Emergency notification test Thursday
After the Virginia Tech massacre in April 2007, the University of Miami began conducting emergency notification tests to ensure student and faculty safety.
This Thursday, beginning at 12:15 p.m., a test will take place to make sure notifications are received through multiple mediums, including voice messages to cell, home and office phones, text messages, e-mail messages, emergency notification sirens and public address and loudspeaker messages in some residence hall and other buildings.
National Gandhi Day of Service Saturday
This Saturday, over 50 college campuses nationwide will participate in National Gandhi Day of Service 2008. The University of Miami will hold the event on the UC Patio from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and will offer free breakfast, t-shirts and lunch.
After morning entertainment and keynote speakers, volunteers will serve community agencies from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
First held in 2003, this day started with a small group of volunteers and has grown to several hundred in the last few years. Last year over 700 UM students volunteered.
Global Spectrum to Manage Miami Convention Center
Global Spectrum, a leader in managing public assembly facilities throughout North America, is now the new operator for the Miami Beach Convention Center.
With this new contract, Global Spectrum, which also operates the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach and the BankUnited Center on the University of Miami campus, says they are going to “utilize the synergies and resources of these two facilities… to maximize opportunities for the Miami Beach Convention Center.”
“We’re really looking forward to working closely with City of Miami Beach in taking their convention center to a new level,” said John Page, Global Spectrum’s chief operations officer.
UM scientist uncovers miscalculation in geological undersea record
A paper by University of Miami Professor Dr. Peter Swart suggests that records of Earth’s history and conclusions about changes in carbon reservoirs will need to be reassessed.
For the last 4.5 billion years, controversy has surrounded the precise timing of the origin of life on Earth. Time is largely indicated by the amount of organic carbon produced by biological activity of the ratio of the less abundant isotope of carbon, 13C, to the more abundant isotope, 12C.
However, Swart’s work states the 13C/12C ratio is unrelated to the global change and that records related to carbonate platforms are not good recorders of the ratio in open oceans.
“As a consequence of our findings, changes in 13C/12C records need to be reevaluated, conclusions regarding changes in the reservoirs of carbon will have to be reassessed and some of the widely-held ideas regarding the elevation of CO2 during specific periods of the Earth’s geological history have to be adjusted,” Swart said.