Scientists have invested great time and effort into making connections between a plant’s genotype, or its genetic makeup, and its phenotype, or the plant’s observable traits. Understanding a plant’s genome helps plant biologists predict how that plant will perform in the real world, which can be useful for breeding crop varieties that will produce high…

A gardener hoping for a crop of the juiciest summer tomatoes might tend to each and every plant in a plot. But a farmer working to feed the world? Researchers believe that may be possible. They’re applying and integrating layers of technologies – including sensors, machine learning, artificial intelligence, high-throughput phenotyping platforms such as drones…

Three Iowa State University physicists have spent the past decade helping to upgrade hardware and untangle messy proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. One result of their work is that the three have their names – Chunhui Chen, Jim Cochran and Soeren Prell – on the 2012 research paper describing how the collider’s ATLAS detector observed a new…

An Iowa State University program to help Iowa towns harness their data has led to four offshoot projects to help support community recovery related to economic vulnerability, substance use and general support. A three-state Coordinated Innovation Network of land-grant universities worked over the past year to expand the Data Science for the Public Good program, developed…

Even if you weren’t a physics major, you’ve probably heard something about the Higgs boson. There was the title of a 1993 book by Nobel laureate Leon Lederman that dubbed the Higgs “The God Particle.” There was the search for the Higgs particle that launched after 2009’s first collisions inside the Large Hadron Collider in Europe. There was the 2013…

Seed banks across the globe store and preserve the genetic diversity of millions of varieties of crops. This massive collection of genetic material ensures crop breeders access to a wealth of genetics with which to breed crops that yield better or resist stress and disease. But, with a world of corn genetics at their disposal,…

As the damaging effects of climate change become more apparent, researchers are studying ways to generate energy with minimal impact on the environment. Computer simulations could be the key to making this process more efficient. Shankar Subramaniam, a professor of mechanical engineering at Iowa State University (ISU), is the principal investigator (PI) on a project…

An Iowa State University research project to understand how shrinking small towns maintain quality of life has received another major grant to expand the team’s work. The rural smart shrinkage project, led by Kimberly Zarecor, professor of architecture, received a three-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation – the largest federal grant ever awarded to…

A new federally funded project led by Iowa State University researchers will help farmers share data relevant to their operations with one another and improve production. The Smart Integrated Farm Network for Rural Agricultural Communities (SIRAC) project recently received a three-year, nearly $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop technology that will…

Backed by experimental data from a laboratory machine that simulates the huge forces involved in glacier flow, glaciologists have written an equation that accounts for the motion of ice that rests on the soft, deformable ground underneath unusually fast-moving parts of ice sheets That equation – or “slip law” – is a tool that scientists…