May, 2005

Bibas: Age May Be Factor In Rigas Sentence (Buffalo News, May 31)
Federal prosecutors are expected to ask a federal judge Wednesday in Manhattan to sentence 80-year-old John J. Rigas to prison for decades -- or longer. But this doesn't mean that U.S. District Judge Leonard B. Sand will agree to that sentence for the Adelphia Communications founder and former owner of the Buffalo Sabres. Legal experts who have been following the case say that thanks to his age, his health and the weight of evidence, the elder Rigas is likely to get a shorter sentence than his son Timothy. Both were convicted last July on 18 felony counts in connection with the downfall of the giant cable company that John Rigas founded five decades ago. "My gut says that Judge Sand doesn't want to send (John Rigas) to prison for life," said STEPHANOS BIBAS, a former federal prosecutor in the Southern District of New York, where Sand is a judge. "If you give a long prison term to an 80-year-old, then the sentence is really automatically jacked up to life," said Bibas, who is now an associate professor of law at the University of Iowa. "Not every judge would think decades in prison would be appropriate for somebody like that."
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20050531/1025888.asp

Damasios Cited In Endowment Story (South Bend Tribune, May 31)
A story about increasing university and college endowments points out that one of the side effects is an "arms race" for superstar faculty. It cites the departure of HANNAH and ANTONIO DAMASIO for the University of Southern California from the University of Iowa.
http://www.southbendtribune.com/stories/2005/05/30/local.20050530-sbt-MICH-B1-47_U_S__schools_now_.sto

Law Alumna Runs For Virginia Lieutenant Governor (Washington Post, May 31)
Viola Baskerville, 53, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates, is running to be lieutenant governor of Virginia. Baskerville is a graduate of the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA College of Law.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/30/AR2005053000821.html

Law Alumna Lieutenant Governor Candidate (Virginian Pilot, May 31)
A recap of the race for lieutenant governor of Virginia. One of the candidates, Viola Baskerville, is a graduate of the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA College of Law. The Virginian Pilot is based in Hampton Roads, Va.
http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?story=87125&ran=98464

Alumnus Named College VP, Dean (Asheville Citizen Times, May 31)
John Casey has been named vice president of academic affairs and dean of Warren Wilson College in Asheville, NC. Casey holds a Ph.D. from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. The Citizen-Times is based in Asheville, N.C.
http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050531/NEWS01/50530007/1001

Gurnett Comments On Voyager 1 (Philadelphia Inquirer, May 30)
Voyager 1 recently entered the heliosphere, the furthest edge of our solar system. The boundary of the heliosphere does not lead directly to the vastness of interstellar space but into an intermediate region called the heliosheath, where the solar wind wrestles with the stellar winds of the interstellar medium. These "winds" are extremely rarified -- just a few particles per square foot, said project scientist DON GURNETT of the University of Iowa. This is far less dense, he said, than the best artificial vacuum anyone's created on Earth.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/magazine/daily/11771393.htm

Damasio Comments On Humor Study (Los Angeles Times, May 30)
Scientists have discovered Comedy Central in the brain -- specific tissue regulating the ability to understand sarcasm. People with damage to the right frontal lobe, right behind the eyes, are unable to appreciate this kind of humor. The study tested 25 people with frontal-lobe damage, 16 with damage to the back of the brain and 17 normal volunteers. Rigged to scanning devices, the subjects were presented with a series of sarcastic comments. Normal volunteers and people with back-brain damage understood the sarcasm. But the people with right frontal-lobe damage didn't get the irony. Dr. ANTONIO DAMASIO, head of the neurology department at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, said this finding makes perfect sense. "People with damage on the right side of their brain ... have major problems with social cognition, or thinking," he said.
http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-sarcasm30may30,1,4485404.story?coll=la-headlines-health

Brochu Helps Student Win Field Internship (Galesburg Register Mail, May 28)
Holly Berg, a student at the University of Iowa, will have her mind buried in the past this summer as she studies dinosaurs at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. The subjects of that study, ceratopsians, lived 65 to 70 million years ago. Berg will be a senior at the University of Iowa this fall majoring in geology with a minor in biology. Berg knew just the right person to help get a letter of recommendation -- her research professor, CHRIS BROCHU. It was through Brochu she met Peter Makovicky of the Field Museum. Makovicky submitted a letter of recommendation for Berg to work at the museum this summer. The Register Mail is based in Galesburg, Ill.
http://www.register-mail.com/stories/052905/LOC_B6HCTELO.GID.shtml

Alumnus Publishes Book Of Family History (Milford Daily News, May 28)
Mitchell Kalpakgian has compiled his family stories in a new book titled, "An Armenian Family Reunion: A Lifetime of Unforgettable and Delightful Stories," published by The Neumann Press. Kalpakgian, 64, earned a Ph.D. at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/artsCulture/view.bg?articleid=99803

Alumnus Subject Of Documentary (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 28)
If a contest were held to determine the most fascinating character of the local movie scene, the prize would have to go to Stewart Stern, the screenwriter who fled Hollywood 20 years ago for a new life as a teacher and all-around friend of Seattle film.  Stern's enduring claim to fame is that he wrote "Rebel Without a Cause," one of the great American films, but he also has a long list of other credits and the cachet of being descended from Hollywood royalty (his uncle was Paramount founder Adolph Zukor). Beyond these credentials, Stern also carries the strange mystique of being the movie industry's most famous victim of that little-understood, much-dreaded creative malady: writer's block, an affliction that effectively ended his career at the peak of his powers. In short, he's a prime candidate for a memoir, and one is finally here: "Going Through Splat: The Life and Work of Stewart Stern," a documentary having its Northwest premiere tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre during the Seattle International Film Festival. Stern attended the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. The same story appeared on the Web site of the ARIZONA REPUBLIC.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/movies/226183_stern28.html

Ceilley Says Sun Protection Is Essential Daily (Essence, June 2005)
Everyone under the sun needs protection against the damaging effects of ultraviolet rays. "Using sun protection is as important as putting on your seat belt -- it has to be part of your everyday routine," says ROGER CEILLEY, M.D., clinical professor of dermatology at the University of Iowa. People of color aren't immune to the damage caused by the sun's ultraviolet A and B rays, and are susceptible to skin cancer and premature aging.
http://proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url=http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=5bfb4838b46fba1ede8efa64538ad682&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLzVzz-zSkVA&_md5=fa7cc60e2d9ab7c508c97f0df7bd7643

Gurnett Comments on Voyager (Science Magazine, May 27)
NASA managers had decided that the Voyager 1 spacecraft--28 years and 14 billion kilometers out from Earth--might have outlived its usefulness. It didn't seem worth the expense of waiting for Voyager to find something more interesting than the now-monotonous hum of the solar wind as the spacecraft glided into the void far beyond the farthest planets. Then this week, Voyager scientists announced that their craft had just entered a new realm, one long hypothesized but never observed, that marks the doorstep to true interstellar space. At this week's Joint Assembly of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), Voyager principal investigator DONALD GURNETT of the University of Iowa reported that on  Dec. 15, Voyager detected the same sort of plasma-wave oscillations that spacecraft have always encountered just before running into shock waves in the solar wind upstream of planets. Shortly after the oscillations, Voyager was in the new solar wind regime of heightened magnetic field.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/308/5726/1237a

County Attorney to Retire (WQAD-TV, May 27)
Johnson County Attorney J Patrick White says he won't run for re-election when his sixth term expires in January 2007. White has gained national attention during his tenure. In 1991, his office investigated a shooting spree at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA campus, involving a disgruntled researcher who killed three professors, a fellow graduate student and an administrator before shooting himself.
http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=3397564

Donham Advises on Ticks (Tri-State Neighbor, May 27)
Kathy Cuddeback was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 1993. Doctors suspect she contracted the disease in 1977 from a tick bite she got while working in Tennessee and Kentucky as a naturalist. Cuddeback, president of the Iowa Lyme Disease Association and board member for Emerging Infections in the Central States, has been working to spread the word about ticks and Lyme disease's potential in Iowa. "Anybody who is having outside contact, particularly in woody or grassy areas, should beware of ticks," said KELLEY DONHAM, University of Iowa occupational health specialist. He believes farmers, because they often use equipment or are in crop fields when they are outdoors, are less likely to encounter the black-legged ticks. The agricultural publication is based in South Dakota.
http://www.tristateneighbor.com/articles/2005/05/27/tri_state_news/top_stories/news17.txt

UI Dentistry Graduate To Speak (Monmouth Daily Review Atlas, May 26)
The Memorial Day address in Monouth, Ill will then be given by Lt. Col. Charles Thie of Scott Air Force Base. He graduated from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA COLLEGE OF DENTISTRY in 1969, and was commissioned as an officer in the USAF Dental Corps. After retiring in 1999 he returned to the military to become a forensic dentist in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. The newspaper serves Monmouth, Ill.
http://www.reviewatlas.com/articles/2005/05/26/news/local/news2.txt

UI Awarded March of Dimes Grant (St. Louis Business Journal, May 26)

Dr. Louis Muglia, associate professor of pediatrics and researcher at Washington University in St. Louis, received a $420,000 March of Dimes award for research on premature birth, the nonprofit said. The grant is one of the first March of Dimes national Prematurity Research Initiative (PRI) Grants, which awarded a total of nearly $2 million to six projects in this round of funding, including a grant to the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CARVER COLLEGE OF MEDICINE.
http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2005/05/23/daily47.html

