David F. Muir V, a 22-year-old senior electrical engineering major, won the scholarship by submitting an application and work samples, which includes two iPad apps he created, to Apple. The scholarship covers the $1,599 cost of the conference ticket.

The five-day conference will allow him to strengthen his software development skills and network with other developers in the Apple world, Muir said.

“If there is one conference to go to as an Apple developer, this is most definitely it,” he said.
The conference provides developers an inside look at the most recent iOS and OSX software and Apple products. Attendees will get the chance to attend more than 100 sessions and hands-on labs led by Apple engineers, according to the Apple website. (https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/faq/) The conference will be held on June 11-15 at the Moscone West convention center in San Francisco.

Muir plans to work this experience into his job as a senior software developer for the Gainesville-based Touit mobile app company (http://totuit.com/), which specializes in mobile software solutions for the ground transportation industry.

Starting during the 2012-13 school year, this collaboration — which also includes the United Way, City Year, Communities in Schools, Educational Directions, Big Brothers & Big Sisters, Ready for Tomorrow and Bridge of Northeast Florida — will aim to improve teaching and learning at Jackson, an F school on intervene status. The organizations are meeting May 29 to brainstorm ideas and synthesize their plans.

“The whole purpose of this project is to increase success,” said DCPS Deputy Superintendent Patricia Willis, “and introduce more of what the UF Lastinger Center is doing in non-high schools.”

Through its award-winning Master Teacher Initiative, the Lastinger Center provides on-the-job, onsite/online professional development to educators in Jacksonville’s highest needs elementary and middle schools. The initiative’s programs include a free UF master’s degree to teachers who make a five-year commitment to their schools. It offers this opportunity at Jackson, which, like many vulnerable schools, struggles to hire and keep experienced faculty.

“We’re inviting everyone who wishes to contribute to turning around Andrew Jackson High School to join us on a multi-year journey,” Lastinger Director Don Pemberton said. “It’s not going to be easy. It’s not for the mild and meek. But it’s an opportunity to make a real difference.”

Besides providing comprehensive professional development to Jackson teachers and administrators that includes leadership and team building, Lastinger will also help boost student engagement and morale, mobilize the community to support the school, recruit UF volunteers, chronicle the transformation effort and assemble research and evaluation teams to measure the results.

“We will identify research-based strategies and share them widely with our partners,” Pemberton said.

Brain drain to magnet and private schools often harms vulnerable schools, said UF Duval County Professor-in-Residence Crystal Timmons. Many high-achieving students opt out of attending lower-performing schools such as Jackson.

Out of 1,200 area students who could attend Jackson, only 800 have elected to do so.

“The community is losing a third of its students,” said Jon Heymann, CEO of Communities in Schools and a DCPS School Board candidate. “They’re voting with their feet.”

To attract more high-achieving students, who receive opportunity scholarships to attend schools out of their zones, Jackson will offer the International Baccalaureate and leadership and entrepreneurship programs beginning this fall.

“If everyone’s truly committed,” Timmons said, “then there is no reason why this venture should not be successful and why the students should not be successful.”

As part of the turnaround effort, social workers and other professionals will also be stationed at Jackson to meet the needs of students, teachers and families, Willis noted.

“We think if we can get sustainable work in Jackson,” she said, “we can spread that work and replicate it in other struggling schools.”

An educational innovation incubator, the UF Lastinger Center harnesses the university’s intellectual resources and partners with educational organizations to design, build, field-test and disseminate new models to transform teaching and learning.

The free exhibit will be displayed through Oct. 7.

“We hope visitors gain an appreciation for what came before us and connect to the Maya society on a personal level,” said Tina Choe, Florida Museum exhibit developer.

The exhibit illustrates how the city originally looked through 3-D maps and an aerial video. Visitors will also discover how the Maya of Cerros integrated religious rituals with daily life and view 45 artifacts on display for the first time, most dating from 350 B.C. to A.D. 300.

“It is an ideal opportunity for the public to see artifacts from the only large, scientifically excavated early Maya collection now in a U.S. museum collection,” said Susan Milbrath, the curator of Latin American art and archaeology at the Florida Museum.

