From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu
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KU leading project to test new business model for rural, weekly newspapers
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas professor of journalism is leading a project to test a new model based on research with publishers and readers to help rural newspapers adapt, survive and thrive. The project will move away from heavy reliance on advertising and cheap subscriptions. The research team is now in the process of implementing the new business model with Kansas Publishing Ventures.
KU law school is 11th in nation for first-time bar exam pass rate
LAWRENCE — Graduates of the University of Kansas School of Law who took the bar exam for the first time in 2021 had one of the highest success rates in the country. KU Law posted the 11th-highest first-time bar exam pass rate nationally, according to an analysis by Reuters. Nearly 96% of KU Law graduates who took a bar exam for the first time during the 2021 calendar year passed, according to data recently released by the American Bar Association.
Distinguished Professor Steven Warren set to give Inaugural Lecture
LAWRENCE — Steven Warren has worked on more than his fair share of studies and clinical trials in four decades as an expert in social and behavioral sciences. The University of Kansas community has the chance to hear the University Distinguished Professor of Speech-Language-Hearing deliver his Inaugural Lecture, titled “Fragile X and the Role of Maternal Responsivity,” at 5:30 p.m. May 4 in the Hancock Ballroom at the Oread Hotel.
Study preserves memory in mice, offering promising new basis for active immunization against Alzheimer’s disease
LAWRENCE — During experiments in animal models, researchers at the University of Kansas have discovered a possible new approach to immunization against Alzheimer’s disease. The findings have been just published in the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Antioxidants.
KU student Aylar Atadurdyyeva named a Key into Public Service Scholar
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas student Aylar Atadurdyyeva, from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, is one of 20 students selected as a Key into Public Service Scholar by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation’s most prestigious academic honor society. Chosen from almost 900 applicants attending chapter institutions across the nation, each scholar will receive a $5,000 undergraduate scholarship.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
KU leading project to test new business model for rural, weekly newspapers
LAWRENCE — Business has changed since 1833. One would be hard-pressed to find businesses operating with the same model that was in place when Andrew Jackson was in the White House. But in the case of newspapers, many are still operating with the same business model established when Benjamin Day opened the first penny press nearly 200 years ago. A University of Kansas professor of journalism is leading a project to test a new model based on research with publishers and readers to help rural newspapers adapt, survive and thrive.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Teri Finneman, associate professor of journalism at KU, took part in an oral history project to help document the experiences of rural, weekly newspapers.
“We saw during the pandemic how absolutely critical it was to have a local news source. You couldn’t get community-specific news about COVID anywhere else,” Finneman said. “At the same time, we saw newsrooms closing. It hit me that this is the time to look at a new business model.”
This summer, the project will implement and test a model that moves away from heavy reliance on advertising and cheap subscriptions. After a year of testing, if the new model is successful in use of memberships, e-newsletters, events and new content direction, plans call to distribute a new model available for rural weeklies across the country. The research is funded through an innovation grant from KU’s William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications.
Finneman and research partners Pat Ferrucci of the University of Colorado-Boulder and Nick Mathews of the University of Minnesota conducted surveys with 132 publishers from the Great Plains states, primarily from newspapers in communities with populations of 3,000 or fewer. The publishers were presented 15 potential revenue streams and asked which they would be willing to try. Respondents said they were most receptive to the traditional threads of advertising, subscriptions and legal notices. The least popular options were memberships, e-newsletters, government support and large private donations.
More than 400 readers in rural areas of these states were given a similar survey, asking in what ways they would consider supporting their local newspapers. Memberships, events and e-newsletters were among the most popular responses.
“We found there’s a tremendous disconnect between what readers say they are willing to support and what publishers are willing to consider,” Finneman said. “This business model we’re testing is all about being proactive if the day comes when newspapers lose another revenue source in legal notices, having a safety net in place and evolving.”
Forty percent of readers also indicated that they would be very likely or likely to donate, in addition to subscription costs, to their local newspaper. Finneman said the concept does have precedent in the United States, as both public television and radio receive government support and private support through donations.
In terms of the type of content they wanted to see, readers indicated they were most interested in reading about local events, feature stories and obituaries. They were least interested in reading opinion pages, which Finneman said is understandable in the age of social media, where opinion is available everywhere.
“People just want to read good news. We’ve heard that for years, but especially during the pandemic, that point was driven home,” Finneman said. “We heard time and time again that people just want to read some good news and about things to do in their community.”
The research team is now in the process of implementing the new business model with Kansas Publishing Ventures, which owns and operates Harvey County Now in Newton and the Hillsboro Free Press in Hillsboro.