UI Seeking Federal Funding Earmark (New York Times, May 26)
The University of Michigan received $4 million for curriculum development and training at its Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Marshall University in West Virginia received $11 million for a new heart institute. The UNIVERSITY OF IOWA is hoping to get $16.5 million from a pending highway bill to study taxation of drivers based on miles driven on certain types of highways. These are just three of thousands of examples of recent "academic earmarks," provisions inserted into federal spending bills to finance specific university projects, like research, or the construction of classrooms and laboratories. Increasingly, universities are being financed like farmers and military contractors, with legislative earmarks. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, there were 1,964 earmarks to 716 academic institutions costing a total of $2 billion in the 2003 fiscal year, or just over 10 percent of the federal money spent on academic research. From 1996 to 2003, the amount spent on academic earmarks grew at an astounding rate of 31 percent a year, after adjusting for inflation.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/business/26scene.html

Gurnett Comments On Voyager 1 Milestone (New Scientist, May 25)
"VOYAGER 1 has entered the final lap of the race to interstellar space," exults Edward Stone. And this time he is sure that the spacecraft he helped launch nearly 30 years ago has finally reached the very fringes of our solar system. Voyager 1 was supposed to have reached this milestone nearly three years ago but the evidence was inconclusive. Now it has officially crossed the "termination shock", the region where the speed of the solar wind drops abruptly from supersonic to subsonic, and has entered the shell of dense solar wind called the heliosheath that separates our solar system from interstellar space. The Voyager twins, 1 and 2, were launched in 1977 to explore the outer planets. In 1998, Voyager 1 became the most distant spacecraft, overtaking the Jupiter probe Pioneer 10. Then, in November 2003, Stamatios Krimigis of Johns Hopkins University in Laurel, Maryland, reported that Voyager 1 had gone past the termination shock sometime in August 2002 (New Scientist, 8 November 2003, p 12). At the time, the spacecraft was 85 astronomical units from the sun. He still stands by his claim, which was based on estimates of the solar wind speed. But many scientists disagreed because Voyager 1 had not seen a concomitant and significant increase in the sun's magnetic field, a sign that solar particles are slowing down and bunching together at the termination shock. "I do not agree with Krimigis," says DONALD GURNETT of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, a member of the Voyager 1 team. "We should have seen the magnetic field increase and we did not." A version of the story also ran on the Website of SCIENCE MAGAZINE.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18625015.000

Damasio Comments On Humor Study (Chicago Tribune, May 25)
Scientists have discovered Comedy Central in the brain -- specific tissue regulating the ability to understand sarcasm. People with damage to the right frontal lobe, right behind the eyes, are unable to appreciate this kind of humor. The study tested 25 people with frontal-lobe damage, 16 with damage to the back of the brain and 17 normal volunteers. Rigged to scanning devices, the subjects were presented with a series of sarcastic comments. Normal volunteers and people with back-brain damage understood the sarcasm. But the people with right frontal-lobe damage didn't get the irony. Dr. ANTONIO DAMASIO, head of the neurology department at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, said this finding makes perfect sense. "People with damage on the right side of their brain ... have major problems with social cognition, or thinking," he said. This same story also appeared on the Web site of the CANTON (Ohio) REPOSITORY.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0505250209may25,1,6901932.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

UI Alumna Applies For School Board Post (Billings Gazette, May 25)
Greta Besch Moen, who has applied to serve on the Billings school board, has a bachelor's degree in science from the University of Minnesota, a master's degree in radiological science from the University of Wisconsin and a doctorate in human cancer biology from the University of Wisconsin. Her post-graduate work was in experimental immunology at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. The paper is based in Montana.
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/05/25/build/local/60-sd2-postions.inc

UI Alumnus Joins Vanderbilt Medical Center (Nashville City Paper, May 25)
Ramon Cuevas recently joined the faculty of Vanderbilt University Medical Center as a clinical instructor of Pediatric Neurology. Cuevas is concurrently finishing his fellowship training in Sleep Medicine, with special emphasis on pediatric sleep disorders. Previously, Cuevas completed internships in Internal Medicine and Pediatrics, as well as a residency in Neurology, at Vanderbilt. Cuevas received his medical degree at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, in Iowa City. His research focus will be on pediatric sleep. The paper is based in Tennessee.
http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/index.cfm?section_id=51&screen=news&news_id=41687

Squire: Frist May Have Scored With Iowa Social Conservatives (Salon, May 25)
When Sen. John McCain stood before the microphone Monday night and announced the moderates' deal that averted the nuclear option over the filibuster, Majority Leader Bill Frist was nowhere to be found. He wasn't at the press conference. He wasn't a party to the deal. Despite orchestrating the showdown over the filibuster, Frist was left out of the compromise, looking like a fringe player in McCain's show. If the confrontation over judicial nominees was an early battle among Republicans with an eye on the next presidential election, McCain, a leading centrist candidate, faced off against Frist, who is positioning himself as the conservative's conservative. And by any measure, McCain clearly won. But the filibuster drama may have exposed a larger truth about GOP efforts to succeed George W. Bush in 2008 -- neither McCain nor Frist is well-positioned to win the Republican nomination. However Frist went down, he went down fighting for the religious right -- and that could help come primary time. The Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary are won by wooing the more active and more partisan members of each political party. "Of the folks who will attend [the Iowa caucuses] on the Republican side in 2008, you are probably looking at a good third that are active social conservatives," said PEVERILL SQUIRE, a political scientist at the University of Iowa. (Subscription required.)
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/05/25/fristmccain/

IEM Allowed People To Wager On 2004 Election Outcome (Newsday, May 25)
Wagering on the future isn't just about betting on a horse in the Belmont Stakes. Using the Web, savvy bettors can gamble on the odds of nearly anything happening, including the outcomes of pop culture crises and current events. A UNIVERSITY OF IOWA site called IOWA ELECTRONIC MARKETS (www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem) took money from political junkies wanting to wager on the 2004 U.S. presidential bout.
http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-cool2-livinglarge,0,879906.story?coll=ny-main-tabheads

Damasio Comments on Humor Study (Newsday, May 24)
Scientists have discovered Comedy Central in the brain - specific tissue regulating the ability to understand sarcasm. People with damage to the right frontal lobe, right behind the eyes, are unable to appreciate this kind of humor. The study tested 25 people with frontal-lobe damage, 16 with damage to the back of the brain and 17 normal volunteers. Rigged to scanning devices, the subjects were presented with a series of sarcastic comments. Normal volunteers and people with back-brain damage understood the sarcasm. But the people with right frontal-lobe damage didn't get the irony. Dr. ANTONIO DAMASIO, head of the neurology department at the University of Iowa College of Medicine, said this finding makes perfect sense. "People with damage on the right side of their brain ... have major problems with social cognition, or thinking," he said. This same story also appeared on the Web site of the CANTON (OH) REPOSITORY.
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/health/ny-hssarc244273780may24,0,3914871.story?coll=ny-health-headlines

UI Studies Medical Malpractice Insurance Costs (WQAD-TV, May 24)
The cost of medical malpractice insurance appears to cut both ways in Iowa. Critics say the rising cost of malpractice premiums is driving doctors away from Iowa, but a report by the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA-based Iowa Physician Information System shows that Iowa has actually gained doctors in recent years. And for some doctors the reason they come to Iowa is the cost of medical malpractice insurance. WQAD is based in Moline, Ill.
http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=3377293

UI Presidential Search Cited (The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 24)
A profile of Bill Funk, a senior consultant and manager of the education practice at Korn/Ferry International, a major executive-search firm. He is, to use the vulgar term, a headhunter. For almost a quarter-century, Bill Funk, 56, has played a key role in matching colleges with presidents and chancellors. His bona fides are impressive: He has had a hand in the hiring of more than 250 chief executives in academe, as well as numerous provosts, deans, and other top-level administrators. At one point, he says, he had recruited nearly a fourth of the sitting presidents of the nation's top 60 research institutions, and nine of the presidents of Big Ten systems or their flagship institutions. The UNIVERSITY OF IOWA delayed its search for a new leader a few years ago in order to secure the services of Mr. Funk, who at the time was helping the University of Minnesota. In recent months he has handled searches for presidents at Baylor, Hamline, and Kettering Universities and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The online version of this story is available only to subscribers.
http://chronicle.com/free/v51/i38/38a00101.htm

Alumnus Hired at Job Fair (Tucson Citizen, May 24)
There's a reason it's called a job "fair." Like the annual summer festivals, job fairs feature crowds, booths, choices, thrills and spills, risks and rewards.  Company recruiters seek job candidates. Job seekers hope to find a job or a better one than they've got. The mutual search goes on in an atmosphere that brings to mind a busy midway at a county fair. visit to a January job fair led to a computer systems administrator job for Justin Zortman, 24, of Johnston, Iowa, a 2004 UNIVERSITY OF IOWA grad. Shelley Hill, human resources director at ABC Virtual Communications in West Des Moines, was there, too, offering one of that fair's special features: free advice on improving résumés. Zortman got more than advice on his résumé. Hill liked Zortman's skill set and urged him to send his résumé to ABC after he'd polished it up.
http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/index.php?page=business&story_id=052405d1_jobfair

Alumnus Looks Back on Music Career (Fremont Tribune, May 24)
It was 1963 when the young Charles Wilhite came to Midland Lutheran College to teach music classes. Fresh from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA with just a dissertation needed to finish his doctorate, the musician was ready to instruct students in piano and organ as well as to lecture on theory of music and history of music. "I haven't taught organ recently, but when I came there were 10 to 12 organ students a semester," Wilhite remembers. "Kids aren't studying piano any more and church organists are hard to find." Wilhite has witnessed various changes on the Midland campus during the past 42 years. The Tribune is based in Nebraska.
http://www.fremontneb.com/articles/2005/05/23/news/news82.txt

UI Law Alumnus Rowley Mulls Congressional Run (Minneapolis Star Tribune, May 24)
Former Minneapolis FBI agent Coleen Rowley, who gained fame by publicly assailing the bureau's pre-Sept. 11 counter-terrorism lapses, said Monday that she is pondering a run for the U.S. House. Rowley, of Apple Valley, said she is "seriously, seriously considering" running as a Democrat in Minnesota's eastern suburban Second District, a seat held by second-term Republican Rep. John Kline. A sidebar points out she received her law degree from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/587/5419678.html
http://www.startribune.com/stories/468/5419201.html

Niebyl: Pregnant Patients Can Refuse Episiotomy (People, May 23)
A story about the common childbirth practice of episiotomy - a small surgical incision made at the edge of the vagina, intended to east childbirth by reducing the risk of tearing and promoting faster healing - quotes DR. JENNIFER NIEBYL of the University of Iowa. "Patients should say they don't want an episiotomy - unless there's a good reason," Niebyl said. (This story is unavailable online.)

