Luke 1:57-80 (NIV)

⁵⁷ When it was time for Elizabeth to have her baby, she gave birth to a son. ⁵⁸ Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her great mercy, and they shared her joy.

⁵⁹ On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him after his father Zechariah, ⁶⁰ but his mother spoke up and said, “No! He is to be called John.”

⁶¹ They said to her, “There is no one among your relatives who has that name.”

⁶² Then they made signs to his father, to find out what he would like to name the child. ⁶³ He asked for a writing tablet, and to everyone’s astonishment he wrote, “His name is John.” ⁶⁴ Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue set free, and he began to speak, praising God. ⁶⁵ All the neighbors were filled with awe, and throughout the hill country of Judea people were talking about all these things. ⁶⁶ Everyone who heard this wondered about it, asking, “What then is this child going to be?” For the Lord’s hand was with him. ⁶⁷ His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

⁶⁸ “Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel,
because he has come to his people and redeemed them.
⁶⁹ He has raised up a horn^[c] of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David
⁷⁰ (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),
⁷¹ salvation from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us—
⁷² to show mercy to our ancestors
and to remember his holy covenant,
⁷³ the oath he swore to our father Abraham:
⁷⁴ to rescue us from the hand of our enemies,
and to enable us to serve him without fear
⁷⁵ in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.

⁷⁶ And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High;
for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him,
⁷⁷ to give his people the knowledge of salvation
through the forgiveness of their sins,
⁷⁸ because of the tender mercy of our God,
by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven
⁷⁹ to shine on those living in darkness
and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the path of peace.”

⁸⁰ And the child grew and became strong in spirit^[d]; and he lived in the wilderness until he appeared publicly to Israel.

Reflection

Even though Zechariah was initially filled with doubt when the angel Gabriel came to him, Zechariah was left without a doubt when he was finally able to speak.  As Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit, he first prophesied about the coming of the Lord as a fulfillment of God’s promise of salvation.  He was used by God to proclaim Jesus as the Son of God who would redeem and deliver the people from sin and death.  And then, Zechariah prophesied about his son and the prophetic role that John was to play in fulfilling God’s plans.  He was truly blessed and favored because he humbly recognized the correct order of authority and power in God’s kingdom.

Response

How wonderful it is to be called by the Lord.  There is nothing more fulfilling than to be used by God for His purposes.  When we are filled with the Spirit, we are no longer doubtful but can correctly understand the order and power that is at work in God’s kingdom.  Let’s offer up prayers of surrender and give Him our hearts.  May our minds, talents, resources and time be used for service in the Kingdom that will never end.

UMBC CHMPR Colloquium

Oil Spills and Search and Rescue:
Key Computational Challenges

Dr. C. J. Beegle-Krause
Environmental Research for Decision, Inc.

1:00pm 16 December 2011, ITE 227 325b

Leveraging the research community into societal issues can help save lives and reduce environmental impacts from both natural and anthropogenic disasters. For example, Search and Rescue, oil Spills, and marine debris drift are decision support areas commonly solved with Eulerian-Lagrangian models. These models typically use wind and current fields derived from external circulation models. These problems share many similarities:

• Use of a “leeway” or “windage” to simulate drift on the water surface or atmospheric transport,
• Increased leveraging of larger scale physical ocean and atmospheric circulation models, and
• Predicting geolocation information with sufficient accuracy for detection (e.g. finding the person) or response (booming off the beach),

However, there are some distinct differences and each field has some case types with complexities that remain unanswered by the research community. This presentation will cover some key examples, such as:

• Mystery spills (reverse drift) – Where did oil come from?
• Surface collection areas (sensitivity of drift to surface circulation convergence and divergences and shoreline contact);
• Accuracy required for locating a target – small islands may be missing in implementation of numerical model; and
• Extensive drift problems – an overdue vessel may have crossed the domains of several small and large-­‐scale models.

