When Ken Roberts was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in September 2006, he was shocked. At age 72, he didn’t feel he was functioning outside of what his age should dictate. On the urging of a close friend, Roberts submitted to a five-hour evaluation at his primary care clinic. At the time, it is probable that Roberts was between three and four years into the disease’s progression. That is the average amount of time the illness goes unnoticed in patients, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. The problem with diagnosing the disease lies in the fact that symptoms for it are closely related to those of natural aging.

If a new study being conducted by researchers at the University of Kansas and McGill University in Montreal goes according to plan, Alzheimer’s may be diagnosed earlier by evaluating a word-recognition task and brain wave activity.

The idea for the research came from Nancy Azevedo, a graduate student at the Canadian university. During some routine testing, she noticed certain deficits among Alzheimer’s patients in a lexical decision task. The task was straight forward. It asked participants to evaluate strings of letters, some of which formed English words, and others that formed non-words.

“I noticed as I was compiling all of the data that they kept making all these mistakes with the non-words,” Azevedo said. “I couldn’t figure out why they were doing so much worse on this particular data.”

This observation led Azevedo to her research idea, which looks at language deficits and corresponding brain wave activities in hopes of finding an early marker for the fatal neurological disease.

Ruthann Atchley, a KU professor of psychology, worked closely with Azevedo to develop a method for testing the research hypothesis.

“What we want to do,” Atchley said. “is see if we can find some subtle effects of language that are disrupted very early on in the progression of the disease.”

The implications of finding an early marker for diagnosing Alzheimer’s Disease are numerous. An early diagnosis could lead to earlier treatment for the illness, which is the seventh leading cause of death in the US, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. It would also help prolong the lives of patients diagnosed in the early stages.

As it stands now, more than five million people in the US are living with Alzheimer’s. In the Kansas City area, there are approximately 25,000 people living with the disease. Michelle Niedens, the education director for the Alzheimer’s Association’s Heart of America chapter, said the average age of an individual with the disease is 65 years, with one in ten individuals of that age being diagnosed with the illness. Atchley said that early treatment could help those living with the illness enjoy a better life.

“If you can diagnose the disorder very early on and you intervene with drug therapy, the overall duration of life, of a good quality life, can be drastically extended,” Atchley said.

The study is in its preliminary stages, but looks to collect most of its data next year. The preliminary testing will consist of about 60 participants, 20 in each of three different groups. Each group comprises people with general cognitive impairments, mild-level Alzheimer’s and control conditions. If the early study shows promise, the range and number of participants will expand, and the likelihood of grant money being awarded will increase as well.

The procedures involved in the study are relatively straight forward. While performing the lexical decision task, the patients will be run through an electromagnetic technique known as event related potentials or ERP. Essentially, patients will be asked to say words like “brake” and non-words like “brako” and “bbbkkk” while a computer monitors their brain activity. The goal of the method is to look at electrical responses within the brain when the patients are involved with the task. Researchers hope to find patterns in the data that could turn out to be early signs of an early dementia, such as Alzheimer’s. Atchley said the benefit of this process, and what makes the research cutting-edge, is that the brain activity may be even more sensitive than the behavior that Azevedo observed. The early markers that this study may uncover would also give researchers and physicians a better understanding of the brain.

“This doesn’t just give us an early marker, which is worth it in and of itself,” Atchley said. “It also tells us something about the underlying cognition associated with Alzheimer’s disease.

Niedens agreed that the use of medication in the earlier stages of the illness is beneficial. She said that although there is some controversial research being conducted, most function-based studies confirm that the medication is indeed helpful.

“Those that get diagnosed very early now, I really believe they may benefit from the next generation of medication,” Niedens said. “Although a cure may still be some way down the road.”

Niedens said that medication given to early-stage Alzheimer’s patients is one of the most important tools in their mental stability. She said that the earlier the disease is diagnosed, the more hope it gives the individuals who are affected.

“Hope is far more than a cure,” Niedens said. “It’s lots of things. They are able to adapt their lives in meaningful ways.”

The research, if supported by early testing, will continue for as long as it is useful in the biomedical world. If successful, the study would also lend itself to testing for new Alzheimer’s drugs that may come on the market. The study would allow researches and doctors to evaluate the effectiveness of new drugs much quicker than is now possible.

Ken Roberts is content for now to keep taking the pills that his doctor prescribes. He said he hopes he will survive the disease until something new comes out to help fight it. He said it is all he and anyone with the disease can really do.

“I hope that in the next few years new medications will come out to stop the disease at whatever stage you’re at,” Roberts said. “For now, whatever the doctors tell us to take, we’re going to take it. We can’t afford to stop taking them. We can’t afford to take that chance.”

Massachusetts Street is in chaos. Downtown Lawrence is flooded with celebrating college students in frenzy after the Jayhawks have won there first title in 20 years. My friends Jesse and I make our way through the crowds slowly. Suddenly we run into someone that we watched the game with earlier. The bearded, Turkish man is running in as much excitement as anyone else.
He hugs my friend and then shakes my hand. He asks me if I can remember my name.
I could not, I had forgotten.
In that moment Yakup Gunbatar was just another excited Lawrencium celebrating his team’s victory. For Gunbatar, Lawrence is a long way from his native of Turkey.
Three years ago Gunbatar came to the United States from Turkey. In his country the men are required to do military service after they are out of school. The government allow the men to pursue a master’s degree, but Gunbatar would not be permitted to pursue a Ph.d.
“They think you are just trying to postpone military service,” Gunbatar said. “If you go for a second master’s degree they may not allow you to continue.”
Gunbatar was pursuing a master’s degree at Middle East Technical University. In order to pursue a Ph.d. in the USA he had to suspend degree he was pursuing there because of the military service rules.
Gunbatar applied to several different schools and was accepted to a lot of them. He did not hear back from KU, however, where his girlfriend at the time was accepted. After waiting sometime he placed a call to the aerospace engineering department to find out if he was accepted or not.
“I called to see what happened to my application and they told me I was accepted,” Gunbatar said.
Coming to the US, Gunbatar, wanted to go to a school with a good department for aerospace engineering. That was the biggest factor in him choosing to come to KU.
“Since high school, I have been fascinated by aerospace field.” Gunbatar said.
As a graduate research assistant, Gunbatar now works for the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS). The center is comprised of six partner universities, headquartered at the University of Kansas. They work to develop technology and computer models to measure the sea level change in response to the changing mass of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica.
Gunbatar is involved in the development of controller and auto-landing design for unmanned air vehicles (UAV). He also involved in radar design for the UAVs.
Gunbatar said that he had no major problems in adjusting to life in the US. He learned English at the university he attended in Turkey. He says that writing and reading English is easier to learn. Speaking English is something he has been improving since coming to America.
“When I was at Wichita State, I had friends from Turkey, and we spoke Turkish,” Gunbatar said. “This didn’t really help me learn to speak english any better.”
Gunbatar spent a short amount of time at Wichita State before coming to Kansas.
Gunbatar said that people in a smaller state like Kansas are very friendly and talkative. He said the atmosphere of the Lawrence and KU is very accepting and find it easy to live here with all the different people from different places around the world, here in Lawrence.
Gunbatar enjoys that driving is easier to do in America and gas is so much cheaper here. He said the use of public transportation is not as prolific here as in Turkey.
Gunbatar has no family with him in the US.
“I miss my family every millisecond,” Gunbatar said. “I talk to them almost everyday via the internet.”
Gunbatar is not a US citizen, and does not know how long he will be able to stay in the country. He said he may stay in America for some time depending on conditions he will face.

A national study conducted last year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed a decrease in the immunization rates of children between the ages of 19-35 months in 2006-2007. This was the first decline in immunization rates reported by the National Immunization Survey (NIS) since 2002. Medical and public health professionals said the decline was because of the complexity of the vaccination system, incomplete records scattered across numerous providers, failure of vaccination providers to remind parents of immunization opportunities and growing public mistrust of childhood immunizations.

According to the 2007 NIS, 70 percent of children in the United States were vaccinated in accordance with CDC recommendations compared to 77 percent who were properly vaccinated in 2006. Barbara Schnitker, director of nurses at the Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department, said the coverage should have been at least 90 percent to comply with a goal set by the Healthy People 2010 initiative.
Kansas’s immunization rates decreased for both children and adults, following the national trend. While it is important for people of all ages to be current in their immunizations, medical professionals are most disturbed by the low rates for children ages 19-35 months old. Schnitker said this age group was critical because it was when children needed the most vaccinations.
According to the 2006 survey, the Kansas immunization rate for children 19-35 months old was 58 percent. Last year, the state coverage fell to 51 percent. In Douglas County, 54 percent of children were immunized properly, exceeding the national rate.
“Douglas County is better than the state at large, but it’s nothing to write home about. There is still work to be done,” Schnitker said.
Schnitker said that improving state numbers might be more difficult than expected because of inconsistencies in the system. The Lawrence-Douglas Country Health Department runs audits of all the shots it administers to track vaccination rates. When the department treats international patients who were not immunized as children, it must record the record as though they missed their childhood immunizations, compromising the accuracy of the data.
The childhood immunization schedule is complex and non-static, making it difficult for many parents to comprehend without the help of a medical professional. Joe Blubaugh, Kansas Department of Health and Environment director of communications, said the health care system was too difficult for parents to understand.
“As a father, I can tell you the only reason we were able to keep our daughter on track with immunizations was because we have a medical home. A lot of Kansans don’t have one,” Blubaugh said.

There has also been debate about the safety of immunizations. In 1999, a report surfaced that claimed the MMR (measles-mumps-rubella) vaccine caused a young boy to develop autism. Although numerous studies disproved this theory, the rumor had spread. Similar misconceptions about vaccines still affect some parents’ decisions to not vaccinate their children.
“I can say, ‘I’ve got a stack this high of literature that says that there is no correlation between autism and vaccinations,’ but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that there’s no science that shows that because that urban legend is out there,” Gale Hansen, KDHE state epidemiologist, said.
The US legal system might also have ramifications for public health. When an ill child goes to the doctor’s office, doctors verify the child has been vaccinated. If the child is not current, doctors prefer to vaccinate them in the same visit since the child and parent are present. If anything untoward happens to the child following the immunization, many parents sue the doctor for malpractice.

“[Physicians] are there to try to keep people well and make them better, but if they’re being sued and lose their license they can’t do that anymore,” Hansen said. In 2005, the Kansas Immunization Registry Project (KSWebIZ) began as an effort to construct a free, web-based immunization record database. Schnitker said the statewide registry would allow the health department a greater depth of knowledge about who was not being immunized, insurance providers that were non-compliant and age or racial groups that needed to be targeted. “This year’s survey results confirm that the health system is broken,” said KDHE Secretary Roderick Bremby. “Too many gaps exist that prevent all of our children from getting the immunizations they need, when they need them. We need to ensure access for all children.” In the mean time, KDHE and the health department are continuing to promote awareness by attending health fairs and publicizing national events. The CDC provides promotional materials on events like the National Immunization Conference and National Infant Immunization Week, which was April 19-26. “When those promotions come up we try to do things to get the word out and impress upon parents how important immunizations are. We just have to continually work at it,” Schnitker said. The KDHE is working actively to ensure children in Kansas are immunized properly. While long-term change remains the focus, physicians and state officials said they expect statewide initiatives like the KSWebIZ program to produce higher immunization rates for Kansas in the next national survey.

Liz Schubauer

Time is up at the White House Conference on School Safety, but President George W. Bush takes one last comment. Michael W. Smith, Goodland freshman, steps up to the microphone and cracks a joke.

“I wanted to explain why I had on a bright red jacket,” Smith says, before introducing himself and describing the goals of Family, Career and Community Leaders of America.

Smith rotates the entire upper portion of his tall, wide-shouldered frame as he looks around the room he is addressing. He speaks smoothly and quickly, in a voice that can bring tears to people’s eyes when he sings Ava Maria in church.

At the beginning of his freshman year in high school, Smith went to ask Sarah Short, a teacher of family and consumer science at Goodland High School, about FCCLA.

“We spoke most of the hour and he says, ‘Well, I think I’d like to be national president of the organization.’ And I said, ‘OK Michael, I’m here for you.’ And he did it,” Short says.

Smith was district president of FCCLA during his sophomore year, state president during his junior year, and national president during his senior year.

