Courtesy of FaithWorld

Twitter’s “everybody has one!” plague has hit the Vatican.

This past week, Pope Benedict XVI dove into the world of digital ministry, setting up a Twitter handle in eight different languages. Though he gained 200,000 followers just hours after the announcement and over half a million by the end of the day, the Pope will not officially begin tweeting until December 12. His handle is @Pontifex.

So what will the Pope be tweeting about? According to a FaithWorld blogger,

The tweets will come primarily from the contents of his weekly general audience, Sunday blessings and homilies on major Church holidays. They will also include reaction to major world events, such as natural disasters.

Although the Pope only follows the multiple language versions of himself, he has received an uproar of interest in the social media community. The hashtag #askpontifex has generated questions from all over the world — some good, and of course, some not so good.

The Pope is off to a really great start, but has a while to go before he challenges another international religious leader — the Dalai Lama, who has over 5.6 million followers.

What questions would you have for @Pontifex ?

Suppose every telephone call you made was recorded by someone.

Imagine also that all of your calls are being kept by your carrier for a couple of years… then, when law enforcement said they wanted a copy of that recording… they could easily get it. 

Not cool, right?

An array of police chiefs from big cities around the country think that is very cool. 

Wireless carriers have already responded to more than a million law enforcement requests for subscriber information that includes location data.

In addition, law enforcement are asking for permission to collect your text messages.

To address some of this concern, Congress is now mulling changes to the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to limit access to cloud data. The amendments passed by the Senate Judiciary Committee would require a warrant to access electronic communications that are more than 180 days old (newer emails already require a warrant). 

Wait! Deleting your messages will not do the trick!  Messages stored on your cell  can be resurrected even after you clean your phone.

Will there be a time in the near future where all  devices will be monitored by a government agency?

Research by Robert Provine, professor of psychology, has recently been cited in a variety of news outlets.

On December 1, the Wall Street Journal published a story on “The Unsolved Mystery of Why You Just Yawned” in which they delve into research performed for Provine’s latest book, Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping and Beyond.

“So what is known about yawning? Dr. Provine—who is a champion of what he calls ‘sidewalk neuroscience,’ experiments anybody can do at home without special equipment—has spent years teasing out the details of yawning, as recounted in his recent book ‘Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping and Beyond.’ By asking people to pinch their noses or grit their teeth while yawning he found that ‘the motor program…will not run to completion’ unless you can inhale through your mouth and gape your jaw wide,” the author wrote.

Provine’s research was also part of a November 23 Forbes story on “The Black Friday Experiment: Mind Control and Mass Hysteria Gone Viral.” ”Humans are social animals and like all social animals have fantastic mechanisms for synching up behavior. If I start yawning, there’s a pretty good chance you’ll start yawning. If I start puking, you’ll most likely yak along. Most of the time, as Dr. Robert Provine explains in [his book] Laughter, this is a good thing,” the author writes, but then goes on to explain that these same mechanisms can cause us to “go from mimetic transmission to mass hysteria in lickety-split.”

Provine was also quoted in a November 26 CTV story entitled “Why Hiccup? Basis of Biological Oddity Is Unclear.” “Hiccupping has no obvious function. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t have one. But it hasn’t been discovered,” says Provine in the story.

Let the Quests Begin!

The Industrial Internet. The Internet of Things. What
does it all mean? In a nutshell, it’s internet-connected devices collecting data and communicating to make industries smarter. This data is then used to anticipate and avoid problems, instead of fixing things after
the fact.

 As we continue to look for different ways to analyze
data we need, we’re looking for people who know how
to analyze and interpret data. Like finding an algorithm
that can reduce air travel delays, or a solution to streamline a patient’s experience in the hospital.

 To get started, choose your quest. Or, to learn more, watch the intro videos for the Flight Quest and the Hospital Quest. Go to www.gequest.com

 GE Flight Quest Challenge

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFZ4hWzsunc&feature=player_embedded

 GE Hospital Quest Challenge

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=-HBZkBLcEdY

New Industrial Internet Service Technologies From GE Could Eliminate $150 Billion in Waste,http://www.gereports.com/new_industrial_internet_service_technologies_from_ge_could_eliminate_150_billion_in_waste/

The David Mikow Art Gallery — which opened this fall in the Catonsville home of UMBC political science professor Carolyn Forestiere — will feature an array of “Images in Print,” all created by UMBC alumni and students. The show is co-curated by visual art professors Calvin Custen and Irene Chan, and opens this Friday, December 7, 5-7 p.m.

The work of the following alumni will be shown (all visual arts majors, unless noted): Sandy Chiang ’11, Elizabeth Guidara ’11, polisci, Erin Johnson ’12, Boram Lee ’12, Ka Lai Lou ’11, Brittney Nichols ’12, Sohee Oh ’11, Pat Sedlander ’12, Jenna Ullrich ’10, Laura (Meg) Viar ’11, psychology, Kayla Vlahos ’11, Jessica Voss ’12. A selection of work by the following students will also be displayed: Samantha Warren, Karina Alcazar, Heather Brown, Alexandra Buyalos, Judy Caracofe, Wyatt Jaster, Sharon Kusiak and Jingfei Lu.

For directions and more information about the show, please visit the gallery website.

The gallery featured alumnae photographers at its first show. Read more about the opening here.

JCET was well represented at the 2012 Fall AGU Meeting held in San Francisco, December 3 -7. Fifteen (15) JCET faculty members, one (1) JCET Staff member, one (1) GEST faculty member, and four (4) JCET graduate students attended AGU to present posters and participate in the oral sessions.  For additional information, link to JCET at AGU.

JCET faculty attending the 2012 Fall AGU Meeting included Allen Chu, Forrest Hall, Shin-Chan Han, Jay Herman, Fred Huemmrich, Ben Johnson, Jae Lee, Jasper Lewis, Simone Lolli, Bill Olson, Lorraine Remer, Chung-Lin Shie, Chris Shuman, Leonid Yurganov, Hai Zhang and Glenn Wolfe.  Erricos Pavlis, GEST, and Valerie Casasanto, JCET Program Coordinator, also attended.  Many of the posters are available for review using AGU's e-poster search at http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/.  Abstracts of the oral presentations are available utilizing AGU's program search at http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/scientific-program/.

The following four JCET graduate students presented their work at AGU:

Gergely Dolgos
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a53i-0250/
Thishan Dharshana Karandana Gamalathge
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a33i-0271/
Daniel Orozco
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a53i-0258/
John Sullivan
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/files/2012/11/Newchurch_AGU_2012_TOLNet_v1-1.pdfandhttp://fallmeeting.agu.org/2012/eposters/eposter/a53q-0439/