Amarillo area Our Town briefs
Amarillo League of Women Voters to present UWAC community status report
The Amarillo League of Women Voters will be welcoming LWV Board Member, Adam Leathers, who will present the findings of the United Way of Amarillo & Canyon’s Community Status Report, at 10 a.m. Saturday, March 18, at the Northwest Branch Public Library, 6100 SW 9th Ave.
The Community Status Report of the United Way of Amarillo & Canyon is an annual publication that lays out Amarillo and Canyon’s successes and challenges in terms of Education, Income, Health, and Vulnerable Populations.
Local elections will be held May 6 for Amarillo City Council positions, four area school boards and Amarillo College trustees. If your organization, business, nonprofit, or church is interested in having the Amarillo League of Women Voters register your employees or members to vote, please contact us at amarillolwv@gmail.com or 806-337-2148.
City of Amarillo debuts new digital resource for building permits
The City of Amarillo Building Safety Department is launching a new software system – My Government Online Connect - MGO Connect. The system will be used for commercial and residential development including:
Permits
Licensing
Code enforcement
MGO will streamline processes and create a better user experience. Additional benefits of the new system include:
Mobile and tablet-friendly
Simplified processes
Consistent customer experience
Integrated customer support
“We feel MGO is not only easier to use but will offer a convenient and simple platform for the community, whether they are requesting a permit for a water heater to applying for permits for a corporate construction project,” said COA Building Official Johnny Scholl.
The online application process utilizes intuitive menus and dropdown selections. The system will also provide clickable links for more information and system prompts. The previous software system will close Friday (March 10) at 4 p.m. The new MGO system will begin Monday, March 13.
The new system is available at https://mgoconnect.org/cp/portal or www.amarillo.gov/departments/planning-and-development-services/building-safety
Contractors will need to link their active contractor license to the new system following the provided steps online. In the MGO Connect system contractors can submit applications, pay for permits and request inspections.
During the software transition, plumbing, electrical and mechanical subcontractors can email requests to be attached to a previously existing building permit to building@amarillo.gov. Instructions for the new MGO Connect system are available at: www.amarillo.gov/departments/planning-and-development-services/building-safety
The Building Safety office is available to assist via email at building@amarillo.gov or by phone at (806) 378-3041. Additional assistance is available at the MyGovernmentOnline customer support help desk at 1-866-957-3764 – Option 1.
For more information contact City of Amarillo Media Relations Manager Dave Henry at (806) 378-5219 or by email at David.Henry@amarillo.gov.
WT joins Tiny Earth Initiative in effort to increase hands-on learning in labs
CANYON — West Texas A&M University students next fall will join a global effort to find new antibiotics as part of an innovative way of teaching microbiology.
WT has joined the teaching initiative Tiny Earth, in which traditional laboratory experiences in introductory science classes are converted into discovery-based research exercises.
“Most science-class laboratories are based on the traditional concepts of curriculum, which is important,” said Dr. Maitreyee Mukherjee, assistant professor of biology in the Department of Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences in WT’s Paul Engler College of Agriculture and Natural Sciences. “But adopting the Tiny Earth curriculum will enhance that experience by incorporating research-based laboratory experiences.”
Students in Mukherjee’s microbiology class will dig their own soil samples around the WT campus and the Texas Panhandle, then spend the semester analyzing their samples — “everything they normally do in a microbiology lab, just in the framework of doing research,” Mukherjee said. They will be introduced to cutting-edge molecular methods, DNA sequencing and bioinformatics techniques, in addition to traditional methods they usually learn in a microbiology lab.
Student campaign leads to new translation options on WT’s website
CANYON — An engaged student is behind a significant addition to West Texas A&M University’s online presence.
Allan Baltazar, a senior criminal justice and psychology major from Houston, recognized a need for consistent translation options on the website, which ultimately led to a plug-in that can translate any webpage on wtamu.edu into dozens of different languages.
Baltazar, who serves as secretary of campus community on the president’s advisory council of the WT Student Government Association, had initially proposed adding separate Spanish-language pages on the site, but WT’s Office of Information Technology found a more efficient and more broadly applicable solution.
“We’re using the Google Translate library, which will take the contents of a page and translate it into virtually any language you would like,” said IT engineer Eyoel Mengesha. “But instead of doing that directly through Google, which would involve using a proxy server that’s blocked for security reasons, we just downloaded the library ourselves.”
Mengesha used that library to customize a plug-in that’s consistently responsive on mobile devices and offers dozens of language options, from Afrikaans to Zulu. Users can click on the maroon-colored box labeled “Español” in the lower left corner of most screens. That will immediately translate the text into Spanish. Additionally, a pull-down menu will appear in the top left corner, offering instant translation into more than 130 other languages.
This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Amarillo area Our Town briefs
