Nick Benson, coordinator of the Iowa Initiative for Sustainable Communities (IISC), is making new connections between the University of Iowa and Iowa communities. Benson is working to expand the IISC into a campus-wide initiative. The IISC recently formalized agreements with four Iowa communities for the 2013-2014 academic year: Muscatine, Cedar Rapids, Cedar Falls, and Washington.

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and Lt. Gov. Kim Reynolds joined about 20 University of Iowa students for a crash course on medical devices for treating cardiovascular disease—and an introduction to new facilities that are changing how UI faculty teach.

Kathleen Janz, a UI professor of health and human physiology, says parents need to be part of the solution of helping kids get more physical activity in response to a report released Friday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Barbara Eckstein, Jim Giglierano, and Mark NeuCollins will present "The Arc, the Wall, and the Line: Mapping the People's Weather" from 12:30-1:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 13 in 1117 University Capitol Center (UCC) Conference Room A.

Telecommuters actually work more overtime than their office-bound colleagues, says Mary Noonan, UI associate professor in sociology, in a story on how Yahoo's chief executive has decreed that workers must start showing up at the office.

Victoria Steelman, a UI assistant professor of nursing and author of a recent study on retained surgical items, comments on tracking systems that have been approved by the FDA to help cut down the risk of sponges being left in patients after surgery.

Jeffrey Murray has been awarded a $450,000, three-year grant that will allow him to build on his past discoveries in the area of premature birth with the goal of improving health care providers’ ability to predict which women are at high risk of delivering their baby too soon.

H.S. Udaykumar and Meena Khandelwal will discuss their efforts to trace the linkages among forests, energy, gender relations, health, consumption, and culture, and between the local and global processes at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 13 at the Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, 111 Church St.

UI psychologist Jerry Suls was part of a research team that looked at how people get on with their lives following harrowing experiences after he was unscathed when a tornado hit downtown Iowa City in 2006.

Eli Perencevich, a UI professor and infectious-disease doctor, says he is concerned that there aren't a lot of methods in the tool kit that are significantly effective in curbing the spread of certain bacteria-resistant infections.

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Teresa Mangum, director of the UI's Obermann Center for Advanced Studies, recruited scholars to "show and tell" their research at the inaugural Iowa Humanities Festival this Saturday at Salisbury House & Gardens in Des Moines. (Note: A paid subscription may be required.)