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.

The UI's Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER) is helping faculty and graduate students learn how to effectively communicate their research. The project involves producing short videos, with CGRER staff help.

John Wemmie, a UI neuroscientist, shares insights from an experiment on how SM, a woman with a rare illness that damaged her amygdala and left her unafraid, recently experienced a panic attack, which may have practical value in the study of panic attacks.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Radio features John Spencer and Sammy Perone's University of Iowa psychology research into how infants learn to look and how looking helps them learn.

Patricia Foster and Jeff Porter, faculty members in the University of Iowa Department of English and the Nonfiction Writing Program, will read from their new book, "Understanding the Essay," at 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 14, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The reading also will be streamed live on the UI Writing University website.

Researchers at the University of Iowa say the human brain has a new, second gatekeeper that registers fear. The region, perhaps the brainstem, diencephalon or insular cortex, signals fear from internal dangers. The finding could lead to more precise treatment for people suffering from panic attacks and other anxiety disorders. Results appear in "Nature Neuroscience."

The University of Iowa School of Music will present a free performance by pianist Roberta Rust at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 13, in Riverside Recital Hall on the UI campus. The program will feature works by Mozart, Claude Debussy, Enrique Granados, John Cage, and George Gershwin.

If successful, this work could be used by semiconductor electronics companies to design high-speed, low-power electronics for computers, cell-phones, and any other device whose performance is limited by battery storage.

The University of Iowa School of Music will present a free performance by Excelsior! Trio at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 13, in the University Capitol Centre recital hall.

The telephone rang, and with four words, writer Ayana Mathis was transported from a Paris vacation to a whole new world: “This is Oprah Winfrey.” The Writers' Workshop alumna's first novel was selected for Oprah's Book Club 2.0; her interview with Winfrey will air on Super Bowl Sunday.

Iowa’s three Regents universities are making faculty hires, launching studies, partnering with community colleges, and building industry partnerships—all in a $22 million effort to boost the state’s research capacity in renewable energy and energy utilization. The benefits to Iowa could be many: research grants, new technologies, startup companies, educational opportunities and workforce...