UI Physician Information System: Iowa Gaining Doctors (WQAD-TV, May 23)
The cost of medical malpractice insurance appears to cut both ways in Iowa. Critics say the rising cost of malpractice premiums is driving doctors away from Iowa, but a report by the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA-BASED IOWA PHYSICIAN INFORMATION SYSTEM shows that Iowa has actually gained doctors in recent years. And for some doctors the reason they come to Iowa is the cost of medical malpractice insurance. Dr. Jeffrey Piccirillo moved his family and medical practice to the eastern Iowa town of Grinnell where he pays $74,000 a year in malpractice premiums. He says that's about one-third of what he paid in suburban Chicago. The tracking system shows that 264 doctors left Iowa in 2004 for a variety of reasons. It also shows that 303 doctors came to Iowa. That's a net gain of 39 for a total of nearly five-thousand. The cost of malpractice insurance doesn't seem to be tied to the number of lawsuits filed in Iowa. The station is based in Moline, Ill.
http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=3377293

Columnist Cites UI Course (Cincinnati Post, May 23)
A columnist makes reference to a course being taught this fall at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA on the impact of pornography on mainstream culture.
http://news.cincypost.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050523/EDIT/505230335/1003

UI-Bound Student Says Calculus Good Math Prep (Peoria Journal Star, May 23)
Parents say a curriculum gap between middle and high school has some students struggling to get to the highest level math classes and prepare for college. About three dozen parents of elementary, middle and high school students formed a group, "Math Matters!" Their goal is to align the middle school curriculums in Metamora, Germantown Hills and Spring Bay with the Metamora High School math curriculum. Metamora High School senior Ben Dattilo said it's important that high school students have the opportunity and background needed to get through the highest level math class. Dattilo, who plans to attend the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA and major in computer engineering and music, said calculus better prepared him for college. The paper is based in Illinois.
http://www.pjstar.com/stories/052305/TRI_B6G9KKOG.045.shtml

Damasios' Departure Cited In Endowment Story (Redland Daily Facts, May 23)
Forty-seven U.S. colleges and universities now have endowments of $1 billion or more, compared to 17 a decade ago, according to the National Association of College and University Business Officers. Harvard alone has $22 billion, nearly $10 billion more than No. 2 Yale. For American colleges, $1 billion has become a benchmark, a point beyond which schools can stop worrying about the day-to-day and dream big. But some worry that the "arms race" for superstar faculty is costing many non-billionaires, especially public universities, their best talents: researchers such as Hanna and Antonio Damasio, two neuroscientists who recently left the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA to start a brain institute at the University of Southern California ($2.4 billion). The paper is based in California. Versions of the story also ran on the Websites of IN-FORUM in North Dakota, NORTHJERSEY.COM, the EAST VALLEY TRIBUNE in Arizona, the FORT WAYNE JOURNAL GAZETTE in Indiana and other media outlets.
http://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/Stories/0,1413,209~23371~2883722,00.html

UI Study On Women's Colleges Cited (East Valley Tribune, May 23)
Attendance at women's colleges has fallen since the 1970s, leading some institutions to become coed to survive. The number of women's colleges dropped from approximately 300 in 1960 to 80 in 1998, according to government data. Today, only 65 women's colleges remain in the United States. Women's college proponents say research indicates their graduates make better gains in academic involvement, self-esteem and leadership. At single-sex colleges, women take all leadership roles, form study groups composed of only women and take charge in lab exercises and classroom discussions, according to a study by the DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATIONAL POLICY AND LEADERSHIP STUDIES AT THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. The paper is based in Arizona.
http://www.eastvalleytribune.com/index.php?sty=41785

'Delaying Real World' Author Studying Writing At UI (New York Times, May 22)
This is the time of year when new college graduates prepare to start the next chapter. It's a time for résumés and interviews and deciding what to be for the rest of your life. Or, if you follow the advice and example of Colleen Kinder, it's a time for deciding how to escape. Kinder is the author of what is becoming a must-read on college campuses -- "Delaying the Real World: A Twentysomething's Guide to Seeking Adventure" (Running Press, 2005). Unlike the ever-growing number of books on how to find a job, hers (and her Web site, delayingtherealworld.com, is about how not to find one. You have plenty of time for all that, she said. First, take time to do what you want, not what's expected. Kinder has spent the last year publicizing her book and applying to graduate school. Next year she will put her toe into the real world, studying writing at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA and working on her second book, about her year in Cuba.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/22/jobs/22wcol.html?

Robinson Finds More Obesity Among Wealthy (Chicago Tribune, May 22)
Is thinness waning as a status symbol? Extra girth went from a Victorian mark of power to a moniker of the lower class in the 20th Century, and it has showed little sign of a turnaround. Until this month, that is, when a study presented to the American Heart Association showed rising obesity rates among people who earn more than $60,000 a year. Studying government data linking family income to obesity levels, Dr. JENNIFER ROBINSON of the University of Iowa and colleagues found the percentage of the higher-income obese grew from less than 10 percent in 1970 to nearly 27 percent in 2002. During the same period, obesity rates among people earning less than $25,000 rose to 32.5 percent from 22.5 percent. "The inverse relationship between income and obesity seen in earlier studies has eroded," the co-author said. "Obesity prevalence now is similar across all income categories, with obesity prevalence in the highest income group rapidly approaching that of the lowest income group."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/sns-yourmoney-0522value,1,6121528.story?coll=chi-business-hed

UI Study On Obesity One Of Many (Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, May 22)
A story about the plethora of studies on what to eat and how to determine a healthy weight -- many of which contradict one another -- cites a UNIVERSITY OF IOWA study that found obesity is increasing three times faster in the affluent population than among people with lower income levels. The paper is based in Indiana.
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/living/11711511.htm

UI Math Department Gets Presidential Award (Digital Divide, May 22)
President Bush recently announced the recipients of the 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) -- a program supported and administered by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Each award includes a $10,000 grant for continued mentoring work. One recipient was the DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS AT UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, the largest single awarder of math doctorates to minorities in the nation. Articulated less than 10 years ago, Iowa's commitment to increasing the numbers of minority graduate students has resulted in a well-crafted recruiting campaign to convince students that the environment is a supportive one. A standing committee has responsibilities from student admissions to monitoring their progress. Alliances with other institutions including, but not restricted to those serving minority students, has resulted in substantial support from external grants and new and continuing collaborations with minority faculty elsewhere. Currently, the department has 21 percent underrepresented minority graduate students. It is ensuring continuity by institutionalizing structures, thereby permitting the growth of a community where organizations work together.
http://www.digitaldivide.net/blog/pshapiro/view?PostID=3778

Judge Once Taught At UI (The Republican, May 22)
Appointed to the U.S. District Court bench for the District of Massachusetts in 1994, this year's commencement speaker for Western New England College's School of Law gave what she called a somewhat non-traditional commencement speech. Born into a family of humble means in New York, Judge Nancy Gertner spoke a little bit about her early years to this year's class of 170 graduates gathered in Symphony Hall yesterday. A graduate of Barnard College and the Yale Law School, where she also earned a master's degree in political science, Gertner has had a long and distinguished legal career. She has taught at Boston College, Harvard University, Northeastern University and the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. She is a Charles R. Merriam distinguished professor at the Arizona State University Law School, and has been teaching sentencing at Yale for five years. The paper is based in Massachusetts.
http://www.masslive.com/springfield/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-0/111674816643220.xml&coll=1

Lee: Too Many Buttons May Distract Drivers (Shreveport Times, May 22)
Steering wheels aren't just for steering anymore. Or even honking. They're increasingly becoming the place to install more control buttons -- from switching radio stations to cranking up the A/C. Automakers say the buttons help motorists keep their fingers on the wheel instead of having to fiddle with dials and knobs on the dashboard, making driving safer. Of course, as steering wheels are loaded up with more and more buttons, there's worry a driver might accidentally hit the button that blasts the stereo when all he was trying to do was downshift into low. Pondering such possibilities, experts worry the button bonanza may go too far. "As you put more and more buttons on the steering wheel, it can be confusing," says JOHN D. LEE, a University of Iowa engineering professor who has written about driver distraction. Automakers say they are trying to be careful not to confuse.
http://www.shreveporttimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050522/NEWS05/505210324/1064

