The 30-minute “Noticias WUFT” (“WUFT News”), which will air every Thursday night at 11, will cover local, state, national and international news, including public affairs, sports and weather.

“In terms of serving our community, it’s a critical need,” said assistant professor Amy Jo Coffey, the program’s faculty adviser.

Programming will be geared toward listeners who rely solely on Spanish-language news and information, Coffey noted.

Telecommunication students Paola Alonzo and Felipe Awad came up with the idea for “Noticias WUFT” when they produced a Spanish-language podcast for UF’s WRUF-AM last spring, and presented it to College of Journalism and Communications Dean John Wright.

“Original programs such as ‘Noticias WUFT’ give our students a chance to learn, grow and make a difference in the community,” Wright said.

At Wright’s suggestion, Alonzo and Awad teamed up with Coffey, who researches non-English language programming, to guide the project. They met regularly with Paul Gordon, interim executive director of the Division of Multimedia Properties; Thomas Krynski, DMP radio news director; and Larry Dankner, DMP division director for programming, to launch the program. They’ve gained the support of UF’s Hispanic Student Association, Hispanic Communicators Association and National Broadcasting Society chapter.

“All persons reporting, anchoring, producing, interviewing, and editing are students,” Coffey said. “Copy editing will be overseen by two bilingual Ph.D. students, Vanessa Bravo and Maria DeMoya.”

Many of the college’s students are interning or have landed jobs at Spanish-language media outlets such as Univision or Telemundo, Coffey noted.

Plans include turning the weekly show into a daily broadcast. Eight students are working on it, and others have expressed interest in getting involved. The program will reach 17 counties.

“This is a severely underserved market in North Central Florida,” Coffey said. “This is a public service we think we need to provide.”

WUFT-FM 89.1 – which broadcasts news and public affairs programs on its primary channel, classical/art programming on HD2 and old-time radio on HD3 – is part of the college’s DMP. It simulcasts its programs on it sister station, WJUF-FM 90.1.

The college is a national leader in the professional education of future journalists and other communication practitioners. It offers undergraduate programs in advertising, print and broadcast journalism, public relations, and telecommunication; and graduate programs in science/health communication, media law, political communication and international communication.

A team at UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences has uncovered some of the genes that control the complex mixture of chemicals that comprise a flower’s scent, opening new ways of “turning up” and “tuning” a flower’s aromatic compounds to produce desired fragrances.

“For a long time, breeders have mostly focused on how flowers look, their size, color and how long blooms last,” said David Clark, a professor of environmental horticulture. “But scent has gotten left behind. Go to a florist and try to smell the flowers. You probably won’t get what you expect.”

Over the years, Clark says, breeders have selected flowering plants that produce bigger, more attractive flowers with long vase lives; but in doing so, they may have been inadvertently selecting plants that were willing to devote less to producing fragrance.

That may change. For example, a customer may someday be able to walk into a florist and select from scented or unscented varieties of the same flower.

In work published in the January issue of The Plant Journal and the February issue of Phytochemistry, the researchers describe how various genes in petunias help regulate the amount of the 13 major aromatic compounds in that flower’s fragrance.

The work will help researchers control the levels of these compounds, adjusting a flower’s fragrance while also producing more or less of it.

In the papers, the researchers also describe some of the more fundamental aspects of how flowers produce scent. For example, they observed that the scents are largely manufactured in the petunia flower’s petals, and that scent production is activated when the flower opens.

The studies are part of an ongoing effort to isolate the chain reaction responsible for producing scent, so that fragrances can be modified without interfering with other flower qualities, said Thomas Colquhoun, a UF environmental horticulture researcher and first author on both papers.

For more than a decade, Clark and his colleagues have combed through more than 8,000 petunia genes. The search has yielded some interesting finds.

For example, the gene that produces the compound that gives rose oil its distinctive scent also makes tomatoes taste good.

By manipulating this gene, UF researchers led by horticulture professor Harry Klee have been able to create tomatoes with more flavor. Klee, Clark and colleagues are now working with plant breeders and taste specialists to prepare the tomato for the marketplace. Better smelling roses are also in the pipeline.

“The taste of food, the smell of a flower — these are things that enrich our lives in ways we don’t fully understand yet,” Clark said. “Learning how plants interact with us and their environment brings us closer to truly appreciating what the natural world has to offer.”

With the completion of the expansion project, University of Florida students and RecSports members will be able to enjoy a new 2,100-sq.-ft. activity room designed to accommodate an expanded group-fitness schedule at the Southwest Recreation Center. The expansion also will provide a multi-level 15,000-sq.-ft. cardio room, doubling the number of cardio pieces available. The cardio equipment will be equipped with personal viewing screens. The expansion includes a 1/9-mile indoor running track on the second level. The current cardio room is being renovated. The renovated space will house two massage therapy rooms, a personal training studio, athletic training room and the assessment center, which is currently located at the Student Recreation & Fitness Center. The old entrance to SWRC will be renovated into a social lounge with seating areas, flat screen TVs, free Wi-Fi and a smoothie bar.