The 21st century vision of numerical modeling includes Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS, and application of chaos theory), Social Media (thanks to UMBC), further integration of numerical and geospatial data streams, and more real-­‐time information access through handheld computing.

Dr. C.J. Beegle-Krause is President of Environmental Research for Decision, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to three primary missions: transitioning peer reviewed research into Decision Support applications; Education; and Data Rescue. As founder of the nonprofit, she has a strong vision of the Next Generation Trajectory. Her background is in physical oceanography, specializing in modeling chemical transport. She is one of the original developers of the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) GNOME trajectory model, and spent five years of her career at NOAA as one of the U.S. lead trajectory forecasters, on-call 24×7 for events around the world. She was called back to NOAA OR&R for the Deepwater Horizon (MC252) oil spill and continues to work on aspects of that incident and future model development.

The front page of today‘s Baltimore Sun highlights Operation Oliver, a local partnership that seeks to revitalize Baltimore’s Oliver neighborhood through community art, garbage removal, crime watch and landscaping, involving several UMBC students. The article follows Jeremy Johnson ’12, sociology, and two fellow volunteers as they walk through the neighborhood, noting both concerning conditions and exciting rehab projects.

Johnson is a board member of The 6th Branch, a nonprofit that applies the leadership and organizational skills of military veterans to local community service initiatives — one of two lead organizations for Operation Oliver. Incoming project coordinator Dave Landymore ’13, GES, is featured in a photo series accompanying the Sun article (images 1, 7 and 11), along with project volunteer Heather Hryczshyn ’13, GES (images 12 and 13).

The initiative’s next service day will be Saturday, 12/10, 9:00 am-1:00 pm. Several UMBC students have already signed up to help. To learn how to volunteer, visit Operation Oliver on Facebook.

Several students have received Huayu Enrichment Scholarships (HES) from the Taiwan Ministry of Education to study Mandarin in Taiwan from June-August, 2012. The students are Niesha Watts ’14, applied linguistics; Amy Fowler ’12, Asian studies and interdisciplinary studies; Vadim Rubin ’10, history, and ’12 Asian studies; and Jillian Long ’13, Chinese.

Initial contact with the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representatives Office (TECRO) in Washington, D.C., was made by Eugene Schaffer, chair of education. The Asian studies program, including director Constantine Vaporis, organized an information session to inform students about the scholarships and to assist with the application process. Anna Shields, director of the honors college,William Brown, lecturer in Chinese, and Vaporis formed the selection committee.

The scholarships are being supplemented with funding from the offices of the Vice Provost, Academic Affairs, the Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, Antonio Moreira and the Asian Studies Program.

Robert Deluty, associate dean of the graduate school, is published in the Fall 2011 issue of The Faculty Voice.

The paper, which is an independent newspaper published by and for all the faculty of the University System of Maryland, included 20 of Deluty’s poems along with commentary by editor William Hanna.

If you are a Graduate Student at UMBC, and if you are working on your  graduate school courses, proposal, or dissertation, then this event is for you!

The on-campus setting provides Dissertation House participants with productive and rewarding scholastic engagement. Students who participate in this program will spend each day thinking, writing, and sharing ideas about their doctoral dissertations. Students will learn effective time-management skills; learn how to set small manageable goals, and will meet with a dissertation coach in one-on-one consultations to discuss and address obstacles that might prevent them completing their degrees.

This is a weekday (9 a.m. – 5 p.m., non-residential) commitment set for the week of Tuesday, January 17 – Friday, January 20, 2012.

This information and other details about the Dissertation House can be found on: http://www.thedissertationhouse.com

Seats are limited. Students who are closest to finishing their doctoral dissertations (graduating with PhDs in 2012) will receive priority.  Priority will be assigned in this order: earliest defense dates (January – April 2012 dates), May 2012 graduation, Summer 2012 graduation, December 2012 graduation.  After we fill seats with our 2012 prospective graduates, we will review applications for additional slots. You must officially apply:  http://dissertationhouse.wordpress.com/apply/.  This information is mirrored: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/9573