Enthusiasm for WWDC 2013 has been incredible, with tickets selling out in record time. For those who can’t join us in San Francisco, you can still take advantage of great WWDC content, as we’ll be posting videos of all our sessions during the conference. We’ll also be hitting the road this fall with Tech Talks in a city near you. Hope to see you there.

Enthusiasm for WWDC 2013 has been incredible, with tickets selling out in record time. For those who can’t join us in San Francisco, you can still take advantage of great WWDC content, as we’ll be posting videos of all our sessions during the conference. We’ll also be hitting the road this fall with Tech Talks in a city near you. Hope to see you there.

Hilltop Institute Senior Research Analyst Michael T. Abrams, MPH, presented his work on substance use disorder (SUD) treatment to the Maryland Addictions Directors Council on on March 11, 2013. The work focuses on coordination of care and cost saving opportunities evident in the federal Affordable Care Act, and traceable within Maryland’s Medicaid program.

On April 10, 2013, Abrams presented a description of three UMBC-centered research projects examining supported employment for persons with serious mental illness at the Behavioral Health Research Conference. The University of Maryland Department of Psychiatry and Maryland Mental Hygiene Administration sponsored the conference. The audience included statewide policymakers and other stakeholders.

Two of the projects are federally funded and direct collaborations between The Hilltop Institute and the UMBC Department of Public Policy, and the third was the dissertation project of Brent Gibbons (Public Policy PhD candidate). All three studies are under the leadership of David Salkever, professor of public policy. To learn more about these projects, contact Abrams at mabrams@hilltop.umbc.edu.

I hate feeling tethered to the internet. So why do I love FreedomPop?

Rarely do I, even in casual conversation, refer to something as the “best thing ever.” And yet I’m fairly certain I’ve used that epithet a few dozen times in gushing to friends, acquaintances, and strangers about my latest toy: the Freedom Stick 4G from FreedomPop. “Go ahead!” I dare them, as they scatter to the edge of the sidewalk. “Try and name a better thing!”

A response to Jason Pontin’s essay on free speech by the author of Principles for a Free Society.

Jason Pontin has written a perceptive analysis of a timeless question:  what changes in law need to be adopted in order to account for technological advances (see “Free Speech in the Era of Its Technological Amplification”)? In answering that question, he takes the right approach by taking up John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, which at its core makes this claim:

An experimental new touch screen, the Obake, has a stretchable surface that to reacts user interaction in new ways.

An inexpensive new prototype device called the Obake adds a new dimension to touch screen technology. The surface of the device, developed by Dhairya Dand and Rob Hemsley of the MIT Media Lab, can react to how it’s being used by reaching out toward the user. It was relatively simple to make: the researchers used an open source software framework to enable the screen to react; the hardware costs between $50 and $60, Dand says.

Join the Department of Dance, Friday, May 3 at 8:00 p.m. in Studio 317 of the Fine Arts Building, as Dance students debut their first ever choreographic pieces for this First Works concert.

Admission to First Works is free.