For more information, visit the Web site at recsports.ufl.edu or contact Jessica Gates, 352-273-2414, JessicaG@recsports.ufl.edu.

Since the Peace Corps was founded in 1961, 1,066 University of Florida alumni have joined, making it the No. 1 all-time producer of Peace Corps volunteers in the Southeast. The university also ranked fourth nationally with 15 graduate students serving overseas.

“The University of Florida is now ranked as one of the most outstanding Peace Corps producing undergraduate and graduate universities in the nation,” said David Leavitt-D’Agostino, Peace Corps public affairs specialist. “The amount of interest among the student population continues to grow exponentially as demonstrated by the largest jump in rankings of all schools ranked this year.”

The Peace Corps is especially attracted to UF because many of its undergraduates fill assignments in scarce skill areas where it is traditionally difficult to find qualified applicants. They include agriculture, forestry, environmental science, French, and teaching English.

“This university has great students who want to make a difference in the world and are looking for the best means to do it,” said Amy Panikowski, UF campus recruiter. “With an internationalized curriculum and many social justice student organizations on campus, one can’t help but pay attention to what’s going on in the world. UF does breed some strong leaders. I just help them get started on it and they do the rest.”

The following are the top five large universities in the undergraduate category: University of Washington with 101 currently serving; University of Colorado at Boulder, 95; University of California Berkeley, 89; Michigan State University, 86; and University of Florida, 79.

The Peace Corps ranks its top volunteer-producing schools annually according to the size of the student body. Small schools have less than 5,000 undergraduates, medium-sized schools have between 5,000 and 15,000 undergraduates and large schools have more than 15,000 undergraduates. The rankings are calculated based on fiscal year 2009 data as of Sept. 30, 2009, as self-reported by Peace Corps volunteers.

Currently, there are 7,671 Peace Corps volunteers serving in 76 host countries around the world. A college degree is not mandatory for service. Relevant experience in areas such as education, health, business, information technology, environment, and agriculture, however, is required. In 2009, Peace Corps received more than 15,000 applications, an 18 percent increase over 2008. This is the largest number of applications since the agency began electronically recording applications in 1998.

Known as the island apple snail, it could threaten an endangered bird, the Everglades snail kite. The kite normally feeds on native apple snails the size of a golf ball. But in recent years, those snails have declined in historically important kite habitat and the birds have fled.

Many kites now dwell at Central Florida’s Lake Tohopekaliga, which is filled with the invasive snails. The mollusks grow larger than a tennis ball and kites have difficulty holding them. Researchers warn that young kites there may be malnourished.

The study was published in the current issue of Biological Conservation.

Popular in the aquarium trade, the island apple snail may have been accidentally or deliberately released in the wild. It’s been found in numerous Florida locations, according to the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

As the invader spreads, it could become a serious threat to snail kite populations, said Wiley Kitchens, a courtesy professor with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Fewer than 700 of the birds exist in the U.S., all of them in Central and South Florida.

“There’s an 80 percent probability that in the next 30 years, snail kites will be extinct in the U.S., for all practical purposes,” Kitchens said. But management efforts by state and federal agencies provide hope, he said.

The snail kite is important to scientists because it’s one of the few vertebrates whose range is largely restricted to the greater Everglades ecosystem, Kitchens said. He considers it a barometer for the region’s environmental health and success of Everglades restoration efforts.

Researchers observed snail kites at Lake Tohopekaliga, also known as Lake Toho, and at wetlands dominated by native apple snails.

Adult kites had trouble handling island apple snails but got enough to eat. Juvenile kites had more difficulty, possibly because they’re less experienced at holding and devouring prey.

The younger birds dropped invasive snails eight to 10 times more often than native snails, and it took them four times longer to attempt to eat the invasives, Cattau said.

The study suggests juvenile kites on a steady diet of invasive snails might burn more calories than they consume because they expend so much effort trying to eat the snails, said Chris Cattau, one of Kitchens’ graduate students.

“In some cases this could impact survival,” said Cattau, who co-wrote the paper.

The UF researchers hypothesize that if Lake Toho remains a popular kite breeding area, it may become an ecological “trap,” providing too little food for young birds and raising their mortality rate.

In Florida, the invasive and native apple snails have rarely been found side-by-side, said Phil Darby, an associate professor with the University of West Florida and an expert on apple snails. So it’s hard to say if the invader will displace native snails.

Anecdotal reports suggest native apple snail populations are rebounding in Lake Toho, though they remain low in many areas the kites have largely abandoned. Other reports suggest invasive apple snails have reached Lake Kissimmee and other Florida waters.

