Maryland State Of Mind; 501

Fundings for Maryland state of mind is provided by the 13 institutions of the university system of Maryland. Additional funding provided by belet your guide through the wilds of communication. Coming up next on Maryland state of mind travel to the flooded lands of Bangladesh and see how a scientist has devised an ingeniously simple idea to save thousands of lives from cholera. Or with the pilots. Who are imperiled by bird collisions and meet the scientists who were trying to minimize these avian accidents. And. The clock is ticking towards the new millennium. But will the world experience computer meltdown from the Y2K crisis can be averted in time. And are these our source code saviors. All coming up next. A Maryland state of mind. Hello and welcome to Maryland state of mind. I'm your host Scott Simon.

Water. Clean pure water may become as much of a global flashpoint in the next century as oil has been in this one. As we begin our fifth season we traveled to Bangladesh a country often flooded by monsoons get clean safe water is a precious commodity. Cholera is a common waterborne disease there which is why Dr. Richard Caldwell of University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute chose to come and study it. She has come up with a novel solution that protects against the disease. For the people of Bangladesh it's an idea that could become. The fabric of their lives. In one of the poorest nations on earth. Thirst is quenched wherever water accumulates. Bangladesh is the land of rivers. Situated in the delta of the Ganges River. The low lying lands are flooded twice a year by monsoon

rains. But in these dirty waters tiny microbes live that cause cholera a disease that sickens thousands each year and kills hundreds of mostly children and the elderly. In a land with per capita earnings have a little over two hundred dollars annually. There are no water treatment plants. There are not enough trees to burn to boil the water. And so there are cholera epidemics occurring with alarming regularity. Dr. Rita Colwell is a marine microbiologist and outgoing president of the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute. She has made a career of studying the tiny micro organisms that cause cholera. To take fish from them. Professor Caldwells work in cholera led her to Bangladesh. As her knowledge of this disease grew she knew she must find a way to help the Bangladesh people

but they were so poor the solution would have to be cheap and simple which likely meant it had to be clever. OK the. Cholera Vibrio affect the human body by causing massive dehydration through diarrhea and vomiting. A person can lose dozens of quarts of water in hours which can kill the old and the young if they are not rehydrated quickly. We've discovered over the last 10 15 years. That the bacterium is associated with plankton microscopic plants and animals in water river water sea water lake water Pannonia. So Dr. COLWELL felt the solution lie in a simple cheap and very common

filtering material. An article of clothing that was a daily part of Bangladeshi life. Material that was available. To every household. Was some of the very inexpensive. Sorry. Cloth they used to make sense. We tried NEMS teacher because the men in Bangladesh were teacher but the teacher material didn't work very well. But the Sari Club folded several times actually folded about four times. Turned out to be very effective in removing the plankton. And when we tested the water microbiological we found that up to 99 percent of a camera was removed. Clear difference specs. All those specs are plankton all

kinds play predominantly according to the work that you've been doing some planting. Let's talk about something else. The other thing that's good about this is that she can rinse that on and just leave it to dry. It can be used over and over again. And because of drownings we don't have a building on biofuel. Right so there won't be any concentrations of bacteria you can roost off. And the film doesn't you. We were told actually that there will be problems that this will be culturally acceptable but we did the experiments and we went out in the field and actually be interviewed families and they found that actually of sorry cloth was designated to be used as a water filter. It would be acceptable. And by doing the experiments ourselves we found that indeed women were very happy to

provide a cleaner better water for their children. Now certainly vaccines will be wonderful and many many people have been working on. But over the last 30 years there has not yet been developed a fully effective fully revived reliable vaccine for cholera. When Dr. COLWELL began studying the micro-organism in the 1960s scientists were uncertain where cholera came from. The conventional wisdom was that it was transferred from person to person. Her studies in bacteria in the sea made her suspect it might come from somewhere in our waterway. So we've been able to show that it's actually present in the environment. Associated with microscopic animals in the environment. Plankton zooplankton in a reservoir. Dr. Guzman's work also includes the algae so that the organism is able to survive in the environment withstand long

