News Archive
Tuesday, February 11 2020
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Heat trapped in urban areas tricks trees into thinking spring has arrived earlier
Satellite data of 85 U.S. cities shows plants begin turning green earlier in the spring in urban areas than in surrounding rural areas. It’s a symptom of the way cities trap heat, a phenomenon known as the “heat-island effect,” according to a recently published study.
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Elaine Weiss is spring MLS chair during centennial kickoff
Award-winning journalist and writer, Elaine Weiss, will speak about the lessons of the women's suffrage movement and the relevance of its themes in 2020, as the nation marks the centennial of the ratification of the 19th Amendment. The lecture is part of a statewide kickoff at the Memorial Union on Friday, Feb. 14, which marks the centennial of the founding of the national League of Women Voters.
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Risk expert to discuss risk-managing principles in Iowa State lecture
Allison Schrager has spent her career studying risk. Schrager, an economist, award-winning journalist at Quartz and author of “An Economist Walks into a Brothel,” will present a lecture at Iowa State University on Feb. 17.
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77-year-old amateur astronomer helps reveal rare galaxy double nucleus
Iowa State astronomers have revealed that a well-known, nearby galaxy has a rare double-nucleus structure. Their paper reporting the discovery is now online and has been accepted for publication by the Astrophysical Journal. First author of the paper is Allen Lawrence, a 77 -year-old who went back to school to study astronomy after retiring from a long career as an electrical engineer.
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Celebrate Black History Month at Iowa State
A variety of events are planned to celebrate Black History Month throughout February at Iowa State University and in Ames.
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Major NSF-sponsored grant will help researchers discover ways to improve urban sustainability
A new $2.5 million grant will help an interdisciplinary team of researchers analyze innovative approaches to improving urban sustainability. The team will study various approaches to bolstering local food production in Des Moines and the surrounding area and how those approaches could affect nutrition, waste and environmental impacts.
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Students, Iowa State police join forces to design new police gear
Iowa State University industrial design students are collaborating with the ISU Police Department to examine the issues police officers face with their uniforms, gear and vehicles – and what designers can do to help solve those problems.
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Diverse cropping systems don’t increase carbon storage compared to corn-soybean rotations
Diversified crop rotations protect water quality and have other environmental benefits, but recent experiments show that farms can’t rely on such rotations to improve carbon storage in the soil. The findings contradict widely held expectations that the extensive root systems of perennials and cover crops would deposit carbon in soils.
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Signs of economic recovery, but Iowa’s job growth lags behind nation
In the decade since the Great Recession, Iowa’s job rate has grown by 7.1%, according to a new employment analysis. Dave Swenson, an associate scientist of economics at Iowa State University who conducted the study, says much of the growth occurred in metropolitan counties.
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Iowa FIRST LEGO League Championships: Students build better cities, crowd cheers
The state’s best teams of FIRST® LEGO® Leaguers – 120 of them – will demonstrate their robot, research and thinking skills during the annual Iowa championships this weekend, Jan. 18 and 19, at Iowa State University’s College of Engineering.
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Innovative mindset takes Iowa State student on the ride of his life
Charlie Wickham loved roller coasters as a child – but he didn’t want to ride them. He finally hopped on one at 10 years old. Now a senior in mechanical engineering at Iowa State University, Wickham has ridden 250 roller coasters around the world, and his knack for designing rides and networking has given him a front-row seat to the amusement park industry.
Change Agent: Paul Plummer
Paul Plummer started taking on scientific challenges as a kid on his family farm. Today, he’s working on one of the most pressing concerns faced by modern science: antibiotic resistance.