News

The University of Maine Intermedia MFA program has announced the presenters for its Spring 2013 Visiting Artist Series, Jan. 17–April 30 in Lord Hall. They include artist, writer and teacher Iain Kerr; artist Ilana Boltvinik; photographer and videographer Miranda Clark; interdisciplinary artists Hasan Elahi and Erin Manning; co-authors Patsy Baudoin, John Bell and Nick Montfort; and Cabinet Magazine editor-in-chief Sina Najafi. They will discuss their diverse research and art practices, which include food works, performance, social activism, computer coding, publishing and curation. Complete information, including times and dates of presentations, are listed on the UMaine Intermedia MFA Visiting Artist Series website. For additional information or to request disability accommodations, contact Bethany Engstrom at bethany.engstrom@maine.edu.

Janet Waldron, senior vice president for administration and finance at the University of Maine, was interviewed for a Bangor Daily News article about Gov. Paul LePage’s budget proposal for state support of the University of Maine System. The proposal would require a $1.2 million budget cut for UMaine, the flagship campus.

University of Maine Professor of Civil Engineering Per Garder was interviewed for a Maine Public Broadcasting Network report about his research showing that highway roundabouts are safer than traditional four-way intersections.

University of Maine Professor of Political Science Amy Fried was interviewed for a Channel 7 (WVII) report Jan. 22 about a new political poll in Maine that indicates Republican Gov. Paul LePage could win a three-way election challenge next year, but would not do as well in a two-way race.

Channel 5 (WABI) aired a report on the new winter exhibit by Minnesota artist Michael Crouser at the University of Maine Museum of Art in Bangor.

The Bangor Daily News has reported on the new advanced composting facility at the University of Maine, which is expected to convert as much as a ton per day of dining hall food scraps to soil enhancers for university gardens and farms.

A Portland Daily Sun article about the growth of Bangor Waterfront Concerts included a reference to a recent study by University of Maine Professor of Economics Todd Gabe, who found that the outdoor performances have generated more than $30 million in local spending, in addition to other economic benefits over the last three years.

For the second year in a row, UMaine’s women’s basketball Coach Richard Barron has issued a challenge to the Black Bear community. If the “Play4Kay” cancer benefit reaches its $10,000 goal, he’ll shave his head following the women’s basketball team’s annual Play4Kay game at 1 p.m., Saturday, Feb. 9 at the Harold Alfond Sports Arena. The team will play Albany. Last year, fans and the UMaine community did reach the goal and Barron went ahead with a public shaving.

All donations to the Play4Kay campaign will go to the Kay Yow Foundation to support breast cancer research. To donate, visit the Black Bears’ Play4Kay website.

Yow was a North Carolina State University women’s basketball head coach who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987 and died in 2009. She created the fund to further cancer research and provide cancer patients access to experimental drugs and clinical trials, according to the Play4Kay website. The Kay Yow Cancer Fund has raised more than $8 million in support of women’s cancer research since its inception in 2007, according the organization.

Coach Barron knew Yow from his early coaching days at NC State and has been committed to the cause ever since. “I have been involved with the Kay Yow Fund and Coaches vs. Cancer for close to 20 years and I am very excited about having Maine participate in this cause,” Barron says in a news release.

The Portland Press Herald interviewed George Kinghorn, University of Maine Museum of Art director and curator, and Steven Evans, UMaine associate professor of English and coordinator of the university’s New Writing Series, for an article about Kinghorn’s friend Richard Blanco, the inaugural poet from Bethel, Maine.

The website Science360 featured a University of Maine cold-water coral research video on its home page. The video includes interviews with School of Marine Sciences Research Assistant Professor Rhian Waller, who has been scuba diving for coral samples in extreme cold-water environments around the world, and marine sciences student Keri Feehan, who has been assisting in analyzing the coral samples.

The Bangor Daily News carried a Maine Sun Journal article that included observations from University of Maine Professor of Finance Richard Borgman about foreclosures and liens in the state’s housing market.

Several news organizations across the country, including the New England Cable News and the Seattle Times, carried reports about the University of Maine’s new composting facility, an automated composting unit that can convert more than 1 ton of organic waste per day from campus dining facilities to rich soil amendments that will be used in UMaine landscaping and on university crop fields. Other organizations included Channel 8 (WMTW), Channel 5 (WABI) and the San Antonio Express-News.

The University of Maine’s ninth annual International Dance Festival, showcasing an array of traditional music, dance and costumes of some of the 400 international students at UMaine, is set for Saturday, Feb. 16, at the Collins Center for the Arts. Two free performances of dances from around the world are scheduled at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Doors open one hour before showtime. For information or to request disability accommodations, call 207.581.3423.

