Focus: Hidden - Arkansas

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock student has received a $2,750 Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) award from the Arkansas Department of Education to research an outdated maritime law that lawyers invoked in an attempt to avoid or limit legal damages sought by victims and their family members in a tourist boat accident that killed 17 people last summer.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock graduate student is shedding light on long-overlooked contributions black communities in Arkansas made to the World War I effort. Crystal Shurley, an archivist at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies who completed her Master of Arts in public history in December 2018, wrote her thesis on the history of the Arkansas Colored Auxiliary Council, an early archivist group that was active during World War I and has remained a relatively undocumented part of Arkansas history.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor is part of an international research network that has been awarded more than £15 million pounds, or $19.6 million, to address gendered dimensions of injustice and insecurity around the world. Over the past two years, Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm, associate professor in the UA Little Rock School of Public Affairs, has traveled to war-affected countries across the world as part of the Justice, Conflict and Development Network.

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An article written by University of Arkansas at Little Rock researchers, students, and collaborators has been accepted for publication into “Nanoscale,” a peer-reviewed scientific journal, as well as included in the 2018 Nanoscale HOT Article Collection. The article, “Quantification of cellular associated graphene and induced surface receptor responses,” presents a new, combination-based way to quantify and analyze the effect of graphene at the single cell level.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor’s research has shown that local access to legal drugs at the county level reduces opioid and heroin-related mortality rates. In states that have medical cannabis laws, the researchers found that mortality rates among non-Hispanic white men related to opioids and prescription opioids declined by 6 to 8 percent in counties that have dispensaries, when compared to counties that do not have dispensaries. Meanwhile, mortality due to heroin overdose in non-Hispanic white men due to heroin overdose declines by more than 10 percent.

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In commemoration of the centennial of the World War I, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Sequoyah National Research Center has published the website “American Indians in World War I” in partnership with the United States World War I Centennial Commission to commemorates the service of 12,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives who served in the war, mostly as volunteers.

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Alventena Cobb of Conway is a professional musician. She’s played the violin for more than 30 years and has instructed many students.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock history professor and his graduate students are making headway into a mystery 99 years in the making. Dr. Brian Mitchell and his graduate students in the Intro to Public History Class have followed a trail of clues through cemeteries, public records, and databases as part of their search to discover what happened to a dozen black men wrongfully sentenced to death in a time of great racial turmoil in the aftermath of the 1919 Elaine Massacre.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor and doctoral student have received a $20,000 Google AI research grant for their research in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Dr. Xiaowei Xu, professor of information science, and Tolgahan Cakaloglu, a doctoral candidate in computer science, received the grant for their project, "Contextual Advanced Text Representation via Improved Deep Language Model by Utilizing Side Information."

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New research at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock digs into assumptions about the influence of bots on people’s opinions. 

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Members of the Little Rock Game company have created an app for an exhibit at the Clinton Presidential Center exhibit, “White House, Green Building."

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A chemistry professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock has received $188,863 from the National Science Foundation to study experimental methods of developing organic optoelectronic materials. Dr. Noureen Siraj, assistant professor of analytical and physical chemistry, will work with the Center of Organic Photonics and Electronics at the Georgia Institute of Technology to characterize new materials developed at UA Little Rock that possess Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) characteristics. FRET is a radiation-free energy transfer process between chemical compounds.

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One University of Arkansas at Little Rock student-athlete got the surprise of her life when the Trojan mascot she was taking a picture with turned out to be her sneaky boyfriend successfully pulling off an unforgettable marriage proposal.

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock spin-off company, NuShores Biosciences, LLC, has received a $1.7 million grant to study how NuShores’ bone regeneration technology can be applied in craniofacial tissues. The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, a component of the National Institutes of Health, has awarded the company a 2.

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A black World War I veteran and victim of the 1919 Elaine Massacre will posthumously be honored with the Purple Heart and other World War I honors that he was denied a century ago. For Dr. Brian Mitchell, a professor of history at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, helping Leroy Johnston receive his medals is about righting a wrong a century in the making.

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Charlotte and Emelia Dubs are just starting to toddle around their world. The 1-year-old twin girls from Conway spend their days exploring, laughing, blowing kisses and keeping their parents, Kenzie Butcher-Dubs and Morgan Dubs, on their toes.

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The research presents an in-depth examination of the information networks using social network analysis and cyber forensic based methodology to identify prominent information actors and leading coordinators of the disinformation campaigns.

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A group of University of Arkansas at Little Rock employees, students, and alumni who created a space-western storytelling card game – dubbed Galactic Scoundrels – have reached their online fundraising goal to raise enough money to have the game manufactured, breaking their fundraising goal by more than $10,000. 

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A University of Arkansas at Little Rock professor visited Syrian refugees and activists in Turkey and Lebanon in the last of four trips to war-affected countries by an 18-member international research team investigating how peace can be achieved in societies emerging from conflict. 

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When most people think of tea and molasses, their thoughts don’t stray any further than the kitchen. Meghana Bollimpalli, a Central High School student who was mentored by two chemistry professors at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, saw the potential to create a less-expensive renewable energy source that has earned her more than $60,000 in scholarships and prize money from science fair competitions.