The North American electric power system has been called the world’s largest interconnected machine and is a key part of our national infrastructure. The power grid is evolving to better exploit modern information technology and become more integrated with our cyber infrastructure. This presents unprecedented opportunities for enhanced management and efficiency but also introduces vulnerabilities for intrusions, cascading disruptions, malicious attacks, inappropriate manipulations and other threats. Similar issues are foreseen for other cyber-physical infrastructure systems including industrial control systems, transportation, water, natural gas and waste disposal.

A one-day Smart Grid Cyber Security Conference will be held at UMBC on February 15, hosted by the UMBC Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Department and Maryland Clean Energy Technology Incubator. The conference will be a comprehensive presentation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology regarding an Inter-agency Report 7628 (NISTIR 7628) named Guidelines for Smart Grid Cyber Security which is a critically important document for guiding government, regulatory organizations, industry and academia on Smart Grid cybersecurity. This regional outreach conference is valuable to any organization that is planning, integrating, executing or developing cyber technology for the Smart Grid.

The conference is free, but participants are asked to register in advance to help us organize for the correct number of participants.

A full copy of the 600 page report is available here.

UMBC's trial access to Oxford Bibliographies Online has been renewed. The trial runs through February 21, 2011.

Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO) is a library of disciplined-based subject modules. In each subject module, leading scholars have produced a literary guide to the most important and significant sources in an area of study they know best. The guides feature a selective list of bibliographic citations supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult. Each topic has a unique editorial commentary to show how the cited sources are interrelated. The citations promote discoverability as they link out to the sources via your library collection or through Google books and more.

For off-campus access, please login via VPN first (http://vpn.umbc.edu). Then follow the link under "News & Events" on the library homepage. For more info on remote access, see http://aok.lib.umbc.edu/services/remoteaccess.php

Please let us know what you think. Leave a comment or send your comments to Drew Alfgren at alfgren@umbc.edu.

Palanivel Kodeswaran will defend his Ph.D. dissertation, "On the use of context and policies in declarative networked systems", at 10:00am on Monday, 31 January in ITE 325. The research was directed by Professor Anupan Joshi. The defense is open to the public.

Abstract: Managing complex networks while ensuring that certain high level goals such as security are met is a complicated process. This is evidenced by the recent Internet outages caused by operators misconfiguring BGP routers. Clearly, there is a growing need to separate the high level goals/policies from the low level mechanisms that implement the various services. We propose a declarative framework for specifying and enforcing high level policies in networks. The declarative framework offers flexibility in terms of specifying the higher level goals rather than focusing on the lower level mechanisms employed in the implementation, and robustness in terms of recovering from failure. One of the key building blocks of our framework is to allow applications to expose their semantics, thereby allowing the underlying network to exploit the semantics and provide better-than-best-effort service where possible. Our framework employs semantic web languages such as OWL and RDF to formally express application and network specifications, and thereby leverages the inherent reasoning and conflict resolution capabilities of these languages. Once the applications and networks are formally specified in our framework, operators can write adaptation policies to jointly adapt the application and network layers in response to changing network conditions. Our experiments with video over wireless show that the joint adaptation provides higher performance compared to no adaptation as well as application/network layer alone adaptation. Furthermore, the adaptation policies are easy to express in our framework and can be dynamically changed at run time. We also show how our framework can be used to automatically configure BGP routers. High level organizational routing policies can be captured in our framework through appropriate ontological specifications. These specifications which can then be checked for correctness are automatically compiled into appropriate low level BGP configurations by our framework and installed on the routers. Furthermore, the logical basis of our specifications enables reasoning, and routers can engage in an argumentation with their neighbors to diagnose and recover from routing misconfigurations through policy controlled reconfigurations. In cases where the argumentation protocol does not converge or the reconfiguration needed is not permitted by policy, the network administrator is alerted along with a log of the argumentation protocol executed so far, helping in isolating the location and cause of failure.

AASHE is gearing up for the fourth edition of its semi-annual Global Edition! From building solar cars in Palestine to adopting fair trade campus policies in New Zealand, the AASHE Bulletin: Global Edition covers the continued strides made by college and university campuses around the globe toward sustainability. Institutions from more than 15 countries were represented in the August 2010 issue and AASHE would like to hear what your institution has been up to since then.

