News Service

Monday, July 22

Connecting silos: Iowa State University scientists call for unconventional collaboration in agriculture

Jul 16, 2019

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.
Iowa State attracts $469 million in external funds, sets record of $260.9 million for research

Jul 14, 2019

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.
ISU study describes how mosquito immune system fights off malaria parasite

Jul 10, 2019

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.
Helping Marshalltown recover from tornado through research, outreach

Jul 10, 2019

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.
Iowa State students develop self-checkout fraud detection model to win international data mining competition

Jul 8, 2019

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.
Want to boost creativity? Try playing Minecraft

Jul 8, 2019

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.
Iowa State-Iowa researchers team up to advance state’s bioscience priorities

Jul 5, 2019

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.
Physicists use light waves to accelerate supercurrents, enable ultrafast quantum computing

Jul 1, 2019

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.

In the news

Some Marshalltown residents struggling to afford repairs on tornado’s anniversary

Iowa Public Radio Jul 19, 2019

A community’s poorest residents often bear the brunt of natural disasters, according to Sara Hamideh, assistant professor of community and regional planning. Hamideh is an expert in disaster recovery and resilience, and has worked over the past year on research involving Marshalltown's recovery from the July 2018 EF-3 tornado. "If we don’t want to see these long-term struggles after a disaster, the time to act is before a disaster happens," she said.

Playing this hit video game boosts creativity

Inc. Jul 12, 2019

Playing video games that encourage creativity may give players a creative boost. Iowa State's Douglas Gentile says it appears games that encourage creation, such as Minecraft, could be a useful tool for inspiration and improved thought processes.

Trump Facebook ads use models to portray actual supporters

AP/The New York Times Jul 3, 2019

Political experts say it's not unusual for stock photos to find their way into ads, but presidential campaigns should be more careful. There are plenty of such gaffes. "As a producer, you want to control -- you want people to look a certain way and you want them to sound a certain way," said Jay Newell, a former cable TV executive who teaches advertising at Iowa State University. "The fact that the footage is from outside the U.S. makes it that much more embarrassing."

10 years later, America's booming economy still bears scars of the Great Recession

CNN Jun 26, 2019

Small towns in Michigan, Ohio and upstate New York which had relied on manufacturing are still reeling from the recession a decade ago, according to Dave Swenson, associate scientist, economics, at Iowa State. "Those places were hit harder by the recession and are slower to recover than the national average," he said.

The divorce rate is at a 40-year low, unless you're 55 or older

The Wall Street Journal Jun 26, 2019

Marriage is thriving but changing in the ways in which people approach it, says Tera Jordan, associate professor of human development and family studies at Iowa State. In 1963, the average woman married at around age 20, but by 2017, the median age for marriage was 27 for women and 29 for men.