Your daily dose of news, notes and links from around Kansas University.

• The Institute of International Education has released its 2010 Open Doors report.

KU will release its specific figures when the IIE releases its full university rankings, which could come sometime this month. I expect that while nationally, students studying abroad were down slightly in the 2008-09 academic year, KU will post at least a modest increase. Study abroad has been an increasing focus of top KU brass — Provost Jeff Vitter has told me on a number of occasions he’d like to see students freed up to take advantage of more international study options.

Stay tuned for the complete rankings…

• Jordan Jacobson, a KU senior majoring in graphic design, spotted Wednesday’s Heard on the Hill item about KU’s Student Senate opting for a Topeka marketing firm to design a new logo and website. He reached out via Twitter (where I can be found at @LJW_KU), and said he knows of several students who could have provided the service. In fact, he’s in a graphic design class now that focuses on logo creation and branding.

He said he talked to a few instructors and students, and hadn’t heard of anyone who was approached by Student Senate.

Asked for his thoughts on the new logo, Jacobson didn’t seem too impressed.

“They should have been using their student body and the new, fresh ideas here at KU,” he said.

• KU Info Director Curtis Marsh — an early Heard on the Hill fan — told me his organization puts out similar tidbits every day. You can catch them on Twitter, too. Wednesday’s tidbit varied from KU Info’s usual KU focus to point out the cash value of the gifts in the song “The 12 Days of Christmas.” This year, apparently, it would cost $23,439 to buy everything in the song (ignoring all the repetitions), according to PNC Financial Services.

The amount of time it must have taken PNC Financial Services to create this interactive website (complete with a pop-up book) makes me wonder if they have anything better to do.

• If watching legal arguments is your thing, then KU Law School’s gay-straight alliance OutLaws and Allies is looking out for you. They’re sponsoring a public viewing of oral arguments in the California gay-marriage case Perry v. Schwarzenegger.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in a rare move, granted C-SPAN permission to broadcast the oral arguments live. The public is invited to watch from noon to 2:30 p.m. on Monday in the Gridiron Room of the Burge Union, 1601 Irving Hill Road.

• I have nowhere to put a partridge in a pear tree, so I think I’d rather you just send me a tip for Heard on the Hill at ahyland@ljworld.com.