The University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute in cooperation with King’s alma mater Morehouse College in Atlanta will kick off the first of the webcasts at 10 a.m. EDT on Friday, April 4, when experts from UF and Morehouse, along with institutions in China, India, Kenya and South Africa, discuss and share in real-time King’s meaning for the 21st century, said James Oliverio, director of UF’s Digital Worlds Institute. The other three programs are also scheduled at 10 a.m. on successive Fridays in April, and all can be viewed on the Internet at www.worldhouse.morehouse.edu.

In his “World House” speech upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, King said “modern man has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think. Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance.”

The UF-Morehouse international conversation will use technology to bridge that divide, Oliverio said. “We’re going to have a cultural exchange, a scholarly dialogue and a motivational call to action for the students of today to carry forward the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who proceeded with the nonviolent resistance movement of Mahatma Gandhi in India and influenced Nelson Mandela in South Africa,” he said. “Using technology to literally connect places across the globe simultaneously, we will create a shared virtual space around the world on the network and have performances and workshops over that global platform.”

The outreach developed from a collaboration between UF and Morehouse College, the recipient of about 10,000 pieces of Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal writings in 2006. Terry Mills, a former UF dean who moved to Morehouse last year to become the Margaret Mitchell Marsh Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, said the idea came in discussions he had with Oliverio about how the two institutions might use the acquisition in educational programming.

The innovativeness of the technology at Digital Worlds Institute, which Mills called the “Imac Theater of Videoconferencing” for its ability to allow multiple partners around the globe to engage in an interactive, unified virtual space, made UF the natural choice to help produce the program, he said. “There are also geographic and historical reasons for the connection, notably Gainesville’s close proximity to St. Augustine where Dr. King had led freedom marches as well as its location near the site of the Rosewood massacre,” Mills said.

The purpose of the global discussions is not only to remind the world of King’s legacy but to keep his vision alive, as his message continues to have relevance today, Oliverio said.

“This is a memorial to Dr. King, not just in the sense of looking backward to some academic papers in a museum, but honoring his life’s work in the hopes that students of today at Morehouse, UF and the other participating institutions will reassess their involvement with their own societies in the same way that Dr. King took a stand against oppression of African Americans in the United States,” he said. “Even at the beginning of the 21st century human kind is still butchering each other in tribal conflicts over economic materialism and resources.”

Although King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is well-known among college students, many are not familiar with the “World House” concept mentioned in his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech and his writings where he discusses the need to fight racism, war and poverty, he said.

The topic of the April 4 90-minute session is King’s challenge to citizens in “transcending tribe, race, class, nation and religion to embrace the vision of World House.” Speaker presentations as well as performances by artists, dancers and musicians are planned from each participating location, which, besides UF and Morehouse, are the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China, the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in India; Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya; and the U.S. Embassy in Johannesburg, South Africa. UF presenters from the Digital Worlds Institute’s Research, Education and Visualization Environment in 101 Norman Hall include Stephanie Evans, an African American studies and women’s studies professor, and drummer Mohamed DaCosta, a lecturer in UF’s College of Fine Arts School of Theatre and Dance. The 60-minute April 11 session will feature UF social anthropologist Faye Harrison and poet Sharon Burney of UF’s African American Studies Program.

John Richard Stepp, an associate professor of anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, presents his findings this week in an artistically displayed scientific exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History as part of The Center for Biodiversity and Conservation’s Thirteenth Annual Symposium in New York. The symposium opens Wednesday and continues through Saturday.

Stepp and his anthropology and ecology graduate students compiled data sets globally and regionally to investigate the relationship between biological and cultural diversity. By analyzing data on human and floral diversity, Stepp found a positive correlation between the number of different plant species and the number of different types of human cultural groups.

“This research shows you can’t isolate biodiversity from cultural diversity, which is important to consider when creating future conservation plans,” Stepp said.

To effectively convey the data to the conference’s audience of policymakers, United Nations representatives and others in a visually compelling manner required the marriage of science and art. Stepp turned to the UF College of Fine Arts graphic design program, MINT, in the school of art and art history for assistance in creating 13 large maps. Each map uses colors and shapes to dynamically render a different data set.

The maps feature some of the regions showing greatest diversity, including Mesoamerica, the Amazon-Andean slope, the greater Himalayas, equatorial Africa, greater Southeast Asia/Melanesia. Stepp said sloping mountainous tropical areas are significant regions for diversity because the range of habitats presented in these areas creates different opportunities for cultural adaptations.

“Sometimes it appears humans have maintained or even created biodiversity,” Stepp said. “Human activity has created different habitats, which can allow for increased biodiversity.”

Building on research published in 2005 in the journal Mountain Research and Development, Stepp’s study used language as one example of cultural diversity.

New Guinea alone contains almost 10 percent of the world’s languages and some of the highest biodiversity in the world, he said.

“Each language represents a culture that is an experiment in what it means to be human,” Stepp said. “Coded within language is sophisticated knowledge of management and interaction with the environment.”

Stepp’s research illustrates that the single biggest predictor of how many languages are spoken in any given area is how many plant species exist in that area. The reverse is also true, he said. Biological diversity and human diversity may share a similar fate. About half of the world’s approximately 7,000 languages are endangered, he said.

Using a geographic information system, Stepp’s research group spatially correlated a number of data sets including all of the world’s languages. The researchers were able to compare this with a sophisticated database containing the distribution of the world’s vascular plant species developed by a team at the University of Bonn led by Wilhelm Barthlott. Other data used were global energy consumption patterns, road networks, population density, bioproductivity, evapotransipration, rainfall and slope. The work is part of an ongoing project funded by The Christensen Fund, based in Palo Alto, Calif.

The students in MINT primarily used Adobe Illustrator to make visual sense of the numbers. MINT director and graphic design assistant professor Connie Hwang said that tool was only one part of the project.

“It’s the innovative and brilliant minds of the students that made this project extraordinary and successful,” she said.