UI Study Inspired Patient Center (RedNova, May 21)
A story about Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center's Center for Shared Decision Making, whose goal is to help patients make better, wiser and potentially less costly choices about their treatment by involving them more actively in their health-care decisions, says center director Dr. James Weinstein. His interest in the approach was sparked a decade ago when he participated in a research project at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. The orthopedic surgeon was surprised to see that some surgery rates fell by 30 percent when patients were given more information about their choices. "I didn't feel like they (patients) were getting the information they needed to make their decisions," he said. "They were talking to me, but maybe that wasn't good enough, because I was a surgeon and surgeons do what surgeons do. Maybe they weren't getting a fair shake." The publication is based in Texas. Versions of the story also ran on the Website of the ORLANDO (Fla.) SENTINEL, the FORT WAYNE (Ind.) NEWS SENTINEL, MIAMI HERALD and many other media outlets.
http://www.rednova.com/news/health/151136/hospital_focuses_on_making_tough_decisions/

Judge Rules In Former UI Hawkeye Pierce Case (Covers, May 21)
A judge split the difference on Pierre Pierce's plans to prepare for the NBA draft, ruling Friday that Pierce could leave the state to attend a camp in Chicago next month but would not be allowed to move to California to train for the draft. Pierce, a former UNIVERSITY OF IOWA basketball player who faces four criminal charges from a January incident involving a former girlfriend, had been barred from leaving Iowa under pretrial release conditions. Dallas County District Judge Gregory Hulse relaxed some of those restrictions after Pierce sought permission to move to Los Angeles to begin training with his agent, and then travel to Chicago to take part in an NBA camp prior to the June 28 draft. Prosecutors fought the request and asked Hulse to revoke the bond, saying Pierce's past behavior proved he could not be trusted to leave Iowa and the supervision of corrections officials. Last month, Pierce admitted making 84 telephone calls to the alleged victim on March 25 and 29 using a stolen cell phone, violating the judge's no contact order. Earlier this week, prosecutors presented new evidence showing Pierce made 239 additional calls to the woman, also using cell phones that were not his. In his ruling Friday, Hulse denied the motion to revoke bond but gave Pierce a chance to pursue a professional career. The publication is based in Canada.
http://www.covers.com/articles/articles.aspx?theArt=47642&tid=29&t=1

Kresowik Comments On Social Security Proposal (Wall Street Journal, May 20)
A coalition of student-body presidents from across the U.S. is opposing the president's plan for Social Security with a petition calling for the White House and Congress to protect the 70-year-old program, Andrea Jones wrote in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The perspective of young people has been mostly overlooked," University of Georgia student president Adam Sparks said. "I want to make sure I'm paying into something that will still be solvent," said MARK KRESOWIK, president of the student government at the University of Iowa. The statement from the student leaders said the best ways to address Social Security's shortfalls are "to examine the levels at which workers pay into the system, ensure that benefits remain at the current levels for the neediest recipients, and reassess the payout to others."
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111646836131437793,00.html

UI Burning Oat Hulls As Fuel (Chronicle, May 20)
Faced with rising prices for the coal it uses to provide heat and electricity on its campus, the University of Iowa retrofitted one of its two power plants to burn oat hulls, which it gets from a Quaker Oats plant just 20 miles down the road. By using the hulls, a remnant of the milling process that comes in a light, powdery form that feels like feathers, the university managed to save about $500,000 on the cost of fuel this year, says DONALD J. GUCKERT, associate vice president and director of facilities management. The savings were welcome. Iowa's coal prices have gone up 91 percent in the past two years. And the cost of natural gas, which it also uses to run its power plants, has risen 66 percent in the same period. Iowa has been experimenting with alternative fuels in its vehicles as well. Of the 350 cars and light-duty trucks in its maintenance fleet, about 250 can use a gasoline-and-ethanol mixture that costs the institution just $1.20 per gallon. (Regular gasoline is running the university $1.66 a gallon and diesel fuel $1.70. Like many public colleges, Iowa does not pay taxes on its vehicle fuel.) "We use more than most people," says DAVID C. RICKETTS, director of parking and transportation, noting that ethanol can be produced from corn, of which Iowa has a lot.
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i37/37a02301.htm

UI Mentioned In Story On Foetry.com (Chronicle, May 20)
Alan Cordle, a 36-year-old research librarian at Portland Community College, has been moonlighting for the past year as the anonymous operator of Foetry.com, a Web site devoted to exposing corruption in poetry contests, many of which are run by university presses. Cordle created Foetry in April 2004 after years of watching his wife, Kathleen Halme, enter poetry contests and becoming increasingly convinced that they weren't fair. For example, in 2002 Brenda Hillman selected a manuscript by Aaron McCollough for the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. As part of that honor, Mr. McCollough's manuscript was published by Ahsahta Press at Boise State University. Foetry alleges that Ms. Hillman and Mr. McCollough knew each other and that she "helped him revise" his manuscript before the contest. Because of that connection, the argument goes, the contest was tainted. Mr. McCollough, now a graduate student in English at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, calls Foetry's allegations "a bunch of crap." He says he was one of a dozen or so students who participated in a weekend seminar conducted by Ms. Hillman at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA about two years before the contest. She did not, he insists, help him revise his manuscript at that time, although she did give him some suggestions after he won. Ms. Hillman backs up his account.
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i37/37a01201.htm

UI Press Book Chronicles History of Chautauqua (Chronicle, May 20)
Once upon a time in small-town America, summer meant Chautauqua. Before radio, before talking pictures, rural folk counted on finding wholesome and edifying entertainment when the "big brown tent" arrived. Itinerant Chautauqua had a stationary start in 1874 when a group of Methodists grew uncomfortable with the flamboyant emotion of camp-meeting revivalism. They proposed an alternative: a summer assembly for Sunday-school teachers. The first gathering was held by Lake Chautauqua in New York and the name stuck for offspring that arose elsewhere, presenting lectures, music, and recitations for a wider audience. Yet it wasn't until 1904 that Chautauqua went on the road, says Charlotte M. Canning, a theater and performance historian at the University of Texas at Austin and author of "The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance" (UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PRESS). She recounts what happened when a basic idea of "education and uplift" combined with the savvy of circuit-tour operators.
http://chronicle.com/prm/weekly/v51/i37/37a01601.htm

Kansas Tuition Increase Sought (Wichita Eagle, May 20)
Under proposals presented to the Kansas Board of Regents on Thursday, tuition increases will range from 6.5 percent for all students at Fort Hays State University to 15.9 percent for full-time undergraduate students enrolling at the University of Kansas. Wichita State University is proposing a 9 percent tuition increase. David Shulenburger, executive vice chancellor and provost at the University of Kansas, noted that even with the increases, tuition for Kansas residents at his university, $4,824 for two semesters, will be cheaper than in-state tuition at the University of Nebraska, $5,262; the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, $5,396, and the University of Missouri, $7,100. The story also appreared on the web site of the SALINA JOURNAL and KANSAS CITY STAR in Kansas.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/eagle/living/education/11690684.htm

Clarkson Teaches Pornography Studies Course (MTV.com, May 20)
Students at the University of Iowa are lining up for what promises to be a stimulating educational experience. Upper-level communication studies course "Critical Pornography Studies" will focus on the role of pornography in pop culture, according to JAY CLARKSON, the graduate student spearheading the class. Iowa House Speaker Christopher Rants (R-Sioux City) told The Associated Press he is against spending taxpayer dollars on the elective. "Don't they know we're not done with their budget yet? I'm pretty sure we don't need to increase state funding by $40 million to teach 'Critical Pornography Studies,' " Rants said. Clarkson said the speaker's opposition to discussing porn in a public forum is one of the main reasons the course is so important. "I really wish he had contacted me to find out about the course or even read the course description more carefully," he said. "Pornography exists, and merely dismissing it won't make it go away. It is important, in my opinion, to encourage students to think about [something in a way] that is both critical and informed. Isn't that what college is for?"
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1502632/20050519/index.jhtml?headlines=true

Author Earned Degrees From UI (Litchfield County Times, May 20)
Gregory Galloway came up with many of the snippets of the story that make up his first novel, "As Simple As Snow," as his wife, Gina, drove him from New Jersey to their weekend house on Bunker Hill Road in Cornwall. "I couldn't physically write during the drive, but I would sit in the passenger's seat and think and make notes, and when we got here I'd literally rush inside and write everything down. I would have about 15 or 20 pages in my head," Galloway said. The result of that frenzied technique is a sharp and well-constructed drama that weaves mystery and riddles into a teenage love story set in a small river town. Galloway has a bachelor's and a master's degree from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA in English, and another master's in poetry from the same school's well-regarded writing program. The newspaper is based in Connecticut.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?BRD=2303&dept_id=478844&newsid=14556922&PAG=461&rfi=9

Personal Savings Accounts Opposed (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 20)
In a column on events of the past week, a columnist writes "Some college student-body presidents are signing a petition opposing personal savings accounts. One, from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, says it will saddle the young with billions of dollars in future debt. Son, that debt was saddled up for you and the next generation of student-body presidents long before you were born."
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=5794b7ed6cbe510ce187181314ffba0d&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVb&_md5=441908685aa6551a7ca2a546a0489ae4

Woman Organizes Buddist Conferences (The Straits Times of Singapore, May 20)
When Angie Chew left home in Malaysia to study computer science at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA in the United States, she took along her most prized possession, a small statue of Buddha. She was 17 then. Since the she has spearheaded the formation of the Buddhist Fellowship and proved to be an adept organizer, staging two high-profile events in 2000 and last year which she billed as 'global Buddhist conferences' and which drew hundreds of participants.
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=5794b7ed6cbe510ce187181314ffba0d&_docnum=3&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVb&_md5=91eb4829389f9d89ec4b45fb466f38b0

Pipe Organist Earned Doctorate at UI (Korea Times, May 20)
Hanna Lee, a noted Korean pipe organist, will give a recital at Yongsan Art Hall in Seoul on May 23. She received a doctorate from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/culture/200505/kt2005052019292411720.htm