periods of dormancy in the environment and during the peaks of a year when the plankton bloom during the spring and for those periods of time the numbers of bacteria increase tremendously because they're associated with plankton. The field knowledge of cholera in Bangladesh was bolstered by the team that Dr. COLWELL established at the Institute for diarrheal disease research Bangladesh. They're combined with data gathered from their field hospital and Ma'at lab. Scientists began to unravel the source of this perplexing bacterium. The excitement of this research is that we have here in Bangladesh doctor is coordinating the research that's going on supervising the scientists here and in the University of Maryland Dr. Harke Anwar Harke is coordinating the research that's been done mostly at the molecular level and suddenly the testing of coordinates very well with research here. So we have this terrific team that's international with our communication via e-mail and all the modern

mechanisms of communication in working synchronously in tandem to accomplish our goals in understanding the origin of code. The initial success of a pilot project to prove the effectiveness of the sorry straining technique has led to a large scale experiment to prove its efficacy beyond a doubt. I recall well back home. Her ability to manage complex scientific research did not go unnoticed. Dr. COLWELL was recently named the director of the National Science Foundation which disperses nearly four billion dollars annually to underwrite scientific research in the US. Our thirsty world's demand for clean safe water will only grow in the future. As water filters through the cotton threads of Asare. We can only regard this human ingenuity with a bit of awe. Rarely do life's problems yield to such elegant simplicity. So when such

solutions do arise we should pause a moment and be grateful for the creative spark of a human mind. My. If you would like to see more about Dr. Rida Caldwells work and career watch for a Maryland state of mind special on this remarkable scientist in December. He brings life to classic films and choirs alike with his irrepressible joy of music. Later on Maryland's state of mind. Birds planes take the same flight path. It's not a question of who we both Lou. Mid-air collisions between our feathered friends and airplanes cost lives. Bird and human and millions don't. So when scientists from University of Maryland Baltimore County began to study how to prevent these avian accidents the

results were anything but bird brain. Their work may save lives today whether they wear feathers or live. These are the bird of Katie's view. There are nearly 10000 different species of birds living on Earth. Perhaps making them the most ubiquitous members of the animal world. Their ability to fly and soar make them unique. No animal can travel faster. And until this century birds had no rivals in the skies. Strapped in a jet aircraft. Men can fly at speeds in excess of 600 miles per hour. And when aircraft and birds come together in a sky disaster can occur seemingly out of nowhere and without warning. Like a barrage of deadly shrapnel bird strikes as they are called pulverise unsuspecting birds and cause major damage to airplanes.

When these. Birds. Get the leading edges of these air they are. Just. An. Enormous energy is released. During these collisions. In fact I Transport Canada has liken this to Windows bird become an elephant. It becomes an elephant. When lose tremendous forces are generated and during a collision similar to that of an elephant basically stomping. Apart. Dr. Phil Seager the director of the Center for Conservation Research and Technology for CCR at the University of Maryland Baltimore County heads a research team that uses high technology to study birds and bird conservation. CCR is now using that same science to develop ways to protect birds where they were once safe. Ever since man took it here and here he is colliding with birds which have been there since the beginning of time.

Birds pose a serious threat to aircraft because they are distributed throughout the atmosphere where aircraft travel. At any given time. Birds fly in different parts of the country low to the ground or a Delta tudes in excess of 20000 feet. Unlike pilots birds don't file flight plans. They are free roaming to avoid bird strikes means pilots have to know where the birds are flying so they can avoid them before it's too late. Currently pilots and other aviation professionals rely on radar visual sightings and other methods to warn a potential bird strike. But such alerts are not always adequate. Understanding bird behavior Dr. Seegars says is key to developing better methods of protecting aircraft and birds bird behavior of course plays a large role. And where do you find these birds in the atmosphere. And at what times you find them they're using state of the art computer programs and technology. The team is developing computer programs in the laboratory that generate bird flight forecast information.

