A few weeks ago, the HBO program Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (which is an excellent comedy/news/investigative journalism show that gets USDemocrazy’s full endorsement) tackled the subject of the US embargo on Cuba, condemning it as irrational, harmful, and ineffective.

Though it was a very funny and on-point segment, Oliver got one crucial detail wrong.

He criticized President Obama for renewing the embargo after calling it a failed policy in 2004. The problem? Rescinding the embargo without Congressional approval hasn’t been an option for any American president since 1996.

In that year, a standoff between Cuban-American activists and the Cuban government ended in two unarmed American planes being shot down. The incident prompted President Clinton to sign a law making the embargo permanent until the Communist government falls. A recent piece from The Atlantic tells the full story.

In his autobiography, President Clinton called the law “good election-year politics in Florida,” where Cuban-Americans (who largely support the embargo as a means to undermine Castro’s regime) are a powerful voting bloc.

In other words, don’t expect this policy of questionable wisdom to be reconsidered anytime soon.

It’s Oktoberfest! You know what that means…

Lots of Beer! Beer! Beer!… 

Often called in laymen terms “the German St. Patrick’s day”, Oktoberfest has long beer halls that are set at the fairgrounds in Munich, Germany running from late September and ending the first weekend in October.

But wait… shouldn’t all this talk of drinking raise the usual cautionary tales of dangerous underage drinking and drinking on campuses?

American culture tells a polar opposite story, glorifying the day-to-day binge drinking of college students, especially that of Fraternity and Sorority “formals”.

Classic movies like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds come to mind and in more recent cinema; American Pie, Van Wilder, and The Neighbors all have a positive depiction of the barely sober youth lifestyle.

In the words of rapper J-Kwon, who strangely puts this discrepancy between American culture and policy toward underage drinking rather eloquently in his #2 billboard song Tipsy,

Teen drinking is very bad. Yo I got a fake ID though!

So what’s a millennial to do if you want to responsibly avoid the sauce until you come of age (while grappling with an embarrassing teetotaler social stigma)?

We all know the reality of college drinking; students are going to get their hands on some form of alcoholic beverage whether we like it or not and yes some will abuse it.

But maybe Oktoberfest could help temper the temptation to binge.

 The festival of Beer might provide an ample opportunity to teach a more “sober” way to

talk about the beverage.

Oktoberfest is not just about getting drunk but it’s about the beautiful taste of beer itself! The autumn season introduces a wide assortment of ales such as Märzen, Oktoberfest, Festbier, Pumpkin Ales, Imperial Pumpkin Ales, Pumpkin Spice Ale, Oktoberweissebier, and many more.

We’d like to see the American culture celebrate less binge drinking instead try a taste of the German culture of beer/ale.

Speaker: Dr. Subha Madhavan,
Director, Biomedical Informatics,
Innovation Center for Biomedical Informatics,
Georgetown University, Washington D.C
Date/Time: October 17, 2014 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
Location: ITE 459

Abstract: The advent of the microarray technology in 2000 has paved the way for advanced translational research methods that use molecular markers such as microRNA, proteins, metabolites and copy number data. Our flagship web platform, the Georgetown Database of Cancer (G-DOC), was deployed in April 2011 to enable the practice of an integrative translational and systems-based approach to research and medicine in cancer. G-DOC is a feature-rich shareable research infrastructure that allows physician scientists and translational researchers to mine and analyze a variety of “omics” data in the context of consistently defined clinical outcomes data for cancer patients.

The popularity of next generation sequencing (NGS) grew exponentially in 2007 when a faster, more accurate and affordable sequencing throughput became a reality. Since then, the size and complexity of genomic data has increased many fold, making its analysis, management and integration increasingly challenging. Scientists today are using not only a combination of clinical, NGS and omics data for analysis, but also medical and pathology images for validation of analysis results. To drive hypothesis generation and validation of molecular markers for biologists and researchers, it would be convenient to have a “one--stop” system that can handle all these data types, including NGS and medical images, in one location. For this purpose, we expanded the G-DOC system to support NGS and medical images. Moreover, the success of G-DOC in the cancer realm has helped us realize the importance of such systems in the non-cancer world for complex diseases such as Alzheimer's, Duchene Muscular dystrophy, etc.

With the goal of improving overall health outcomes through advanced genomics research, we present G-DOC Plus, our web platform that enables the integrative analysis of multiple data types to understand mechanisms of cancer and non-cancer diseases for precision medicine. G-DOC Plus allows researchers to explore data one sample at a time, as a sub-cohort of samples; or as a population as a whole, providing the user with a comprehensive view of the data.

