Today’s News from the University of Kansas
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KU researchers, students collaborate with artists and CERN on livestream performance
LAWRENCE — A livestream event at 6 p.m. April 8 will highlight research by KU faculty and students through an emerging collaboration between the Spencer Museum of Art’s Integrated Arts Research Initiative and Arts at CERN, the official arts program of the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The experimental live performance will include dancer Vinson Fraley and musician Earl Maneein layered with video footage from CERN that has been manipulated by mathematical techniques used in quantum mechanics.
KU Life Span Institute to host conference on developmental and intellectual disabilities.
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Life Span Institute is partnering with the Baylor College of Medicine to host the 54th annual Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities from April 5 to April 8. Registration for the online event closes at midnight Thursday, April 1. The conference will bring together a diverse group of more than 450 national and international behavioral researchers and scientists to discuss research and collaborations in their field.
Study details how Middle East dust intensifies summer monsoons on Indian subcontinent
LAWRENCE — New research from the University of Kansas offers insight into one of the world’s most powerful monsoon systems. The study details how the Indian summer monsoon, of vital social and economic importance to the people of the region, is supercharged by atmospheric dust particles swept up by winds from deserts in the Middle East. The study’s lead researcher said understanding these mechanisms and climactic effects of dust will prove to be of increasing importance in the face of global climate change.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Elizabeth Kanost, Spencer Museum of Art, 785-864-0142, [email protected], @SpencerMuseum
KU researchers, students collaborate with artists and CERN on livestream performance April 8.
LAWRENCE — A livestream event at 6 p.m. April 8 will highlight research by KU faculty and students through an emerging collaboration between the Spencer Museum of Art’s Integrated Arts Research Initiative (IARI) and Arts at CERN, the official arts program of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). The experimental live performance will include dancer Vinson Fraley and musician Earl Maneein layered with video footage from CERN that has been manipulated by mathematical techniques used in quantum mechanics.
The performance — titled “Singular Value Decomposition”— is grounded in research by Agnieszka Miedlar, IARI faculty fellow and assistant professor of mathematics; Daniel Tapia Takaki, associate professor of physics & astronomy; Clint Hurshman, IARI graduate fellow and student of philosophy; Olivia Johnson, IARI undergraduate fellow and student of mathematics and dance; and Janet Biggs, a New York-based video installation artist. Joey Orr, the Spencer Museum’s curator for research, has guided the collaboration in the production of new work at the boundaries of science and visual art.
Using prompts like “extreme fluctuation” and “entanglements,” the dancer and musician will act as quantum waves within the performance. The performance is presented as a free livestream by the Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York, which represents Biggs.
“This experimental performance is an exploration of whether methods from mathematics and physics can provide new techniques for artistic production,” Orr said. “Can mathematics and physics equations translate into dance movements? Can notations drawn on a whiteboard become choreography? Can a violinist read collisions occurring in the Hadron Collider as a musical score?”
Arts at CERN and IARI will continue asking these questions and more next year as the partnership becomes the focus for IARI’s 2021–2022 academic year.
The Integrated Arts Research Initiative (IARI) is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation at the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas. Arts at CERN, the arts program of the world’s largest laboratory for particle physics, was created to explore the notions of creativity, human ingenuity and curiosity. The Cristin Tierney Gallery is a contemporary art gallery committed to the development and support of both established and emerging artists.
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Contact: Jen Humphrey, Life Span Institute, 785-864-6621, [email protected], @kulifespan
KU Life Span Institute to host conference on developmental and intellectual disabilities
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Life Span Institute is partnering with the Baylor College of Medicine to host the 54th annual Gatlinburg Conference on Research and Theory in Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities from April 5 to April 8.
First launched in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, in 1967, the Gatlinburg Conference will bring together a diverse group of more than 450 national and international behavioral researchers and scientists to discuss research and collaborations in their field.
This year, the conference will be hosted entirely online. For undergraduate and graduate students, and for postdoctoral fellows, registration is free. The cost is $100 for professionals, including investigators, tenure-track or research faculty, and clinicians. Registration closes at midnight Thursday, April 1.
With a theme of “Intervention and Clinical Treatments for Intellectual Disabilities,” the conference includes two pre-conference workshops, 21 symposia, 136 poster presentations, graduate student symposia and a presentation on federal funding offered by staff from the National Institutes of Health.
“The KU Life Span Institute is very excited to co-host the Gatlinburg conference this year with the Baylor College of Medicine,” said John Colombo, Life Span Institute director and interim dean of the KU College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. “This is a longstanding and beloved conference for behavioral scientists in the field of intellectual and developmental disabilities, and we were faced with the challenge of bringing this meeting online for the first time in 54 years. We worked to keep registration costs low and are thrilled that more scientists and trainees have registered than in any previous year.”
Highlights of the conference:
1. “Successes and Challenges in Treating Severe Communication Disorders,” by Nancy Brady, professor and chair, KU Speech-Language-Hearing Department, and scientist at the Life Span Institute.