Basically what we're seeing here is the bird flight forecast model. It's designed to display us forecasts of the times and altitudes of bird flight. What we're seeing right here is a forecast of thermal depth and intensity thermal depth the elevation the atmosphere to which is warm currents of air. The birds use to circle high upon can reach because we know how birds use the weather in or to achieve altitude. We can get a forecast. Of bird flight times and altitudes which are related to the weather. And that's right here you just see us broad band right in the middle that shows us how high in this case how high American High-Pockets can fly to. While the CC T-Bird flight programs were being developed more studies were conducted where birds live in the field were actually applying VHF altimeters to the backs of bird. Very high frequency transmitters if you will that transmit a signal from the individual birds that were tracking and monitoring and that signal also carries with it

altitude information from a small altimeter in the device. And these birds are then tagged in the field and we track them from the ground or airplanes and very carefully observe and monitor their behavior for example flapping are soaring and then collecting altitude information. The forecast is generated by taking all sorts of information aerodynamic information on the birds the structure of the wings by understanding what time a year it is whether or not the bird is breathing whether or not it's migrating whether or not foraging. And also combines with all this information the weather information as well. And by combining all this information what we can do is generate. A forecast for any time of the year any time of the day what time and altitude these birds are expected to fire. During takeoffs landings and low level flight. Aircraft are most vulnerable to bird strikes. Seagulls and other birds for example like to hang around airports often flying into the path of airplanes. Although rare when collisions

occur the impact can puncture the airframe shatter the cockpit canopy or worse birds are sucked into the engines like a meat grinder. This has happened several times recently within the last couple of years and AWACS jet taking off in Elmendorf ingested a number of Canada geese and that jet was airborne for only 12 more seconds after takeoff. And 24 souls aboard were lost. And most recently in Nebraska an F-16 collided with a flock of forging an American white pelicans. One of the birds was ingested in the engine as well as several others which impacted the leading services jet and the jet was instantly destructed and crashed and the pilot miraculously survived. During the fall of 98 the CC team will put their bird flight computer model online for the first time using data gathered in the Midwest on the American white pelican. They hope to help the Iowa Air National Guard to avoid future bird strikes.

The idea is that pilots can just treat this just like a weather forecast. They come in before a flight. Look at the weather forecast and see what's expected to happen. They can also look at bird forecasts here. All they'd have to do is come in look at a screen like this and they can see at what times and altitudes. Birds are expected to fly by looking at that information before they go up to fly. They know what altitudes they should avoid the system that we're developing for a bird strike really is one side of a coin when you flip that side of the coin over. This is a tremendous system to conserve avian species on a global scale. This system will enable us to understand how these birds move in the atmosphere how they relate the key habitat and most particularly how they really relate the places where people are beginning to affect their numbers and their very existence. It's coming to the end of the millennium. But is it the end of the computer age as we know

it. Find out later on Maryland state of mind. To experience a film during the silent era was doubly exciting. It combined the excitement of a moving picture with a live performance on a piano organ. A recent showing of the 1925 silent film classic body and soul starring Paul Robeson needed a musical score and there was only one composer for the job. Bill Cummins is a legendary musician choir director and composer from Coppin State College. His lifelong love of music gave him the perfect credentials for the job. So much so that we might call him the music man. OK. Here's a composition that I wrote many many many years back called Waltz of the 20th century. I knew way back when that early

childhood I wanted to become a musician. Being in school I couldn't wait. To the last class. School ended at 2:30. And most kids. Rush. And. Finish their homework and go out to play ball. To. Play marbles or football or whatever. But I couldn't wait for school to end because I had my best friend waiting for me and I was the piano. And as soon as school was over I would rush home and I couldn't wait. And I opened the door. And there it was. Beautiful upright piano waiting for me to play. I was creating music even before I knew the musical notes of theoretical pop music. I've always made up songs and. I remember being in the program at our church. And I forgot the words to one of the songs that I was supposed to

sing. And I just made up the words and people came out to me and said oh we enjoyed the song you created. And that stuck with me up until now some time when I'm on the stage and. If I forget is how to create. So God gave me the gift of music and it was always in me. I guess. Your heart is shallows on a silver screen. Museum of cinema needed a fundraiser and we felt that we needed a different kind of fund raise and what I thought about was what would be different. And I think folk have not seen musicians play a soundtrack for a silent movie. I needed a good solid movie and I came off the live shows body and soul dying young Paul Robeson. Then I needed a musician to do. Obviously the soundtrack. So we asked Bill Cummings who was my music teacher in high school over 25 years ago. I knew who was at Coppin State College to come and put us a school together.

