President-elect Donald Trump has selected Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has called for an end to the practice of putting fluoride in water. WBUR host Scott Tong takes a closer look at the role fluoridation plays in public health with University of Iowa College of Dentistry professor Steven Levy.

A group of 32 students from the United States have been selected to attend the University of Oxford as part of the prestigious Rhodes scholar program in the coming year among an international class representing more than 70 nations, scholarship officials announced. Iowa's Paras Bassuk is among this year's recipients.

Ever since the NCAA permitted college athletes to get paid by companies that use their names, images and likenesses, athletes have tested the limits of their increasing power.

Sports and rituals have long gone hand in hand, and many of the country's colleges have their own unique traditions both on and off the field. To settle the score on which tradition is the best, an expert panel nominated their top college sports traditions, then readers and fans voted for their favorites. Here are the top 10 winners.

Tune into an Iowa Hawkeyes game at Kinnick Stadium and at the end of the first quarter, you'll witness one of the best traditions in college football. During the Hawkeye Wave, fans in Kinnick Stadium turn and show support to kids in the nearby children's hospital. The Hawkeye Wave has quickly become one of the most touching and uplifting traditions the sport has to offer. For just a moment, fans of both teams will come together to give a boost to children battling illness just across the street.

As a PhD candidate in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership Studies at the University of Iowa, Mavis Gyesi researches the educational experiences of African immigrants in U.S. high schools and their transition to college. In a working paper, Gyesi interviewed 13 African immigrant students in Iowa high schools who come from different cultures and speak different languages. She found that many of them take advanced courses in high school and aspire to go to four-year colleges, busting what research has shown to be stereotypes about African students as academically unmotivated or likely to fail.

A University of Iowa game day tradition called the Hawkeye Wave has become a hallmark of the heartland for kids at Iowa’s Stead Family Children’s Hospital. At every home game, thousands of fans and players in Kinnick Stadium all turn and wave at the patients watching from the hospital next door.

Iowa researchers say they’ve excavated the state’s first well-preserved mastodon, a roughly 13,600-year-old specimen that was found in the southern part of the state. The University of Iowa’s Office of the State Archaeologist said in a Facebook post that the 12-day excavation involving staff and local community members yielded “several mastodon bones,” primarily from the skull.

Archeologists in Iowa believe they have unearthed an ancient mastodon skull dating back to when the first humans were roaming the Earth. Discovered in the southern part of the state, the find is Iowa's first well-preserved mastodon, according to the University of Iowa’s Office of the State Archaeologist. Scientists and local community members recently undertook a 12-day excavation at the site, which yielded “several mastodon bones,” primarily from the skull.