Ag and Life Sciences ONLINE

COLLEGE NEWS



- Convocation for agriculture graduates on May 10



- Natural born leaders: Ag students in action



- Field days set at ISU research farms



- RSVP for upcoming adviser evaluation program



- Awards edition of Ag Online coming May 2



- Deadlines & Reminders



COMMUNICATIONS KIOSK



- Presentation tip: Remember to pack the fonts



INFOGRAZING



- New-student survey: All in the family



- Drinking water safety the subject of Iowa TV show



EXTERNAL VOICES



- Finding common ground far from the farm



MARGINALIA



- Next Slide, Please







C O L L E G E N E W S









CONVOCATION FOR AGRICULTURE GRADUATES ON MAY 10



The College of Agriculture convocation for graduating students

will begin at 9 a.m., Saturday, May 10, in C.Y. Stephens Auditorium.

The convocation is for spring and summer semester graduates. Students

are recognized individually in the presence of family and friends.

A reception prior to the convocation begins at 8:15 a.m. Faculty

and staff are welcome to attend.



NATURAL BORN LEADERS: AG STUDENTS IN ACTION



A few recent examples of leadership by College of Agriculture

students: Lisa Ahrens, freshman in agronomy and ag business, was

named to the Iowa Board of Regents by Gov. Branstad; Rob Wiese,

ag studies senior, is president-elect of the Government of the

Student Body; Jay McLaren, ag business sophomore, was named president

of the Inter-Residence Hall Association for 1997-98; and Daniel

Faidley, ag business senior, was co-chair of VEISHEA.



FIELD DAYS SET AT ISU RESEARCH FARMS



Twenty-four field days are scheduled from June to September at

ISU's Research and Demonstration Farms. They include Home Demonstration

Garden field days, Agronomy Day and Weed Science Field Day. For

a complete list of dates, times and locations, see this Web site:

http://www.ag.iastate.edu/news/researchfarms.html



RSVP FOR UPCOMING ADVISER EVALUATION PROGRAM



To attend the May 1 College of Agriculture professional development

program on adviser evaluation, RSVP by April 29 to Norma Hensley,

4-6614 or nhensley@iastate.edu. Indicate a preference for a meat

or vegetarian meal. The program, in 210 Bessey, begins at 5:15

p.m. For more information: Les Wilson, 4-3889 or lawilson@iatstate.edu.





AWARDS EDITION OF AG ONLINE COMING MAY 2



The second annual special edition of Ag Online, featuring recent

awards, honors and accomplishments of College of Agriculture faculty,

staff and students, will be sent next Friday, May 2. Communications

advisers in each department have been collecting and forwarding

this information to us. Contact your local adviser or send a note

to Brian Meyer, bmeyer@iastate.edu, by Wednesday, April 30.



DEADLINES & REMINDERS



May 1: Adviser Evaluation Program, 5:15 p.m., 210 Bessey. RSVP

by April 29: 4-6614 or nhensley@iastate.edu



May 10: College of Agriculture Convocation for Graduating Students,

C.Y. Stephens, 9 a.m.



May 12: Pre-proposal deadline, Multi-state Consortium on Animal

Waste, 4-1823







C O M M U N I C A T I O N S K I O S K









PRESENTATION TIP: REMEMBER TO PACK THE FONTS



On your next trip to make a computer presentation, you could avoid

some odd-looking slides by packing spare fonts. If you plan to

use someone else's computer to make a PowerPoint or similar software

presentation, the computer may create font-substitution problems

if it doesn't have the fonts used to create the presentation.

One solution is to take your fonts along on a disk so you can

install them if necessary. Most software also allows you to embed

the fonts in the presentation. That will mean a larger file, but

the presentation will look as intended.







I N F O G R A Z I N G









NEW-STUDENT SURVEY: ALL IN THE FAMILY



(More results from last fall's survey of 540 new students in the

College of Agriculture.) Percentage who said the following family

members had attended ISU:



Father: 25



Mother: 12



Brother or sister: 27



Aunt, uncle or cousins: 49



In 1985, percentage who said father attended: 18



In 1985, percentage whose mother attended: 6



DRINKING WATER SAFETY THE SUBJECT OF IOWA TV SHOW



The safety of Iowa's drinking water will be discussed on "Iowa

News & Views," a statewide cable TV series. The program,

airing the weeks of April 28 and May 5, will feature L.D. McMullen

of the Des Moines Water Works and George Hallberg of the University

of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory. In Ames, "Iowa News & Views"

airs on Channel 10 on Mondays, 7:30 p.m.; Tuesdays, 10:30 p.m.;

and Fridays, 6:30 p.m. Viewers may participate in an Internet

discussion forum about the show's topics by sending e-mail to

i-news@pobox.com or by visiting the web site at: http://pobox.com/~i-news









E X T E R N A L V O I C E S









FINDING COMMON GROUND FAR FROM THE FARM



"I'm an island in a sea of city people whose culture is so

alien that I can't begin to understand them. But corresponding

daily with [two agricultural listservs] gives me a sense of community

and of belonging to a group with a common background. I have more

in common with a dairy farmer in New Zealand or Ireland than with

the person who lives 30 feet beyond my pasture fence and works

for the post office." F.W. Owen of Homerville, Ohio, from

a two-part series on farmers using the Internet in the New York

Times' CyberTimes: http://search.nytimes.com/library/cyber/nation/032197nation.html









M A R G I N A L I A







NEXT SLIDE, PLEASE



See this issue's "Communications Kiosk" item for a tip

on making presentations go smoother. For those who attend a lot

of scientific presentations, the following poem, "Next Slide,

Please," written by Nobel laureate in chemistry Roald Hoffman,

may sound familiar. (From "A Literary Companion to Science,"

1989.)



there was no question that the reaction worked



but transient colors were seen



in the slurry of sodium methoxide in dichloromethane



and we got a whole lot of products



for which we can't sort out the kinetics



the next slide will show



the most important part



very rapidly



within two minutes



and I forgot to say on further warming



we get in fact the ketone



you can't read it on the slides



but I refer to the structure you saw before



the low temperature infrared spectrum



as I say



gives very direct evidence



so does the NMR



we calculated it



throwing away the geminal coupling



which is of course wrong



there is a difference of 0.9 parts per million



and it is a singlet



and sharp



which means two things



either



you're doing this NMR in excess methoxide



and it's exchanging



or



I would hazard a guess



that certainly in these nucleophilic conditions



there could well be



an alternative path



to the enone you see there



it's difficult to see



you could monitor this quite well in the infrared



I'm sorry in the NMR



my time is up I see



well this is a brief summary of our work



not all of which



I've had time to go into



in as much detail as I wanted



today.