UMBC’s Center for Social Science Scholarship has opened its doors this fall with Christine Mallinson, professor of language, literacy and culture, as its inaugural director. The new center, which will promote faculty, student, and alumni research across multiple fields of study, is the result of many years of cultivating deep levels of scholarship on campus as well as collaboration and planning by the social science faculty.

“The Center for Social Science Scholarship answers a longstanding need at UMBC: to provide a hub, a connector, and a microphone for our extraordinary work on critical issues facing communities and societies today,” explains Scott Casper, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS).

The Center will emphasize areas of research such as civic and political participation, global patterns of labor and migration, educational access, the relationship between humans and the environment, human behavior and health equity across the lifespan, the social context of technology, and policy impact.

Mallinson, who joined UMBC in 2006, researches the context of and mechanisms involved in communication within major social institutions, including education, the workplace, and the legal system. By working with teachers, lawyers, and judges to better understand how perceptions cause bias, Mallinson’s has developed research-based strategies to remove inequalities and barriers.

“Christine Mallinson’s innovative, collaborative scholarship has influenced academic debates, informed policy, and empowered communities. I look forward to her leadership on behalf of UMBC’s social science research community,” says Casper.

Through her interdisciplinary work in language, literacy, and culture, Mallinson said she has immersed herself in multiple campus partnerships and experienced first hand the extent of dynamic social science research happening across UMBC.

Banner image (l-r): Mejdulene B. Shomali, gender, women’s, & sexuality studies; Carole McCann, gender, women’s, and sexuality studies; Christine Mallinson, director of the Center for Social Science Scholarship; Charissa Cheah, psychology. All images by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

On October 7th at around 7:30pm a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a SAOCOM 1A Earth-observation satellite was witnessed by spectators in the Southern California region being launched. The gasses being expelled from the SpaceX rocket as it lifted off from the Vandenberg Air Force base lit up by the setting sun produced a magnificent cloud-like light show (as seen in time-lapse link below).

https://youtu.be/1Tx6jrvCCd4

A week of virtual events helping you explore health careers.

Did you know that 20 health professions are represented at this year’s Health Professions Week?!  Students are encouraged to take this FREE opportunity to explore professions that might not have been on their radar.

The #HPW2018 participating professions include:

• Anesthesiologist Assistant (Association of Anesthesiologist Assistant Program Directors)
• Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology (American Speech-Language-Hearing Association)
• Chiropractic (Association of Chiropractic Colleges)
• Dental Professions (American Dental Education Association)
• Health Administration (Association of University Programs in Health Administration)
• Medicine (Association of American Medical Colleges)
• Naturopathic Medicine (Association of Accredited Naturopathic Medical Colleges)
• Nurse Anesthetists (American Association of Nurse Anesthetists)
• Nursing (American Association of Colleges of Nursing)
• Occupational Therapy (American Occupational Therapy Association)
• Optometry (Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry)
• Orthotics and Prosthetics (National Commission on Orthotic and Prosthetic Education)
• Osteopathic Medicine (American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine)
• Pharmacology (American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics)
• Pharmacy (American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy)
• Physical Therapy (American Physical Therapy Association)
• Physician Assistant (American Academy of Physician Assistants and Physician Assistant Education Association)
• Podiatric Medicine (American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine)
• Public Health (Association of Schools & Programs of Public Health)
• Social Work (Council on Social Work Education)

Students should not miss this exclusive opportunity to learn about the diverse and rewarding options a career in the health professions can offer. Registration is FREE on the HPW event website and prizes are also available.

Yours in Health,

Health Professions Week Team

HPW thanks our 2018 sponsors: Liaison International, Sallie Mae, CVS Health, Kaplan Test Prep, HOSA, and the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions, Inc.

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Ignite with our What You Need to Know series. Written by Courtney Hobson, Coordinator in the Dresher Center for the Humanities.

When you need to look up information on the internet, Google is the number one site we typically go to. If you type in “Indigenous Peoples’ Day,” or “Aretha Franklin,” the first result will likely be an article on Wikipedia.

For those of you not in the know, Wikipedia is a free open-source encyclopedia which means that anyone can edit it. Most of the editors consist of academics or hobbyists who, with time, a computer and a steady internet connection, are generating informative articles that are viewed by millions all over the world.

As one of the top ten visited internet sites in the world, Wikipedia is not merely a tool to record facts; it is helping to shape our collective knowledge. Winston Churchill once remarked that, “history is written by the victors.” Knowing our history is important, but knowing the authors is even moreso. This brings us to editing articles on Wikipedia.

Less than 10% of Wikipedia’s editors identify as cis or trans women and the editors that do identify as women are more likely than men to have their edits reverted.

What does this mean? This means that women are not seen or valued as notable contributors to our society. The statistics are similarly dismal for POC.

Editing Wikipedia is a step towards challenging systemic structures that tell us what information is important enough to know. It is a step that I realized that anyone could take when I attended my first edit-a-thon in 2016 at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The edit-a-thon focused on expanding or creating articles about Black artists. With just 30 minutes of writing and research, I was able to create an short article or stub. I am now one of those hobbyists who edit articles for fun, but I focus on adding content about people from Baltimore, especially Black women.

