College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

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A backseat biography of life and love

University of Iowa undergraduate student Kara Masteller interviews her grandfather, James Kennicott, about finding love and dealing with life after an Alzheimer's diagnosis for a UI course–related Intergenerational StoryCorps project—all from inside her Buick.

Can mammogram-reading pigeons help train human radiologists?

Footage of pecking, mammography-reading pigeons may seem hilarious, but it’s serious business for Edward A. Wasserman, a UI professor of experimental psychology. Reading medical images, he said, “requires a kind of perceptual sophistication beyond mere words.” That’s where the pigeon steps in.

Mind the GAP

Wednesday, November 18, 2015
A desalination device that also creates electricity and a screening system to detect symptoms of delirium are among the University of Iowa faculty inventions that were awarded a total of $625,000 in gap funding by the University of Iowa Research Foundation.
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One very brainy bird

Wednesday, November 18, 2015
A new study has found that pigeons are nearly as good as people at distinguishing cancerous breast tissue from normal breast tissue. The findings add to previous research into pigeons’ remarkable ability to discriminate between complex visual images and may lead to the birds being trained as medical image observers.
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The fittest fiddle

Tuesday, November 17, 2015
UI researchers say behavior, particularly psychologist Edward Thorndike’s law of effect, is the foundational principle behind the evolution of the violin and other handmade inventions. Simply put, behaviors that are followed by positive outcomes tend to be repeated.
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Master tinkerer

Monday, November 16, 2015
A University of Iowa physics graduate student has won a coveted NASA fellowship. Jake McCoy is building a sophisticated tool that may help astrophysicists locate missing matter in the cosmos through X-rays emitted by dark, distant areas in space.
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UI's Blain: Black women's votes matter

UI assistant professor of history Keisha N. Blain writes that despite black women's influence at the polls, their concerns are undervalued in contemporary political campaigns. While some presidential candidates have gone to great lengths to court black voters, few have been vocal about black women's vulnerability to state-sanctioned violence.
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The first dance

Thursday, November 12, 2015
The University of Iowa Department of Dance will present its first performances of the season, featuring the work of graduate and undergraduate students, at 8 p.m. Thursday–Saturday, Nov. 19–21, in Space Place Theater.

Realities converge in 'Arcadia'

Thursday, November 12, 2015
The UI Department of Theatre Arts will continue its Mainstage season Nov. 13 with Tom Stoppard’s "Arcadia." The play alternates between the early nineteenth century and the present day, and secrets of the universe are discovered or unearthed again.

The sublime simplicity of Baseball-Reference.com

The baseball statistics website Baseball-Reference.com started as a way to avoid writing a dissertation by a University of Iowa doctoral student.
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Academic Panoramic: Snapshots of the UI student experience

Wednesday, November 11, 2015
In order to see the full academic picture found at the University of Iowa, you’ll need to look in all directions. Academic Panoramic provides a look at a cross section of the UI educational experience, from philanthropy and public health to theatre arts and sports analytics.
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Academic Panoramic: What's new about getting old?

Wednesday, November 11, 2015
There are some undeniable truths in life. One of them is that we will get older. Yet we don't really know how and why we age. It’s those central questions that Veena Prahlad is tackling in her undergraduate class, Mechanisms of Aging.