Would you like to discuss a book written by one of our Iowa City Darwin Day speakers? Join the HawkSci Lit Book Club at the Sciences Library to discuss the delightful and witty book: Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That’ll Improve and/or Ruin Everything.
This book was co-authored by Dr. Kelly Weinersmith, featured speaker at Iowa City Darwin Day 2022, and Zach Weinersmith, author of the webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.
Thursday, April 7, 2022
6:30 PM – 7:30 PM
Sciences Library 3rd floor
120 Iowa Ave
This event is free & open to the public. Zoom link available upon request.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Laurie Neuerburg in advance at 319-467-0216 or laurie-neuerburg@uiowa.edu
Welcome back, Hawkeyes! We hope that you had a nice break, and we’re glad that you are back! Keep our Hawkeye community safe by getting your free COVID-19 vaccinations and booster if you have not done so yet.
Courtesy: National Human Genome Research Institute https://www.genome.gov/about-genomics/fact-sheets/Understanding-COVID-19-mRNA-Vaccines
Books, Articles, Laptops, and More
You can search InfoHawk+ to find books, articles, and other resources at the UI Libraries, and you can contact a sciences librarian to get expert help to use our resources.
We now have laptops that you can check out! Visit the Sciences Library Service Desk to check out a laptop. Laptops circulate for 3 days or for 3 weeks, depending on how long you need to use them.
Study Spaces
The Sciences Library offers a variety of study spaces that are available to you! If you are looking for a good place to study, we have study spots that include computer stations, study carrels, study booths, and large tables for group work. The Sciences Library is located at 120 Iowa Ave.
Sciences Library Spring 2022 Hours
The Sciences Library is open Monday through Thursday from 8:30 AM to 9:00 PM, Friday from 8:30 AM to 5:00 PM, and Sunday from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM for the spring semester. The Sciences Library is closed on Saturdays.
Study Help for BIOL 1411: Foundations of Biology
If you are taking BIOL:1411 Foundations of Biology, then you can take advantage of free study help with our Sciences Library Student Mentors!
Drop-in Tutoring for Foundations of Biology
Mondays, Tuesday, Wednesdays, & Thursday 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM. Ask to meet with the student mentor at the Sciences Library Service Desk.
Group Study Sessions for Foundations of Biology
Sundays, 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM. The student mentor will lead a session to review material from the week’s lectures. This is located in room 102 at the Sciences Library.
Sundays, 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM. The student mentor will provide help with lab content. This session will be held in room 102 at the Sciences Library.
As we wrap up the Fall 2021 semester, a good place to study for final exams is the Sciences Library! Whether you need a quiet place to study, group space, or study break ideas, the Sciences Library has you covered! We have a variety of study spots to choose from including bean bag chairs, large tables, study carrels, and study booths. There are rolling dry erase boards, large TV monitors, computer stations, scanning stations, and print stations that you can use. If you need a rest, then we have coloring sheets, building blocks, and games available for you to use to give your brain a break. You can also check out our virtual Sciences Library’s Finals Week Stress Relief Guide. You can put together an online puzzle of a porcupine, print off science coloring sheets, and view an assortment of animal live cams. You will also find links to xkcd and other science comics that will make you laugh on the Stress Relief Guide!
Join Arborist Andy Dahl for a tree talk and tour at the Sciences Library! This program will be held on Friday, October 1, 2021. The tree talk will begin at 2:00 PM on the 3rd floor of the Sciences Library. There will be a short break at 2:45 PM for light refreshments. The walking tour of campus trees will begin at 3:00 PM at the Sciences Library. This program is free and open to the public. The Sciences Library is located at 120 Iowa Ave.
Tree Talk & Tour at the Sciences Library
120 Iowa Ave, Iowa City
Friday, October 1, 2021
• 2:00 PM: Tree talk located on the 3rd floor of the Sciences Library
• 2:45 PM: Break for light refreshments
• 3:00 PM: Walking tour of campus trees starting at the Sciences Library
The Arbor Day Foundation has designated the University of Iowa as a Tree Campus Higher Education institution, and the University of Iowa campus grounds are recognized as an arboretum by ArbNet, a professional network of arboreta and tree professionals. The University of Iowa campus showcases over 8,000 trees representing over 330 species.
Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all University of Iowa–sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in this program, please contact Laurie Neuerburg at 319-467-0216 or laurie-neuerburg@uiowa.edu.
Summer naturally finds us spending more time outdoors, which provides a multitude of opportunities to observe the diversity of plant and animal species that inhabit Iowa. Unless you are already a professional naturalist, you may occasionally wonder about the identity of some species you encounter. If you’d like to satisfy that curiosity without lugging around a bulky field guide, consider checking out one of the many Bur Oak Guides available at the Sciences Library.
