New research suggests that water quality challenges in Iowa and nationally would be even greater if it weren’t for a little appreciated feature of the landscape — road ditches.

The acclaimed national Colored Conventions Project has named two members of the UI campus community co-directors of its first pilot satellite partner, and a new course gives students an opportunity to rediscover this little-known part of Iowa history.

Bill Barnhart, seismologist and assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, talked about the first-ever detection of tremors on Mars. 

University of Iowa physicists use a special furnace to produce a key piece of equipment whose manufacturing process was once lost to history. The UI is one of a handful of academic institutions worldwide with a furnace capable of reproducing the magnetic instrument, called a ring core.