Now, Smith works as a freelance motivational speaker. He built off of the network he built up through his work for FCCLA. He charges a fee for giving speeches. He has spoken at more than 10 conferences around the United States in the past two months. He speaks at 20 to 25 career or leadership conferences per year.

Smith has written 10 keynote speeches that he can fit to the needs of events and audiences. The keynotes are titled things like “Leadership: ‘Are you ready?’” or “Positioned for Success: “‘It's not what you know...’”

Summaries of the keynotes and videos of Smith speaking can be viewed on Smith’s website, michaelwadesmith.com.

Smith said he liked to speak because “you weren’t just giving workshops, you were actually affecting the lives of students.” Smith draws inspiration for his speeches from everywhere. “Life is a big notebook for keynotes,” Smith said. “Everybody’s family is absolutely crazy.”

Smith grew up living with his mother and grandparents. Dick Short, husband of Sarah Short, said that Smith’s grandparents have had a big influence on Smith. Dick said he teases Smith because he walks with a slight limp like an old man.

“The grandfather said, ‘Michael, you can do anything Michael wants to do.’ And that has stayed with him,” Sarah Short said.

People in the town of Goodland, population 5,000, also support Smith. “The whole town is really proud of the places he’s gone,” said Jena McCall, Smith’s best friend from high school.

Townspeople like to keep up with what Smith is doing. “A lot of it is through his grandmother. His grandmother talks to every body,” Dick Short said. “His grandmother is a waitress in a restaurant and you know she’s never known a stranger.”

“People come off of I-70 and she will make sure that they know about her grandson,” Smith said.

Smith’s mother is Mexican and his father is black. Smith said that he has had to deal with a lot of bigotry growing up in a white area. “Some kids say that he acts white sometimes,” said Jena McCall, Smith’s best friend in high school. “He’ll just kind of explain that black is a race. He’s never aggressive about it.”

“He always has an opinion about everything. He’s really good at telling you the truth whether you want to hear it or not,” McCall said.

Michael doesn’t get nervous when he gives speeches anymore, not even when he was talking to the President of the United States last October. “You just feel like he’s just a regular guy,” Smith said.

A few months after Stephanie Vellucci got a small piercing below her bottom lip known as a labret, she noticed her gums were beginning to recede. When the recession continued, she decided she should remove the stud and transition to a lip ring.

Currently, Velluci works as a body piercer at Big Daddy Cadillac’s Tattoos & Piercing. She said customers were beginning to make the same kind of change.

“I would say labrets are dying,” Vellucci said.

Dental problems caused by labrets are not only an issue today, but can also be seen in populations from the past. David W. Frayer, professor of biological anthropology, plans to publish a paper this summer that suggests Neolithic teeth from a site in Pakistan show signs of wear from labrets. If proven, the discovery would support the idea that labrets can cause serious damage to gums and teeth.

Jean-Francois Jarrige, a French researcher, discovered the Pakistani site on the Bolan River outside of Quetta in 1977 after a series of intense spring storms led to the erosion of the surrounding hillside.

The teeth used in Frayer’s study were discovered in the third area to be excavated, known as Mehrgarh Three. They are believed to be from the pre-ceramic Neolithic time period about 9,000-7,500 years ago.

Frayer said Mehrgarh Three contained the remains of 225 individuals and that the majority of the bones at the site were not very well preserved. With many of the individuals, only teeth remained.

Once the excavations were over, the teeth were loaned to the Luigi Pigorini Museum of Prehistory and Ethnography in Rome.

About three years ago, Frayer went on sabbatical and joined Alfredo Coppa, Luca Bondioli, Roberto Macchiarelli and a number of other researchers in Rome to work with the teeth.

“I was lucky to be involved in the project,” Frayer said. “It was a tremendous amount of fun.”

Gianna Tartaglia, a research assistant at the museum, proposed that unusual scooped
out sections visible on the front of 10 of the teeth were due to wear.

When Frayer decided to study the same teeth, he proposed a different cause for the lesions: labrets.

Frayer said a number of other sites around the world, including Peruvian and Inuit sites, have shown evidence of labrets. This is the first time someone has proposed labret wear for the area in which the teeth were found.

“They’re much more common than people anticipated,” Frayer said.

Frayer said the team began to think labrets were the cause after ruling out a number of other possibilities. The first possibility the team decided to explore was abfractions, which occur when the area between the root and enamel of a tooth bends and a crevice develops.

The team decided to send a CD of pictures to Jim Bader, a dentist in North Carolina, and later to John Grippo, the dentist who coined the term “abfraction.” Both dentists said the wear did not seem to indicate abfractions.

Another possibility was that the lesions were caused by corrosion from raw tobacco or some kind of food product. The only problem was that corrosion would have caused wear on the sides of the teeth as well.

“That’s the hardest one to exclude,” Frayer said.

One of the main problems with Frayer’s proposal is that nothing resembling labrets has been found at the site. He said it was possible that the plugs could have been overlooked or that they were made out of wood.

“That’s the missing piece of the puzzle,” Frayer said.

Frayer said that the team could possibly work on an article for a dental journal if they were able to show that the lesions were actually caused by labrets.

“There’s a practical value to all of this,” Frayer said.

Patrick Jankowski, dentist at JayHawk Dental LLC, said he had seen a number of patients with damage from labrets.

According to Jankowski, gum recession is generally the first sign of damage and can show up within the first couple of weeks after a piercing. With time, the teeth can begin to chip and eventually show signs of wear on the surface.

Vellucci said customers with concerns about their teeth generally requested acrylic labrets rather than metals such as surgical steel, titanium, niobium or gold.

Jankowski said acrylic labrets were less harmful because they were softer and less likely to chip teeth, but that they could still cause gum problems.

Cate Crandall, Overland Park sophomore, said she wasn’t worried about permanent damage from her labret because she wasn’t planning on wearing it for any longer than a couple of years.

“Plus, with the advances in medical technology today, it won’t be hard to fix,” Crandall said.

Jankowski said the quickest way to reverse minor damage was to remove the labret. More serious damage could require surgical procedures and take several months to heal.

Vellucci said she hadn’t been to the dentist in a while, but that the gum recession didn’t cause her any pain and that her tooth wasn’t loose. Switching to a lip ring doesn't guarantee dental health, however.

Jankowski said a number of his patients had dental problems from lip rings and tongue studs as well.

Karen Finkbiner remembers the day one of her chemotherapy patients came in for her regular appointment. When the patient arrived she said she simply couldn’t and wouldn’t go through with the chemotherapy treatment anymore. Finkbiner, an oncology pharmacist, said the patient had a very curable disease but decided to stop treatment after one course of a six-course treatment program because of a side effect: a severe case of diarrhea. Finkbiner said the patient’s side effect was affecting her quality of life too negatively and she did not want to continue with the treatment even if it meant curing all of the cancer.

“It’s a fine line for oncologists, pharmacists and nurses because we want to encourage them to complete their treatment to enhance their possibility of curing all of the cancer,” Finkbiner said. “However, we support the patients decision.”

Recent research may help with the side effects such as those experienced by Finkbiner’s patient. A group of KU researchers discovered a new approach to improving drug delivery, directly to the cancer cells targeted by chemotherapy. The research is important to enhancing anti-cancer drugs by reducing side effects elsewhere in a patient’s body. The research group, led by advisor Jeff Krise, associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry, has been looking at individual cells, both cancerous and normal, absorb anti-cancer drugs.

“Cancer drugs have inherent selectivity towards cancer cells,” Krise said. “How we design drugs in the future will be affected by this.”

When patients undergo chemotherapy, it becomes difficult to kill all the cancer cells without killing the patient, Krise said. Increasing chemotherapy dosage is complicated because side effects necessitates that treatment be stopped before it can kill all of the cancerous cells. Krise explained that one trait of cancer cells is that they divide and grow, but he said the use of anti-cancer drugs can help stop the cancerous cell replication, which keeps it from spreading to other areas.

“If you could give a 50-fold higher amount of chemotherapy without harming normal cells, it would hit the cancer cells really hard,” Krise said.

Finkbiner said she believed the key to improving chemotherapy treatment was fewer side effects. She said that chemotherapy had a narrow therapeutic window, which was unlike other diseases in which twice the drug dosage caused little change in side effects. Chemotherapy patients, however, cannot take twice the amount of a drug without expecting serious harm. Finkbiner said doing so might kill the cancerous tumor more effectively but would also affect other areas of the body.

“I think optimizing any drug, new or old, would be beneficial,” Finkbiner said.

Cancer cells grow rapidly, which makes them sensitive to chemotherapy treatment. Finkbiner said that if the cancer was not growing, then chemotherapy would not work. She said that the side effects of traditional chemotherapy, such as hair loss, are caused because normal cells that grow rapidly suffer more from treatment than normal slower-growing cells.

“Anything we can do to come up with less toxic drugs or less severity of side effects is a huge breakthrough for patients,” Finkbiner said.

The research group examined how the same drug reacted differently in cancerous cells versus normal ones. Other researchers had previous attempted to enhance drug delivery by targeting the drugs to just the cancerous cells and avoiding drug interaction with the normal cells.

In contrast to previous attempts, Krise and his researchers hope to improve drug delivery to where the cancer drug reaches all cells but is only toxic to the cancerous cells. The researchers started with a cell-culture model, which proved their hypothesis correct.

Kathy Roby, a medical research associate professor at KU Med Center, works in the anatomy and cell biology department. Roby is also conducting research on targeting drug delivery to cancerous cells. The difference between Krise’s and Roby’s research is that Roby is targeting only the cancerous cells and not all cells.

Chemotherapy is usually given through an IV, which circulates the drug throughout the whole body, causing numerous side effects. Roby said the amount of chemotherapy treatment given does not depend on how many cancer cells it kills but rather on how much of the toxic side effects the body can handle. Roby said she believed the research could help in two ways. One benefit is the possible reduction of side effects.

“It could be really beneficial for the patients in terms of quality of life,” Roby said.

Roby said the second benefit was having the possibility of giving more chemotherapy treatment, which would give the drug more of a chance to kill more cancerous cells.

Julie Tuley, clinical coordinator in The Oncology Center at Lawrence Memorial Hospital, said chemotherapy was given in cycles, which usually depends on the patient’s type of cancer and the drugs. Tuley said all chemotherapies were different and a lot of treatments depended on dose toxicity in regard to what side effects the patients suffered. Chemotherapy is used to reduce the number of cancer cells to a point at which the immune system can recognize them as cells that need to be attacked. Tuley said different chemotherapies caused different side effects and some of those side effects could be dose limiting, meaning the patient’s treatment must be stopped or changed.

“The best way to fight cancer is to stay on course with treatments, but sometimes side effects don’t let a patient stay on course,” Tuley said.

Krise’s research group is divided in examining both cancer related drug delivery enhancement and degenerative disease. However, the cancer-related drug research receives more funding than his research group’s study on degenerative disease. The National Cancer Institute, which is part of the National Institutes of Health, funds $1.5 million to the group’s research for a five-year period. Krise said the NIH has a great emphasis on conducting cancer research within Kansas.

Krise said he thinks it will work, which will allow pharmaceutical companies to make modifications on current cancer drugs.

“We can take a lot of older drugs and make them a lot more effective,” Krise said.

Victims of a virus: New vaccination in the making

The smell hits like a wall when going past two sets of glass doors into the Lawrence Humane Society at 1805 E. 19th Street. It’s a mixture of cleaning supplies, animal feces, medication and the smell of the animals themselves. The floors are mopped to a shine to keep germs and viruses to a minimum, but soon become dirty again due to all the paws that scurry over them by the end of the day.

Jeaneen Hercha, director of animal welfare for seven years, bends over to look at the stitches on the belly of a female Labrador retriever.
“She looks fine,” Hercha said. “Her stitches don’t need to come out just yet.” Hercha has her work cut out for her, with 6,000 animals coming to the humane society each year, some being adopted out and some receiving euthanasia.

This year Hercha’s main concern is a rare cat virus known as the calicivirus, an upper respiratory virus found in kittens and older cats. Feline calicivirus is “characterized by upper respiratory symptoms, pneumonia, oral ulceration (sores in the mouth) and occasionally arthritis,” according to AnimalHealthChannel.com. The virus, which is normally rare, can cause outbreaks and send veterinarians and humane society staffs scurrying. The virus also comes in different viral strains, some strains being more severe than others, as well as causing different symptoms. Within the past few months the calicivirus vaccination has become incorporated into another upper respiratory virus vaccination, the feline viral rhinotracheitis and distemper vaccination, otherwise known when you visit your local veterinary clinic as, “FVRCP.”