Publisher Joey Young and the researchers are determining how the new model will be implemented and speaking with community members in the papers’ readership area, as well as with press groups and communities throughout the Great Plains states. The model will include memberships in which readers can receive tiered. The model will also work to engage community members, especially young residents, and focus on preferred reader content.
In focus groups in which researchers presented publishers with results of reader surveys and discussed potential new approaches, participants indicated a reluctance to accepting donations or government support. While many countries include government support for media, the model for this study will begin with a focus on memberships, in which readers can offer additional support.
“There was a lot of caution about trying something new, and a lot of concern about a lack of time, as opposed to the potential to make more money and add resources to address a lack of time, while continuing to serve their communities,” Finneman said, adding that, if even 25 or 30% of readers elected to pay more through memberships, the revenue increase could be significant.
As the new model is tested, the research team and local publisher will conduct both publicity and educational outreach efforts to help inform local readers of the changes, how they work, the benefits, reasons behind the move and more. While the project is underway, the research team will also produce an oral history of the project, its implementation and potential to transform the industry that will be housed at the Kansas Historical Society.
Finneman, who with KU journalism students publishes the Eudora Times, said the project is intended to revive community journalism’s business model and also to prevent news deserts from spreading. The project is also intended to help boost connections between community newspapers and their readers. In one state, 63% of respondents said they did not know anyone at their local newspaper office but also indicated they would be twice as likely to give financial support to their local paper if they did know a journalist, editor or publisher.
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Contact: Margaret Hair, School of Law, 785-864-9205, [email protected], @kulawschool
KU law school is 11th in nation for first-time bar exam pass rate
LAWRENCE — Graduates of the University of Kansas School of Law who took the bar exam for the first time in 2021 had one of the highest success rates in the country.
KU Law posted the 11th-highest first-time bar exam pass rate nationally, according to an analysis by Reuters. Nearly 96% of KU Law graduates who took a bar exam for the first time during the 2021 calendar year passed, according to data recently released by the American Bar Association.
Other law schools posting pass rates in the top 15 include Harvard, New York University, Yale, the University of Chicago and Duke. KU is one of the few schools in the top 15 to be consistently recognized as a “Best Value Law School” by National Jurist magazine.
“As an institution, we have focused on removing obstacles for, and investing in, our students through donor-funded bar exam preparation and other programs,” said Stephen Mazza, dean of the School of Law. “It’s encouraging to see that, when coupled with the outstanding determination exhibited by the Class of 2021, we have been able to achieve outstanding outcomes.”
KU Law’s Free Bar Prep Program offers all students a post-graduation Themis Bar Review course that includes a simulated bar exam. The bar prep program also includes a first-year diagnostic exam that tests students’ understanding of core concepts, a bar exam preparation course for credit during the spring of their third year and assistance from the law school’s director of bar preparation when studying for the bar. KU Law graduates who took the bar exam in 2021 were in the first class to participate in all three years of the Free Bar Prep Program.
Alumni gifts support the Free Bar Prep Program, making it possible for KU Law to be one of a few law schools nationally to offer a commercial, post-graduation bar review course at no cost to students.
In Missouri, 100% of KU Law graduates who took the Missouri bar exam for the first time in 2021 passed. KU Law’s 100% pass rate was 17.8% above the Missouri average of 82.2% for first-time test takers.
In Kansas, 98.2% of KU Law first-time test takers passed the Kansas bar exam in 2021, placing the school 20.4% above the Kansas average. The state’s overall first-time pass rate was 77.8%.
Bar passage reports generated by the American Bar Association from 2021 and previous years are available on the KU Law website.
The bar examination is a test intended to determine whether candidates are qualified to practice law in a given jurisdiction. The bar exam is administered twice a year – in February and July – in most jurisdictions. Most students graduate in May and take the summer exam. Commercial bar preparation courses typically cost several thousand dollars.
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Distinguished Professor Steven Warren set to give Inaugural Lecture
LAWRENCE — Steven Warren has worked on more than his fair share of studies and clinical trials in four decades as an expert in social and behavioral sciences. The University of Kansas community has the chance to hear the professor deliver his Inaugural Lecture at 5:30 p.m. May 4 in the Hancock Ballroom at the Oread Hotel. A reception will immediately follow the presentation at 6:30 p.m.
Warren is a University Distinguished Professor of Speech-Language-Hearing and an investigator in the Schiefelbusch Institute of Life Span Studies at KU. His presentation is titled “Fragile X and the Role of Maternal Responsivity.”
“Fragile X is a genetic condition inherited from mothers that results in various developmental problems such as intellectual disabilities,” Warren said. “It is caused by a single gene found on the X chromosome. This gene is responsible for encoding a single protein that is required for the optimal development of the brain. Our longitudinal study has focused on the impact of mothers on the children starting in early childhood and stretching into adolescence. Our work suggests that maternal responsivity may have a substantial impact on the development of these children.”