2. “Fragile X Syndrome: Supportive Treatment, Unmet Needs, and Paths to Novel Interventions and Disease-Targeted Therapies,” by Elizabeth Berry-Kravis, professor of neurology and pediatrics at Rush University Medical Center.
3. “Road to Therapeutics from A to Z: Lessons Learned from Chromosome 15,” by Jessica Duis, assistant professor, Pediatrics-Clinical Genetics and Metabolism at the University of Colorado.
4. “Science Communications and the Importance of Talking to Non-Scientists,” by Maggie Koerth, an award-winning science journalist and a senior science writer at FiveThirtyEight.
5. “Effective Data Visualization,” by Neda Sadeghi, a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health, National Institutes of Health.
The KU Life Span Institute brings together scientists and students at the intersections of education, behavioral science and neuroscience to study problems that directly affect the health and well-being of individuals and communities in Kansas, as well as across the nation and world.
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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
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Contact: Brendan Lynch, KU News Service, 785-864-8855, [email protected], @BrendanMLynch
Study details how Middle East dust intensifies summer monsoons on Indian subcontinent
LAWRENCE — New research from the University of Kansas published in Earth-Science Reviews offers insight into one of the world’s most powerful monsoon systems: the Indian summer monsoon. The study details how the monsoon, of vital social and economic importance to the people of the region, is supercharged by atmospheric dust particles swept up by winds from deserts in the Middle East.
“We know that dust coming from the desert, when lifted by strong winds into the atmosphere, can absorb solar radiation,” said lead author Qinjian Jin, lecturer and academic program associate with KU’s Department of Geography & Atmospheric Science. “The dust, after absorbing solar radiation, becomes very hot. These dust particles suspended in the atmosphere can heat the atmosphere enough that the air pressure will change — and it can result in changes in the circulation patterns, like the winds.”
This phenomenon, dubbed an “elevated heat pump,” drives moisture onto the Indian subcontinent from the sea.
“The Indian summer monsoon is characterized by strong winds in the summer,” Jin said. “So once the winds change, the moisture transport from ocean to land will change, and consequently they will increase the precipitation. The precipitation is very important for people living in South Asia, especially India, and important for agriculture and drinkable water.”
While the dust from the Middle East boosts the power of the monsoons on the Indian subcontinent, there is also a reverse effect that results in a positive feedback loop where the monsoons can increase the winds in the Middle East to produce yet more dust aerosols.
“The monsoon can influence dust emission,” Jin said. “When we have a stronger monsoon, we have heating in the upper atmosphere. The convection associated with the monsoon can go up to a very high elevation, as much as 10 kilometers. When this pattern of air over the monsoon is heated, you produce something like a wave. Across the area, you’ll have high pressure, then low pressure, then high pressure. Those waves can transport air to the Middle East. The air comes upward over the Indian subcontinent, then goes to the Middle East and goes downward — and when the downward air strikes the surface, it can pick up a lot of dust aerosols.”
Jin’s co-authors on the paper are Bing Pu, assistant professor of geography & atmospheric science at KU; Jiangfeng Wei of the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China; William K.M. Lau of the University of Maryland and Chien Wang of Laboratoire d’Aerologie, CNRS/UPS, Toulouse, France.
Their work encompassed a review of literature on the relationship between Middle East dust and the Indian summer monsoons, along with original research using supercomputers to better understand the phenomenon.
While it has been known that an “elevated heat pump” exists due to dust coming from the Arabian Peninsula, Jin and his colleagues argue for another source in South Asia fueling the effect of aerosolized dust upon the Indian summer monsoons: the Iranian Plateau.
“The Iranian Plateau is located between the Middle East and the Tibetan Plateau, and the Iranian Plateau is also very high,” Jin said. “The land at high elevation, when solar radiation reaches the surface, will become very hot. Over this hot Iranian Plateau, we can expect changes to the monsoon circulation and at the same time the hot air over the Iranian Plateau can also strengthen the circulation over the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. So, the Iranian Plateau can increase dust emission from the Middle East, as well as monsoon circulation and monsoon precipitation. The Iranian Plateau is another driver that can explain the relationship between Middle East dust and Indian summer monsoon.”
Jin said the paper explores three other mechanisms influencing the Indian summer monsoon. One is the snow-darkening effect, where black carbon and dust reduce snow’s reflectivity, warming the land and the troposphere above. Another is the solar-dimming effect, where aerosols in the atmosphere cause the land surface to cool. Lastly, the research considers how aerosolized dust can serve as ice-cloud nuclei, which can “alter the microphysical properties of ice clouds and consequently the Indian summer monsoon rainfall.”
The KU researcher said understanding these mechanisms and climactic effects of dust will prove to be of increasing importance in the face of global climate change.
“This is especially true for Asia — there are climate projections showing that in some areas of Asia, the land will become drier,” Jin said. “So, we expect more dust emissions and dust will play a more important role for some time to come in Asia. We have a lot of anthropogenic emission, or air pollution, in eastern China, East Asia and India. But as people try to improve our air quality, the ratio between natural dust to anthropogenic aerosol will increase — that means dust will play a more important role in the future.”
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