2023-2024 Annual Impact Report
This report is a compilation of College-related news releases issued by KU News during the 2023-2024 academic year. The stories have been condensed for the purposes of this annual report. The College would like to thank KU News and all the writers and photographers who contributed to these
What an amazing year it was!
It has been a great honor for me to complete my first full academic year as executive dean of the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Kansas. I am so excited to share with you the collective work of our talented faculty, staff, and students over the past year.
To say that the 2023-2024 academic year was one of growth and transformation would be an understatement.
In terms of growth, KU enrolled a recordbreaking freshman class of 5,259 students for the 2023-2024 year, and total enrollment across the university at all campuses was the highest since 2010. Along with experiencing that growth in the College, we have also been undergoing great transformation. Perhaps our biggest transformation came through the implementation of the Dean’s Office’s Strategic Alignment Plan, putting us in step with the university’s Jayhawk Rising framework, which emphasizes the three key areas of student success, research & discovery, and healthy & vibrant communities.
Student success is always a top priority in the College, particularly during the crucial first year and the transition to the second year. To support this important phase, we have improved engagement and academic experiences for our students. The College Undergraduate Academic Services has extended its hours into the evening three days a week. We also started a comprehensive plan to enhance student retention and success, especially in first-year courses, and we have ramped up our marketing efforts and our outreach to western and central Kansas — and among minority and first-Gen and Pelleligible students. We will continue to leverage existing tools and resources to uphold the highest
standards and ensure our students’ success. But the bottom line is we need to do more in this area — and we will.
In terms of research & discovery, we conduct highimpact research across the College, with nearly $56 million in research expenditures supporting groundbreaking innovations. Our focus has been to strengthen and expand our diverse and already outstanding achievements in research and scholarship. With that in mind, we have introduced a trio of exciting initiatives (see pages 6-7) that help scholars find funding opportunities or enable faculty at various stages to focus more of their time developing their research. We have also created regular Faculty Collaborative Research Luncheons to help facilitate networking across disciplines.
Meanwhile, to foster healthy & vibrant communities here in the College, we created Staff Appreciation Days to celebrate our wonderful and dedicated staff, and we introduced social events, like our bimonthly pizza lunches, to bring faculty together across the College. We also launched two newsletters (a research newsletter and one for the College community at large) to help keep everyone informed. Perhaps most important in terms of community-building, last spring I revived the annual State of the College speech, and now we are reviving this annual Impact Report — both of which had been absent for several years. The speech and this report will return to being important annual traditions that help us see the bigger picture of what the College is accomplishing.
Indeed, as you peruse the pages of this report, you will see all sorts of exceptional research being done right here, at a public university in the heartland. As a flagship R1 AAU institution, we serve as our state’s gateway to the world, and as these pages demonstrate, the work being done here has impacts locally, nationally, globally, and in ways that transcend time and space.
Such breadth of work underscores the depth and diversity of high-caliber research and scholarship being conducted in our College. It therefore gives me great pleasure to share this report with you. It is not just a documentation of the wide-ranging work our faculty, staff, and students are doing, it’s a celebration of a College on the rise.
Arash Mafi, Ph.D. Executive Dean
$11M grant will help KU establish biomedical center that uses big data to improve women’s health
A new $11.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will establish a multidisciplinary biomedical center at the University of Kansas to research big data’s potential to improve women’s health.
The award is a component of the NIH Institutional Development Award Program and will be KU’s fifth Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) since the program’s inception in the 1990s.
“We’re talking about diseases like ovarian cancer, breast cancer, multiple sclerosis, and Alzheimer’s disease, which are more prevalent in women,” said principal investigator Heather Desaire, University Distinguished Professor of chemistry and the center’s director.
Five KU faculty will lead biomedical research projects, each of which could serve as a springboard to further funding opportunities. The research project leaders are Rebecca Whelan, associate professor of chemistry; Meredith Hartley, assistant professor of chemistry; Amber Watts, associate professor of psychology; Jarron Saint Onge, professor of sociology and population health; and Misty Heggeness, associate professor
of public affairs & administration and associate research scientist at KU’s Institute for Policy & Social Research.
Additionally, the new grant will support three new tenure-track faculty hires at KU in the departments of Chemistry, Psychology, and Sociology, whose research will focus on the intersection of big data and biomedical research benefiting women. A Research-Engaged Faculty Fellows Program also will be established under the grant.
Moreover, the Kansas Board of Regents has awarded the new center matching funds earmarked toward training students in data science, boosting the state’s workforce in the burgeoning field.
The researchers, students, and faculty involved will be backed by a new Biomedical Datasets and Services Core Lab at KU supported under the NIH award that will serve other research efforts at KU and even private industry, too. The core lab will be run by Donna Ginther, Roy A. Roberts and Regents Distinguished Professor of Economics, and will focus on biomedical data sets, which is a new expansion of the scope of her center’s past work, Desaire said.
Total College research expenditures for FY 24
37
Number of KU graduate programs ranked in the Top 50 among public universities by U.S. News & World Report
20 $55.7M
Number of College graduate programs ranked in the Top 50 among public universities by U.S. News & World Report
F.R.E.S.S.H., an acronym for Fostering Research Expansion in the Social Sciences and Humanities, is a cohort of scholars that meets bimonthly throughout the school year, having just wrapped up its inaugural year at KU.
Equal parts workshop, support group, and networking circle, the program brings together faculty in the College to explore research funding opportunities and sharpen grant writing skills.
The idea was conceived three years ago at the University of New Mexico, while Arash Mafi was interim dean of the College of Arts & Sciences there. When he accepted the job as executive dean of KU’s College in 2023, one of his first initiatives was to set up something similar here.
“F.R.E.S.S.H. empowers our faculty to take control of securing vital resources for their research,” Mafi said. “Witnessing our innovative researchers come together, sharing insights, and supporting each other in the grant writing process has been truly uplifting.”
Associate Dean Nick Syrett, who oversees the program, said its primary goal is to demystify the process of applying for external grants and fellowships for social scientists and humanists. Toward that end, the group hears from speakers from on and off campus, and they also break off
into smaller groups and workshop each other’s proposals. All participants are expected to submit one grant or fellowship application within 18 months of starting the program.
“Even if all participants don’t win their grants or fellowships on the first time out, we know that this is a long game that sometimes requires multiple years of submissions,” Syrett said. “But we can’t win if we don’t first try!”
One member of the inaugural F.R.E.S.S.H. class, Sofia Vera, assistant professor of political science, said it introduced her to amazing colleagues across campus and reminded her that she wasn’t alone in this process.
“It gives you the structure to develop your proposal and gives you connections, making the process of submitting a proposal much more enjoyable,” Vera said.
It will take some time before this first F.R.E.S.S.H. class learns if its members’ applications have been successful. Still, by all accounts, the program is already a huge success heading into Year Two.
“It’s just too early—some participants’ deadlines are a ways out yet,” Syrett said. “I think we’ll all feel it’s been successful if participants know more about resources on campus and make connections with fellow researchers in the group.”
Two new College programs help scholars at various stages of their career find time to dedicate to their research
Career Advancement/Research Enhancement Semester
The C.A.R.E.S. Program is designed to provide associate professors in the College focused time to advance their record of scholarship and research to the rank of full professor. Associate professors are at a critical career stage where expansion of scholarship is necessary to ensure long-term productivity and professional advancement. However, faculty at mid-career are often constrained by service, teaching, and other commitments that limit the time and energy that can be devoted to scholarship. C.A.R.E.S. aims to remove some of these constraints, with the goal of facilitating a faculty member’s progression to the highest academic ranks.
