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Thursday, October 6 2011

News

Iowa State researchers help detect very-high-energy gamma rays from Crab pulsar

owa State University researchers helped design and build the $20 million instrument that allowed astrophysicists to discover the first very-high-energy gamma rays from a pulsar. The discovery is reported in the Oct. 7 issue of the journal Science.
News release.

Iowa State, Ames Laboratory, Technion scientist wins Nobel Prize in Chemistry

The Nobel Foundation today announced Dan Shechtman of Iowa State University, the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and Israel's Technion has won the 2011 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The foundation announced The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences picked Shechtman "for the discovery of quasicrystals."

News release.

ISU study finds Iowa's local housing trust funds respond well to affordable housing demand amid rising poverty

Iowa's State Housing Trust Fund is responding well to the demand for affordable housing in the state, according to an Iowa State University study. However, during the eight years of the program's existence, roughly 70,000 more Iowans tumbled into poverty, creating an affordable housing need that is unmet - and largely unknown. The Iowa Finance Authority commissioned the ISU College of Design's Department of Community and Regional Planning to conduct the study, which provides an overview and analysis of the state's Local Housing Trust Fund Program.

News release.

Sanchez to discuss African Green Revolution in ISU Norman Borlaug Lecture Oct. 10

Pedro Sanchez, 2002 World Food Prize laureate, will present the 10th Norman Borlaug Lecture, "The African Green Revolution Moves Forward," at 8 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 10, in the Memorial Union Great Hall. Sanchez is director of the Earth Institute's tropical agriculture program at Columbia University, and an international leader in the fight against hunger. He pioneered the use of agroforestry to restore fertility to some of the world's poorest and most degraded soils. Sanchez co-led the United Nations Millennium Project's Task Force on Hunger, and won the MacArthur Foundation's "Genius Award" in 2004. A reception and student poster display on world food issues will precede the lecture at 7 p.m. in the Memorial Union Oak Room. Both events are free and open to the public.

News release.

ISU's Pease Family Scholar to address physical fitness and mental health on Oct. 13

Bradley Hatfield (left) -- a professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he also has an affiliate appointment with the university's neural and cognitive sciences program -- will give a talk as ISU's Pease Family Scholar on Thursday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. His presentation, "Physical Fitness and Mental Health: Understanding Exercise and Sport Psychology through the Study of Brain Processes," will take place in the Campanile Room of ISU's Memorial Union.

Iowa State researchers produce cheap sugars for sustainable biofuel production

Iowa State researchers have developed technologies to efficiently produce, recover and separate sugars from the fast pyrolysis of biomass. That's a big deal because those sugars can be further processed into biofuels. Robert C. Brown and other Iowa State researchers will present their findings to the International Conference on Thermochemical Conversion Science in Chicago Sept. 28-30.
News release.

ISU-led group awarded $25 million grant for land use, biofuel production study

Ken Moore, Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agronomy

The USDA awarded an Iowa State University-led group a $25 million grant from the National Institute of Food and Agriculture to develop the blueprint for using marginal farmlands to grow perennial grasses that will, in turn, provide a biomass source for a drop-in biofuel-based fuel over the next five years. The multi-state, interdisciplinary team is lead by Ken Moore, Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor in the Department of Agronomy.

News Release.

Steven Leath named Iowa State's next president

The Iowa Board of Regents has named Steven Leath the 15th president of Iowa State University. Leath's appointment is effective Feb. 1, 2012. Leath will be paid an annual salary of $440,000. Leath has been vice president for research and sponsored programs for the University of North Carolina system since 2007.
Announcement.

Iowa State seeing student returns from investment in financial literacy offerings

It's been two years since Iowa State announced plans to offer greater financial literacy resources for students. And the numbers -- both in terms of enrollment in financial literacy classes and student use of ISU's Financial Counseling Clinic and its resources -- suggest that the university is seeing a return on investment in terms of greater student access.