Click here to view the “How to Make Homemade Baby Food” video on YouTube.

Climate Change Institute Involved in Successful Recovery of a New Deep Ice Core from Antarctica

A team of scientists from nine nations, which included two University of Maine graduate students, has made a breakthrough in Antarctica — successfully drilling more than 760 meters through the ice to bedrock on an island in the Ross Sea.

The international team, led by Nancy Bertler, Victoria University’s Antarctic Research Centre and GNS Science in New Zealand, completed the drilling on Roosevelt Island in late December when the drill bit brought sediment up from the base of the ice sheet.

The drill cores from the Roosevelt Island Climate Evolution project will provide the most detailed record of the climate history of the Ross Sea region for the last 30,000 years — the time during which the coastal margin of the Antarctic ice sheet retreated following the last great ice age, says Bertler, who is an adjunct faculty member in UMaine’s Climate Change Institute (CCI).

Graduate students Skylar Haines and Tom Beers of the Climate Change Institute and the School of Earth and Climate Sciences each spent several months working in Antarctica on the ice core drilling project as part of their master’s research. Now they will work under the direction of Climate Change Institute Director Paul Mayewski and Research Associate Professor Andrei Kurbatov to develop highly detailed reconstructions of past climate in CCI’s W.M. Keck Laser Ice Facility.

Core analysis could help determine the stability of the Ross Ice Shelf and West Antarctica.

“With the success of the deep ice drilling at Roosevelt Island, Antarctica, we have the ice core material necessary to make significant insights into the past, current and future behavior of the West Antarctic ice sheet — one of the greatest potential contributors to future global sea level rise and one of the major controls on Southern Hemisphere climate,” Mayewski says.

More information about the Roosevelt Island project is online.

Transportation research finds roundabouts are the way to go for drivers of any age

A few years ago, a baby boomer turned 63 every seven seconds in this country, leading the New England University Transportation Center to proclaim that in fewer than 20 years, the United States would be a “nation of Floridas.”

Designers of highways and byways are taking those aging driver demographics into account when planning for the future of transportation in the U.S. That includes research by University of Maine civil engineer Per Garder, who is helping transportation officials in their quest to successfully navigate the road ahead.

With a more than  $94,000 grant from the NEUTC, Garder conducted a two-year study of roundabout design and navigability by drivers, including the elderly.

A roundabout is a circular type of intersection around a central island. Drivers travel in one direction around the roundabout and exit onto intersecting roads. In recent years, roundabouts have gained popularity in the United States. Garder says there are currently more than 2,200 in the country and about 20 in Maine.

Garder is an expert on transportation — from roundabouts to rumble strips. His research frequently centers on improving safety for pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers.

T. Olaf Johnson, then a master’s degree student in civil engineering at the university, coauthored the study.

A hidden video camera observed 2,366 drivers using the roundabout where Maine, Vermont and Texas avenues converge near Bangor International Airport.

Drivers using the roundabout were classified into one of seven age groups: younger than 20, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70 and older. The researchers studied whether age, gender and cell phone use impacted the minimum time interval when an approaching driver could safely join the flow of traffic.

They concluded a roundabout is a viable solution for intersections, regardless of their proximity to schools and retirement housing.

According to the study, the average gap, or headway, needed for the average driver to enter the roundabout was 3.26 seconds.

Drivers younger than 20 needed the longest gap — 4.85 seconds, while drivers 70 and older, on average, needed 3.95 seconds.

“I was surprised that 20-year-olds were not more aggressive,” Garder says, but adds that their longer wait times might be because of their inexperience navigating roundabouts.

Drivers in their 30s waited for a gap of 2.90 seconds before entering the roundabout. Drivers in their 40s waited for a 3.17-second gap, and drivers in their 50s waited for a gap of 3.19 seconds, on average.

Overall, on average, males waited for a 3.19-second gap and females for 3.33.

Because of the limited number of drivers observed in the youngest and oldest age groups, as well as in the cell phone user group, researchers couldn’t validate that large numbers of those drivers would substantially increase waiting times — and therefore lead to a lower level of service.

Garder recommends that a larger study, or a continuation of this study, be done.

When it comes to talking about elderly drivers, Garder says elderly is a relative term.

