UCF in the News

College graduations are in full swing, and many students are gearing up to enter the workforce. But with fierce competition and changing job market dynamics, the search for that first job can be daunting. It takes three to six months for the average college grad to secure employment right after graduation and about 53% of college grads are either unemployed or working a job that doesn’t require a degree. Now, it’s time to put that degree to work. Here are some things to keep in mind to prepare you for the job market. “Internships, internships, internships, internships, internships, undergraduate research – whatever it might be to get these richer experiences while they’re here so that they’ll have so much more to share when it comes time for interviews,” explained Lynn Hansen, Director of Career Services at the University of Central Florida. But if you didn’t get any experience before graduation, spend this summer doing an internship to beef up your resume. Second, networking is key. Attend career fairs, alumni events, and professional networking mixers to connect with potential employers. Also, have a good social media presence. “We encourage students to have a very strong LinkedIn profile,” said Hansen.

K9 Partners for Patriots, an organization created for veteran suicide prevention, sees it every day, for each veteran and K9 partner together regaining their purpose. But, don’t take our word for it. Recent findings from UCF’s School of Social Work indicate that the use of Service Dogs has gained scientific evidence of working well in many situations and for many veterans. More evaluation from both the service dog industry as well as independent scientists is now underway to further determine the helpfulness of service dogs for veterans.

We are well into leisure and hospitality season with summer travel increasing and more folks going out to restaurants and bars. That fun-seeking, plus the rising wages nationwide that were also highlighted in Friday’s numbers, translate into more jobs. Prices at restaurants and entertainment venues may be higher than in the past, but we Americans do like to treat ourselves. Per Sean Snaith, director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting: “The owners of the restaurants and hotels and these other leisure and hospitality-related industries need to hire additional workers.”

The clearest view of America’s economic conundrum is from the sunny beaches of Miami. The city has been growing quickly and jobs are plentiful. But prices, especially the cost of housing, have risen so fast that workers can’t keep up. The 2.7% unemployment rate in the Miami metro area is among the lowest in the country. But inflation was higher than in any other major metro area in April, and housing costs have doubled in just six years. Wages have been rising—but not enough to keep up with prices. Sean Snaith, the director of the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Economic Forecasting, described the Miami region as the poster child for the challenges the Fed faces. Typically, higher rates cool demand and lead to higher unemployment and weaker inflation. “The usual trade-off between unemployment and inflation is just not happening in this tightening cycle,” Snaith said. The experience of cities such as Miami would be a reason for the Fed to hold off on cutting rates this year, Snaith said.

As the space around Earth becomes increasingly cluttered with human-made junk, scientists are ramping up their efforts to safeguard satellites in real time. The latest in that effort are new algorithms being developed at the University of Central Florida (UCF) to automatically monitor and protect spacecraft from bumping into satellites and asteroids in cislunar space — the realm between Earth and the moon, which is under the gravitational influence of both celestial bodies. Because cislunar space is so vast, tracking and predicting the orbits of satellites, spent rocket stages and asteroids is a challenging task, scientists say. The existing infrastructure "is not equipped to provide the needed coverage in cislunar space," Tarek Elgohary, an associate professor of aerospace engineering, said in a UCF statement. "There is a need for fast and accurate solutions to quantify uncertainties to improve predictions and provide [space domain awareness] information in the absence of continuous coverage." The new algorithms are being designed to autonomously track objects and predict collisions in low Earth orbit (LEO), which is expected to become increasingly crowded in the coming decade. Elgohary said the same tools, whose development is largely being funded by the Virginia-based Air Force Office of Scientific Research, could also be used to monitor ships at sea, predict their paths and "spot suspicious behavior in real time."

You’ve read the headlines:“Explosive Atlantic hurricane season predicted for 2024.”“Hurricane forecasts for 2024 predicts the highest number of storms ever.”And, “Long-range forecasts suggest 2024 hurricane season from hell.”What are these headlines really doing? Scaring you, your family, your friends. Don’t be scared, just be prepared is our motto at Spectrum News 13, and it’s a great way to prepare for any storm that may impact us. Dr. Deborah Beidel, a Professor of Psychology and the Executive Director of UCF Restores, has some advice on how to mentally prepare when handling the extreme hype of the upcoming season. “What we find is that when people are worrying about uncertainty, because that’s what this is, the best thing to do is try and plan and prepare,” Beidel says. “I think the best thing to do to parse through the information is to remember that although all these storms might happen, the probability of any one storm hitting us directly is always pretty low. It’s not impossible, but it’s low. So, we shouldn’t think that we are going to be hit by 21 storms or whatever it may be.”

A new theory of how rockets erode moon soil makes a startling prediction: powered lunar landings may fling around four to 10 times more material than previously thought. The work suggests that without sufficient precautions, rocket-lofted lunar dust would pose a serious sandblasting hazard to cargo and crew on the moon. The physicist behind the new calculations, Phil Metzger, is one of the world’s leading experts on how rocket plumes interact with planetary surfaces. Now that his research has been published in two studies in the journal Icarus, he is calling for more global cooperation on the problem as space agencies plan out long-term lunar infrastructure—including human outposts. “The amount of damage [that lunar dust] might cause to a spacecraft could be an order of magnitude worse than we believed,” says Metzger, director of the University of Central Florida’s Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education.

An asteroid that tore through the atmosphere over Germany in January was spinning faster than any other near-Earth object ever recorded, new research suggests. The space rock, dubbed 2024 BX1, turned into a fireball and exploded over Berlin in the early hours of Jan. 21. Although small asteroids on collision courses with Earth are typically detected only when they crash into the atmosphere, scientists spotted this one roughly three hours before impact. That's not the only way 2024 BX1 was unusual, according to a paper published to the preprint database arXiv on April 5. Researchers think the asteroid, which was traveling 31,000 mph (50,000 km/h), was rotating once every 2.6 seconds — the fastest spin ever seen for an asteroid. Previously, the record for the fastest-spinning asteroid belonged to a flying rock called 2020 HS7, which showed a rotation period of 2.99 seconds. That asteroid measured between 13 and 24 feet (4 to 8 meters) in diameter, which is slightly bigger than 2024 BX1 and may explain why the latter spun faster. Asteroids spin for several reasons, such as being propelled back into space after a collision. Because they are more compact, smaller asteroids tend to spin faster than larger ones. "They have internal strength, so they can rotate faster," lead author Maxime Devogèle, a physicist at the University of Central Florida who works with the European Space Agency, told New Scientist. Devogèle and his colleagues studied the rotational speeds of three asteroids, including 2024 BX1, using images they took as the objects approached Earth. The other two asteroids, 2023 CX1 and 2024 EF, were described based on close calls with our planet recorded on Feb. 13, 2023, and March 4, 2024, respectively.