“Not many people realize the impact that the calicivirus has,” Hercha said. At any given time the humane society has 300 to 400 cats and 99.9 percent of those cats will contract an upper respiratory infection one to two days after they enter the shelter due to the stress of the environment. Hercha and her staff attended a conference on the calicivirus in the fall of 2007 to watch for signs of this deadly virus, which can cause a 60 percent mortality rate in cats.

Not only do humane societies have to watch for the differences between the common upper respiratory viruses versus the calicivirus, but veterinary clinics do, too. Matthew Coles, doctor of veterinary medicine, of the Animal Hospital of Lawrence at 701 Michigan Street, regards the calicivirus like the flu.

“It’s just like any virus, some animals get sicker and some get through it,” Coles said. “However, the calicivirus can change from a typical virus to a newer strain and that’s when we have to worry.”

Coles specified that his clinic has recently received literature discussing more severe violent strains of the calicivirus that has had an outbreak in Springfield, Mo. Coles isn’t worried just yet though, but if the virus gets closer to Kansas, Coles and his staff will be prepared to watch for the signs. As will Hercha and her staff at the humane society.

The virus is rare because humane societies and veterinary clinics have learned how to contain it. Calicivirus doesn’t travel through the air, but rather through direct contact with the saliva, eye and nose discharges and sometimes the feces, of an infected cat. Calicivirus is only found in cats and is not transferable to humans. The virus is dangerous in many ways, but in one way because it is resistant to disinfectants and can survive outside of a cats body for 8 to 10 days. This factor is similar to the parvovirus in canines, which has a 90 percent mortality rate.

Irene Schomacker, doctor of veterinary medicine, of the Cat Clinic of Johnson County at 9426 Pflumm in Lenexa, said calicivirus is a scary thing.

“My main concern with viral vaccinations is that the viruses are mutating so rapidly that it would be worthless to vaccinate and then have to consider a different vaccination for the same virus,” Schomacker said.

Schomacker’s cat clinic deals mainly with older house cats and because the calicivirus usually resides in cats from catteries and cats from humane societies, Schomacker and her staff are trying to keep from over vaccinating their patients.

“I am keeping my ear to the ground, however,” Schomacker said. “I’ve heard the horror stories and I’ve got to protect my patients as much as I can.”

Not only is Schomacker concerned about over-vaccinations, but other veterinarians are as well. Clients have been stressing to their veterinarians that they feel their pets are being over-vaccinated and they aren’t over exaggerating.

Jeff Dennis, doctor of veterinary medicine and internal medicine, of Veterinary Specialty and Emergency Center or “VSEC” at 11950 W. 110th St. in Overland Park, stresses that people are concerned with over-vaccination.

“Vaccinations last for one year for sure,” Dennis said. “However, the drugs never get tested, so they may last longer. We just know that they stay in the system of the animal for at least a year.”

At VSEC, Dennis and a staff of 30, deal with specialty cases and extreme emergency situations. If Lawrence veterinarians ever face a situation that they can’t handle, such as a bad case of the calicivirus, they send them to VSEC. VSEC states on its Web site that the members of the staff are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Coles agrees with Dennis on over-vaccinations. With the recent release of a new FVRCP vaccination to protect against the most recent strain of it calicivirus, Coles said he isn’t going to introduce it to his patients until an outbreak comes closer to Lawrence.

“It’s up to the vet to buy the new vaccinations,” Cole said. “If there’s an outbreak at the humane society here, we’ll definitely be getting more of the vaccination.”

Tammy Faries, Garnett senior, takes her cats, Crookshanks and Periwinkle, to the Animal Hospital of Lawrence.

“I feel that if cats never go outside then vaccinations aren’t really required,” Faries said. “But if cats do go outside or they are outside cats then vaccinations are necessary.”

Faries totes her two cats to the veterinary clinic only once every couple of years because they are older, but when they were kittens she took them as often as they needed. And because they are strictly indoor cats, she’ll spend only about $40 on both cats. Faries would prefer to not know about the calicivirus unless it concerns her cats.

Back at the Lawrence Humane Society, Hercha scrambles back and forth. A new shipment of animals has just come in from the state and she and her staff unload them by the crate loads from a horse trailer. That means an entire new shipment of cats to look out for, as well as dogs. The cats will all develop an upper respiratory virus, according to Hercha, and she and her staff will have to watch for the signs of the dreaded calicivirus.

“We keep the basic vaccinations here,” Hercha said. “No new ones because it’s costly to keep them updated, but we treat them with what any vet would treat them with. Basic antibiotics like Clavamox.” The humane society runs on donations, so when the going gets tough, Hercha said it cuts out extras as much as it can.

“We gladly scrump on stuff for us,” Hercha said. “As long as it helps the animals in the long run.”

Ed and Kelly Luke of Lawrence thought that having a baby would be easy, until they tried to conceive.

The couple was wrong.

For four years their fertility problem remained undiagnosed. They went to fertility doctors who tried to prescribe them fertility drug, which the Lukes were not comfortable with.

“I just wasn’t getting pregnant,” said Kelly, now 45. “They were looking for what was wrong. But a 37-year-old woman should still be able to get pregnant.”

Then Ed Luke, who at the time was using holistic medicine to treat his own medical problems, heard about an alternative to traditional medical infertility treatments: Acupuncture. They did some reading and decided that Kelly should try it.

Everyday Kelly went to Dr. Farhang Khosh, a doctor of natural medicine and acupuncturist in Lawrence. He examined her entire body, looked at her tongue, checked her pulses, got a detailed history of her medical problems and prescribed her natural supplements. Then in 2003, Kelly began the acupuncture treatments, costing $75 per session.

Shortly after she began the treatments, she become pregnant. That pregnancy was not successful. But Kelly tried again.

Today, the Lukes have a three-year-old son, Noah. They credit his successful birth to acupuncture.

“I don’t think it would have taken this long if we would have tried it [acupuncture] sooner,” Kelly Luke said. “There is no down side to it and I have never felt better.”

Medical doctors will not confirm nor deny the effect acupuncture has on increasing fertility.

“Acupuncture is a controversial issue,” said Dr. Sam Kim , a reproductive endocrinologist and director of the Fertility Preservation Program at the University of Kansas Medical Center. “When it comes to the research being done, the jury is still out.”

But the Lukes are not the only people that support acupuncture as a beneficial fertility treatment.

Cecilia Mills, a partner in the Southwind Health Collective in Lawrence, a facility offering massage and acupuncture treatments, said that an increasing number of women have been coming to their offices over the last three years seeking acupuncture to treat infertility. Dr. Khosh said that his practice in infertility treatment has been growing by about five percent each year for the last five years.
“More people are drawn to it now that it is talked about more,” Khosh said. “It is almost non-invasive. It doesn't involve hard core methods.”

Acupuncture, as a use in treating infertility, has been growing for some time. The American Board of Oriental Reproductive Medicine, ABORM, was founded as a federal non-profit organization in 2006. It helped organize a standard for practitioners to follow when performing traditional Chinese medicine, such as acupuncture.

“Because of the financial, emotional, and physical toll experienced by those diagnosed with infertility, the ABORM was created to offer a national (and soon-to-be international) standard for specialization for acupuncturists who treat infertility,” said Ray Rubio, president and CEO of ABORM.

Acupuncture has become one of the fastest growing complementary care treatments in the country, but it still remains a controversial issue.

Stress management is key during the infertility treatment process and acupuncture is a known stress reducer. But, its actual effectiveness on pregnancy is still questionable said Anne Adams, the director of programming and policy for the American Fertility Association based in New York City..

“Increasingly there is an acceptance that complementary care modalities, such as yoga, meditation and acupuncture have a salutary effect,” said Adams. “Whether there is a correlation between pregnancy outcomes that is more conditional. Some studies say yes, some say no.”

Exactly how acupuncture may help conception is unclear. But research has been done showing that acupuncture can have positive effects when used with medical fertility treatment, such as in vitro fertilization, IVF.

A research study done in 2002, published in Fertility and Sterility, showed that patients that were undergoing IVF treatment and acupuncture had a 42.5 percent pregnancy rate while woman that only used IVF treatments had had pregnancy rates of 26.3 percent.

“The Infertility Cure,” written by Randine Lewis was published in 2002 and was the first book to claim that traditional Chinese medicine was a successful infertility treatment. The book includes testimonials and research supporting natural approaches, including acupuncture.

Debra Sussman, executive director of the Mind Body Institute in California, a facility that studies and practices mind and body medicine for progress in infertility treatments, said that acupuncture may also help by increasing blood flow to the uterus before and after embryo transfer.

“The research also shows that it [acupuncture] decreases FSH, follicle stimulating hormone, levels,” Sussman said.

The levels of FSH in a woman’s body are important to pregnancy. Higher levels of FSH mean the woman is less likely to get pregnant because with a higher FSH level the number and quality of viable eggs becomes limited. If FSH gets to a certain level, the woman enters early menopause and can’t conceive, Sussman said.

A clinical study from the Zhejiang College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, located in Hangzhou, China, showed that acupuncture treatments did effect the level of FSH in subjects, helping to bring them to normal levels.

Fertility treatments are expensive and each medical or pharmaceutical treatment can cost thousands of dollars per cycle.

Cecilia Mills of the Southwind Health Collective said that for some people fertility treatments can cost as much as a years salary. According to the American Society of reproductive medicine, the average cost of an IVF treatment can be as much as $12,400 per cycle.

In Lawrence, at both Dr. Khosh’s office and the Southwind Health Collective, the price of an acupuncture treatment starts at $75. At the Southwind Health Collective folow-up treatments cost $60.

For Ed and Kelly Luke, all they wanted was a baby. Now, thanks to acupuncture they said, they have their active, beautiful three-year-old son. Kelly said that she tells everyone that is openly battling infertility about her experience and recommends acupuncture. She said that she has acupuncture to thank for helping her get pregnant after her long, drawn-out battle with infertility.

In the Experimental Joint Biomechanics Research Laboratory in the School of Engineering, a team of researchers on the second floor experimented on thawed cadaveric knees during a two-day process at the end of April. If there was a stench from the knees, it went unnoticed, as the windows were propped wide open during the testing. By the second day it wasn’t easy to ignore the soft, flimsy shape the knees were beginning to take or the uncanny resemblance the innards of the knees had to packaged meat at the grocery store.

Moving past the appearance of the testing, though, is research that’s helping to improve orthopedic medicine.

Chadd Clary, a researcher and doctoral student, said in the past two years they’ve tested about 30 knees.

“What we’re interested in is the behavior and the movement of the knee,” Clary said. “Of both the natural knee and how that changes after total knee replacement.”

Doctoral student Amit Mane is another member of the researcher team and said the knees came from people who donated their bodies to science. Mane said they tell an agency, which has the cadavers, their stipulations and what they’re looking for, such as age, height and gender. He said they do not use any cadavers that had knee surgery.

Researcher and doctoral student Amber Reeve said most of the cadavers they’ve tested are older than 55, but they typically receive knees that are between 60 and 65-years-old. Reeve said the youngest knee they have tested was 41-years-old and the oldest knee was around 80-years-old.

Mane said the project they’re working on started a year and half ago and that they are currently on the second phase of the project.

The primary hands-on research happens during a planned out two-day period, which is only one stint out of a series of tests throughout the year. Research advisor Dr. Lorin Maletsky said an orthopedic company, which funds the research, requests that they test the company’s knee replacement prototypes. Maletsky said they are currently contracted to test 10 knees a year.
Maletsky said he and his researchers have worked with a variety of orthopedic companies and that the companies want to research whether its knee replacement prototypes will react the way the company predicts they will react. He said if the company doesn’t get the results that it predicted, then it tries to determine why that is, such as factors like the way the knee replacement was designed or how it was tested.

During a study, Clary said the first day is used to test two cadaveric knees in their natural state, meaning without knee replacements. He said on the second day, a surgeon implants the knee replacements in the same knees and then the researchers test the knees to see how they react with the replacements.

The researchers have three main devices that they use to test the knees with and without the replacements.

Two of those ways are with the Kansas Dynamic Knee Simulator and the Quasi-Static Knee Simulator. Clary said Maletsky designed and built the Kansas Dynamic Knee Simulator after building a similar machine at Purdue University. He said since the machine was created six years ago, the researchers have modified it to what it is today.

