February 28, 1997




Getting Their Shots

Becky Higgins inoculates soybean leaves with white mold samples while working in the Plant Pathology epidemology lab in Plant Science Hall Monday on East Campus. The tests will help determine which breed of soybean is more susceptible to white mold fungus.
(Photo by Richard Wright)

Internet Training a Boon for Paraeducators


By Amy Cyphers
News & Information

Once relegated to running dittos and putting up bulletin boards, a recent study shows that teacher aides - also known as paraeducators - now spend about 80 percent of their time in direct instruction, similar to a certified teacher. But while teachers undergo a comprehensive educational program, most paraeducators come to the job with little or no formal training.

So Al Steckelberg, a professor in special education and communication disorders at UNL, helped create Project PARA, an interactive, Internet-based training program for paraeducators in Nebraska.

Funded by the U.S. Office of Special Education, the 2 1/2-year-old project was originally conceived as a traditional independent study sprogram, Steckelberg said. But as the technology and popularity of the World Wide Web exploded, the project was developed to take advantage of computerized instruction.

The program has been successful so far, he said, with 80 paraeducators participating at seven sites in the eastern half of the state. Although the "official" class is now limited to 80, Steckelberg said the site is visited more than 1,000 times a day by others in the field as a sort of independent study.

Using the Web for training is convenient and efficient, Steckelberg said, particularly in a state like Nebraska.

"Because it's Internet-based, people have accessibility to (the training) from anywhere, anytime they want - evenings, weekends, after school," he said. "It's a vehicle for delivery that addresses accessibility issues, both of time and of distance. It's one way a university program can support schools in rural areas as well as urban areas."

The website curriculum covers topics such as ethics, handling emergencies, managing student behavior and delivering instruction. Participants undergo a series of on-line practicums and exams, and regularly correspond with the Lincoln-based instructor.

Steckelberg said the unique program has won positive reviews from its 80 students, as well as thousands of others from around the world who have visited the website. Educators in California, Colorado, Iowa, Missouri and Washington have contacted him to use the site for training paraeducators in those states.

"The project has been extremely successful," he said. "The people using it are happy and it really lets us explore new things in the World Wide Web and in on-line training. Even though this project is designed for paraeducators, the concept has broad applications - outreach from the university can be used with other professionals, in other courses."

The Project PARA web address is http://para.unl.edu.

Architecture Strengthens Global Links Through Joslyn Institute


By David Ochsner
Scarlet Editor

The College of Architecture has for years been a leader in international education and exchanges, and that reputation is being further buttressed by its partnership with Omaha's Joslyn Castle Institute (JCI) in a new United Nations-sponsored program.

The United Nations Center for Human Settlements, also known as Habitat, has designated the partnership of UNL and JCI as one of 13 thematic centers scattered around the world that will support the Habitat's Best Practices in Local Leadership Program.

Cecil Steward, dean of architecture and a board member of JCI, said Habitat's Best Practices program is similar in design to the Nebraska Community Improvement Project, but its scope is global. Every two years a total of $400,000 in cash awards is given by the Best Practices program to individuals, organizations, local and national governments from around the world in recognition of excellence in community improvement projects both large and small.

"The idea of the awards program is to share knowledge and expertise so others can use or modify the ideas to solve problems in their own communities," said Steward. Of the 13 Habitat centers worldwide, three involve universities, located in the United States - The Pratt Center for Urban and Environmental Development in New York, the Harvard University Center for Housing, and Nebraska. Other center locations are in Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. The headquarters is in Nairobi, Kenya.

Steward said JCI/UNL's thematic area of expertise in the Habitat program is architecture and urban design with an emphasis on sustainable development. Activated last July, the nonprofit JCI defined its mission as one of fostering intelligent and effective community planning in dealing with urban issues on a number of fronts - social, economic, political, aesthetic and environmental.