Most Bur Oak Guides are easy to carry laminated foldout guides (roughly the size of a folded roadmap) published by the University of Iowa Press. They offer a handy way to identify the most likely species of plant or animal you will encounter in a variety of Iowa habitats. There are guides for birds, butterflies, fish, frogs, grasses, mushrooms, orchids, and trees, to mention just a few.
Unlike the laminated foldout guides mentioned above, there are some titles in this series published as full-length reference books that offer more detailed treatment of their subjects. Among them is a trio of beautifully illustrated books co-authored by Sylvan Runkel that describe the wildflowers and plants of Iowa’s wetlands, woodlands, and tallgrass prairie.
Since the month of July finds so many wildflower species of the tallgrass prairie in bloom, I would be remiss if I did not mention An Illustrated Guide to Iowa Prairie Plants by Paul Christiansen and Mark Müller, which was published in the Bur Oak Books series, a companion series to Bur Oak Guides.
Whereas Runkel’s books on Iowa’s wildflowers offer full color close-up views of each species with narrative that includes brief natural history, this black-and-white illustrated guide places greater emphasis on plant morphology and provides detailed line drawings that provide a fuller picture of various plant parts critical to properly identify particular species. This title has the added benefit of being available in a free online version created through a partnership between the University of Iowa Press and the UI Libraries.
Full descriptions of individual titles in both series can be found at Bur Oak Guides and Bur Oak Books at the University of Iowa Press website.
Image credit: Groundhog prepares to feast on an acorn by Ladycamera. 22 October 2011.
While there is no consensus among groundhogs this week about exactly when spring will arrive, there is the reminder that spring will come, and as Punxsutawney Phil would like us to know, “you’re looking forward to one of the most beautiful and brightest springs you’ve ever seen.” Check out the table below to see how groundhogs all over North America have faced (or not faced) their darkest shadows to bring us their prediction! Under the column “2021 Prediction,” you can find a link to an article or video of these famous whistle pigs and other prophetic creatures making their most recent forecast!
Iowa City Darwin Day celebrates the benefits of science for humanity, and all are invited to celebrate this year by attending virtual talks by prestigious scientists! All Iowa City Darwin Day events are free and open to the public.
Erich Jarvis’ talk “Evolution of Brain Pathways for Vocal Learning and Spoken Language” will be on Friday, February 12 at 12 PM CST. Erich Jarvis is a professor and head of the Laboratory of Neurogenetics of Language at the Rockefeller University. He uses song-learning birds and other species as models to study the molecular and genetic mechanisms that underlie vocal learning, including how humans learn spoken language. He chairs the international Vertebrate Genomes Project which studies how species are genetically related and how unique characteristics evolve. Jarvis also collaborates on a project to generate a new human pangenome reference that will represent over 90% of genetic diversity.
Dr. Jarvis is the 2002 recipient of the National Science Foundation Alan T. Waterman Award and was awarded the Director’s Pioneer Award by the National Institutes of Health in 2008. He received the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award in 2019
Charmaine Royal’s talk “Race, Genetics, and Health” followed by a panel discussion will be on Friday, February 19 at 4 PM CST.
Charmaine Royal is a 2020 Ida Cordelia Beam Distinguished Visiting Professor. She is Associate Professor of African & African American Studies, Biology, Global Health, and Family Medicine & Community Health at Duke University. She is also core faculty in the Duke Initiative for Science & Society, senior fellow in Kenan Institute for Ethics, and faculty in the Social Science Research Institute where she directs the Center on Genomics, Race, Identity, Difference and the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation. Dr. Royal’s research, scholarship, and teaching focus on ethical, legal, and social issues in genetics and genomics, particularly the intersection of race and genetics and its policy implications and practical interventions.
Panelists:
UI Professor of History Mariola Espinosa
UI Visiting Professor of Law Phoebe Jean-Pierre
Dr. Brian Donovan , BSCS
Moderator: UI Associate Professor of Law Anya Prince
You are invited to the Sciences Library for a comfortable, quiet place to study! There are computer stations, study carrels, and booths with USB and outlets for phones and computers. If you have group work to do, there are tables and large mobile monitors to use for sharing your computer screen. The Sciences Library is located between Phillips Hall and the Biology Building on Iowa Ave. The building is open Monday through Friday from 8:30 AM to 5 PM for the Spring 2021 semester. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, we have hygiene stations available with disinfectant wipes and hand sanitizer. A face covering is required, and yellow stickers mark off seats that are to remain unoccupied. The book stacks are open so feel free to peruse the shelves!