We invite press releases and news article suggestions for inclusion in the upcoming issue, slated for a late-February release. Topics include green buildings, climate and energy initiatives, new educational programs, waste reduction efforts and more. To submit an item for consideration, email a hyperlink to the news story or press release that is posted online to bulletin@aashe.org with the subject line, “global edition.” The deadline for submissions is Feb. 21, 2011.

Please review the Global Edition Submission Guidelines before sending articles.

The CSEE Department's two new Cybersecurity graduate programs begin this semester.

Graduate Certificate in Professional Studies: Cybersecurity Strategy and Policy

This four-course graduate certificate can be completed in a year. Because these courses are not technical (although a technical background may be helpful), this program is available to students with a variety of undergraduate backgrounds. Once accepted into the M.P.S.: Cybersecurity, all four courses count toward that degree. Students may choose to take this certificate by itself, or they may take this certificate and then later complete the master’s.

Master's in Professional Studies: Cybersecurity

This ten-course master’s degree incorporates courses in cybersecurity strategy, policy, and management with more technical, hands-on cybersecurity courses. Rather than having to choose between a management or policy-oriented cybersecurity degree or a completely technical cybersecurity degree, the M.P.S. allows you to customize the mix of courses that best meets your career development needs. The master’s degree may be completed in two to three years, depending on how many courses you take each semester. Classes are offered fall, spring, and summer semesters. M.P.S. courses are offered in a classroom or hybrid (50% online, 50% classroom) format. This approach offers flexibility for students while also providing opportunities for in-person professional networking through a dynamic seminar and research experience.

Social Sciences Forum
Spring 2011 Lecture Series

Wednesday, February 9 at 4pm
Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Reading and Discussion of Not In My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City

Antero Pietila, Author and Former Reporter for The Baltimore Sun
Co-sponsored by the Department of English and The Retriever Weekly

Thursday, February 24 at 4pm
Albin O. Kuhn Library, 7th floor

Baltimore School Desegregation and the Challenges of Understanding Race

Howell Baum, Professor, School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, University of Maryland, College Park

Monday March 14 at 4pm
Albin O. Kuhn Library, 7th floor

The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System

Barry Eichengreen, George C. Pardee and Helen N. Pardee Professor of Economics and Political Science, University of California, Berkeley

Mullen Lecture
Sponsored by the Department of Economics

Wednesday, March 16th at 4pm
Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Negotiating Contaminated Identities: Gender, Water, and Development in Altered Waterscapes

Farhana Sultana, Professor of Geography, Syracuse University; Chair and Organizer of the 'The Right to Water' conference

Korenman Lecture
Co-sponsored by the Gender and Women's Studies Program 

Monday, April 25 at 4pm
Albin O. Kuhn Library, 7th floor

Being Face-to-Face But Not Seeing Eye-to-Eye: Divergent Goals and Experiences During Interracial Interactions

J. Nicole Shelton, Professor of Psychology, Princeton University

Second Annual Distinguished Lecture in Psychology
Sponsored by the Department of Psychology

Wednesday, May 4 at 4pm
Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery

Sing Out! Pete Seeger and American Reform

Allan M. Winkler, Distinguished Professor of History, Miami University in Ohio

Low Lecture
Co-sponsored by the Department of History

Do a Web search for megabucks and you will get this: Google boss get $100 million payout

Will you go to SOTU with me? Congress gets ready to mix it up.

A possible piece of history gets a definite payout.

And, the Steelers and the Packers head to Super Bowl XLV.

Jesus might love everybody, but not the President of the United States according to the conservative comedy site JesusHatesObama.com. The site states that it doesn’t actually believe that Jesus hates Obama, and says in friendly Comic Sans font that they are just exercising free speech.

The creator, Richard Belfry, commented, “Do I really believe that Jesus hates Obama? Absolutely not.”

The company attempted to run a Superbowl ad for it’s “Jesus Hates Obama” message and merchandise.  Superbowl ads are no strangers to controversy- remember the pro-life commercial that aired last year?- but in a somewhat surprising move, Fox refused to air the ad.

You can watch the rejected ad on Youtube

Do you think this is just a harmless joke, or an extreme statement? Was Fox right to reject the ad?