“There are similar machines at other places, but there are some unique capabilities here that we have,” Maletsky said.

With both the Kansas Dynamic Knee Simulator and the Quasi-Static Knee Simulator, the knees are attached to the machines and various loads, or forces, are applied to the knees to see how the knees behave, Clary said. The knees are attached to the machines in a way that mimics the actual structure and appearance of a leg.

Clary said that the loads that are applied from the Kansas Dynamic Knee Simulator are dynamic loads, meaning that the knees are forced to continuously move the way the researchers manipulate them to, such as in a deep-knee squat. The Quasi-Static Knee Simulator applies static loads to the knees, Clary said, which means the knees are forced into a certain position and remain in that position with no movement. The other way he said they test the knees is by applying loads by hand.

Clary said testing on live patients is difficult, so the testing on the machines helps surgeons determine how the knee replacement will affect a patient.

The main reason people need knee replacements, Clary said, is to treat osteoarthritis.

“Basically, the surfaces of your bones are covered in [a] strong, slick layer of articular cartilage which cushions and lubricates the joint,” Clary said. “With osteoarthritis, this layer of cartilage breaks down leaving bone-on-bone contact which can be very painful.”

It’s hard to repair the cartilage, so a surgeon covers the surface of the bone with a knee replacement, he said.

“Although almost everyone will eventually suffer from osteoarthritis as they age, it's been shown that ligament injuries accelerate the onset of the disease,” he said.

Clary also said some patients complain that they feel unstable or the knee feels unnatural after a knee replacement, so they try to research why those things occur.

“One of the things that orthopedic manufactures are trying to accomplish is to create knee replacements that replicate the motion of the natural knee, so that to the patient it feels as natural as possible,” Clary said.

According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, the first knee replacement occurred in 1968. Since knee replacements were first introduced, Clary said one improvement in the components is the material on the backside of the knee replacements now has “porous coatings.” He said this allowed the bone to permanently attach itself to the knee replacement, lessening the chances that the knee replacement becomes loose.

Clary said the shapes of the knee replacements haven’t changed much.

“The basic idea is that the shapes of modern implants are very similar to the healthy natural knee and recreate very similar motions to the healthy knee,” he said.

One way knee replacements have improved, Clary said, is surgeons can now perform partial knee replacements instead of the total knee replacements. He also said computer aided surgery, which uses computers and cameras, have improved the surgeon’s placement of the knee replacement. The other improvement Clary mentioned was a minimally invasive surgery, which is when a surgeon makes a smaller incision so that the patient can recover faster.

Maletsky said testing is important to orthopedic companies because the knee replacements they’re testing haven’t been used in patients before. He said the two-day testing gives them actual data that tells the company whether the knee replacement did what it predicted it would do.

Maletsky said they have tested some components that have gone into patients clinically. He said the current knee replacements they were testing haven’t been used in patients yet. Clary said surgeons will eventually do clinical studies with those replacements, though.

After the researchers are done with the cadaveric knees, they are sent to the University of Kansas Medical Center where they’re incinerated, Clary said.

Aside from testing knee replacements, Clary said they hope to study ACL injury more. He said women are six times more likely to experience an ACL injury because of factors like hip width, knee shape and hormones. Just as the researchers apply loads to the knees to test knee replacements, they would apply loads to the knees to try to figure out what causes an ACL injury, he said.

Liz Schubauer

Undergraduate students are researching therapies that could help different groups of people, from preschoolers to senior citizens, with speech, language and hearing disorders communicate.

Natalie Lynn, Kansas City, Kan., senior, researched storybook reading between parents and their children with speech, language or hearing disorders.

“Shared storybook reading is an activity we used a lot with kids with communications disorders,” said Matt Gillispie, clinical instructor in speech, language, and hearing. “It helps give them some literacy skills.” Gillispie is Lynn’s faculty mentor for the research project.

Lynn said children with speech, language or hearing disorders tend to lag behind in learning how to read. She said that past research has shown that storybook reading can increase literacy for children with these disorders. One additional benefit of shared storybook reading is that it is convenient; a parent can do it at home.

Lynn’s experiment focused on children who use augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). An AAC device is similar to a touch-screen computer. A child can point at pictures or words on the screen and the machine will say the words. It is used for communication at school, where the teacher and other students may not know how to use sign language.

Lynn researched how training of the storybook reader can impact the storybook reading. Lynn encouraged the parent to be more interactive by using the AAC device, asking questions about the book, and pointing to the book. She loaded pages onto the AAC device that related to the book the parent and child were reading.

Lynn found that going over a handout of tips with the parent before the storybook reading increased the amount of time that the parent spent using the AAC device. Lynn said that it is important for the parent to use the AAC device, because it shows the child how to communicate using the device.

“Going over the handout did help him find ways to increase interaction,” Lynn said. Some types of the parent’s communication attempts did decrease, Lynn said. The parent had less time to point to things in the actual book, because he was pointing to things on the AAC device.

Erin Gunzelman, Wichita senior, is researching legacy profiles, and whether they are an effective therapy for stroke victims who have speech, language or hearing difficulties.

A legacy profile is a scrapbook. Each page has a photo in the center, with words around the edges that are meant to trigger memories.

“They help them converse with other people, have that social interaction with people base on their life experiences,” said Julie Gatts, clinical assistant professor in speech, language, and hearing. “It helps support someone who had trouble using words.” Gatts is Gunzelman’s faculty mentor.

Gunzelman spent 10 hours talking with her subject about important things in his life before she created a legacy portfolio.

Gunzelman then went over the legacy profile with her subject. The hope is that going through memories in a logical way will make it easier for people who have had strokes to participate in therapy and conversation groups.

“It’s something that hadn’t been done before,” Gatts said. “We were curious to see; is that something that could make a difference?”

Similar experiments have studied the effects of legacy portfolios on people with dementia, but Gunzelman and Gatts are not aware of any studies involving legacy portfolios that have been done with stroke victims.

Gunzelman is currently analyzing her data.

Both experiments have limitations because each studied only one case study over only a handful of sessions.

The students received class credit for their research. The experiments were conducted over the past two semesters. Lynn and Gunzelman spent the fall semester researching past literature on their subject. They developed and carried out their studies during the spring semester.

One floor above the Experimental Joint Biomechanics Research Lab in Learned Hall, Carol Gonce works at the front desk of the mechanical engineering department office. Gonce recently returned to her job after taking two months off to recover from knee replacement surgery on her right knee.

Mechanical engineers design and test prosthetics like Gonce’s new knee. After years of knee pain, Gonce went to Lawrence Memorial hospital for the surgery.

“Now I’m thinking what in the world did I put it off for?” she said.

In June, mechanical engineering professor Lorin Maletsky and his students will present research on knee replacements at a conference held by the Bioengineering Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Their lab builds simulations to test surgical procedures and prosthetics.

Maletsky’s lab on the second floor of Learned Hall contains the grease and the steel contraptions associated with mechanical engineering. The only hints of biology are a poster of the skeletal system and a cast of a foot attached to one of the machines. Arensberg’s Shoes, on Massachusetts St., donated the foot.

Human tissue, which attaches to the machines, resides in an unsuspecting, industrial freezer. These researchers are used to merging the world of the surgeon with the world of the engineer, but Chadd Clary, a PhD. student and Self graduate fellow, recalled one early realization.

“Wow, I’m really holding a leg.”

As human as this research can be, Clary said he views the leg as a mechanical structure. Maletsky said mechanical engineering principles let his lab understand the structure and motion of the human body.

“I am really just a machine designer, and the application happens to be biomechanics,” Maletsky said.

Clary started working with Maletsky as an undergraduate. Clary said knee prosthetic design has progressed quickly. The first knee-replacement surgeries, performed about 20 years ago, lasted a decade. Surgeries performed today will last for three decades.

Clary sees room for improvement in surgical procedures to catch up with the advances in prosthetic design. Every surgeon is different. Some have more experience with knee replacement than others. Clary is working on a computer model that mimics the best surgeons.

He collects data from surgeons who use KU’s simulators.

“We have a wealth of talent that comes through the lab,” Clary said.

The trouble is talented surgeons perform something more like art than science. So, Clary uses sensors that capture the idiosyncrasies of a surgical procedure. Then, he makes the computer model reproduce the instincts of a skilled surgeon.

Surgeons with less experience can use the model in computer-assisted surgery.

“They don’t have those highly developed skills and instincts,” Clary said.

So, letting the model handle some of the work brings the expertise of surgeons who specialize in knee replacement to more patients.

Maletsky and his students also use their knee simulator to test prosthetics for companies that design them. They can try things with the simulator that they would not try on real patients.

For example, a simulation can predict the results possible mistakes.

“[We] purposefully do it wrong and see what happens,” Maletsky said.

The simulator also lets the researchers insert sensors that are too invasive to use in patients. They still cannot measure everything. In fact, Maletsky pointed out the challenges in his research.

They simulate only a few of the twelve muscles that cross the human knee. When they simulate walking, the legs move at one third of walking speed.

“We make gross oversimplifications,” Maletsky said.

Variations from person to person make designing a single prosthetic difficult. Some people are bow-legged or knock-kneed. Everyone walks differently.

“That’s what makes this challenging. Given enough time, I guarantee I can make a perfect knee for one person,” Maletsky said.

Perfect knees for everyone may remain a goal for a long time. For now, Carol Gonce is satisfied that she can walk up and down stairs again thanks to her knee replacement.

“I’m so glad I got it done,” she said.

Biomechanical engineering even offers help for people with healthy joints. Ken Fischer, a KU mechanical engineering professor, said simulations could predict who is at risk for arthritis, which is a common reason behind joint replacements.

Gardening takes a lot of work. You weed the garden, you pick out the flowers, you take care of the pests, etc. If the Prairie Park nature center has any say, Lawrence residents will be planting sustainable gardens in the near future.

Director of the nature center’s sustainable garden project, Marty Birrell, said that the main idea behind sustainable gardening was just a reduction of the effort put into gardens so that the gardens can “sustain” themselves.

Sharon Ashworth, professor of Environmental Studies, went even further, saying that sustainable gardening limits the amount of fertilizers, insecticides and even the amount of water used in gardening.

Birrell said the idea for the nature center’s garden came about because the city of Lawrence as a whole was looking for ways to be more sustainable. “The city was targeted to improve its techniques in city parks because they traditionally have weeded with herbicides,” Birrell said.

Birrell said this problem with the city spurred the nature center’s idea for a sustainable garden to warn residents about the same possible problems in their yards. “We need to be doing more to educate residential landowners on how to reduce the fertilizer and pesticide and herbicides that are used in residential lands,” Birrell said.

Birrell said that the sustainable garden would be a way for residents of Lawrence to learn about sustainable gardening techniques and implement them on an individual level. “It’s a display garden to help educate land owners on how to landscape their yard to make it more sustainable,” Birrell said.

If Lawrence residents need a model besides the nature center’s display they can look to local farms, like Pendleton’s Country Market, as examples of sustainable gardening on an even larger scale.

Karen Pendleton, owner of Pendleton’s Country Market, said her farmland was 450 acres and she tries to maintain her crops in sustainable ways by growing plants that will survive with less water and insecticides.

Pendleton said they grow plants that can survive with minimal water and also use other techniques to cut back on water use. “We also use techniques such as mulching to preserve water so that we’re not having to water quite as often,” Pendleton said.

Pendleton also said to get around using pesticides they use beneficial insects.
Pendleton’s husband, John, described one of these methods. He said they used microscopic wasps to get rid of the aphids in one of the greenhouses.

Pendleton said she decided to get into sustainable farming because it was a good way of business and it saves money, a positive for anyone thinking about sustainable gardening. “Any time I can cut back on an input that’s going to cost me money, I’m going to be able to make more money at the end,” Pendleton said. “At the same time, it has to be, if I cut back on something I still have to be able to have a good, quality product in the end.”

While Pendleton said growing plants that required less water if an efficient, sustainable technique, Ashworth said that growing plants that are native to the area can also benefit a sustainable garden by requiring less water and fertilizer and having an added benefit. “If you plant native plants, not only is there minimal resource input into those plants, it also benefits biodiversity in the local area,” Ashworth said.

Pendleton said the lack of people growing non-native plants is a problem in Lawrence. “Many people are trying to grow crops that are not easily grown here,” Pendleton said. She said this cause people to use too much water or pesticides, which could become a problem down the road.