Course Release for Increased Scholarly Productivity
The C.R.I.S.P. program is designed to provide faculty with additional time to focus on their work in order to expand research efforts. Faculty have consistently highlighted that with increased time, they can elevate their research contributions and drive our collective goals. C.R.I.S.P. was developed in response to this need, offering course releases for faculty engaged in high-impact institutional research that goes beyond typical disciplinary expectations and demands significant time investment. While the program is primarily focused on projects tied to external funding, C.R.I.S.P. also supports impactful research initiatives with broad institutional benefits, such as those involving community engagement, even if they do not culminate in external funding.
Kelly Matsunaga, assistant curator of paleobotany and Thomas N. Taylor Assistant Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, has received a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation.
The grant, which totals over $946,000, will fund research and education on how conifers, including the tallest and longest-lived organisms, have evolved over the last 300 million years in response to a changing planet. Conifers include pines, junipers and redwoods.
“We are thrilled for Dr. Matsunaga and the recognition her groundbreaking research is receiving,” said Arash Mafi, executive dean of the College. “Her innovative approach and exceptional contributions to her field align perfectly with our mission to foster excellence and drive progress in scientific inquiry.”
The researchers — a team of undergraduates, graduate students and postdocs — will work with information on living species and the extensive fossil records of conifers. This information will be used to reconstruct evolutionary relationships, investigate evolutionary dynamics throughout time, and test hypotheses on conifer reproductive organ evolution.
“The CAREER will allow us to offer a new research-based course on plant anatomy and development and will also create new research opportunities for undergraduate, graduate and postdoctoral scholars,” Matsunaga said. “In addition, we will develop a new exhibit in the KU Natural History Museum based on this research.”
The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious award for early-career faculty, providing support as they guide advancement in their departments and act as academic role models in the research and education landscapes. The annual award’s grant continues over a five-year span.
Keana Tang, who earned her Master of Science in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) from KU in 2021, and is currently pursuing her PhD in EEB here, recently won the Midwest Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS)/ProQuest Distinguished Master’s Thesis Award. The purpose of the annual award is to recognize distinguished scholarship and research at the master’s level.
Keana’s thesis was focused on characterizing extinct plant diversity from the Cretaceous Period (145-66 million years ago). Two new extinct species were described based on three-dimensionally preserved fruits recovered from the western coast of North America. The continued recovery and documentation of new fossils from the Cretaceous will play a crucial role in understanding the early diversification of flowering plants.
Jennifer Raff, associate professor of anthropology, was recently awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on the history of human populations through sequencing the genomes of contemporary peoples and their ancestors.
The fellowship will allow Raff to work on her second book, a follow-up to her successful debut, “Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas,” which was listed for two weeks on the New York Times Best Sellers list for nonfiction titles.
As she works on her second book, tentatively titled “The Ancients,” Raff said one of her goals is to dispel the notion of biological races.
“I’m not only telling the stories about human evolution and genetics, but I’m also trying to focus more directly on the concept of biological race and what DNA shows in terms of how we are related and whether these biological races are actually a useful way of describing genetic variation. Spoiler alert: They’re not,” Raff said.
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation created the fellowships for midcareer individuals who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts and exhibit great promise for their future endeavors. Each year, the foundation receives approximately 3,000 applications and awards approximately 175 fellowships.
Arash Mafi, executive dean of KU’s College, said Raff’s fellowship is a testament to the quality of scholarship being conducted across the College.
“Professor Raff is doing what we encourage all of our researchers to do, and that is to make their complex research findings accessible to general audiences,” Mafi said. “It’s a very effective way to have a better informed, better prepared citizenry.”
Raff said receiving the prestigious award will help take her research to the next level.
“I think it’s going to be career changing for me,” she said. “It is providing me with monetary support to travel to some of these sites in Europe, Asia, and Africa, so I can actually study them and write about them firsthand. I’m really excited to see what will develop.”
For Academy Award-winning screenwriter Kevin Willmott, the Hollywood jobs are great and all. But the material closest to his heart inspires the stories he tells of overlooked historical events, and particularly local ones, that cast a revealing light on the problems of today.
The newest film written, produced and directed by the recently retired professor of film & media studies is just such a story.
“The Heroic True-Life Adventures of Alvin Brooks” is a documentary tribute to a Kansas City civil rights icon.
Brooks, at age 92, is still “sharp as a tack,” according to Willmott. He was one of Kansas City’s first Black police officers in the early 1950s. He went on to a storied career as the city’s first Black department director and creator of its human relations department, as founder of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime and its Crimestoppers anonymous tip line, as a City Council member, an educator, and an all-around advocate for human and civil rights.
Willmott said he first got to know Brooks 20 years ago while filming “From Separate to Equal: The Creation of Truman Medical Centers,” about the racial history of Kansas City’s public hospital.
“I know I use the term ‘living history’ a lot, but he
is truly living history,” Willmott said.
The filmmaker added that it’s more important than ever, in light of political efforts to downplay and cover up the history of racism in America, to remind people of it.
“I know I use the term ‘living history’ a lot, but he is truly living history,” Willmott said.
Willmott said the film offers viewers a ray of hope in dark times.
“We’re so divided, and there’s so much hate going on right now,” he said, “and who knows where it’s going to end up?
But Alvin is a reminder of what we can be. He’s a reminder of the best of us. Because I still hold on to Dr. King and what he believed in. That’s the America I believe in. And it’s hard to hold on to that these days. So the movie, in some ways, is a great reminder of ... who we really are, and who we can be.”
11,090
Undergraduate students in the College
1,415
Graduate students in the College
1,539
Number of bachelor’s degrees granted in 2023-2024
316
Number of master’s degrees granted in 2023-2024
122
Number of undergraduate degree programs in the College
147
Number of PhDs granted in 2023-2024
Using data from the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, Alex Polanski, a doctoral student in physics & astronomy, led a study revealing 15 new exoplanets (planets beyond our solar system) along with the mass of 126 other exoplanets. The findings give astronomers new understanding of the makeup of exoplanets and their star systems generally.
The study cataloging the exoplanets — comprising severe and exceptional environments, some of which hold promise to support life — was conducted under auspices of the TESS-Keck Survey and appears in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
“TESS is a satellite orbiting above Earth’s atmosphere, scanning the sky for exoplanets using the transit method,” said Polanski, who works at the KU ExoLab, a research group dedicated to the discovery and characterization of nearby planetary systems.
The transit method involves observing a planet as it passes in front of its host star, causing a slight dimming of the star’s light. However, transit data doesn’t provide information about the planet’s mass, which is crucial for understanding its composition.
To determine the mass of exoplanets, researchers used the Keck Observatory to execute a technique called “radial velocity,” according to Polanski.
“The TESS-Keck Survey represents the single largest contribution to understanding the physical nature and system architectures of new planets TESS has discovered,” said Ian Crossfield, associate professor of physics & astronomy, who leads KU’s ExoLab and co-wrote the paper.
“This paper is the largest of its kind to date. The last similar one that came out was, I think, a sample of 27 exoplanets. This is up to 126 planets,” Polanski said.
Polanski said a better knowledge of exoplanets and their star systems would give us a better understanding of our own solar system.
“Our solar system might be more unique than we thought. About half of all Sun-like stars have a binary companion. Our Sun does not. Only about 10% of Sun-like stars have gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn. This suggests our solar system might be less typical than we assumed.”