During the project’s three-month timeline during fall 2007, 11 MINT designers tackled the challenge of how to hold the public’s interest while they viewed one map after another. Four lead designers were in charge at the refinement stage. Designer Mason Greenewald carried the project through the production stage.

It was the first time MINT, which takes jobs for clients on and off the UF campus, had worked on a project for display in a national museum.

“Everyone was really interested in working with something informational and environmental, not only for the design, but also for its educational content and its destiny to be shown in the context of a museum for everyone to see,” Hwang said. “Not only did we consider how we could connect with and attract the general public but also how we could highlight the intellectual knowledge and research of the client.”

Stepp said the outcome is fresh and new, not gender, race, or age specific, and easy to digest and comprehend.

“The end result of the project is absolutely stunning, interesting and mesmerizing,” he said. “The MINT designers transformed simple scientific data into something intriguing and beautiful, something that will live in viewer’s mind for a long time.”

In his book, “The Sugar Fix: The High-Fructose Fallout That Is Making You Fat And Sick,” Dr. Richard Johnson reviews the increasing evidence that fructose may play a role in the obesity epidemic and proposes a low-fructose diet he believes could help people lose weight and potentially prevent diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

“We recognize that obesity has multiple causes, including eating too much and exercising too little, but we think a missing piece of the obesity puzzle is fructose intake,” said Johnson, the J. Robert Cade professor of medicine and chief of the division of nephrology, hypertension and transplantation in the UF College of Medicine. “It’s not fructose itself that is the problem, but eating too much of it.”

Americans consume nearly three times as much fructose as a century ago, Johnson said. Although the major source of fructose is soft drinks, it’s found in a variety of foods such as fruit, juice, sweetened cereals and pastries.

“We think fructose makes you obese not simply by the calories it provides but because it also tricks hormonal systems that control appetite,” Johnson said. “You don’t get a sense of being full so you keep eating. It (fructose) may also be important in the development of diabetes, kidney disease and heart disease.

“An additional problem is that the more fructose you eat, the more sensitive you become to it,” Johnson said. “If you want to have success losing weight, you have to cut out fructose for two weeks. At that point you are no longer as sensitive and you can resume a low-fructose diet with ease.”

Johnson’s book, which was published by Rodale, contains a diet he developed with nutritionist and dietitian Elizabeth Gollub, as well as tables listing the fructose contents of common foods. Fructose content is not found on most labels.

Unlike other low-carbohydrate diets, which require dieters to reduce all carbs, Johnson’s plan targets fructose. Starchy foods like potatoes and rice aren’t a no-no as in low-carb diets. And after the first two weeks, dieters can resume eating fruit and having treats such as cake in moderation.

“Most people are used to eating about 50 percent of their diet as carbohydrates,” Johnson said “When you cut it way back and have a very high-protein, high-fat diet, it’s very hard to sustain. It’s also not necessarily healthy. What’s great about our diet is we can maintain a normal carbohydrate-protein-fat balance, and when you do that, the diet is much easier to sustain.”

Johnson became interested in fructose while studying hypertension. He and his colleagues discovered that uric acid increased blood pressure in animals and that ingesting fructose seemed to spur production of uric acid. Reducing uric acid in these animals helped control blood pressure and other problems such as pre-diabetes.

“The effect of fructose to cause pre-diabetes and raise blood pressure may be more important than its effects to increase weight,” Johnson said. “Our studies suggest that, even if one can control one’s weight, that excessive intake of fructose may increase the risk for high blood pressure and diabetes. Going on a low-fructose diet will have benefits above and beyond losing weight.”

The research in Johnson’s book came from studies in his own lab as well as from other scientists studying fructose in cells, animals and humans at other institutions, he said.

He also reviews the history of fructose consumption, comparing it with the rise of obesity. The two histories mirror each other, he writes.

Although fructose consumption was already on the rise when high-fructose corn syrup was invented, the introduction of this sweetener in the late 1960s accelerated the increase. High-fructose corn syrup contains about as much fructose as table sugar but is cheaper to produce, leading companies to produce bigger portions of sweets and soft drinks for the same price, Johnson said.

Today, Americans eat 30 percent more fructose than they did in the 1970s and three times as much as in 1900, when the obesity rate was 5 percent, Johnson said. About 33 percent of adults are now overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“After reading this book I found myself looking more carefully at labels, looking specifically for high-fructose corn syrup,” said Dr. Andrew Whelton, an adjunct professor of medicine and the former director of clinical nephrology at Johns Hopkins University. “I was amazed to see it so often.

“Although this book was put together for a lay audience, I thought it would be useful for health-care providers, particularly for anyone who deals with issues of obesity and diabetes.”

Reported this month in the online edition of the Journal of Proteome Research, the advance could one day lead to earlier detection and improved treatment of some types of cancer as well as other diseases.

“With many diseases, the problem has been that we really don’t know what to look for,” said Weihong Tan, a professor of chemistry and the lead author of the paper. “What we’ve done is create a technique to identify the biomarkers despite that limitation.”

Doctors often diagnose cancer and other diseases based on the appearance of a tumor or a patient’s symptoms. While such traditional methods can be effective, they sometimes identify a disease only after it is established. For example, clinicians may get tipped off to the presence of lung cancer — which kills more people than any other type of cancer — based on visible images of a tumor that appear on radiological exams of a patient’s lungs.

Because earlier detection typically improves outcomes, doctors would like to spot disease at the molecular level, before it grows or spreads and manifests itself in more obvious and harmful ways. Given that diseased cells’ molecular structures differ from those of healthy ones, that approach should be possible, and researchers have had some success finding such “biomarkers” using antibodies, Tan said. But despite years of research, biomarkers for most diseases remain elusive or unreliable, he said.

His group turned to “aptamers,” single-strand chains of DNA or RNA that recognize and bind to target protein molecules, as a new tool. His paper reports the first-ever successful use of the aptamers to discover a molecular biomarker — in this case, one for leukemia.

Tan said his group used cell-SELEX, a process his group developed and patented.

Researchers create trillions of different varieties of aptamers in a solution. They then immerse cells known to carry the sought-after disease in the solution. After an incubation period, they rinse the cells.