Biographical Information: Dr. Madhavan is the Director of Biomedical Informatics and Center Director. She leads several informatics efforts including the Georgetown Database of Cancer a tool for both researchers and clinicians to realize the goals of personalized medicine at GU, and the NIH caBIG In Silico Research Center for Excellence. She also directs the Informatics cores for NIH funded translational efforts. She is the PI on the Breast and Colon Cancer Family Registries data center that coordinates public health and epidemiology data across 12 sites in the US, Australia, and Canada. More recently, she has partnered with the FDA on the Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science program to develop evidence bases for pharmacogenomics and vaccine adverse event detection. She is also involved in a whole genome data analysis project with the Inova Translational Medicine Institute. Prior to joining Georgetown, Dr. Madhavan served as the Associate Director of Product and Program Management in the Life sciences informatics area at NCI's Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information technology. Her work at NCI involved bridging the gap between bench and bedside by enabling researchers and physician scientists to use cutting edge biomedical informatics solutions to identify better therapies for cancer. At NCI she led a group of scientists, physicians and software engineers in building REMBRANDT (REpository for Molecular BRAin Neoplasia DaTa) -- a database that hosts and interconnects clinical data points with various genomics datasets from large brain tumor clinical trials. This effort won the Service to America Award. While at NCI she also established the data coordination center for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), which managed and analyzed high dimensional genomic data of approximately 100 TB over a period of 3 years. At Georgetown, she leads various informatics efforts including the caBIG In Silico Research Center for Excellence, and the Georgetown Database of Cancer. She also directs the Informatics cores for NIH funded translational efforts such as the Center for Cancer Systems Biology at Georgetown; and the Clinical Translational Science Award at Georgetown along with Howard University, the Washington Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, and MedStar Health Research Institute. She is the PI on the Breast and Colon Cancer Family Registries data center that coordinates public health and epidemiology data across 12 sites in the US, Australia, and Canada. More recently, she has partnered with the FDA on the Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science program to develop evidence bases for pharmacogenomics and vaccine adverse event detection. She is also involved in a whole genome data analysis project with the Inova Translational Medicine Institute. Dr. Madhavan has a master of science in Information Technology from University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biological Sciences from the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences (Indo-US Collaborative program). -- See: http://icbi.georgetown.edu/Madhavan

Actor, writer, and social activist Ian Ruskin has released a new two-hour documentary on the life of Barbara Dane. Titled, “A Wild Woman Sings the Blues: the Life and Music of Barbara Dane,” the documentary includes interviews with several musicians and others who know Dane well.

Theo Gonzalves, Associate Professor and Chair of American Studies, was interviewed for the project and appears in the documentary. Gonzalves is a Senior Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution, working with the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. His project, “Singing Truth to Power: The Story of Paredon Records,” traces the cultural history of a record label whose output of recorded music and speeches documented revolutionary movements throughout the globe. Dane founded Paredon Records in 1970 and produced 50 albums that Gonzalves is studying as part of his project.

Other interviews in the documentary include Pete Seeger, Arlo Guthrie, Irwin Silber, Holly Near, James Early, and many more. For more information on the documentary, click here. To read a UMBC Magazine story about Gonzalves’s project, click here.

From: Philip Rous, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

It is my pleasure to invite you to participate in UMBC’s winter 2014 Commencement Ceremonies. We will have two ceremonies this December in the Retriever Activities Center (RAC).

• Graduate Commencement will be held at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, December 17 in the RAC
• Undergraduate Commencement will be held at 10 a.m. on Thursday, December 18 in the RAC

These commencement ceremonies are important events in the life of our scholarly community where we come together to celebrate the accomplishments of our students and recognize the outstanding commitment of our faculty and staff to their success. These events mean a great deal to our graduating students, their parents and guests. I hope you will make a special effort to attend these events, to share this special time with our students and join in our community’s celebration of academic achievement.

RSVP PROCESS: There is a single web-based response form for faculty and staff to respond —whether you rent, purchase, or already own your regalia. The address is http://my.umbc.edu/go/commencementform

ORDERING REGALIA: As in the past, UMBC will subsidize the rental of academic regalia for faculty and administrative and associate staff. Please order your regalia by October 26, 2014. After that date, you will be asked to pay a late charge of $25. Please note that it will not be possible to order regalia after December 6. Even if there is only a slight chance that you will attend Commencement, you should order regalia. It is easier for the Bookstore to return unused gowns and hoods then it is to place a late order and not get delivery on time. Regalia will be ready for pick-up in the Bookstore beginning December 8 through December 12. (Regalia will not be available for pick-up at the RAC.) Please use the online Commencement RSVP form at http://my.umbc.edu/go/commencementform to place your order. If you have any questions, please call Gail Dupree at the Bookstore, x 53807.

RSVP FOR MARCHING IN THE PROCESSION: Even if you do not order regalia, we need to know whether you intend to march in the Commencement procession, so that appropriate seating arrangements can be made. Please give your RSVP on the website response form for Commencement by December 8, 2014. http://my.umbc.edu/go/commencementform

Sunil Dasgupta, director of UMBC’s political science program at the Universities of Shady Grove, writes about Asian military modernization programs in the International Relations and Security Network’s Security Watch.

In the article, Dasgupta explains what military programs in Asia indicate about the future of warfare in the region. He writes that Asian nations expect that conflicts will stay regional, but will occur at sea or in unpopulated areas to lessen the human cost of war. Dasgupta’s analysis also shows confidence in nuclear deterrence as well as an expansion into cyberspace and outer space. 

Click here to read “Military Modernization and the Future of Warfare in Asia” in Security Watch.