(Radio Iowa) – As we approach New Year’s Eve, a common resolution is to get in better shape, and an Iowa State University psychology professor is studying ways to help make exercise a habit we enjoy. Dr. Alison Phillips, a social and health psychologist at I-S-U, says they tried out a variety of strategies with an online exercise program to see what was most effective at making participants, including some who were new to the practice, stick with it. “We tested eight different groups, so just a combination of three different strategies, and they all worked,” Phillips says. “Even the control group got basic goal setting, which is, we treated it like the standard advice that not everybody does, but that helped them to form habits and stick with their exercise more frequently and for a longer amount of time. We followed them for a whole year.”

Phillips says exercise preparation habits proved to be the best method. She says they guided participants to form habits around getting ready to exercise, essentially making sure they had everything they needed. “If you want your exercise routine to be going to the gym every day after work, your preparation habit might be making sure your gym bag is packed the night before,” she says, “maybe even loaded into your car so that it’s ready to go and you have fewer barriers when it’s time to exercise.” By getting one’s gym clothes — or whatever gear is necessary — organized ahead of time helped to cement the plan to exercise in a person’s mental schedule.

“It depends on the person, of course, but maybe it’s doing laundry right when you get home from work, to make sure your clothes are clean, putting your shoes by the door so that you see them and they’re ready to go,” Phillips says, “really dependent by the person, but it was around getting stuff ready, rather than an exercise habit itself.” The popularity of pickleball has skyrocketed in recent years, and Phillips says enthusiastic participants in a sport often create an identity for themselves around that activity.”That’s part of what motivates us to do something, is how we see ourselves, and those pickleball players? That is a big part of their identity, and it’s become something they’re competitive about, it’s their social circle, it’s their exercise,” Phillips says. “But the fact that it’s exercise is probably far down the list of the reasons why they’re doing it.”

That sense of identity can also be a strong motivator in a host of sports, she says, from running to racquetball.

(Radio Iowa) – The leader of Iowa State’s Master Gardener Program says gardening continues to be a popular hobby. Alicia Herzog says some people turned to it when they were stuck at home during the pandemic.

Herzog says she doesn’t have exact numbers, but she knows through their the winter home gardener webinar series that there’s a lot of interest.

She says it’s something that anyone can learn to do.

Herzog says Iowa State University can answer a lot of the questions people may have on how to start a garden and how to keep it growing.

(Radio Iowa) – An eastern Iowa man was at the Iowa Lottery’s main office in central Iowa today (Friday) to claim a $1 million prize. Radio Iowa’s O. Kay Henderson reports:

(as said) – Iowa Lottery officials announced this (Friday) afternoon, that William Zak, of Dysart, bought at Powerball ticket at a Kwik Star in Vinton for the drawing last Saturday and his ticket matched the first five numbers on that December 20, 2025 drawing. It missed the Powerball number, but was still one of just eight tickets sold in the country to win a $1 million prize from that night’s drawing.

A ticket sold in Arkansas matched all the numbers for the Christmas Eve Powerball drawing for a $1.8 billion jackpot. Iowa Lottery officials say over $4.5 million in tickets were sold in Iowa for the last two Powerball drawings.

(Radio Iowa) – A national study shows falls from tree stands are now the leading cause of injury for deer hunters, even exceeding the risk of gunshot wounds. With more than 100-thousand deer hunters predicted in Iowa this season, an expert is offering suggestions to help even the odds. Megan Anderson, an injury prevention coordinator at Emplify Health by Gundersen, says one of the top causes of tree stand falls is human error, where a hunter simply loses their balance.

Falls from tree stands can be fatal, though she says hunters are more likely to survive.

She says Iowa deer hunters should consider taking some simple precautions that could help to prevent this type of fall from a tree stand.

When a hunter gets in place, she says it’s wise to check for cell reception, and if there’s no signal, to consider carrying a two-way radio in case there’s a problem. While higher might be better in some situations, Anderson says tree stands don’t have to be towering above everything else in the woods, as lower is safer.

Studies find more than 80 percent of firearm hunters and 90 percent of bow hunters hunt from a tree stand or an elevated position.

Emplify Health by Gundersen has clinics in Calmar, Decorah, Fayette, Lansing, Postville and Waukon, and a hospital in West Union.

(Creston, IA) – A man and a woman were arrested on separate Assault charges, Wednesday, in Creston. According to the Creston Police Department, 39-year-old Thomas James Blobaum, of Creston, was arrested at his residence at around 4-p.m., Wednesday. Blobaum was charged with Domestic Abuse. He was taken to Union County Jail and held without bond until seen by a Judge.

And, at around 7-p.m., Wednesday, Police in Creston arrested 36-year-old Juscinda Starr Butcher, of Corning. She was arrested at the Creston Dollar Tree store, on charges of Assault, and Child Endangerment. Butcher was cited and released from the scene on a Promise to Appear in court.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa’s largest zoo is preparing to launch its first-ever statewide art project to celebrate 60 years in operation. Blank Park Zoo in Des Moines is sponsoring Roar & Explore, which will feature life-sized African lion sculptures that will be displayed in all corners of the state, creating a lion art trail. The zoo’s Alex Payne says they’re recruiting artists from anywhere in Iowa to decorate the lions. “We’ll have 26 of these sculptures and we’re looking for Iowa artists to come and submit their designs,” Payne says. “We will go through the different submissions and select 26 different artists to paint these sculptures that we’ll then put out across the entire state of Iowa.”