The vast majority of the aptamers wash away, but those with stronger molecular affinity for the diseased cells remain. The researchers repeat the process several times, eventually shrinking the pool of aptamers to as few as 10 to 25 very strongly attached aptamers — those most closely associated with the diseased cells. Analysis then reveals these aptamers’ molecular structure, as well as the molecular structure of the cells’ biomarkers they bind to.

“As long as the molecules in question are expressed in a substantially different way on diseased and normal cells, they can be identified,” Tan said.

Rebecca Sutphen, associate professor and director of the Genetic Counseling & Testing Service at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa, said improved diagnosis may not be the only application of the research.

“The opportunity to identify cancer cell-specific biomarkers and potentially detect small numbers of cancer cells has many potential clinical applications, including disease detection, better imaging of tumors and even potential application for stem cells,” she said.

Other biomarkers have been found for leukemia, but none is particularly reliable, Tan said. Tan and his colleagues reported using aptamers to recognize cancer cells in a 2006 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Tan said the latest paper advances that work by revealing the target biomarkers the selected aptamers recognize, Tan said. These targets will form a molecular foundation in understanding diseases, he said.

“In 2006, we did not know what the aptamer recognized on the cancer cell surface,” he said. “In this current work, we report discovering these biomarkers, which then form the molecular foundation for us to understand the cancer and to prepare different molecular tools for molecular medicine.”

Tan said the research is particularly promising because aptamers are relatively easy and inexpensive to manufacture compared with antibodies. “This offers the potential for wider application,” he said, adding that aptamers could one day be used not only to detect disease, but also to ferry therapeutic agents to diseased cells.

The research was funded in part with two grants from the National Institutes of Health. It was also funded with two grants from Florida’s Bankhead-Coley Cancer Research Program and one grant from the State of Florida Center of Excellence in Bio/nano sensors.

The paper’s co-authors are Dihua Shangguan, Zehui Cao, Ling Meng, Prabodhika Mallikaratchy, Kwame Sefah, Hui Wang and Ying Li.

So Michael Gutter, an assistant professor in family financial management with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, has compiled a list of Americans’ top 10 tax-season gaffes.

1. Not making use of VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) sites. If your taxes aren’t terribly complicated–you don’t own a business or have a lot of investment income to report–then VITA is an underused resource worth checking out.

“That’s the first thing I would tell people, is to make use of those sites. They have a lot of oversight by state regulatory agencies and the IRS and they’re audited internally before tax forms are sent up and approved and they’re e-filed for free,” he said. “It’s a free service, done by people who literally work with tax code day in and day out.”

Check with your local county extension office or the Florida Prosperity Campaign, www.prosperitycampaign.com, to find your closest VITA site.

2. Not keeping organized records and missing deductions or credits you deserve.

Gutter said taxpayers should keep in mind that the tax code is designed to promote and encourage good-citizen type behavior: Getting an education, taking care of your children, buying a home, giving to charity, etc.

“There are so many opportunities for people to try and save legitimately between deductions and credits,” he said. “A tax credit is a dollar for dollar reduction in your tax liability, so by not taking advantage of it, you’re really giving away your own money.”

3. Not using your kids to your best (tax-saving) advantage.

If you have children, Gutter said, a number of tax credits might be relevant for you. If you have college-age offspring, there are even more.

Go to www.irs.gov and search “education tax credit.”

4. Not realizing that if you’re struggling financially, you might be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit, a credit for low-income workers. Even if your income isn’t high enough to require a tax return, you can still get the credit.

Go to www.irs.gov and type “Earned Income Tax Credit” in the search box.

5. Spending your tax-refund windfall instead of filling out IRS Form 8888. The 2-year-old form can be used to automatically funnel your tax refund into one or more accounts, such as a savings account or an IRA or other safe place where you won’t be tempted to spend it on an impulse item.

Go to www.form8888.org

“It helps people with the self-control issue that we all have with money,” Gutter said. “It burns a hole in everyone’s pocket, it just depends on what temperature it burns in your pocket and how fast.”

He advises taxpayers to use tax refunds sensibly: Reduce debt first, put money toward retirement or pay bills.

6. Not realizing you can go back and amend previous years’ returns.

If you find this year that you haven’t been taking a tax deduction you’re legitimately eligible for, Gutter says, it’s perfectly acceptable to go back and file amended returns for those years.

7. Buying into the hype over speedy refund anticipation loans.

Unless you are in a true financial emergency, tax refund anticipation loans are “not typically in people’s best interest,” Gutter said.

The loans are similar to paycheck advance loans, he said. The “refund” you get is generally the refund you would have gotten if you’d waited–minus a fee or interest.

8. Not realizing you can make IRA contributions for the previous year up until tax filing day.
So until April 15, 2008, you can contribute to your IRA for tax year 2007.

9. Delaying filing a return without a good reason.

This just leaves your refund in the government’s hands when it could be accruing interest for you, Gutter said. There are some instances where it might make sense to sit on one’s tax return until the last minute–such as waiting to pay Uncle Sam if you still owe taxes, as a way to keep the money working for you until the last moment.

10. Breaking the law by lying on your taxes or not filing a return at all.

“We always tell people, even if you owe the IRS money, work on it–you’re not going to get away with this for very long,” he said. “And if you don’t know how to file your taxes, get some help. But not filing is not in your best interest.”

“A tremendous slowdown is forecast over the next few years compared to what we’ve experienced during the last five years,” said Stan Smith, director of UF’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. “The state has not experienced a decline of this magnitude since the mid-’70s, when we were in a national recession.”

The Sunshine State is expected to add an average of only about 209,000 residents a year between 2007 and 2010, compared with annual increases of about 418,000 people between 2002 and 2006, he said.

Although Florida remains a major destination for retirees, far more young and middle-aged people move into the state to find work than their older counterparts arrive to retire, Smith said. But declining job opportunities have stanched the influx of younger people, he said.

