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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Florida’s seemingly endless supply of natural wonders includes insects, spiders and other arthropods that creep, crawl, burrow and fly, and the University of Florida will educate residents about these creatures during Bug Week, a multimedia event May 20-24.

Bug Week includes projects and programs from around campus and showcases the strength of the university’s entomology program, said Ruth Borger, assistant vice president for information and communication services with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences.

“We have one of the biggest and best entomology departments in the country, and we want people to know about it,” said Borger, who helped organize Bug Week. “With summer approaching and bugs becoming more active, we think this is an ideal time to show how our expertise can help average people understand the bugs they see around their homes, yards and communities.”

Much of Bug Week is geared toward helping residents avoid unpleasant encounters with species that pose a threat to health or property, said Chris Moran, UF director of communications.

“I’m a newly arrived resident myself,” said Moran, who came to UF from Texas this year. “So I can appreciate how people move to Florida, see an unfamiliar bug and wonder ‘Is this a problem?’ We tried to keep that idea in mind when we planned our activities.”

Bug Week includes outreach to local, state and national media, with stories on removing ticks safely, avoiding bed bugs while traveling, preventing bee stings, recognizing signs of Formosan termite colonies and discouraging mosquitoes. Another story focuses on UF/IFAS efforts to study invasive pests that haven’t yet reached Florida but pose a threat.

Those stories are posted on a website, http://bugs.ufl.edu, along with profiles of common Florida bugs, a question-and-answer column on pest management, bug-related news items from around the world, a list of bug resources at UF/IFAS, and even a recipe for those bold enough to try eating bugs. The Twitter hashtag is #UFBugs.

The website will be updated regularly after Bug Week ends, and will include seasonal material and audience-participation features, Borger said.

“The website is beginner-friendly, and it’s meant to be fun and colorful, as well as informative,” she said. “It’s going to be home to some incredible contests and public outreach activities, so we hope that our visitors will check back often.”

One theme running throughout the website: helping users understand the difference between beneficial and harmful bugs. Not every bug that’s ugly or fearsome is harmful, and not every bug that’s attractive is beneficial, said Bug Week technical adviser Jennifer Gillett-Kaufman, an assistant extension scientist with the UF/IFAS entomology department.

“We really want people to come away with the idea that they can live in harmony with bugs in many instances, and that there are environmentally friendly options to discourage bugs that you don’t want around the house,” Gillett-Kaufman said. “We want people to break away from the old thinking that you see a bug and the first thing you do is reach for a can of bug spray.”

Approximately 50 million people in the United States pop a daily aspirin pill to treat or prevent heart disease. Of these, at least half take more than 100 milligrams of the drug — more than one baby aspirin — a day. Although aspirin has been widely used in cardiovascular medicine over the past 20 to 30 years, a review of research papers suggests that the widely used over-the-counter medicine does not benefit everyone to the same degree, report Dr. Ki Park and Dr. Anthony A. Bavry in the May issue of Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.

“Not all patients with coronary disease are the same,” said Park, a physician in the department of medicine’s division of cardiovascular medicine.

Park and Bavry’s algorithm leads physicians through a series of questions that consider the patient’s age, sex and current health status. The answers help them determine whether the course of care should include aspirin.

“It’s an evolving assessment that should be repeated every few years as conditions change,” Park said.

Most studies on the effects of aspirin therapy in patients who had previous heart attacks have focused on men. While examining the literature, Park and Bavry found that less is known about the effects of aspirin on women, people with diabetes, the elderly and even patients who are at risk of a heart attack but have never had one.

“In this paper we highlight gaps in knowledge where we don’t fully know if aspirin should be used or not,” said Bavry, an assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine. “There’s still room to study its optimal use.”

While people may see aspirin as a harmless drug, taking a daily aspirin does carry some risk of side effects such as gastrointestinal bleeding. Park and Bavry’s review contains an analysis to help physicians determine whether the risks outweigh the benefits.

Their review showed that while aspirin therapy remains a good way to prevent further heart attacks, more is not better. A low-dose aspirin, such as an 81-milligram pill, gives the same amount of protection as a standard dose of 325 milligrams and lowers the risk of bleeding.

But even at a lower dose, the current literature suggests certain patients may not benefit from aspirin therapy. In women, for instance, evidence shows aspirin can help prevent certain types of stroke, but does not appear to prevent heart attacks as effectively as it does in men. On the other hand, women appear to have a lower risk of gastrointestinal bleeding than men do.