Ashworth sees Prairie Park’s initiative as completely feasible. She does not think it’s that hard to use sustainable gardening techniques, especially considering how helpful these techniques are in preserving water and limiting chemical input into the soil.

“It’s fine, and I think, totally manageable to do your own garden in your backyard with minimal resource inputs,” Ashworth said.

Doppler radar (NEXRAD) may not be used for very much longer. The
Doppler radar was first proposed by Christian A. Doppler in 1842 and it was
placed out on the market to forecast weather in the late 1980's and early
1990's. Fortunately, new radar is being discovered and researchers are now
looking at a new way to forecast weather by using the phased array radar.

The phased array radar concepts were developed in the late
1950's during World War II in order to protect from missile threats. The phased
array radar came into operation in the 1960's and 1970's. The phased array radar
is still being investigated but is coming closer and closer to being released to
the weather stations.

Atmospheric Science Lecturer at the University of Kansas, Curtis Hall commented how at the University of Oklahoma where the National Weather Service is located in Norman Oklahoma, they are doing extensive research on the phased array radar and hope to come to some sort of development and be able to release this within the next five or ten years.

Current Atmospheric Science student at the
University of Kansas, Jennifer McLemore usually goes to check out the local
Doppler radar that is provided for students in Lindley Hall on campus. Every
time McLemore goes into the Weather Lab there is always something new and
exciting to check out but she has noticed that it doesn't always give the most
accurate readings.

"Even though the radar we use today is pretty
good, there are some problems with it when it comes to tornadoes. It doesn't
tell us whether there is a tornado or not, the only thing it can tell us is if
there is rotation and even that isn't much anymore," McLemore said.

The current NEXRAD Doppler radar has an antenna that collects
data as does the phased array radar, but the phased array radar does this in one
sixth of the time. One of the main differences that creates such a time
difference is that when the Doppler radar scans the sky it sends out a beam and
waits for the returned energy, and the phased array radar sends out multiple
beams of energy while rotating an entire 360 degrees and changing elevation.

When this radar does come to the market, Meteorologists will be able to create
more accurate forecasts and improve current computer models and reduce the
'guessing' work done in preparation of storms. Meteorologists will finally be
able to look at the evolution of storms and see how they really work and send
out enough lead time for people to take shelter in severe weather.

Warning Coordination Meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Topeka,
Jennifer Stark has gone to a few presentations about the phased array radars.
Stark said that the phased array radars aren't deployed to the Weather Forecast
Offices but are currently being tested for accuracy.

"I've seen a couple presentations on the imagery they are
getting from the phased array radar's from the NSSL (National Severe Storms
Laboratory) and the images are amazing", Stark said.

The phased array radar is actually capable of doing many more
things than the current Doppler radar does. The phased array radar can do
real-time casting of severe weather (i.e., tornadoes, hurricanes, high winds,
etc.). One of the main advantages of the phase array radar compared to the
Doppler radar is that it cuts down the scan time from six minutes to only one
minute for the entire atmosphere. This will enable Meteorologists to send out
lead warning times from ten to twenty minutes.

University of Kansas student Wesley Johnson has always had his
head in the clouds and is always out looking for storms. Johnson was an
Atmospheric Science student but recently changed to Environmental Studies but
still has a strong fascination with weather.

"When it comes to radar, I think it's pretty accurate but the lead time isn't
enough yet. There are families out there getting killed by these massive storms
since the lead time is only five or six minutes. That isn't nearly enough time
to get everything gathered and take shelter. We need to improve this somehow, I
know The National Weather Service can do that, it's just a matter of time,"
Johnson said.

When this new phased array radar does come out whether it is in
five years or twenty-five years, there is still a lot Meteorologists can do in
the mean time. Maybe they could predict when the next severe weather will hit;
after all it is only just the beginning of tornado season.

Worries over global warming have people talking about the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the air. Some people think this increase comes from cars and other pollutants, but two researchers at the University of Kansas think a large part of the carbon dioxide comes from a natural source - groundwater. Gwen Macpherson, associate professor of geology, and Karen Ohmes, Hutchinson sophomore, will conduct a new study this summer to measure the carbon dioxide levels of a stream at the Konza Prairie Preserve. Macpherson said she hopes this will help researchers in the future better understand where the increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the air are coming from.

Macpherson has been studying groundwater (underground water) at Konza Prairie since 1991, but she took an interest in this new study after accidentally running across some odd data five years ago. At that time Macpherson decided to compile her ten years of research and look for long-term trends in the water chemistry of her work, not expecting to find anything. What she did find, however, was something odd. Macpherson noticed that the amount of carbon dioxide in one stream changed as the river ran downhill, something she had never seen before.

Macpherson said she thinks underground limestone is causing the change. As the groundwater flows downhill and into the stream at this site, it passes through five to seven different sets of limestone. When the water passes through it erodes the limestone, creating carbon dioxide.

“Groundwater contains carbon dioxide, and this is what gets everybody’s attention,” Macpherson said. “Most groundwater contains more carbon dioxide than you would find in the air which means when that groundwater comes to the surface it’s going to release carbon dioxide into the air.”

Marios Sophocleous, senior scientists of hydrogeology at the Kansas Geological Survey, said that any water moving through soil underground would pick up carbon dioxide. He hasn’t done research on the subject, but he said although carbon dioxide levels of groundwater are higher than levels in the air, he didn’t think groundwater was contributing much to the increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the air.

“I think that would be a smaller contributor than something like the trees,” Sophocleous said. “In my opinion, it’s not going to be that great from groundwater.”

Macpherson and Ohmes both said they hope this information will help them and future researchers understand some of the natural causes behind increasing levels of carbon dioxide and global warming.

“Everybody’s worried about the CO2 emissions in the atmosphere,” Ohmes said. “Everybody just assumes it comes from cars, but a lot of other things put CO2 in the atmosphere as well, and this is just one way to document it.”

Macpherson also said she thought it was important to understand the natural processes that put carbon dioxide in the air as a platform for understanding how manmade processes affect it.

“We only barely understand all of the sources for carbon dioxide,” she said. “I think we need to nail down a lot better how the natural system works in order to understand the impact we’re having by driving our cars and all the other things that we do.”

Macpherson and Ohmes will start their research in June. They expect to make three trips to the Konza Prairire Preserve, six miles south of Manhattan. Macpherson said during their first trip they will pinpoint the locations where the water leaves the limestone, which could be difficult.

“Sometimes you can see the limestone,” Macpherson said. “That’s easy. Sometimes you can’t, and that’s a little harder because it will be more diffuse. It’ll be a little harder to pinpoint. But I think we can do it.”

They will collect water samples on each trip, analyze them at labs in Lawrence and compare the data. Macpherson and Ohmes both said they hope to get their findings published.

“You never know until you actually do the final analysis of the data what will come out of it, but I can see this as a very neat, packaged study,” Macpherson said.

She said that if Ohmes wanted to write the study up, she could publish the findings with a venue for student-written research such as the Kansas Academy of Sciences. Macpherson also said that it’s possible that their findings could dovetail in with some research she’s currently doing and get published in a larger journal.

The pair said they hope to fund their research through a grant. Ohmes applied for the grant through the Association of Women Geoscientists. She doesn’t know yet whether they will receive the money, but she said even if they don’t get it they will go ahead with the research. Ohmes said she could still get money if she choose to do research hours as an elective through the university.

Compared to most studies, Macpherson and Ohmes don’t need a lot of money. Most of the equipment they need they can use at the university. Gas will be their biggest expense.

“That’s why we need the grant, basically, is for the gas,” Ohmes said. “It’s going to be over $150 to make trips out there.”

For years, scientist worked hard to advance technology, aiming to create devices that are smaller, faster and more convenient. Technical advance such as laptops, cell phones and flash drives are just a few examples. A University of Kansas professor and her researchers are aiming to advance technology.

KU professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Chemistry Susan Lunte and a research group are focused on the development of a smaller, faster and more sensitive substance analysis micro chip to analyze substance in blood.

Lunte began doing research, which is paid for by the National Institute of Health, in 1995. She said she has seen improvement with the advancement of the chip since then.

“There has been a gradual change in the size of the chip,” Lunte said.

She said the chip, which was once half the size of a student desk, is now the size of students’ ID cards.

The micro chip would contain all the elements used in larger blood analysis instruments such as ultraviolets, fluorescent and micro electro units, but only smaller and faster.

The micro chip is t-shaped and 10 microns deep, 50 microns wide—barely larger than the size of human hair, which is about 30 microns. The material is a flimsy rubber—similar to the material used to tile a bathroom with. The sample is injected onto chip, then the blood is run through the channel, separated and the substances of interest are analyzed.

Lunte said the chip allowed scientist to look at the contents ofsingle cells and study the different protein expressions in individual cell types.

“The chip made it capable to see things that the bigger devices would not find,” Lunte said.

Lunte said the micro chips are smaller and portable. The chips are meant to analyze smaller volumes of substance.

The Lunte research group focuses on areas of brain-related infection, one in particular is strokes. Strokes affect the blood-brain barrier, which is present in the brain vessel and used to protect what flows in and out of the blood stream.

Courtney Kuhline, graduate student and member of research group, studies amino acid and peptide transport across the blood brain barrier. She said the blood brain barrier is important because it keeps harmful things out of blood and transfer nutrients from blood to the brain. She said with the chip she could detect the activity that occurs in the blood brain barrier.

“The micro chip pulls out specific compounds in a smaller, faster method,” Kuhnline said.

Other areas of study are AIDS, Alzheimer, neuropathic pain and cancer cells.

David Fischer, graduate student and member of the Lunte research group, works with cancer screening and blood diagnosis of cancerous cells. He said the micro chip would allow researchers to detect cancer at its earliest stage, and possibly increase the survival rate.

“Very beginning stages of finding disease that way, down the road, we can find a drug,” Fischer said.

Fischer said ordinarily he took the blood sample and sent it to the capillary electrophoresis system, substance analysis. It takes 20-to-30 minutes to get results. The micro chip provides the same results in 2-to-5 minutes.

Fischer said ideally, medical clinics could use chips for clinical testing.

“Some projects aim at making analysis, of what’s going on. We aim to make it user friendly,” Fischer said.

He said researchers are using existing technology and making it better, faster and more sensitive.

Lunte said the micro chip has a number of advantages. She said the chips would generate less toxic waste, reduce timing of analysis, make modern analytical methods available to third world countries and keep cells alive for log term monitoring.

She also said the chip could monitor animals better. She said animal testing often ends up killing animals. With the new device, research could be done on an animal in its everyday environment, doing everyday activity.

“Most are done by killing animals. Don’t get good reading,” Dr. Lunte said.

Lunte’s group does research on blood brain barrier in rats. She said that they monitor rats in their real environment. The rats’ blood is injected into micro chip and then the data is sent to computers for monitoring.

Pradyot Nandi, graduate student and participant in Lunte’s research group said the chip makes a good instrument to analyze substance. Nandi studies samples of the rats on the micro chips. He said the samples from the chip would be easy to analyze online.

“It’s very convenient,” Nandi said.

Lunte said the research group is working on minimizing the size of the chip.

“We’re working on making it small enough to fit a rat, like a backpack,” Lunte said. The chips will not go inside the body.

She said minimizing the size is a barrier because of the associated electronics. She said the interface is the main problem.

Lunte said the chips also come with disadvantages. She said going small is not always necessary and small chips proveids limited space for sample analysis . Also, sometime other substances stick to the surface of a chip, which can hinder accurate results.

Fischer said the micro chip can improve future medical studies. He said the advancement and improvement of technology wouldn’t be possible if these devices did not exist.

"It’s good that we push the boundaries. We provide much better insight,” Fischer said.

Lunte said in the future, she hopes the chip does well on the medical market.

The first variation of the herpes simplex virus can strike anyone at any time, but blindness is not a commonly known effect of HSV-1.
Dr. David Davido, University of Kansas assistant professor in the department of biology, estimates that one million people have ocular infections as a result of both variations of the herpes virus, the vast majority of which result from HSV-1.

“It’s out there, it’s definitely out there,” Davido said.
Davido has spent the past 16 years researching HSV-1 on and off, with a focus on its ocular effects. Using grants from the National Institute of Health, he hopes to eventually use his research to patent therapeutic breakthroughs.
Davido’s lab focuses on the gene and protein ICP0, using it as a target. ICP0 shows itself early on in infect cells. Tests for herpes check the blood to see if the body is producing antibodies against the virus. If the antibodies are present, the person has herpes. Tests don’t reveal the virus itself, only the antibodies.

