Hannah Walsh, a UI sophomore political science major from Spirit Lake, Iowa, was recently appointed to the Board of Regents, State of Iowa. Walsh is the lone student member on the nine-member board and is ready to be the voice of the students of the UI, Iowa State University, and University of Northern Iowa.

Wenfang Tang, a UI political science professor, says that compared with their predecessors, the new Chinese leaders seem to show more sophistication, confidence, and ambition in a CNN weekly column focusing on China's new austerity in response to directives from Beijing.

Are you ready to groove? The next free concert in the Arts Share/Community Foundation of Johnson County series will provide just the opportunity. “Groovin’ With Iowa Percussion,” led by University of Iowa School of Music faculty member Dan Moore, will take place at 3 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 17, in Riverside Recital Hall on the UI campus.

University of Iowa College of Nursing Professor Joann "Jo" Eland and 18 students provided a helping hand in India over the winter break as part of a class that provides hospice and palliative care overseas.

Lucie Brock-Broido, author of three collections of poetry and recent Ida Beam Visiting Professor, will present a free reading at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20, in the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Glenn Schaeffer Library, adjacent to the Dey House.

The University of Iowa Department of Theatre Arts will present "MOLD" and "Dust and Ash," two one-act plays that take different looks at how our past affects us, at 8 p.m. Friday to Saturday, Feb. 22-23, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24, in Theatre B of the UI Theatre Building.

The University of Iowa School of Music will present a free concert by the UI Symphony Band and the Iowa Honor Band (composed of the state's top high school musicians) at 7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 16, in the Main Lounge of the Iowa Memorial Union.

The University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop will host a free reading by poet Michael Palmer at 8 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, in the Frank Conroy Reading Room of the Glenn Schaeffer Library, adjacent to the Dey House.

Hawkeye golfer Gigi DiGrazia spent her winter break at a health clinic in India, preparing for what she hopes will be a career in medicine.

The Ten Minute Play Festival, featuring eight plays written by University of Iowa undergraduate students, will be showing at 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, Feb. 14-16, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 17, in Theatre B of the UI Theatre Building.

Nacho Zamora—entrepreneur, curator of public art, and director of the Solar Artworks Project based in Dubai—will give a guest lecture at 6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 8, in Room 240 of Art Building West on the University of Iowa campus. The lecture is free and the public is welcome to attend.

A University of Iowa team showed that the amygdala is not the only gatekeeper of fear in the human mind in a paper published recently in the journal Nature Neuroscience.