KU researchers show how promising material for solar energy gets its boost from entropy
Solar energy is critical for a clean-energy future. Traditionally, solar energy is harvested using silicon – the same semiconductor material used in everyday electronic devices. But silicon solar panels have drawbacks: they’re expensive and hard to mount on curved surfaces.
Among the most promising of the alternative materials for solar-energy harvesting are “organic” semiconductors, carbon-based semiconductors that are Earth-abundant, cheaper, and environmentally friendly.
“They can potentially lower the production cost for solar panels because these materials can be coated on arbitrary surfaces using solution-based methods — just like how we paint a wall,” said Wai-Lun Chan, associate professor of physics & astronomy. “These characteristics make organic solar panels particularly suitable for use in nextgeneration green and sustainable buildings.”
While organic semiconductors already have been used in the display panel of consumer electronics such as cell phones, TVs, and virtual-reality headsets, they have not yet been widely used in commercial solar panels. One shortcoming of organic solar cells has been their low light-toelectric conversion efficiency, about 12% versus single crystalline silicon solar cells that perform at an efficiency of 25%.
But the recent development of a new class of organic semiconductors known as non-fullerene acceptors (NFAs) changed this paradigm. Organic solar cells made with NFAs can reach an efficiency closer to the 20% mark.
In a breakthrough study appearing in Advanced Materials, Chan and his team, including graduate students Kushal Rijal (lead author), Neno Fuller, and Fatimah Rudayni, and in collaboration with Cindy Berrie, professor of chemistry, have discovered a microscopic mechanism that solves in part the outstanding performance achieved by an NFA.
The team, whose work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences, believes this unusual process occurs on the microscopic scale because of the quantum behavior of electrons. This pairs with the second law of thermodynamics, which holds that every physical process will lead to an increase in the total entropy to produce the unusual energy gain process.
“Despite entropy being a well-known concept in physics and chemistry, it’s rarely been actively utilized to improve the performance of energy conversion devices,” Rijal said.
Award-winning ensemble uses adaptive-use musical instrument to give everyone a chance to perform
Back in August, the Kansas Commission on Disability Concerns (KCDC) presented a Michael Lechner Advocacy Award to the Pre-Pandemic Ensemble (PPE), a Lawrence-based mixed-ability improvising band that uses a special app called AUMI, or Adaptive Use Musical Instrument, to improvise across abilities.
According to the KCDC, the award is given to those who have advocated for people with disabilities in their community. The Pre-Pandemic Ensemble demonstrates to the public that people with disabilities have talent, hope, inclusion and passion for music.
The ensemble came together through monthly allability jam sessions using the AUMI at the Lawrence Public Library and continued over Zoom during the pandemic isolation period. It includes Sherrie Tucker and Ray Mizumura-Pence, both faculty members in the Department of American Studies. Tucker has published extensively on the AUMI. She and other ensemble members were among coauthors of a 2024 book about its origins (see page 34).
For local poet and ensemble member Julie Unruh,
the recognition from the KCDC “left me in awe. I was shocked I didn’t think anything like this would happen to us.”
Mizumura-Pence said he appreciated the award.
“My colleagues and friends in the ensemble revel in the possibilities of bringing campus and communities together to make the music of the future a reality today,” he said.
The PPE has performed at the Society for American Music (virtually), the Lied Center Pavilion, and the Lawrence Public Library Auditorium. Monthly jams have been going on at the library’s Sound+Vision Studio for people of all ages and abilities, with no experience necessary. To learn more about AUMI — and the next jam sessions — visit aumi.ku.edu.
Humans depend on a planet rich in biological diversity to provide essentials like food, water, medicine, stable climate conditions, economic prosperity and more. So how will we fare as rapid climate change continues to alter ecosystems and drive plants and animals to migration or extinction?
A new training program based at KU will help develop a scientific workforce equipped to answer this complex question. With support from a $2.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the BioGEM program will prepare postbaccalaureate scholars to better understand organisms’ past responses to changing environments, so they can better predict — and hopefully mitigate — devastating future impacts.
“The urgency and complexity of addressing the current climate-mediated biodiversity crisis requires an all-hands-on-deck approach. Interdisciplinary training of diverse early career scientists will help to bring new and creative solutions to this problem,” said Paulyn Cartwright, professor of ecology & evolutionary biology and the lead investigator on the grant.
Over a three-year period, BioGEM will recruit 30 recent bachelor’s graduates, who have limited or no prior research experience, to work with mentors on interdisciplinary research projects.
Although BioGEM scholars will be based at KU and utilize the university’s world-class facilities
and museum collections, they also will benefit from partnerships with Haskell Indian Nations University, Emporia State University, Rockhurst University, Stowers Institute for Biomedical Research, and BioKansas.
“Forming networks of mentors and mentees will better enable cross-disciplinary training for the BioGEM scholars and prepare them for a wide range of careers in research,” Cartwright said.
BioGEM will reside in KU’s Office for Diversity in Science Training. Most of the programs are supported by the National Institutes of Health and, therefore, prepare students for biomedical careers. However, BioGEM is funded by the NSF and is focused on training students interested in ecology, evolution, and biodiversity science, Cartwright said.
Mentors will be trained based on a curriculum developed by the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research, which includes culturally aware mentoring.
“It is my hope that the benefits of this training will extend beyond BioGEM and enable faculty to be more effective mentors to mentees of all stages and backgrounds,” Cartwright said.
Sarah Deer, University Distinguished Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Indigenous Studies, and by courtesy law, along with a fellow KU researcher, launched a website to document cases of land return to sovereign Native American tribes, provide resources for those interested in doing so, and connect researchers, advocates, and others interested in land return.
A story maps site powered by ArcGIS technology is now online documenting cases of landowners returning property to the original Indigenous owners across North America. With each arrow on a map, visitors can find links to news coverage of such transfers and links to the sites of the sovereign tribes who were returned their land.
Deer teamed up with Ward Lyles, associate professor of public affairs & administration, who researches land use, planning, and related topics and had experience in mapping how land is used.
“We decided to launch the project as a way to give credence to #landback, not just as a metaphor, but to also inspire landowners who came into stolen lands generations ago,” Deer said. “We wanted to help show this is grassroots, on-the-ground framework.”
The site is updated regularly, and as of October 2023 has documented more than 90 instances of private landowners, churches, municipalities, and others returning land to Indigenous nations. Deer and Lyles said they have not collected every instance as people often do not want to publicize the return of land for various reasons. Locations
are approximate as the researchers also wish to respect the people who decided to return land as well as tribes who have regained possession of their original territory.
The site also includes links to documents on how to legally return land, as the process is not as simple as a declaration in a will. Deer, who has written amicus briefs for the Supreme Court in cases involving Indigenous land rights and recently saw the high court rule in favor of her Muscogee (Creek) Nation in an Oklahoma land rights case, said she hopes to help anyone interested in land return.
“We decided to launch the project as a way to give credence to #landback, not just as a metaphor, but to also inspire landowners who came into stolen lands generations ago,” Deer said. “We wanted to help show this is grassroots, on-the-ground framework.”
“I want to make sure people know this is not something you can just do. You have to be intentional about it, to figure out the taxation issues, surveying, and many other aspects of land transfer,” Deer said. “We want to inspire potential returns and provide education about roadblocks to return. Scholars, activists, and anyone interested in this topic is welcome to use it.”
When the Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, it did so by insulating itself from considering the effect the decision would have on women and marginalized communities, according to authors of a recent study. The result, they found, created a two-tiered system of healthcare that exacerbates existing disparities.
Alesha Doan, professor of public affairs & administration and women, gender & sexuality studies, who is also an associate dean in the College, is co-author of a study that examines the Dobbs decision, published in the Journal of Women, Politics & Policy.