The artifacts displayed in the exhibit were excavated by archaeologists working at Cerros in the 1970s and donated to the Florida Museum of Natural History by the Institute of Archaeology in Belize in 2009. The donation of more than 2,800 artifacts doubled the size of the Florida Museum’s Latin American archaeology collection. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the artifacts will also be added to an online catalog.

University of Florida researchers have discovered that people with no signs of dementia during their lives, even though their brains contained the debris typical of Alzheimer’s disease, probably would have experienced health problems had they lived longer, according to a study to appear this week in the open access journal Alzheimer’s Research & Therapy.

Scientists suspect patients who experience relatively few cognitive problems even with a substance called amyloid beta protein accumulating in their brains — the hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease — might collect a less toxic form of the so-called brain plaque.

But UF College of Medicine scientists with colleagues from the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville found few differences when they compared the postmortem brain tissue of Alzheimer’s patients with that from people who accumulated plaque without symptoms, a condition known as pathological aging.

“Pathological aging may be early Alzheimer’s disease rather than a benign form of amyloid protein deposition, or it may be patients with PA are resistant to the toxic effects of the amyloid plaques,” said Dr. Todd Golde, director of the UF’s Center for Translational Research in Neurodegenerative Disease. “It will be important to understand the differences between these two neurodegenerative pathologies in treatment and prevention efforts.”

Alzheimer’s disease is characterized by severe loss of neurons in brain regions important for learning and memory because of overproduction of amyloid beta protein. In a healthy brain, these protein fragments are broken down and eliminated. But when they accumulate, scientists believe amyloid plaque interferes with the brain’s ability to generate new cells and contributes to tangles — twisted masses of protein fibers within the brain cell.

The researchers found similar amounts of insoluble amyloid in Alzheimer’s and pathologically aged brain tissue, with elevated levels in both types of abnormal tissue compared with healthy brain tissue. Researchers also found a great deal of similarity and overlap in the subtypes of amyloid protein, according to Golde, who is also affiliated with UF’s McKnight Brain Institute.

Experimental models suggest that therapies that target these proteins may be effective in preventing or delaying disease development. Without treatment or prevention breakthroughs, a projected 7.7 million patients in the U.S. will have Alzheimer’s by 2030, according to the Alzheimer’s Association. That number will grow to between 11 million and 16 million by 2050.

The College and University Professional Association for Human Resources awarded the GatorStart Project Team, composed of nine staff members in UF’s Human Resource Services and Enterprise Systems, a national HR Innovation Award for a program that allows new employees to complete essential “paperwork” online.

“It’s exciting to start a new job, and we wanted to get the person off on the right foot,” said project leader Melissa Curry, director of recruitment and staffing.

UF is one of only two universities nationwide to offer such a streamlined program. Launched in February, GatorStart is designed to have each employee begin his or her job duties the moment he or she arrives at UF, rather than to sit through days of orientation and filling out paperwork.

Forms such as W-4s, direct deposit and intellectual property agreements can all be completed at the GatorStart website. Whether it’s a new faculty member or a student with a part-time job, employees will no longer be presented with too much information because the new system recognizes the appropriate paperwork for each new hire.

“The primary thing was to look at sustainability,” Curry said. “Payroll forms take a lot of paper, and we’ll know in the next few months how cost-effective this new online system is.”

While on the website, recruits also watch the “Go Gators” 30-second TV spot and an orientation video created to build excitement among new employees joining the UF community.

The award presentation will take place in Boston Sept. 10. In addition, the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources will give $3,000 to a UF endowment or scholarship of choice.

To learn more about GatorStart, visit http://www.hr.ufl.edu/.

Currently serving as interim vice president for student affairs, Kratzer has been part of the UF Division of Student Affairs since 1986. He recently led campus initiatives such as the expansion and renovation project of the J. Wayne Reitz Union, an exit survey for all graduating students to collect longitudinal data on job placement and career choice, and the implementation of several campus safety-related campaigns including “U Matter We Care” and the Medical Amnesty Policy.

