Shannon Carney for The Retriever

A banner hangs in the commuter lounge in the commons boasting that 14 percent of UMBC’s students are “adult learners,” students over the age of 25 obtaining their bachelor’s degree. Often facing different struggles than their younger classmates, adult learners are not always connected to campus.

In a push to better connect with older students, UMBC hosted its first adult learner week. The events ranged from social events to a small technology class.

The happy hour at Flat Tuesdays kicked off the week as a relaxing way for adult learners to get to know each other. Sandwiches, pasta salad and brownies were free offered along with the free popcorn always available. Off-Campus Student Services gave free UMBC shirts to attendants with “AL” printed on the back so students could show their adult learner pride.

About twenty people came to the happy hour, making the small bar feel packed. Some students discussed their favorite childhood television shows such as Doug and Full House. One student proudly passed around her phone to show pictures of her granddaughter.

Bringing this diverse group of people together seems to be part of a new focus for the college. This year OCSS created a new position of an adult liaison to the adult learners on campus which was filled by Joe Winters, an adult learner who is majoring in environmental science and geography and will graduate in spring 2018.

Winters has only been in his position for a few weeks and has already helped organize events, including adult learner week. He is also helping to plan new events and build an online presence to help adult learners connect to each other.

It was difficult for Winters to pinpoint the challenges adult learners face because they encompass such a diverse group of people; the group includes people with or without children, people changing careers or beginning new ones.

“It’s hard to wave a magic wand that will kind of fix everything but we’re kind of learning that, we’re trying to figure out what works,” Winters said.

One struggle that seems to be universal is the issue of time. A husband and a father of two children, Winters himself understands how difficult it is to balance home life and his studies while still being involved on campus.

“I have to figure out when I can be home so I can take [the kids] to swim practice. I have to figure out meals for the week for not just me but for them,” he said.

The schedule for adult learner week reflected the challenge of finding time to get involved. There was a mix of evening events like the happy hour, and morning events like free breakfast.

Going forward, OCSS is looking to place some of their focus on outreach like adult learner week. There is a breadth of resources for students to access on campus that can be underutilized. 

“There is kind of an emphasis on targeting adult learners, so we’re creating a network where those resources can be found,” Winters said.

The post Reaching out to the adult learner appeared first on The Retriever.

Hosea 11:9-10a - “No, I will not unleash my fierce anger. I will not completely destroy Israel, for I am God and not a mere mortal. I am the Holy One living among you,and I will not come to destroy. They will follow me. I, the Lord, will roar like a lion.And when I roar, my people will return trembling from the west.“

“He is God, and not man, as in other things, so in pardoning sin and sparing sinners. If they had offended a man like themselves, he would not, he could not have borne it; his passion would have overpowered his compassion, and he would have executed the fierceness of his anger; but I am God, and not man.

“… If an earthly prince were in such a strait between justice and mercy, he would be at a loss how to compromise the matter between them; but he who is God, and not man, knows how to find out an expedient to secure the honor of his justice and yet advance the honor of his mercy. Man’s compassions are nothing in comparison with the tender mercies of our God, whose thoughts and ways, in receiving returning sinners, are as much above ours as heaven is above the earth.

“…It is a great encouragement to our hope in God’s mercies to remember that he is God, and not man. He is the Holy One. One would think this were a reason why he should reject such a provoking people. No; God knows how to spare and pardon poor sinners, not only without any reproach to his holiness, but very much to the honor of it, as he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and therein declares his righteousness, now Christ has purchased the pardon and he has promised it (Matthew Henry’s commentary).”

Today, let’s thank God and be in awe of who he is and his overflowing compassion. Let us follow him as we have heard/hear his roar in Jesus Christ.

-AP

Until recently, humans had only detected five binary star systems—pairs of stars orbiting each other—that emit extremely high-energy gamma rays. Robin Corbet, an astrophysicist at UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology (CSST), just discovered the sixth, and most luminous, and this one is special. Instead of being in our Milky Way galaxy, it’s located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, our next-door neighbor galaxy, 163,000 light years away.

This marks Corbet’s second gamma ray binary discovery, following his initial detection of such a system through the Fermi gamma-ray space telescope five years ago. After that initial find in 2011, he thought more would follow quickly, but the systems proved elusive. The fact that he found the sixth known gamma ray binary outside of the Milky Way came as quite a surprise. At first, he shares, “I didn’t believe it.”

