hackUMBC is a 24 hour hackathon for UMBC students held in the UMBC Skylight room from 7:00pm Friday December 6 to 7:00pm Saturday December 7. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and caffeine will be provided.

The event is open to all UMBC students of any skill level, from innovators to designers to hardcore coders. Join other hackers for 24 hours of teamwork and exploration as you compete to grow projects from scratch, all while expanding your connections to other students, industry leaders, and professors.

All kinds of computing systems are game: Web, desktop, server, mobile, wearable,enbedded, entertainment, game and hardware projects are all welcome. Projects will be judged based on creativity, technical difficulty, polish, and usefulness. More than $2500 in prizes will be awarded.

For more information and to register, see the hackUMBC site.

A 3-D gesture-recognition chip could make it a lot easier to use smart watches and head-mounted computers.

If just thinking about using a tiny touch screen on a smart watch has your fingers cramping up, researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Davis may soon offer some relief: they’re developing a tiny chip that uses ultrasound waves to detect a slew of gestures in three dimensions. The chip could be implanted in wearable gadgets.

Kabir Goyal, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Date/Time: Friday 8 Nov 2013, 2:30 pm Location: ITE 406, UMBC

Abstract: The presentation shall start by giving a brief introduction about the researcher, what Home Healthcare is, Home Health Agencies, and the professionals who are involved in Home Health care. After that, the presenter will speak about the study plan and its components. The search keywords used in the systematic review will be discussed. Various papers which have been read and which may form an integral part of the final report will be discussed. The presentation will conclude by speaking about the criteria followed for short listing the papers, along with tagging, categorization, and synthesis.

This article will teach you the basics behind the embed markup element in HTML5.

When your business is searching for a web hosting company, you need to be aware of the many options available to you. A Premium web hosting provider will typically have many benefits to offer making your businesses entire online experience easy and affordable. This article will help you to choose which benefits and options to consider.

This November, the David Mikow Gallery—which is run by UMBC professor of political science Carolyn Forestiere—will host its first theatre performance. The play, “comfort/drones” is an original by UMBC professor Alan Kreizenbeck, and it will be performed by UMBC alumni: Rachel Hirshorn ’04, acting; Kevin James ’09, acting; and Daniel Friedman ’13, acting and psychology.

From the David Mikow Gallery’s release:

The play is based on the writings of Wallace Shawn and asks “What are the consequences of moral behavior?” After the performance, we hope to engage our guests in a lively discussion based on themes derived from the play.

Read more and reserve tickets.

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Radishes: They’re not just for salad anymore. In fact, they may be useful for controlling runoff into the Chesapeake.

Stuart Schwartz, senior scientist with UMBC’s Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, spoke with Tim Wheeler, an environmental reporter for The Baltimore Sun, for Wheeler’s article, “Radishes get tryout as runoff fighters.”

Wheeler writes: “City and most suburban soil is badly in need of aeration, Schwartz said. He and other researchers have found that even grass-covered ground, just below the surface, is often as dense and impermeable as concrete. Anything heavier than a light rain runs off, washing fertilizer, organic matter and other pollutants into storm drains and nearby streams.”

As it turns out, planting radishes might just help control runoff in urban areas.

“Daikon radishes, a long, white variety of the red ones that often grace salads, can grow taproots as big as a person’s arm. When farmers plant them after a late-summer harvest, their roots bore down through the soil, loosening it. Then, after winter frosts kill the plants, the roots decay, leaving behind deep openings that allow rain to soak in,” writes Wheeler. He continues, further down in the piece, “The deep-rooted radish offers a relatively low-cost, low-tech way to break up urban soil, according to Schwartz, who spent only about $50 for the seed mix. The vacant lot on Perlman Place was provided through a partnership with the city and with Civic Works, a nonprofit that runs Real Food Farm nearby in Clifton Park. The lot is one the city is leasing to Civic Works for expanding its urban agriculture initiative.”

To learn more about radishes, agriculture, runoff and the environment you can also read, Clare Leschin-Hoar’s piece, in TakePart, “Can Radishes Be The Secret Weapon In Protecting Our Water from Big Farming’s Runoff?”