It’s Tuesday which means that the Treehouse Show is back! In episode 85 of The Treehouse Show, Nick and Jason (@jseifer) talk about CSS and Sass styleguides, HTML frameworks, Flexbox and more.
The post Flexbox, CSS and Sass Style Guides, HTML Frameworks | The Treehouse Show Episode 85 appeared first on Treehouse Blog.
]]>With over 10,000 cyber security-related job postings last year in Maryland, a 97% increase in the past 5 years, the number of cyber security jobs in Maryland is growing faster than the national average, the Baltimore Business Journal reported on March 5. Baltimore alone had 4,514 cyber jobs posted in 2013. However, with the demand for jobs outgrowing supply rapidly, the issue at hand is not simply finding employees to fill those positions, but finding employees who are experienced enough and capable of filing those positions. This could indicate why it took cyber security jobs 36% longer to fill than all jobs nationally last year. Approximately 80% of job postings require candidates to have a bachelor’s degree at the very least and more than 60% require candidates to have at least four years of experience, signifying that education and experience plays a key factor in the selection process.
Read the full article here: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/blog/cyberbizblog/2014/03/cyber-security-jobs-baltimore-maryland.html?ana=e_du_pub&s=article_du&ed=2014-03-05
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Position Description (Fall, 2014)
(applications accepted on a rolling basis from April 18 through August 8)
The UMBC Relationship Violence Prevention Advocates program is a comprehensive program funded by a grant from Verizon. The program changes each year and is designed to educate the UMBC Community on specific relationship violence prevention information. The goals of the program are to systematically raise awareness and support for a campus to be without relationship violence and create an environment that encourages healthy relationships and the victims of relationship violence to come forward and receive support. Specific components of the program include:
· Relationship violence prevention education and training for volunteer students, faculty and staff advocates who represent various groups and populations on campus. These advocates will help to educate the campus community about relationship violence prevention through their networks, and serve as referral sources for those who have experienced or are impacted by relationship abuse/violence or have questions about unhealthy relationships.
· Training for UMBC athletic coaches
· Relationship Skills Program via the UMBC Counseling Center
· Awareness, Education and Resources through www.umbc.edu/rvap
· Bystander Intervention training through the Green Dot program (VP Student Affairs Office)
General Description:
UMBC Relationship Violence Prevention Advocates are UMBC community members who: a) are able to provide relationship/dating/intimate partner violence prevention information to their community networks, b) observe the UMBC community and take notice of and report community issues related to relationship violence to advocate trainers, c) encourage bystander intervention techniques within UMBC community network, d) make appropriate referrals, e) provide helpful resource information to their UMBC community network and individuals, f) support violence prevention efforts on campus, and g) volunteer to staff events (tabling, etc).
1. Must attend training on August 25, 2014 from 9:30am-4pm
2. Must attend the following Friday meetings at noon- August 29; September 5, 12, 19; October 3, 17, 31; November 14; December 5
3. Must share educational information with your network of friends, colleagues, student organizations, team members, and at campus events
4. Must utilize skills to make referrals, provide resources, intervene safely when necessary using bystander intervention skills.
Training topics for advocates will include: characteristics of unhealthy relationships, domestic violence and abuse, healthy relationship skills, bystander intervention, on and off campus resources, helping and referral skills, men’s role in preventing violence, presentation skills, changing culture, identity group needs, etc.
On April 3, the Baltimore Business Journal reported on UMBC Master in Professional Studies in Health Information Technology, launching this fall.
The program will cover a range of technical and health care topics, including health IT law and ethics, data analysis, patient safety and personalized medicine. With an increase of 53% of job postings for health informatics jobs, health IT is one of the fastest growing industries in the health care sector. The Health IT program will feed into the Baltimore-Washington area’s growing health IT business by training professionals to meet the demand for industry experts.
Read the full article from the Baltimore Business Journal here: http://www.bizjournals.com/baltimore/news/2014/04/03/umbc-launches-masters-program-in-health-it.html?page=all
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by Sarah L. Hansen
Photos courtesy Sarah Luttrell (top features Alex Kingston, bottom features Preethi Somasundaram presenting to Kayla Lemons)
The 30th Annual Graduate Association of Biological Sciences Symposium was held in UMBC’s University Center ballroom on Friday, March 14. The event featured posters by twenty-six graduate students in the department, four student talks, and Nate Morehouse, the remarkably engaging keynote speaker from University of Pittsburgh. Organized by GABS officers Lucas Horn (president), Sarah Luttrell (secretary), Sharlene Brown (vice president), and Rob Nunn (treasurer), and staffed by volunteers, the event drew 90 registered attendees, including a mix of students, faculty, and staff.