Deer Collision Safety Examined (ABC News, May 19)
In a story about the dangers of hitting deer crossing highways, footage supplied by the NATIONAL ADVANCED DRIVING SIMULATOR at the University of Iowa was shown. The demonstration shows how drivers suddenly confronting a deer make a potentially fatal mistake, swerving to avoid the animal. The footage shows a driver in a vehicle traveling at about 45 miles per hour when a deer walks out from behind a parked vehicle into the path of the driver's car.
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=c304dbb6a8fe433a015bb0694c7cc324&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVb&_md5=8560b7f98f1cd8a02b5bb2f4f53558c9

Actor to Study at UI (Pittsburg Post Gazette, May 19)
Elena Passarello is a writer, musician, comic, teacher and, actor. Starting this week, Pittsburgh gets its last chance for the foreseeable future to enjoy her acting, as she plays the young wife at the center of the comic whirlwind in City Theatre's production of the Steve Martin-Carl Sternheim farce "The Underpants." In August, Passarello leaves town to pursue a master's degree in nonfiction writing at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=5794b7ed6cbe510ce187181314ffba0d&_docnum=4&wchp=dGLbVzz-zSkVb&_md5=6d3d0165b1c28cbd1fd6016751103f3f

Signori Web Study Noted (Webpronews.com, May 19)
According to a recent study co-written by Ask Jeeves Director of Advanced Products Antonio Gulli and University of Iowa's ALESSIO SIGNORINI, the major search engines have managed to index nearly 85 percent of the estimated 11.5 billion documents that make up the "visible web." While the study relies heavily on estimates and on reporting from search engines, it is one of the only recent examinations of the actual size of the web and of search engine coverage.
http://www.webpronews.com/insidesearch/insidesearch/wpn-56-20050519SearchEnginesIndex85ofVisibleWebContent.html

Skorton Testifies On ALF Attack (Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19)
Attacks by two extremist groups, one of which has been tied to numerous acts of vandalism against research facilities at universities, are growing in both frequency and size and represent one of the most serious domestic-terrorism threats today, federal law-enforcement officials told a Senate panel on Wednesday. The Animal Liberation Front and its sister organization, the Earth Liberation Front, have claimed credit for 1,100 incidents of vandalism that have caused more than $110-million in damage in the past five years. The groups, often called the ALF and the ELF, are also using college campuses to recruit members, law-enforcement officials said. The senators also heard statements in support of the ALF's tactics attributed to an associate professor of philosophy and humanities at the University of Texas at El Paso, Steven Best, who often speaks on behalf of the organization on college campuses. James M. Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma, questioned why the University of Iowa, which was hit by an ALF attack last November, allowed Best to speak on its campus in January. The university's president, DAVID J. SKORTON, who testified at the hearing, said that although he had been pressured by some professors to cancel the speech, he had let it go forward because Best had been invited by a student group and college campuses should be venues for open discussion. Still, Skorton told the committee, Best's statements on the Iowa campus "were strongly supportive of the worst violent acts." The ALF attack on a research lab at Iowa has cost the university $450,000 so far, Skorton said. But "what cannot be measured in monetary terms is the loss of progress in research," he told the committee. Researchers at the university, he said, are "still being harassed and are still concerned about their own safety." After the hearing, Skorton said he was concerned that the ALF attacks at Iowa and elsewhere would "change the openness of campuses." Some faculty members have criticized Iowa administrators for not providing adequate security in the aftermath of the attack.
http://chronicle.com/prm/daily/2005/05/2005051903n.htm

Skorton The 'Voice of Reason' In Hearing (Inside Higher Ed, May 19)
Perhaps only in the superheated atmosphere of the current conflict over the U.S. Senate's confirmation of judges could a hearing about illegal bombings and arson by animal rights groups turn into a partisan affair. Yet that is precisely what happened at Wednesday's hearing of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works on the actions of the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front and other groups that have taken credit for attacks on university research laboratories and other facilities in recent years. It's not that any of the lawmakers defended the attacks as appropriate or legitimate; the fault line that produced endless party line bickering was over a Federal Bureau of Investigation conclusion (endorsed by the panel's Republican leaders) that "eco-terrorism" of the sort practiced by these groups is the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat facing the United States. Also contentious were accusations by witnesses and Republican senators that what they called "mainstream individuals and organizations" such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and even the Humane Society of the United States help "support" the more extreme groups, financially and otherwise. Amid the melee, DAVID J. SKORTON, the University of Iowa president who was the lone witness from academe at Wednesday's session, sought to stay above the fray, and he emerged as the voice of reason. In his prepared testimony and in answers to oftentimes politically loaded questions from one side of the political aisle or the other, Skorton stuck to two key messages. He dispassionately (yet compassionately) described the damage, physical and psychological, that was done by a November 2004 attack on laboratories at the university. Far worse than the $450,000 in damage to scientific equipment, computers and supplies, Skorton said, was the "human cost" to the researchers who lost or faced major delays in their scholarly work and to them and their families because of harassment and fear that they faced in the days and weeks that followed. He also stood up quite passionately for academic freedom and for the right of animal rights advocates to push their cause, with which he expressed some sympathy. (He also sought to distance himself, politely, from committee leaders' view that the animal rights groups are terrorists. "I called this a criminal act, and I am always careful with the words I choose," Skorton told reporters after the hearing. "It is criminal because it broke laws.") Skorton, who described himself as a vegetarian who is "active in animal rights" issues, said there was a "whole area of constructive discussion" in which "reasonable people can disagree" about the appropriate balance between research interests and the protection of animals. "On university campuses, especially, it is our obligation to have that debate," he said, even if people take "odious" points of view.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/05/19/animal

Squire: Senate Faces 'Bare-knuckle Fight' Debate (Globe & Mail, May 19)
A nasty debate over the nomination of a conservative Texas judge began yesterday, in the prelude to a major battle that may eventually determine the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court and how it rules on contentious issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. Republican senators, frustrated by the success of Democrats in blocking the nominations of several of President George W. Bush's choices for judicial appointments, are threatening to abolish the filibuster, which allows senators to talk out an issue without it coming to a vote. The Republicans say it's a question of fairness -- that their Democratic rivals should allow each judicial nomination to come to a vote, which the Republicans would easily win with their 55 seats in the 100-seat Senate. The Democrats say the majority party is intent on squashing minority rights and ending a long tradition of U.S. politics in their menacing talk of killing the filibuster. "This is really a bare-knuckle fight between the parties over the extent to which the Republicans will be able to push through many of the things they have on their agenda," said PEVERILL SQUIRE, a political scientist at the University of Iowa.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20050519/CONG
RESS19/TPInternational/Americas

Skorton Says Activists Will Not Intimidate UI (WQAD, May 19)
The president of the University of Iowa says animal rights activists practicing terrorist tactics will not intimidate the university. DAVID SKORTON told a congressional committee in Washington D-C yesterday that last year's raid on a research lab created an atmosphere of fear. Members of the Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, claimed responsibility for the break-in at Seashore Hall and Spence Labs in November. No arrests have been made. Skorton says there are clear differences between civil disobedience and the "criminal behavior" that occurred at the university. He says security changes have been made, and the university remains committed to research that he says is "scientifically sound, legal and humane." The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is investigating eco-terrorism. The station is based in Moline, Ill.
http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=3365662

Fisher: Tax Incentives Costly (Lexington Herald Leader, May 19)
Kentucky could continue to offer billions of dollars to Toyota and hundreds of other corporations if legislation introduced yesterday by Kentucky Congressman Ben Chandler and a raft of other lawmakers is enacted. The proposed law, introduced by a bipartisan group in both the U.S. House and Senate, is designed to short-circuit a court ruling that threatens to make illegal many of the income-tax abatements that Kentucky and 42 other states now routinely hand out to help lure footloose multi-state corporations. Filings in the ongoing court case by Kentucky Attorney General Greg Stumbo credit the state's tax-incentive programs with luring more than $10.8 billion in capital investment and 75,000 jobs to Kentucky since 1997. However, many experts question such assertions, citing academic research that suggests tax incentives only actually affect the location decision of a company about 10 percent of the time. In other words, tax incentives are a waste of state funds 90 percent of the time, said PETER FISHER, a University of Iowa economist who has published two books analyzing the effectiveness of state economic-development policies. "Tax incentives are not totally ineffective, they're just very costly for what you get out of them," Fisher said. "If nine times out of 10 we're giving away money with no effect, then isn't there a better way to spend our money to improve the economy?"
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/11682606.htm

Westerhaus To Move To NCAA (Indianapolis Star, May 19)
The NCAA named Charlotte Westerhaus vice president for diversity and inclusion. It's a newly created position intended to help increase job opportunities for women and minorities. Westerhaus will report directly to president Myles Brand and is expected to join the NCAA in August. She has been an assistant to the president and director of equal opportunity and diversity at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. Version of this story also appeared May 19 on the websites of WANE-TV in Indiana, MACON (Ga.) TELEGRAPH, PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER, and SAN LUIS OBISPO (Calif.) TRIBUNE.
http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050519/SPORTS/505190423/1004/SPORTS

UI Students Organized Pro-Israel Conference (Washington Jewish Week, May 19)
Parents are frightened, defense organizations are sounding the alarm and community-based activists are in a state of near apoplexy over the alleged dominance of anti-Israel forces on American college campuses. In the past few years, however, there has been a quiet revolution in pro-Israel campus advocacy -- supported by such mainstream organizations as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Hillel and the Israel on Campus Coalition -- and savvy pro-Israel students have made stunning inroads at colleges and universities across the country, including those frequently pointed to as the most hostile to Israel. Activists at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA engaged campus political leaders beyond their traditional base by organizing a pro-Israel conference featuring two members of Congress, and which was attended by College Democrats, College Republicans, as well as student government officials from more than a dozen Iowa universities with little or no Jewish infrastructure.
http://www.washingtonjewishweek.com/localstory.php?/wjw2/283336601931691.bsp

