Congratulations to Dari! He passed his PhD proposal exam in the area of Health Informatics and is now a PhD Candidate

Preprint: James Mayfield, Paul McNamee, Craig Harman, Tim Finin and Dawn Lawrie, KELVIN: Extracting Knowledge from Large Text Collections, AAAI Fall Symposium on Natural Language Access to Big Data, 2014.

We describe the \kelvin system for extracting entities and relations from large text collections and its use in the TAC Knowledge Base Population Cold Start task run by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. The Cold Start task starts with an empty knowledge based defined by an ontology or entity types, properties and relations. Evaluations in 2012 and 2013 were done using a collection of text from local Web and news to de-emphasize the linking entities to a background knowledge bases such as Wikipedia. Interesting features of \kelvin include a cross-document entity coreference module based on entity mentions, removal of suspect intra-document conference chains, a slot value consolidator for entities, the application of inference rules to expand the number of asserted facts and a set of analysis and browsing tools supporting development.

On Sunday, September 7, Political Science Professor and Chair Thomas Schaller appeared on MSNBC’s “Up with Steve Kornacki,” to analyze the future of the Democratic party in the South. Schaller is author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South (Simon and Schuster 2006).

Schaller participated in an engaging panel discussion with political consultant Steve Jarding, NBC News Senior Political Reporter Perry Bacon Jr., and MSNBC Political Analyst Joan Walsh. The group discussed what the 2016 presidential election could look like in the South for Hillary Clinton and how it may be different from the 2008 and 2012 elections.

“Clinton’s states are Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee…Kentucky. Obama’s states are new South states, the states with the most non-native Southerners: Florida, Virginia, North Carolina,” Schaller said. “So Democrats are going to win in the South, but they aren’t going to win in the ‘bubba’ states.” He added, “the notion that Democrats are going to win with economic populism…if they can’t win on economic populism after the greatest financial crisis in 60 years, then when are they going to win? When are white, working class Southerners going to move Democratic if not in 2007, 2008, 2009?”

To view Schaller’s main segment on the program, click here. Links to other parts of the segment can be found in the “more clips like this” section.

UMBC Quantum Computation Seminar

How to program the D-Wave Quantum Annealing Computer?

Omar Shehab

2:30-4:00 pm, Tuesday, 9 September 2014, ITE 325B

In this tutorial session, we will give a gentle introduction to the programming model of the D-Wave Quantum Annealing Computer. The implementations of a number of programs will be demonstrated. Mapping of generic problems, minor embedding of problem Ising graphs, classical computational complexity of problem mapping and different system parameters will be discussed in details. We will also discuss how to enhance the success probability of finding a solution.

Omar Shehab is a PhD student of the department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering working under the direction of Professor Samuel Lomonaco. Omar’s research areas of interest are quantum Hamiltonian complexity and quantum cryptography.

The Shriver Center’s Governor’s Summer Internship Program (GSIP) and the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems’ Costa Rica Field Course were featured in The Baltimore Sun‘s September special section on education.

Collin Wojciechowski ’13, political science and media and communication studies, and Michele Wolff, Director of The Shriver Center, were quoted in an article focusing on a hands-on approach to learning politics and government. Wojciechowski, who is currently special assistant to the Deputy Chief of Staff in Governor Martin O’Malley’s office, said part of his experience that led to his job came thanks to GSIP: “It gives you a chance to directly shadow a whole range of people and specifically people who are higher levels directly,” he said.

The program introduces Maryland college students to the unique challenges and rewards of working within state government and interns work for ten weeks during the summer in state government agencies. Wolff said, “it’s really important for students to see the relevancy of what’s happening around them while they are in college,” adding, “through programs like this they see the relevancy of what’s happening outside the college experience. They see that not only does it have an impact on them, but they can have an impact on what’s around them.”

In an article focused on experiential learning, Maggie Holland, Assistant Professor of Geography and Environmental Systems, and Honors College student and environmental science major Clare McCauley were quoted about UMBC’s Costa Rica Field Course. The course provides students with service opportunities and field experience while being immersed in another culture.

“As I understand experiential learning,” Holland said, “it’s the whole toolbox. It’s about linking the classroom outward.” In describing her positive experience in the program, McCauley noted, “If I can’t plant some trees and get along with my neighbor, then all these sustainable, conservatory actions really mean nothing.”

To read complete versions of both articles, click below:
Learning politics and government hands-on
Experiential learning

An article published September 7 in The Philadelphia Tribune discusses the case of U.S. Rep. Chakka Fattah, a ten term representative from Philadelphia who is facing corruption allegations, charges and guilty pleas surrounding his family. George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, associate professor of history, is quoted in the article and discusses the case of Fattah Sr. and his son, Fattah Jr., explaining that children of Black political families often go into businesses connected to their parents’ political power.

“There is a much higher percentage of white political families that produce their wealth from non-government related private businesses than there are Black ones,” Musgrove told The Tribune. “The children of many Black political families reproduce their class position by going into business[es] that are somehow connected to their parents’ political power. This may make them more susceptible to investigators looking for influence peddling.”

Musgrove added: “These young men grow up with the privileges associated with their parents’ status and take them for granted. Their children did not necessarily have an organic connection to these communities and that can sometimes lead them to use these communities for their own gain. They tend to have the same opportunities for graft afforded their white peers but not the same political protections.”

To read the full article in The Philadelphia Tribune titled, “Fattah not the first Black political family with money troubles,” click here.