An easy-to-use EEG cap could expand the number of ways to interact with your mobile devices.

One day, we may be able to check e-mail or call a friend without ever touching a screen or even speaking to a disembodied helper. Samsung is researching how to bring mind control to its mobile devices with the hope of developing ways for people with mobility impairments to connect to the world. The ultimate goal of the project, say researchers in the company’s Emerging Technology Lab, is to broaden the ways in which all people can interact with devices.

Name: Nia Hampton

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Station North Arts and Entertainment District

Location of the Organization: Baltimore, Maryland

Title of Your Position: Fundraising Initiative Intern

Major(s)/Minor(s): Media and Communications

Expected Graduation Date: Spring 2014

1. Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research or service-learning position/assignment, including your day-to-day tasks and responsibilities.

As an intern at Station North it’s my job to research potential grants. My daily tasks include working on my grant proposal as well as administrative duties, such as updating the list serve. I also have to make people sign up for our mailing list at various events and festivals. 

2. What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company and what have you found most challenging?

I’ve enjoyed the events and festivals we’ve planned and co-created. Final Fridays are really fun and Artscape was cool as usual. I also really enjoy researching grants; I’m always surprised by how much money is readily available to help people bring ideas to life. The most challenging aspect of my internship has been dealing with the different personalities and perspectives when it comes to decision-making. 

3. What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another summer activity?

I’ve seen certain aspects of the art world that people don’t necessarily know exist. I’ve learned that ultimately everything really is a business; that although you may have talent, success is really a product of drive, opportunity and intelligence.

4. How do you see your summer work as meaningful? Has it given you a chance to work on issues or with communities that matter to you?

My summer has been extremely meaningful. I’ve discovered my love of the elderly community on a personal level. And now I’m in the process of writing a grant proposal that would make it possible for the older residents of Station North to take art classes next summer.

The exhibition currently in the Library Gallery, A New Context: Photographs from the Baltimore Sun Revisited, was featured in a City Paper article today. The favorable review of show, curated from UMBC’s Baltimore Sun Archives, was written by Joe MacLeod.

In the piece, MacLeod explores the exhibition’s ability to highlight a transformation in the responsibility of photography in the news, and comments on how biases of the time, revealed in the edited photographs, influenced reporting. He says of the blatantly prejudiced cropping and its effect on the picture as a whole, “[c]ontext is all, and history changes context and what we decide an image means.”

Read “Fit to Print” at City Paper‘s website.

A New Context continues through Friday, May 31.

UMBC’s Center for Aging Studies has received a 17-month grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) to expand the research project “Autonomy in Assisted Living: A Cultural Analysis.” This grant extends a four-year ethnographic study of autonomy to include dementia care units affiliated with three of the sites in the parent grant. The Principal Investigators of this research are Professor Robert L. Rubinstein and Associate Research Scientist Ann Christine Frankowski. The research team includes ethnographer Amanda D. Peeples and GRA Colleen R. Bennett.

With 3 dead and 176 injured the bombing of the Boston City Marathon this Monday is the worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. And the wait for the investigation to turn up results is proving corrosive in its own right. 

No particular organization or cause has taken credit for it yet.

Curious, given that a long line of groups would normally lay claim to the slaughter. As expected Hamas and Hezbollah rejoiced in the streets and giving strangers candy immediately afterwards, but neither group claimed credit. So, there is a lot we don’t know.

What we do know is people are scared, American Muslims in particular. 

The public backlash against Muslims after 9/11 is still fresh in the minds of many, and they are terrified of facing a similar situation with this event. And so we have seen a torrent of Islamic condolences, condemnations, and concern over the tragedy.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Islamic Brotherhood, and even the Republic of Iran were all very quick to issue statements condemning the bombers, sympathizing with the victims, and trying to make sure that if the bombers were Muslim, that they were marked clearly as extremists.

In addition to official statements many Muslims around the world from Egypt to Kabul (pictured above, see full album here), were sending their prayers and best wishes. This has truly developed into an event global in proportion.

Khaled A. Beydoun, UCLA law professor, wrote  an article titled, “Boston explosions: ‘Please don’t be Arabs or Muslims” that describes this phenomenon as “psychosis.” And who can blame them?

Already former terrorist experts, Fox pundits, and Senator Susan Collins are assuming that the attack HAD to have been conducted by Islamic extremists, despite any concrete proof.

Fortunately the FBI seems to be handling the situation well, dispelling all rumors that the Syrian national they took in for questioning was a suspect. Still the wave of rumors is coming on strong.

And the country is uneasy.

Even Rush Limbaugh’s fretted that if the perpetrator turned out to be a right wing extremist, conservatives would get torn to shreds by the media. So Muslims aren’t alone in this.

It seems we are all quick to point fingers, cast blame  and act out.

But revenge can be counter-productive (Remember Afghanistan?). But for now all we can do is wait patiently for whoever did this to get caught… and hope that they’re from Mars.

 Terror doesn’t discriminate, and neither should we.