The University of Maryland’s Independent Student Newspaper
M O N DAY, D E C E M B E R 1 , 2 01 4
City struggles to fill Barking Dog space A year after bar’s closure, large venue proves challenging for officials looking to revamp Route 1 By Eleanor Mueller @eleanor_mueller Staff writer Dark and deserted for more than a The barking dog closed in November 2013 after two year, The Barking Dog looks poised to years of business. Officials said the building’s size stay that way, despite College Park’s has made filling it difficult. file photo/the diamondback
efforts to find a new tenant and students’ wishes for a new establishment. “Places up and down Route 1 where there’s empty space, we want to move as quickly as we can to have them filled and having activity,” city Mayor Andy Fellows
said. “Something like The Barking Dog, which is part of a well-traveled area. … Residents and those used to having a place there do miss those sites and are curious about the next thing coming.” Though the bar officially closed in November 2013, the city has had no luck getting another tenant to take over the 15,000 square-foot space. City economic development coor-
A FaILED FINALE
Wellness program for staff concerns univ, USM administrators
Terps squander 25-point lead to fall to Rutgers on Senior Day
By Katishi Maake @TheHavocRat Staff writer
By Daniel Popper @danielrpopper Senior staff writer
In an effort to reduce the cost of health insurance and encourage healthier living, this state will roll out its own wellness program Jan. 1, which has some university officials concerned. The program will require state employees and non-Medicareeligible retirees and their spouses to participate or pay penalties that increase over time, according to the state Department of Budget and Management. “The main goal of the program is to slowly improve the health of our covered population,” said Anne Timmons, DBM employee benefits division director. “By doing that, it will allow us to flatten the trend line that we can avoid cost shifting to the participants.” The program will follow a carrot-stick model that gives state
All Jeremiah Johnson could do was watch. T he senior cornerback had spent five years as a member of the Terrapins football team. He’d sprinted out of the tunnel at Byrd Stadium dozens of times. He’d broken up passes, made tackles, celebrated with teammates and made memories. But on his final play on his home field, Johnson could do nothing but look on as Rutgers quarterback Gary Nova took a knee to seal a 41-38 victory after the Terps squandered a 25-point lead on their Senior Day. “I was just upset. I wish that it had to end on a play where we could actually do something,” CORNERBACK JEREMIAH JOHNSON dives in an attempt to bring down Rutgers quarterback Gary Nova in the Terps’ 41-38 loss to the Scarlet Knights on Saturday. The Terps blew a 25-point first-half lead in the defeat, which dropped their record to 7-5 in coach Randy Edsall’s fourth season. christian jenkins/the diamondback
Researchers develop tiny batteries for max function
Coursera’s U-backed courses draw 1.2 mil By Darcy Costello @dctello Senior staff writer
By Joe Zimmermann @JoeMacZim Staff writer
eleanor gillette, a chemistry doctoral candidate and study co-author, explains the nanobattery she is working on. University researchers developed highly efficient batteries smaller than a hair. alexander jonesi/the diamondback Batteries of such a size are worth studying in their own right, said Chanyuan Liu, the lead author of the study, but their small size and straightforward design actually make them very efficient at holding charge. “We’re using traditional materials,” said Liu, a doctoral student in materials science at this university,
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University MOOCs example of course format’s success
Devices smaller than a hair open research doors
Typical batteries are big, overcomplicated and slow to charge, but university researchers have developed batteries that they say combine form and function for greater use and research. These batteries have a simple structure, which means they take on charge quickly, and each one is thousands of times smaller than a human hair. In a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology last month, scientists and engineers at this university demonstrated how they built working batteries on the nanoscale using a structure called nanopores, which are ceramic membranes with billions of pores in every square centimeter. In each of these pores lies a miniscule battery.
See Bars, Page 3
FOOTBALL | SCARLET KNIGHTS 41, TERPS 38
State preps employee health plan
See Wellness, Page 2
dinator Michael Stiefvater pointed to the building’s size as the primary reason for the difficulty. “The Barking Dog is a unique building,” Stiefvater said. “It’s difficult to find someone to take over that kind of spot.” Most restaurants require only a third of that space, he said.
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“but because we’re using these nanoscale alignments of each nanopore and connect[ing] them in parallel, this enables … a short distance between two electrodes in a straight channel, and that enables the very fast charging of our battery.” See batteries, Page 2
With a full-time job and twin boys to take care of, Josephine Albert doesn’t have a lot of spare time. So when she considered pursuing a further degree, rather than looking at on-site university courses, Albert turned to online classrooms. This eventually led her to a massive open online course offered by Hank Lucas, a university information systems professor. “MOOCs are shaking things up, and change is a good thing every now and then,” said Albert, a student enrolled in Lucas’ course. “It’s forcing higher education institutions to really think about where we are now, what students want and where we’re going to be in a few years.” The course, Surviving Disruptive Technologies, is one of 14 university-affiliated MOOCs offered on Coursera, a platform on which people can take free online classes from more than 80 universities and organizations nationwide. Since the
university’s Teaching and Learning Transformation Center began developing MOOCs, 1.2 million students have taken a university-affiliated Coursera course — a number the center hopes to increase in coming years, said Ben Bederson, associate provost of learning initiatives. The teaching center released its first request just less than two years ago, Bederson said. The university is now on its third round of requests and hopes to add four courses. This university partnered with Vanderbilt University to offer a specialization in Android development in January and more than 250,000 students signed up for the programming course component, Bederson said. “You can’t really create a specialization like this any other way,” Bederson said of the MOOC format. “You can’t get a chemistry degree when some classes are at this university and some are elsewhere.” Although MOOCs are offered to students for free, it costs students $50 to receive the authenticated course certificate from Coursera. Aside from the certificate, Bederson said there are nonmonetary benefits to MOOCs, such as bringing positive attention to See moocs, Page 3
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