“Dave is a dynamic leader with a clear vision of how the Division of Student Affairs can best meet the needs of UF’s 50,000 students,” Glover said. “Kratzer is measured and deliberate in his handling of academic and service matters. His vast experience and proven results make him the ideal choice as vice president.”

He had been UF’s associate vice president for student affairs for seven years and director of UF’s J. Wayne Reitz Union for 18 years.

Before coming to UF, Kratzer was director of student unions at Murray State University in Kentucky and the University of Evansville in Indiana, and had worked in student activities at Western Illinois University. He holds a master’s degree in recreation administration from the University of Illinois and a bachelor’s in recreation and park administration from Western Illinois University.

In addition to his student affairs experience, Kratzer has had significant military leadership experience. As a major general in the U.S. Army, he was responsible for theater-level logistics as the commander of the 377th Theater Support Command during Operation Iraqi Freedom-One in 2002 and 2003. As a brigadier general, he commanded all Civil Military Operations in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 and 2002. Kratzer is a 1998 graduate of the U.S. Army War College with a concentration in strategic studies.

The UF Division of Student Affairs consists of 13 departments on campus with more than 500 full-time employees and 1,900 part time employees. UF Student Affairs departments include the Career Resource Center, the Center for Leadership and Service, the Counseling and Wellness Center, the Dean of Students Office, the Florida Opportunity Scholars Program, GatorWell Health Promotion Services, Housing and Residence Education, Off Campus Life, Student Legal Services, Recreational Sports, Multicultural and Diversity Affairs, the J. Wayne Reitz Union, and Student Activities and Involvement.

Areas within those departments include the Disability Resource Center, New Students and Family Programs, Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution, Sorority and Fraternity Affairs, and Student Government. For more information about the Division of Student Affairs, see http://www.ufsa.ufl.edu/.

Kratzer succeeds Patricia Telles-Irvin, who left UF early last year to become vice president for student affairs at Northwestern University.

Working with scientists from North Carolina State University and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, researchers at the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus name the species in a study published online today in the Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. The study’s findings could be useful for understanding the impacts of a warmer climate in the future.

The description of one of the largest known freshwater turtles is based on a nearly complete skull and shell. Brought to life as a critical part of the ecosystem in the recent Smithsonian Channel documentary “Titanoboa: Monster Snake,” the 60-million-year-old reptile is the largest turtle from the Paleocene Epoch, reaching about 8 feet in length.

“At that size, I would imagine that it was swimming around without too much fear,” said co-author Jonathan Bloch, Florida Museum associate curator of vertebrate paleontology. “The only animals it probably would’ve had to worry about were the dyrosaurids (ancient crocodile relatives) – we have turtle shells from the same place with bite marks on them.”

Lead author Edwin Cadena, now a doctoral candidate at North Carolina State University, conducted the research while working with Bloch and earning his master’s at UF.

“The tropics are a very biodiverse region on the planet today, so we’re very interested in terms of conservation and our own survival,” Bloch said. “Tropical ecosystems are very important, and if you want to understand the region, you have to understand its history, especially in terms of climate change.”

Named Carbonemys cofrinii for the coal mine in which it was discovered and Dr. David Cofrin, whose contributions made the paleontological excavations possible, the species is a primitive relative of modern turtles living in the tropics. Specimens, including an exceptionally well-preserved three-dimensional skull, were prepared at the Florida Museum. Using phylogenetic analyses of morphological and molecular data, researchers determined the species belongs in the order Pleurodira, which bend their necks sideways into their shells, rather than Cryptodira, which pull their heads straight back into their shells.

“In tropical South America today you find many pleurodires on the banks and in the water of the rivers, so they are still a critical part of the ecosystem,” Bloch said.

Two additional distinct turtle species are discussed in the study but remain unnamed without identifiable skulls. Other animals found in the Paleocene environment in South America include several species of crocodiles, snakes and large fish.