In order to emit gamma rays, which contain one million times the energy of visible light waves, one of the “stars” in the binary system must be a black hole or neutron star, a star that has collapsed in on itself. “These are more massive than our own Sun but squeezed down to something about the size of Washington, DC,” explains Corbet. Hundreds of these binary systems have been found that emit X-rays, but only a handful emit even higher-energy gamma rays.

Corbet detected the system by analyzing variations in gamma rays coming from about 3,000 known gamma ray sources. In a gamma ray binary system, the intensity of the gamma rays as they strike the telescope varies depending on the relative position of the stars as they orbit each other. Because the gamma ray sources are so far away, only a small percentage of the rays ever reach the telescope. That means it can take a long time to collect enough data to detect a pattern.

Once the Fermi satellite collected enough data, Corbet ran analyses on a 12-core computer for a few months. Looking at gamma rays from all 3,000 sources, the analyses identified two stars orbiting each other every 10.3 days—a new binary system. Then Corbet requested data sets from colleagues around the world that included X-ray, radio wave, and visible light wave data. He hoped the additional information would corroborate the gamma ray signal and confirm the orbital period, which it did. The visible light data also supported the idea that the system contains a neutron star, but there’s still a small chance it could be a black hole.

Binary systems can only generate the energy required to emit gamma rays when the neutron star is rotating very fast. The fact that only six of these systems have ever been discovered suggests that very few neutron stars rotate that quickly, and there may be more slowly-rotating neutron stars than scientists thought.

Calculations suggest the neutron star in the system Corbet just discovered rotates around its axis in less than 39 milliseconds, compared to Earth’s 24-hour rotation. As a star rotates, it flings particles away from its surface, creating a “stellar wind.” With one star in a binary rotating so fast, interactions between particles in the stellar wind from each star can be intense, which is what creates the gamma rays. “It’s like having a particle accelerator in space,” says Corbet.

Next steps for the research include confirming that one star in the system is indeed a neutron star by making observations to directly detect its rotation period, although this is very difficult. Corbet is also interested in tracking the two stars’ orbits, to see if they are truly circular or more elliptical. Because there are so few of these systems, and this is the only one outside the Milky Way, anything learned will inform future research goals and theories about extreme binary star systems.

Read the full paper in The Astrophysical Journal here: A luminous gamma-ray binary in the Large Magellanic Cloud

Image: Yellow circle indicates the gamma-ray binary discovered by Robin Corbet in the Large Magellanic Cloud; photo courtesy NASA Goddard.

Stu Schwartz, senior research scientist for the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE) at UMBC, has long looked with concern at the issue of soil compaction and its effect on stormwater runoff and infiltration. Impervious surfaces, such as roofs, roads, and parking lots, increase stormwater runoff and pollutants in streams and rivers. Schwartz and his students found that standard construction practices can routinely result in green permeable landscapes with compacted soil profiles that produce almost as much runoff as an impervious road or parking lot.

Looking for a better way to create sustainable, attractive landscaping, he dug into the problem of compacted soil and began collaborating with various government agencies to address these issues.

Schwartz and his students worked with the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration’s Office of Environmental Design to demonstrate and refine an alternative to standard topsoiling practices that are commonly used by contractors. The technique—suburban subsoiling—makes the soil less compact and incorporates rich, organic compost into the soil to restore infiltration and water-holding capacity.

This practice needs little to no ongoing irrigation and fertilizer input, functions well technically, and has the markers of commercial success. It can be implemented with relatively minor changes to standard land development practices, and holds great promise as a win-win technology to reduce stormwater runoff while delivering superior sustainable landscaping.

The American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) recently identified this innovation as one of 2016’s “Sweet 16” projects. AASHTO’s “Sweet 16” distinction annually recognizes four high value projects from each geographic region of the United States.

In applying the suburban subsoiling technique, Schwartz and his students have worked with the City of Baltimore and Yorkwood Elementary School. The collaboration aims to reduce the amount of asphalt covering the ground and create construction that can allow the ground to absorb more water. Schwartz’s team developed an alternative way to restore the sustainability profile of the soil after the asphalt was removed and replaced with grass.

Photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture. CC by 2.0.