Today’s News from the University of Kansas
Headlines
KU awarded grant to study transportation needs for underrepresented youths in KC area
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas has received a federal planning grant for a project aimed at helping Kansas City leaders figure out how to connect underserved teens to out-of-school activities and opportunities. The team will use the National Science Foundation funding to do preliminary research into which transportation modes — including the bus system, ride-hailing services and more — best help Kansas City youths connect to OST opportunities, and it will question how the overall transportation system can be redesigned to ensure the social benefits and system efficiency.
Study of virus in fruit flies points to the repeatability of evolution
LAWRENCE — A new study in the journal eLife from researchers at the University of Kansas Department of Molecular Biosciences reveals that virus variants in fruit fly (Drosophila) populations separated by hundreds of miles have been evolving along a strikingly similar path. The findings someday could help guide understanding of viruses that infect humans, like HIV and COVID.
KU Law team wins national championship at Indian law moot court competition
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas School of Law team was crowned as the national champion of this year’s National Native American Law Students Association Moot Court Competition. Third-year law student Zachary Kelsay, of Independence, Missouri, and first-year law student Emily Depew, of Neodesha, defeated Columbia Law School in the final round of the virtual competition Feb. 27. Other KU competitors included Kansas students from El Dorado and Olathe.
Kansas Public Radio launches 3rd annual KPR Mug Design Contest
LAWRENCE – Kansas Public Radio is launching its third annual KPR Mug Design Contest, in which the winner’s unique design will be featured on the 2021 KPR Membership Coffee Mug. Submissions are due no later than March 26.
KU students to present at Kansas Undergraduate Research Days
LAWRENCE – Students from each of the Kansas Board of Regents’ four-year public universities will share work during Kansas’ Undergraduate Research Days. The 2021 event will take place online March 2-4. Presenters include Kansas students from Leawood, Olathe, Overland Park, Topeka and Wamego.
Full stories below.
Contact: Cody Howard, School of Engineering, 785-864-2936, [email protected], @kuengineering
KU awarded grant to study transportation needs for underrepresented youths in KC area
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas has received a federal planning grant for a project aimed at helping Kansas City leaders figure out how to connect underserved teens to out-of-school activities and opportunities.
Alexandra Kondyli, associate professor of civil, environmental & architectural engineering, is leading the team that received the $50,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. She said out-of-school time (OST) activities such as internships, jobs and other learning or training experiences can help young people shape their identities, as well as prepare for their future academic and professional careers. But in sprawling, low-density metro areas like Kansas City, the physical disconnect between residential areas and OST opportunities — combined with unreliable and inefficient transportation services — creates two fundamentally different experiences: Youths from affluent homes and school districts, who are disproportionately white, have greater access than youths from lower-income homes and schools, who are disproportionately Black and Latino.
“You can see there’s a divide, where wealthier kids from high-income households do have that ability to access these opportunities and then eventually have higher success getting accepted to college,” Kondyli said.
Transportation planning can be part of the solution.
“Underrepresented students usually don’t know where these opportunities are — and if they know, they don’t know how to get there,” she said.
The grant, awarded in January, is part of the first phase of the National Science Foundation’s Civic Innovation Challenge. The agency selected 52 teams across the United States to establish community-based research partnerships that identify local challenges and propose solutions that can potentially be scaled up to the regional and national levels. Those teams — including KU’s — are being given until May to refine their proposals, after which NSF will choose which among them will receive $1 million grants to proceed to a one-year pilot implementation.
Under the initial KU proposal, Kondyli’s team would do preliminary research into which transportation modes — including the bus system, ride-hailing services and more — best help Kansas City youths connect to OST opportunities, and it will question how the overall transportation system can be redesigned to ensure the social benefits and system efficiency. The team would conduct focus groups and workshops with students and parents affiliated with the schools in underserved neighborhoods of Wyandotte County in Kansas and Jackson County in Missouri to identify acceptable transportation options and potential incentives for encouraging their use.
“Our goal is just to bring the community together, identify the solutions and find the mechanisms to implement and sustain these solutions for the students to use,” Kondyli said.
KU’s partners in the project include community organizations such as the Kansas City Public Library, Wyandotte County Economic Council, Wyandotte County Health Department, KC Social Innovation Center, LeanLab and ThrYve; regional transit organizations such as Mid-America Regional Council, Kansas City Area Transportation Authority and the Unified Government of Wyandotte County-Kansas City, Kansas; and public-private partnerships including Cityfi, Keystone Innovation District and Kansas City Digital Drive.