The symposium affords students the opportunity to share their research with Biological Sciences colleagues. Graduate student Karan Odom, PhD candidate in the Omland lab, commented that GABS is a great way for molecular and ecological folks to learn about each other’s work. No matter your field, the GABS symposium is about “spreading the joy of conducting research,” said Chong Zhang, a PhD candidate in the Lu lab.
Poster Prowess
Every poster was attended by a student obviously invested in their work and knowledgeable about their project. Alexandra Kingston, a PhD candidate in the Cronin lab, studies squid chromatophores, the pigment sacs that create the octopus relative’s camouflage. But get this – squid can’t see color! Kingston discovered visual pigments located all over their skin and in other organs, though, and she wonders whether squid can “see” with them. So far it’s been difficult to test that hypothesis. Kingston’s collaborators at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, MA work on cuttlefish, which are closely related to squid. They tried to incapacitate cuttlefish eyes by placing opaque contacts over them, but it turns out the highly intelligent creatures will rip out the contacts, often injuring themselves severely.
Ryan McDonald, a PhD student in the Schreier lab at IMET, studies a wood-eating catfish, one of only two wood-eating fish species in the world.Because plant material provides minimal nitrogen, which all animals need to build protein, these fish have symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria in their guts.McDonald is trying to characterize this bacterial community, or “microbiome.” One of his methods involved dissecting the fish in a glovebox-size oxygen-free chamber, because some of the bacterial enzymes are deactivated in the presence of oxygen.
Applied Molecular Biology (AMB) students also presented posters. AMB is an accelerated masters program emphasizing intensive lab work. Some students, like Brandy Kaschenbach, had never conducted research before this year. “It’s amazing how much I’ve learned already,” she said. Her work in the Bieberich lab is helping create a rat model of prostate cancer that represents the disease in humans more accurately than previous models.
Other posters described genes in plants that control defense and circadian rhythms (Chong Zhang, Lu lab), optimization of a molecular complex used in dental care products (Candice Craig and Isleen Wilde, AMB), the accuracy of protein production in human cells (Ling Cao, Farabaugh lab), the characterization of the yeast gene SET4 (Pushya Pradeep, AMB), and much more.
Enticing Talks
Four students presented twenty-minute talks about their research. Amanda Monahan, PhD candidate in the Starz-Gaiano lab, discussed stem cell maintenance in fruit flies. The genes involved are very similar “from flies to man,” she said, so her work is relevant to humans. Having too many stem cells can lead to tumor formation and cancer, and too few can result in slow wound healing or premature aging. The STAT gene is required to maintain appropriate stem cell populations, and Monahan’s work helps elucidate how STAT is regulated. It turns out the “apontic” gene plays an important role in controlling STAT activity, and therefore, stem cell numbers. This could be the key to the next generation of cancer treatments, as cancer stem cells often remain after chemotherapy.
Michael Martin (Mendelson lab) focused on the divergence of sexual signals among species of darters (freshwater fish). Sexual signals are “traits used in the mating process to either woo females or ward off potential rivals,” he said.Martin examined eight pairs of allopatric darter species (meaning they do not occur in the same geographic area). For each species pair, he put five males and five females of each species (20 fish total) in an artificial stream environment and observed and recorded their aggression and courting behavior. Each observation lasted two days, and he did three trials for each species pair. With eight pairs that’s 48 days of fish observations! Martin found that male coloration correlated more strongly with male aggression than with female choice. When a male spots a similar male, “they’ll show off their fins, they’ll fight each other, they’ll chase each other,” Martin said. The more similar the two males’ coloration patterns, the more aggressive they are toward each other. That means that males’ colors may be more of a “contest signal” to other males rather than an “attraction signal” to females. This counters the traditional theory that divergence in male traits occurs primarily in response to female behaviors.
