Around Maryland

Starting this week, the Maryland Transportation Authority is shifting northbound Interstate 95 at the Maryland Route 152 interchange (Exit 74) in a new traffic pattern as part of its ongoing $1.1 billion program to relieve congestion and improve travel along the highway between Baltimore and Harford counties, according to a news release. This shift is expected to begin Thursday and continue through June 2023. Traffic will split with two lanes to the left and two lanes to the right of the work zone separated by a barrier on northbound I-95 between mile marker 73 and mile marker 75.

Towson University is committing to help students who are dealing with food insecurities. Estimates indicate almost 30% of college students don’t have enough food to get by in a single week. At Towson University, that translates to one in four students who are potentially food insecure. The university is reinstating its swipe donation program early next year. Students who end the week with a balance on their OneCards can choose to donate what’s left to classmates who are facing hunger issues.

In the 1990s, Kim Holcomb battled for curbside recycling pickup as president of Owings Mills Green Action. She’s been interested in environmental issues ever since. And so, when she learned that Baltimore County would host Maryland’s first natural burial ground, Holcomb felt called to sign on for a plot. “It’s like the ultimate recycling to have a green burial,” said Holcomb, who now lives in Pikesville. “It’s ashes to ashes and dust to dust. And it makes a lot of sense to me.” A few other cemeteries in the state allow for natural burials, which bypass elaborate caskets, concrete vaults and traditional embalming in favor of simpler, biodegradable methods that allow a body to decompose in the earth.

Rashaud Nesmith was 16 when he was charged with armed carjacking. Still a teenager, he became involved with a violent Baltimore gang that law enforcement has connected to dozens of murders, shootings, armed robberies and carjackings. Now 21, he was sentenced Monday to serve 40 years in federal prison — nearly double his lifetime.

Chemotherapy has long been the go-to treatment for cancer, but the drugs aren’t always strong enough against advanced tumors. They also damage other parts of the body. Some scientists at Johns Hopkins University say they may have discovered something better. They developed and have begun testing a new drug on cancer patients at the university’s Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center and elsewhere around the country.

Baltimore’s efforts to affordably control traffic and promote resident safety have hit a bump in the road due to a shortage of poles, a basic component for the installation of stop signs, speed hump alerts and other street markers. The severity of Baltimore’s pole shortage, and how exactly supplies got so low, isn’t clear. Councilman Mark Conway said the shortage has delayed stop sign and speed hump installations in his district. And at one point earlier this year, the city was out of poles completely, according to Councilman Ryan Dorsey, who said a transportation staff member informed him months ago that the department had ordered too few poles.

Rehema Mwaisela’s first love was science and math as a young undergraduate at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She hadn’t imagined herself as a teacher, but her journey through a tutoring program at a Baltimore City public school has changed the trajectory of her life. She began at Cherry Hill Elementary/Middle last year, tutoring small groups of second, fifth and seventh graders in math in an attempt to help jump-start their learning after the pandemic. While she helped them, she also learned something about herself.