Risk factors also change with age and the estimated 10-year risk for heart disease. The rise in use of cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins also can affect whether a patient should take aspirin. And aspirin therapy for patients with diabetes, who are automatically considered to be at high risk for cardiovascular disease, remains controversial.

“A lot goes in to estimating a patient’s risk,” Bavry said.

Leslie Parker, an assistant professor of nursing, will lead a four-year study to examine whether the customary clinical practice of assessing the amount of residual gastric contents in an infant’s stomach actually improves care or whether it can cause harm. Residual gastric contents are the volume of fluid remaining in the stomach after a feeding.

“Research has never evaluated whether this widely accepted clinical practice is beneficial to these very low birth weight infants and whether it can actually cause real harm to infants,” Parker said. “We hope this study can assess the risks and benefits of this practice and whether alternate methods can improve care.”

Approximately 63,000 very low birth weight infants born in the United States annually are too immature to coordinate sucking, swallowing and breathing, thus requiring the use of feedings through tubes inserted orally or through the nose traveling down the esophagus into the stomach. The customary clinical practice when tube-feeding is to determine if any breast milk or formula remains in the stomach by removing residual gastric contents through a tube into a syringe prior to each feeding.

Traditionally, the presence of a large volume of fluid left in the stomach after a feeding is thought to be due to feeding intolerance or an early symptom of necrotizing enterocolitis — a serious complication in premature infants often leading to the death of intestinal tissue.

Future nutritional decisions are based on the volume or color of the fluid removed from the stomach. If the aspiration and assessment finds a large volume of fluid, it is common to omit a feeding or not increase the amount of milk delivered to the infant and to supplement with nutrition delivered intravenously, which can be associated with serious complications.

Parker and her research team will study two groups of very low birth weight infants in the neonatal intensive care unit at Shands at the University of Florida. One group will receive routine care. This includes assessment of residual gastric contents, monitoring for vomiting, measuring the size of the abdomen and assessing for bloody stools. The second group will not receive routine removal of residual gastric contents but will be assessed by the other routine methods of care.

Parker will evaluate the nutritional and gastrointestinal outcomes of both groups of infants to assess the risks and benefits of aspiration. All of the infants will receive breast milk from either their mothers or donors.

“It is our hope that the results of our study can have translational impact to evidence-based practice for patients,” Parker said. “I hope that my program of research can improve short- and long-term health outcomes for very low birth weight infants by improving their nutritional status and decreasing complications due to prematurity.”

The 2013 International K-12 Teacher of the Year Award winner is Donald DeVito from Sidney Lanier Center School. In second and third place are Maria Eugenia Zelaya from Eastside High School and Judith Weaver from High Springs Community School. Robert Ponzio from Oak Hall School receives an honorable mention.

The awards committee looked at the extent to which the applicant’s teaching activities promote internationalization and opportunities for students to become interested in international issues through activities.

The Sidney Lanier Music Program, where DeVito teaches music and special education, is global in scope and is linked with universities and music programs internationally through research, cooperative music projects and professional music education organizations. Examples include projects in Haiti, Pakistan, Guinea, England, Ireland and Brazil in which his students either receive adapted music education activities with universities in these countries or engage with other students and children in creating music and sharing curriculum using Skype and interaction through the International Society for Music Education. DeVito has spearheaded projects that have provided aid and education to international populations.

Zelaya teaches Spanish at Eastside, where she uses computer games and programs for activities to help students master the language, and she incorporates instruction in Latin American culture, as well. In addition to her teaching duties, she sponsors several clubs, including the Spanish club, Eastside Striders and Conferencia, which received first place in a state competition. Maria is also a member of the teaching staff of College for Kids. College for Kids is a summer program for middle school students organized by Community Education at Santa Fe College.

Weaver is the media specialist for middle grades. She recently spearheaded a unit of study centered on the book “A Long Walk to Water,” by Linda Sue Parks. More than 400 students in grades 4-8 read how children in Africa walk for sometimes six hours per day to obtain water. As a culminating activity, on World Water Day, students participated in a rotation of speakers who taught about topics such as water scarcity, groundwater pollution, village life in Sudan and Tanzania, invasive and native species, global warming, water filtration systems and other topics.

Ponzio is the chair of Fine Arts at Oak Hall School, director of the Cofrin Gallery and an internationally exhibiting artist. He and his principal worked together to solidify a partnership school agreement with an excellent secondary school in Changzhou, China. Ponzio was one of the driving forces behind the venture and that they are now in the sixth year of the partnership.

The awards were given on Wednesday, May 8 at the UF International Center during a reception honoring the awardees along with school representatives, family and friends. Finalists and their corresponding schools will receive a monetary award.