Medicine and Humanity

Science is becoming increasingly more complicated as our understanding of the world increases. While the practice of science continues to yield new technology and information, its findings are not the only thing that matters. Science struggles to explain why certain human experiences and connections are powerful, but the value of their occurrence cannot be dismissed. Sometimes, it takes a challenging personal situation to pull those who fixate on the answers science provides back to the world we share, back to the humanity which is central to our being

Precision Health U

The Precision Medicine Initiative was launched by former President Barack Obama in 2015. In response, research in genomics is continually expanding. Genomic medicine seeks to study the DNA of healthy and sick individuals to create individualized treatment plans for people of various backgrounds. The All of Us research project which is under the National Institute of Health expects to begin recruiting individuals in 2017 to participate in sharing their genetic information, health history, and lifestyle for research purposes. Of course, this can be a frightening proposal to many people. However, for this area of research to move forward, people of all backgrounds must come together and invest in this project. Precision Health U was made to make science less scary in order to encourage individuals to consider participation in genomic research and start discussion about personalized medicine. The Twitter outreach and community engagement aspects both seek to discuss concerns of privacy, the power of these tests, and what the results will mean for the exciting future of healthcare. By sharing scientific news on Twitter in a simplified, tempered manner, Precision Health U is spreading safe, useful information to the public in a new kind of public health initiative

UI Scientists in the Classroom

UI Scientists in the Classroom was created to better connect with our community by bringing scientists and students from the University of Iowa into the classrooms of area elementary and middle schools. Professor Emily Finzel provided a model by which these interactions would take place, and this spring our group put this idea into practice with the teachers at Lucas Elementary in Iowa City. During a two visit series, our group went into two different classrooms to interact with the students. The first meeting involved the introduction of the visiting student researchers and their research projects followed by a discussion about the current topic that was being covered in the school\u27s curriculum. The next day, we returned to do an interactive activity with the students in order to better cement the concepts we had covered the previous day while allowing engagement that hopefully made the children better appreciate the aspects of science which are difficult to encompass in traditional curriculums. This collaboration hopes to offer a model for future programs to follow in regards to how to implement simple university engagement and outreach seamlessly into a school\u27s ongoing teaching system

Megadroughts in North America: placing IPCC projections of hydroclimatic change in a long-term palaeoclimate context

IPCC Assessment Report 4 model projections suggest that the subtropical dry zones of the world will both dry and expand poleward in the future due to greenhouse warming. The US Southwest is particularly vulnerable in this regard and model projections indicate a progressive drying there out to the end of the 21st century. At the same time, the USA has been in a state of drought over much of the West for about 10 years now. While severe, this turn of the century drought has not yet clearly exceeded the severity of two exceptional droughts in the 20th century. So while the coincidence between the turn of the century drought and projected drying in the Southwest is cause for concern, it is premature to claim that the model projections are correct. At the same time, great new insights into past drought variability over North America have been made through the development of the North American Drought Atlas from tree rings. Analyses of this drought atlas have revealed past megadroughts of unprecedented duration in the West, largely in the Medieval period about 1000 years ago. A vastly improved Living Blended Drought Atlas (LBDA) for North America now under development reveals these megadroughts in far greater detail. The LBDA indicates the occurrence of the same Medieval megadroughts in the West and similar-scale megadroughts in the agriculturally and commercially important Mississippi Valley. Possible causes of these megadroughts and their implications for the future are discussed

Precision Health U Poster on Precision Medicine

Image part of PHealthUhttps://ir.uiowa.edu/ideal_latham_images/1071/thumbnail.jp

Twitter Growth of @PHealthU

Image part of PHealthUhttps://ir.uiowa.edu/ideal_latham_images/1072/thumbnail.jp

PHealthU Logo

Image part of PHealthUhttps://ir.uiowa.edu/ideal_latham_images/1070/thumbnail.jp

DNA Interest Group of Iowa City

Image part of PHealthUhttps://ir.uiowa.edu/ideal_latham_images/1069/thumbnail.jp

The Digestive System Experiment: Excretion of Waste

We then snipped the bottom of the pantyhose, where the food had accumulated, into plastic bowls. This represented the act of excreting waste and thus ending the digestion process. Image part of UI Scientists in the Classroom.https://ir.uiowa.edu/ideal_latham_images/1159/thumbnail.jp