“This discovery is showing us that after the extinction of the dinosaurs, the tropics were a place where animals can actually succeed and get really big,” Cadena said. “They had a lot of space and a lot of food sources so they didn’t have to worry about competition with other big animals. We’re seeing that the tropics 60 million years ago had so much diversity and it keeps that diversity for a long, long time.”

Phylogenetic analysis shows the newly described turtle is most closely related to living species in Venezuela and Madagascar, supporting the theory the continents were once connected in northern South America, rather than southern South America through Antarctica. The wet conditions in the tropics make fossil evidence of ancient flora and fauna rare, so much of the study’s value is the in the animals’ Colombian origin, said Walter Joyce, a researcher at the University of Tubingen.

“We don’t know much about the tropics at all,” Joyce said. “So everything the Florida group has been getting the last 10 years has been pretty interesting because it’s basically new – it’s a new part of the world we know nothing about.”

Home to the oldest known rainforest ecosystem, the potential for fossils from the tropics to offer insights about animal biogeography and responses to climate change should not be underestimated, Cadena said. Yet, human impacts make the area’s future prosperity uncertain.

“Some of the modern living species in the tropics related to these fossils that we found in the mine are in danger of extinction now,” Cadena said. “Changes that occurred over millions of years in the past are happening in just a few thousand years – it’s kind of sad to see.”

A special open forum to discuss the budget with Provost Joe Glover and President Bernie Machen is being hosted by the Faculty Senate May 29. It is scheduled for 10 a.m. in McCarty Hall, Room C100.

The award is part of the DOD’s Minerva Research Initiative, a university-based social science research program started by former Defense Secretary Robert Gates to increase the nation’s understanding of regions and topics considered important to U.S. national security. The funding will support a three-year effort by a team of UF faculty and graduate students to study various aspects of culture and politics in the nations of Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and Chad. The project should yield valuable insight into a poorly understood area of emerging global importance and establish UF as a key center for research on the Sahel region.

“These countries are among the least developed and least studied nations on Earth,” said Leonardo Villalon, the UF associate professor of political science and African studies who received the award. “And until recently they have been considered sort of a sleepy backwater in the world scene.”

But that is changing quickly as new threats to stability develop in the region, he said. Turmoil from Arab Spring uprisings in Northern Africa and disruptive forces from Al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamist militia are reaching south across the Saharan Desert and infiltrating what has historically been a peaceful region.

Why?

“Because they can,” Villalon said. “Political structures in the Sahel are fragile and susceptible to pressure from the outside.”

Years of drought coupled with a fast-growing population and few options for economic development have created enormous strain on governments in the Sahel region. To their credit, these states have managed to maintain a largely peaceful existence despite the challenges, he said.

But the recent coup in Mali suggests that the once peaceful Sahel may not be able to withstand political turmoil flowing from bordering nations like Libya. Men from Niger and Mali reportedly recruited to fight in Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi’s army are returning home and generating unrest. In Mali, the situation has deteriorated to the point where the democratically elected president has been ousted by a military junta, a situation that is causing great concern for the U.S.

“The catastrophe unfolding in Mali as a result of the conflict in Libya was actually a potential vulnerability we identified when we applied for the award,” Villalon said. “It turned out to be an unfortunately prescient statement.”

The award will fund field research in six nations of the Sahel that will serve as the basis for academic publications and other educational resources. Beyond academia, the results of the research may be of use for journalists and the general public, as well as for the DOD and U.S. policymakers. More importantly, said Villalon, the work will help institutionalize ongoing efforts at UF to build a university research-based training ground for the next generation of political scientists specializing in this region of the world.

“The grant builds on previous work we’ve been doing at UF,” said Villalon. “It’s not just a project we dreamed up out of the blue.” Villalon has studied issues at the intersection of politics and religion in the Sahel for more than 20 years.

This week, Villalon and UF colleagues are hosting visiting scholars and election officials from the Sahel as part of a two-year-long program funded by the U.S. Department of State called The Trans-Saharan Elections Project. Last year, a similar delegation of U.S. professionals visited Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal to tour election facilities and meet with election administrators and political leaders.