If you need help with your research, then you can meet with a librarian in a one-on-one research consultation to help you find books and articles that you need for a paper or project. You can search InfoHawk+ to find out what the UI Libraries has that you can use online or check out & take home, which includes print books, ebooks, newspapers, journals, and magazines (both print and online), DVDs and streaming videos. You can request that the library purchase something that we don’t have, or request to borrow something that we don’t have through Interlibrary Loan. You can access all of our ebooks, electronic journal articles, streaming videos, and online resources from off-campus by logging in with your HawkID.
You can ask librarians for help about research and using the library whenever you need it through chat, email, in-person, or by phone. Have a great semester! We’re glad to have you at the Sciences Library!
When you take a break from your studying, rest and recharge with online puzzles, science coloring sheets, wildlife live cams, and museum and nature virtual tours with the Sciences Library’s Finals Week Stress Relief Guide. You can put together a puzzle of the Andromeda galaxy, The Blue Marble view of Earth, a porcupine having a snack, or a peacock displaying its feathers. The science coloring sheets include Coloring Molecular Machinery: A Tour of the Protein Data Bank, Discovering Biology Through Crystallography, and images from the Biodiversity Library. Animal live cams from Explore.org, zoos, and aquariums can transport you to the sights and sounds of an African safari, a colorful, bustling coral reef, or a soothing waterfall. Immerse yourself virtually in the Badlands, the Grand Canyon, and other National Parks, or attend an online tour of the Field Museum, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, and the British Museum. If you need a laugh, you can find Bird and Moon, xkcd, and other science comics on the Stress Relief Guide!
Iowa is not known for having an especially dramatic landscape. But in fact there are many hidden gems to be found in this particular plot of so-called flyover country. Among them is Wildcat Den State Park in southeastern Iowa. According to Iowa DNR it is one of the most photographed state parks in Iowa. If you’ve not yet visited this state park to walk its trails and view its remarkable geological features, take advantage of any opportunity to do so before it becomes snow and ice encrusted. The park is 12 miles northeast of the city of Muscatine; from the University of Iowa campus it’s roughly an hour drive by car.
The most prominent landscape feature at Wildcat Den are the spectacular sandstone cliffs and glens whose origins date back to the Middle Pennsylvanian period, or about 310 million years ago, when ancient rivers coursed through this landscape. What makes these cliffs on the south side of the park so visually arresting is due in part to cross-bedding*, as well as iron-oxide stained and cemented zones visible on the exposed sandstone. To walk the trail at the base of these cliffs is every bit as captivating as a visit to a fine arts museum. But there’s much more to the geology at Wildcat Den.
Brian Witzke’s 1999 article in of Iowa Geology (pages 16-19 ) provides a brief, but very informative introduction to the geology of this park, while “The Natural History of Wildcat Den State Park,“ is a more detailed introduction to all aspects of the park, including its history, archaeology, vegetation, and wildlife. Its treatment of the park’s geology is in-depth and somewhat technical, but would still be informative to the novice. In this Geological Society of Iowa (GSI) field trip guidebook Robert McKay details the geological phenomena of cross-bedding* that is so visible in the sandstone at Wildcat Den. It also includes discussions of all the stops on the 1997 GSI field trip, and could serve as either a preview of what to expect on a visit or a review to answer questions raised after first visiting the park.
Two books published by the University of Iowa Press in its Bur Oak series would make excellent companion resources to help contextualize the geology of not only Wildcat Den State Park, but of geology all across the state: Jean Prior’s Landforms of Iowa and Wayne Anderson’s Iowa’s Geological Past: Three Billion Years of Earth History. Both Prior and Anderson note the preponderance of sedimentary rock throughout Iowa in its exposed rock record, evidence of its early marine environment.
Iowa Geology, a small journal published by Iowa DNR Geological Survey Bureau from 1976 to 2001, offers a treasure trove of highly readable articles for a general audience on a variety of topics pertaining to Iowa geology one might imagine, including “The Midcontinent Rift,” “Global Climate Change and the Cretaceous Greenhouse World,” and “The Age of Dinosaurs.” All issues are available in PDF format from Iowa Research Online: The University of Iowa’s Institutional Repository.
For those who wish to explore Iowa’s geology in other parts of the state, the Iowa Geological Survey (IGS) provides a beautiful suite of webpages called Parks of Iowa, which also makes available guidebooks similar to “The Natural History of Wildcat Den State Park” for 12 other Iowa state parks. In fact, IGS makes the Geological Society of Iowa Guidebooks for field trips to over 70 diverse sites throughout Iowa freely available from its publications platform.
Now it’s time to go explore!
Thank you to Kai Weatherman for writing this post, and a special thanks goes to Raymond Anderson for his expert geologic commentary!
