Robert Provine, professor of psychology, has won an Association of American Publishers’ 2012 PROSE Award for “Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond.”  The book received the award in the category of Biomedicine and Neuroscience.

The PROSE Awards – the American Publishers Awards for Professional and Scholarly Excellence –honors the best in professional and scholarly publishing, as judged by peer publishers, librarians and academics. This year’s competition attracted 518 entries of books, reference works, journals and electronic products in more than 40 categories.

“The winners and honorable mentions announced this year are high caliber works and genuinely represent the best in scholarly publishing,” said John A. Jenkins, Chairman, PROSE Awards and President and Publisher Emeritus, CQ Press.

The Association of American Publishers is the national trade association representing 300 premier US publishers of high-quality scholarly, professional, education and entertainment content produced using the most current technology, reaching the world.

The Baltimore Office for Promotion and Arts announced the semi-finalists for the 2013 Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize this week. Congratulations to Lynn Cazabon, visual arts, and Imaging Media and Digital Arts alumni Mina Cheon, Marian Glebes and Agnes Moon for their selection.

The Sondheim prize awards a $25,000 fellowship to a visual artist or visual artist collaborators living and working in the Baltimore region. The prize is in conjunction with the annual Artscape juried exhibition and is produced with our partners, The Walters Art Museum (WAM) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Approximately six finalists will be selected for the final review for the prize.  Their work will be exhibited in the Special Exhibition Gallery at The Walters Art Museum.

An exhibition of the semi-finalists’ work will be shown in the Decker and Meyerhoff galleries of the Maryland Institute College of Art during the Artscape weekend (July 19-21, 2013).

Following the Ravens’ Super Bowl win, the team will increase ticket prices at M&T Bank Stadium, reports the Baltimore Sun. Season ticket holders will see an average price increase of 10%, plus a $5 parking rate increase.

UMBC sports economist Dennis Coates notes, “In the grand scheme of ticket price changes, I’m not sure that a 10 percent is particularly a big one. But it doesn’t make it any easier for the average fan to pay an extra 10 percent. We’re still in a relatively sluggish economy and there are a lot of people whose income hasn’t changed a whole lot.” However, Coates suggests, compared with 20-30% ticket price increases that some franchises have tried, particularly after building new stadiums, the 10% raise is more modest, and fans might be more willing to accept it following the Super Bowl victory.

Responding to recent cheating scandals — from Lance Armstrong using banned substances to reports of inflated performance data in higher ed — Thomas F. Schaller’s latest Baltimore Sun column argues, “there’s ample evidence that cheating is rampant in almost every sphere of American life.” The political science professor delves into the economic impacts of cheating, particularly in the realm of tax evasion.

Schaller writes, “In a July 2012 report, the Tax Justice Network estimated that, conservatively, between $21 trillion and $32 trillion of global income is hidden in offshore tax havens…that means probably a minimum of $5 trillion in U.S income is currently shielded from taxation. Assume an average marginal tax rate of just 20 percent, and that’s $1 trillion lost to the treasury.” He further suggests that asymmetry in the U.S. tax system “makes cheating especially tempting to the rich.” Read Schaller’s full commentary on the Baltimore Sun website.

“As the Baltimore Ravens’ march to victory in Super Bowl XLVII defied the common wisdom of the sports world, so, too, has an examination of the genetics of their winged namesakes in the western United States led one local biologist to evidence he says defies the common wisdom of his field,” writes reporter Arthur Hirsch in the February 17th edition of the Baltimore Sun.

Hirsch’s story follows the work of Kevin Omland, Professor of Biological Sciences here at UMBC. Omland who has been working for the past 15 years on reverse speciation of ravens.

Vist the Baltimore Sun to learn more about Omland’s work.