, officials said during the exchange's board meeting.

"There may be some stragglers, but we're going to help everyone even if it's after April 18," said Dr. Joshua M. Sharfstein, chairman of the exchange board and the state health secretary.

Only those with a change in family or work status, however, will be able to ask to enroll after April 18.

In all, almost 313,700 have enrolled for coverage through the exchange in Maryland under the Affordable Care Act, about 80 percent in Medicaid. Tens of thousands more have enrolled directly with insurers.

Technical problems have stymied many people who tried to buy policies online after the Oct. 1 launch. And even after many issues were fixed, thousands who had tried to enroll early remained stuck in the system.

Officials announced at the end of open enrollment March 31 that they would scrap the website and adopt technology used in Connecticut.

Isabel FitzGerald, state information technology secretary, stepped in to oversee the end of open enrollment and the changeover. She said the state plans to keep using the old system until the new system is working, and that process is on schedule.

With the next open enrollment in November, there is little time. There are some things that the new system won't do, such as allow consumers to enroll directly in dental plans. They will have to go to insurers' websites for that.

Sharfstein said he expected to enroll consumers who qualify for Medicaid directly through the exchange website, something that can't fully be done on the Connecticut exchange now. Consumers there sign up online, but staff members have to manually retype the applications because the exchange and Medicaid systems aren't yet linked.

And while Maryland is taking a system largely "as is," there is pressure to get it plugged in properly, tested and working with the state's insurers and the federal system that determines eligibility for subsidies.

FitzGerald has split the exchange staff in two. One is focusing on maintenance of the existing website with Optum/QSSI serving as the prime contractor under a contract worth up to $14 million. The other side will focus on the new system, with Deloitte Consulting as the lead contractor under a contract worth between $40 million and $50 million.

"We have a time line that won't move," Fitzgerald told the board.

Also during the meeting Tuesday, the board supported negotiating a contract worth no more than $150,000 with Audacious Inquiry for consulting on the state's online system for small businesses, called SHOP. The firm is based in the UMBC research and technology park and has other state contracts.

Financial officials reported Tuesday that the exchange has spent about $130 million so far, most of it federal dollars. While there is still money in the current budget, the state also recently approved an additional $49 million for the exchange.

meredith.cohn@baltsun.com

Dropbox’s new photo app, Carousel, is smartly designed, but that won’t ensure success.

Like anyone else who’s owned several phones, computers, and cameras over the past 10 years, I’ve got photos all over the place. They’re stored on my iPhone, my personal laptop, my new work laptop, my old work laptop, stashed with services like Flickr and Facebook, and forgotten on dusty memory cards on the edges of my desk. I always intend to organize them someday, but that day never quite comes.

The SVG Working Group has published a Working Draft of SVG Integration. This specification details requirements on how SVG documents must be processed when used in various contexts, such as CSS background images, HTML ‘iframe’ elements, and so on. These requirements include which features are restricted or disabled, such as scripting and animation. A number of referencing modes are defined, which other specifications that allow the embedding or referencing of SVG documents can normatively reference. Learn more about the Graphics Activity.