Be sure to check in with USDemocrazy this week and next when our intrepid USDemocrazy correspondent provides behind the scenes take on the circus that is our nominating conventions. It promises to be one giant cartoon!

Can you imagine flexing your right to protest government policies, only to be swept away to a detention center, where government officials brutally abuse you physically and psychologically?

This has become an ugly reality for many citizens of Syria.

The Syrian Government’s mistreatment of their own citizens was brought into the spotlight on this summer when Human Rights Groups accused Syria of using torture methods on their own citizens.

Hundreds of former detainees have offered horrifying accounts of the abuse inflicted upon them while being held in detention centers.

One man recalls being held in a cell no bigger than 50 square meters alongside 120 other captives, with only one toilet for all to share.  While these people waited for questioning, they could hear the screams of their fellow civilians as they went through a torture process that included:

• Taking off the prisoner’s shirt and accusing the prisoner with false claims

• Tying the prisoner’s hands and feet with metal bonding and blindfolding their eyes

• Laying the prisoner on the ground and kicking them until they are severely wounded

• Threatening the prisoner with electrical shock

• Threatening the prisoner’s family

• Beating the prisoner until they admit to false accusations

The former detainees that have made it out of detention centers have sought refuge in nearby Turkey, along with 35,000 other Syrian civilians who fled the country in fear for their lives.

Many of the refugees who received torture believe that they will never be able to return to their homeland.  They have been referred to as the “living dead” because they believe that upon returning to Syria, they would be immediately arrested and put to death by members of their own government.

It seems as though politics has become America’s latest soap. By that we don’t mean to make a clever metaphor about the ____(insert party’s name here) cleaning up the mess America has become. No, politics is more Days Of Our Lives than Dawn.

Nothing really ever happens and everybody keeps recycling the same old tired script week after week. As New York Times Columnist David Brooks noted in his op ed “Dullest Campaign Ever”:

Has there ever been a campaign with so few major plans on the table? President Obama’s proposals are small and medium-size retreads, while Mitt Romney has run the closest thing to a policy-free race as any candidate in my lifetime. Republicans spend their days fleshing out proposals, which Romney decides not to champion.

Brooks has some other great observations about the campaign that are worth reading. But this one illustrates the state of our national drama has become. While the two candidates have different ideas on say tax policy any discussion gets drowned out by drama

Here’s a little challenge; try to come up with a list of all the major stories of the campaign thus far. Now try to name three policy proposals from each candidate. GO.

MS Thesis Defense

Predicting the Activities of Mobile Phone Users
with Hidden Markov Models

Amey Sane

9:00am Tuesday, 28 August 2012, ITE 325b, UMBC

Mobile phones are ubiquitous and increasingly capable, with sophisticated sensors, network access, significant storage and processing power and access to a wide range of application data. They can improve the range and quality of their services by acquiring and using models of their context, including the activities in which their users are engaged. This thesis explores the use of supervised machine learning techniques for predicting a smartphone user's activities from available sensor data. We have specifically concentrated on applying classifiers and ensembles using hidden markov models for activity recognition. Our classifiers predict a user's current activity from among a set of conceptual activity classes such as sleeping, traveling, playing, working, and chatting/watching TV. We have experimented with and evaluated the effectiveness of different approaches on data collected on Android smartphones by university faculty and students.

Committee: Drs. Tim Finin (chair), Anupam Joshi and Yelena Yesha

UMBC's digital story work is highlighted in a new publication from EDUCAUSE. Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies contains case studies highlighting creative solutions to higher education challenges in difficult times. The chapter Stories in Our Classrooms: A Faculty Community of Practice as an Agent of Change by Beverly Bickel, William Shewbridge, and Jack Suess, describes the development of story work at UMBC and its importance in promoting digital literacies on campus.

Editied by Diana Oblinger, the book and individual chapters are avaiable for free download.

UMBC's digital story work is highlighted in a new publication from EDUCAUSE. Game Changers: Education and Information Technologies contains case studies highlighting creative solutions to higher education challenges in difficult times. The chapter Stories in Our Classrooms: A Faculty Community of Practice as an Agent of Change by Beverly Bickel, William Shewbridge, and Jack Suess, describes the development of story work at UMBC and its importance in promoting digital literacies on campus.

Editied by Diana Oblinger, the book and individual chapters are avaiable for free download.