“The vast majority of Florida’s population growth is due to migration, and during a recession the rate of job creation slows down in Florida,” he said.

The biggest group moving to the state during the last four or five decades has typically been those in their 20s and 30s, with those 65 and older accounting for only about 15 percent of in-migration, Smith said. But younger people in their 20s and 30s also make up the biggest share of those leaving the state, which is why Florida became the nation’s oldest state after World War II, he said.

Robust real estate markets and burgeoning construction fueled Florida’s growth from 2002 to 2006, just as it did during the boom years of 1971 to 1974, Smith said. In turn, the housing market’s decline dramatically curbed population growth after 2006, just as a national recession in the ’70s sharply limited expansion between 1974 and 1977, he said.

Another reason growth typically slows during a recession in addition to the availability of fewer jobs is that people have difficulty selling their houses, which delays their move, he said.

“We’ve certainly seen a slowdown in economic growth nationally, and it’s even possible we may be in a recession right now, although we won’t know for sure until later this year,” he said.

Projections call for Florida’s population to return to more normal growth levels of about 317,000 a year between 2010 and 2020, similar to the 1980s and 1990s, Smith said. Although there also was a slowdown in growth during recessions in the 1980s and 1990s, it was nowhere near the steep decline of the 1970s or that which is taking place now, he said.

“It’s really sort of a boom-and-bust pattern that we have seen in Florida,” Smith said. “The years between 2002 and 2006 were the biggest in terms of absolute increases since the early ’70s, and then just as we experienced in the ’70s we are going from a period of high- to low-growth numbers.”

The county projected to grow the fastest in percentage terms between 2007 and 2010, Lafayette in Florida’s Big Bend, is something of an anomaly because it owes its top spot to prison construction, Smith said. It is predicted to grow from 8,215 in 2007 to 9,200 in 2010, he said.

Otherwise, many of the high-growth counties are the same as in past years, he said.

Flagler, which was the fastest-growing county between 2000 and 2007, jumping from 49,832 to an estimated 93,568, is expected to continue to expand at a rapid rate, to 103,500 by 2010, Smith said. Its coastal location, proximity to Jacksonville and relatively low cost of living, as well as the presence of the large Palm Coast development, contribute to its high ranking, he said.

Other rapidly growing counties are Sumter, which owes its surge in part to prison expansion and the increasing number of residents at The Villages retirement community, and Osceola County, which receives spillover from nearby Orlando.

In terms of absolute numbers, the counties expected to make the biggest gains between 2007 and 2010 are Miami-Dade, from 2,462,292 to 2,512,300; followed by Orange, from 1,105,603 to 1,154,200; and Hillsborough, from 1,192,861 to 1,234,900.

UF Graduate Research Professor John Griggs Thompson and European mathematician Jacques Tits won the 2008 Abel Prize for Mathematics and will split the $1.2 million award, the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters announced.

Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters President Ole Didrik Lærum called Thompson from Norway at 6 a.m. EDT to give him the good news.

Thompson was surprised to get the call but he had actually heard some gossip previously, he said this morning.

“I’m devoted to mathematics; it’s my life’s work, so to see the Norwegians recognize that, it puts mathematics on the map,” Thompson said. “It’s a win-win situation.”

There is no Nobel Prize in mathematics, but the Abel prize is the closest equivalent. Created in 2003 and named after the Norwegian mathematician Neils Henrik Abel, the prize recognizes “outstanding scientific work in the field of mathematics,” according to the Norwegian Academy.

Thompson and Tits were awarded the Abel Prize for their contributions to what is called group theory, a branch of mathematics that focuses on the study of symmetry, such as the symmetry of geometric figures or algebraic equations. They have invented important new concepts and proved fundamental results in this field, according to the academy’s announcement.

“The achievements of John Thompson and Jacques Tits are of extraordinary depth and
influence. They complement each other and together form the backbone of modern group theory,” the Abel committee stated in the announcement.

Krishnaswami Alladi, chairman of UF’s mathematics department, said the award contributes greatly to the department’s and UF’s international academic reputation.

“We take immense pride from this,” he said. “The math department’s reputation has been growing steadily in recent years, but having a faculty member win the Abel prize catapults us to another level entirely. It also speaks very highly of the research and scholarship of the math department and, more generally, of the entire university.”

Thompson, 75, has been a professor at UF since 1993. He is the world’s leading authority in group theory, which traces its origins to the work of 19th-century French mathematician Evariste Galois, who, while still in his teens, discovered fundamental symmetry properties related to the solution of polynomial equations.

Thompson’s achievement in group theory began early, while he was still a graduate student in the 1950s at the University of Chicago. There, Thompson solved a famous 60-year-old problem in group theory.

According to Alladi, it was obvious from Thompson’s doctoral thesis that “his ideas would lead to a new era in group theory.”

That prediction was quickly borne out. In the 1960s, Thompson collaborated with famed mathematician Walter Feit to solve the so-called “odd order” problem. The proof, or mathematical argument of the solution, required a series of equations that filled 253 pages — an entire issue of the Pacific Journal of Mathematics.

Alladi said Thompson’s achievements and leadership helped spur a worldwide effort among dozens of mathematicians to solve one of the biggest problems in mathematics, the classification of finite simple groups. That effort was completed in recent years, after four decades of intense investigation guided by Thompson, he said.

Thompson also has also been very active during his tenure at UF, Alladi said.

“He has helped us build a world-class group in algebra,” Alladi said, adding that the department had founded a research professorship in his honor for top recent doctoral graduates in mathematics.

Solving the “odd order” problem won Thompson the American Mathematical Society’s Cole Prize in 1966. Four years later, he won Fields Medal, one of the highest awards in mathematics. Many other awards and medals followed and, in 2000, Thompson was one of 12 recipients of the National Medal of Science awarded by President Bill Clinton.

Tits, the other recipient of the Abel prize, is a professor at the Collège de France.

A reception to celebrate the announcement is set for 4:30 p.m. today at UF’s Keene Faculty Center. The event is free and open to the public, and expected attendees include UF President Bernie Machen and Berit Johne, counselor for science at the Norwegian Embassy in Washington. Johne will read a congratulatory message from the Norwegian Ambassador.

