@IOWA - February 2004

The University of Iowa's Dance Marathon, the largest student-run philanthropy west of the Mississippi River, celebrated its 10th anniversary by raising a record $625,758 last weekend in its 24-hour marathon dance event at the Iowa Memorial Union. Dance Marathon creates special projects to provide emotional and financial support to families treated by the Children's Hospital of Iowa at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics with an emphasis on the Division of Hematology/Oncology. More>>

Berg, Rietz Say IEM Could Help Identify Best Candidates

As it comes time to select a nominee for president, the Democratic Party could use prediction markets such as the Iowa Electronic Markets (IEM) to help it decide which candidate has the best chance of defeating George W. Bush in the 2004 elections. The IEM, operated by six professors at the Henry B. Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa, has a reputation for accurately predicting elections since its inception in 1988, with an average margin of error of 1.37 percent. More>>
Iowa Electronic Markets: http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/

New University of Iowa Provost Has Iowa Roots

A scholar with two advanced degrees from the University of Iowa is returning to become the UI's chief academic officer. Michael J. Hogan, professor of history and executive dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences at Ohio State University, will be the University of Iowa's next provost, President David Skorton has announced. In addition to serving as provost, Hogan will have an appointment as a tenured full professor in the UI Department of History in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Pending approval of his appointment by the Board of Regents, State of Iowa, he will assume his new duties July 1, 2004. More>>
Office of the Provost: http://www.uiowa.edu/~provost/

UI Researcher Says Monkey Brains Process Communication Sounds Like Humans

New research led by a University of Iowa professor has shown for the first time that monkeys listening to calls from other monkeys have the same brain activity pattern seen in humans during language processing, giving scientists a starting point for investigating how communication and language may develop. The study, published in the Jan. 29 issue of the journal Nature, was led by Amy Poremba, assistant professor of psychology in the UI College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. More>>
Psychology Department: http://www.psychology.uiowa.edu/

Marketing Students Rate Super Bowl Ads

A group of University of Iowa marketing students paid close attention to the commercials aired during the Super Bowl, rating the ads as part of a survey organized by Baba Shiv, an associate professor of marketing in the Tippie College of Business. The big winner in the survey was Budweiser, with its ads featuring a trained dog, a donkey who dreams of becoming one of the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horses, and a flatulent horse who ruins a romantic evening. About 20 students in the Tippie School of Management's MBA program rated the ads, saying which were the best and worst ads from both an entertainment standpoint and a business standpoint. More>>
Tippie College of Business: http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/

UI Hospitals And Clinics Receives Magnet Award For Nursing Excellence

Nurses at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics are the first in the state to earn coveted "Magnet Hospital" status that is awarded only to health care centers that provide the highest level of nursing care. More>>
University of Iowa Health Care: http://www.uihealthcare.com/uihospitalsandclinics/

Computer Resources Help Doctors Answer Patient Care Questions

You bring questions to your physician, but if your doctor has questions about how to best provide care for you, where does he or she go for answers? Physicians still use paper-based resources; however, a University of Iowa Health Care study focused on pediatricians shows that, in comparison, it takes less than one-third of the time to use the computer to find an answer. More>>
Carver College of Medicine: http://www.medicine.uiowa.edu/

UI Expert Urges Testing Of All Homes For Radon

A University of Iowa radiation expert is urging all Iowans to have their homes tested for radon, an odorless, colorless and tasteless radioactive gas that is the second leading cause of lung cancer in the United States. Radon causes an estimated 21,000 lung cancer deaths in the United States each year. More>>
College of Public Health: http://www.public-health.uiowa.edu/

UI Art Faculty John Beldon Scott Receives Book Award

John Beldon Scott, professor of art history at the University of Iowa, has received the Charles Rufus Morey Book Award from the College Art Association for his book "Architecture for the Shroud: Relic and Ritual in Turin" published by the University of Chicago Press. More>>
School of Art & Art History: http://www.uiowa.edu/~art/

Renovation Of UI Museum Of Art Nears Completion

The University of Iowa Museum of Art (UIMA) is growing. The museum will soon have more than 8,000 square feet of new and renovated gallery space, representing a 30-percent increase, as well as new areas for educational programming and other events, and for the care and study of its collections. More>>
Museum of Art: http://www.uiowa.edu/uima/

Van Allen Opposes Bush Space Plan
(USA Today, Jan. 13)

An Iowa physicist considered to be one of the founding fathers of space exploration opposes Bush administration plans for a space station on the moon and a manned mission to Mars. JAMES VAN ALLEN, the namesake for the Van Allen Belts of intense radiation that encircle the earth, said Monday that such manned space missions have become too expensive and better results can be gained by robotic spacecraft. "I'm quite unimpressed by any arguments for it," Van Allen, 89, said in an interview from his office at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. "I'm one of the most durable and fervent advocates of space exploration, but my take is that we could do it robotically at far less cost and far greater quantity and quality of results," he said. The Associated Press article also appeared in the OMAHA WORLD HERALD and on the websites of several television stations across the United States. More>>
Department of Physics and Astronomy: http://www.physics.uiowa.edu

Squire: Kerry Waited For Dean Stumble
(Boston Globe, Jan. 19)

