In an op-ed on the Puerto Rican debt crisis published March 20 in Fox News Latino, Public Policy Ph.D. student Justin Vélez-Hagan argues default will be inevitable as a more than $1 billion deficit is expected to round out the current fiscal year. Vélez-Hagan is also executive director of the National Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce.

“Puerto Rico’s well-known dependency on credit first made public waves when every credit-rating agency gave Puerto Rico a vote of no confidence last month, citing major liquidity concerns as the biggest culprit for the downgrades,” Vélez-Hagan writes.

To dig itself out of the debt crisis, Vélez-Hagan adds: “[Puerto Rico] has to shed its fat by yanking off the fiscal Band-Aid and restructuring its debt. Speculators will suffer the most, and may have the loudest complaints, but after the initial shock Puerto Rico will finally have the chance to break its cycle of deficit-spending and will only then have another opportunity to make the right decisions that ensure long-term economic prosperity.”

You can read the full column in Fox News Latino here.

A family reunion with the Paul Taylor Dance Company 

By Rebecca Ritzel

"After dancing with Taylor’s original touring company for six years, Walton left the troupe to get married and moved to Baltimore. She taught dance at the Peabody Institute and became a professor at UMBC, where she chaired the dance department for two decades and continues to teach. Her former students include local choreographer Daniel Phoenix Singh."

 
http://goo.gl/2Sf0lD

President Hrabowski will receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Arizona State University during their May 14th undergraduate commencement ceremony.

History Associate Professor Kate Brown has won the 2014 George Perkins Marsh Prize for her book, Plutopia: Nuclear Families, Atomic Cities, and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford University Press, 2013).

The award is given by the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH) for the best book in environmental history. Brown received her prize March 15 in San Francisco at the annual ASEH conference.

Last fall, Brown presented a Social Sciences Forum on Plutopia which explored the work and research behind her book. More information can be found here.

Meredith Oyen, an assistant professor of history, is quoted in a CNBC News article about the five-man alternative rock band from Taiwan known as Mayday that is set to kick off a tour in the United States this month.

In the article, Oyen says music groups like Mayday are beginning to become more popular in countries around the world: “Mayday is starting to challenge the assumption that English-speaking pop stars are global stars, and Chinese-speaking acts are only regional ones,” she said.

Oyen is currently in China serving on a Chinese Service Center for Scholarly Exchange (Beijing) external evaluation panel to evaluate U.S. history courses taught at several Chinese universities. As part of the trip, she gave a lecture at Minjiang University called “The Meeting of Minds: Academic Exchanges in US-Chinese Relations.”

To read the full CNBC article that Oyen is quoted in, click here.

An article published in the April 2014 edition of The Baltimore Beacon newspaper examines the current view of retirement and how it looks much different today than it has in the past.

Erickson School Dean Judah Ronch is quoted extensively in the article and comments on how people are living longer and healthier lives due to less demanding work environments and better healthcare.

“We have more vigor and more energy than our parents and grandparents did,” Ronch said. “As a result, we don’t feel the need – or the desire – to view retirement as a life of total leisure. Many of us still want to contribute, whether it’s using our skills in new ways, or developing new areas of expertise and new careers altogether.”

In the past, retirees would keep busy through volunteer work, but Ronch said that is one of the many aspects of retirement that is changing.

“Baby boomers are used to being compensated for their time,” he said. “We may still want to work and earn money, but perhaps in a less competitive environment.”

To read the full article titled, “Retirees are hardly retiring,” click here (Ronch is quoted extensively on page 24).   

A new Duke University study finds that contagious yawning is linked more closely to a person’s age than their ability to empathize, and it shows a stronger link to age than tiredness or energy levels.

Psychology Professor Robert Provine was interviewed for a BBC News article about the study and said it was “unique” because it marked the first time a link between ageing and contagious yawning had been demonstrated.

The scientific study of contagious behavior, including yawning and laughing, was conducted in Provine’s lab at UMBC and the new Duke study involved application of his previous methods for examining contagious yawning.

Provine said the findings would “help to get down to the neurological nitty-gritty of contagious behaviors” and mental health disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, adding, “contagious acts such as yawning and laughing remind us that we are often mindless beasts of the herd, not rational beings in full conscious control of our behavior.”

To read the full article on the BBC News website, click here.

In his latest column published in The Baltimore Sun, Political Science Professor Thomas Schaller writes about growing political polarization at the national level at the same time forces are eliminating divided government on the state level.

“The American states have cleaved into red and blue subsets. In all but three — yes, three — of the 49 states with bicameral, partisan state legislatures (Nebraska is unicameral and non-partisan), one party controls both chambers,” Schaller writes.

As the balance of power between parties is becoming more even at the state level, Schaller writes divided government continues to prevail on the national stage.

“The first two years of Mr. Obama’s presidency saw unified Democratic control, but the next four have been divided and the last two almost certainly will be — the same pattern during his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton’s term.”

To read the full op-ed titled, “Adapting to a politically divided nation,” click here.

The 2014 campaign for Maryland governor is intensifying, and candidates in both parties are moving forward with proposals on taxes and spending as Election Day nears in November.

Public Policy Professor and Chair Donald Norris was interviewed for an article published March 14 in The Baltimore Sun about the race for governor and the various education expansion and tax cut proposals from candidates on both sides.

“This is campaigning as usual,” Norris said. “Promise, promise, promise in order to win as many votes as you can on these promises — and then worry about it when you get in office.”

To read the full article titled “Candidates make many promises — but how to pay for them?” in The Baltimore Sun, click here.