Peter Orazem, a University Professor of economics, authored four of the top 15 strategies cited by a panel of leading economists, including four Nobel laureates, at the global Copenhagen Consensus 2012 last month. Orazem's recommendations were on how to improve education in the developing world. The panel was charged with answering the question, "If you had $75 billion to spend over the next four years and your goal was to advance human welfare, how could you get the most value for your money?"

Iowa State University's Gene Takle will tell U.S. Department of Agriculture officials how farmers are adapting to climate changes. He'll say, for example, that wetter springs and summers mean more drainage tile is being buried under fields. Takle will speak during a USDA seminar on June 7 in Washington, D.C. The seminar will be videotaped for later webcast.

Among 11,675 Iowa high school dropouts who enrolled in the General Education Development (GED) preparation program during the 2003-04 fiscal year, fewer than a third (31.5 percent or 3,680) earned a GED by the end of the 2009 fiscal year. And only 2 percent (229) completed a community college credential, according to the doctoral dissertation by Andrew Ryder, a research and evaluation scientist in Iowa State's Research Institute for Studies in Education.