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Meet David, he is a Physics major and an undergraduate researcher. The focus of his research will be to calculate, both analytically and numerically, the emission anticipated from the relevant radiation processes of jets such as synchrotron and inverse-Compton emission.
How did you find your mentor for year research project?
Last semester I decided that I wanted to do research and asked some people in my department about how to get started. I was directed to the astrophysics department and there I found one of the professors that I had taken a couple of courses with. Because I had taken classes that were relevant to the research subject that we would be doing, it seemed like a good fit.
How did you know this was the project you wanted to do?
I always enjoyed astronomy and I had also found that I liked the astrophysics course that I had taken last semester. The subject seemed to be very interesting and something that would give me a better idea of what working in the astrophysics field would be like.
Is this your first independent research project?
Yes, it is. It seems like something that is a great experience and perhaps something that I would have wanted to do more of if I could.
Do you get course credit for this work?
Yes, we placed the research for this semester under a category of a three-credit senior research 499 course. This will help me to fulfill the credit requirements for upper-level classes needed to graduate.
How did you hear about the Undergraduate Research Award (URA) program?
My mentor told me about URA. A researcher of his had previously been accepted as a URA scholar and he suggested that I apply as well.
What academic background did you have before you applied for the URA?
I had transferred from community colleges after deciding that I wanted to do physics. I then took all of the required courses in my major as well as a few electives before applying for the URA.
Was the application difficult to do?
It could have been fairly difficult due to the fact that it was hard to know many details of the subject that the research was going to be about prior to actually starting. With the help of my mentor it was not too hard, however.
What has been the hardest part about your research?
All of it is fairly challenging but enjoyable also. The theory is not very simple and it can be hard to understand how a quantitative analysis of a process is formulated based on a qualitative idea of the physical processes involved.
How does your research relate to your work in other classes?
The information and knowledge obtained from my classes is fundamental in the research that I am conducting. Also, as a result of the research requiring a large amount of in-depth topics, the knowledge gained will help me in future classes.
What are your career goals?
Hopefully I will find something related to what I have been studying and perhaps to what I have been researching. I am not certain about the exact area I want to go into but doing this research will help me decide.
Did you transfer to UMBC from another institution? Where?
I spent a little time taking classes at community colleges in the area before I decided that physics was the subject that I wanted to pursue.
Read more about David's research here...
]]>New details of the NSA’s capabilities suggest encryption can still be trusted. But more effort is needed to fix problems with how it is used.
When a New York Times report appeared Thursday saying the National Security Agency had “circumvented or cracked much of the encryption” protecting online transactions, computer security professionals braced for news of breakthroughs undermining the fundamentals of their field.
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The September edition of what’s new for web designers and developers includes new web apps, jQuery resources, sites to find inspiration, responsive design tools, mobile design tools, coding resources, and some really great new fonts.
Many of the resources below are free or very low cost, and are sure to be useful to a lot of designers and developers out there.
As always, if we’ve missed something you think should have been included, please let us know in the comments. And if you have an app or other resource you’d like to see included next month, tweet it to @cameron_chapman for consideration.
Type Hunting is a curated collection of vintage typography examples. You’ll find everything from retro t-shirts to antique packaging, old signs, and more.
Audobox is a tool that lets your app’s users leave audio feedback for you. It’s a great way to turn a bad experience into an awesome one.
Hopscotch is an open source framework for creating product tours for your pages. It features multi-page tours, event callbacks, and more.
These iOS 7-Inspired Line Icons are a great set of more than 80 icons in the style of iOS7. You can use them however you like as long as you don’t redistribute them without permission.
The Elusive-Icons Webfont contains 283 vector icons designed for Bootstrap that can be used on any of your projects (whether they’re Bootstrap-based or not). It’s completely open source, with no attribution requirement.
Bootstrap Magic makes it easy to create your own Bootstrap theme. It’s made with Bootstrap 3 and Angular JS, and gives you live preview, a colorpicker, Google Webfonts, and much more.
Capsule is a specialized WordPress theme that gives you a scratch document for your coding. It supports Markdown Extra syntax plus GitHub-style fenced code blocks, and auto-saves for you every 10 seconds.
StatusPage.io is an easy way to create a status page for your website or app. It includes custom branding, support for various types of system status messages, and more.
Space Ipsum is a lorem ipsum-esque generator with a space theme. It will give you all sorts of space-related dummy text, quoted from various sources.
Just Delete Me gives you the info you need to delete your account from a variety of websites and services, including Amazon, Blogger, Facebook, Gumroad, and more.