In tests measuring how termites damage the thermal properties or insulation in homes and other buildings, three types of widely used construction materials — 2-by-4 boards, five-ply plywood and foam board insulation — were exposed to the pest for eight weeks by entomologists at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

“All three building construction materials were damaged by termites, but the pest caused more damage to insulation than to either the wooden 2-by-4 or plywood samples,” said Phil Koehler, an entomology professor who supervised the study by graduate student Cynthia Tucker and research associate Roberto Pereira. Their findings will be published in the April issue of the journal Sociobiology.

The thermal imaging tests, which measured heat transfer through the three building materials, focused on damage caused by a species of subterranean termite, Reticulitermes flavipes, that’s well known in North America.

Tucker, who is completing work on her doctoral degree in entomology at UF’s College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, said they were surprised to find that rigid foam board insulation was most heavily damaged by termites, with 12 percent of the material being removed by termites in eight weeks, causing a 27 percent loss in insulation values.

“Most types of insulation are composed of plastic that’s not a source of food for termites, but the soft texture of insulation allows termites to build extensive tunnels and consume paper that lines the outside surface,” Tucker said. “In fact, the insulation materials are an almost ideal habitat because they protect the pest from cold temperatures.”

She said tests showed that plywood was the most resistant to heat flow, but once termites damaged the plywood, temperature changes were significant. After termites ate just 3.1 percent of the wood, insulation values dropped 74 percent.

When the pest attacked 2-by-4 boards, consuming 6.7 percent of the wood by tunneling along the fibers and within softer spring wood, there was a 35 percent drop in insulation values.

“Until recently, changes in the thermal properties of a structure caused by termites — especially for buildings in areas where temperature extremes require lots of heating or air conditioning — have been overlooked,” Tucker said.

Termite damage has been most commonly thought of in terms of weakening structures, making infested areas prone to collapse, she said. Water damage is also linked to these termites because they bring moisture up from the soil into structures.

Pereira said homeowners should make sure a high quality pre-construction termite treatment is done and a termite-protection contract is maintained. Once termites damage the structure, killing the pest will not correct the damage or restore insulation properties.

D.R. Sapp, president of Florida Pest Control and Chemical Co. in Gainesville, said the research provides valuable information that many homeowners overlook.

Insulation can be a “termite turnpike” because the foam material has a low density and holds moisture, he said, making it easy for the pest to quickly tunnel through buildings and attack wood.

“Homeowners always are concerned about anything that can affect the value of their homes, especially now when there is a downturn in the housing market,” Sapp said.

The overall index is two points below its January level, which then marked its worst record in 16 years, said Chris McCarty, director of UF’s Survey Research Center at the Bureau of Economic and Business Research. In February, it rose three points to 73 before dropping in March.

“Consumer confidence is now the lowest it has been since December of 1991, when it hit a record low of 64,” he said.

Four of the five components that make up the index fell this month. The largest decrease was in perceptions about national economic conditions over the next year, which fell 12 points to 53, followed by perceptions of national economic conditions over the next five years, which fell nine points to 74. Perceptions of whether it is a good time to buy big-ticket household items fell four points to 65, and perceptions of personal finances now compared with a year ago fell one point to 64. The only component to rise was perceptions of personal finances one year from now, which rose two points to 86.

“Given these levels and the retail sales data from the U.S. Census Bureau, it is clear that consumers are not in a position to revive an economy that is almost certainly in a recession,” he said.

Home sales and prices, both of which have fallen disproportionately in Florida for the past year, are among the factors affecting Floridians as well as everyone else in the United States, McCarty said.

The housing market woes have led to a shake-up in financial markets as investors across the globe questioned the prudence of U.S. lending practices, McCarty said. They are now withholding the cash needed to fund ongoing lending efforts, he said.

In response, the Federal Reserve Board has engaged in a series of unprecedented interventions to restore confidence in financial markets, including taking on mortgage debt from troubled firms such as Bear Stearns and lowering interest rates sharply, McCarty said. The drop in interest rates has contributed to the falling dollar against other currencies, which makes goods from gasoline to cereal more expensive, he said.

“Our economic problems are unlikely to turn around over the next several months,” McCarty said. “However, some of what needed to happen has already occurred.”

Home prices are falling to reasonable levels and in parts of Florida are now where they would have been without the run-up over the past few years, he said.

“We expect housing prices in many Florida markets to bottom out by July, following another weak home-buying season,” he said. “Although it will be a long time before real estate returns to 2005 prices, it will be a reasonable time for Floridians waiting to buy a house to enter the market.”

And with the passage of the property tax amendment, those Floridians with Save Our Homes equity will be in a good position to move within Florida, he said.

“Many economists expect slow growth to return by the end of the year and solid growth to return by early next year,” he said. “It is useful to keep in mind that there are investors out there with money to lend, an essential ingredient for a growing economy. When they are confident that their investments will grow, they will return.”

It also is clear from the international fallout that the U.S. economy is firmly integrated into the global markets and stands no chance of failing, he said.

The research center conducts the Florida Consumer Attitude Survey monthly. Respondents are 18 or older and live in households telephoned randomly. The preliminary index for March was conducted from 399 responses.

Consumer confidence is designed to help predict buying patterns by measuring the mood of consumers toward purchasing. Although other economic indicators also predict buying patterns, consumer confidence tends to be available sooner. The index is benchmarked to 1966, so a value of 100 represents the same level of confidence for that year. The value of the index is in comparing changes over time rather than looking at an isolated month.

AAA and the University of Florida National Older Driver Research and Training Center are making these and other recommendations for addressing the physical, visual and cognitive changes that affect senior drivers as part of the Smart Features for Mature Drivers program. AAA and UF announced the smart features today (March 21) at the New York International Auto Show.

Reduced range of motion, arthritic joints, diminished fine motor skills and trouble with night vision and recovery from glare are all common age-related physical changes that can affect driving ability. A recent AAA survey found that 43 percent of drivers over 55 suffered from at least one of nine driving-related difficulties commonly caused by aging.