"The partnership with Habitat gives the university first-line access to the most critical issues in the world," said Steward. "Through the awards process we will critique and interact with entries that will have the greatest impact on global community improvement. We will be involved in global issues that go beyond design and involve a range of social issues such as crime, public health and safety, the welfare of children and a host of economic issues."

JCI and the university also will have access to a specially designed private "intranet" that will link Habitat's global centers. Steward said the connection will also provide information to public links, including a global call for entries this spring for the 1998 Best Practices Award as well as detailed information on the winning entries. As the focal point of the JCI/UNL partnership, the Joslyn Castle also will be the site of international seminars and workshops as well as a Best Practices video library.

"This type of global access will trickle through the College of Architecture, and because we are involved in a diverse range of social, political, environmental and economic issues, this information will also benefit researchers throughout the university," said Steward. "The bottom line is that the university is now part of a global initiative to promote and facilitate the exchange and transfer of experience, expertise and knowledge for improving the living environment for all people."

Editor's Note: the World Wide Web address and database for Habitat's Best Practices program can be found at http://www.bestpractices.org.

Royal Society Extends Rare Honor to Physicist


By Tom Simons
News & Information

Peter Dowben can be forgiven if he has a case of the butterflies.

After all, the UNL physicist will receive a rare honor next week when he delivers an invited talk at the Royal Society in London. Founded in 1660, the Royal Society is the oldest scientific society in Great Britain. Among its founders and early members are scientist Bishop John Wilkins, philosopher Joseph Glanville, mathematician John Wallis, inventor and microscopist Robert Hooke, and architect Christopher Wren, who wrote the preamble to its charter. Later members included mathematician Isaac Newton and astronomer James Halley.

Membership now includes about 1,000 fellows. Committees of fellows decide when a subject in an emerging field is important enough to merit discussion, then invite distinguished scientists to discuss them.

"I'm already nervous," said Dowben, who will chair a discussion session March 6 and deliver his talk on the nature of metals and insulators. "It's even unusual in Britain (to get an invitation to speak to the Royal Society). It's by invitation only. You don't apply. You get called."

Dowben, who has been at Nebraska since 1993, said in August he received an e-mail notice from the society that he would be invited to speak, then received the formal invitation by letter Dec. 12.

"I was elated," he said. "First of all, being British-educated, for someone with a degree from Cambridge (Ph.D., 1981), this is a pretty big deal. Secondly, it's sort of a nice formal recognition that we're doing something interesting (at Nebraska) that has other people excited."

Dowben's talk is on that work and is titled "Some Thin Film Experimental Demonstrations of the Successes and Failures of the Mott-Hubbard Model."

"Normally, metals are good conductors of electricity," he said. "We've been able to show that many materials that are generally considered to be metals may under special circumstances be insulators. These discoveries have not led to any immediate practical applications, but the issues in question are related to the development of new semiconductor devices."

Engineering Professor Fights War on Land Mines


By Karol Bredenkamp
College of Engineering

It's a problem that keeps blowing up in people's faces - literally, said Dennis Alexander.

Alexander, an electrical engineering professor and director of the Center for Electro-Optics at the University of Nebraska College of Engineering and Technology , has joined a worldwide effort to devise a means of detecting millions of buried and surface mines that litter unmarked fields in countries once at war.

The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded UNL and Mission Research Corp. of Albuquerque, N.M., a $97,000 small business innovative research contract to complete the first phase of a detection system formulated by Alexander.

The system uses a carbon dioxide laser to launch thermal waves into soil or sand that may cover buried objects. An inframetric camera, originally developed to detect tiny cracks in military planes, looks at the infrared image emanating from the soil surface. Small differences in the temperature above the buried mines allow the image of the buried object to be displayed on a computer screen. With this system, trained personnel will have the ability to efficiently locate the mine and retrieve, detonate or diffuse it.

Land mines are traditionally made of wood, plastic, metal or a combination of materials. Alexander said he believes trained personnel will be able to determine the type of mine and how it is constructed because each material conducts heat in different ways.