In the past, some Iowa communities have taken on projects with sculptures resembling local team mascots, for example, but Payne says Roar & Explore will offer a different type of canvas for the artists.”There’ll be steel sheets of lion silhouettes and so there will be intersecting lions, one will be a lioness and one will be a lion,” Payne says. “Instead of a three-dimensional kind of life-like lion, it’ll be a flat silhouette where artists can then come up with different designs, so if they want to make it look like a lion with different designs, you can do that or it could just be a different abstract type design.”

Blank-Park-Zoo-image

The steel lions will be actual size — about three-and-a-half feet tall and six-feet long. Artists are encouraged to get creative and submit their visions for how these lions could be put on the prowl across Iowa. “They can go to our Facebook page or blankparkzoo.com/sculpture and there they can find our call for artists,” he says. “They can submit their designs there as well, and then we will have a committee go over all the different designs and select the winners and we will then reach out to them early next year.”

Finished sculptures will be installed across Iowa in April and they’ll remain on public display through Labor Day weekend. So why lions? The zoo’s lion conservation center is set to debut in 2026, tripling the space dedicated to the animals, and lions have long been an icon of the zoo, symbolizing strength, courage, and community.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Air National Guard has activated new squadron that will help fend off cyber threats. Chief Master Sergeant Crystal Jordan is part of the 133rd Combat Training Squadron under the 132 Air Wing located at the Des Moines Airport. “We’re basically a total force cyber trainer. So, we train any branch of the military,” she says. Jordan says they set up “range environments” for training.

“Whether you are doing defensive cyber operations — so you are defending a network –that’s your mission. Or you could do offensive cyber operations, which means you are attacking some sort of network. So, that’s in this range environment,” she explains. Sergeant Jordan says they use cyber professionals to help set up scenarios for training. “An those cyber professionals will go out, and some of them can be our own professionals as well, where the trainer becomes the operator. And those missions can be all over the world,” she says.

Jordan says being able to fend off cyber attacks is a key skill in the modern military. “Every modern aircraft sensor and weapon, it is going to use a network of some sort. So the tanks, they use radio frequency and WIFI to communicate back with headquarters,” she says. “And everybody uses satellite communication for G-P-S. And so it doesn’t matter what the type of network is, that is what is all the different scenarios that we’re building.”

Jordan says they now have staff in place. “We currently have 72 members assigned. Of those 72, we have 12 that are fulltime and the rest are D-S-G, traditional guardsmen that come in. Everybody is used to hearing, one drill weekend a month, two weeks a year,” she says. Jordan says they expect to eventually expand to 130 to 140 personnel.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Cattlemen’s Association is urging Iowa lawmakers to include money for development of vaccines for bird flu and foot-and-mouth disease in next year’s state budget. Kelli Klink is director of government relations for the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association.

“If we want affordable beef on our grocery store shelves, we must do everything we can do to protect our livestock,” Klink said. Foot-and-mouth disease is a fast-spreading viral disease that primarily affects cows and other animals with split hooves, like pigs and sheep. Foot-and-mouth disease has been eradicated from North America, but livestock producers are concerned it could arrive in the U-S in a shipment of livestock from another country.

Since 2024, bird flu has been detected in 13 dairy herds in Iowa. Joel Harris is C-E-O of Genvax Technologies in Ames, which received a state 250-thousand dollar grant last year to support its research into a bird flu vaccine. He says the virus has been the most significant animal disease event in U.S. history. “In Iowa alone, millions of chickens and turkeys have been depopulated to stop the spread, costing farmers, straining rural communities and impacting food prices,” Harris said.

“Investing in foreign animal disease preparedness, especially vaccine development, is one of the most cost-effective tools we have. It helps protect Iowa farmers, reduces the need for mass depopulations, strengthens biosecurity and keeps our food supply stable and affordable.” Harris made his comments during a recent online forum with Governor Kim Reynolds. The governor says she gets a monthly update from the U-S-D-A about bird flu.

“It is critical we figure out how to get in front of this,” Reynolds said. Iowa Senators Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst are part of a bipartisan group of senators that have called on the U-S-D-A to speed up its review of the agency’s avian flu vaccine strategy for poultry. Last February, U-S Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins announced a billion dollar plan to address the ongoing outbreak of bird flu — and it included 100 million dollars for research into a bird flu vaccine and other potential treatments.

(Red Oak, IA) – Sheriff’s deputies in Montgomery County, Thursday evening, arrested a man on an Assault charge. Authorities say 19-year-old Talan Michaael Ennis, of Villisca, was arrested at around 6:50-p.m., in the 100 block of W. 3rd Street, in Villisca. Ennis was charged with Assault – Causing Bodily Injury. He was transported to the Montgomery County Jail and held on a $1,000 bond.

(Radio Iowa) – Christmas 2025 has come and gone, but did you know that the Iowa Legislature declared Christmas as an official state holiday in 1862 — eight years before Congress declared Christmas a federal holiday. Michael Swanger is editor of the Iowa History Journal, which has a cover story in its current issue about how European immigrants brought their Christmas customs to Iowa.

“It goes back to even before statehood in terms of the roots of the traditions,” Swanger said. Swanger says holding candle-light church services on Christmas Eve, for example, came from Moravia — which is now part of the Czech Republic. “The Moravian congregations in eastern Iowa, they really helped shape the way that we celebrate Christmas in Iowa still today,” Swanger said.

According to the Archives of the Moravian Church in America, Moravians started coming to the U-S in the 17-hundreds and many brought with them the figures for Nativity Scenes. The town of Moravia, in southern Iowa’s Appanoose County, was founded by a group of Moravian families just five years after Iowa became a state. By the way, Sunday is Iowa’s 179th birthday.

Iowa became the 29th state on December 28th, 1846.