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

• I caught KU associate professor emeritus Betty Hart on NPR’s “Morning Edition” on Monday when driving to work through the snow.

She was talking about her groundbreaking 1995 study that found that children who hear more words tend to develop better speech. One aspect that stood out to me in her NPR interview was that while children in a welfare home heard about 600 words per hour, children in a professional family heard more than three times that many, possibly providing one explanation for the differences in how people speak. Listen to the story here.

The NPR story details how different organizations are working to help children of poorer parents hear more words.

KU, by the way, is also continuing to follow up on the ramifications of Hart’s research completed with professor Todd Risley.

Dale Walker, associate research professor at the Life Span Institute’s Juniper Gardens Children’s Project, and Steve Warren, vice chancellor for research and graduate studies, were awarded a four-year $1.6 million grant in 2008 to establish a Model Demonstration Center for Promoting Language and Literacy Readiness in Early Childhood.

The work being done at the center builds on Hart’s and Risley’s 10-year study, and provides additional language learning opportunities for children in early-childhood programs in Kansas City, Kan., Topeka, Olathe and North Kansas City, Mo.

• KU will bring on an additional communications staffer to Strong Hall to help in the absence of Lynn Bretz, KU’s director of university communications, who is on medical leave.

Joe Monaco, who currently works as a public information officer for the Kansas Department of Commerce, will begin work at KU later this week as the assistant director of university communications.

Monaco’s job will be a temporary one, said Jack Martin, deputy director of university communications, running until the end of the fiscal year on June 30.

Martin said that Monaco will bring a wealth of business contacts to his job at KU, and will assist in promoting the university’s message.

• Robert Minor, a KU professor emeritus of religious studies, is quoted in a rather offbeat Boston Globe article over the weekend.

It talked about the sudden rash of prominent men crying in public recently.

With people like new House Speaker John Boehner tearing up at press conferences, and other male politicos and nonpoliticos alike seemingly bawling at will, the newspaper looked at why.

And Minor, who apparently serves on the board of something called the American Men’s Studies Association, said that of course it’s OK for men to cry — after they’ve just scored some kind of victory over another man.

“There are certain rules, a manhood code about when you can and cannot cry,” Minor told the newspaper. “It’s OK to cry once you have already proven, particularly to other men, that you have fulfilled the manhood code.”

I cry a little every single time I get a tip for Heard on the Hill. Unleash the floodgates at ahyland@ljworld.com.