Iowa State University’s Keith Vorst is working with major corporations to find new uses for recycled plastics to save money, keep the materials out of landfills and reduce pollution. Vorst, an associate professor of food science and human nutrition, leads the Polymer and Food Protection Consortium. “We’re creating technologies that will have companies mining landfills and the […]

Police in Zhengzhou, China, are wearing high-tech sunglasses equipped with facial-recognition technology to check crowds at transit centers and elsewhere for suspects, the Straits Times reported. Human rights groups have questioned the practice, but it has already led to the arrest of seven suspects accused of crimes that ranged from human trafficking to hit and runs, and […]

Gallup and Northeastern University checked U.S. adults’ thoughts on how artificial intelligence (AI) will affect their lives, their work, educational choices and potential interventions from higher education, government and private industry. Among the key findings of the study, conducted via mail survey of 3,297 from Sept. 15 through Oct. 10, 2017: — Seventy-six percent of Americans “agree” or […]

Revolution, the Washington, D.C.-based investment arm of AOL-founder turned venture capitalist Steve Case, debuted a new “Ecosystem Playbook” last week that includes at least two Des Moines sources, Gravitate’s e-newsletter the Pull reported. The document draws ideas and insights from 33 cities visited on the “Rise of the Rest” bus tours, which stopped in Des Moines in 2014. The […]

University of Iowa students are learning astrophysics by using a sandbox to create a terrain, then monitoring what happens when something travels across it. This is backed by part of a $405,011 National Science Foundation grant. The augmented-reality sandbox called “Gravbox” is a new take on similar systems used for geology and engineering, but designed for the […]

Nominations for the Prometheus Awards presented by LWBJ and organized by Technology Association of Iowa end Friday. The awards honor leaders and companies in the $11 billion technology industry, which accounts for 8.8 percent of the state’s gross domestic product and employs over 76,000 workers. There are a bunch of categories. You can see them here […]

ShieldX Networks has named Iowa State University a finalist in the 2018 SC Award for Best Cybersecurity Higher Education Program in the Professional Award category for its innovative use of the ShieldX APEIRO cloud security platform. The SC Awards are a high-profile contest among cybersecurity professionals. Winners will be honored April 17 in San Francisco. See […]