In any event, Darby says, native apple snail populations must be brought back in historically important kite habitat if the birds are to return there.

“They’re flexible,” he said. “Kites will show up where the food sources are most abundant.”

Residents can report suspected invasive apple snails using the Web page http://www.myfwc.com/docs/WildlifeHabitats/FWC_applesnails_FLMS_handout.pdf.

An $800,000 federal grant may help to solve the problem.

“A critical shortage of special-education faculty at the university level, especially those with expertise in severe disabilities, poses the greatest obstacle to preparing competent teachers to meet the needs of students with severe disabilities,” said Diane Ryndak, associate professor in special education and occupant of the endowed B.O. Smith Research Professorship at UF’s College of Education. “More than 90 percent of Florida’s teachers who serve students with major support needs still lack the state’s endorsement for teaching in this specialized field.”

Ryndak is working to improve access to training. She is leading a new effort — called Project PRAIS — to help institutions of higher education resolve the shortage of special education professors in the field of severe disabilities. Under the grant from the U.S. Department of Education, her UF team will recruit and prepare three new doctoral students in special education who seek to become university researchers and professors with expertise in significant disabilities.

UF also will hire eight postdoctoral fellows — one per semester under the four-year grant — who will collaborate with the doctoral students on research projects and assist in mentoring them about teacher preparation and educational services for students with severe impairments.

“This represents an all-out, aggressive effort to develop new leaders in the preparation of teachers with expertise in severe disabilities,” Ryndak said.

The help is long overdue in this state. In Florida universities, Ryndak said there are few special-education professors qualified to prepare teachers in the field of severe disabilities. Since 2007, UF, Florida State University and the University of North Florida have collaborated in a statewide distance-learning consortium to groom teachers in this field — with Internet and videoconference links to each other and to participating special-education programs at Florida Gulf Coast University and the universities of South Florida and West Florida.

While this joint effort helps, Ryndak said it doesn’t come close to meeting the need for more special-education teachers in severe disabilities. “Many teachers do not live close enough to a university that offers courses required for this endorsement,” Ryndak said.

UF’s federal grant covers the tuition and assistantships for the doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows. In exchange, they each must commit to working two years in the field for every year of coursework they complete, or repay the tuition assistance they received. Some doctoral students ideally will fill university faculty positions in Florida and prepare additional special education teachers — and university professors — with expertise in severe disabilities.

The UF College of Education’s multicultural affairs office will help to recruit doctoral candidates from underrepresented ethnic and cultural backgrounds, to match the typical diversity of students with special needs in public schools.

The doctoral students will conduct supervised research and learn research-based interventions and assistive technology to help students with disabilities participate and learn in inclusive general-education classrooms. Under Ryndak’s mentorship, they also will assist in updating instructional materials and help teach the graduate courses leading to Florida’s endorsement in severe disabilities.

“Project PRAIS will provide training and experiences that go beyond a university’s standard doctoral program,” Ryndak said. “Our Ph.D. students will develop the knowledge and skills needed to provide highly effective teacher education and research related to the preparation of teachers serving students with severe disabilities.”

Working with scientists from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, paleontologists from the Florida Museum of Natural History on the UF campus found fossils of the new species of ancient crocodile in the Cerrejon Formation in northern Colombia. The site, one of the world’s largest open-pit coal mines, also yielded skeletons of the giant, boa constrictor-like Titanoboa, which measured up to 45 feet long. The study is the first report of a fossil crocodyliform from the same site.

“We’re starting to flesh out the fauna that we have from there,” said lead author Alex Hastings, a graduate student at the Florida Museum and UF’s department of geological sciences.

Specimens used in the study show the new species, named Cerrejonisuchus improcerus, grew only 6 to 7 feet long, making it easy prey for Titanoboa. Its scientific name means small crocodile from Cerrejon.

The findings follow another study by researchers at UF and the Smithsonian providing the first reliable evidence of what Neotropical rainforests looked like 60 million years ago.

While Cerrejonisuchus is not directly related to modern crocodiles, it played an important role in the early evolution of South American rainforest ecosystems, said Jonathan Bloch, a Florida Museum vertebrate paleontologist and associate curator.

“Clearly this new fossil would have been part of the food-chain, both as predator and prey,” said Bloch, who co-led the fossil-hunting expeditions to Cerrejon with Smithsonian paleobotanist Carlos Jaramillo. “Giant snakes today are known to eat crocodylians, and it is not much of a reach to say Cerrejonisuchus would have been a frequent meal for Titanoboa. Fossils of the two are often found side-by-side.”

The concept of ancient crocodyliforms as snake food has its parallel in the modern world, as anacondas have been documented consuming caimans in the Amazon. Given the ancient reptile’s size, it would have been no competition for Titanoboa, Hastings said.

