Feb 2009 UMBC introduces RT
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Light Point Intros New Security Plug-In

Bwtech@umbc's Light Point Security recently announced that its product, Light Point Web - an online plug-in offering safe web browsing - would integrate OPSWAT's malware protection device Metascan for extra security on the Internet. With Metascan, every file is scanned more than 40 times before downloading, making the odds for malicious downloads much less likely.

 

Mike Spykerman, vice president of product management at OPSWAT, said, "Metascan's fast multi-scanning technology results in significantly higher malware detection rates and provides Light Point Web users with optimal threat detection."

CSEE PhD student Kavita Krishnaswamy and Prof. Tim Oates write about their research using brain-computer interfaces and speech recognition tools to control robotic to assist individuals with reduced muscular strength. The piece, Robotic assistive devices for independent living, appeard in Robohub, "a non-profit online communication platform that brings together experts in robotics research, start-ups, business, and education from across the globe."

They describe their motivation as follows.

"One of the most craved aspects of the human experience is to be independent: the abilitiy to take care of one's self establishes a sense of dignity, inherent freedom, and profound independence. Our goal is to bring robotic assistive devices into the real world where they can support individuals with severe disabilities and alleviate the workload of caregivers, with the ultimate vision of helping people with severe physical disabilities to achieve physical independence without relying on others. As robotic assistive devices become ubiquitous, they will enable people with severe physical disabilities to confidently use technology in their daily lives, not just to survive, but to flourish."

They demonstrated the feasibility of integrating a brain-computer interface with speech recognition for self-directed arm repositioning tasks through a robotic interface for repositioning the simulated arm of an avatar using a Emotiv Epoc headset and Dragon NaturallySpeaking voice recognition software.

Coldstart is a task in the NIST Text Analysis Conference’s Knowledge Base Population suite that combines entity linking and slot filling to populate an empty knowledge base using a predefined ontology for the facts and relations. This paper describes a system developed by the Human Language Technology Center of Excellence at Johns Hopkins University for the 2014 Coldstart task.

Tim Finin, Paul McNamee, Dawn Lawrie, James Mayfield and Craig Harman, Hot Stuff at Cold Start: HLTCOE participation at TAC 2014, 7th Text Analysis Conference, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Nov. 2014.

The JHU HLTCOE participated in the Cold Start task in this year’s Text Analysis Conference Knowledge Base Population evaluation. This is our third year of participation in the task, and we continued our research with the KELVIN system. We submitted experimental variants that explore use of forward-chaining inference, slightly more aggressive entity clustering, refined multiple within-document conference, and prioritization of relations extracted from news sources.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Information Programs recently invited Antonio Moreira, vice provost of Academic Affairs and professor of chemical and biochemical engineering, to visit Argentina to discuss best practices of STEM education. Moreira visited the Argentine cities of Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata in late May and was hosted by the U.S. Embassy in Argentina.

During his time in Argentina, Moreira met with government officials, universities, think tanks, students and many other audiences to talk about the importance of investing in STEM education. “Argentina shares with the United States a similar challenge with recruiting and retaining an adequate number of students into STEM fields,” he said. “During my discussions with many individuals and organizations, I found an enormous interest in the US STEM education experience and very specifically in the successes in STEM education at UMBC. There are many who strongly wish to make a difference in Argentina and I hope they will find the energy and the pathways for achieving their goals.”

Katherine Ordoñez, assistant cultural affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, said, “Dr. Moreira’s visit enabled the Embassy to engage with a variety of Argentine audiences in STEM education best practices… [his] expertise was well-received by Argentines as they seek to increase the number of students graduating with degrees in STEM subjects.”

La Capital Mar del Plata, a daily Argentine newspaper, reported on Moreira’s visit. Click here to read “Highlights the importance of studying careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics,” translated from the original Spanish.