“There are ways to counteract the difficulties brought on by age-related changes so that seniors can maintain their safe driving abilities,” said Dennis McCarthy, co-director of the National Older Driver Research and Training Center and a research assistant professor in the UF College of Public Health and Health Professions’ department of occupational therapy. “One of these is through proper use of particular vehicle features.”

In 2003 about one in seven licensed drivers was 65 or older. By 2029, that proportion is expected to rise to one in four drivers, according to the AARP Public Policy Institute.

“The goal of Smart Features for Mature Drivers is to ensure that mature drivers are comfortable in their vehicles and to keep them driving safely as long as possible,” said Desiree Lanford, a UF driving rehabilitation specialist.

Smart Features for Mature Drivers recommends particular vehicle features based on the driver’s needs. For example, thick steering wheels, keyless entry and ignition, power mirrors and larger dashboard controls can make driving easier for seniors with arthritic hands or diminished fine motor skills. The doors on four-door models require less strength to open and close than two-door vehicles. Those with limited range of motion in the back, neck, shoulder or arm should consider large, wide-angle mirrors, tilt steering wheels and comfortable, six-way adjustable seats with lumbar support when choosing a vehicle. Seniors with vision issues may benefit from extendable sun visors and larger dashboard controls with contrasting text.

“The best vehicle features are those that fit the individual person and his or her limitations or needs,” Lanford said.

AAA and UF experts also suggest all mature drivers consider proven crashworthiness, antilock brakes, head restraints to reduce the risk of neck injuries, dynamic stability control to help prevent loss of control in a turn, and side and dual-stage or dual-threshold air bags that inflate based on the severity of the crash, lowering the risk of injury if airbags deploy with too much force.

“Safe driving is a function of person, environment and vehicle factors,” said Sherrilene Classen, a UF older driver injury prevention researcher and project team member. “The Smart Features for Mature Drivers project recognizes normal age-related changes and provides beneficial vehicle features to accommodate such changes — a critical step in injury prevention.”

To learn more about the Smart Features for Mature Drivers program, visit the Web site www.AAA.com/seniors.

“By providing public services such as Smart Features for Mature Drivers, AAA aims to keep our growing senior population safe behind the wheel,” said AAA President and Chief Executive Officer Robert L. Darbelnet. “We encourage older drivers and their families to use this as a guide in the selection of their next vehicle or evaluating their current one.”

The year before, West Nile virus unexpectedly struck nearly 3,000 people in Colorado, killing more than 60. Similar outbreaks seemed virtually inevitable throughout the country for the next year — especially in Florida, where the mosquito and bird-borne disease seemed inevitable.

Even after months of preparation, states such as California, Arizona and Texas suffered heavy casualties in 2004. In Florida, however, four major hurricanes and a tropical storm had splattered mosquito and bird populations across the state, leaving the virus no means of reproducing and spreading.

Meteorological challenges continued to hold the virus at bay for the next three years — another heavy hurricane season followed by two years of drought. But this year, the weather could actually be “normal,” and University of Florida entomologists could think of no scarier proposition.

Already this season, high levels of eastern equine encephalitis virus have been documented in parts of Central Florida. These early outbreaks may not bode well for the upcoming mosquito season.

“Depending on the summer rainfall patterns, conditions in Florida could be perfect for us to finally be hit by some of the diseases we’ve been narrowly ducking the last few years,” said Jonathan Day, professor of medical entomology at UF’s Medical Entomology Laboratory in Vero Beach, part of UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. “We’re watching very closely so we know what to prepare for.”

As Day outlines in a paper published in this month’s Journal of Medical Entomology, there is a distinct chain of events that leads to a Colorado-like epidemic, and that chain begins in early January with specific rainfall, drought and temperature patterns.

For example, a series of droughts such as those reported in peninsular Florida during the last two years, could isolate mosquitoes into small areas of moisture-rich land. During that time, the confined mosquito population interacts with the birds that are attracted to the fresh water. The birds and mosquitoes become a captive audience and cycle any virus that is trapped in that space with them.

When rains return, the now infected mosquito population would then be set free to spread the disease to other birds and animals, including humans, on which they feed.

There are currently more than 560 meteorological recording stations across Florida carefully monitoring the Sunshine State’s weather patterns.

Many in the state may already be feeling the buzzing pests’ bites, but the information gathered at the recording stations and by many other experts across the state allow an analysis of what the current conditions may mean for July — the bloom of mosquito season and potentially the most dangerous time for arboviral diseases.

Of course, mosquito-borne diseases have probably been a problem since humans first inhabited the state of Florida 15,000 years ago. However, the increasing density of the human population in Florida makes the problem far more potent, Day says.

For example, widespread outbreaks of St. Louis encephalitis virus struck peninsular Florida in 1977, with 110 human cases. Thirteen years later, it struck again with 226 cases.

In his paper, Day points out how both outbreaks followed strikingly similar rainfall and drought patterns, patterns that can be tracked and are predictive of future mosquito-borne disease outbreaks.

But, of course, the crystal ball isn’t only focused on weather patterns. Knowing which mosquito species are dangerous is also vitally important.

“The type of mosquito not only tells us what kind of disease we could be dealing with, but also when and how to take precautions,” said Roxanne Rutledge Connelly, a UF entomologist who helps teach one of the most recognized courses in identifying mosquitoes in the world.

For example, if the potentially dangerous mosquito population is the Asian tiger mosquito — a relatively new invasive species to the United States known for spreading dengue fever in Hawaii and Southeast Asia — then the game is completely different than that for the vast majority of other mosquito species.

The Asian tiger mosquito not only feeds in bright sunlight, but it needs significantly less water to breed than most of its American cousins. So, control and prevention programs must consider these issues.

“We have more ability now than ever before for predicting these outbreaks and doing something about them before they get out of hand,” Day said. “There are vaccinations, animal control measures and insecticides. The truth is that our best tool is still general public awareness; but it’s the most difficult tool of all to put into use, because it takes the most time, effort and preparedness.”