Cerrejonisuchus improcerus is the smallest member of Dyrosauridae, a family of now-extinct crocodyliforms. Dyrosaurids typically grew to about 18 feet and had long tweezer-like snouts for eating fish. By contrast, the Cerrejon species had a much shorter snout, indicating a more generalized diet that likely included frogs, lizards, small snakes and possibly mammals.

“It seems that Cerrejonisuchus managed to tap into a feeding resource that wasn’t useful to other larger crocodyliforms,” Hastings said.

The study reveals an unexpected level of diversity among dyrosaurids, said Christopher A. Brochu, a paleontologist and associate professor in geosciences at the University of Iowa.

“This diversity is more evolutionarily complex than expected,” said Brochu, who was not involved in the study. “A limited number of snout shapes evolved repeatedly in many groups of crocodyliforms, and it appears that the same is true for dyrosaurids. Certain head shapes arose in different dyrosaurid lineages independently.”

Dyrosaurids split from the branch that eventually produced the modern families of alligators and crocodiles more than 100 million years ago. They survived the major extinction event that killed the dinosaurs but eventually went extinct about 45 million years ago. Most dyrosaurids have been found in Africa, but they occur throughout the world. Prior to this finding, only one other dyrosaurid skull from South America had been described.

Scientists previously believed dyrosaurids diversified in the Paleogene, the period of time following the mass extinction of dinosaurs, but this study reinforces the view that much of their diversity was in place before the mass extinction event, Brochu said. Somehow dyrosaurids survived the mass extinction intact while other marine reptile groups, such as mosasaurs and plesiosaurs, died out completely.

The crocodyliform’s diminutive size came as a surprise, Hastings said, especially considering the giant reptiles that lived during the Late Cretaceous. The fossil record also points to the possibility of other types of ancient crocodyliforms inhabiting the same ecosystem. “In a lot of these tropical, diverse ecosystems in which crocodyliforms can thrive, you often see multiple snout types,” he said. “They tend to start speciating into different groups.”

The annual award, given by the college’s Historic Preservation Program, recognizes an individual with a connection to the state of Florida who exemplifies the spirit of historic preservation and has demonstrated exceptional dedication to the field. Jacobs of Fernandina Beach received this year’s award in recognition of his service to both the state and the university.

The award is named in honor of the late Walter Beinecke Jr., and UF professor emeritus F. Blair Reeves, both of whom were recipients of the top national honor in the field of historic preservation, the National Trust for Historic Preservation Crowninshield Award.

Reeves said that Jacobs truly deserves this honor.

“Buddy is the personification of the spirit of historic preservation in Florida and it is appropriate for the college to recognize his contribution to its historic preservation programs,” Reeves said. “Buddy’s wisdom, generosity and abilities have served us well. PI:N participants especially treasure the experience of his classroom presentations, beach parties and his poetic contributions to every deserving occasion.”

PI:N, or the college’s Preservation Institute: Nantucket, is a cooperative effort between UF and the community of Nantucket, which provides students with a unique educational experience in a broad range of historic preservation issues. It is a field program in the Center for World Heritage Research and Stewardship.

Jacobs became involved with PI:N when he was nominated to the board by former UF Provost Robert Bryan in 1983. Over the years, he devoted his time and talents to the field school and the program in numerous ways. Among other things, he worked closely with Beinecke to achieve the successful transfer of Beinecke’s Nantucket properties to form a permanent home for PI:N. Due to Jacobs’ efforts, the Florida Legislature finalized the creation of the Beinecke-Reeves chair in Historic Preservation, a position currently held by Roy Eugene Graham.

Graham, who also serves as director of the college’s Historic Preservation Program, has learned he can depend on Jacobs.

“Buddy has always been there for the Historic Preservation Program,” Graham said. “We can always count on him to give us advice, support and enthusiastic encouragement. His leadership in converting the PI:N advisers to the larger Historic Preservation Board of Advocates has been greatly appreciated. As Chair of the college’s Campaign Council, he will continue to champion historic preservation.”

Jacobs has other connections to both UF and historic preservation.

An alumnus of UF, he served as student body president, receiving his juris doctor degree in 1966. Upon graduation, he joined the university’s administration as director of development, serving as assistant dean – and later dean – of university relations and development. In this capacity, he undertook the restoration and opening to the public of the long-neglected Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings home and citrus grove at Cross Creek. The site was later named a National Historic Landmark.

In 1973, he returned to his hometown of historic Fernandina Beach where he played a major role in creation of what was then Florida’s largest National Register Historic District. Along with historic preservation, Jacobs is known for his work in law. He has been general counsel for the State Attorneys of Florida since 1971, and is founder and principal of Jacobs & Associates, Attorneys at Law in Fernandina Beach.

The print edition is produced biweekly during spring and fall semesters. Past print editions may be viewed online at http://news.ufl.edu/campus/print/.

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