When I watched the entire film there were different moods there. Sad sad scary movies they were happy moods. And one thing I found out that in music. We can portray different moods. I'm sure you've seen the movie Jaws and every time something tragic is about to happen. You hear that same oh and the volume increase as the tragedy nears. And as you can see it it draws in your whole audience and they become a part of the the whole movie. So and watching the film body and so I became a part of the movie. In this scene this is one that I particularly like to the daughter is is trying to. Convince her mother that the reverend is not all what he says to be.

And she's explaining to her mother that on that rainy Sunday night the Reverend and her was caught in the storm and until she didn't get home you know she got home real late probably the next morning. So on this scene here she and the Reverend riding in the horse and buggy. I try to give it a nice flavor. I did get a very good scene is about to rain she holds her cap. The wind is blowing. Loose. Lift her from the carriage when. After.

Viewing. The. Film. About a week. I wrote what I call musical sketch a melodic line for each segment. And coming back. Looking at the film this time. And matching each segment trying it over and over again. And it took me about two weeks to really do it because I was very nervous in my first one. I wanted to be. A successful one and very impressed. And I want my cat to be happy in the audience to be happy to use one of my favorite scenes here where this preacher is forcing this young lady to give him the money that is her mother had saved up to buy her house and she said it's in the Bible and the money was hid in the Bible because her mother thought that no one a thief wouldn't come and look inside of the Bible to steal money. He tells her to get it now.

And by the inflection of the crowd the. Strain on his face I can see that something like this when he started out with. Her all being allowed. To. Try to present that night 1920s. Was. Mainly. The piano. I wanted to be very natural. The old silent film used use an organ or a piano. So I wanted to keep it in that. That flavor. The audience was very enthusiastic and very impressed. They actually hear live music during the filming of the showing of body and soul. And Bill Cummings again was as professional as talented as he usually is. Music is my life. We can explain it. You can see it you can only. Feel it have different moods it can make you cry. To make you laugh.

You know music without it. This will be a sad sad world. Just how symphonic is an orchestra created in just three weeks and made up of college students you be the judge later on Maryland state of mind of the new millennium arrives at midnight on December 31st 1999. People will certainly be celebrating this momentous milestone but they may also be holding their breaths with the dreaded right to prices devastate our computerized world. Well the lack of two digits really paralyzed posterity.

An entrepreneur with the university system of Maryland is directing a dramatic rescue operation training hundreds of source code safeguards at work. Let's. Hope we fix the millennium bug before it fixes us. Computer technology has transformed the way the world works. It's hard to go through a day without interacting with some kind of microprocessor controlled device. But it's the mainframe computer the PC's big daddy that still conducts most of the world's business.

And as we approach the millennium we've discovered a bug in the computer code developed by early mainframe programmers. That just may bring our whole computerized world. To a screeching halt. To the Y2K problem in a nutshell is a date problem. The computers simply don't understand four digit dates but more than that. It's a labor pool problem. There simply aren't enough people with the technical skills and background to be able to help companies become compliant. Appears to be to help solve both of these problems and to provide a way for students to pay for their education. The university system of Maryland created the year 2000 fellowship program. Jim Hill is the executive director.

When we look at what industry needs and remember all of this is triggered to support the needs of companies and industry. They told us that the most important thing was that the students or these fellows had the general capacity. To program. Once accepted into the program. The students go through an intensive seven week course. The first thing we're exposed to is the general concept of the Y2K problem. In this case we're looking at a Cobol program. Then they go through understanding COBOL learning COBOL very quickly. Understanding how to recognize data. And doing the year 2000 remediation what the person will be looking for is the presence of date fields whether or not they have two characters or four characters in the near field. And then you've got to learn how to remediate it how to go in and change them. We have a terrific partner with the folks at Calver. They develop this curriculum. Paul now directs the year 2000 education program for caliber learning.