Today, he says many experienced drivers in their 60s and 70s have good eyesight and decision-making skills. In general, Garder says driving skills deteriorate around the age of 80. According to statistics, he says driver safety peaks in the 50s, followed closely by drivers in their 40s and 60s. Garder says people behind the wheel in their 80s, teenage years and early 20s are statistically the least safe.

Roundabouts in general, says Garder, are the way to go. There are fewer crashes in roundabouts than at intersections with signals, as well as fewer traffic delays and less fuel consumed.

The roundabout used in the study opened in August 2007 at a former designated high-crash location at the intersection of Texas and Maine avenues in Bangor.

In the three years prior to the opening of the roundabout, nine crashes were reported at the intersection; four resulted in injuries and hospitalization was required in three instances. Damages associated with the collisions totaled $300,000, says Garder.

In 2008–2009, three crashes were reported on the roundabout, none of which resulted in injuries. Damages associated with the accidents totaled $8,800, he says.

With regard to traffic flow, drivers may be able to sail straight through roundabouts, just as they may an intersection with a signal light. With routine traffic on a roundabout, though, drivers generally proceed through more quickly than if they have to stop for a red light, he says.

The researchers computed that a driver who travels straight through 10 similar roundabouts daily versus 10 signalized intersections would annually save 14 gallons of gas. If every licensed driver in the country did the same, Garder says 2.7 billion gallons of gas would be saved annually.

Emerging technologies, including automobiles that parallel park themselves and slow in school zones when children are present, show great promise, Garder says. So too do autos in which the driver’s seat shakes if the vehicle crosses the center line.

Garder says these and other technological advances could do for automobile safety what technology has done for large-scale commercial air travel. He credits computerized cockpits with being the main reason there has not been a fatal crash of a large American commercial jet since November 2001.

University of Maine Associate Professor of Political Science Mark Brewer was interviewed for a Channel 5 (WABI) story on federal gun-control policy changes proposed by President Obama, which Brewer says most likely will face tough challenges in Congress. Brewer also discussed the subject as a call-in guest on the Todd Veinotte Show on the St. John, N.B. radio station News 88.9.

Defense policy adviser and author Michael Pillsbury, an authority on China, will discuss “A China Policy for the United States” at 4 p.m., Feb. 4 in 107 D.P. Corbett Business Building. The free public talk is presented by the University of Maine School of Policy and International Affairs. Pillsbury, author of China Debates the Future Security Environment, served during the Reagan administration as Assistant Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning and was responsible for implementing the Reagan Doctrine, a program of covert aid to anti-communist guerrillas and resistance movements in the former Soviet Union. Also an analyst with the RAND Corporation in the 1970s, Pillsbury has served on the staff of four U.S. Senate committees and drafted the Senate Labor Committee version of the legislation that enacted the U.S. Institute of Peace in 1984. He also assisted in drafting the legislation to create the National Endowment for Democracy and the annual requirement for a U.S. Department of Defense report on Chinese military power. For information, or to request disability accommodations, call 207.581.3153.

To: Department Chairs, Graduate Coordinators, and Administrative Assistants
From: Dean Sandweiss and Associate Dean Delcourt
Date: January 15, 2013
RE: Open Nominations for 2013-14 Financial Awards

The Graduate School is currently accepting nominations for competitively-awarded fellowships, assistantships and scholarships for the 2013-14 academic year (see HERE for 2013-2014 Award Nomination Guidelines ). The nomination deadline for the fellowship and assistantship awards is February 8, 2013, and thenomination for scholarships is March 1, 2013. All nominations must be submitted by the graduate program coordinator via the Graduate Schoolwebsite. Graduate Coordinators will need to create an account, and apply for a "faculty" role in order to access the e-nomination forms. If there are any questions, please send an email to crystal.burgess@maine.edu and Crystal will assist you.

Information about the Financial Awards is also available on the Graduate School website within the Faculty Hub. Faculty members will need to create an account (http://www.umaine.edu/graduate/user/register) to view this information, if they have not done so already.

The Graduate Student Government is hosting a workshop on Friday, January 25th from 1-3 p.m. in 57 Stodder Hall titled: "Job Search Tools and Etiquette: Preparing for Non-Academic Careers". 

Career Advisors from the UMaine Career Center will cover the tools and skills necessary to compete in today's job market and will answer questions such as:

What is the difference betweeen a CV and a resume?

What resources do I use to find a non-academic job?

How and when do I negotiate benefits and salary?

How can I be assertive without being pushy?

What are the essentials of a 30-second elevator pitch?

The Career Center Staff will also review student's resumes and CVs.

To register please either call 581-3472 or email CETA@umit.maine.edu by January 20.