KU’s team includes Andrew Davidson, assistant professor of electrical engineering & computer science; Huazhen Fang, associate professor of mechanical engineering; Lisa Koch, associate director for research, partnership and innovation with the KU Transportation Center; Bradley Lane, associate professor in the School of Public Affairs & Administration; Joel Mendez, assistant professor of urban planning and public affairs, and Jomella Watson-Thompson, associate professor of applied behavioral science.
“The whole goal of this project is to make a sustained effort and not something that will run for a year and then disappear,” Kondyli said. “I think in the long, long term we’ll see that the kids will have access to a good selection of out-of-school opportunities to attend, and that will help them in their professional lives. We could potentially see how these students will be able to get more opportunities down the road just by helping them access these opportunities now.”
The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.
Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.
Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Study of virus in fruit flies points to the repeatability of evolution
LAWRENCE — A new study in the journal eLife from researchers at the University of Kansas Department of Molecular Biosciences reveals that virus variants in fruit fly (Drosophila) populations separated by hundreds of miles have been evolving along a strikingly similar path.
“Drosophila is a 120-year-old model system for understanding all sorts of different things — genetics, in particular,” said co-author Robert Unckless, assistant professor of molecular biosciences. “The idea was that in each of these isolated populations, host-virus co-evolution can happen somewhat independently.”
Using rotten mushrooms, the KU investigators captured fruit flies (Drosophila innubila) in Arizona on three isolated “sky islands” — mountains that rise from the desert to form lush, isolated forest ecosystems. Then, they sequenced the genomes of hundreds of these individual fruit flies to confirm the populations were evolving with minimal-to-no gene flow between them.
“We collected flies from all these different populations,” Unckless said. “When you sequence a genome, you don’t just get the fly’s genome — you get the viral genome as well. By doing this, we get the genetic variation within the fly as well as the genetic variation within the virus. Here, it looks like we have three sky island populations where both the fly and the virus are evolving independently.”
Molecular analysis by Unckless and postdoctoral researcher Tom Hill suggested one of the strains of the Nudivirus (also called DiNV) in the fruit flies recurrently evolved at least four times in the past 30,000 years, three times in Arizona and once in another geographically distinct species.
“To me the thing that’s so striking is the fact that evolution repeats itself,” Unckless said. “The repeatability of evolution is all on the viruses’ side. The virus was able to recurrently evolve this high virulence — and it’s not one mutation, we’re talking about 11 mutations. And that’s fairly shocking.”
The analysis of DiNV in the fruit flies showed the mutations resulted in a viral variant that had a 100-times higher viral load (titer) in individuals. This high virulence type was also associated with higher population infection rates: the higher the proportion of infections caused by the high-titer type, the greater the overall population infection rate.
“If infected with this high-titer virus, the flies then were more likely to die — the high-type virus not only gives you more virus per fly, but it also is more virulent — it’s worse for them,” Unckless said.
The KU researchers wondered if they could replicate the results found on the sky islands in the lab by introducing the virus to uninfected fruit flies.
“We did do some experiments where we infected flies in the lab and showed not only can we recapitulate that result in the lab — flies infected with the high-titer type virus have about 100-fold higher viral titer than those infected with the low-titer type — and it’s about 100-fold, kind of remarkable that it was that similar,” the KU researcher said. “Also, the flies infected with the high-type virus died faster — and more of them died. This shows that the increased viral titer does cause increased virulence.”
A second fruit fly species from the Arizona sky island examined by Unckless and Hill, Drosophila azteca, was more commonly infected with a variant of DiNV that had a lower titer, or viral load.
“There’s a concept in epidemiology called ‘optimal virulence,’ and that can be different for the two different species,” Unckless said. “It could be that in Drosophila Azteca, the low titer variant actually does better and in Drosophila innubila the high titer variant does better — and all we’re really seeing in both species is the sort of spillover between species – the sloppiness of the virus transmission.”
Unckless said the fruit fly virus results seem to harken to a question about evolution posed by the famed American paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould.
“The idea is if you rewind the tape of life and let evolution go again, do you get the same result or you to get a different result?” Unckless said. “We can’t rewind the tape, but we can play the tape for three different populations in this study and we get more or less exactly the same thing for each of them.”
The findings someday could help guide understanding of viruses that infect humans, like HIV and COVID. For example, many of the variants in SARS-CoV-2 around the world are thought to be evolving using a similar blueprint – the same mutations arising in different geographic regions.
“Recently, colleagues of mine said, ‘Hey, this phenomenon that you just published on is happening now in coronavirus,’” Unckless said.
The National Institutes of Health supported this work.
Subscribe to KU Today, the campus newsletter,
for additional news about the University of Kansas.
http://www.news.ku.edu
Contact: Ashley Golledge, School of Law, [email protected], @kulawschool
KU Law team wins national championship at Indian law moot court competition
LAWRENCE — A University of Kansas School of Law team was crowned as the national champion of this year’s National Native American Law Students Association (NNALSA) Moot Court Competition.