We came together with the idea that since there was a shortage of not only information technology people and we anticipated a bigger shortage because of the Year 2000 problem and people that are going to need to know COBOL and the mainframe languages that we should do something as far as training those people. The concept was that we would bring people who had an aptitude who had the educational benthic work they're working on their way toward a computer science degree or a information technology degree. The time is now to get them into the workplace. Justin Kelly a recent graduate of the Y2K Bootcamp is now working for PG&E. I'm an undergrad. I'm a junior right now and I intend to keep going to school. I want to take some night classes while I'm down here to work. I got interviewed by ten other companies and I guess people like me and I'm not like them and this is a program that. Just

reformats the date fields. These are all fields in here and I'm worried about the ones that say leave before. For. The Prefect's. They're there have your day effective something service effective gas service effective electric service and this is a code for any format that I'm using that we age the data and then we. Set the system date like. January 1st 2000 and fast. I mean us gosh 100000 lines of code in this shop. A lot of data. I think with. A monster effort and a dedicated approach I believe that we should be able to cross over without any problems. Feel like the Saviour the Savior the next millennium. So it should be after years that this is a very good way to go. Can a small army of COBOL Warriors stamp out the year 2000 bug.

For. Here's the problem much bigger. Every computer needs to be checked. My computer here has to be checked. It's a year old. If to check the BIOS is the basic input output system. Then you have to check the software that's on that computer system. In many instances the software is built on old COBOL type programs and they will fail in the World Trade Tower buildings in New York Manhattan. They went to the computers that control the elevators and they turned the clocks on the computers to 2001 one computer turned off the elevator and sent it to the basement. Because when it read 2001. He said wait a minute. Nobody's done maintenance on this elevator for 90 so much. Yes the elevator went to the roof and they kept working. These elevators were sequential they were made at the exact same time by the exact same manufacturer but they all reacted completely differently to the Y2K problem because they

couldn't understand that that almost everything in our society today runs off some kind of microprocessor microchip. I mean Mercedes cars go over 50 chips and disaster matters 50 billion PC embedded chips that have been manufactured and maybe 1 to 3 percent have a problem of 1 percent or 50 billion. Five hundred million. That's 500 million ships that have a date problem. If I can get cash out of my 80 m for a week or so. I'm in trouble. Well a lot of people are planning to go out and late December get a couple of thousand dollars to tide them over. The federal government informed us that they are preparing. To print $80 billion in extra currency. We will not be able to supply enough technicians for even Merrills. But what we tried to do is to show folks a way to do this and that it should be replicated around around the country and around the world. We as Americans

tend to think we can wait till the last minute so rather than fix things or file for an extension where there is no extension for the Y2K it is a date certain and it is a brick wall. Those computers do not understand what happens when it goes to zero zero. We don't know what they're going to do. And there's no way to fix it except to fix. You can't put it off. Research isn't limited to just science or history. And 2000 college students proved that one incredible event this spring. Later in our program. Symphony orchestras take years to achieve the cohesion and Fusion necessary to perform great classical music. So there's more than a little anxiety when a group of collegiate musicians gather in college park each summer with the goal of creating a symphony but in a mere three weeks this diverse group coalesces into a

talented orchestra that can capture the essence of Elgar or the sublimity of Strauss. Their performances draw crowds and recruiters for major symphonies are like propping her remark I hear a symphony. For the past 11 summers. The sound of music has drifted across the university of Maryland for three weeks in June. Nearly 100 elite young musicians gathered to attend the national orchestral Institute a prestigious music festival that can help launch their careers. The National orchestral Institute has virtually put. The college park campus here on the musical map. Professionals in the music field. Look at the NY as one of the finest training programs for orchestral musicians in this country. In 1987 the school of music tap Don Reinhold a pianist and member of the summer school faculty to organize the NY the three weeks

the end of an extremely intense period of activity. What the public sees are three public concerts conducted by three major conductors. What is not seen by the public is intense coaching that's going on in the early part of each week and this instruction is being given by the principal musicians of the major work histories of this country. Make each year's festival begins with intensive nationwide auditions we had just over 800 live auditions in 18 cities and what they are asked to play at the audition is the standard concerto accept such as a Mozart concerto and then switch to excerpts that show different techniques and styles. We finally select some 90 musicians to form the orchestra. He also assembles a teaching staff of the highest caliber.