For the CSJ: Ignite Wikipedia edit-a-thon, we will have a chance to discuss these issues in greater depth, as well as explore resources available through our library. But most importantly, we will inject Wikipedia with a bit of Baltimore and shine a light on figures and events who have shaped our city.

Further reading below:

• Gender bias on Wikipedia
• Wikimedia Foundation releases gender bias report
• Why didn’t Wikipedia have an article on Donna Strickland, a Nobel Prize winner?
• Doing the work: Editing Wikipedia as an act of reconciliation
• How Does Political Wikipedia Stay Apolitical?
• Why I’m making it My Feminist Mission to End Wikipedia’s Notability Policy
• Art and Feminism
• afroCROWD
• Women in Red Wikiproject

Sebastian Deffner plans to spend his career expanding on the work of physics giants to refine our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, from the inner workings of the tiniest cells to the dynamics of the largest cosmic phenomena. Deffner, an assistant professor of physics at UMBC, recently moved forward in this work through a pioneering paper in Physical Review X with CalTech collaborator Anthony Bartolotta, and now has a new grant to push the envelope even further.

As their paper describes, Deffner and Bartolotta have developed more accurate ways to determine how energy is used, released, and transformed in very small systems with very high energy, which had previously been poorly understood. Deffner’s new grant from the Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) will enable him to further develop a new field of physics that focuses on energy and information processing.

The origin of intelligence

The FQXi sought research projects that would address the question of agency in the physical world. It’s common to think about actions as being caused by some external force—flipping a switch, pushing a lever—but those levers and switches “are all part of the same universe,” Deffner explains. “We don’t have any scientific idea that there could be something acting on the universe from the outside, which means that anything that happens within the universe actually arises from interaction of different parts of the universe. Nothing comes for free.”

“Now, if this is true, how does something like intelligence or agency actually arise from the very fundamental laws of physics that describe the universe?” he asks. To address that question, Deffner has turned to a new field of physics known as the thermodynamics of information. Classic thermodynamics considers how energy in the forms of heat and work is transformed in physical systems. But Deffner thinks there’s more to it.

Including information

“We don’t get a complete thermodynamic picture if we neglect information. If we only think about heat and work, we will always end up with statements that seem to violate the axioms of thermodynamics,” Deffner says. “Only if we include information processing, and understand what that actually means, do we get a complete thermodynamic picture.”

The idea is that writing and erasing information in a system involves energy, so evaluations of the overall energy in a system must consider information processing. Understanding energy and information processing is important for describing the universe, but it’s also important for more practical applications.

Scientists and engineers are working to develop the next generation of information storage, and it may take the form of “quantum memory”—systems that rely on quantum mechanics and the stability of extremely cold groups of atoms (near absolute zero) to store information.

“If you want to build a quantum memory out of these ultra-cold atoms,” Deffner explains, “you have to understand how information actually is written and how you can stabilize the information content of these systems.”

A universe in flux

Current theories, such as thermodynamics, work well when a system is in equilibrium. However, “if you look at the universe, it’s not in thermal equilibrium. It’s not even close,” Deffner says. For example, think of a star like our Sun constantly releasing heat and light through extremely high-energy reactions.

So, “What I want to do is to take stochastic thermodynamics that we’ve developed for small quantum systems and small biological systems, and apply these concepts and notions to cosmology to get a better understanding of the extremes of the universe,” Deffner says. He’ll be charting new territory in the extraordinarily complex math that describes, at a fundamental level, how the world works.

Following the dream

As his career progresses, Deffner hopes to help generate “a better, more concise understanding of the universe,” he says, “but for that we need a lot of bits and pieces, and almost nothing like this has been done yet.”

The Physical Review X paper took the first baby steps toward developing the basis to move forward with this work. Now, Deffner is off and running, but he recognizes the journey will be a marathon, not a sprint.

“We know which direction we’re going now, and we know which steps to take,” he says, “but we will not be able to describe the universe in 2020. If we’re lucky, that’s something for 2050.”

One thing Deffner does know is that he’s committed to the marathon. “If you don’t dream big, what are you going to do?” he asks. “Sometimes you have to take a risk and follow the dream.”

VISITING ARTIST 

Iman Djouini

October 24^th

Time: 5 pm Place: Recital Hall FA118

Iman Djouini b. Algiers, Algeria is a multidisciplinary artist who works in print media, digital fabrication, installation, photography, film and public art. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Printmaking from Tulane University and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting and Art History from The Maryland Institute College of Art. Her research-based practice explores the employment of language and design as tools for shaping perception. Recent works have looked into uses of symbols found in images, text, flags, textiles and data. She critically investigates theoretical frameworks like binary opposition, delineation and compartmentalization in contested cultural and political histories. Djouini is currently a professor of Art and Design at the Center for Art and Media at Goucher College and the Maryland Institute College of Art.