Kresowick Joins Student Social Security Stand (Danbury New Times, May 19)
More than 150 student leaders at universities from Georgia to Iowa to California, from Princeton to WestConn, are taking a stand on Social Security. Students For A Secure Future, a coalition of youth leaders from all 50 states, announced plans Tuesday to meet with their state legislators and lobby Congress and the White House with a united message. MARK KRESOWICK, student government president of the University of Iowa, said that students talk about immediate concerns like tuition, but Social Security is a long-term concern. "In the next 40 years, a portion of our income will go to the system. It's almost taxation without representation. The people who will pay for the decisions that are made today have no voice. That's why I signed," Kresowick said. The students did not have solutions to the problems funding the program, but some were open to reviewing the caps on contributions and examining whether the wealthiest citizens should receive benefits. "I have concerns that the people who need it the most can't pay in at the same rate as those who can afford a private retirement system," Kresowick said. The newspaper is based in Connecticut.
http://news.newstimeslive.com/story.php?id=71480&category=Local

Columnist Notes UI Class On Pornography (Naples Daily News, May 19)
A columnist writes that "the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA is offering a class on pornography. My how the Corn Belt has changed. I bet it's the influence of all those politicians who show up for the Iowa presidential caucuses. But we wander. The instructor tells the Associated Press the course "will examine the impact of porn on mainstream culture." If asked nicely, the FCC might be willing to offer its files on Janet Jackson and Howard Stern as Cliffs Notes." The newspaper is based in Florida.
http://www.naplesnews.com/npdn/pe_columnists/article/0,2071,NPDN_14960_3788610,00.html

UISG President Signs Petition (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 18)
More than 150 student body presidents from college campuses all over the country, including four from Georgia, have signed a petition calling for a commitment from Congress and the White House to protect Social Security. The coalition, called "Students For a Secure Future," opposes the president's plan to change the program to allow workers to divert earnings into private accounts. MARK KRESOWIK, president of student government at the University of Iowa, said Bush's approach will saddle young people of today with billions of dollars in debt in the future. "I want to make sure I'm paying into something that will still be solvent," he said during a Tuesday conference call on the issue. The statement from the student leaders says the best ways to address Social Security's shortfalls are "to examine the levels at which workers pay into the system, ensure that benefits remain at the current levels for the neediest recipients, and reassess the payout to others."
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/0505/18college.html

Conroy Frankness About Mental Illness Recalled (Wall Street Journal, May 18)
Michael Judge, the paper's deputy editorial features editor, recalls his time in the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and its late director, FRANK CONROY. Judge says he liked Conroy "because he was brave and kind enough to talk to a roomful of Iowans about the myths surrounding creativity and mental illness. The artist creates despite mental illness, not because of it, he told a roomful of Iowans in the early 1990s. Like Conroy, Judge said he had family members who suffered from mental illness. (Subscription required)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB111638179547436585-search.html?vql_string=Conroy%3Cin%3E%28article%2Dbody%29&collection=wsjie/archive

Glass: Women Who Work At Home Make Less (Miami Herald, May 18)
Despite more awareness about flexibility in the workplace, the percentage of employers offering options has declined in the last three years, according to the Society of Human Resource Management. Employers face competing sets of demands: cost-cutting pressures to squeeze more from employees juxtaposed with pressures to bring turnover rates down through work-life policies. Managers or professionals who work at home part of the day or work reduced hours lost as much as 55 percent of their earnings growth over a seven-year period, according to a study by JENNIFER GLASS at the University of Iowa.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/11670613.htm

Whitt Coauthors Book On Graduation Rates (Inside Higher Ed, May 18)
Why are students more likely to thrive at -- and graduate from -- some colleges than others? That's the central question in "Student Success in College: Creating Conditions That Matter," just published by Jossey-Bass. The four authors of the book provide in-depth examinations of 20 colleges at which students are deeply engaged in learning. The ideas in the book draw on the work of the National Survey of Student Engagement and the Institute for Effective Educational Practice, both of which are part of Indiana University's Center for Postsecondary Research. The authors of the book are George E. Kuh, director of the center; Jillian Kinzie, associate director of the institute; John H. Schuh, distinguished professor of educational leadership at Iowa State University; and ELIZABETH J. WHITT, professor of education at the University of Iowa.
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/05/18/kuh

UI Class On Pornography Cited (NBC5i.com, May 18)
An Associated Press article reports that UNIVERSITY OF IOWA graduate student Jay Clarkson will be teaching a class about pornography this fall. Clarkson said no films or other explicit material will be shown in class, which will examine the impact of pornography on mainstream culture. But Iowa House Speaker Chris Rants doesn't like the idea a bit. The lawmaker said the pornography class isn't something that should be taught with taxpayers' money. The station is based in Dallas, Texas. Versions of the story also ran on the Websites of KSBW in California, WMTV in Maine, NEWS4-JAX in Florida, WSOCTV in North Carolina and other media outlets.
http://www.nbc5i.com/education/4501851/detail.html

Course To Examine Pornography's Pervasiveness (New York Times, May 18)
Jay Clarkson has had no trouble getting students at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA to sign up for his fall class examining pornography in popular culture. One person who isn't a fan, however, is Iowa House Speaker Chris Rants, who is questioning whether tax dollars should be spent on the elective class. "Do they know that we're not done with their budget yet?" Rants, R-Sioux City, said. "I'm pretty sure we don't need to increase state funding by $40 million to teach critical pornography studies." Clarkson, a graduate student, says students seeking a cheap thrill should look elsewhere. "There are probably some students who will be titillated by the title," he said. "They will be disappointed." The one-time course is being offered by the communications program at the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences -- and it's already full with 20 students, and a growing waiting list. Clarkson said his goal is to get people to think about how pornography has moved from the adult bookstore to everyday advertising. "It's not a class about enjoying or viewing pornography," Clarkson said. "We will certainly be talking and reading critics who are against pornography." Clarkson said pornographic films and other explicit materials won't be viewed in class. Versions of the story also ran on the websites of the BOSTON GLOBE, the MINNEAPOLIS STAR-TRIBUNE, LOCAL6-TV in Florida, and other media outlets.
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Pornography-Course.html

UI Power Plant Wins Award For Burning Oat Hulls (WQAD-TV, May 18)
The power plant at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA has received a national award for generating power by burning oat hulls and reducing its use of coal. University of Iowa officials say The Association of Higher Education Facilities recognized the university's Biomass Fuel Project, which uses waste hulls from the Quaker Oats plant in Cedar Rapids to generate power. The project saves the university an estimated $500,000 in fuel costs each year and reduces coal use by more than 17,000 tons Officials say burning oat hulls emits fewer greenhouse gasses and soot into the atmosphere, making it more environmentally friendly than burning coal. The station is based in Moline, Ill.
http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=3358121

Delaney Named Dean of Nursing at Minnesota (Minneaplois Star-Tribune, May 18)
CONNIE WHITE DELANEY, a nursing professor from the University of Iowa, has been named dean of the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota. Delaney, 55, has taught for more than 25 years at nursing schools in Iowa and around the world. She directed the Institute of Nursing Knowledge at the University of Iowa and holds professorships at universities in Wales and Iceland.
She is known for her work in health informatics, the science of using computerized information to improve health care, university officials said.
http://www.startribune.com/stories/1556/5409553.html

Chang Talks About Iowa Writers' Workshop (WBUR, May 17)
The Iowa Writer's Workshop has trained hundred of writers in its 70 year history, though it is only had a handful of directors. Most recently that was FRANK CONROY, by his own admission, a tough and demanding teacher. Conroy died last month and one of his former students is about to take charge.  LAN SAMANTHA CHANG is the first woman to head the workshop and she is considerably younger than her predecessor Conroy. But they share a common belief in the power of words and a dedication to the idea that writing is not just some skill one is just born with, but something that can be taught. Chang was interviewed on "The Connection" produced by WBUR, Boston's National Public Radio affiliate.
http://www.theconnection.org/shows/2005/05/20050517_b_main.asp

Squire Comments On Iowa Governor Race (Roll Call, March 17)
Iowa ranks fourth on a list of the 10 most endangered governorships for 2005 and 2006, according to the Capitol Hill publication, which ranks states only by the likelihood of partisan change, not by the likelihood of a sitting governor being ousted in a primary by a candidate who goes on to win in the general election. Iowa climbs two slots this month, amid quietly growing concern among Democrats and growing unity among Republicans in support of their frontrunner, Rep. Jim Nussle. Nussle, who faces a challenge from Sioux City businessman Bob Vander Plaats, does not yet seem to be taking too much flak for his role in cutting federal outlays as House Budget chairman, though he's still little known outside of his eastern Iowa district. On the Democratic side, Secretary of State Chet Culver, the tentative frontrunner, benefits from high approval ratings for retiring Democratic incumbent Tom Vilsack, but he could face several primary opponents. "The Democrats have a decent pool of candidates, but none can match Nussle's campaign experience and fundraising ability," said University of Iowa political scientist PEVERILL SQUIRE. That said, the seat is open and the state is politically divided. Keep it high on the list.
http://proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url=http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=ef16e0e6c50e6b6ca7d5213e89b649f3&_docnum=1&wchp=dGLbVzb-zSkVb&_md5=3e85dab55f86f20a0fe81911e04e73d7