“This is an important collaboration that we are building between ourselves and our African colleagues,” he said. “The award gives us an opportunity to dramatically increase our understanding of the complex issues that underpin stability in this region.”

“We’re hopeful that this more sensitive method, which is both simple and inexpensive, will improve diagnosis in patients,” said lead researcher Dr. Kevin Fennelly, an associate professor in the UF College of Medicine’s department of medicine and Southeastern Tuberculosis Center, and the UF Emerging Pathogens Institute.

The new technique, which involves vacuum filtering a sputum sample treated with household bleach and other simple chemicals through a small filter, could dramatically improve TB diagnoses globally, particularly in settings where the disease is common and resources are limited. It is especially useful when the presence of only a small number of bacteria in the test sample makes it hard to detect TB. The researchers are refining the technique in hopes of developing a cost-effective product that can be used globally.

Funded by the World Health Organization and the Núcleo de Doenças Infecciosas infectious disease institute in Brazil, the study appears online and in an upcoming print edition of the Journal of Clinical Microbiology.

TB is a treatable disease caused by a microbe called Mycobacterium tuberculosis. It most often affects the lungs, but can also target organs such as the brain, spine and kidneys. Symptoms of active disease include a chronic cough, sputum production and coughing up blood. TB spreads from person to person through the air.

Once the leading cause of death in the U.S., TB has been largely under control in Western nations. Still, more than 11,000 U.S. cases were reported in 2010, the latest year for which there is comprehensive data. That year, almost 9 million people around the world were diagnosed with TB and almost 1.5 million died from it. TB causes more deaths than any other bacterial infection and is the most common killer of people living with HIV.

“TB is still a tremendously important disease worldwide and control efforts are greatly hindered by lack of simple, inexpensive diagnostics that could be used at the point of care,” said Dr. Elizabeth Talbot, a Dartmouth College infectious diseases and TB diagnostics expert who was not involved in the UF research. “What Dr. Fennelly has done is capitalize on existing infrastructure of microscopy to try to improve performance of that prevalent diagnostic tool.”

The most widely used way to confirm TB infection is to use a microscope to identify and count disease-causing bacteria in sputum smeared onto a glass slide. This so-called direct-smear method also helps health professionals figure out how likely people are to pass on the disease, what treatment decisions should be made, and how well patients are responding to treatment. Although the method has been in continuous use for more than a century, it can be unreliable, catching cases only about half of the time, on average.

Part of the problem is that sometimes sputum samples don’t contain many bacteria, making it hard to detect TB. Concentrating bacteria onto a small area could help improve detection accuracy, and although previous efforts have led to improvements, they tend to require expensive equipment or technical know-how. In some cases, gains were offset by loss of sample or safety concerns. So the quest for a low-cost, simple, effective method led back to the trusty microscope.

In the early 1980s researchers vacuum-filtered sputum samples to trap TB bacteria onto quarter-sized filters that were then viewed under a microscope. But the filters hung over the sides of standard microscope slides, posing a health hazard and preventing proper inspection. So Fennelly and his team decided to try smaller-than-a-dime filters that fit neatly onto microscope slides and that concentrated the bacteria even more.

Among 314 patients in Brazil suspected as having TB, but not yet in treatment, the small-filter method detected 89 percent of cases, compared with 60 percent detection when samples were concentrated by the currently used method of rapid spinning, and 56 percent detection when sputum smears were looked at directly under the microscope. Furthermore, the small-filter method identified almost three-quarters of TB-positive cases that had been incorrectly reported as negative based on the traditional technique.

Fennelly and collaborators are now teaming with the humanitarian organization Médecins Sans Frontières, translated as “Doctors Without Borders,” to test the method in western Uganda, where many people have both TB and HIV. They’re comparing it again with the traditional direct-smear method and with a sophisticated DNA-based test that can also detect whether bacteria are drug resistant.

Both types of technique have their place — high-tech tools would be most feasible in referral centers, but on the front lines, the small-filter microscope method can perform an invaluable service, the researchers say.

