Data

Up to half of sexually active young people will get a sexually transmitted disease by the time they are 25, yet many don't seek testing because it may be difficult, costly or embarrassing. Public health officials nationally and in particularly affected cities like Baltimore, however, say they've found a method that seems to address the major hurdles — a website that supplies free in-home testing kits for three of the most commonly reported STDs. "The highest prevalence is in young adults, and we knew we had to reach these kids," said Charlotte A. Gaydos, a professor of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The audience for NBC's coverage of the Preakness was up by as much as 24 percent during the afternoon, according to overnight Nielsen data provided by the network. The audience for the block of time that includes the race ((5:45-6:45 pm ET) was 9% up from 2012 with a 6.0 ratings versus 5.5 last year. Pre-race on NBC (5-5:45 pm ET) was up 24% from 2012. That's a 3.6 ratings versus 2.9, and that's the largest audience since 2009. Not surpisingly, Baltimore was the top market with the telecast drawing a 15.7rating and a 32 share.

Division:  Newsroom Position Type:  Internship Position paid or unpaid?  Unpaid Duration:  10 weeks (comprising 120 hours OR specified hour requirements from school)   Description One-semester internships are offered on the data desk. Emphasis is on using data to find and tell stories through applications, print graphics and/or written pieces with a strong eye toward building the student's skills and portfolio Location Baltimore, MD, USA Documents Required Cover Letter/Resume, Unofficial Transcript, Writing Sample (Submission of programming or scripting samples is also encouraged)

After a three-month delay, Baltimore has resumed posting parking ticket data on OpenBaltimore, the city government's transparency website. Officials gave no explanation for the lengthy delay in updating the site. Nothing had been added to the database since late January. That has changed, and the site now has information for tickets issued as recently as Thursday. Those include citations for parking in a handicapped zone, at an expired meter or too close to a fire hydrant, as well as speed camera tickets.

Maryland's 46 acute care hospitals can now all share information electronically on patients admitted, discharged for transferred. The “encounter level” data can be passed along in real time via the Maryland Health Information Exchange , a statewide system of secure information sharing among hospitals, doctors' offices and health organizations, according to Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown, who announced the system recently. Some hospitals also are sharing lab and radiology reports, consult notes and other clinical data.

Want to know how many people have asthma or diabetes in the county where you live? A new state web portal was recently launched that provides this and other health data for every county in Maryland. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene partnered with the Hilltop Institute at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County to create the website that uses data about Medicaid recipients.  The website can be found at http://www.md-medicaid.org/ia-maps/ .  The interactive website has data on chronic diseases, such as asthma, diabetes and hypertension.

Are Maryland and The Wall Street Journal showing federal health-care cops how to do their job? Kind of looks that way. On a computer network based in Woodlawn, on huge encrypted hard drives, are patient records containing evidence of the estimated $50 billion that fraudsters and abusers drain from the federal Medicare program every year. But pressure from doctors has kept the data under guard for three decades. The Journal and the Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission are mining the information in long-overdue attempts to shed light on abuse.

Anyone wondering about the power of police should read Nicole Fuller's story on Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold, who we all remember was indicted on charges that he abused his office and used his police protection detail for personal errands and to separate competing girlfriends. The story says he did more: The Anne Arundel County Police Department acknowledged Wednesday that a statewide police criminal records database was accessed in order for County Executive John R. Leopold to investigate political opponents.

I've just spent two days in training on a system that generates business reports, and I understand so much more about the power of my company's particular tool and its application in my job. I also have a really bad headache from glancing at the teacher's screen up in front of the classroom and then back at my monitor for the better part of six hours each day. But here's the thing. Now I really want a Janet's World Home Management Database. Why, the JWHMD already has the requisite long and unmemorable acronym — it will fit in perfectly in the IT world.

THE ARMY Corps of Engineers reacted indignantly Friday to complaints from elected officials in Anne Arundel County who claim they had not been told about plans to lay a 310-mile fiber-optic cable network underneath the Chesapeake Bay. After all, Corps representatives point out, they had issued a public notice on July 26, posted the notice on the Corps' Web site, and mailed copies to 425 agencies, groups and private citizens who had happened to be on...