While ICP0 is not necessary for the cells to replicate, its behavior makes it easier for the virus to do so. Davido is using the gene to determine what makes the virus latent or productive.
The virus in its latent state may seem relatively benign. The infected person will still have HSV-1, but may not show any outward signs. The virus in its productive state is disruptive, and the infected person will show the sores and outbreaks that are symptomatic of herpes.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 45 million Americans over the age of 12 are infected with herpes. In the past decade, however, infection has decreased in prevalence.
Davido said that ocular herpes research was extremely important, because continued breakouts — a recurring sore in the same spot on the eye — could eventually lead to blindness.
Three undergraduate students work in Davido’s lab, including Thornton Thompson, Lenexa junior and a Goldwater Scholarship nominee.
Thompson’s work in the lab includes working to modify ICP0 to see how that affects its function. He’s been working in Davido’s lab for a year and a half. While he said he hopes the research leads to medical applications, he was quick to point out that that shouldn’t be the primary focus.
“Besides the intrinsic value of gaining knowledge for knowledge's sake, this research does have medical application,” Thornton said. “But remember that many of the greatest scientific discoveries came about by accident, and not by a directed focus.”

Davido said he valued the work done by his research assistants.
“They certainly are important,” Davido said. “They provide results that we ultimately want to publish.”
Depending on how much they contribute to the research, undergraduate research assistants may be listed as authors or contributors in the final research paper.
Davido said that while his work is focused on HSV-1, it will also have implications for HSV-2. He said that his lab is focused on treatments to prevent herpes infection, as well as impair replication in those already infected with the virus.
The main herpes medication available now, Valtrex, sometimes has a decreasing potency the longer a patient takes it. Davido said that AIDS patients were often unable to gain benefit from Valtrex because of their weakened immune symptoms. In some long-term patients, Valtrex only has a 40 percent success rate.
The National Institute of Health notes that there are two types of HSV-1, recurrent and primary. Primary HSV-1 sores tend to heal completely, but the infected person remains infected and the sores may still break out later. Recurrent sores are less severe. The NIH estimates that only 10 percent of all herpes-infected people may get sores, even though they may still spread the disease to other people.
Davido’s research as been going on for a long time, but he is confident that eventually his hard work will yield results, and may end the suffering of millions of people infected with herpes.

Snakes recently collected from the Philipines sit in jars, ready to be sorted and catalogued. The Lifemapper program uses information associated with specimens like these to create a series of maps that reflect the location of species.

Mapping out a Future

New program predicts future habitats for species

The distinct smells of formaldehyde and alcohol permeate the air and hundreds of glass jars line the towering shelves. Each jar, carefully alphabetized and catalogued, holds a different species of preserved reptile. Tiny lizards lay unblinking in a sea of alcohol while large frogs occupy the container next to it. Farther down the row is a tall jar with one, thick snake coiled at the bottom. This is the herpetology specimen archive at the University of Kansas Natural History Museum and Biodiversity Research Center . It contains roughly 290,000 reptile and amphibian specimens. According to Andy Bentley, the Ichthyology Collection Manager, the museum is home to nearly 12 million plant and animal specimens and is growing at a rate of five to 10 percent every year. A new project called Lifemapper, which was launched just this year, is putting all of the museum’s documented specimens to use—as well as the billions of specimens that have been documented by other research institutions from around the world.

Lifemapper, developed by a small group of software programmers at the Biodiversity Research Center, uses information gathered from hundreds of universities and institutions and creates a virtual map of where species are located and where they will be. Yellow dots represent where a species currently lives and a red shading system shows where it is predicted to occur based on current environmental trends.

The information for these maps comes from specimen archives like the ones at KU. Each and every specimen in an archive, right down to the very last frog, has an extensive set of information associated with it that tells researchers when and where the specimen was found. The information is so specific it tells researchers the exact latitude, longitude and time of day the creature was picked up. Sometimes it will even say if the weather was sunny or cloudy that day. Every little detail means something to a scientist.

“A specimen is only as good as the data associated with it,” Bentley said. “Without information about where and when it was collected, it’s just another dead animal.”

Lifemapper combines that specimen information with data on current environmental trends provided by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A series of 64 computers is necessary to process all of that information. The computers then come up with a formula that predicts where a single species might occur if the climate continues to progress the way it is now. The formulas can also be manipulated to show how different climate conditions change the way a species multiplies.

The project website, www.lifemapper.org , doesn’t look like much yet—it’s just barely functioning.

“It’s taken a lot longer than I expected,” said Aimee Stewart, Senior Software Developer for Lifemapper. “Right now there’s not a whole lot you can do with it. We’re just trying to build the archive and trying to keep everything stable as we do things.”

However, the program team is eager to talk about the future of Lifemapper. Eventually, they hope to add features that would allow people to submit multiple requests and keep track of all their data. They would also like to see other types of analysis that would be able to look at the interactions between species, like carnivores and the animals they eat. The finished program will be a tool for advanced scientific research purposes, but Stewart also sees a great outlet for its use in grade school education.

“A sixth grader can go through the whole process,” Stewart said. “They can upload their own data and they can watch it go through the process and they can look at the results and try to interpret why this may have happened. They may be right or they may be wrong, but that’s maybe not as important as learning how to think in a scientific way.”

KU is one of the country’s leading institutions on Bio-Informatics, which is a way of using math, statistics and computational technology to conduct biological research. Leonard Krishtalka, Director for the Biodiversity Institute at KU, said that recent advances with bio-informatics technology enable researchers to make important predictions for the future.

“Biodiversity informatics and tools such as Lifemapper enable the analysis of centuries of data,” Krishtalka said. “Lifemapper can turn centuries of purely descriptive data on the life of the planet into power predictions that can inform smart environmental policies for human health, growing the economy, improving national security and enhancing the quality of life.”

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Take a tour of the archives

Image one: Specimen archives in the herpetology department at KU. The herpetology department houses almost 300,000 reptiles and amphibians.

Image two: Every single specimen in the archives is tagged with an identification number. The museum always collects more than one specimen of each species so that they can differentiate between male and female, young and old or big and small.

Image three: These snakes were recently collected from the Philippines, but some of the specimens in the archives date back to 1882. Scientists first started documenting life in the area when the railroad was being built across Kansas.

Image four: Some specimens are just too big for their jars. These giant lizards have to be kept in huge metal tubs.

Image five: Researchers work in labs filled with jars of recently collected specimens. The archives at KU grow almost 10 percent every year. That means in ten years, another 1.2 million specimens will have been added to KU's archives.

Sitting directly across from a smiling 5-year-old girl, an examiner at KU’s Language Acquisition Lab places a couple toys on a table and begins rattling off a series of sentences—only half of which makes much sense.

“I likes milk,” the examiner begins.

“He eats pizza. He are standing up.”

The young girl is attempting to decide which sentences are correct and which are “not so good.” This is merely one more exercise in a series of tests that will judge the child’s language abilities. The young girl does below average, but at the end she gets to play with the toys anyway.

This is just another day at the office for Mabel Rice, director of the Language Acquisition Studies lab.

For the last 15 years, Rice and her colleagues have been conducting research on a group of young children with language impairments from over 100 area school districts. The study, funded by the National Institute of Health, is an attempt to better our understanding of language development in young children.

But this is just a small piece of the puzzle in KU’s on-going commitment to determining exactly how kids come to develop language. The University has been a leading center for research and social programs on the subject for over 20 years.

Becoming a Model Demonstration Center

The University’s Life Span Institute recently announced that they had been awarded a $1.6 million grant to establish a Model Demonstration Center for Promoting Language and Literacy Readiness in Early Childhood. The center will be one of only three like it in the county and will work with childcare providers to implement language-promoting strategies inside of preschool and kindergarten classrooms from all across the Kansas City Metro area.

“The center will be unique in that it will actually deal with the issue of language and early literacy development by providing training to the people who help develop these skills in children,” said Karen Henry, spokesman for the Life Span Institute.

The center will be lead by KU associate research professor Dale Walker and Steve Warren, vice provost of research and graduate studies. The program will be an extension of the earlier work of KU professors Betty Hart and Todd Risley—who showed that children who heard more language in early infancy had larger vocabularies entering preschool than those who did not hear as much language in their homes.

This research, which is well known in the field and has even been quoted by the last two presidential administrations, predicted that those who heard more language in early infancy would eventually have higher levels of school readiness, spoken language, early literacy and achievement level.

Walker and her colleagues followed-up the study and concluded that Hart and Risely were correct—those children who heard more language at home went on to be more successful academically.

“Those children who had better language experiences when they were infants continued to do better in language and literacy related areas in school when compared to their peers that had less language opportunities.” Walker said.

Now, with the creation of the $1.6 million model demonstration center, Walker is turning her focus to local children caregivers—hoping to equip them with various language-promoting strategies that have been shown to aid in language and literacy formation.

“These strategies come from early intervention research from Steve Warren, Betty Hart, and others. Based on the literature, I simplified their work and developed 8 simple language promoting strategies. And that’s what we’ve been trying to teach childcare workers in Kansas.” Said Walker.

Strategies include increasing the labeling of common items and helping finish a child’s incomplete sentence.

Figuring out language at KU

The model demonstration center will work closely with the Juniper Garden’s Children’s Project, a Kansas City affiliate of the Life Span Institute which works with area professionals to implement a wide variety of programs aimed at improving children’s development, both academically and socially. They also work closely with the University to help foster research in the field.

One of their current projects is the Beacon Excellence in Communications Promotion, which provides educational training to early childhood caregivers in the Kansas City Metropolitan area to teach them how to create an environment that offers many opportunities for language and learning development.

They also support many programs that deal with other areas of general childhood development, including behavioral and literacy issues. They founded the University’s Center for Early Intervention for Reading and Behavior.

Another KU-sponsored program that is helping children with language development is the Language Acquisition Preschool, which teaches children through various language and learning exercises. The head teacher of the school is a speech language pathologist and the assistant teacher is an early childhood educator.

The preschool was founded by Mabel Rice, who also created the Language Acquisitions Studies Lab. Rice has devoted most of her career to understanding language development, and is considered an international authority on the issue

Rice is also the director of the child language doctoral program, which has graduated 17 professionals to date. Her research and contributions to the field are so well known that she was even an adviser to the children’s programs “Sesame Street” and “Dora The Explorer”.

Issues in the field

Researchers are still debating how much language development is influenced by genetics or upbringing.

In their study, Hart and Risley found that children from poorer families had poorer language skills. They concluded that by age 4, a child from an advantaged family may hear 45 million words, while a similar child from a welfare family may hear as few as a third of this—only 15 million.

But a more recent study by Rice and her colleagues found that there were no correlations between a child’s economic status and their verbal abilities at age 2.

“The conclusion is that we don’t want to assume too strongly that children of poverty are unable to acquire early vocabulary.” Rice said in the report.

And at the same time, there is also some uncertainty regarding the influence of a child’s home environment on language development.

“We just don’t know why some kids learn to talk so effortlessly, while other children in the same environment struggle with this process,” said Nancy Brady, research professor for Institute of Life Span Studies.

Another issue involves finding the best way to implement language-promoting strategies.

“We still are still figuring out the best ways to help others understand what we know. These strategies help improve early literacy outcomes, but only if they are actually being used.” Walker said.

It is clear that we don’t know all there is to the issue of language and early literacy development.

However, through a continued dedication to strong research and social programs, The University of Kansas and its dedicated staff are making sure they are doing their part towards finding these answers.

At the beginning of the fall semester a group of nervous teenagers walked into their first social skills group meeting. Looking around the room, the teens took comfort in knowing they were among peers who all have autism. In school they already learned the academic and behavioral skills needed in day-to-day life, but there was still something missing. They were lacking true friendships and meaningful relationships. They knew their classmates in school, but they usually didn’t receive an invitation to the birthday parties and were not invited to participate in weekend festivities.

Wes Dotson, Broken Arrow, Okla., graduate student and Justin Leaf, Long Beach, Calif., graduate student worked with many children with autism around the Lawrence area and noticed the lack of services focusing strictly on social skills.

“Schools often focus on behavioral skills, academic skills and independent living skills often to the inclusion of teaching them how to make friends, because they have to focus on what they need to focus on,“ Dotson said. “We felt this was a very pressing need in the community.”