Barkan-led Study Recommends Cut In Uganda Aid (AllAfrica.com, May 17)
A World Bank-commissioned study has recommended aid cuts to Uganda over the next three years, warning that recent political developments have jeopardized the country's development agenda. A team headed by Prof. JOEL BARKAN of the University of Iowa, senior consultant on Africa governance for the World Bank, visited Uganda last year before preparing the report entitled "The Political Economy of Uganda - The Art of Managing a Donor-Financed Neo-Patrimonial State". "Extreme prudence is required," the confidential report says, adding, "We regret that we cannot be more positive about the present political situation in Uganda, especially given the country's admirable record through the late 1990s." New Vision is based in Uganda.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200505171549.html

Blanck Comments on Supreme Court Case (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 17)
The Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide if states and counties can be sued for not accommodating disabled prisoners, a big-money question for governments already strapped for cash. The court already has held that people in state prisons are protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. Now the justices will consider whether prisoners can sue for damages under the ADA, a law meant to ensure equal treatment for the disabled in many areas of life. The ADA has become the battleground for the Rehnquist court's legacy in terms of federalism," said PETER BLANCK, a University of Iowa law professor specializing in the disabilities law. Blanck said the case addressing the rights of convicted criminals may be tougher for the court when it hears arguments next fall. "It's not a very sympathetic population," he said. The same story appeared on the Web site of THE GUARDIAN (UK), MIAMI HERALD, ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT GAZETTE, ST. PAUL PIONEER PRESS, COLUMBI (SC) STATE, CHARLOTTE OBSERVER, KANSAS CITY STAR, BRADENTON (FL) HERALD, DULUTH NEWS TRIBUNE, GRAND FORKS HERALD, BILOXI (MS) SUN HERALD, SAN LUIS OBISPO (CA) TRIBUNE, MYRTLE BEACH (SC) SUN NEWS and numerous other news organizations.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apwashington_story.asp?category=1154&slug=Scotus%20Disabled%20Inmates

Thomas Interprets Mars Rover Data (Akron Becon Journal, May 17)
To the teams of researchers analyzing photographs and other data beamed back to Earth by the Mars rovers, GEB THOMAS is equal parts detective, optometrist and quality control manager. Thomas, an engineering professor at the University of Iowa, helps NASA geologists interpret what they see _ helping them to avoid confusing pebbles with boulders as they scan the dusty, Martian landscape with a pair of rolling robots. "Driving a robot is like walking by, only looking through a paper towel tube. It's not easy," said Thomas, who was awarded a three-year $835,000 grant to continue his piece of the Mars exploration. The same story appeared on the Web sites of KFMB-TV (San Diego) and the FORT WAYNE JOURNAL GAZETTE.
http://www.ohio.com/mld/ohio/news/11659764.htm

UI Study: TM Might Lower Stress (Lexington Herald Leader, May 17)
Practicing Transcendental Meditation -- a technique involving intense breathing exercises and the repetition of words, or "mantras" -- might have benefits beyond stress reduction. It might help you live longer. Researchers at five universities and medical centers including the Medical College of Georgia and the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CARVER COLLEGE OF MEDICINE tracked 202 patients with high blood pressure for as long as 18 years. They found that participants who used Transcendental Meditation for 20 minutes twice a day had a 23 percent lower death rate from all causes and nearly a one-third lower death rate from heart disease than those who did not practice the form of meditation. The Herald Leader is based in Kentucky.
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/living/health/11645461.htm

Barkan-led Study Recommends Cut in Uganda World Bank Aid (New Vision, May 17)
A World Bank-commissioned study has recommended aid cuts to Uganda over the next three years, warning that recent political developments have jeopardised the country's development agenda. A team headed by Prof. JOEL BARKAN of the University of Iowa, senior consultant on Africa governance for the World Bank, visited Uganda last year before preparing the report entitled "The Political Economy of Uganda - The Art of Managing a Donor-Financed Neo-Patrimonial State". "Extreme prudence is required," the confidential report says, adding, "we regret that we cannot be more positive about the present political situation in Uganda, especially given the country's admirable record through the late 1990s." New Vision is based in Uganda.
http://www.newvision.co.ug/D/8/12/435022

Former UI Doctor Performs Arkansas' First Liver Transplant (Arkansas Democrat Gazette, May 17)
The first liver transplant was performed in the state of Arkansas last week at the Univeristy of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. The surgery was performed by Dr. Youmin Wu, formerly of the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.
http://www.nwanews.com/story.php?paper=adg&section=News&storyid=116709

Writer Critical of UI Road Tax Study (Albequerque Tribune, May 17)
A columnist is critical of a proposal to tax drivers for the miles they drive, instead of for the amount of gas they buy, because the plan is a disincentive for auto companies to manufacture, and drivers to buy, more fuel efficient vehicles. The UNIVERSITY OF IOWA PUBLIC POLICY CENTER is currently engaged in a feasibility study examining the viability of such an alternative road funding tax.
http://www.abqtrib.com/albq/bu_columnists/article/0,2565,ALBQ_19837_3776299,00.html

UI Studies Electronic Stability Control Systems (Design News, May 16)
After more than a decade of experience with electronic stability control systems (ESC), automotive researchers are comprehending the value of this little used technology. Stop the skid with ESC, they're saying, and you can head off the other events in the gruesome chain. "People are realizing now that if you can make the driver better, you can reduce crashes," says Rich Golitko, marketing director for electronic stability control at Bosch Automotive. Indeed, the realization has arrived in the form of an avalanche of technical studies. In January, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety published findings declaring that ECS reduced fatal single-vehicle crashes in one study by an astounding 56 percent. That study followed on the heels of a September paper from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) describing a potential 35 percent reduction in single-vehicle crashes if ECS were used across the board in all vehicles. Similar studies from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA and the Swedish National Road Commission showed 34 percent and 38 percent control improvements on wet and snowy roads, respectively.
http://www.designnews.com/article/CA529770.html

UI College Of Medicine Takes Part In TM Study (Standard Times, May 16)
Practicing Transcendental Meditation - a technique involving intense breathing exercises and the repetition of words, or "mantras" - may have benefits beyond stress reduction. It might actually help you live longer. Researchers at five universities and medical centers including the Medical College of Georgia and the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA CARVER COLLEGE OF MEDICINE tracked 202 patients with high blood pressure for up to 18 years. They found that participants who used Transcendental Meditation twice a day for 20 minutes had a 23 percent lower death rate from all causes and nearly a third lower death rate from heart disease than those who did not practice the form of meditation. The paper is based in Massachusetts.
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/daily/05-05/05-16-05/b04li695.htm

Redlawsk Co-Authors Essay on Political Corruption (Chicago Tribune, May 15)
In an opinion piece, political science professor DAVID REDLAWSK writes that a fear of corruption runs deep into American political history. James Madison and the other Founding Fathers considered it "corrupt" when government officials overstepped the legal boundaries of their office. For this reason, Madison and his colleagues gave the different branches of government substantial powers to police and discipline each other. This is what schoolchildren learn as "checks and balances." Yet within the confines of the executive and legislative branches, favoritism in politics was not to be condemned. Indeed, it was to be expected and even applauded. Under Madison's celebrated political logic--readers may recall his forceful arguments in the Federalist Papers--ambitious representatives have strong incentives to reach out to particular constituents and interest groups (i.e., "factions"), and channel their concerns into the policymaking process.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-0505140246may15,0,6760334.story?coll=chi-newsopinionperspective-hed

Actress To Attend UI Nonfiction MFA Program (Beaver County Times, May 15)
No one will see actress Elena Passarello drop her drawers in City Theatre's upcoming production of "The Underpants," Steve Martin's 2002 adaptation of Carl Sternheim's classic comedy set in 1910 Germany. Yet those drawers, worn by Passarello's character, Louise, the wife of a puritanical bureaucrat, are the foundation of the play. "The story's about a woman who was trying to see the king, and her bloomers fell down," Passarello explained. "It caused a scandal. The joke is that nothing happens. It's a pair of bloomers the size of capri pants." "Underpants" is an ending of sorts for the 27-year-old actress who came to Pittsburgh by way of South Carolina and Atlanta. She has appeared in City Theatre's 2002 production of "Mrs. Bob Cratchit's Wild Christmas Binge" and several Public Theater and Pittsburgh Playhouse productions.  While in Pittsburgh, Passarello earned a degree in English writing and literature and a degree in French at the University of Pittsburgh. Her role as Louise will be her last performance in Pittsburgh before she leaves this fall to pursue a master's degree in nonfiction writing at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. The paper is based in Pennsylvania.
http://www.timesonline.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=14530788&BRD=2305&PAG=461&dept_id=478564&rfi=6

Thomas Analyzing Mars Rover Images (ABC News, May 14)
To the teams of researchers analyzing photographs and other data beamed back to Earth by the Mars rovers, GEB THOMAS is equal parts detective, optometrist and quality control manager. Thomas, an engineering professor at the University of Iowa, helps NASA geologists interpret what they see - helping them to avoid confusing pebbles with boulders as they scan the dusty, Martian landscape with a pair of rolling robots. "Driving a robot is like walking by, only looking through a paper towel tube. It's not easy," said Thomas, who was awarded a three-year $835,000 grant to continue his piece of the Mars exploration. Just as challenging, Thomas says, is training geologists to make observations with photography instead of their vision and field training. He helps them draw reasonable conclusions from rover images that appear within a limited field of vision and uncertain depth perception. His work to narrow the divide between perception and reality will take him this fall to Chile's Atacama desert, an arid, lifeless environment about as close as any spot on Earth gets to Mars, Thomas and others say. The paper is based in Columbia, S.C. Versions of the story also ran on the websites of FORT WAYNE (Ind.) NEWS SENTINEL, TALLAHASSEE (Fla.) DEMOCRAT, ABERDEEN (S.D.) AMERICAN NEWS, PHILLY.COM and the WILKES BARRE TIMES-LEADER, both in Philadelphia, THE STATE in South Carolina, WASHINGTON POST, KANSAS CITY (Mo.) STAR and many other media outlets.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=758180

