Cinematic Arts Students, Matthew Roe and Max Eilbacher, will screen films this week at the 2nd Annual Best of Baltimore Student Film Festival. The Festival, held at the Creative Alliance, will take place Thursday, February 27 beginning at 7:30 p.m., and features the work of students from Goucher, JHU, MICA, Morgan, Towson, Stevenson, University of Baltimore and UMBC. Each college showcases two films.

Tickets for the screening are available now.

President Yoweri Museveni has made it clear: In Uganda, gay is not okay.

The President signed into law on Monday tougher penalties against homosexuals and their supporters. The law:

• Allows life time sentences for “aggravated homosexuality” – this term lumps “serial offenders,” acts in which one person is HIV positive, and acts with a minor together
• Allows prison sentences for people counseling or reaching out in support of the LGBT community
• Criminalized lesbianism for the first time
• Requires citizens to denounce those suspected of being gay
• Prohibits the promotion of homosexuality

Homosexual acts are already outlawed in Uganda, like many other African countries. The bill originally included a death sentence for some acts, but the U.S. and others threatened to withdraw their aid to the country. Apparently, Museveni is unafraid that the new law will have any serious ramifications.

 ”Outsiders cannot dictate to us. This is our country. I advise friends from the west not to make this an issue, because if they make it an issue the more they will lose. If the west does not want to work with us because of homosexuals, then we have enough space to ourselves here.” – President Yoweri Museveni

 But can Uganda really survive as an isolationist country?

 In 2012, USAID sent more than $200 million to Uganda. These funds have a critical role in providing support to the country, including 400,000 antiretroviral treatments. But Uganda has plans to hit it big in oil come 2016, and the African country is an ally in the fight against al-Qaeda, contributing a large force of peacekeeping troops. The decision to cut relations isn’t so easy for a White House still concerned with a growing militant Islamic influence.

According to Ronald Kibabu, a taxi driver, the new law won’t hurt Museveni at home.

“We don’t like (homosexuality) in our culture. That can keep him as president. The election is coming.” 

It may not hurt Museveni in the election, but he is losing legitimacy in the international community. Desmond Tutu called the law an attempt to “legislate against love” and spoke out against it:

“There is no scientific justification for prejudice and discrimination, ever. And nor is there any moral justification. Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa, among others, attest to these facts.”

What should President Obama do? Can we afford to cut ties with Uganda?

Ukraine no longer has a president.

The increasingly hostile clashes between the pro-Russian government and pro-EU protestors has spilled over into the Presidential Palace.

Three days ago, security forces fired live ammunition against protestors, breaking a truce between the factions and dramatically escalating the conflict.

As a result of this escalation, protestors began to resort to more militant tactics, leading to pitched battles in areas near and in Kiev. Amidst this violence, President Viktor Yanukovych fled the capital after his bodyguards refused to protect him and members of his party and the police defected to the opposition. Within a day of Yanukovch’s escape, Parliament official stripped him of power.

The military has promised not to intervene, and Yanukovych’s archrival, former Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, has been released from hospital. It is widely speculated that she will run for President when elections are held in late May.

Much of this came as a surprise to outside observers, as it appeared Yanukovich and the opposition were near a deal in negotiations.

However, the violence did motivate the U.S. and other Western allies to imposed sanctions on individuals within Yanukovich’s government.

Yanukovych and his remaining allies have described this move by the protestors and parliament as an illegal coup d’état. The protestors claim that they were ousting a thuggish leader bent on using violence to maintain political power.

We here at US Democrazy want to know what you think of these development–What’s the latest you’ve heard about the events in the Ukraine?

With a heavy emphasis on encryption and strong controls over all data from your phone, Blackphone launches amid intense interest at Mobile World Congress.

A phone touted as the first to put privacy and security ahead of all other considerations launched at a packed event at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, today.

Professor Gymama Slaughter received a research award from the National Science Foundation to support her work on a self-powered biosensing microsystem that simultaneously generates bioelectricity and monitors glucose.

The four-year award in the amount of $400,000 is from NSF’s prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program, which supports junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.

With the support from NSF, Professor Slaughter and the students in her Bioelectronics Laboratorywill fabricate and characterize a self-powered biosensing microsystem that simultaneously generates bioelectricity and monitors glucose. This will be accomplished using an inertial power scavenging design by converting interstitial glucose into energy through the coupling of enzymes and three-dimensional nanowire arrays to power implantable glucose monitors.

The self-powered biosensing microsystem will monitor sugar levels and embodies two key technical contributions: it eliminates the need for a potentiostat circuit and an external power source or batteries, leading to dramatic improvements in both speed and energy efficiency, and it demonstrates an autonomous, self-powered, low-power biosensing microsystem that can be adapted for other uses. For people suffering from diabetes, continuous, self-powered monitoring of glucose will improve their quality of life and can save lives.

Professor Slaughter notes that the educational component of the project enriches and complements other programs at UMBC designed to increase minority and female participation inSTEM fields. The exposure of these students to a real-world problem and its solution will enable them to better appreciate the contribution of scientific research.