Compiled by the Retriever Weekly Features Staff

Virgo- You’ll find that herbal tea to be less relaxing after you spill it all over your lap.

Libra- You’ll make a new friend this week, assuming the bee that won’t leave you alone is trying to be your friend.

Scorpio- With time running out, you’ll finally admit that it was a bad idea to make your theoretical physics project contingent on you figuring out time travel.

Sagittarius- You’ll be metaphorically blown away by how rapidly the wind literally blows away all of your notes.

Capricorn- The sound your sneaker makes as you slip and tumble backwards will inform you that, yes, the floor is indeed squeaky clean.

Aquarius- With the sun shining brightly and nary a cloud in the sky, you’ll find your atmospheric science project on cloud formation very difficult to complete.

Pisces- You’ll feel much better once you reframe that huge, unforgivable mistake as “learning your limits.”

Aries- You’ll feel vaguely disappointed upon discovering the your horoscope is utterly useless this week.

Taurus- After several weeks of failed gardening, you’ll decide that, you know what? Weeds actually look kind of nice.

Gemini- A brief nap outside will leave you feeling refreshed and without a wallet or backpack.

Cancer- You’ll score big when you find a box of free will just lying around for the taking.

Leo- You’ll feel disconnected from everyone around you, at least until the wi-fi comes back up.

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Campus MovieFest offered students the opportunity to create short films for prizes

Campus MovieFest, the world’s largest student film festival, has returned to UMBC. Students rented free equipment to make a 5 minute film in just 7 days.

Campus MovieFest returned to UMBC this week to offer students a unique opportunity. Described as the world’s largest student film festival for the last 15 years, this international event offers students everything they need to make a five minute film in just seven days.

After signing up for the festival, students receive rental gear including a Panasonic HD camera and an Apple laptop loaded with Adobe software. Anyone can put their creativity to the test as the festival is open to students across all disciplines.

For students who do not have the technical knowledge of filmmaking, CMF offers free tech support and instruction during the seven-day filming period.

“We give students the opportunity to share their voice on screen,” said Nishant Gogna, CMF’s director of marketing, as he waved at students passing by his table on The Commons Main Street.

Within two hours, the free items CMF brought for students were nearly gone. Two women searched through colorful sunglasses and slap bracelets. Gogna informed them the free t-shirts were nearly gone with only a few sizes remaining.

A steady stream of students kept CMF’s five employees busy explaining the rules, handing out paperwork and packing gear into bags. UMBC is only in its third year of affiliation with the festival, but there were consistently six to ten students crowding the long tables set up for CMF.

Being back at UMBC, Gonga recognized students who participated in previous years, including Hannah Kelly, a sophomore majoring in acting. Last year, Kelly performed in two CMF films: “Future Children” and “Nerds Rule Jocks Drool.” Both films were campus finalists and were nominated for awards. The later was presented as a part of URCAD and both videos can be seen on YouTube.

“The experience was amazing. It’s so different from acting in theater,” said Kelly as she waited to receive her camera equipment. This year, she plans to work behind the scenes, collaborating with a group of friends on a video.

Although Kelly is participating for fun, not competition, the prizes offered are alluring. There are over $150 thousand in prizes, including grants, cash and a subscription to Adobe creative cloud. Gaining exposure is another incentive. Top CMF films will be shown on Virgin America in-flight and at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival’s short film corner.

A panel of UMBC students, staff and faculty will judge the films. On May 2, the selected movies will be screened in ITE 104 at 7:30pm. Although the event falls during one of the busiest times of year for students, Kelly felt it was something fun to look forward to.

“Just do it, if you’re even considering it,” she said. “It’s a blast to participate in.”

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In April 2014, Asian Studies Program Director Constantine Vaporis was selected as a Smithsonian expert for tours of Japan. Vaporis is leaving next week to deliver five formal lectures and will also be providing the informal educational component for the tour, Eternal Japan: From Tokyo to Kyoto. The formal lectures are as follows:

1. From Edo to Tokyo
2. The Countryside and Agriculture in Japan: Past and Present
3. Sake: From Rice to Ritual
4. Samurai and the Castle Towns of Tokugawa Japan
5. Buddhism & Japan’s Ancient Capitals

To read a profile of Vaporis on the Smithsonian Journeys website, click here.

In response to a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal over the weekend, Richard Bissell wrote about the international relief effort in The Conversation. Bissell, a professor of emergency health services, along with his colleague Thomas Kirsch at Johns Hopkins Medicine, analyzed what can be done to improve and effectively maximize resources of international health-oriented disaster responses.