Throughout his career, Warren has focused on communication and language development in children with developmental delays and disabilities.
A 22-year faculty member at KU, Warren currently serves as a principal investigator in collaboration with Nancy Brady, the chair of KU’s Department of Speech-Language-Hearing: Sciences & Disorders, on an ongoing longitudinal study on the impact of parenting on the development of children with fragile X syndrome, which is the most common inherited cause of autism.
This natural history study has been ongoing with National Institutes of Health (NIH) support since 2003 and is presently supported by a research grant from National Institutes of Health and Human Development. Warren’s work has been supported over his career with 25 grants from the NIH and 24 grants from federal agents and foundations.
Much of Warren’s work has focused on the effects of different types of communication and language intervention as well as children with specific neurodevelopmental disorders and how they respond to different language interventions such as the mand-model, which involves requesting a verbal response from the child. Warren and his colleagues have conducted several randomized clinical trials on the effects of these interventions on children’s language development.
This work began when Warren served as an investigator at the John F. Kennedy Center for Research on Human Development as a faculty member at Vanderbilt University from 1982 to 1999 and then continued once he came to KU in 2000. In 2004, he began working with an interdisciplinary group of scientists on the development of LENA, a breakthrough technology that automatically captures and analyzes huge amounts of child language interaction data. This work is still ongoing.
Warren’s research has been recognized by career research awards from the National Down Syndrome Congress (1999), the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (2008) and the American Psychological Association (2013).
Warren holds a doctorate in child and developmental psychology from KU. He has been in a variety of roles since returning to KU as a faculty member in 2000, including vice chancellor for research and graduate studies from 2007 until 2014, when he stepped down from the role to focus on teaching and research.
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a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.
https://kansaspublicradio.org/when-experts-attack
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Study preserves memory in mice, offering promising new basis for active immunization against Alzheimer’s disease
LAWRENCE — During experiments in animal models, researchers at the University of Kansas have discovered a possible new approach to immunization against Alzheimer’s disease (AD).
Their method uses a recombinant methionine (Met)-rich protein derived from corn that was then oxidized in vitro to produce the antigen: methionine sulfoxide (MetO)-rich protein.
This antigen, when injected to the body, goads the immune system into producing antibodies against the MetO component of beta-amyloid, a protein that is toxic to brain cells and seen as a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. The findings have been just published in the peer-reviewed open-access journal Antioxidants.
“As we age, we have more oxidative stress, and then beta-amyloid and other proteins accumulate and become oxidized and aggregated – these proteins are resistant to degradation or removal,” said lead researcher Jackob Moskovitz, associate professor of pharmacology & toxicology at the KU School of Pharmacy. “In a previous 2011 published study, I injected mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease with a similar methionine sulfoxide-rich protein and showed about 30% reduction of amyloid plaque burden in the hippocampus, the main region where damage from Alzheimer’s disease occurs.”
The MetO-rich protein used by Moskovitz for the vaccination of AD-model mice is able to prompt the immune system to produce antibodies against MetO-containing proteins, including MetO-harboring beta-amyloid. The introduction of the corn-based MetO-rich protein (antigen) fosters the body’s immune system to produce and deploy the antibodies against MetO to previously tolerated MetO-containing proteins (including MetO-beta-amyloid), and ultimately reduce the levels of toxic forms of beta-amyloid and other possible proteins in brain.
In the new follow-up study, Moskovitz and his co-authors injected the MetO-rich protein into 4-month-old AD-model mice that were genetically modified to develop the familial form of Alzheimer’s disease. Subsequent testing showed that this approach provoked the mice’s immune systems into producing antibodies that could alleviate the presence of AD phenotypes at an older age (10-month-old mice).
“This treatment induced the production of anti-MetO antibody in blood-plasma that exhibits a significant titer up to at least 10 months of age,” according to the authors.
Moskovitz’s KU co-authors on the Antioxidants study are Adam Smith, assistant professor of pharmacology & toxicology; Kyle Gossman and Benjamin Dykstra, graduate students in Smith’s lab; and Philip Gao, director of the Protein Production Group at the Del Shankel Structural Biology Center.
In a series of tests, the KU researchers assessed the memory of injected mice against similar mice that didn’t receive the corn-based methionine sulfoxide.
“We measured short-term memory capability through a ‘Y’ maze, and that’s very important in Alzheimer’s disease — because when people get Alzheimer’s, their short-term memory is going away, while the old memories are still there,” Moskovitz said. “You put a mouse in a maze shaped like a ‘Y’ so they can go either the left or right arm. But then you introduce a third arm in the middle and if they recognize the third arm as new, they’ll spend more time exploring that new arm because they have curiosity. If they don’t even notice there’s a third arm — because they forget it the minute after they saw it — they will spend more time in right or left.”