Data entry is repetitive and hard to do well - that is, quickly and accurately. Shane Foley is great at it. The 21-year-old Ellicott City man works on two computer screens, eyeing images of handwritten sheets on one and clicking the information into a program on the other. His boss gives him a glowing review. So does the head of the state agency whose contract he's working on. Really something for a young man whose neurologist told his parents, many years ago, to consider institutionalizing him. Foley, who has autism, is the first employee of a program for Marylanders with autism-spectrum disorders.

Division:  Newsroom Position Type:  Internship Position paid or unpaid?  Unpaid Duration:  10 weeks (comprising 120 hours OR specified hour requirements from school)   Description One-semester internships are offered on the data desk. Emphasis is on using data to find and tell stories through applications, print graphics and/or written pieces with a strong eye toward building the student's skills and portfolio Location Baltimore, MD, USA Documents Required Cover Letter/Resume, Unofficial Transcript, Writing Sample (Submission of programming or scripting samples is also encouraged)

A bill that would ban gathering of biometric data from school children in Maryland - including information culled from the palm scanners that drew protest in Carroll County last year - is slated for a hearing Wednesday in Annapolis. Senate Bill 855, proposed by State Sen. Joseph M. Getty, a Republican who represents part of Carroll and Baltimore counties, would prohibit public school boards from collecting biometric information, defined as "fingerprint, vocal and facial characteristics; and any other physical characteristics used for the purpose of electronically identifying that individual with a high degree of certainty.

Northwestern High alumni have gone to court to try to stop the Baltimore school from closing, as civil rights activists say the plan is discriminatory because shuttering the institution would disproportionately affect low-income, minority students. The alumni association filed a lawsuit seeking an injunction in Baltimore City Circuit Court last week, arguing that the Baltimore school system's 10-year facilities plan was based on inaccurate and outdated information and would adversely affect hundreds of students from Northwest Baltimore.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security now incarcerates, via immigration detention, more people per year than any other state or federal agency. In 2012, the DHS detained over 429,000 noncitizens awaiting immigration hearings or deportation, at a $2 billion cost to taxpayers. Yet the DHS' new risk assessment technology, which comprehensively and individually assesses immigrant detainees and collects valuable data, makes it possible for Congress to improve detention practices while reforming broader U.S. immigration laws.

Part data collectors, part tour guides — with a dash of personality for good measure — the 10 yellow navigational markers that make up the Chesapeake Bay Interpretive Buoy System have been a hit with the public and weather forecasters since their launch in 2007. So much so that the American Meteorological Society singled out their creator, NOAA oceanographer Doug Wilson, at its annual meeting last month and presented him with one of its top awards. "I know he had a lot of help, but he saw the potential and ran with it. He was relentless," said Mark Bushnell, a Virginia meteorologist who nominated Wilson for the Francis W. Reichelderfer Award, given to a person who contributes to the public's understanding of science.

A Beltsville technology company that bought a former department store building in Glen Burnie said this week it plans to convert it into a sprawling data center for government and commercial customers. Privately-held AiNet Corp., which owns and operates data centers and fiber optic networks, bought the former Boscov's department store building at Marley Station Mall in January for $1.6 million from an arm of General Growth Properties. Deepak Jain, AiNet's founder and president, said his company is ramping up operations this spring and summer at the 300,000-square-foot facility.

With one click of his laptop mouse, Bill Squadron, the head of Bloomberg Sports, shows every pitch thrown to Orioles center fielder Adam Jones this season. It shows a strike zone full more than 1,000 marks of different colors and shapes - much like abstract art, Squadron jokes. One click later, the graphic shows the 600-some fastballs thrown to Jones. Another click and it's down to 200 pitches that show pitches with one out. Then, Squadron filters the data to show just home runs and it's down to three dots.

When reporters asked Baltimore police and state agencies where the guns used in city crimes came from, no one could provide specific information. "I can tell you that the vast majority, 95 percent plus, are committed with illegal guns," Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. But he didn't use data to support that widely held assumption. Local law enforcement agencies don't have that information because of a federal blockage of gun tracing data. Police also can't reveal what gun tracing data they do have because a federal law passed a decade ago shields most firearm tracking information from the public.

Baltimore County residents: Feel free to get nosy about your neighbors' property taxes. A new online database from The Baltimore Sun allows users to find the assessed value and the amount of tax paid for any Baltimore County home or commercial property . The database contains numbers from the tax year that ended June 30, 2012, and gives users multiple search options. In addition to looking up a property by address, users can search by the property owner's name, the assessed value, the tax amount or the credit amount.