Third-year law student Zachary Kelsay, of Independence, Missouri, and first-year law student Emily Depew, of Neodesha, defeated Columbia Law School in the final round of the virtual competition Feb. 27. Austyn Caisse won the second-place award for Best Spoken Advocate, and Depew won the third-place award for Best Spoken Advocate.
“Competing in NNALSA would have been impossible without the support of the KU Law community,” Depew said. “We are incredibly thankful to our coaches, teammates and faculty who spent endless hours teaching us about Indian law and judging practice rounds. Preparing and participating in the competition was intellectually challenging and rewarding.”
This is the third national championship KU Law has secured at the NNALSA competition. KU Law teams brought home first-place finishes in 2016 and 2019. Teams also brought home second-place finishes in 2015 and 2017, and a third-place finish in 2020.
“The KU NALSA squad is the hardest-working team in the competition, and all of that effort shows in the results year after year. This year was no different. The whole squad worked together to sharpen one another’s speaking skills and refine their legal arguments,” said Shawn Watts, director of Tribal Law & Government Center and team co-coach. “My favorite part of this year’s squad is that they truly understand that success for one is success for all.”
The NNALSA competition tests students’ knowledge of Indian law by evaluating their legal writing and oral advocacy skills. Students submit written briefs and participate in a simulated courtroom experience.
“We became more confident and culturally aware advocates in learning about the economic challenges still facing Indian country after the Supreme Court’s decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma,” Kelsay said. “I am especially grateful that KU worked to develop a Zoom room for us to perform in this virtual competition.”
Three additional KU teams competed at the event, including Heddy Pierce-Armstrong, of El Dorado; Kevin Barnett, of Portsmouth, Rhode Island; David Biegel, of Anchorage, Alaska; Austyn Caisse, of Santa Cruz, California; Aidan Graybill, of Scottsdale, Arizona; and Grace Seger, of Olathe.
The NNALSA moot court teams were coached by Watts; Nancy Musick, L’19; and Chris Carey, L’19. Carey was part of KU Law’s national championship team in 2019.
“I am so proud of this team. They have worked hard for weeks — even coming to 7 a.m. practices — and it paid off. But, most importantly, this team has supported each other and focused on bringing home the gold for KU Law as a team,” Musick said. “I believe this victory is proof positive that when Jayhawks pull together, they can accomplish anything. I am already looking forward to the next NNALSA competition.”
Forty teams from law schools across the country competed. The final rounds were judged by a panel of esteemed Indian law scholars and practitioners, including Judge Diane Joyce Humetewa of the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona and Commissioner Erica Thunder of North Dakota’s Department of Labor and Human Rights.
Other highlights from the 2020-2021 competition season thus far:
1. Third-year law students Jenny Bartos and Zach Beach advanced to the quarterfinal round of the Jeffrey G. Miller National Environmental Law Moot Court Competition on Feb. 17-18. Bartos won the award for Best Oralist in two preliminary rounds.
2. Third-year law students Rachael Simon, Emma Easom and Kirstyn Dvorak advanced to the quarterfinal round of the regional National Trial Competition on Feb. 19-21.
3. Second-year law students Kalie Belt and Olivia Black and third-year law student Jon Dennis won the award for best draft at the UCLA Transactional Law Competition on Feb. 26.
Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”
a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.
https://kansaspublicradio.org/when-experts-attack
Contact: Bobbi Washechek, Kansas Public Radio, 785-864-7853, [email protected], @KPRInfo
Kansas Public Radio launches 3rd annual KPR Mug Design Contest
LAWRENCE – Kansas Public Radio is launching its third annual KPR Mug Design Contest, in which the winner’s unique design will be featured on the 2021 KPR Membership Coffee Mug.
These new mugs will be given to members of KPR at a socially distanced fifth annual Ice Cream Social in the Theatre Lawrence parking lot and during the KPR Mug Drive-Thru events. Further details will be announced in April.
The winner will receive a $150 value art supply gift basket from Wonder Fair; a free KPR T-shirt, socks and hat; a $25 Raven Book Store gift certificate; and two mugs. The runner-up will receive a $75 value art supply gift basket from Wonder Fair and a KPR T-shirt. KPR is planning smaller-scale distribution of this year’s mug to KPR members and sustainers while being mindful of health and safety concerns.
The design submissions need to emphasize either Kansas, community connections, radio or all three. It must also contain the words Kansas Public Radio, KPR or the actual KPR logo, available to download here. The design needs to be 8.25 inches by 3.5 inches. Designers are allowed a full color scheme, and the design must be submitted as a vector PDF.