The coaching is phenomenal. It's so wonderful for each instrument we have master classes where we can work individually on the excerpts and solo repertoire if we so choose. And then we have coaching groups. Three top flight conductors share directing responsibilities each leading a Saturday night concert featuring the best and most demanding music of the classical repertoire. Yet in this moment the ends of notes when you have a 48 don't kill. Ok just one a little bit you don't have to murder them. All of the students are superb players but many have yet to learn the intricacies of playing in an orchestra. When I'm working on these pieces I'm trying to point out what they need to be listening for. There are moments where you need to lay back and listen for someone else or. Or I try to rehearse so that the violence know that they're what the English horn or whatever it is so that they hear ones really think think they're sound before you play you know to me try to think that trombone. And. I would say it's very small business with maybe just a little more space to

match it just a hair. The learning curve of this particular group is so great that after the second or third rehearsal it becomes very hard to tell the difference between. What was originally a student orchestra at the beginning of the week and a top notch professional orchestra by the end of the week the master class is focused not only on the upcoming concert but on the all important skill of taking auditions but the coaches here because they've gone through it and they've won great jobs and great orchestras. They know exactly what to expect from the people they're auditioning and what they did to get the job is one of the things that we want to avoid at the audition is sounding like a machine gun. You know once you get the stroke you don't want to sound like you know no kid leaves here without learning something important. A new Associated with going into orchestral playing. I don't think I could exist as a musician. Just playing. I really need to have that

working together with young people. It's very difficult to land an orchestral job. The audition process is excruciating. It's extremely competitive. Anywhere from 100 to 200 people will show up for one position. The pressure is extreme because you know that you need to play almost perfectly if you're auditioning for a principle position. You want to show a lot of individualism and creativity and something that makes you stand out whereas if you're auditioning for a second position you want to play well but you don't want to be too big you don't want to have a sound that's too individual. You want to show that you can blend. Perhaps the greatest reward for the students is playing the Saturday night concerts. This week the program features Brahms Fourth Symphony and Rijkaard Strauss his epic tone poem I'm held in Lavan halgan Liben is on every. Audition that you'll ever take because it's so technically demanding and it's a piece that

requires great great control and great strength technically for the strings is very challenging it's got the most famous violin solo in the entire orchestral repertoire. Twenty year old Madeline Adkins has won the concert master's chair and thus the opportunity to play the solo. Playing with consummate skill. She nails it. Although technically easier the Brom's requires greater maturity to play. It's introspective for Brahms very very thoughtful very pensive.

And especially the first moment really requires taking it apart and putting it back together and thinking about it a lot. Every concert represents an opportunity for the orchestra to share in the artistry and genius of great composers like Brahms and Strauss being a part of that brilliance is why young musicians like Claudine Bigelow chose their life's path. It takes a lifelong passion and dedication to be a musician. You can't do it for how much money you're going to. Bring. To School artistically. This is the best way I've found to have a beautiful and. Successful careers in music are never guaranteed. But Don Reinhold knows he's done his best to prepare these splendid young musicians. This is in a way a dream team. That happens here in College Park every year and would be very difficult to convey that in words you would have to hear

them to. Will our nation's welfare reform efforts really work or will some of our citizens suffer. We study the questions and provide some answers later on. Maryland state of mind. Research is often thought of as occurring in science labs or in dark dusty libraries. But at the National Conference of undergraduate research this spring at Salisbury state thousands of college students prove that research can be done in dance music and drama. It was a fascinating exchange of ideas. One we call a meeting of the mind. The term research usually conjures up a vision of a scientist huddled over a lab bench experimenting with boiling beakers of strange and mysterious chemicals.

But research can explore the life and times of the legendary Sophie Tucker but. After you for its quality can. Determine a chemical reaction or the reaction to a flute Sonata. Or unravel the secret of life or the hidden meaning in West African dance. These and more traditional topics provided a diversity and excitement in this spring's National Conference on undergraduate research better known as N.A.. Salisbury state university played host to over two thousand undergraduates and advisers from the United States and a number of foreign countries. In this meeting of the minds. Scientific topics dominated ranging from computer simulations of ant behavior. It's not actually learning from the simulation. It's what we learn from doing the simulation how we achieve this how it's connected together and if it works. If the ants

