UCF in the News

The University of Central Florida Police Department now has the ability to livestream a police officer’s body camera video directly into their headquarters. The technology isn’t new — but using it on a college campus is. Sgt. Greg Larkin demonstrated the capability for News 6 from an upstairs conference room at UCF police headquarters. We watched live as his officer down the road handed out a ticket. “Supervisors can use it for review or gathering intelligence in real time,” Larkin said. “So you might pull up a live stream just to make sure an officer is doing what he or she is supposed to be doing or to make sure an officer is OK.” Larkin, in charge of body-worn technology for the department, is responsible for keeping the body cameras up to date. Rapidly improving camera quality and deteriorating battery life now require the cameras to be upgraded every 2.5 years.

From the oldest to the youngest-- Inflation is forcing some to make some tough decisions. Some college students have to choose between paying for school, paying rent and actually eating. UCF Knights Helping Knights Food Pantry is a safety net for many students. Skipping meals can have a ripple effect. National studies say food insecure college students are more likely to drop classes and are 40 percent less like to graduate.

The most important time to prepare for a hurricane is before a storm has formed. The Tampa Bay Times spoke with 14 experts working in fields related to storm preparation, response and recovery, about how to prepare for natural disaster — and where people go wrong. Evacuation behavioral studies have found that people who have a plan in place before a storm is forecast are more likely to evacuate when orders are called, said hazard geographer Chris Emrich. Emrich, who is a founding member of the National Center for Integrated Coastal Research at the University of Central Florida, studies people’s really bad days. His job is to look at disasters and understand how to make them less devastating. People often make the mistake of being reactive, he said, instead of proactive when it comes to hurricane preparation. The latter is dangerous. The threat of an oncoming storm is stressful, he said, and evacuating can be resource intensive. If you live in an evacuation zone, Emrich said, it’s important to prepare before pressure compounds. “That will really reduce the amount of stress when it comes time to evacuate because you’ve already thought about it,” Emrich said.

Democrats fear that 2022 could be the year Florida cements itself as a red state. With little more than a week to go before Election Day, Republicans appear poised to once again dominate the state. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is running well ahead of his Democratic rival, former Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), while Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) is struggling to break through in her bid to unseat Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). Of course, one election isn’t indicative of a trend, in and of itself. “Certainly, over time, population growth has been a primary driver of political change in Florida going back decades,” said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida. “And it certainly has fueled the rise of Republicans in the state. “Over time, as more and more people move to Florida — we’ve had 2 [million] to 3 million people a decade move to this state for about five to six decades in a row — that’s absolutely going to change things.”

An Australian dermal clinician has debunked the common misconception that getting a 'base tan' protects skin from sun damage. Dermal science student Madeleine has taken to her popular account with information she has learned in the lab and the classroom about the dangers of 'tanning as protection'. 'Skin producing melanin in response to sun damage is it going into survival mode, it does not actually provide significant protection,' she said in a video. But it affords almost no protection against future ultraviolet exposure and is not recommended by professionals and scientists. The University of Central Florida revealed that a base tan protects you as much as sunscreen with an SPF 3 or less. 'Melanin has an absolute maximum SPF of 14, but it does not protect as well as applied SPF and protective clothing,' said Madeleine.

The Food and Drug Administration is reporting shortages of the type 2 diabetes drug Ozempic. The news comes after the medication has gone viral for leading to weight loss. Experts say some people are taking the drug off-label to lose weight. The prescription drug Ozempic, used to treat patients with type 2 diabetes, has gone viral on the social media platform TikTok because of its weight-loss side effect. “Ozempic belongs to the GLP-1 RA medication family, which helps patients in three ways,” said Martha Garcia-Stout, PharmD, JD, a lecturer within the College of Health Professions and Sciences at the University of Central Florida. “It helps by slowing stomach emptying, which delays the absorption of nutrients, preventing a glucose spike after meals; increasing the level of circulating insulin by stimulating the production of more insulin; and reducing the release of additional sugar from the liver into the bloodstream.”

UCF lecturer of Political Science, John Hanley talks with FOX 35 on why midterm elections are so important in Florida.

NASA hopes to take us back to the moon for an extended stay via its Artemis lunar program, but lots of logistics still need to be worked out before we can safely set up on the moon for the long haul. One such hurdle is the actual material astronauts will use to construct a permanent lunar base, which will require a host of engineering considerations we normally never need to think about down here on Earth. According to an announcement earlier this week via the University of Central Florida, a team from the school’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering developed a new construction material composed partly of lunar regolith—the loose rocks, dust, and other debris covering the Moon’s surface. Using both 3D printing and a method called binder jet technology (BJT) in which a liquid binding agent (in this case saltwater) is infused into a bed of moon powder supplied by UCF’s Exolith Lab, Associate Professor Ranajay Ghosh’s group was able to produce bricks capable of withstanding pressure of up to 250 million times greater than our own atmosphere. Although the initial cylindrical bricks produced are comparably weak, blasting them with 1200 degrees Celsius heat strengthened them enough to be a viable tool in the eventual structures NASA hopes to establish on the Moon, such as a modular cabin and mobile home. “This research contributes to the ongoing debate in space exploration community on finding the balance between in-situ extraterrestrial resource utilization versus material transported from Earth,” Ghosh said in UCF’s announcement.

Next semester, select master’s students at the University of Central Florida will call Universal Orlando their classroom. Through a partnership with Universal Creative, UCF’s Themed Experience program is offering a Creative Lab course where students will learn about entertainment design and development in the classroom and at Universal’s creative headquarters in Orlando while developing their own projects. “Not every program has the advantage that we have of being located right here in the heart of the industry,” said Peter Weishar, founding director of the Themed Experience program. “So you could be a magnificent designer who’s looking to work at Universal eventually, but located out of state — you could come here for the summer and take this class.” Students will have to sign non-disclosure agreements with Universal. Even though they will not be working on upcoming projects with Universal firsthand, students will still be learning about things in development and showing Universal’s teams their own projects, Weishar said. “On one hand, we don’t want them talking about trade secrets outside of class, and on the other hand they have to agree that they know they’re showing their work to Universal,” he said.