“The most important aspect of this process is called the ‘needs assessment,’ which uses an initial damage assessment to predict what kinds of rescue, health, food and shelter needs exist at that time, as well as what will likely be needed going forward in the near- and midterm. As the needs are established, then the appropriate response can be directed to meet those needs,” Bissell and his colleague wrote.

Bissell also wrote about the need for immediate search and rescue operations and urgent trauma care with a focus on working closely with local medical practitioners and to not use technologies that are beyond local capacities for continued use after the disaster response.

“The lesson here is that international response teams need to know the resilience status of local health care facilities before embarking on a response,” Bissell wrote.

To read the full article in The Conversation titled “What works and what doesn’t in disaster response,” click here.

History Professor Kate Brown will soon publish a new book at the end of May on her experiences traveling and conducting research in the Chernobyl Zone of Alienation, the basement of a hotel in Seattle, Ukraine, Russia, and Illinois. The book, titled Dispatches from Dystopia (University of Chicago Press) examines the histories of places that have been silenced, contaminated, or broken and the lives of people who remain in those places.

The work recently received a positive review from Inside Higher Ed columnist Scott McLemee. “So for the first several pages of Dispatches From Dystopia I braced myself, only to find that Brown is the rare case of someone who can incorporate a number of registers of narrative and reflection within the same piece of writing, shifting among them with grace and quiet confidence. Her essays might be called position papers: topographical surveys of historical sites, with the mapmaker’s own itinerary sketched in,” he wrote.

“Brown’s first-person reflections are embedded in narratives and place descriptions that are more intricate and varied than a reviewer can even begin to suggest, and certain issues and motifs link the essays in ways that would probably reward a second reading. Each piece, like the volume as a whole, is an example of nonfiction that uses the first person, rather than just indulges it,” McLemee added.

The review contains several excerpts from the book. To read the full article, click here. For more information about the book, due out May 30, click here.

Updated 6/11:

Brown’s book was also reviewed by the Los Angeles Review of Books on May 31st. To read the complete article, click here.

Sunil Dasgupta, director of UMBC’s political science program at the Universities of Shady Grove, recently published an article in International Relations and Security Network (ISN) Digital Library News about the impact of foreign aid on curtailing extremist violence in Pakistan.

In his article, Dasgupta outlined how Pakistan has been at the center of several international security concerns for years, is a source of Islamist extremism and violence, and possesses nuclear weapons.

“Those invested in transforming Pakistan—the United States and the Western world in general, overseas and liberal Pakistanis—have concluded from these facts that the solution in Pakistan lies in strengthening the state so that it can make difficult choices and undertake necessary reforms. In support of that goal, the United States has provided Pakistan with billions of dollars in foreign aid. Far from reversing the problem, Pakistani state policy has exacerbated Islamist extremism in the country. Arguably, external assistance itself has undermined the possibility of change, tainting the Pakistani state as a foreign agent,” Dasgupta wrote.

“As currently constituted, the state in Pakistan simply cannot deliver, but there is no commitment and viable pathway to reconstituting the state. Instead, there is fear that reconstituting the state at this time will strengthen Islamist groups and open the possibility of nuclear weapons falling into terrorist hands. Foreign aid diplomacy, then, becomes something to do in the belief that doing nothing may be worse; and the reason a failed policy does not see the end that it deserves,” he added.

To read the full article titled “The Failure of Foreign Aid to Pakistan,” click here.

Christopher Swan, an associate professor of geography and environmental systems, is leading the Maryland Green Prisons Initiative, which was launched in partnership with the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, Baltimore Office of Sustainability and other local collaborators. As part of the program, Swan works with inmates at the Metropolitan Transition Center in Baltimore to spruce up and test wildflowers and grasses in vacant West Baltimore lots.

Swan was recently interviewed in the Baltimore Sun about the initiative. “One of the goals of the project is to bring nature into the prison,” he said. “Cities all over the place are having a problem with vacant land and what to do with it. The Baltimore Office of Sustainability has goals and we try to help them meet them by having inmates help out as a human resource in order to make that happen.”

Swan also noted the initiative will likely beautify two dozen vacant lots and said about 14,000 vacant lots exist in the city. To view a video about the project, including information on the “Portrait Garden,” by Lynn Cazabon, an associate professor of visual arts, see below. To read more about the project, click here.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8iFFoJPadc&w=560&h=315]