actually were like real ants That's pretty amazing how many years away would we from actually modeling a human in a computer to the ecological impact of a plant species clogging the Chesapeake Bay. Are different trends in features and macro diversity. So it was fun it was it was good to I guess tell me what we're doing instead. Now this is really interesting. I like to explain that real Dan.. This is the 12th national conference and it started out back in 1987. University of North Carolina Asheville with about 300 participants. It has grown since then to become a conference of about 2000 participants you. Add. Presenters and their faculty sponsors and their friends come along. At a graduate research really is being seen in a new light as a significant part of an undergrad education. More and more colleges and universities across the country see that it represents the best. Forms of involving faculty and students in

a close mentoring relationship. The conference featured prominent researchers Marine microbiologist Dr. Rita Caldwell from the University of Maryland biotechnology Institute described her work on cholera and assessed the importance of undergraduate research. The single most important factor in success in science for a young person is research experience. If you take Nobel laureates Prize winners people who are Ruchi faculty eminence and so forth and success in industry the single common factor is an undergraduate research experience. Historian Dr. Quintard taylored challenged the myths held about African-Americans in the old west. Was the was never really different for African-Americans. That was the focus of my research and indeed in some ways that's the title of the book. Was it a place where black folks could go beyond a racial frontier and find both freedom and opportunity.

The student presentations utilize different formats the more formal oral presentations were made to an audience of their peers. While poster presentations allowed for a more casual but up close and personal examination and interrogation. Well the head is a small diving duck and it sounds rabbit Chesapeake Bay. My interest to the head is there an increasing population. Well most of the species on the bay are decreasing. I wanted to look at what this population increase is doing to them in the bay weather where they like to go and if there's any population with me as a result of that atomic force as I say first are just groups of atoms. I'm anywhere from a few to a few thousand. There's something in between just single atoms and bulk materials. So we're concerned with what properties they might have that are different from the table or the floor or just isolated atoms is named after the legend of John Henry the man who challenged the machine and laying down the track and he won.

But then he died from a heart attack right after beating it. And so Sherman Dane found this phenomenon happening with an American. Many people use Hoberman determination to deal with the stress but then instead of dying right away they had the adverse health effect of hypertension and high blood pressure. And of course research into drama dance and music added a bit of spice to the conference and the sweet smoke comes from a broken mellow old pop. Sweetest piece is one that soft brown and dry. Serious research demands serious relaxation and so a trillion grains of sand were shaped into a gigantic beach party at the epicenter of campus. The serious became the silly. While the sublime was put aside for Salzar. The celebration of serious research by young scholars bodes well for the nation

for they are the future. They are honing skills that will change the paths of medicine of science even history. It truly was a meeting of the minds. If you would like more information on the stories featured on Maryland state of mind. Call 1 800 4 7 7 8 4 3 7. Or visit our Web site w w w dot NPT dot org slash mind in contemporary society we often define ourselves by our work. What we do or don't do says much about who we are. So when legislative leaders reformed our welfare laws across the country there was controversy and how these new laws would affect our society. Would people really leave welfare and find jobs. Would the work be meaningful or would it be makework would some individuals fall through the safety nets and suffer particularly children. A researcher from the University of Maryland

Baltimore has been carefully analyzing the data in Maryland and the nation has gained a valuable resource through her work study. Today we are taking an historic chance to make welfare what it was meant to be. In August 1996. After years of debate President Clinton signed the federal welfare reform to play the hand of a public welfare system as we have known it for a year is going to be a million program. Was going to probably be referred to in Alaska as well for narcotic welfare reform. It's welfare. Since then our country's welfare system has changed completely. Families face a five year lifetime limits on cash assistance. How is welfare reform working in Maryland. Are the new regulations hurting Maryland families. Dr. Katherine Bourne of the University of Maryland School of Social Work is a major authority on welfare reform and her research was vital to the planning

process of Maryland's Department of Human Resources and deputy secretary Linda Fox. I think Marilyn was ahead of many other states because we did anticipate change and because we had a very inclusive process in planning our welfare reform. Dr. Bourne has studied the welfare population in Maryland for some 20 years now and she actually looked very closely at the experiences of a group of people that entered the welfare rolls in 1989 and we took that information and we designed a strategy where we would work with the most job ready first to free up resources to invest in those families that had more significant barriers to employment. So our fundamental strategy was based directly on Dr. Bourne's work. Dr. Bourne's research helped Marilyn make a relatively smooth transition to the new federal requirements. Her current study of life after welfare has made Maryland the first state in the nation with hard data on the effects of reform on