Baldus Comments On New England Execution (Chicago Tribune, May 13)
New England's first execution in 45 years Friday has some opponents of capital punishment worried that the death penalty will gain wider acceptance in the region. But many advocates and experts are not concerned. They say the execution of serial killer Michael Ross stemmed more from the special circumstances of the case, including his decision to abandon any appeals, rather than a broader movement toward more executions in New England. "If you don't have volunteers, you don't have many executions in these cases. There is not a lot of enthusiasm for it," said DAVID BALDUS, a University of Iowa law professor who has studied the death penalty. Versions of the story also ran on the websites of the COLUMBIA (Mo.) DAILY TRIBUNE, CHICAGO DAILY SOUTHTOWN, CONTRA COSTA TIMES in California and other media outlets.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/sns-ap-connecticut-execution,1,1035316.story?coll=chi-news-hed

UI Traveling Culture Website Noted (Grand Forks Herald, May 13)
Billed "A Lake Region Legacy," North Dakota Chautauqua continues in the Devils Lake area this weekend with three of the 15 events offered during this 2005 season. The Chautauqua's origins began in New York State near Lake Chautauqua. It began as programming to train Sunday school teachers, but evolved in assemblies across the country and, ultimately, touring events with lecturers and other performances aimed at stimulating self and civic improvement, especially in rural America, according to the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA'S Traveling Culture Web site. The newspaper is based in North Dakota.
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/11634418.htm

Writer Recalls Failures (The Oregonian, May 13)
Gina Ochsner's written two books and won more than a dozen awards for her short stories, but she thinks that learning to deal with failure helped prepare her for success. "I was the worst graduate student they had ever seen (at Iowa State)," Ochsner said, "and they told me this. If anybody had gone around the room in one of my classes and picked out the three people who would end up writing a book, I wouldn't have been one of them." Ochsner can tell funny stories about attending Iowa State (she thought she had been accepted into the famous writing program at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA and didn't realize her mistake until she was driving across the country). The newspaper serves Portland, Ore.
http://www.oregonlive.com/books/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/entertainment/1115805572291830.xml&coll=7

Vilsack Signs Medicaid Bill (WQAD-TV, May 13)
Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack has signed into law an overhaul of the state's Medicaid system. The move staves off a loss of $180 million dollars in federal money and adds up to 30,000 people to the state's health care rolls. Under the measure, the state will be able to use money spent on charity care at two big public hospitals as a lure to attract federal matching funds, adding those patients to a modified form of Medicaid. The legislation, which sets up a new pilot program offering health coverage through UNIVERSITY OF IOWA HOSPITALS AND CLINICS and Broadlawns Medical Center in Des Moines, was the result of months of bargaining between state and federal officials. WQAD is based in Moline, Ill.
http://www.wqad.com/Global/story.asp?S=3338545

Blumberg: Babies, Adults Share Sleep Patterns (Houston Chronicle, May 12)
A study by researchers at the University of Iowa indicates that babies and adults do not sleep so differently after all. MARK BLUMBERG, of the research team that published results this month in the online journal PLoS Biology, said infants and adults have the same basic stages of sleep. As babies grow, he said, "it's more that the pattern of sleep is changing over time." Through a series of tests on week-old rats, the researchers linked behaviors that indicate REM and non-REM sleep to specific midbrain areas also known to be crucial in the sleep of adults. From this, they concluded that the neural mechanisms of infant and adult sleep are very similar.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3178387

UI To Partner On Fiber Purchase (Wall Street Journal, May 12)
Four years ago, after the collapse of the telecommunications bubble, much of the world was awash in fiber-optic communications lines. Not to worry, said some technology seers: New uses would arise that would suck up all that capacity. But despite a surge in Internet usage since then, the fiber glut is as bad as ever. Today, researchers estimate that about 85 percent of the fiber lines in the ground in the U.S. still are "dark," or inactive. Even the fiber that is being used isn't close to having its full capacity exploited. In fact, less than 5 percent of the total transmission capacity of all the fiber lines is being put to use -- about the same amount as in 2001. The endurance of the fiber glut has sparked some creative uses of the capacity. Cable-TV giant Comcast Corp. is forming its own nationwide fiber network so it won't have to rely entirely on satellites to beam TV signals among its local cable systems. Universities have been snapping up lines at discount prices to form their own data-sharing networks. Among the new players getting into fiber is the University of Minnesota, which plans to buy its own link to a research hub in Chicago in collaboration with the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, Iowa State University and the University of Wisconsin. It will cost each school $2.5 million to $5 million over five years, says Steve Cawley, chief information officer at the University of Minnesota. "The expense is significant," Mr. Cawley says, but he adds that the universities will be able to use the network for engineering experiments they wouldn't be able to do with a rented fiber system.
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111584986236831034,00.html?mod=telecommunications%5Fprimary%5Fhs

Family Gives Back To Ronald McDonald House (Hancock-Henderson Quill, May 12)
When Angie Rankin underwent stem cell transplants four years ago at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA HOSPITALS in Iowa City, the local Ronald McDonald House made it possible for her parents to stay locally. The Ronald McDonald House program offers overnight accommodations for the families of minor children undergoing demanding medical treatment in order to prevent lengthy travel time to and from the hospital or medical center. Rates are nominal and no one is ever turned away based on inability to pay. But someone always pays, and one avenue of donations is the collection of pop can tabs. Mike and Nancy Rankin contacted Southern elementary principal Dale Buss at the start of the current school year and made arrangements for the collection of pop can tabs by pre-school through 4th grade students. The student collected 256 pounds of tabs that filled more than half the bed of a one-half ton pick-up truck. The Ronald McDonald House receives over $10,000 annually from donated pull tabs.
http://www.quillnewspaper.com/thisweek/a1103a1.html

African-American Radio Executive Profiled (Omaha Reader, May 12)
Omaha native Catherine Liggins Hughes, a 58-year-old African American whose Radio One network is described as "the voice of black America and the lightning rod for the black community." Her mother's father, Laurence C. Jones, was one of the first African-Americans to receive a degree in education from the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. The newspaper serves Omaha, Neb.
http://www.thereader.com/createpage.asp?contentID=3228

Conductor Studied at UI (The Irish Times, May 11)
Conductor Marion Doherty, who founded the large Malahide choir Enchiriadis Treis in 1994, had more than just a dissertation in her suitcase when she returned from three years of doctoral studies at the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA. She also had a forgotten Missa brevis written by an obscure monk-composer, Romanus Pinzger, and published in 1750. After stumbling on incomplete manuscripts in Iowa, Doherty painstakingly reassembled the complete work following research in Switzerland and Bavaria. A performance at Mahony Hall in Dublin was the culmination of all her far-flung detective and reconstructive work.
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=79e79d3d1ce774f2dc28d3a0ada4cb42&_docnum=5&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVb&_md5=447ad23c3c2ddb48c1232cd35180158c

Squire Comments on DeLay Dinner (Los Angeles Times, May 11)
More than 800 people were expected to gather Thursday night at a Washington hotel for a show of solidarity with their beleaguered hero, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).  DeLay, who was admonished three times last year for his political tactics, faces another investigation by the House ethics committee and has been raising money for his defense. "This is the wrong event at the wrong time for DeLay," said PEVERILL SQUIRE, a University of Iowa political scientist. "This dinner is simply going to remind people of the reasons they have their doubts about his ethics. DeLay being toasted by conservative fat cats ought to be the last image his backers want to convey right now."
http://web.lexis-nexis.com/universe/document?_m=79e79d3d1ce774f2dc28d3a0ada4cb42&_docnum=6&wchp=dGLbVtb-zSkVb&_md5=14572addccf88c3815194c306ac1c49e

UI Graduate Comments On Calif. Drug Proposal (Napa Valley Register, May 11)
Pharmacists who "just say no" when asked to fill prescriptions that violate their personal ethics are targeted by proposed state legislation that would mandate all prescriptions be filled. Some local druggists are not happy about the bill, authored by Sen. Deborah Ortiz, D-Sacramento, which would be the first in the nation to require filling emergency contraception prescriptions, even if the pharmacist feels it violates his or her personal morals. The owner of Napa's Family Drug on Old Sonoma Road, Thomas Gracia, has mixed feelings. Besides a personal objection to the so-called "morning after" pill, a medicine designed to prevent a pregnancy if taken just hours after possible conception, Gracia has concerns over the health of a patient. He is worried that if he knows a certain prescription may interact adversely with other medications taken by a patient, he may still have to fill the prescription, putting his patient at risk. Gracia grew up in Santa Maria, attended the UNIVERSITY OF IOWA, and was the son of a pharmacist.
http://www.napanews.com/templates/index.cfm?template=story_full&id=B5B63CE5-93B9-4FB7-B1C6-56BFDEA3E5A0

Former UI President Freedman Cited (Inside Higher Ed, May 11)
The "preoccupation with money" is eroding the values of higher education, argues a new book, "Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money," published in April by the University of Virginia Press. The authors - James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield - question the endowment obsession of presidents, the rating obsession of admissions officers, and the career obsession of students. Engell is the chair of the English a