UMBC’s grad students stated that they enjoyed the Dissertation House experience and were pleased with their progress. The week included discussions by the counseling center, an elevator pitch exercise, a writing exercise, and mini-lectures on organization and working with your advisor.  The next Dissertation House will be held at the University of Maryland College Park from tomorrow until Friday.

Students from Gerontology, Information Systems, and Psychology participate in a goal-setting exercise on Day 1 of the UMBC DH.

All students at the UMBC Dissertation House enjoy a daily buffet lunch in UMBC's Skylight Room.

Each mini-lecture includes discussion and feedback. Mini-lectures are scheduled daily between 9 and 10 AM, and between 1 and 2 PM. These students are from Electrical Engineering, Chemistry, and Psychology.

Contact:
Anthony Lane
Communications Manager
(410) 455-5793
alane@umbc.edu

University System of Maryland (USM) scientists have developed an environmentally sustainable and cost-efficient system to increase the world's supply of high-quality seafood. The new technology has formed the basis of a licensing agreement to Maryland Sustainable Mariculture (MSM) LLC, a biotechnology start-up company in Baltimore.

The technology, known as the Recirculating Marine Aquaculture System, was developed at the former University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute (UMBI) and its Center of Marine Biotechnology (COMB) by then-COMB Director Yonathan Zohar, Ph.D. , and his team. Zohar is now chair of the newly formed Department of Marine Biotechnology at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).

"As our oceans run out of fish, the world is in dire need of a consistent supply of high-quality seafood," Zohar said. "The development of this technology marks the culmination of a multi-disciplinary effort, spanning a decade, to develop the next wave of aquaculture technology that produces healthy and clean seafood while having no adverse effect on the marine or coastal environments."

Under the direction of Zohar and former UMBI Director of Technology Transfer Jon Gottlieb, M.B.A., Ph.D., several USM scientists - Harold Schreier, Ph.D., Kevin Sowers, Ph.D., Allen R. Place, Ph.D., Yossi Tal, Ph.D., and Keiko Saito, Ph.D. - developed during the past decade a new generation marine aquaculture system. The system is designed to solve many environmental and biological concerns of current practices.

The breakthrough relies on a recirculating marine aquaculture technology that is environmentally sustainable and protects species from disease. The system's core uses filtration units that incorporate naturally occurring microorganisms to clean the tank water using recurring processes already found in oceans. A byproduct of the manner in which the microbes remove waste products is methane, which is captured for use as a supplemental energy source.

The technology enables a marine aquaculture facility to be located in urban or rural locations or next to airports or markets, thus reducing the carbon footprint of seafood production.

"As a result, clean and healthy fish can be made available wherever there is a demand," Gottlieb said.

As part of a reorganization by the governing University System of Maryland Board of Regents that aligns UMBI centers with other USM institutions to increase technology transfer from research discoveries, the regents have formed a new center, the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET). IMET, a partnership of three USM research institutions with strengths in environmental and life sciences, will expand on the former COMB's assets.

UMBC will collaborate with the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the University of Maryland, Baltimore to advance discovery and technology commercialization in marine and environmental fields. IMET will be based in downtown Baltimore at the former COMB facility.

Unlike the current net-pen aquaculture practices, the USM technology enables the farming of any species of marine fish. It also provides optimal farming conditions that result in faster growth of the fish to market size. The technology was successfully tested at the former COMB facility for the production of the high-value Mediterranean fish seabream (orata) and seabass (bronzini).

Following two successful Dissertation House sessions at the University of Maryland Baltimore (Medical School, Downtown campus), and  UMBC campuses, we are looking forward to welcoming UMCP’s  students next week. This is the first summer that we are hosting Dissertation Houses on all three of the public doctoral research campuses in Maryland and the students say that they appreciate the convenience of having local sessions.  UMCP’s DH will be held in the  Pyon Su  Room 2108 of the  Adele H. Stamp Student Union. Sessions will start at 9:00 AM sharp. Breakfast, lunch, and a snack will be provided free of charge to all participants.

The Dissertation House at UMBC is sponsored by the UMBC Graduate School and PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP. The Dissertation House addresses graduate school retention, a core value of UMBC.

Google announced today that it has acquired Metaweb, the company behind Freebase — a free, semantic database of “over 12 million people, places, and things in the world.” This is from their announcement on the Official Google blog:

“Over time we’ve improved search by deepening our understanding of queries and web pages. The web isn’t merely words — it’s information about things in the real world, and understanding the relationships between real-world entities can help us deliver relevant information more quickly. … With efforts like rich snippets and the search answers feature, we’re just beginning to apply our understanding of the web to make search better. Type [barack obama birthday] in the search box and see the answer right at the top of the page. Or search for [events in San Jose] and see a list of specific events and dates. We can offer this kind of experience because we understand facts about real people and real events out in the world. But what about [colleges on the west coast with tuition under $30,000] or [actors over 40 who have won at least one oscar]? These are hard questions, and we’ve acquired Metaweb because we believe working together we’ll be able to provide better answers.”