See also: Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory’s Encephalitis Information System.

“It sounds like an old song resung, but our respondents are still keeping the faith in the real estate market,” said Wayne Archer, director of UF’s Bergstrom Center for Real Estate Studies. “It’s not that we don’t see some lessening of the market, but it’s nothing like the sensational doom that dominates the news about residential housing.”

The latest quarterly survey of Florida real estate trends completed in January and released this week shows declining optimism about commercial real estate, which had been a bulwark in the property market, Archer said. Occupancy is expected to fall for industrial, office and retail property, as rental rates are beginning to lag inflation, signaling that real rates (adjusted for inflation) may fall, he said.

Respondents continue to expect only slightly more decline in the sales for new single-family homes, while the picture for condominiums, although more pessimistic, has improved slightly, he said.

“Despite growing near-term concerns about recession, residential foreclosures, falling house prices and disruption of financial markets, our survey respondents maintain an unchanged, even slightly positive view of investment in Florida real estate at this time,” Archer said.

Although there is a staggering number of housing foreclosures in a few counties, foreclosure patterns vary widely at the statewide level, Archer said. While Lee, St. Lucie and Osceola counties are considered among the country’s foreclosure capitals, most counties in North Florida, especially Alachua and Leon counties, are in good shape, he said.

The three worst counties all share lower housing costs than surrounding counties, which attract marginal home buyers who may be eligible only for subprime mortgages, Archer said.

“If you worked in Collier County but couldn’t afford to live there — maybe you were a construction worker — where could you go?” he said. “Well, if you stretched hard and qualified for a subprime loan, you might be able to buy a house in Lee County.”

Similarly, prospective home buyers who work in West Palm Beach but can’t afford to live there may choose to move to St. Lucie County and commute, while people employed in the Orlando area might be able to afford a home in less expensive Osceola County on the southern outskirts, he said.

The rest of Florida is a little worse off than the rest of the nation but not dramatically so because its subprime meltdown is offset by the still frozen snows of the north, he said.

“There are pessimists who think people are going to pack up and leave Florida, but when I stand outside on these clear winter days, I think ‘they’re not going far,’” Archer said. “As long as people keep moving here, the growth will bring us a correction that you won’t get in industrial states like Ohio, Michigan or Illinois.”

Even in the worst counties, there are signs of Florida’s attractiveness with the growing popularity of “vulture ventures,” in which people move in to buy distressed properties thinking they can make huge profits as the market corrects itself, he said.

Another factor in Florida’s favor is the aging of the baby boomers, some of whom have considerable wealth, Archer said.

“A lot of baby boomers are closing up shop and deciding where they want to be in the future,” he said. “As you get a little older, you get a little more sensitive to the cold, and Florida is going to look pretty good to them.”

Although it won’t save Lee County on Florida’s southwest coast, prospects for international investment, especially with the weak dollar, may spell relief for the 40,000 condominiums sitting vacant in Miami, Archer said.

“With possibly half of these luxury condominiums in an urban setting with spectacular views, they could appeal to high-income individuals throughout the world, especially from Latin America,” he said. “Eventually downtown condominiums may be hard to find as land becomes scarce.”

The January report is 10th in a series. The series is the only Florida-centered survey of leaders and professional advisers in the real estate industry. The largest group of respondents was appraisers, about 61 percent, followed by consultants and brokers.

A three-year, three-pronged prevention program did little to keep Chicago middle schoolers from drinking or using drugs, despite its prior success in rural Minnesota, where the program reduced alcohol use 20 to 30 percent, UF and University of Minnesota researchers recently reported in the online edition of the journal Addiction.

“The intervention found to be effective in rural areas was not effective here, which really surprised us,” said Kelli A. Komro, a UF associate professor of epidemiology in the UF College of Medicine and the study’s lead author. “This is an important finding to realize this program was not enough. The bottom line is this: Low-income children in urban areas need more, long-term intensive efforts.”

Adolescents who drink by age 15 — about half of teens — are more likely to struggle in school, abuse alcohol later in life, smoke cigarettes and use other drugs than those who don’t. Even worse, exposure to alcohol at a young age may damage the developing brain, according to a 2007 U.S. Surgeon General report.

“Almost any problem kids might have, alcohol increases that risk,” Komro said.

By targeting middle-school-age children, the UF and University of Minnesota team hoped to reduce these risks. The researchers studied 5,812 sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders from mostly low-income communities in Chicago, randomly dividing the neighborhoods into two groups: those who would participate in the prevention program and those who would not.

The program, a tweaked version of what Komro and her colleagues developed for their Minnesota study, included three preventive approaches to relay the message that drinking is not acceptable in school, at home and in the community.

In participating schools, an alcohol prevention curriculum was used in the classroom. Students led these sessions because the prevention messages are more accepted when they come from peers rather than teachers, Komro said. The family component included homework assignments that parents and children could complete together, organized events for families, and educational postcards with helpful hints that were sent to parents. For the community aspect of the program, researchers hired organizers to work with community volunteers to change the risks and problems with teen drinking in their neighborhoods.

But at the end of the study, year-end surveys showed no difference in alcohol use among the teens who took part in the project and those who did not. At least 70 percent of the schools in the neighborhoods that did not use the program had some form of drug and alcohol prevention program in the schools. It’s unlikely these programs skewed the results of the study though, Komro said. UF’s prevention program was larger and more comprehensive than the other school-based programs and researchers would have detected a difference among the students had it worked.

One particular problem surfaced during the community component of the project. The organizers struggled to rally some community members around the cause, often having to explain why they should be concerned about adolescent alcohol use. That gave researchers some insight into why the program did not work there.

“People in these areas are concerned with housing, they’re concerned with gangs and other drug use,” Komro said. “There was a whole upfront effort where we had to educate people about how alcohol was related to those other issues, and that it was an important issue to think about with their young people.

