UCF in the News

For many Americans who witnessed the attack on the Capitol last Jan. 6, the idea of mobs of people storming a bedrock of democracy was unthinkable. For the data scientists who watched it unfold, the reaction was a little different: We’ve been thinking about this for a long time. The sentiment comes from a small group working in a cutting-edge field known as unrest prediction. The group takes a promising if fraught approach that applies the complex methods of machine-learning to the mysterious roots of political violence. Centered since its inception a number of years ago on the developing world, its systems since last Jan. 6 are slowly being retooled with a new goal: predicting the next Jan. 6. “We now have the data — and opportunity — to pursue a very different path than we did before,” said Clayton Besaw, who helps run CoupCast, a machine-learning-driven program based at the University of Central Florida that predicts the likelihood of coups and electoral violence for dozens of countries each month.

Thomas Cavanagh, vice provost for digital learning at the University of Central Florida, oversees the highly regarded UCF Online platform and takes issue with assertions that in-person learning is superior. UCF Online has a 25-year history and offers more than 100 online programs to about 6,600 students who are not able to attend in person. Additionally, 75 percent of UCF’s 70,000 in-person students also take at least one online course. Cavanagh sees the increasing use of rhetoric diminishing online education as the result of “pent-up demand” for normalcy and the social aspects of in-person education, particularly for students who sought an in-person experience and had online learning foisted on them because of the pandemic. But he said that rhetoric is simply inaccurate. “I don’t think any particular modality is superior or inferior based just on modality,” he said. “It’s all based on design and faculty engagement.”

A team of scientists wants Pluto classified as a planet again — along with dozens of similar bodies in the solar system and any found around distant stars. The call goes against a controversial resolution from 2006 by the International Astronomical Union that decided Pluto is only a “dwarf planet” — but the researchers say a rethink will put science back on the right path. But a study announced in December from a team of researchers in the journal Icarus now claims the IAU’s definition was based on astrology — a type of folklore, not science — and that it’s harming both scientific research and the popular understanding of the solar system. “We think there’s probably over 150 planets in our solar system,” said Philip Metzger, the study’s lead author and a planetary physicist at the University of Central Florida.

Only 37 places in the U.S. offer focused ultrasound technology to treat essential tremor and tremor-dominant Parkinson’s disease, according to the Focused Ultrasound Foundation, including two added to Central Florida this year at HCA Healthcare’s University of Central Florida Lake Nona Medical Center and AdventHealth Celebration. The UCF Lake Nona Medical Center is booked until February as people flock to these two Central Florida medical centers from across the country.

More than 95-percent of fall 2021 Rosen College graduates have secured employment following commencement. The percentage is part of a dramatic turnaround that is due to Rosen’s efforts to help students through the pandemic recession. One fall graduate, Valerie Contreras, will be entering a year-long salaried internship program with Four Seasons.

NASA's research focus on sustainable aviation will get some big help from teams of university faculty and students recently selected to participate in the agency's University Leadership Initiative (ULI). ULI gives the academic community an opportunity to support NASA's aeronautical research goals and provide students with valuable experience in solving real-world technical challenges. "Aviation of the future has to be climate friendly to keep the world flying, and a great way to do that is to allow tomorrow's top minds to begin making contributions to these goals while still in school," said Koushik Datta, ULI project manager. Three of the four teams are working toward lowering or eliminating aircraft emissions, with each team approaching the problem from a slightly different perspective. The fourth team's autonomy research is in support of NASA's Advanced Air Mobility campaign. A total of four teams were selected for final negotiations that could lead to awards of up to $31.5 million during the next five years. The University of Central Florida team will explore using liquid ammonia as fuel for a jet engine and generating electricity from the engine’s exhaust heat, reducing emissions, and saving on fuel. Team members include Georgia Tech, Purdue University, Boeing, GE Research, ANSYS, Southwest Research Institute, and the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority.

Job growth in Florida will outpace the national economy, and unemployment will continue to decline in 2022, according to a new economic forecast for the Sunshine State. Florida's unemployment rate, which stood at 4.5% in November, is expected to continue falling in 2022, and housing starts will pickup, but not quickly enough to satisfy robust demand in the short run, according to the forecast released earlier this month by the Institute for Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida.

Twenty-two years ago, Charlie Vazquez was a Houston police officer planning the arrest of a man on parole who’d served time for kidnapping and sexually assaulting a child. The man aimed the gun at Vazquez and his partner. Then he turned the weapon on himself and died by suicide. Vazquez could not sleep for months. The way the man died kept him up, and so did the thought that he and officers could have been killed. “I started to second-guess myself a lot while on the job,” he said. Vazquez is now Tampa International Airport’s police chief and said he still suffers from post-traumatic stress. In his line of work, he is hardly alone. Firefighters, law enforcement officers and paramedics are 10 times more likely to attempt or contemplate suicide compared to civilians. Flashbacks are a symptom of PTSD. Other symptoms include nightmares, sleeplessness, poor appetite and feeling irritable or hyper-stressed, said Deborah Beidel, executive director of UCF Restores, an Orlando facility that offers post-traumatic stress treatment to first responders and veterans. A PTSD diagnosis is often coupled with a diagnosis of depression. Those symptoms are a normal, short-term response to a highly stressful event, Beidel said. Treatment becomes necessary when symptoms persist for months. The intensity of their experiences can make it harder for first responders to find help. Therapists who aren’t trained to treat first responders can be overwhelmed by their experiences, Beidel said. Often the patient ends up having to console the mental health professional. She has treated at least 25 first responders who told her their former therapists decided they could no longer treat them because they couldn’t handle their traumas. “The message this sends first responders is that you can’t be cured or you can’t be helped,” Beidel said.

The stars aligned for the 2021 Gasparilla Bowl, which will be starkly different than in 2020 when the game between South Carolina and UAB was canceled due to virus issues with the Gamecocks. This year, the game sold out in three days, likely because the game is between two Florida teams and ticket prices were relatively affordable. With the roughly 65,000 seats sold, Scott Glaser, the bowl’s executive director, said arrangements are being made to have standing room tickets at the stadium available by the end of this week.