Dotson and Leaf started a social skills group for children with autism that meets with different age groups every day from 4:15-5:45 p.m. To recruit the kids, they sent out flyers and a mass e-mail through the Lawrence and Kansas City Autism Society. It wasn’t long before they received over 100 e-mails from interested parents. They performed clinical studies with each kid and the parents before deciding which children were right for the group. Children with autism either lack normal language development or have an impairment in the development of social behavior, or both. The kids chosen for the group needed language skills because the teaching Dotson and Leaf use is language based.

The research obtained in their social skills group will not only help them receive their dissertations, but also provides a new kind of teaching environment in the Lawrence area for children with autism. The teaching techniques they use in the groups were developed over thirty years ago, but usually are applied in a clinical setting. Dotson and Leaf not only apply the teaching techniques in a controlled environment, but they also are the first group to evaluate their data rigorously with research.

Dotson leads the 12-18 year-old groups because it matches his expertise. Usually the group begins with an activity where the children learn rules of games and sportsmanship so they can take part in similar activities outside of the group. Next, Dotson moves to the teaching portion of the class that focuses on another skill, either emotional or conversational. They learn how to deal with different situations or about general knowledge so they know age appropriate topics to talk about.

“When the group started out most of the kids named Disney movies when asked what their favorite movies were and only three of them knew how to play soccer,” Dotson said. “We try to teach them things that other kids their age like so in school they know what to talk about with their classmates.”

Dotson collects data before they learn a new skill, immediately after they learn the skill and during a follow-up period to see if the teaching is effective. During the entire group session, the kids are reinforced with praise and encouragement. They also receive points on a point card for appropriate behavior and loose points for inappropriate behavior. The points are collected at the end of the group and the kids can turn their points in for different items including games and candy.

Leaf leads the 3-6 year-old groups, which matches his expertise. The kids are younger, so the group is focused on more basic social skills. Some examples of these skills are giving compliments, asking for things politely and recognizing emotions in people through their facial expressions. The children are younger so they are reinforced more than the older kids and need a tangible reinforcer. Leaf uses tickets for their points and each time the children act appropriately they are reinforced immediately and he places a ticket in their cup that are traded in for prizes at the end of the day.

Leaf uses the same teaching model and data collection used with the older kids. The kids choose their activity during break time because Dotson and Leaf want to make sure everything that happens in the group serves as a reinforcer. If the children engage in an activity they want to play, then it reinforces their good behavior.

“We have seen a lot of progress,“ Leaf said. “The kids would come in and not know how to follow simple instructions and interact with friends and now I think they follow pretty much all instructions and they exhibit a lot of social behaviors they didn’t have before.”

In addition to Dotson and Leaf, 12 undergraduate students help teach and collect data for the group. The experience gives them the opportunity to receive real world, hands-on experience while working with children with autism. They have the opportunity to lead and teach a lot of behaviors, which most people don’t have until they are out of college and working.

Valerie Johnson, Overland Park senior said she was nervous when she started the group, but now wants to continue this kind of research after college.

“I had the public image of what children with autism are and I didn’t really know what to expect and I was just worried I was not going to like it, but I absolutely feel in love with it and completely changed my major because of it,” Johnson said.

James Sherman, Ph.D., professor of applied behavioral science, first encountered autism in the 1960s when people regarded autism as untreatable. Sherman said teaching children with autism social skills is absolutely critical for their development.

“Humans are social animals and there are many skills they need in order to be successful,” Sherman said. “If they can’t make friends they are going to be at a severe disadvantage.”

Dotson and Leaf said they know they are leaving a lasting impression on the kids in their group. One of the 16-year-old in the group received a cell-phone for Christmas and he immediately brought the phone to class and wanted to put everyone’s phone number in it.

“That was such a happy day for us and we wanted to do a dance,” Dotson said. “Seeing the relationships that develop between the kids is very rewarding for us.”

Dotson and Leaf plan to continue the group through the summer and into next year. They hope to expand the group to other areas in Kansas including the Kansas City area. They want to show the success of their group and show others how these kids are capable of building meaningful and lasting relationships.

Everybody grumbles when they pass the gas stations now. With oil prices flying past $120 per barrel, and the nation's average price for a gallon of gasoline more than $3.60, the nation is suffering through another energy crunch.

But the Kansas Geological Survey of the University of Kansas is testing a new way to get more oil out of aging and deserted oil fields. And it's starting here in Kansas.

Lynn Watney, senior scientist with the Survey, said the process involves breaking through rock and other obstacles in the ground with high pressure water, then forcing untapped oil pockets toward the pump, and using a new, more efficient pump to increase oil production.

The goal is to get 3-10 times as much oil from the fields as they get now, resulting in lower prices at the gas station.

“We'd be extending the life of the oil field,” Watney said.

Lynn Watney, senior geologist, Kansas Geological Survey

Watney, a leader for the Survey, received a Ph.D. in Geology from KU in 1985. Along with his Survey work, he's an executive director for the KU Energy Research Center, an adjunct professor for the KU department of Geology.

Across the United States, more than 400,000 “marginal” oil wells are aging or abandoned and aren't producing as well as they have in the past. Kansas ranks second in the county behind Texas in the number of these marginal wells. Kansas has 54,000 of these marginal wells.

The Survey is conducting the performance tests for this new method in Hillsboro in Marion County, a county with a similar oil history to Douglas County and counties across the nation. According to the Kansas Geological Survey, oil production in Douglas County has fallen from just under 74,000 barrels in 1995 to under 38,000 barrels last year. It is the same way in most Kansas counties – production is fizzling out.

The problem is that, as more oil is pumped, more water gets into what is pumped out. Project engineer Saibal Bhattacharya said that these older pumps can be pulling up between 90 and 95 percent water.

“You can't sell water,” he said. “Oil – you can.”

Fields that produce these high amounts of water in central Kansas comprise 60 percent of Kansas' oil production, according to a Survey proposal sent to the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America.

That's where this new process comes into play. Four water jets, called laterals, are set up 300 feet around the well to jet holes into rock in the ground to basically erode the rock and create more upflow, both more oil and more water. Then a new pump called a progressive cavity pump separates out the water from the oil. They take the water and, in a separate pump, inject it back, very deep into the ground.

Bhattacharya said that everything involved in the process has been done before, but that it is usually very expensive. He said the Survey is unique in putting the combination of two new technologies together efficiently to save money for potential users of their process.

“At the end of the day, money is all that counts,” he said.

If the testing is successful, it could be reproduced and reenacted by anybody with an aging or struggling oil pump. Locally and nationwide, this process might help a number of small and big companies.

Ernie Morrison, the senior geologist of Mull Drilling, said he is excited about the project's possibilities.

“Anything we can do to enhance oil is good,” he said. “The ramifications of this project succeeding would be unbelievable.”

His company, based in Wichita, would be interested in their process if it does work out.

“They're trying to get a good model set up,” Morrison said. “If they can do it, it's easy to reproduce their process with less risk and cost.”

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The Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America is underwriting what they have already done, and Watney, the senior scientist, wrote a proposal that the Survey sent to the RPSEA. The RPSEA accepted the proposal, and will be giving the survey $250,000 to cover almost half of their $519,000 bill.

This accepted proposal from the RPSEA means more money pumped into the project, which will translate to more things the Survey can do in Hillsboro. They will be able to more accurately and more elaborately test the process and even start transforming it into a nationwide sweep.

If all continues going well for the Survey, local farmers all over Kansas and the nation will feel the positive effects.

“Revitalizing old oil fields affects rural America, such as Kansas, helps farmers and ranches sustain a living through increased royalties,” Watney said. And, for consumers, it will “help reduce pain at the pump.”

In society today it seems like just about anything can cause breast cancer, and understandably so for the simple fact that the chance of developing invasive breast cancer at some time in a woman's life is about 1 in 8. Even the 6 o’clock news poses the questions, “does leaving your water bottle in your car cause breast cancer?” But how much do we really know about cancer?
Dr. Ted Gansler, medical director of health content for the American Cancer Society (ACS), and his colleagues conducted a telephone survey for the ACS to find out just how much Americans really knew about cancer and more than 85% said they considered themselves somewhat knowledgeable. Yet a significant number of people still believe common myths about the disease and its treatments.

“The media and medical shows like ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ have put ideas into people’s heads about cancer that aren’t always entirely true,” Oncology Certified Nurse at Lawrence Memorial Hospital Julie Tuley said. “People are actually afraid to drink out of plastic water bottles because they don’t want to develop the disease.”
From coast to coast Americans have caught wind that leaving a water bottle in your car and then later drinking from it can lead to breast cancer because the heat and the plastic of the bottle have certain chemicals that can be harmful; more specifically Diethylhydroxylamine (DEHA), a potential carcinogen.
“More recently you hear everything causes cancer. You even hear vegetables cause cancer in different reports,” Dr. Eston Schwartz Oncologist at Lawrence Memorial Hospital said. “The most recent one was the water bottle issue and plastics. People have said if you heat these plastics they can cause cancer, that has never been proven.”

Danielle Gray, a sophomore at William Jewel College, said that her American Literature class recently spent an entire day discussing the possibility of breast cancer occurring from re-using plastic water bottles.
“A class mate of mine saw something about it on the news and brought it up casually as class was starting,” Gray said. “But other people started listening and before long it became a big issue.”
The ACS dismisses the rumor entirely. The website claims that DEHA is not inherent in the plastic used to make these bottles, and even if it was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says DEHA cannot reasonably be expected to cause cancer. The EPA also says that DEHA cannot cause teratogenic effects, immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, gene mutations, developmental toxicity or other serious or irreversible chronic health problems.
“I have been in the field of Oncology for 18 years and never in my career have I seen a cancer patient that probably got it from drinking out of a previously used water bottle,” Tuley said. “Cancer is a very hereditary thing or is usually caused from the same old things everybody knows about: smoking, tanning, things like that.”
There are numerous pamphlets inside health facilities such as Watkins Health Center and Lawrence Memorial Hospital that claim eating right and exercise reduce the risk of cancer.
“It is not guaranteed that proper diet and working out will keep you safe from cancer,” Tuley said. “But it will definitely help.”
In July 2006 Dr. Heather Spencer Feigelson of the ACS conducted a study showing that women who gain weight once they reach adulthood face a much higher lifetime risk of all types of breast cancer.
Feigelson found that the most extremely obese women were up to three times more likely to have regional or distant metastases than women with less weight gain. Fat tissue increases circulating estrogen, thereby adding to the risk. Compared to women who gained 20 pounds or less during adulthood, women who gained over 60 pounds were almost twice as likely to have ductal type tumors and more than 1.5 times more likely to have lobular type cancers.
Elizabeth Sawalich, a nurse in the gynecology department at the Watkins Health Center, said that she gets people who come in all the time with all types of questions concerning the development of cancer.
“The most commonly asked question is ‘does birth control pills cause cancer’ and of course that isn’t true,” Sawalich said. “Although once cancer is developed it is mandatory that patient be taken off the pill.”

Sawalich said that the most outrageous claim she had ever heard was if underwire bras could cause breast cancer, but students at KU aren’t the only ones who think this. The ACS found that 6.2% of Americans thought this myth to be true.
In 1995 Soma Grismaijer and Sydney Ross Singer wrote a book called Dressed to Kill. The book quoted two anthropologists who said that underwire bras could in fact cause cancer.
However, according to the ACS their study was not conducted according to standard principles of epidemiological research and did not take into consideration other variables, including known risk factors for breast cancer.
“Nobody knows for 100% fact if these silly myths will or will not lead to cancer,” Tuley said. “But based on the research I have done and from what I have seen, most of them are just rumors.”

Rain taps the outside of Devon Harris’s car as she sits alone in the parking lot of her dorm. Tears mirror the streaks of the rain, while her sobbing leaves her shaking and weak. Wiping violently at her tears, why am I so sad remains unanswered. The loneliness inside her throbs with prominence, it’s the only thing she remembers how to feel. How did it get so bad?

Finally making it to her room, she climbs into bed and turns her phone on silent; anything anyone has to say won’t help. Who is this person I’ve become? Unanswerable questions constantly taunt her thoughts. She had all these plans, an extravagant idea of the person she wanted to become, but somehow she had lost that along the way.

Her vivid personality dimmed, Devon’s pain left her screaming inside, her outcries failing on deaf ears. Her confidence, work ethic, ambition, her joy of dancing and singing in the car, the things she was proud of, recognized and remembered for had all disappeared.