UsabilityHub is a set of usability tools that make it easier to test the effectiveness of your designs. Do five second tests, click tests, and more.
KNACSS is a lightweight, simple CSS framework. It’s minimalist, responsive, extensible, and relies on common best practices.
Web Tracing Framework is a collection of rich tools for analyzing and visualizing your web apps. It’s available as either a Chrome or Firefox extension.
GenerateWP is a set of user-friendly tools for creating custom, high quality code for your WordPress projects. It includes things like a taxonomy generator, post type generator, menu generator, toolbar generator, and much more.
The Random User Generator will create a random user for you that you can use as placeholders in your projects. It works with jQuery and other methods.
Assemble lets you combine the power of frameworks like Foundation and Bootstrap for your projects, to create exactly the kind of framework and end result you need.
Spectrum is a Mac and iOS app for designers and developers that makes it easy to intuitively design color schemes. It uses established color theory, making it much simpler to create aesthetically pleasing palettes.
UIBox is a set of curated HTML, CSS, and JS UI components. You can search or browse components by exploring tags.
Every Time Zone is a simple to read graphic that shows you what time it is in various time zones around the world, and lets you view what time it will be in various major cities using a slider with your own time.
Magic is a CSS3 framework that includes a number of animations built-in, many of which are cross-browser compatible.
This Premium Flat Social Icon Set from Jamie Peak includes 40 flat social icons in two different styles (there are 20 included in the free pack). It includes resizable vector shapes, and comes with JPG, PNG, and PSD files.
CSScomb is a great tool for sorting CSS properties into a specific order. There are versions for Coda, Textmate, Espresso 2, Vim, Chocolat, and many other text editors and coding apps, as well as an online version.
If you need a textured background for your next project, be sure to check out this Noise Texture Generator. Just enter values for the noise opacity, density, background color, and dimensions, and then download your custom pattern.
Countly is a mobile analytics platform that’s open source and real-time. It currently supports all four major platforms: iOS, Android, Blackberry, and Windows Phone.
Whatfix lets users create guides to any website online, that can be embedded into those sites. You can also run “flows” (guides) to get inside help on those websites.
Charcuterie is a family of ten distinct typefaces, including three decorative/ornamental typefaces. Two of the fonts in the collection, Charcuterie Engraved and Charcuterie Cursive, include 135 and 275 swash alternates, respectively.
Appareo is an imperfect, worn serif font inspired by vintage book typefaces. It comes in three weights, with varying degrees of distress.
Chef Script is an experimental font with fantastical elements. It includes 1463 glyphs to compose words, phrases, and short messages in small and large sizes.
Mrs Summer is a hand-drawn font with a Western touch that includes uppercase character with alternate glyphs instead of lowercase letters.
Letterpress Leftovers JNL is a font consisting of 26 vintage letterpress cuts in a variety of themes, plus a wood type border.
Drake is a serif typeface that comes with both clean and distressed versions.
Rivina is an elegant, playful, hand drawn serif, with outline and filler fonts that can be combined or used seperately.
We Are Rockstar is an aggressive, angular typeface that comes with a full character set, including most common punctuation marks and a number of special characters.
Outgunned is a dingbat font that includes gun and other arms-related images. It includes 97 glyphs overall.
Vast Shadow is a slab serif typeface perfect for advertising, signage, and other display use. It’s a solid, sturdy font, while also being just a little bit refined.
Know of a new app or resource that should have been included but wasn’t? Let us know in the comments.
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Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2013:
Setup: 6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Thursday, Sept. 19, 2013:
All-Day Shift: 9:30 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Morning Shift: 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Afternoon Shift:12:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Takedown: 3:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
CSEE Professor Tim Finin was one of eight researchers elected this year as a fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). His election citation reads
The new fellows were inducted at the annual AAAI fellows dinner at the 2103 AAAI conference in Seattle Washington in July.
Finin's research interests have ranged widely over a the field of Artificial Intelligence during his professional career and have included computer vision, natural language processing, knowledge representation and reasoning, expert systems and multiagent systems. His current research is focused on extracting useful information from text and semistructured data and using Semantic Web technologies to enable people and computers to effectively model, share and integrate both knowledge and data. He is working with UMBC faculty and students on applying these ideas to help solve problems in security, privacy, mobile computing and social computing environments.
AAAI was founded in 1979 as an international scientific society devoted to advancing the scientific understanding of the mechanisms underlying thought and intelligent behavior and their embodiment in machines. It's fellow program started in 1990 to recognize individuals who have made significant, sustained contributions, usually over at least a ten-year period, to the field of artificial intelligence.
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