The study, co-written with Lori Brown of Syracuse University and Shoshanna Ehrlich of the University of Massachusetts Boston, connects a critical legal analysis with an examination of how the Dobbs decision has affected practitioners and those seeking abortion care. The authors conducted interviews with 22 providers in states with both abortion restrictions and protections.
The authors wrote that the court did not connect abortion with “invidiously discriminatory animus against women” by claiming the topic was not about gender, nor did preventing abortion constitute sex discrimination. That ignores previous abortion cases like Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, both of which noted clearly that gender was paramount in the issue.
“There is a line in the majority opinion that says,
‘This has nothing to do with gender,’” Doan said. “However, if you read the briefs submitted by hundreds of experts, providers, physicians, advocates, and others, it is expressly present. And it is present in decades of research that provides empirical evidence that women suffer medical, legal, economic, and other dire consequences when the government criminalizes abortion.”
The Supreme Court’s dissenting opinion also pointed out that gender was a central component of previous rulings on the matter, in addition to amicus briefs submitted to the court, Doan said.
“You’re getting a two-tiered system of medical training, which translates into a two-tiered system of health care,” Doan said.
The study results showed that providers were highly concerned about how the decision would affect their ability to deliver care equitably. Specifically, women who travel to abortionprotective states often do not have the time for follow-up visits or to spend more than the minimum time at a care facility because of childcare or work responsibilities waiting at home, or they cannot afford the travel-related costs of a longer stay.
“You’re getting a two-tiered system of medical training, which translates to a two-tiered system of health care delivery,” Doan said.
Study examines why some topics elicit more anger online than others
Why is anger so pervasive in political discussions on social media? A new study gives some clues.
The desire to express political anger seems so strong that it overrides the instinct, found in older research, to control one’s anger in public, according to a new paper co-written by a KU associate professor of communication studies.
In “Emotion Work on Social Media: Differences in Public and Private Emotions about Politics and COVID-19 on Facebook,” published in late 2023 in the journal Social Media + Society, KU’s Ashley Muddiman, and Emily Van Duyn of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ran an experiment with 518 people, comparing how they expressed emotion online about the topic of COVID-19 versus politics in general. They also compared the participants’ expression of emotion about the two topics compared with their actual feelings. For example, did they outwardly express what they were feeling inside, or did they hide their feelings? The latter condition, Muddiman said, is known as performing “emotional work.”
The experiment took place in early 2021, when COVID-19 vaccines were still rolling out across the country. Participants were asked to craft, but not to actually post, a social media post about one of the two topics. Then, per the paper, “Participants were asked ... to indicate how much anger and anxiety they felt when crafting their specific message from never to often.” Human coders then compared the emotions expressed in their posts to their inner feelings.
The authors write that theories of emotion work in communication suggest that people repress expressions of anger in public, fearing a loss of control over who receives the message. However, the experiment showed that was not the case with political posts. People asked to write political posts felt angrier than people asked to write posts about COVID-19, and were the most likely to express anger in public social media posts, Muddiman said.
“The other big takeaway is that there’s something about politics online that overrides that. If somebody felt angry, and they were expressing themselves about politics in a public setting, they were very willing to express that anger, which was against what we expected. So, there’s something about politics that made people want to express their anger publicly. That was very interesting to me.”
Muddiman said the researchers predicted that being online would cause people to rein in their anger, but that wasn’t the case when it came to politics.
“There’s something about anger that just overrides a lot of this and that invites or encourages people to share their political identities ... in public with everyone,” Muddiman said. “And that might be one of the reasons why we see so much anger online, even when it’s not always what people are feeling. There’s a cachet to expressing anger in online political settings.”
764
Total number of faculty in the College
458
Tenured and tenure-track faculty in the College
39
Distinguished professors in the College
Researchers find most markets have ample housing but afforadability is another matter
The United States is experiencing a housing shortage. At least, that is the common belief — and is even the basis for national policy.
But new research finds that most of the nation’s markets have ample housing in total, but nearly all lack enough units affordable to very low-income households.
Kirk McClure, professor emeritus of public affairs & administration at KU, and Alex Schwartz of The New School co-wrote a study published in the journal Housing Policy Debate. They examined U.S. Census Bureau data from 2000 to 2020 to compare the number of households formed to the number of housing units added to determine if there were more households needing homes than units available.
The researchers found only four of the nation’s 381 metropolitan areas experienced a housing shortage in the study time frame, as did only 19 of the country’s 526 “micropolitan” areas — those with 10,000-50,000 residents.
“The data shows that the majority of American markets have adequate supplies of housing available. Unfortunately, not enough of it is affordable, especially for low-income and very low-income families and individuals,” McClure said.
McClure and Schwartz also examined households in two categories: Very low income, defined as between 30% and 60% of area median family income, and extremely low income, with incomes below 30% of area median family income.
The numbers showed that from 2010 to 2020, household formation did exceed the number of homes available. However, there was a large surplus of housing produced in the previous decade. In fact, from 2000 to 2020, housing production exceeded the growth of households by 3.3 million units. The surplus from 2000 to 2010 more than offset the shortages from 2010 to 2020.
Helping people afford the housing stock that is available would be more cost effective than expanding new home construction in the hope that additional supply would bring prices down, the authors wrote. Several federal programs have proven successful in helping renters and moderate-income buyers afford housing that would otherwise be out of reach.
“We cannot build our way to housing affordability. We need to address price levels and income levels to help low-income households afford the housing that already exists, rather than increasing the supply in the hope that prices will subside,” McClure said.
Giving former inmates Medicaid improves their health, but doesn’t necessarily improve recidivism, study finds
Inmates face numerous difficulties upon reentry into society. Public healthcare services are not always easily accessible to them while making this transition.
“Recidivism is an expensive and tragic societal problem,” said David Slusky, professor of economics. “In addition to designing new policies to help reduce it, policymakers also want to understand what existing policies and programs could help.”
His new paper titled “Accessing the Safety Net: How Medicaid Affects Health and Recidivism” finds that reducing barriers in access to Medicaid for vulnerable populations increases enrollment and utilization of health care services, but it does not reduce 1-year or 3-year recidivism. This suggests the effectiveness of such policies is context-dependent.
The findings appear as a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“The U.S. makes it very difficult for those released from prison to rejoin the formal economy,” said Slusky, who co-wrote the article with Analisa Packham of Vanderbilt University. “Many individuals see continued criminal activity as their best economic option.”
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, nearly half of those returning to the community are rearrested within one year, and 77% are rearrested within five years.
To study these issues, Slusky focused on South Carolina, a non-Medicaid expansion state that implemented a 2016 policy to more easily re-enroll previously incarcerated individuals in the Medicaid program.
Slusky found no evidence that people with easier access to Medicaid are less likely to commit future violent or property crimes.
So, what exactly is the benefit for the community if this doesn’t curb crime?
“Medicaid has been shown in many other cases to improve economic and financial outcomes and make individuals less likely to skip necessary medical care due to cost,” he said. “We also do see increased overall healthcare utilization from the policy change, which is evidence individuals are getting more care — which is the outcome most directly affected by increased insurance rates.”
Slusky said there are limits to what can be done in non-Medicaid expansion states as enrollment assistance programs can only help those who are eligible.
“It’s very difficult to scale up a program like the one in South Carolina. Despite all of the effort and expense, we just don’t see that large an increase in the share of released individuals who end up on Medicaid. There is just only so much that nonexpansion states can do to help those in need.”