In their announcement, Google promises to continue to maintain Freebase “as a free and open database for the world” and invites other web companies use and contribute to it.

Freebase is a system very much in the linked open data spirit, even thought RDF is not its native representation. It’s content is available as RDF and there are many links that bind it to the LOD cloud. Moreover, Freebase has a very good wiki-like interface allowing people to upload, extend and edit both its schema and data.

Here’s a video on the concepts behind Metaweb which are, of course, also those underlying the Semantic Web. What the difference — I’d say a combination of representational details and centralized (Metaweb) vs. distributed (Semantic Web).

Web search guru Danny Sullivan has a great response to the NYT editorial on regulating search engine algorithms: The New York Times Algorithm and Why It Needs Government Regulation. Here’s how it starts:

“The New York Times is the number one newspaper web site. Analysts reckon it ranks first in reach among US opinion leaders. When the New York Times editorial staff tweaks its supersecret algorithm behind what to cover and exactly how to cover a story — as it does hundreds of times a day — it can break a business that is pushed down in coverage or not covered at all.”

Google published its own response to the Times piece as a Financial Times op-ed and also posted it to the Google public policy blog: regulating what is “best” in search?

“Search engines use algorithms and equations to produce order and organisation online where manual effort cannot. These algorithms embody rules that decide which information is “best”, and how to measure it. Clearly defining which of any product or service is best is subjective. Yet in our view, the notion of “search neutrality” threatens innovation, competition and, fundamentally,your ability as a user to improve how you find information.”

The penultimate paragraph gives what they say is their strongest argument againt mandating “search neutrality”.

“But the strongest arguments against rules for “neutral search” is that they would make the ranking of results on each search engine similar, creating a strong disincentive for each company to find new, innovative ways to seek out the best answers on an increasingly complex web. What if a better answer for your search, say, on the World Cup or “jaguar” were to appear on the web tomorrow? Also, what if a new technology were to be developed as powerful as PageRank that transforms the way search engines work? Neutrality forcing standardised results removes the potential for innovation and turns search into a commodity.”

This assumes of course, that there is real competition among Internet search engines. Microsoft has been putting a lot of research and development into Bing with good results and it’s been gaining market share. Yahoo is doing very interesting this as well. Consumer choice among a handful of competitors would be the best way to ensure that none abuse their customers.

Here’s a great resource if you want to come up to speed on ontologies and their importance today.

Professor Barry Smith of the University at Buffalo held a two-day course, An Introduction to Ontology: From Aristotle to the Universal Core, in 2009, to introduce ontologies and their applications to both philosophers and computer scientists. It consisted of of eight lectures for which slides and downloadable videos are available. Paul Alexander has also made the videos available in streaming form here if you want to view them without downloading.

The lectures are all either 60 or 90 minutes. Here are links to the streaming videos, thanks to Paul Alexander:

In what may be a first, today’s New York Times has an editorial about an algorithm. No, they haven’t waded into the P=NP issue, but commented on Google’s algorithm for ranking search results and accusations that Google unfairly biases it for its own self interest.

“In the past few months, Google has come under investigation by antitrust regulators in Europe. Rivals have accused Google of placing the Web sites of affiliates like Google Maps or YouTube at the top of Internet searches and relegating competitors to obscurity down the list. In the United States, Google said it expects antitrust regulators to scrutinize its $700 million purchase of the flight information software firm ITA, with which it plans to enter the online travel search market occupied by Expedia, Orbitz, Bing and others.”

This issue will become more important as the companies dominating Web search (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) continue to increase their importance and also broaden their acquisition of companies offering web services.

The NYT’s position is moderate, recommending:

Google provides an incredibly valuable service, and the government must be careful not to stifle its ability to innovate. Forcing it to publish the algorithm or the method it uses to evaluate it would allow every Web site to game the rules in order to climb up the rankings — destroying its value as a search engine. Requiring each algorithm tweak to be approved by regulators could drastically slow down its improvements. Forbidding Google to favor its own services — such as when it offers a Google Map to queries about addresses — might reduce the value of its searches. With these caveats in mind, if Google is to continue to be the main map to the information highway, it concerns us all that it leads us fairly to where we want to go.