In the first phase, researchers are conducting experiments to decide how long and powerful the thermal pulse needs to be to heat objects buried at certain depths and discern the difference between mines and other buried objects like wood and rocks.

"The results so far look promising," Alexander said. "We received this grant because of our optical expertise. The Nebraska Research Initiative funding has provided some of the latest sophisticated equipment for performing this type of research."

The United Nations estimates that as many as 100 million unmarked land mines may be buried in more than 60 countries such as Bosnia and Iraq. Some originate from World Wars I and II. Their popularity as a weapon stems from their low cost - as little as a few dollars per mine - and the psychological damage they inflict on the population, especially when the mines are designed to look like children's toys.

Dana Poulain and Scott Schaab, both Mission Research employees and UNL graduates, and UNL graduate student Joe Krause are involved in the project with Alexander.

Center to Research Technology-Based Instruction

A new Instructional Innovation Research Center to explore the most effective uses of technology in instruction opened recently in Mabel Lee Hall.

The new facility includes an instructional technology laboratory with four work stations. The laboratory provides a controlled environment for assessment of motivational and cognitive issues in the use of technology-based instruction. It also includes a multimedia research classroom for testing technology-based instructional techniques as well as adaptive technologies for the classroom involvement of individuals with disabilities.

Co-directors of the new center are Christy Horn, UNL's Americans with Disabilities Act compliance officer and director of the UNL Accommodation Center, and Roger Bruning, a professor of educational psychology with a long involvement in research involving student learning.

The Accommodation Center, which has provided services for students, UNL employees and persons with disabilities from outside the university for 17 years, will now be in the new facility. The center has state-of-the art technology to assist faculty in developing instructional materials for individuals with disabilities.

The Accommodation Center will continue to provide its services for people with disabilities, but the new center's broader mission will encompass all areas of student learning in technology-based environments.

"Despite the growing use of multi-media technology in the classroom, there has not been very much research into the impact of the technology on students," Horn said. "We don't really know what multimedia techniques are most useful in the classroom, or what are the most effective in terms of what students get from them."

Horn is already working with a teacher in a large introductory biology class evaluating which multimedia materials are most useful in the classroom, and which might be eliminated or made available as supplemental material on computer Web pages and other means.

Horn has a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to provide technology support and consulting to faculty so that they can better serve students with disabilities in the classroom. A second grant from DOE funds the field-testing and evaluation of courses delivered electronically through the UNL Division of Continuing Studies' Independent High School Program.

"The new center is capable of supporting many different areas of basic and applied research and evaluation," Horn said. The kinds of research that the center could support include research on basic memory processes, research examining how students combine information from multiple texts or sources combining media and text and research on approaches to creating multimedia presentation materials and presentations themselves.

Funds for developing the new center were provided through an institutional grant from the office of the vice chancellor for research.

Global Warming Could Affect Nebraska Agriculture

Global warming caused by rising greenhouse gases is a worldwide concern that could impact the future of local farming, a University of Nebraska researcher said.

"The global warming problem is a smoking gun," said William Easterling, NU agricultural meteorologist. "We know beyond a doubt that we're increasing greenhouse gases. When greenhouse gases increase, the greenhouse effect strengthens and temperatures may increase."

In western Nebraska, many mathematical models show these trends could translate to a climate shift to conditions similar to eastern New Mexico. Drought-tolerant varieties of wheat and corn are grown there, but only with greater use of dryland practices and irrigation, he said.

Dryland corn yields could drop 20 to 30 percent compared with current yields if warming duplicates conditions during the 1930s Dust Bowl, he said.

Easterling and co-author Cynthia Hayes, ag meteorology technologist, outline facts and information about global warming in a new NU Cooperative Extension NebGuide. This four-page publication, "Global Warming: What Is Known and Why Nebraska Agriculture Should Care," is available from Cooperative Extension offices statewide by requesting NebGuide number G96-1311-A.

Greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, ozone, water vapor and other minor gases. They help trap and hold heat in the lower atmosphere. Without greenhouse gases, Earth would be an average of 60 degrees Fahrenheit cooler and would not support human life, Easterling said.

Increases in fossil fuel use, agriculture, deforestation and industrial processes are pushing those levels higher, faster, than they have changed in the past.

"Given the time, there is no doubt that if climate would become like that of eastern New Mexico we would adapt and continue to produce many of the same crops we grow now," Easterling said. "However, we would have to become less optimistic about the resulting yields."

Time is the uncertainty. How fast temperatures will rise, along with changes in rainfall, humidity, winds and other climatic elements, and how different factors will react to the changes cannot be modeled in a laboratory.

Greenhouse gases have some advantages.

"We know from experimental research that when you increase carbon dioxide, it tends to increase the growth rate of the crops," Easterling said. "Carbon dioxide also increases the efficiency with which crops use water."

Climate changes, including increased drought and water evaporation, may or may not override this benefit.

What scientists do know is that greenhouse gas concentrations currently are increasing an average 0.5 percent a year, Easterling said. By the time today's children are grandparents, that increase will be double pre-industrial levels and could result in a 3- to 8-degree warm-up.

The effect on Nebraska depends on how rapidly the climate change occurs.

Given the uncertainties about global warming, Easterling advised farmers to take a "no-regrets" approach.

A "no-regrets" approach means being flexible, staying informed and taking precautions that are good business practices no matter what happens to the climate.

No region is going to escape some change, Easterling said. It is important to watch long-term trends within local areas and within competitors' areas. Staying informed and flexible will allow producers to take advantage of market changes quickly.

Water conservation is one precaution to take for the future, Easterling said. People should be using more efficient irrigation equipment and moving to less water-intensive crops.

Using windbreaks or shelterbelts can increase crop yields downwind and protect crops from severe weather conditions, including drought.

Marketing Strategies Class Is Aimed at Ag Women

Farming is a way of life, but it also is a business. Producers have grown more efficient in planting and harvesting crops. To remain profitable, they also must increase proficiency in how those crops are marketed, a role that many ag women are beginning to contribute to.

"Women in Agriculture Marketing Curriculum," a four-part series of two-day workshops from March to November, is offered this year in North Platte to help women become comfortable as part of their family farm's business management team.

"We don't expect women to be the marketers, just part of the marketing team. This curriculum gets them up to speed," said program coordinator Deb Rood of NU's Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The workshops offer a marketing curriculum that covers basic marketing information, tools and marketing plans. Former participants such as Julie Chramosta of Ravenna, who went through the curriculum in 1995 and 1996, praise the program.

"My husband has previous marketing experience, so he helped me with the classes. Now we discuss marketing together," Chramosta said. "John doesn't have time" to devote to keeping market records, she said. "I do all the books, and we share our marketing skills."

Chramosta said the most important things she gleaned from the classes were increased confidence and more insight into marketing possibilities. Since last year's class she has done some hedging, through the use of options, in what she described as "kind of a learning experience for me."

The curriculum is open only to women, a feature that Mary Parker of Benkelman, appreciated. "You just don't learn as much with both men and women," the 1995 workshop graduate explained. In an all-women atmosphere, she said, "when you ask a question, you know that you're not the only one who doesn't understand."

The hands-on marketing workshops are led by Rosemary Hartter, farm woman and co-owner of H&H Marketing Skills, Eureka, Ill. Workshops are designed to help students understand markets and develop marketing strategies they can use at home immediately. Other speakers include elevator managers, brokers, bankers and Nebraska ag women.

Each session opens with a review of the previous workshops. Dates and topics for the 1997 North Platte workshops are: Registration is limited to the first 60 paid registrants. Cost for the first workshop is $125 and $75 for the next three, or $300 for all four (payable by the first workshop, nonrefundable). To obtain a registration form or for more information, call (800) 535-3456.

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