Bioinformatician Tom Peterson (Kann Lab) gave a talk on protein domains in cancer cells. Protein domains are “evolutionarily conserved, they’re the structural and functional units of proteins, and they often mediate interactions between proteins,” Peterson said. “Protein domains are kind of like Legos. If they’re arranged in different formations they can form different structures and serve different functions.” Peterson’s goal is to use computer programming to “identify domain mutational patterns that can distinguish between different cancer types or tumor progression states.” He’s already applied his new method to three data sets obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas for colon, breast, and lung cancer. The method allows researchers to zoom in on which mutations cause different types of cancer, regardless of what gene or even chromosome the mutated domains call home in individual patients. His work will increase our understanding of the genetic causes of cancer and pave the way for more effective diagnosis and treatment.
Finally, Safae Hamdoun (Lu lab) discussed her research on innate immunity in plants. She discussed three different mechanisms by which Arabidopsis thaliana defends itself against pathogens. Pathogen-Triggered Immunity (PTI) is the weakest form of defense, where molecular patterns on the surface of pathogens trigger the plant’s immune response. However, pathogens have evolved “effector” molecules to block PTI. This state is called “Effector-Triggered Susceptibility” (ETS). In response to this, plants evolved Effector-Triggered Immunity (ETI), which is the strongest form of defense. Plants and pathogens are in a constant arms race. “Think of it as an invader trying to go inside a castle,” said Hamdoun. “Depending on how the troops inside the castle move, we can determine the end result of the battle.” Plants undergoing PTI, ETS, and ETI have quantitative differences in their gene expression that are dependent on the pathogen dosage applied, she found. When a plant is under attack, one interesting observation is the appearance of enlarged cells that do not undergo mitosis and instead create tumor-like growths on the underside of leaves. Hamdoun is investigating how and when these growths are generated, depending on the plant’s immune responses (PTI, ETS, or ETI). Understanding plant immunity is critical for breeding or creating pathogen-resistant crop plants.
Colorful Keynote
Nate Morehouse, Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences at University of Pittsburgh, delivered the keynote address on biological links between pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection in butterflies, specifically the sexual exploits of cabbage white butterflies. Although the small insects appear white to human eyes, Morehouse used modeling techniques and knowledge of the cabbage white’s six photoreceptors to “put on butterfly goggles” and demonstrate that male cabbage whites are both brighter and more colorful than females. He also showed that brighter, more colorful males get to mate more often than less colorful ones.
Males are “honest salesmen,” said Morehouse, because a male’s colorfulness accurately represents the amount of nitrogen in his body. Why does that matter? Because the male’s ejaculate is packed with nitrogen, which is crucial for both the female’s longevity and her fecundity. Cabbage white caterpillars feed on nitrogen-poor plants, and as adults they don’t obtain any new nitrogen – except females, via a male’s “nuptial gift” of sperm and nutrients. Nitrogen is important for building proteins, of which most body structures are built. So it’s critical for a female to make sure she gets the best “gift” possible. As Morehouse put it, “Not all males give a 2 carat diamond – some give a .5 carat cubic zirconia.”
Leucopterin, the pigment males load into their wings to make them colorful, is the most nitrogen-rich pigment ever identified in the animal kingdom. If a male has enough nitrogen to stock his wings with leucopterin, a female can safely bet he has plenty to give to her. Males can give as much as 13% of their body weight to a female in the form of protein-stocked ejaculate.
The problem for males is that she can mate again, and “the last in is the first out,” said Morehouse. The male’s gift will be wasted (from his point of view) if she mates with another male. His nutrients will be used to nourish another male’s offspring. As you might expect, males have evolved to prevent this.
A female can’t fit another nuptial gift in her body until she digests the first one, so males have evolved to make digesting the gift difficult. “He packages this thing in a hard outer shell. If he could put a rock in her, he would,” Morehouse said. But of course, females have evolved in response.Morehouse described a structure called the signum inside the female’s bursa copulatrix, or “mating purse.” “It’s a hinged, toothed chewing structure that acts like a jaw and chews its way past this hard outer shell.”
The bursa is also from 2-10 times as capable of breaking down proteins (like those in the shell of the male’s gift) as the entire digestive tract of a cabbage white larva. But now evidence is emerging that the males can exert chemical forces on the female to reduce that enzymatic activity. This butterfly battle of the sexes is “a battleground that we’re just beginning to explore,” said Morehouse.
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