According to Moskovitz, there was a roughly 50% improvement in the memory of mice injected with the methionine sulfoxide (MetO)-rich protein versus the control.
In another experiment, mice were tasked with locating a platform in a water maze.
“We gave them six days to learn, and even the ones with Alzheimer’s eventually learn the location of the platform — but we found after the second day there was a big difference, the injected mice with the antigen learn much faster than the nonimmunized mice,” Moskovitz said. “Then we remove the platform to see if they remember where the platform was just by memory, not by looking. And again, we saw a big difference. The antigen-immunized mice remember and spend more time in the vicinity of the platform they were trained on compared to the nonimmunized control mice.”
In addition to short-term memory improvement, the study showed the antigen-injected mice exhibited better long memory capabilities, reduced beta-amyloid levels in both blood-plasma and the brain, as well as “reduced beta-amyloid burden and MetO accumulations in astrocytes in hippocampal and cortical regions; reduced levels of activated microglia; and elevated antioxidant capabilities (through enhanced nuclear localization of the transcription factor Nrf2) in the same brain regions.”
The researchers found the data collected in the study likely are translational, suggesting active immunization “could give a possibility of delaying or preventing AD onset.”
Moskovitz said such an immunization could be given to people as the risk of Alzheimer’s disease increases later in life, “around the time people are told to go get a colonoscopy for the first time in their 50s or 60s,” he said. “Further booster shots could maintain immunization, a process which people are so familiar with from the COVID vaccines.”
An active immunization would represent an improvement over current passive immunization regimes because the methionine sulfoxide antigen prods the immune system into producing its own antibodies. In passive immunization, antibodies are directly injected into the body but can have severe toxic side effects (such as brain encephalitis) as well as being prone to rejection by the immune system as non-self-antibodies over time.
Moskovitz said the next steps in this line of research would be to conduct pre-clinical and clinical trials in humans in conjunction with the sponsorship of interested pharmaceutical companies.
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The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.
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Contact: Harry Swartz, University Honors Program, 785-864-6003, [email protected]
KU student Aylar Atadurdyyeva named a Key into Public Service Scholar
LAWRENCE — University of Kansas student Aylar Atadurdyyeva, from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, is one of 20 students selected as a Key into Public Service Scholar by the Phi Beta Kappa Society, the nation’s most prestigious academic honor society. The award recognizes students who have demonstrated interest in working in the public sector and possess a strong academic record in the arts, humanities, mathematics, natural sciences and social sciences.
Chosen from almost 900 applicants attending chapter institutions across the nation, each scholar will receive a $5,000 undergraduate scholarship and take part in a conference convening in late June to provide them with training, mentoring and reflection on pathways into active citizenship. Inspired by many Phi Beta Kappa members who have shaped the course of the nation through local, state and federal service, the award highlights specific pathways for liberal arts and graduates seeking public sector careers.
“The society selected the 2022 Service Scholars for their intellectual curiosity; breadth and depth across liberal arts and sciences coursework; positive contributions on and off campus through academic research, internships and community work; and demonstrated commitment to serve others,” said Frederick Lawrence, Phi Beta Kappa secretary. “As the world grapples with concurrent health, economic, democratic and climate crises, the society hopes that its scholarship award encourages more of our nation’s top students to apply their pursuit of arts and sciences excellence in service of the greater good.”
Atadurdyyeva is a junior in global & international studies, microbiology and political science with minors in German studies, psychology and Russian & East European studies. She is an active member of the University Honors program, where she serves as a student ambassador. Atadurdyyeva has served as a clinical research assistant at KU Medical Center and studied the recurrence of prostate cancer. She is currently interning with Education USA, a U.S. Department of State program. Atadurdyyeva is also involved with Student Union Activities, The Big Event and Slavic Club. After graduation, she intends to pursue a doctorate in either microbiology or political science with hopes of becoming a scholar-practitioner.
Officers with KU’s chapter of Phi Beta Kappa said they welcomed this recognition and opportunity for a student member.
“With her three majors, three minors, research experience and involvement in the KU community, Aylar has consistently shown her deep commitment to both scholarship and service,” said Harry Swartz, secretary for the KU chapter. “She has had a stellar career at KU so far, and we can’t wait to see what the future holds for her.”
Atadurdyyeva said she was honored to be selected as a recipient of the Phi Beta Kappa award.
“The award is a testament to the excellence in interdisciplinary education cultivated by both the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and the KU Honors Program,” she said. “With the help of the award, I will be able to meet like-minded peers and learn more about becoming a public servant.”
For more information about the scholarship and links to individual biographies of the recipients, please visit pbk.org/KeyintoPublicService.
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