Final submissions are due no later than March 26 with the designer’s name, phone number and email address attached and sent to Bobbi Washechek via email.
KPR will select the top five design contest entries March 29, then open submissions to online judging March 30-April 2. KPR will announce the winner and the runner-up the week of April 5.
KPR and Kansas Audio-Reader employees and their families are not eligible to compete. For more information, go to kansaspublicradio.org or email [email protected].
The official university Twitter account has changed to @UnivOfKansas.
Refollow @KUNews for KU News Service stories, discoveries and experts.
Contact: Nicole Perry, Center for Undergraduate Research, 785-864-3391, [email protected], @ugresearch
KU students to present at Kansas Undergraduate Research Days
LAWRENCE – Students from each of the Kansas Board of Regents’ four-year public universities will share work during Kansas’ Undergraduate Research Days. The 2021 event will take place online March 2-4.
Ten University of Kansas students will share their work during the free event, which is hosted this year by Fort Hays State University.
“This event is a chance for our students to highlight the undergraduate research opportunities they have had as a result of their studies at the University of Kansas, as well as how this work enhances their own education while also improving the lives of Kansans. Although it is sad that we cannot meet in the Capitol, this virtual event should make it easier for more people to see the wonderful work being done by undergraduate students at KU and across the state,” said Alison Olcott, director of the Center for Undergraduate Research.
The Kansas Undergraduate Research Day website will feature posters and accompanying student videos describing research projects. Visitors will be able to comment and post questions for the student presenters. Students, faculty, KBOR members, state lawmakers and members of the public from across the state are invited to participate. The event is intended to raise awareness of research being conducted by undergraduate students and to highlight the transformational educational opportunities available to students at each KBOR university.
“Even though we are unable to gather in the Capitol rotunda as we have in the past, hosting this event using technology allows more Kansans to see and hear how learning through research positively affects undergraduate students and how higher education strengthens the Kansas economy and workforce,” said Leslie Paige, FHSU Office of Scholarship and Sponsored Projects, the coordinator of this year’s event. “These experiences enrich student education and better prepares them for future careers.”
The presenters are listed below by name, year of study, major, mentor and title of research project:
From KU Lawrence
1. Jade Groobman, senior in women, gender & sexuality studies from Boulder, Colorado; mentored by Sarah Deer, Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies: “Jews of Color: Experiences of Exclusion and Inclusion.”
2. Rhianna Roth, senior in chemical & petroleum engineering from Bellaire, Texas; mentored by Mark Shiflett, Department of Chemical & Petroleum Engineering: “Project SAVE: Silica Adsorbed Vaccine Encapsulation.”
3. Kade Townsend, sophomore in molecular biosciences from Topeka; mentored by Josephine Chandler, Department of Molecular Biosciences: “Evolution of Antibiotic Resistance in the Pathogenic Bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa.”
4. Anna Trofimoff, senior in chemical & petroleum engineering from Overland Park; mentored by Jennifer Robinson, chemical & petroleum enginering: “The Effect of Increasing Internal Phase and Organic Phase Composition on Emulsion Electrospun Scaffold Wettability.”
5. Kaci Zarek, junior in environmental science from Norfolk, Nebraska; mentored by Amy Burgin, Environmental Studies Program: “Using Fluorescence Spectroscopy to Characterize Dissolved Organic Matter in Eastern Kansas Streams.”
From KU Medical Center
1. Nadeen Abusalim, senior in nursing from Olathe; mentored by Kelly Bosak, School of Nursing: “Feasibility of Implementing Clinical Guidelines with Patient Reported Outcomes Across a Digital Network.”
2. Brynn Hammett, senior in the School of Nursing from Wamego; mentored by Maryellen Potts, School of Nursing: “Immunotherapy Patient Education: A Cross-sectional Survey of Patient Knowledge and Information Seeking Strategies.”
3. Annastasia Milton, senior in the School of Nursing from Papillion, Nebraska; mentored by Shin Hye Park, School of Nursing: “The Effect of Unit-level Practice Environments on Nurse Overtime and Job Enjoyment.”
4. Rachel Rosenberg, senior in the School of Nursing from Leawood; mentored by Moya Peterson, School of Nursing: “Treatment of Diabetes in Adults with Down Syndrome.”
5. Courtney Sobek, senior in the School of Nursing from Overland Park; mentored by Barbara Polivka, School of Nursing: “Dissemination of COVID-19 Information through Professional Nursing Associations.”
KU News Service
1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence KS 66045
Phone: 785-864-3256
Fax: 785-864-3339
[email protected]
http://www.news.ku.edu
Erinn Barcomb-Peterson, director of news and media relations, [email protected]
Today’s News is a free service from the Office of Public Affairs
