Nebraska in the national news: February 2022

· 4 min read

Nebraska in the national news: February 2022

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Katie Edwards spoke with The 19th on how LGBTQ+ people can face additional barriers when seeking help and resources for being stalked. The article was among more than a dozen national news stories featuring Husker faculty, students, centers and programs in February.

Edwards, associate professor of educational psychology, said in the Feb. 3 article that LGBTQ+ people often face victim-blaming on top of homophobia or transphobia when reporting stalking crimes.

“We know so little about stalking among LGBTQ+ individuals, and what little bit we do know from research, we know that it’s a pervasive problem,” she said.

More coverage:

Monique Farmer, advertising and public relations, wrote a Feb. 1 column for the Public Relations Society of America. She discussed five tips for successful writing. Casey Kelly, communication studies, was interviewed for a Feb. 6 Associated Press article on former President Donald Trump escalating his racist rhetoric and playing on white grievances at recent rallies. The story was picked up by seven Nebraska media outlets, the Houston Chronicle, The Independent, MSN.com, Yahoo! News, NPR and 230-plus other media outlets.

Yiqi Yang, textiles, merchandising and fashion design, and biological systems engineering, and Bingnan Mu, textiles, merchandising and fashion design, were featured in a Feb. 8 Poultry World article. They are researching how to transform chicken feathers into fibers for natural fabrics to counteract the more than 900,000 tons of feathers wasted each year in the United States. William G. Thomas III, history, wrote a Feb. 8 review for The New York Times of Linda Hirshman’s new book, “The Color of Abolition: How a Printer, a Prophet and a Contessa Moved a Nation.”

Husker researchers have tested whether a reinforcement coating or polymer wrap would benefit columns that support highway overpasses and bridges, Engineering 360 reported Feb. 14. The researchers found that 2.5-foot columns wrapped in a fiber-reinforced polymer and 3- and 3.5-foot columns coated in polyurea outperformed all other simulations in keeping the columns intact.

Elana Zeide, law, was interviewed for a Feb. 15 Reason article on schools using programs such as GoGuardian to keep tabs on their students’ online activity. Zeide said there is little evidence that the tools work as intended and that they disadvantage lower-income students, who might only have school-issued devices. She added: “Surveilling students has been shown to have a chilling effect on their speech and their curiosity, what might be called their intellectual privacy.”

The U.S. Drought Monitor — produced jointly by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln’s National Drought Mitigation Center, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture — was mentioned in a Feb. 16 Bloomberg article on inventions aimed at adapting food to drought. Yahoo! News picked up the article.

The university’s Rwandan Students Association held a cultural gala to connect and reflect on Rwandan culture, The New Times reported Feb. 20. The gala drew more than 250 people to the in-person event and more than 500 to the online portion. Tiffany Heng-Moss, dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources, and Clare Umutoni, president of the Rwandan Students Association, were quoted in the story.

The Grain Weevil, a small robot designed to maintain grain while keeping farmers out of bins, was featured in a Feb. 22 Mashable video. Husker alumnus Ben Johnson and senior Zane Zents invented the robot.

John Benson, vertebrate ecology, is helping Nebraska state officials better understand where exactly the state’s bighorn sheep live and how they move within the Panhandle, where they were reintroduced beginning in the early 1980s. Phys.org highlighted his work in a Feb. 24 article. Julie Peterson, entomology, was quoted in a Feb. 28 National Geographic article on why animal blood comes in a variety of colors. Instead of blood, insects possess a comparable fluid called hemolymph, which transports hormones and gases through their system, except for oxygen — which is absorbed directly through openings along their sides or back. “It’s like they have a line of nostrils down the side of their body,” Peterson said.

Julie Peterson, entomology, was quoted in a Feb. 28 National Geographic article on why animal blood comes in a variety of colors. Instead of blood, insects possess a comparable fluid called hemolymph, which transports hormones and gases through their system, except for oxygen — which is absorbed directly through openings along their sides or back. “It’s like they have a line of nostrils down the side of their body,” Peterson said.

Faculty, administration, student and staff appearances in the national media are logged at http://newsroom.unl.edu/inthenews. If you have additions to the list, contact Sean Hagewood at shagewood2@unl.edu or 402-472-8514. If you have suggestions for national news stories, contact Leslie Reed at lreed5@unl.edu or 402-472-2059.

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