Researchers will follow cohort of young people for decades to document their work experiences
A University of Kansas researcher will be part of a partnership to establish the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 2027 (NLSY27), the latest effort from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics to understand how youths take part in the labor market and how that affects their lives and livelihood.
Misty Heggeness, associate professor of public affairs and economics, will lead KU’s participation in the partnership. RTI International, a nonprofit research institute, is leading the partnership with KU and Rice University that was awarded as a contract by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The survey will follow the same cohort of young people for more than four decades and ask a standard set of questions that collect data on their employment, training, education, income, assets, if they change jobs or living locations, and more.
Heggeness, who researches how women participate in the economy and more, formerly worked for the U.S. Census Bureau. She said she will help improve survey questions to gain more data on how women take part in the workforce and work to link data gained from the survey questions with administrative data from various branches of government to build a fuller picture of labor in a traditional sense and how labor in the home, such as caring for family, influences life, the economy, and more.
“I want to help the survey make better use of
alternate data. We hope to improve linkages between the survey and administrative resources to reduce costs and improve efficiency for the BLS in the long run,” Heggeness said. “That will help improve and expand the knowledge base of what’s happening with youth in the labor market today.”
The preeminent source for understanding how people experience the labor market from adolescence through middle age, the survey is especially valuable to researchers studying economics, labor, business, and more. With its data collected from surveys integrated with government data, it will enable researchers to understand economic trends and their causes.
NLSY27 will follow previous surveys conducted with cohorts from 1979 and 1997. Heggeness said she anticipates helping build a body of data that documents the experiences of youths in the workforce, especially in improving the understanding of how women take part and the role labor plays in the lives of young people.
“I know we’ll be interested in looking at how many youths today are following the traditional fouryear college path versus other types of specialized training, as well as better understanding paid labor and ‘informal’ or unpaid family labor,” Heggeness said. “One of the strengths of NLSY is it allows us to be confident in the trends we see in this cohort over time and understanding the factors behind them.”
A recent study of transgender and nonbinary adults found they were dramatically happier about their job and life in general when they felt comfortable asserting their true identities in the workplace.
It increased their self-reported satisfaction scores in those categories by 22% to 24%.
“We’re always looking to move the needle, but this is not incremental. It’s huge,” said one of the study’s co-authors, Cameron Piercy, associate professor of communication studies. “And there is no cost to an employer. All they have to do is value people for who they are.”
Piercy and his former graduate student Rebecca Baumler, who is now pursuing a doctorate at the University of Texas-Austin, co-wrote “Crystallized Trans Identity: How Authenticity and Identity Communication Affect Job and Life Satisfaction,” which was published in the journal Communication Research.
They surveyed 206 trans adults about how they communicated their gender identity at work, broadly dividing it into three forms of communication: explicit (i.e., openly sharing their trans identity), implicit (i.e., voicing support for trans rights) and covering (i.e., concealing their trans identity).
“We think gender identity doesn’t have a place at work. We think of work as a task-driven thing.
But the reality is it’s folly for us to think that our identities outside of work don’t have a bearing on who we are at work,” Piercy said.
Another surprising finding was that implicit outness was negatively associated with life satisfaction.
“We interpret that as what we call a suppression effect,” Piercy said. “When you advocate for trans identities but you don’t advocate for yourself... it actually harms your life satisfaction. What you’re saying and what you’re doing are at odds with each other.”
“We’re always looking to move the needle, but this is not incremental. It’s huge. And there is no cost to an employer. All they have to do is value people for who they are,” Piercy said.
Piercy and Baumler list examples of researchsupported actions employers could take to make their trans employees’ lives better: “using inclusive language, providing allyship workshops to foster inclusivity, assessing policies to ensure they accommodate trans employees, and fostering interpersonal relationships, among others.”
“In my view,” Piercy said, “this is the tip of the iceberg. My suspicion — and you can see this in the participants’ quotes — is that workplaces that allow people to be themselves are less likely to experience negative work outcomes.”
KU researcher introduces new dataset that captures the history of U.S. sanctions against
The United States and China might best be described as “frenemies.” But while outright military hostilities are currently kept in check, intensifying economic competition between the two superpowers can be observed in their use of sanctions.
“You use [sanctions] to take away economic benefits, whether that’s through trade by withholding exports or through finance by freezing assets,” said Jack Zhang, assistant professor of political science.
Zhang explores this factor in a paper titled “Measuring Chinese economic sanctions 1949–2020: Introducing the China TIES dataset.” It introduces both a new dataset on sanctions involving China and a research framework for expanding knowledge about non-Western economic sanctions more generally. It’s published in Conflict Management and Peace Science.
“There is a big difference between U.S. and Chinese sanctions,” said Zhang, who co-wrote the paper with KU doctoral candidate Spencer Shanks. “Chinese sanctions are often informal in nature, and China denies they’re doing a lot of them.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. is the country that imposes the most sanctions “by a long shot,” according to Zhang. The European Union as a bloc issues the second-greatest number of sanctions, but China’s unilateral use is a close third and will likely soon
surpass the E.U., Zhang said.
The Chinese Economic Sanctions dataset (aka China TIES) includes 135 episodes where China is the sender and 88 episodes where it is the target from 1949 to 2020. Zhang and Shanks use the Threat and Imposition of Economic Sanctions dataset (TIES v.4) as a baseline for identifying and coding sanctions episodes, and they provide a set of standardized narratives documenting each episode with secondary sources. The result is a dataset that is interoperable with TIES but also contains new variables that better capture the informal nature of many Chinese sanctions.
Ironically, sanctions rarely work the way they are intended, Zhang said.
A professor at KU since 2019, Zhang is also the founder and director of the KU Trade War Lab. His research explores the political economy of trade and conflict in East Asia with a focus on explaining why interdependent countries use military versus economic coercion in foreign policy disputes.
“One of the important contributions that I hope our paper will be able to show is to contextualize China sanctions behavior in an international context and in international benchmarks,” Zhang said. “I also think our approach strives to establish a new gold standard for how to build these quantitative datasets that are rooted in expertise in the region.”
for an ‘AI Bill of Rights in Education’
Because ignoring the artificial intelligence elephant in the room is no longer feasible, the author of a new “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in Education” has proposed some principles for dealing with it.
The new journal Critical AI published the article, written by Kathryn Conrad, KU professor of English. Conrad’s scholarly work has centered on intersections of technology and culture, usually in the context of turn-of-the-20th-century Irish modernism.
However, she, like many other scholars, has pondered the implications of AI since November 2022, when the private company OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, a large language model chatbot that generates written responses to questions posed by users.
While the initial buzz around ChatGPT, and more broadly AI, in education centered on its potential to write term papers for students, Conrad has delved deeply into other issues as well, from its potential to surveil users to its built-in algorithmic biases.
Conrad said of her intervention, “I decided it really needed to be a question of rights — student rights, as well — because we have responsibility as educators to protect them.”
In the article, Conrad acknowledged the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s 2022 “Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights” and extended it for education.
Educators, she wrote, should have: Input on institutional decisions to buy and implement AI tools; Input on policies regarding usage; Professional development (i.e., training); Autonomy; and Protection of legal rights.
Her proposed rights for students: Guidance on whether and how AI tools are to be used in class; Privacy and creative control of their own work; Appeal rights, if charged with academic misconduct related to AI; Notice; and Protection of legal rights.
And while she said that educators “cannot ignore” AI, Conrad argued that universities, particularly, with their potential for high-level cross-disciplinary work, could help lead the way to a better future.