“A point-of-care dipstick that can say yes or no is the Holy Grail, but we’re a long way from there,” Fennelly said. “‘Microscope’ has become a dirty word in the TB diagnostics world — but almost every clinical laboratory in the world has one.”

The first-in-humans achievement may also be helpful for more common diseases such as Parkinson’s that involve nerve cell damage caused by lack of a crucial molecule in brain tissue. The results are reported today in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The children in the study, who ranged in age from 4 to 6, inherited a rare disease known as aromatic L-amino acid decarboxylase deficiency, or AADC. Patients with AADC are born without an enzyme that enables the brain to produce the neurotransmitter dopamine. They generally die in early childhood.

In a phase 1 clinical trial led by Dr. Wuh-Liang Hwu, of the National Taiwan University Hospital, surgeons used a delivery vehicle called an adeno-associated virus type 2 vector to transport the AADC gene into localized areas of the brains of three girls and a boy.

Before therapy, the children showed practically no spontaneous movement and their upper eyelids continually drooped. After receiving the corrective gene, the children gradually gained some head movement. Sixteen months afterward, the children’s weight had increased, one patient was able to stand and the other three were able to sit up without support.

The study shows gene therapy that targets AADC deficiency is well-tolerated and leads to improved motor development and function, according to co-authors Dr. Barry Byrne, director of UF’s Powell Gene Therapy Center, and Richard O. Snyder, director of UF’s Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology. Both are members of the UF Genetics Institute.

“The children in this study have the most severe form of inherited movement disorder known, and the only treatments so far have been supportive ones,” said Byrne, a pediatric cardiologist and associate chairman of the department of pediatrics in the College of Medicine. “It is gratifying to see it is possible to do something to help them, other than providing feeding tubes and keeping them safe. This absolutely opens the door to the possibility of even earlier treatment of neurological diseases by direct gene transfer, and has implications for Parkinson’s disease, ALS and even cognitive diseases such as dementia when caused by gene defects.”

The Powell Gene Therapy Center provided expertise to the Taiwanese physicians on treating the patients and engineering the corrective gene that spurs production of the absent AADC enzyme. UF’s Center of Excellence for Regenerative Health Biotechnology manufactured the vector, packaging genetic material it received from Taiwan into virus particles that were purified, characterized and tested for sterility and stability before being shipped to the clinic for use in patients.

“We are ecstatic that we manufactured a product that provided therapeutic benefit to these patients,” said Snyder, an associate professor in UF’s department of molecular genetics and microbiology. “What really makes it special is there are just a handful of examples of gene therapy in children in the world, and these patients all improved.”

Doctors injected the AADC vector into a brain area called the putamen, a site known for AADC activity and part of a “loop” of brain connections related to movement.

Postoperative CT and MRI scans of the patients showed no evidence of bleeding and all four patients were discharged within a week. Three to six months after gene transfer, all the children had gained weight, including one patient who doubled her weight within a year.

Before gene therapy, all patients showed low raw scores in cognition and motor development on a scale called the Comprehensive Developmental Inventory for Infants and Toddlers. Afterward, scores in both areas increased.

Parents reported the children also slept better and had improved eye coordination, emotional stability and body temperature stability.

Eight additional children — four in Taiwan and four in the United States — are expected to receive the experimental treatment, Byrne said.

J.O. Spengler, associate professor and researcher in the College of Health and Human Performance, will serve as one of five moderators for the event, hosted by PreventObesity.net.

Many schools and recreational facilities have playgrounds, gyms, fields and basketball courts that are closed after hours because of concerns over factors such as liability, operating costs and security. The concept of shared use seeks to alleviate these barriers by creating policies and agreements that ease access for community members. This 50-minute webinar session will explain shared-use agreements, how they can help address childhood obesity and how schools and communities can share their facilities to create more opportunities for residents to be active.

Spengler’s research focuses on policy issues relevant to community health and development through sport and physical activity. He has been funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to research existing policy on the shared use of school and park recreational facilities and has conducted funded research to measure physical activity in municipal parks in underserved communities.

Spengler serves as an American Heart Association volunteer informing state advocacy efforts and policy on shared use legislation. His research also informs national AHA Policy Guidance on shared use liability legislation and provides advice and support for AHA Obesity Fund grantees.