families and children as we designed welfare reform we knew that we would be asked certain critical questions as we implemented it. And clearly one of those was what happens when people leave welfare do people leave welfare and end up worse off because they haven't attained and climate or do they really truly leave welfare for work. I think there are many questions of course because we did not. Reform welfare we actually repealed it in this country and replaced it with something else. But the big question that everybody's interested in I think are who's leaving welfare under the new system what are their sticks. How do they compare to the characteristics of people still on the rolls through identifying and tracking a large sample of family leaving cash assistance. Dr. born and her staff have learned a great deal about how Maryland's family investment program is working. We started our research on the first day of reform in Maryland. We've issued two reports so far in our life after welfare series The most recent one was

in March of this year. I think the key findings that are of greatest interest to people are are pretty straightforward and simple. The first one is that people are leaving welfare voluntarily they're not leaving because they're being thrown off the rolls for noncompliance. The second is that the vast majority of adults are finding jobs that they're able to take those jobs and they're not coming back on the welfare rolls. The other finding that I think is probably most important to everyone is the effects on children. We've seen absolutely no evidence that children are coming into foster care after their families leave welfare. Brandy Rozier joined a training program at Giant Food and now works at the customer service desk while she attends college. I like working here because the atmosphere the people the customers. Has to show a girl and the boy working part time does not provide me with enough. Money to. Support my family but I'm trying. I'm continuing to go to school and become a pharmacist and I'm trying to get into the pharmacy and giant.

We've actually gotten to date every 120 welfare recipients through this program. And today you know we have experienced a tremendous retention rate of about 80 percent. After six months of employment individuals that we're getting from the program are typically average to above average performers. Looking to start or pursue careers and make a life for themselves. Linda Mead director of social concerns for Catholic Charities has some caveats about the results of the life after welfare study. There's no question but the entire state advocacy community is very pleased that there is research going on about families leaving welfare but this in no way the information that we're getting from this report should in no way indicate that Maryland is at all looking at families who live in poverty. Most of the families moving off of welfare to work will continue to live in poverty and that is clearly a grave concern of all of us. I don't know that we can be sure whether

moms who have left welfare for work are going to be able to retain their job. We do know that the moms who have left welfare for work are working at very low wages. And whether these wages six dollars an hour are going to be able to sustain a family a mother and two children say is questionable. One of the things that's unique and makes us a national leader here in Maryland with our approach to this research is that we're not just taking a snapshot we're going to be following at least 4000 families over a period of at least two years. The beauty and the relevance of this research is that we are able to feed back information into the policy making process in a timely fashion so that mid-course corrections can be made if need be. Things are working out so far for tendre Martin. She has worked as a loss prevention officer at the greenbelt Mary out for a year. She will leave soon to take a promotion at a much larger Marriott Hotel.

Since I started working here. I received my GED. My high school diploma. Now. I. Have my own apartment. And I'm paying rent. My son is doing well. Unfortunately many other states cannot begin to answer the question what happens when people leave welfare. Most states cannot document that people are being employed or what types of jobs people are being employed. Other states are now beginning to model their studies after hours. In no small part I think because the federal government constantly keeps referring to Maryland as the national model of how this ought to be done we are well on our way to reforming welfare in this state. But if what we really want to do as a state or a country is end poverty that's going to require the involvement of a whole lot of people outside of the university system and the welfare system itself. I think that distinction between reforming welfare and ending poverty is the most

important thing to keep in mind. Once again we've given you a brief tour of the frontiers of knowledge led by our guides from the university system of Maryland. We'll be back this winter with another set of adventures from the cutting edge of knowledge. We hope you'll join us for Maryland state of mind. I'm Scott Simon. Good Night. My. Funding for Maryland state of mind is provided by the 13 institutions of the

university system of Maryland. Additional funding provided by Bell Atlantic. Your guide through the wilds of communication