Mechanical engineering major Brian Wayman ’99 is using the skills he learned at UMBC and at Georgia Tech (MS, Ph.D.) to improve the lives of premature babies.

A mechanical engineer at GE Healthcare, Wayman was profiled recently on the College of Engineering and IT’s website. Prior to joining GE in July 2010, Wayman was the R&D Team Lead, New Product Development at Becton Dickinson.

Brian has several patents and patent applications for his work at Becton Dickinson on disposable syringes designed to prevent re-use of the syringe following injection.  In addition, he has several publications in peer-reviewed bioengineering journals.

Read the full story here.

I know what you’re thinking:  “I’ve got my lifetime supply of Easy Mac, I’m set.  Recipe for mac and cheese?  This is just obnoxious.”  Here’s the thing, I know we’re busy college students, living on a dime.  But why not dress up something you eat everyday?  Make it a little more special.  Easy Mac needs a little more love too.  So how do you dress up your Easy Mac you ask?  Here’s how:

1.     Easy Mac with Potato Chip topping:

Yes, really.  All you need is:

-Make your Easy Mac as you normally would.

-Grab a bag of your favorite flavor chip.

-Break up the chips however you want.

-Top your Easy Mac with the potato chips.

*This is a great way to use up all the little crumbs and broken bits and the bottom of the bag.  Try this with other favorite snacks (flavored pretzels, cheese snacks—whatever you like!)

2. Spicy Easy Mac with Grilled Chicken:

It’s not as complicated or gourmet as it sounds.  All you need is:

*Remember: Substitute with your favorite brand of pre-cooked, ready-to-go chicken and your favorite hot sauces.

-Microwave your chicken in a separate bowl following the directions on the bag.

-Make your Easy Mac as you normally would.

-Stir in the hot sauce and Easy Mac into the bowl you cooked your chicken in.

Enjoy!

*For a Mexican style mac and cheese, try adding some salsa, corn, or black beans into Easy Mac!

Best of all, you can get a lot of these ingredients at Outtakes!  Experiment with your own creations—the possibilities are endless and delicious!

How do you dress up your Easy Mac?  List your favorites here!

The next Libya? Saudia Arabian forces enter Bahrain to aid embattled government.

Nukes feared in Europe. EU begins investigating safety of its own reactors.

2012 ON SALE NOW! Tickets for London’s Olympics go on sale.

Thanks to Wikicommons.

As Japanese workers heroically battle a potential nuclear disaster, related questions are being raised in America.

What is the future of nuclear power plants in America?

After the Three Mile Accident in 1979 almost all nuclear projects in the US ended. Should the same thing happen now?

With the price of oil moving progressively higher,  America had been looking more favorably at the merits of nuclear power. The recent events on the other side of the Pacific Ocean have thrown a wrench into this.

Whether this is a temporary or permanent roadblock to American nuclear power is yet to be sure. For Slate magazine, William Slatetan defends continued nuclear power plants hoping that people

cool this panic before it becomes a political meltdown.

Agreeing, W.W. over at Democracy in America thinks that the disasters in Japan

shouldn’t change our calculations about nuclear energy all that much. While we are likely to gain valuable insights for improving the safety of nuclear energy from Japan’s experience, the main lesson seems to be that we should avoid building nuclear power plants in areas with considerable seismic activity.

Not everyone is so confident that the lessons we learn will help. Rory Kennedy, in a piece for the Daily Beast, worries that

no amount of planning and preparation can fully anticipate the sudden brutality and random course of a natural disaster. Any claims otherwise speak not to deeper understanding but to baser motives. In truth, the lone “clean energy” solution is eliminating nuclear plants altogether.

The political fallout of this will have to be seen.

While we worry about the effects on the US, let’s not forget about the people in Japan. For further info on the issue check out MIT’s Nuclear Science and Engineering Info Hub (especially Dr. Joseph Oehmen’s thoughts on the issue).