“I finally called CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services) and made an appointment,” Harris, Greenwich, Conn., senior, said. “When I said, ‘I think I have depression,’ I was so embarrassed. It sounded so stupid, especially coming from the last person you’d think would have it.”

The increase of depression at the University of Kansas and college campuses across the United States prompted CAPS to put out a survey addressing this issue along with the rise of suicide.

According to the American College Health Association (ACHA), the percentage of college students diagnosed with depression has increased 56 percent in the last six years. While 92 percent of college students experience over half of the symptoms of depression, only 16 percent have been diagnosed.

From the survey, 78 percent of KU students chose “weak and “an excuse” when asked to describe depression bringing the dark image of the disease to the forefront.

“Some students feel there is a stigma attached… so they are less likely to seek help,” Kelly Bowers, director of counseling at Baker University, said.

“The hardest part of overcoming depression may be making that first call to a therapist and acknowledging that you are having a difficult time in your life and you’re feeling stuck,” Mark Bowers, Ph.D., psychologist at Psych Solutions in Lawrence, said, “but most won’t because of the stigma; you are far from an outsider.”

Neglecting to seek help has led to alarming statistics. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found suicide is the second leading cause of death among college students and 11 percent of college students seriously consider suicide each year.

“College students are in the critical developmental age range, ” Mark Bowers said. “Add time management, relationships, access to drugs and alcohol, financial stress etc. and you have yourself a bit of a perfects storm.”

Depression is a serious and common condition that involves that body and mind and significantly affects a person’s appetite, sleep, energy, thinking, self-esteem and physical wellbeing according to the American Psychiatric Association. The symptoms are persistent and not the same as a temporary blue mood or normal emotional experiences such as sadness or grief. Depression can have severe consequences in terms of suffering and disability.

Students don’t seek help for a variety of reasons, but Kelly Bowers attributes a lack of understanding about the physiological aspects of depression and the disorder in general.

Ali Woods, a Leawood junior, has friends with depression and understands students’ reluctance in seeking help.

“At first, they didn’t know anything was wrong, then they just didn’t want to admit it,” Woods said. “They figured I knew and thought I would think less of them. Honestly, I would have never known if they didn’t tell me.”

The CAPS survey found over 90 percent experienced symptoms of depression, but said they didn’t have depression or would never experience it. Gina Graham, a counseling psychologist intern at CAPS, said the thoughts of being “defective” and “weak” need to be changed and depression can’t be ignored any longer or “we’ll be the ones to blame for the consequences.”

Shortly after Harris was diagnosed with depression, she was eager to inform her teachers, excited to explain her embarrassing work ethic.

“I was so ashamed and embarrassed to begin with, but I completely regret telling them,” Harris said.

Each teacher rolled their eyes or seemed to take it simply as an excuse Harris said. “Not one teacher seemed to believe me,” Harris said. “Another ‘please feel sorry for me and give me a good grade.’ The first time I need someone to understand and help me out, I get shot down.”

Kelly Bowers says it’s hard for people who don’t understand the disorder to relate to it and respond correctly. The reaction Harris received is one explanation for why some don’t get help.

CAPS plans to inform incoming freshman of its offered services and the symptoms of depression during orientation and at dorms and are increasing its staff, according to John Wade, outreach coordinator and licensed counseling psychologist at CAPS.

“Individuals who are depressed need support,” Mark Bowers said. “Be available to listen and provide support and encouragement.” He warns that having a friend or family member experience depression can be difficult and frustrating.

“You can still be a good friend even though you cannot fix this for the other person,” Mark Bowers said.

Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s a coleopter? Never heard of it? That's because the word isn't even in the American Heritage Dictionary yet.

A celeopter, recently finished at the University of Kansas’ Aerospace Engineering program, is a new kind of flying machine that researchers at KU believe has loads of potential
when it comes to unmanned surveillance and attack.

The French were the first to build a coleopter, a name that is derived from the French word coléoptère, which means “beetle.” They are characterized by a ring like wing that surrounds the fuselage, and are meant to take off from the ground, hover, and land on their tails without a runway. They are vertically designed, using a propeller or fan for lift, and basically look like a cylinder with a halo around the middle or upper section of the body. They range in size from a few ounces to hundreds of pounds and can perform many different and specialized tasks. Some are built solely for hovering; there are tethered versions, and others can tip horizontally and fly through the air at high speeds.

The University of Kansas’ Aerospace Engineering department is one of a few such departments nationwide currently working on coleopter design and development. It just completed its newest prototype, which resembles a large, and expensive toy.

Weighing in at six pounds, it stands a little over two feet tall, and can go about 160 mph. The department’s most recent coleopter is an unimposing figure, but one that Ron Barrett, associate professor in the Aerospace Engineering department, said out performed other small aircraft of its type, including Honeywell’s unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), which is funded by the The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the United States Army.

“It smoked everything else that was on the open market,” Barrett said. “It hovered longer, was far faster, much more maneuverable, and it was gust sensitive.”

The aircraft itself is a prototype for future coleopters that may be used by law enforcement and the military. David Borys, who is finishing his master’s degree on coleopters, said that as of right now the larger ones are mainly used for reconnaissance and could be fitted with small weapons. He said that the smaller, slower coleopters could be used for police surveillance. Professor Barret said that this is because they are not regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration, and can’t fly as high, or as fast as larger versions. He said that with smaller coleopters there is less potential for danger.

Professor Barrett said the Aerospace Engineering department’s coleopter could be equipped with small cameras or weapons like tear gas. He said it was especially useful for identification purposes.

“With these kinds of aircraft you can fly next to a building and get a good I.D., you can say, ‘oh, well this is a daycare center. Either those al-Qaida members are all really young and still in diapers or maybe we should think twice about attacking this place,’” Barrett said.

The project has developed over the last four years. It started with more basic designs, which have morphed into a larger and more complex coleopter.

Andy Gladbach, a junior who worked on a tethered version of a coleopter, by his estimation put in at least 200 hours per semester. His freshman year he worked on a system that measured the different conditions a tethered machine might encounter. The tethered variant is a more simplistic design. It is smaller, attached to the ground with tethers, and cheaper to make. During his sophomore year he worked on a stabilizing system and was able to take the aircraft to a couple of engineering conferences where it was well received.

“I really liked going to the conferences,” Galdbach said. “My sophomore year we went to the Air force Academy, and that was just really cool in itself because not very many people get to go there.”

Andy Spalding, a junior who also worked on the early tethered aircraft, said he enjoyed taking an idea, building it, and turning it into a real thing. They presented their craft in a half hour presentation, which included an exhibit. He said that the experience allowed them to take what they learned and apply it to real situations.

“Since we had a lack of experience we didn’t know exactly what to do, but I think we really surprised a lot of people,” Spalding said.

The Aerospace department’s newest design has come a long way from the earlier versions. As a result, the school has received a patent, and according to Dr. Barrett, about $380,000 worth of money and grants from various contracts. Singapore Technologies Aerospace recently paid the department to further develop the craft.

The Aerospace Engineering department’s students and professors continue to work towards more funding and better design. In engineering the ultimate goal is to get a product fully transitioned to industry.

“That is the holy grail, that is what engineers come to work for,” Barrett said.

“Ciao, amica.” Sitting in Italian class Junior Noy Phimphasone tries to understand the new vocabulary. What she does not know is that the difference in the way vowels are formed in the mouth changes the way they sound. This change changes the wavelength, or frequency, of the vowel, changing her perception of how to say the English word in Italian. This difference in word formation could cause problems in learning a new language.

The University of Kansas Laboratory of Phonetics and Psycholinguistics (KUPPL) is eight months into research on different vowel formations and the perception of different vowel sounds in different languages. The research is lead by Dr. Allard Jongman of KU who says there are differences in vowel quality, or tone, based on the position of the tongue and lips. For example, the lips form an ‘a’ in bought changing the tone of the vowels. These differences cause speech differences which result in sound differences. Researchers at the phonetics lab hope to find out if these differences have an affect on listeners of different languages.

“There are different sounds between Italian and English and it makes it hard sometimes to understand how to form new words,” said Phimphasone. Researchers have been studying vowels for more than 50 years and phonetics was studied in ancient India, but not everything is known about language. KUPPL researchers are conducting a new study about the vowel frequencies, hoping to see if differences in these vowel frequencies change the listeners understanding of the vowels. This is the first cross language study done with vowel frequencies. The results could change the way that new languages are taught around the world, by specializing curriculum to match vowel formation. Jongman is leading the study to find the answer to the difference in vowels. The first step he says is comparing the perception by speakers of different languages. KUPPL researchers collaborate with researchers in Germany to study native German and Turkish speakers. Jongman says they completed the German and Turkish study six to eight months ago and will begin testing American English speakers at KU in mid May. KUPPL researchers look at the difference in two specific frequencies in the vowels. F1 is the first format, which has a low sound. F2 is the second format with a high sound. Jongman asks if a native language has a lot of different vowels primarily along the F1 frequency, would it make the listener more or less sensitive to subtle differences along the same frequency. “At first glance, you may expect that speakers of such a language would be more sensitive. However, there is also evidence that suggests that speakers ignore acoustic differences that do not serve to distinguish distinct vowels,” said Jongman. The study found that German listeners were more sensitive to frequency differences then Turkish listeners. “It could be that Turkish listeners are not sensitive to subtle F2 differences within the grand categories,” said Kazumi Maniwa, at the University of Konstanz, Germany, “Alternatively, it may have resulted from differences in the two languages’ vowel inventories: German involves somewhat more purely F2 distinctions in this region.” The main purpose of the study is for basic knowledge. There are a few applications that could benefit from the study. Jongman says that with the findings it may be able to help students learning a second language. He says that with the findings teachers might be able to help students by teaching the new language based on the formation of vowels of their native language. For example, if teaching Spanish, the teacher would teach it differently to native German speakers than Turkish based on the sensitivity to certain vowel formations. With the German and Turkish part of the study complete and English almost underway Jongman and his colleagues hope to study speakers of Spanish, Greek, Japanese and Finnish soon. Before starting new studies, Jongman and the rest of the researchers will present their findings in Athens, Greece in August. “I think that would be awesome if you could teach for a certain language,” said Phimphasone

Imagine what would happen to the population of the United States if the area of the U.S. was shrinking each year by an area the size of the state of Illinois. This is the problem monarch butterflies are facing.
Every fall Monarch butterflies make a trip south to Mexico to hibernate from the cold winter months in the north. The population of these butterflies is taking a hard hit because of the deforestation in the southern U.S. and Mexico that is destroying milkweed plants. The butterflies use the milkweed plants not only as a source of food, but also as a place to lay their eggs.
A program at the University of Kansas is hoping to change this outlook for the butterflies. The program, Monarch Watch, is lead by Dr. Orley “Chip” Taylor, a professor of entomology at the University. Dr. Taylor is very concerned about the alarming rate at which the habitat of the butterflies is decreasing.
“In the United States we are losing 9.4 square miles a day due to development. It’s going to have consequences. This loss amounts to 2.2 million acres a year in area, which is equivalent to the size of Illinois, the fourth largest state,” Taylor said.
In 2005, the program created Monarch Waystations to combat this habitat loss. The waystations give the monarchs the necessary means to produce offspring and continue their migration. Although the monarch butterfly itself is not in danger of becoming extinct, the phenomenon of its migration is in danger. Because of deforestation, many monarch butterflies are losing their habitats.
“The Waystations are encouraging people to be aware of the deforestation and plant gardens for the butterflies,” said Ann Ryan, Monarch Watch program assistant.
Since 2005, more than 2,000 waystations have been created.

The program also reaches out to science teachers who are able to use the Monarch Watch program in their classrooms. This part of the program consists of tagging the butterflies to monitor their migration to Mexico in the fall and then back home again in the spring. Per year Monarch Watch sends out about a quarter of a million tags. Although not all of them are used. The number of tags the program sends out has been increasing over the years.
Randy Warner, a former science teacher at Olathe Northwest High School, used Monarch Watch as part of his curriculum to teach students about the butterfly and also have them participate in an actual research project where they contributed data to a large-scale database. Warner said he thought the project was a good motivator for his students, as the tagging of the butterflies allowed the students to get hands-on experience and learn about the scientific research process.

Posted by Abby Leo on May 9, 2008 3:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)