“We have the potential to develop technologies that are trained on ethically obtained datasets, that have privacy protections built in, that are ethically deployed. This is a place we could potentially lead,” she said.
Research out of KU recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences could hasten development of a new class of vaccines aimed at SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
Anthony Fehr, associate professor of molecular biosciences, led research into a protein dubbed “Mac1,” which has intrigued molecular bioscientists as an antiviral target because it is known to help confer virulence, or the power to cause disease. Results have spurred several groups, including the Fehr lab, to begin developing novel inhibitors of Mac1.
“To better understand this protein, we use what’s called reverse genetics, where we can delete or mutate this gene, so it no longer functions in the context of the actual virus,” Fehr said. “While we’ve done this in a lot of different coronaviruses, we hadn’t actually explored this in SARS-CoV-2 until just recently. This paper really describes our efforts to get rid of this protein Mac1 in SARS-CoV-2 and really see what’s happening.”
Studying how SARS-CoV-2 behaved in mouse models, Fehr’s collaborator at Oklahoma State, Rudra Channappanavar and his group, found that without Mac1, the virus barely had an impact on the health of mice.
“Every mouse survived and showed no real signs of disease when they were infected with the virus without this gene, whereas when we give mice
the normal virus, every mouse dies,” Fehr said. “These results further demonstrate that Mac1 is a strong target for the development of novel antiviral therapies.”
What’s more, Fehr and his co-authors found the virus, without the Mac1 protein, induced a robust initial immune response in mice, the kind of biological response researchers look for in a vaccine target.
Fehr and Channappanavar have already shown that prior infection with the attenuated virus can be protective for mice from a future infection.
“Right now, we’re really looking at further developing this virus into a live attenuated vaccine for SARS-CoV-2, and we’re working on different strategies with minor modifications to this virus to make it even better,” he said. “We think this is a great start to developing a vaccine that we think would have longer lasting immunity.”
Fehr said such a vaccine could be administered intranasally, targeting the lung, giving it advantages over today’s recommended vaccine regimen based on mRNA technology.
Additionally, live-attenuated COVID-19 vaccines could last longer than current vaccines requiring boosters.
“We’re finding [mRNA vaccines’] immunity wanes over the course of time. Live-attenuated viruses have been around for decades, and many of them are very effective and last very long. We can get a lot of live-attenuated vaccines as children, and we never have to take them again because they last our lifetime.”
According to Fehr, a live-attenuated vaccine would target parts of the virus more likely to remain the same from variant to variant.
“Hopefully this approach targeting the Mac1 could be beneficial in preventing disease from future variants,” Fehr said.
Researchers from KU have created a new and powerful dataset shedding light on different types of outer-membrane proteins, known as beta barrels, as well as their evolutionary relationships in order to facilitate the development of vaccines against a range of infections. Their findings recently were published in the peer-reviewed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
According to co-author Joanna Slusky, associate professor of molecular biosciences and computational biology, who oversaw the research in her lab, the new understanding of beta barrels enables fresh lines of scientific inquiry as well as drug development.
“Outer membrane proteins reside in the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria, and all of these membrane proteins take on a beta-barrel structure, sharing a common basic topology.” Slusky said. “The outer membrane plays essential roles, including nutrient import, toxin export, adhesion, enzymatic activity, and environmental adaptation, all governed by these outer membrane proteins.”
The team’s approach to producing the new dataset diverged from past efforts, which only sought to catalog relatives of known outer-membrane proteins. The new method, dubbed “IsItABarrel,”
has revealed more than 270,000 previously unidentified outer-membrane proteins that could be of interest to vaccine researchers. Slusky’s group has posted the database online to enable such work.
“Recognizing their shared beta barrel characteristic as a distinctive shape, we developed an algorithm that yielded approximately 1.9 million instances of these proteins,” Slusky said. “From there, we cluster them into distinct groups. The predominant group accounts for around 1.4 million instances. Then, a substantial portion, approximately 500,000 instances, falls into various other groups. This suggests that nature independently developed this fold multiple times.”
The new method, dubbed “IsItABarrel,” has revealed more than 270,000 previously unidentified outer-membrane proteins that could be of interest to vaccine researchers.
Whereas the Slusky lab and others had previously detected two or three instances where protein evolution had converged on the beta barrel shape, now the KU team has identified 11 independent instances of this occurrence in various bacterial types.
“Our initial exploration revealed more bacteria had this type of protein than anticipated, including those previously underrepresented,” Slusky said.
Slusky said the discovery that bacteria can make beta barrels using new sequence motifs of amino acids should provoke many new lines of research.
Slusky’s collaborators on the work were lead author Daniel Montezano, a KU postdoctoral researcher, along with co-authors Rebecca Bernstein, a high school researcher, and Matthew Copeland, research engineer with KU’s Computational Biology Program.
Above: Illustration of an 18-strand beta barrel from S. typhimurium. Credit: Wikimedia.
Ekgmowechashala, the final primate to inhabit North America before Homo sapiens or Clovis people, first appeared on the continent about 30 million years ago, just after the Eocene-Oligocene transition, during which North America saw great cooling and drying, making the continent less hospitable to warmth-loving primates.
Paleontologists from KU and the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology in Beijing recently published evidence in the Journal of Human Evolution shedding light on the longstanding saga of Ekgmowechashala, based on fossil teeth and jaws found in both Nebraska and China.
To do so, the researchers first had to reconstruct its family tree, a job helped by the discovery of an even more ancient Chinese “sister taxon” of Ekgmowechashala the team has named Palaeohodites (or “ancient wanderer”).
“It appears suddenly in the fossil record of the Great Plains more than 4 million years after the extinction of all other North American primates, which occurred around 34 million years ago,” said
lead author Kathleen Rust, a doctoral candidate in paleontology at KU’s Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.
In the 1990s, Rust’s doctoral adviser and coauthor Chris Beard, KU Foundation Distinguished Professor and senior curator of vertebrate paleontology, collected fossils in China that closely resembled the Ekgmowechashala material known from North America.
“As soon as I picked up the jaw and saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, this is it,’” Beard said. “Here in KU’s collection, we have some critical fossils, including what is still by far the best upper molar of Ekgmowechashala known from North America. That upper molar is so distinctive and looks quite similar to the one from China that we found that it kind of seals the deal.”
Beard left it to Rust to conduct the morphological analysis that tied Ekgmowechashala and its cousin Palaeohodites from China in a phylogenetic tree to establish their evolutionary relationships. In the course of the work, Rust was able to draw conclusions about how Ekgmowechashala came to be discovered in Nebraska, millions of years after its fellow primates died out in the continent’s fossil record: its ancestors crossed over the Beringian region millions of years later.
“The first primates came to North America about 56 million years ago at the beginning of the Eocene, and they flourished on this continent for more than 20 million years,” Beard said. “But they went extinct when climate became cooler and drier. Several million years later Ekgmowechashala shows up, only to be a flash in the pan as far as the long trajectory of evolution is concerned. After Ekgmowechashala is gone for more than 25 million years, Clovis people come to North America, marking the third chapter of primates on this continent.”
Rust and Beard were joined in the work by coauthors Xijun Ni of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, and Kristen Tietjen, scientific illustrator with the KU Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum.
Diverse crops make it harder for soil pathogens to thrive, study led by KU reserchers finds
Planting diverse crops rather than just one plant species signifcantly boosts agricultural yield, making it harder for soil pathogens harmful to plants to thrive.
The findings, recently published in Nature Communications, were made by an international team of scientists that included several from KU.
