News Archive
Wednesday, July 17 2019
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Connecting silos: Iowa State University scientists call for unconventional collaboration in agriculture
Iowa State University researchers hope to connect the "silos" of various disciplines by encouraging wide collaboration to address agricultural challenges. The effort is part of the Genomes to Fields Initiative, which began in 2014 to make genomic data related to corn as widely available as possible.
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Iowa State attracts $469 million in external funds, sets record of $260.9 million for research
Iowa State University attracted $469 million of total external funding for the fiscal year that ended June 30. That's the third highest total for external funding and follows two record years of support. The latest total includes a record $260.9 million of external support for Iowa State research.
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ISU study describes how mosquito immune system fights off malaria parasite
A new study describes the way mosquito immune systems fight malaria parasites using various waves of resistance. The study could lay the groundwork for future research to combat the transmission of malaria, which sickens millions of people across the globe every year.
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Helping Marshalltown recover from tornado through research, outreach
One year after an EF-3 tornado struck Marshalltown, Iowa State students and faculty are conducting research and outreach to help a community still in recovery. They’re using what they’ve learned to create a toolkit that communities can use to examine challenges that exacerbate a disaster’s damage and slow recovery efforts.
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Iowa State students develop self-checkout fraud detection model to win international data mining competition
A team of Iowa State University graduate students brought home the top prize from the 20th annual Data Mining Cup, beating nearly 150 teams from 114 universities in 28 countries. The winners were announced July 3 in Berlin. The students developed a mathematical model to detect cases of fraud at self-checkouts in grocery stores.
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Want to boost creativity? Try playing Minecraft
Video games that foster creative freedom can increase creativity under certain conditions, according to new research from Iowa State University. The experimental study compared the effect of playing Minecraft, with or without instruction, to watching a TV show or playing a race car video game. Those given the freedom to play Minecraft without instruction were most creative.
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Iowa State-Iowa researchers team up to advance state’s bioscience priorities
A second year of seed grants will support development of three Iowa State-Iowa research teams working on projects in the biosciences. The idea is to help the researchers build joint teams, collect data, grow projects, compete for bigger grants and help grow Iowa's bioscience economy.
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Physicists use light waves to accelerate supercurrents, enable ultrafast quantum computing
Iowa State's Jigang Wang and a team of collaborators have discovered that terahertz light --light at trillions of cycles per second -- can act as a control knob to accelerate supercurrents. That can help open up the quantum world of matter and energy at atomic and subatomic scales to practical applications such as ultrafast computing.
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Designing better products for off-grid, backcountry situations
A group of Iowa State University industrial design students recently spent two weeks “off grid” in the American Southwest — an experience that has sparked a slew of ideas for new products the students are now designing for backcountry adventures.
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Four approaches to understanding and moving beyond dysfunctional deliberation
It may feel like we have reached an impasse in the debate over divisive issues such as gun violence, climate change and immigration. Improving the level of discourse is not impossible, says Craig Rood, an assistant professor of English at Iowa State University, but he admits it will not be easy. Rood offers four strategies for working toward understanding.
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Formula racers earn a top-10 finish, analyze the data to find even more speed
The student-engineers of Iowa State's Formula SAE team have been spending sunny summer days trying to trim a few tenths of a second from the times posted by their race car. The students recently finished eighth overall at a competition in Canada. They're hoping for an even better performance this week at a competition in Lincoln, Nebraska.
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Iowa State researchers studying slow-release fertilizer to feed crops, improve water quality
A research project looking for ways to add value to biochar may have found an unexpected application for the black power that's a co-product of thermochemically converting biomass to a liquid bio-oil. The researchers have found biochar could be a slow-release fertilizer that delivers nutrients to crops while keeping those nutrients from washing away in the rain or leaching into groundwater. More uses for biochar could make thermochemical biofuel production a more economically attractive technology.
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Antioxidant puts up fight, but loses battle against toxic protein linked to Alzheimer’s disease
New research may explain why an antioxidant that protects the brain is also associated with deterioration in areas susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease. The antioxidant, superoxide dismutase or SOD1, improves cognition, but an Iowa State University research team found SOD1’s protective benefits dramatically weaken when levels of tau proteins – a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease – increase.
Postcard from Campus: Summer Tour