“We know from other studies in low-income, urban neighborhoods, there is a higher concentration of alcohol outlets, compared to suburban or rural areas. There were a lot of alcohol ads around these schools and a greater density of pro-alcohol messages these children are exposed to. You mix that with the poverty level and it’s just a high-risk environment.”

Despite the overall results, there were positive findings that researchers hope to build on, Komro said. Of all the components, the family interventions had the most significant effects. And one aspect of the community project worked well: Half of the community teams went to stores that sold alcohol and asked merchants not to sell to underage kids. In those communities, the ability of young people to buy alcohol went down 64 percent.

“While the findings may not be what the investigators were hoping for, they reported them fully and openly, and this is good for the field,” said Brian Flay, a professor of public health and director of the Prevention Research Center at Oregon State University. “Science can advance properly only when both positive and negative findings are reported.”

“I think a few years ago, a lot of the public wouldn’t have been comfortable eating flowers, but squash blossoms have been a real delicacy in Italian cooking for centuries,” said Sicignano, of The Breakers Palm Beach. “Now, at certain times, people just can’t get enough of them.”

The large, edible flowers that grow on some squash varieties have experienced a surge in popularity in the last few years, especially in early spring. The haute cuisine trend represents more than another Easter item on menus.

Thanks in part to researchers at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, it’s become another valuable source of income for Florida farmers.

“We get a couple of cents for each squash,” said Nancy Roe, who operates a 1,000-acre farm near Boca Raton. “But for each blossom, we can get fifty cents.”

The flowers have yet to become a substantial source of income for farmers like Roe, simply because they can’t currently grow enough.

In the past, squash farmers have focused on plants that produce female flowers — the ones that would someday produce squash. As a result, these plants would often only have one or two male flowers, the kind harvested as a food item.

Russell Nagata, an associate professor at the IFAS Everglades Research and Education Center in Belle Glade, is working with farmers like Roe to change that. In 2005, Nagata and his colleagues began evaluating which types of squash can deliver both vegetables and flowers for maximum profit.

Overall, zucchinis seem to deliver the most bang for the buck — however, the flower business isn’t always just about volume. It can also be about timing.

Demand for the blossoms only comes at certain times, and anticipating those times and having flowers available can be tricky.

“Sometimes the plants are ready to do in the winter months,” Nagata said. “And you can imagine that that’s not always the time when people see flowers on their plate.”

To further complicate matters, the blossoms only have a shelf life of one to two days before they become useless to chefs, who are highly selective about the bright yellow-orange colors and firm texture the flowers must possess.

“There is more demand for these flowers now because people are more educated than ever about food because of the popularity of food shows on television,” executive chef Sicignano said. “So, the exciting part is that we can now use what many would consider nontraditional food items in our cuisine. The challenging side is that those items have to be up to expectations of a more informed dining audience.”

Raw, the flowers offer a refreshing, almost cucumber-like taste. Uncooked, the flowers are commonly used as a garnish on main dishes.

“But that’s probably the most boring thing you can do with them,” Sicignano said.

With a background in Italian cooking from his experience at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, the chief prefers to prepare the blossoms as appetizers — such as stuffed with a crab and corn blend and then tempura fried.

“Both diners and farmers have become more educated, and now many chefs are excited because we can offer the types of dishes we’ve been hiding away on our own home dinner tables for years,” Sicignano said.

Confirming a decades-old prediction, the physicists with the CLEO collaboration say they observed a rare and extremely short-lived subatomic particle with the unusual name of “charmed-strange meson” decay into a proton and anti-neutron.

Detection of the event, which the collaboration made public Sunday at http://arxiv.org/, was attributed to John Yelton, a physicist at the University of Florida, one of many institutions that are part of the CLEO collaboration.

“It’s the sort of thing that, for many years, people have known should happen,” Yelton said. “What we have done is show that it does, and how often.”

The Cornell Electron Storage Ring accelerator, or CESR, collides electrons with positrons at energies ranging from 3 to 5 billion electron volts — producing many short-lived, elementary and rare particles of interest to physicists. CLEO, the large experimental detector designed to detect the accelerator collisions, is a joint project of nearly two dozen institutions in the U.S., Canada and England.

Among the products of the CESR collisions are the charmed-strange mesons, which exist for less than one-trillionth of a second before decaying into other more stable particles. Although charmed mesons have been studied for 30 years, no one had ever observed one decaying into a proton or neutron, as theory had predicted. This is notable because about 10 percent of all the collisions in the accelerator produce protons and neutrons.

Yelton did not detect the anti-neutron directly but rather inferred its presence from data on energy and momentum of other particles.

All told, he found 13 instances of charmed-strange mesons decaying into protons and anti-neutrons, retrieving and identifying those events from data on millions and millions of different collisions and their aftermaths.

Yelton based his analysis on techniques developed at Syracuse University for the detection of two other types of rare subatomic particles, a muon and invisible neutrino.

“Professor Yelton did an extraordinary job of applying our techniques to a new area and extracted an excellent result in record time,” said Sheldon Stone, co-spokesman for CLEO and the physics professor at Syracuse who, with graduate student Nabil Meena, first developed the techniques. “This is what working together in an experiment is all about.”

David Asner, a physicist with Carleton University and CLEO’s other co-spokesperson, said the observation will contribute much to theoretical work on particle decay.

“Observation of these rare decays has the promise of increasing our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of how the world is put together,” he said.

When CLEO was first started in 1979, CESR was among the highest energy accelerators operating at the time. More recent accelerators, such as the Tevatron at Fermilab in Chicago and the soon-to-be-completed Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, operate at far higher energies. Most public attention is focused on research in these colliders — research aimed at, among other things, observing the so-called “God” particle, the Higgs boson.

Yelton said the latest result shows there remains much to be learned from collisions at lower energy in lower energy colliders. “It highlights the fact that there is still physics to be done at lower energy accelerators,” he said.

The CLEO collaboration has also submitted a paper on the discovery to the journal Physics Review Letters.

The National Science Foundation funded the bulk of the CESR hardware and operations. The research is funded by the NSF, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council.