“It’s commonly observed that diverse plant communities can be more productive and stable over time,” said corresponding author James Bever, senior scientist with the Kansas Biological Survey & Center for Ecological Research and Foundation Distinguished Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology.
While crop rotation and other farming and gardening practices long have reflected benefits of a mix of plants, the new research puts hard data to one important mechanism underpinning the observation: the numbers of microorganisms in the soil that eat plants.
According to Bever, the research argues against the industrial-agricultural practice of planting a single food crop over many acres of land, often referred to as “monoculture.”
“Monoculture — planting vast areas with a single crop — is driven by technological reasons rather than biological ones. It’s essential to view monoculture as a cost-benefit model with increased inputs and explore alternative methods
like crop rotation to manage pathogens over time.”
The new data was developed using field experiments at the KU Field Station, along with greenhouse assays and feedback modeling using computers. This project was supported by large collaborative grants to KU from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
At KU, Bever’s collaborators included associate specialist Peggy Schultz as well as Haley Burrill and Laura Podzikowski, both of whom earned doctorates at KU and now are postdoctoral researchers at the University of Oregon and KU, respectively. Lead author Guangzhou Wang worked at KU as a postdoctoral researcher and now is affiliated with China Agricultural University in Beijing, where he worked on the investigation there with co-authors Fusuo Zhang and Junling Zhang. They were joined by co-author Maarten Eppinga of the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Bever said mixing plants in various plots would be beneficial to home gardeners and others who cultivate plants.
“If you had four plots in your backyard that were discrete, you wouldn’t want to put all tomatoes in one and all squash in another, and a third with herbs — you’d want to mix them in. You’ll reduce pathogens by doing that. It’s what our data shows.”
Above: Co-author Peggy Schultz collects data on plots with undergraduate workers. Credit: KU Marketing.
New study finds supermassive blackholes are not as common as previously believed
Active galactic nuclei (AGN) — or supermassive black holes that are rapidly increasing in size — are rarer than many astronomers had assumed previously, according to a team of KU researchers surveying a swath of the cosmos using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).
The findings, made with the JWST’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), suggest our universe may be a bit more stable than previously believed.
The resulting paper, conducted under auspices of the Cosmic Evolution Early Release Science (CEERS) program, appeared in The Astrophysical Journal. The work, headed by Allison Kirkpatrick, assistant professor of physics & astronomy, focused on a long-studied zone of cosmos dubbed the Extended Groth Strip, located between the Ursa Major and Boötes constellations. However, previous examinations relied on a less powerful generation of space telescopes.
“We used the mid-infrared instrument on the James Webb Space Telescope to look at dust in galaxies that are existing 10 billion years in the past, and that dust can hide ongoing star formation, and it can hide growing supermassive black holes,” Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick and many fellow astrophysicists anticipated that the higher-resolution JWST survey would locate many more AGN than a previous survey, conducted with the Spitzer Space Telescope. However, even with MIRI’s boost in
power and sensitivity, few additional AGN were
“The results looked completely different from what I had anticipated, leading to my first major surprise,” Kirkpatrick said. “As it turns out, these black holes are likely growing at a slower pace than previously believed, which is intriguing, considering the galaxies I examined resemble our Milky Way from the past.”
Kirkpatrick said an important mystery in astronomy lies in understanding how typical supermassive black holes, such as those found in galaxies like the Milky Way, grow and influence their host galaxy.
“This discovery opens up a whole new perspective on black-hole growth since our current understanding is largely based on the most massive black holes in the biggest galaxies, which have significant effects on their hosts, but the smaller black holes in these galaxies likely do not,” Kirkpatrick said.
According to Kirkpatrick, the work changes understanding of how galaxies grow, particularly concerning the Milky Way.
“Ultimately, this knowledge will help constrain and measure black hole masses, shedding light on the origins of black holes growing, which remain an unanswered question,” Kirkpatrick said.
Above: Illustration of active galactic nucleus.
Credit: ESA/NASA/AVO/Paolo Padovani.
It’s time to acknoweldge human impact on shaping the moon’s environment
Human beings first disturbed moon dust Sept. 13, 1959, when the USSR’s unmanned spacecraft Luna 2 alighted on the lunar surface. In the following decades, more than a hundred other spacecraft have touched the moon — both crewed and uncrewed — sometimes landing and sometimes crashing.
According to anthropologists and geologists at KU, it’s time to acknowledge humans have become the dominant force shaping the moon’s environment by declaring a new geological epoch for the moon: the Lunar Anthropocene.
In a comment published in Nature Geoscience, they argue the new epoch may have dawned in 1959, thanks to Luna 2.
“The idea is much the same as the discussion of the Anthropocene on Earth — the exploration of how much humans have impacted our planet,” said lead author Justin Holcomb, a postdoctoral researcher with the Kansas Geological Survey (KGS).
Holcomb collaborated on the paper with co-authors Rolfe Mandel, University Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and senior scientist with KGS, and Karl Wegmann, associate professor of marine, earth and atmospheric sciences at North Carolina State University.
Holcomb said he hopes the Lunar Anthropocene concept might help dispel the myth that the moon is an unchanging environment, barely impacted by humanity.
According to the authors, refuse from human missions to the moon includes “discarded and abandoned spacecraft components, bags of human excreta, scientific equipment, and other objects (e.g., flags, golf balls, photographs, religious texts).”
While Holcomb and his colleagues want to use the Lunar Anthropocene to highlight the potential for humanity’s potential negative environmental impact to the moon, they also hope to call attention to the vulnerability of lunar sites with historical and anthropological value, which currently have no legal or policy protections against disturbance.
“A recurring theme in our work is the significance of lunar material and footprints on the moon as valuable resources, akin to an archaeological record that we’re committed to preserving,” Holcomb said. “The concept of a Lunar Anthropocene aims to raise awareness and contemplation regarding our impact on the lunar surface, as well as our influence on the preservation of historical artifacts.”
Holcomb said this field of “space heritage” would aim to preserve or catalog items such as rovers, flags, golf balls, and footprints on the moon’s surface.
“These imprints are intertwined with the overarching narrative of evolution. It’s within this framework we seek to capture the interest of not only planetary scientists but also archaeologists and anthropologists who may not typically engage in discussions about planetary science,” Holcomb said.
Small-Girl Toni and the Quest for Gold
By Giselle
Anatol
Viking Press/ Penguin Random House
Giselle Anatol, director for the Hall Center for the Humanities and professor of English, took the profound grief she felt after the 2019 death of the acclaimed African American author Toni Morrison and turned it into a children’s book inspired by the great storyteller. It is thought to be the first children’s book inspired by the life of the Nobel and Pulitzer Prizewinning author of such novels as “Beloved” and “Song of Solomon.”
The Poverty of the World: Rediscovering the Poor At Home And Abroad
By Sheyda
Jahanbani
Oxdford University Press
“Poverty creates more human misery than any other force on earth,” said Sheyda Jahanbani, associate professor of history. Her new book brings together the histories of U.S. foreign relations and domestic politics to explain why, during a period of unprecedented affluence, Americans supported major policy initiatives to combat poverty.
Witch Fulfillment: Adaptation Dramaturgy and Casting the Witch for Stage and Screen
By Jane Barnette Routledge
Barnette, associate professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance and a practitioner of the craft herself, said part of the reason she wrote this book was that “so many witches are portrayed on stage as either agents of Satan, which is derived from the long heritage of witch hunts and crusades, or they’re just completely and utterly fantasy, which is fine, as long as you also recognize in some way that there are human beings — just like you and me — who actually practice witchcraft as their religious practice.”
