UNM x CNM Sponsor Mobile App Contest
The Office of the Chief Information Officer at UNM is collaborating with CNM to sponsor a Mobile Apps Contest.
The contest provides students from both schools the opportunity to apply their skills to developing apps for the community.
Students will have a selection of resources during the competition, such as UNM and CNM faculty to assist with development and mentoring, and the ability to use any open data to develop their apps. Or they can choose to utilize the vast amount of open data sets UNM and the City of Albuquerque have provided.
The contest is awarding $5,000 for first place, $2,500 for second place, and $1,000 for third place.
An additional $2,500 Women in Technology award will be given to the best all-woman team in the competition, and women are encouraged to compete.
Judging will be conducted by local industry leaders as well as leaders in higher education.
Further incentive for the contest is the chance for ambitious students to receive support marketing and commercializing their apps if their apps have the potential for market success.
The deadline for registration is October 31. Demonstration and Judging day will be on April 1, 2016, with the final award ceremony being held on April 22, 2016.
More information can be found at the contests website: appcontest.unm.edu
UNM students think about immigration issues
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UNM students have the ability this year to discuss the issue of immigration from the viewpoint of immigrants, not just from the political side.
The subject of this year's Lobo Reaching Experience is “Enrique’s Journey” a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that tells the story of a Honduran boy who begins searches for his mother 11 years after she immigrated to the U.S. to support her family.
UNM freshmen got their first taste of the book at Freshman Orientation, and have read excerpts from the book prior to their first semester at UNM. The book is also discussed in Freshman Honors, English, Spanish, Latin American studies, political science, and business courses.
The book's author, Sonia Nazario, will be speaking at a number of lectures, panels, and discussions over the course of the year and will provide opportunities for students to write about the issue of immigration.
People in the Southwest valued caffeine even in 750 A.D.
New findings by UNM anthropology professor Patricia Crown say that caffeine has been consumed for over a thousand years in the Southwestern United States and Northwestern Mexico, according to a UNM press release.
“I think the primary significance is that it shows that there was movement of two plants that have caffeine in North America – that they were either exchanged or acquired and consumed widely in the Southwest,” Crown said in the statement
The caffeine was consumed in two ways, one that was cacao-based, and the other that was made with a particular species of holly. The cacao and holly are not native to the southwest.
Crown says that there was some trade with Mexico, as it’s the closest place the Southwest Native Americans could have obtain cacao, and the holly could have been obtained from the Southern United States.
Crown's research says that the pre-Hispanic Southwest was inhabited by many different groups, who all had a liking for caffeine, whether it be for rituals or for political reasons.
UNM collaborates on Hispanic Heritage Month
More than 50 organizations in Albuquerque have joined together to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. The alliance will promote events and activities during Hispanic Heritage Month, including exhibits on UNM's campus.
The goal of the alliance is to benefit each organization and to provide a single cumulative resource for the public to obtain information about the events during Hispanic Heritage Month.
Some of the events planned for Hispanic Heritage Month are the “I Have a Name” exhibit in the Zimmerman Library Learning Commons, a September, 16 UNM Noontime Event, and an October, 15 National Latino AIDS Awareness Day event on UNM campus.
The national theme for this year's Hispanic Heritage Month is: “Honoring our Heritage. Building our Future.”
Fin Martinez is a freelance reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @FinMartinez
