In good company

Take a look inside one of the largest student organizations on campus

Behind the scenes of sounds: Sound engineering

For all you engineers out there looking to infiltrate the radio station scene with your awesome technical knowhow, not so fast. Being a good engineer doesn’t necessarily make you a great sound technician. As Darren Hushak knows, you need an ear for music and sound to take on that job

Friday Night Magic the Gathering

“Count these!” Someone shouts. “How many knuckle blades do you have?” “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna ankle shank nobody.” In the game room, rules are being established. Tournament brackets are being drawn. And sixteen players stand at the ready. “FNM players!” calls out a man in a dress shirt and tie. “ROUND STARTS!” Tonight is Friday Night Magic, and these are Planeswalkers, navigating the multiverse with a team of creatures, spells and enchantments of various colors and abilities. Th ey might be Liliana Vess, exercising the dark art of necromancy – or elder dragon Nicol Bolas, shattering minds with the power of touch

Welcome home: A safe place for everyone

It may be a small place but it comes with a big heart and its doors are always open. Come inside with us and take a tour around the Sloss House

Max Jury

From local gigs to Lana Del Ray, the Des Moines native sits down with Revival

A Synoptic and Dynamic Climatology of Heavy Midlatitude Rainfall: Trends Across the United States from 1950-2009

The increasing regularity and intensity of heavy precipitation events across the United States during the latter part of the 20th century is widely recognized. Many climate models predict continued growth in the proportion of precipitation from extreme rainfall events concurrent with the projected increase in average global temperatures.To evaluate heavy precipitation events on a regional scale, the principal component analysis (PCA) technique is applied using the expanded version of the evenly-distributed Richman-Lamb precipitation dataset. The PCA technique identifies climatologically similar regions with respect to rainfall in the United States east of the Rocky Mountains over a 52-year period. Results revealed 13 regions of coherent precipitation patterns across the eastern two-thirds of the Continental U.S.A subset of observations from the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily datasetfor the same domain was used to identify heavy and significant rainfall events between1950-2009. The heavy event definition is based on the 90th or higher percentile of totalprecipitation events with at least 1 inch (25 mm) of rainfall. Similarly, significant eventswere the top twenty unique heavy events in each region. Furthermore, when the heavy and significant events were stratified by decade, region, and/or season, meaningful spatial and temporal trends were revealed.The NCEP-NCAR 40-Year Reanalysis data were used to create composite synopticmaps from the significant events in each region. A region-by-region analysis revealedstrong similarities but unique differences in the synoptic-scale environment associatedwith non-tropical significant events across different regions. A national composite of nontropical events from inland regions enabled the identification of common patterns in the synoptic environments associated with significant events. A comparison of national composites from the first half and second half of the study period enabled the assessment of potential temporal trends in the synoptic-scale environment. Of all variables, precipitable water had a noticeable increase in the post-1980 significant events over those prior to 1980.The final work on this research focused on the dynamical forcings (as calculated using terms in the Q-G Omega equation) and assessed possible temporal trends that occurred in the troposphere during the course of the significant precipitation events. This study discovered that, during episodes of significant rainfall, vorticity advection plays little role in initiating or modulating the rainfall event. Instead, thickness advection is by far the most dominant synoptic-scale forcing mechanism to initiate an outbreak of heavy to significant rainfall

Envisioning the Archipelago

Certain limitations arise from the persistent consideration of two common relations of islands in the humanities and social sciences: land and sea, and island and continent/mainland. What remains largely absent or silent are ways of being, knowing and doing—ontologies, epistemologies and methods—that illuminate island spaces as inter-related, mutually constituted and co-constructed: as island and island. Therefore, this paper seeks to map out and justify a research agenda proposing a robust and comprehensive exploration of this third and comparatively neglected nexus of relations. In advancing these aims, the paper’s goal is to (re)inscribe the theoretical, metaphorical, real and empirical power and potential of the archipelago: of seas studded with islands; island chains; relations that may embrace equivalence, mutual relation and difference in signification

Political Economy of Climate Compatible Development: Artisanal Fisheries and Climate Change in Ghana

This chapter presents results of research that explores the socio-political forces and challenges by understanding the political economy of climate compatible development (CCD) in relation to artisanal fisheries in Ghana. The analysis provides insight into the complex political economy in Ghana's artisanal fisheries, a sector that has received little attention with regard to climate change linkages. This could help other projects and wider initiatives on climate change locate their work within a political economy context and target efforts in politically smart ways. The chapter outlines the context for the artisanal fisheries sector and challenges to its sustainability and relations with climate change. It then analyses the politics of climate change policy formulation, including its relationship with the fisheries sector. Ghana is an excellent example of the additional challenges climate change and variability pose to development. It has achieved middle-income country status yet this significant economic progress, as in all other countries, has been accompanied by rising greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

Role modeling is a viable retention strategy for undergraduate women in the geosciences

Gender diversity leads to better science; however, a number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, including many geoscience subdisciplines, show a persistent gender gap. PROmoting Geo- science Research, Education, and SuccesS (PROGRESS) is a theory-driven role modeling and mentoring program aimed at supporting undergraduate women interested in geoscience-related degree and career pathways. This study is unique because it is being conducted in a long-term applied setting, rather than as a laboratory exercise. We compare female STEM majors in PROGRESS to a matched control group (N = 380) using a longitudinal prospec- tive multisite quasi-experimental design. College women in PROGRESS par- ticipated in a mentoring and role-modeling weekend workshop with follow- up support, while women in the control group participated in neither the workshop nor the follow-up support. PROGRESS members identified more female STEM career role models than controls (60% versus 42%, respectively), suggesting that deliberate interventions can develop the networks of under- graduate women. Undergraduate women that participate in PROGRESS have higher rates of persistence in geoscience-related majors (95% versus 73%), although the rates of switching into a geoscience-related major did not differ across groups. More strikingly, we also find that the persistence of undergrad- uate women in geoscience-related majors is related to the number of female STEM career role models they identify, as their odds of persisting approxi- mately doubles for each role model they identify. We conclude that our ability to retain undergraduate women in the geosciences will depend, in part, on helping them to identify same-gender career role models. Further, the suc- cess of PROGRESS points to steps universities and departments can take to sustain their students’ interest and persistence, such as hosting interactive panels with diverse female scientists to promote the attainability and social relevance of geoscience careers