The Treshold: Contemporary Theatre, Art, and Music of Iran
By Rana Esfandiary Routledge
Esfandiary, assistant professor of theatre & dance, writes about the daring stage directors, probing photographers, and electronic musicians who are pushing against mullah-imposed boundaries.
Hip Hop in Musical Theatre
By Nicole Hodges Persley Methuen Drama/ Bloomsbury
Nicole Hedges Persley, vice provost of Community Impact and professor of American Studies and African & African American Studies, offers a historical look at hip-hop’s effect on acting, dancing, singing, design, and, of course, music. Each section Hodges Persley disscusses is accompanied by a Spotify playlist.
Overlooked Places and Peoples: Indigenous and African Resistance in Colonial Spanish America, 1500-1800
Edited By Dana Velasco Murillo, Robert C. Schwaller Routledge
This volume, coedited by Robert Schwaller, professor of history, focuses on the experiences of Native peoples, Africans and Afro-descended peoples, and “castas” (individuals of mixed ancestry) living in regions perceived as fringe, marginal or peripheral. It offers new insight into how and why the inhabitants of these places responded contentiously or cooperatively to Spanish colonialism.
Heroides
By Ovid
Translated by Stanley Lombardo and Melina McClure
Introduction by Tara Welch
Hackett Classics
Professor emeritus of classics
Stanley Lombardo and University of Oxford graduate student Melina McClure
translate Ovid’s collection of 15 letters written by women to the men who have left them behind. “Heroides” (translated as “The Heroines”) can be described as “ancient fan fiction.” Tara Welch, professor of classics, wrote the book’s introduction. “You can’t always tell whether to take [Ovid] seriously or not,” Welch said.
Corpus Applications in Language Teaching and Research:
The Case of Data-Driven Learning of German
By Nina Vyatkina Routledge
Nina Vyatkina, professor of German and applied linguistics, is a believer in students directly using collections of word usage – corpora – to help them understand and gain fluency in their target language. As the author said, in her book, “I actually did use this method with KU students of German ... and it turned out to be very effective, and students liked the method.”
Unequal Sisters: A Revolutionary Reader in U.S. Women’s History, 5th Edition
Co-edited by Stephanie Narrow, Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Vicki Ruiz, and Kim Carey Warren Routledge
Kim Warren, associate professor of history, is one of the editors on the new fifth edition of this scholarly classic, Building on
its goal of emphasizing feminist perspectives on race, ethnicity and sexuality, this edition also highlights queerness, transgender identity, disability, the rise of the carceral state and the militarization of migration.
The Politics of Innocence: How Wrongful Convictions Shape Public Opinion
By Kevin Mullinix
New York University Press
Kevin Mullinix, associate professor of political science, argues that the adoption of policy reforms designed to reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions is contingent on the ideological leaning of a state, the governor’s partisanship, and the presence of innocence advocacy groups.
Indigenizing Archaeology: Putting Theory into Practice
Edited by Emily C. Van Alst and Carlton Shield Chief Gover University Press of Florida
Carlton Shield Chief Gover, acting assistant professor of anthropology and acting assistant curator of archaeology, conceived and co-edited the new volume. Its chapters include lessons and case studies from the discipline.
“This book is the ‘how-tos’ of Indigenous archaeology,” he said. “There’s not just some monolith of Native Americans. Rather, each nation has its own way of doing archaeology based on their own cultural practices.”
The Interwar World
Edited By Andrew Denning and Heidi J.S. Tworek Routledge
Co-edited by Andrew Denning, associate professor of history, this collection brings together an international group of contributors to discuss, analyze, and interpret this crucial period (1918-1939) in 20th century history. Each chapter takes a global, thematic approach, integrating world regions into a shared narrative. “These are pivotal moments that historians dedicate their entire lives to,” Denning said.
Tom Foley: The Man in the Middle
By R. Kenton Bird & John C. Pierce University Press of Kansas
Chronicles Foley’s rise from the House Agriculture Committee to House Majority Leader and, ultimately, his historic selection as speaker of the House in 1989. The authors point out how his experience in representing a largely Republican district enabled him to build coalitions that were key in landmark legislation, including the Americans with Disabilities Act, reauthorization of the Clean Air Act, deficit reduction legislation, and passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Russian Aspect in Conversation
By Stephen M. Dickey, Kamila Saifeeva, and Anna Karpusheva Open Language Resource Center
This resource is aimed at demystifying some important uses of imperfective verbs for learners of Russian at the intermediate level and above. It focuses on patterns of imperfective usage in infinitives, imperatives and the past tense that involve single completed actions and that are difficult for foreign learners to grasp.
The Trials of Madame Restell: Nineteenth-Century America’s Most Infamous Female Physician and the Campaign to Make Abortion a Crime
By Nicholas L. Syrett The New Press
For forty years in the midnineteenth century, “Madame Restell,” the nom de guerre of the most successful female physician in America, sold birth control medication, attended to women during their pregnancies, delivered their children, and performed abortions in a series of clinics run out of her home in New York City. From 1829 onward, restrictions on abortion began to put Restell in legal jeopardy. For much of this period she prevailed—until she didn’t.
By Bogi Takács Broken Eye Books
In this collection of fantastical stories, Bogi Takács Perelmutter, assistant teaching professor in the departments of Slavic, German & Eurasian Studies and Jewish Studies, aspires to capture something universal about the human condition in extremis – whether that’s the Kafkaesque tale of a woman turned into a potted plant or a sadomasochistic, futuristic allegory about the sacrifices required to maintain life in a hostile environment.
Diocletian’s Edict of Maximum Prices at the Civil Basilica in Aphrodisias
By Michael Crawford with a chapter on the architectural reconstruction by Philip Stinson Reichert Verlag, Germany
Philip Stinson, associate professor of classics, is a key contributor to a 50-year project translating this mandate that has culminated in this new book.
Improvising Acrosss Disabilities: Pauline Oliveros and the Adaptive Use Musical Instrument
Co-edited by Sherrie Tucker University of Michigan Press
Sherrie Tucker, professor of American studies, is one of the editors and contributors to a book that details the origins of the AUMI (Adaptive Use Musical Instrument) software that enables individuals with limited mobility to play music. and spotlights its creator, Pauline Oliveros (19322016), an American composer considered a pioneer in the development of experimental and electronic music.
Strong Hall 1450 Jayhawk Blvd.
Lawrence, KS 66045
School of Arts•Film & Media Studies •Theatre & Dance •Visual Art •Humanities •Classics •East Asian Languages & Cultures •English •French, Francophone & Italian Studies •History •History of Art •Institute for Digital Research in the Humanities •Philosophy •Open Language Resource Center •Religious Studies •Slavic, German & Eurasian Studies •Spanish & Portuguese •International & Interdisciplinary Studies •African & African-American Studies •American Studies •Center for Global & International Studies •The Commons •Environmental Studies •University Honors Program •Indigenous Studies •Jewish Studies •Museum Studies •Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies •Natural Sciences & Mathematics •Chemistry •Computational Biology •Ecology & Evolutionary Biology •Geography & Atmospheric Science •Geology •Mathematics •Molecular Biosciences •Physics & Astronomy •Undergraduate Biology •Social & Behavioral Sciences •Anthropology •Applied Behavioral Science •Child Language •Clinical Child Psychology •Communication Studies •Economics •Institute for Leadership Studies •Linguistics •Political Science •Psychology •School of Public Affairs & Administration •Public Management Center •Urban Planning •Sociology •SpeechLanguage-Hearing •Student Success Offices •College Online •College Office of Graduate Affairs •College Undergraduate Academic Services