Polls are of limited value in predicting the horse-trading that will take place at tonight's Iowa caucuses. Any of the four leaders — Sen. John Kerry, Gov. Howard Dean, Sen. John Edwards, and Rep. Dick Gephardt — could come out on top, and the others could walk away with delegates as well. But there is no denying that Kerry had staged a stunning comeback in public opinion in the closing days of the fight for the Hawkeye State. The timing and trajectory of Kerry's surge — in which he has wooed voters from other campaigns and won first-place status in recent polls — cannot be tied to any one transformative moment, Kerry's advisers and political analysts say, although there were times along the way that portended an upswing. Edwards, by contrast, enjoyed one clear jolt: The Des Moines Register's Jan. 11 endorsement of his ardently optimistic candidacy as "a cut above the others," which within days had translated into larger crowds and greater popularity in voter surveys. "Kerry was always sort of lurking behind and waiting for Dean to stumble, and Dean managed to do it," said PEVERILL SQUIRE, a political analyst at the University of Iowa. "Kerry wasn't really a new face like Edwards. He just was a solid alternative to Dean. And he had built the field staff across Iowa that could pounce once Dean was in trouble." More>>
Department of Political Science: http://www.uiowa.edu/~polisci/index.html

Bloom Comments On Immigration
(Arizona Republic, Jan. 19)

America's heartland is becoming a Latin American heartland, too, but in the eyes of many Iowans whose caucuses today will help shape the national political agenda, neither President Bush nor the Democrats who want to displace him are dealing with that reality. Ironically, restiveness in the Midwest about immigration could be a blessing for Arizona and other border states, according to one view, because it casts the issue in national, not just regional, terms. Undocumented immigration is "America's dirty little secret," says author and University of Iowa associate journalism Professor STEPHEN G. BLOOM. "It's getting people to work long hours for low pay with no benefits, and those people, by and large, are grateful for that opportunity." Until something goes wrong. "The question hasn't been answered yet: Who is going to take care of these people?" Bloom says. More>>
School of Journalism and Mass Communication: http://www.uiowa.edu/~journal/

Andrejevic Calls Reality TV “Ponzi Scheme”
(New York Times, Jan. 17)

For 50 years, Big Brother was an unambiguous symbol of malignant state power, totalitarianism's all-seeing eye. Then Big Brother became a hip reality television show, in which 10 cohabiting strangers submitted to round-the-clock camera monitoring in return for the chance to compete for $500,000. That transformation is telling, says MARK ANDREJEVIC, a professor of communication studies at the University of Iowa at Iowa City. Today, more than twice as many young people apply to MTV's "Real World" show than to Harvard, he says. Clearly, to a post-cold-war generation of Americans, the prospect of living under surveillance is no longer scary but cool. In Mr. Andrejevic's view reality television is essentially a scam: propaganda for a new business model that only pretends to give consumers more control while in fact subjecting them to increasingly sophisticated forms of monitoring and manipulation. As he put it in a telephone interview: "The promise out there is that everybody can have their own TV show. But of course, that ends up being a kind of Ponzi scheme. You can't have everybody watching everybody else's TV show. And since that's not possible, in economic terms, the way it's going to work is according to this model of a few people monitoring what the rest of us do." More>>
Department of Communication Studies: http://www.uiowa.edu/~commstud/

Nixon Suggests Method To Keep Roads Clear
(Raleigh News & Observer, Feb. 1)

Businesses and schools closed for several days in a row last week following an ice storm. Wilfrid A. Nixon, a professor of engineering at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA and a national authority on snow and ice removal, said that even a Southern city with few snowplows need not be shut down for days by a storm. The remedy, he said, is cheap and low-tech: Spray a concentrated solution of salt and water on all roads before a storm and in its beginning stages. The salt-water approach, widely used in the Midwest, prevents ice and snow from bonding with a road surface, Nixon said. Instead of getting packed down into a slick sheet by passing vehicles, the snow and ice get turned into slush by the traffic and melt much faster. Nixon and others said the salt-water spray works best at temperatures above 20 degrees but still helps even when it's colder. The cost for the solution is about 10 cents a gallon, and a mile of two-lane roadway needs about 50 to 100 gallons. To cover all of Raleigh, the solution would cost about $10,000, not including the equipment and manpower to spread it. "You do need equipment to do it," Nixon said. "Taxpayers can get a little upset in August when they look and see [equipment] and wonder why the city has all of this equipment that doesn't get used much." More>>
College of Engineering: http://www.engineering.uiowa.edu/

UI Experts Help Media Navigate Presidential Caucuses Office Politics: UI Experts Help Media Navigate Presidential Caucuses

The eyes of the media were fastened on Iowa's Democratic Party caucuses, and University News Services and UI political experts raced to keep up with hundreds of requests for interviews. While many university employees enjoyed the winter break, these experts talked with journalists and broadcasters from all over the world. More>>

Trivia Team With UI Ties Wins Tourney Championship — Again

For the umpteenth time, a team with strong University of Iowa ties won the Great Midwest Trivia Contest at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., while a late fade cost a second team with UI connections a third-place finish. More>>

UI Students Share “My Life As A Student”

Temperamental roommates, 7:30 a.m. physics finals, and Airliner pizza—in the first excerpts from a yearlong journal project, six undergraduates share their experiences at the UI. More>>

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