Other webinar moderators include Manal Aboelata, managing director at the Prevention Institute; Rebecca Frank, network analyst and coordinator for PreventObesity.net; Jamie Chriqui, director of policy surveillance and evaluation and a senior research scientist in the Health Policy Center in the Institute for Health Research and Policy at the University of Illinois at Chicago; and Genoveva Islas-Hooker, regional director of the Central California Regional Obesity Prevention Program.

The webinar is free and open to the public. For more information or to register, visit http://ht.ly/aP1MZ.

The exhibition, “Deep Roots, Bold Visions: Self-Taught Artists of Alachua County,” will include paintings, drawings, sculpture and mixed media works by Jesse Aaron, Alyne Harris, Eddy Mumma, Jerry Coker, Robert Roberg, Francis Moore and Baba Onabamiero Ogunleye. The exhibition will open on May 29 and run through Sept. 9.

These artists draw inspiration from the region, and the subjects of their works range from local scenery and imaginary landscapes inspired by Florida nature to inner visions, religious belief and spirituality. Throughout the exhibition, the Harn will draw attention to the aesthetic power and expressive intensity of the work as well as the methods and skills of these artists, who did not pursue formal academic degrees in the fine arts. The exhibition will also draw attention to local histories as portrayed by the artists and narrated by collectors.

“We are delighted to feature accomplished artists who live and work here in our own community as well as some wonderful local artists who have passed on,” said Rebecca Nagy, director of the Harn Museum of Art and co-curator of the exhibition. “The exhibition shows a wonderful, eclectic cross section of their work. It will be interesting to put their works in dialogue together and see what insights they reveal about our community. We’re also thrilled that our local collectors have stepped forward to lend to this exhibition and told us their stories about how they discovered these artists and have come to appreciate their work.”

This exhibition is organized by the Harn Museum of Art and made possible by the Harn Program Endowment, with additional support from the Harn Annual Fund.

Admission to the museum is free. For more information, call 352-392-9826 or visit www.harn.ufl.edu.

The museum is offering a number of related programs for audiences of all ages.

Tot Time, “I Spy Color,” Tuesday, May 29, 3:30 to 4:30 p.m.
Tot Time, “I Spy Color,” Friday, June 1, 11 a.m. to noon
This free, fun and educational program is for children, ages 2 – 5, and their caretakers. Tots learn about art by touring Harn galleries and exploring art materials. Enrollment is limited to the first 40 children pre-registered. Register by calling 352-392-9826, ext. 2112 or email lstevens@harn.ufl.edu. Tot Time is funded by Prudential Trend Realty.

Family Day, Saturday, June 16, 1 to 4 p.m.
Families will tour the exhibition and build sculptures with found objects and recycled materials in our creative studio. A donation of $2 per child or $5 per family is requested if participating in the art-making activity.

Gallery Talk and Book Signing, Sunday, June 24, 3 p.m.
Robert Moore, author of “Francis Read Moore, Florida Folk Artist: Primitive Paintings and Photos of a Time and Place in North Central Florida;” Kate Barnes, Francis Moore’s first art instructor; and Debbie Moore Brown, daughter of Francis Moore, will offer perspectives on the life and work of Francis Moore, whose work is represented in “Deep Roots, Bold Visions.” The book “Francis Read Moore” is available for purchase in the museum store. A book signing will take place following the lecture.

Museum Nights, Thursday, July 12, 6 to 9 p.m.
Visitors will enjoy activities, performances and presentations engaging in personal expression. This evening is a part of the UF Creative B Program, which highlights creative events across the UF campus.

Collectors’ Discussion, Saturday, July 21, 3 p.m.
Learn from local Gainesville collectors about how and why they collect the art that is on view in the exhibition. Moderated by exhibition curators Rebecca Nagy, Harn Museum of Art director and Susan Cooksey, Harn curator of African Art.