Photographs of Sandstone Bluffs at Iowa’s Wildcat Den State Park
The best-exposed rocks in Wildcat Den State Park are Pennsylvanian-age sandstones, originally deposited in a large river that was flowing to the southwest through the area. The river was flowing through dense equatorial forests towards an arm of the sea that was advancing from the south into Iowa about 312 million years ago. The sand formed sand bars and underwater dunes that were constantly being modified as river channels changed directions, eroding and cutting into existing bars and covering them with new sand layers (beds) from different directions creating the spectacular cross-bedding that is displayed in most exposures. Geologists identify these sandstones as the Spoon Formation of the Cherokee Group. At some exposures, especially at the Devil’s Punchbowl, the sandstones are resting on a dark gray shale unit, the Caseyville Formation, the oldest Pennsylvanian unit in Iowa. The Caseyville was deposited on a river delta that developed into an earlier advance of the Pennsylvanian sea into Iowa.
Image 01. A view of a large block of Spoon Formation sandstone, popularly known as Steamboat Rock, that has broken free of the exposure bluff, sliding down-slope (probably on underlying Caseyville Formation shale). The orange coloration is oxidized iron that coats quartz sand grains and sometimes cement them together.Image 02. A block of Spoon Formation sandstone that has broken free of the exposure bluff. These broken blocks sometimes slide away from the base of the exposure creating a cave-like opening. This action is called “mechanical karst”, different than the “solutional karst” that creates most Iowa caves by dissolving limestone.Image 03. This image shows an exposure of Spoon Formation sandstone that displays thick beds. The cliff face displays an overall grayish coloration that is produced by calcium carbonate in groundwater that moved through the sandstone. The water evaporates at the rock face, precipitating the calcium carbonate (calcite) that cements the sand grains together forming a thin surface crust that resists erosion. This process is sometimes referred to as “case hardening”. In the light brownish areas this cemented crust has fallen off (due to freeze-thaw or other mechanisms) exposing the fresh sandstone.Image 04. A closer look at the sandstone bluff showing the gray case-hardened areas surfaces and the light orange sandstone where the case hardening has fallen away. The bluish colored areas are due to lichens coating the rock surface. This coloration can also be seen on image #3, which is the larger cliff face from which this image was taken, and may be accentuated by the photographic process. Some areas of the sandstone display a rust-red color where iron oxides coat or cement the grains more heavily. The thin beds display a time of slower deposition punctuated by calmer water where silts and shales were deposited.Image 05. A close view of the Spoon Formation sandstone with gray case hardening on some surfaces and brownish fresh surfaces where the varying amounts of iron oxide coat and cement the sand grains. A block of sandstone near the base has separated from the exposure creating a small scale example of mechanical karst.Image 06. An even closer look at the sandstone reveals cross-bedding, created by shifts in the river channel. Areas of case-hardened surfaces appear gray and areas where it has fallen away appear brown or orange. The circular light colored spots are lichens and other plants that have grown on the sandstone.Image 07. Cross-bedded sandstone deposited by an ancient river. Groundwater moving through the sand carries calcium carbonate that precipitated when the water evaporates at the rock face. Large areas of this face were case-hardened, displaying the gray coloration.Image 08. Another good example of cross-bedding in the Spoon Formation sandstone deposited by an ancient river. Each of the thin individual layers (or beds) represent a single event, with coarser-grained layers deposited by faster moving water and finer grains by water with less energy. Each coarse layer represents a high energy event with increasingly finer sand grains deposited as the event dissipated. The coarser layers are slightly better cemented, so are less easily eroded and stand out in positive relief, the finer grains erode in from the face. Groups of beds all trending the same direction were deposited as an underwater dune, with bundles of beds trending in different directions representing a change in water current direction, crossing the earlier beds; cross-bedding.Image 09. A cliff of sandstone originally deposited about 312 million years ago as sand in a large river that was flowing to the southwest. A variety of bed thicknesses and orientations can be seen as can areas with gray case-hardening and other areas of brown freshly-exposed stone. The beds are cut near the right side of the exposure by a near-vertical series of fractures.Image 10: A close-up of the sequence of roughly horizontal cross-bedded sandstones that was subsequently modified by tectonic activity that produced near-vertical fractures and deformed some of the beds.Image 11. An example of differential cementation created this honey-comb looking features. Water bearing natural cements such as clay and lime moved preferentially through areas of coarser sand and sub-vertical fractures, cementing the sand grains as it moved. In nearby areas where water did not move as freely the sand grains were not cemented as securely and eroded away when exposed to the weather. Image 12. This image is a wonderful example of thin-bedded sandstone (separated by thin silty layers) and cross-bedding (identified by the unconformable contact of one set of bedded layers with another set trending in a slightly different direction.
Many of the photographs on this page were taken during the 2000’s. So, some features may appear somewhat different now.