Scientists have been trying to explain the bee-killing malady known as Colony Collapse Disorder, which causes honeybees to abandon their hives, become ill and die. Ellis’ lab has been studying how combinations of environmental factors — chemicals, pathogens, natural enemies — affect bees.

Since widespread honeybee die-offs began to be reported around the U.S. in 2006, researchers have been working to pin down a cause. Bee pollination is critical for much of the food we eat and some estimates suggest the U.S. bee industry is responsible for pollinating as much as $15 billion worth of crops every year.

In the Ellis lab’s most recent study, outlined recently in the Journal of Insect Physiology, researchers reared honey bees from young larvae to the pupal stage.

The UF researchers then exposed the immature bees to a variety of chemicals used in agriculture and beekeeping, including two fungicides, two herbicides and five insecticides. They also exposed them to Varroa mites, which weaken bee colonies.

During the experiment, a control group of bees wasn’t exposed to anything, others were exposed only to the chemicals, or only to mites, and some of the bees were exposed to a combination of chemicals and mites.

The researchers gauged the effects on larvae by analyzing the activity of about 50 genes associated with stress, immune response and bee development.

Ellis, an assistant professor of entomology in UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, stressed that the scientists were only able to screen for expression in some — but not all — genes. They had expected that exposing the bees to the combination of mites and chemicals might produce a more pronounced negative impact, but they didn’t find any.

But their results did suggest, among other things, that two common fungicides — chemicals used to protect crops from fungal infections — apparently have more influence on bees than previously believed. By examining the selected genes, researchers found the fungicides had pronounced effects on the larvae, although they are generally considered non-toxic to bees.

“The data suggest that fungicides are not innocuous to bees,” he said.

Ellis’ next study will go much further, with scientists preparing to raise the bees from larvae to adulthood, labeling and following each individual bee.

“In most studies, investigators treat a field with a product, put bee colonies adjacent to the field and then sample whole colony strength after pesticide exposure. At the end of the day, all you are able to say is ‘this colony is responding in this way to the field treatment.’ You don’t know why it’s responding in that way. When we begin to label bees, it will permit us to investigate an area that has yet to be studied. We’ll be able to follow individual bees throughout their entire lives, thus allowing us to determine long-term impacts of pesticides on bees.” Besides Ellis, the research team members included former UF postdoctoral research fellow Aleš Gregorc; Michael Scharf, a former UF entomologist and now the O. Wayne Rollins/Orkin Endowed Chair in Urban Entomology at Purdue University, and Jay D. Evans, research entomologist with the USDA’s Agricultural Research Service in Beltsville, Md.

The study was funded by the National Honey Board, the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

The center’s weekly Dance for Life program is designed to help people with a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease improve their quality of life through enhanced physical well-being, social interaction, creative expression, and targeted improvements in Parkinson’s symptoms including impaired balance, strength, and mobility, cognitive impairment and language dysfunction.

The award will allow the center, in partnership with the UF Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration, to document the physical and psychosocial impact of dance on the disease, and ultimately help provide this cost-effective, enjoyable intervention more widely to people living with Parkinson’s.

The general hypothesis for this study is that dance, like aerobic activity, activates neuroplasticity, particularly in the frontal lobes and, thus, enhances measures of walking ability, balance, cognition and language in people who participate in the Dance for Life program. The UF Center for Movement Disorders and Neurorestoration has recently designed a study assessing aerobic exercise under this same hypothesis. With funding from the Parkinson Research Foundation, the Center for Arts in Medicine will add a dance intervention group to this broader study, which is funded by the National Institutes on Aging.

This study, the largest scale study of dance and Parkinson’s disease conducted anywhere, will determine whether dance can be effective in improving disease severity, walking ability, balance function, cognition and/or language deficits, and compare the effects of aerobic exercise, dance and a commonly recommended stretch exercise program on cognition and language. The findings from this study may substantially advance the development of treatments for Parkinson’s. Drug-free programs could reduce the potential for adverse effects on patient well-being while addressing cognitive and language impairment.

For more information on the University of Florida Center for Arts in Medicine and the Dance For Life program, visit http://www.arts.ufl.edu/cam.