(Radio Iowa) – International opera star and Centerville native Simon Estes retired from the stage in 2022, but he’s still working as an artist in residence at Iowa State University. Estes will turn 87 in March and he’s spending about three weeks a semester on the Ames campus, teaching private lessons with voice majors in the building that bears his name. The Simon Estes Music Hall was dedicated in 2020 and I-S-U President Wendy Wintersteen helped with the unveiling.

“Simon Estes is undoubtedly one of the most accomplished opera singers in the world. He has sung for U.S. presidents, for popes, for kings and queens,” Wintersteen says, “and as one of the first black opera singers, he helped break down racial barriers.” At the building’s opening, Estes said it was an incredible tribute to his near-six-decades-long career.

“Music and education and faith are the foundations on which my life has been built, and I’m still on that journey,” Estes says. “I didn’t know that the day would come and that you’d name a building after me, but you know, this building is named after me, but it’s not for me. It’s about me, and it’s about all of you young people.”

The son of a coal miner and the grandson of a slave, Estes says his philanthropic work is just as important in his life as music. He’s given hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to students in need, and built a music school in South Africa. Upon announcing his retirement at age 84, he told Iowa Public Radio most opera singers retire at 50 or 60.

“I really thank God that he’s given me this longevity not only in life, but having sung opera,” Estes says. “I made my debut in West Berlin in 1965.” Opera requires substantial strength in the singer’s core to control breathing and project the voice. Estes says there are some key reasons he was able to continue performing into his 80s.

Iowa State University image from 2020

“First of all, I think God gave me very special vocal cords or vocal folds, as the doctor’s say,” Estes says “I never smoked. I didn’t drink alcohol. I didn’t take any drugs, of course. I was very disciplined, always. I only sang the right repertoire at the right time in my life.” Estes played the lead in Porgy and Bess at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1985.

Estes is a graduate of the University of Iowa and the Juilliard School of Music. He has performed more than 100 roles with 84 major opera companies around the globe.

(Radio Iowa) – A Republican lawmaker says a recently announced University of Iowa plan shows the institution is already responding to the creation of a new committee in the Iowa House. University officials are proposing a new “School of Social and Cultural Analysis” — and the closure of the Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies Department and the Department of American Studies. Republican Representative Taylor Collins of Mediapolis will be chairman of the new House Higher Education Committee when the legislature convenes in January. “This is the Board of Regents and the university trying to get ahead of the work of the committee,” Collins said, “but nevertheless, a retreat is a retreat.” The proposed changes are to be discussed at the Board of Regents meeting in February, with the plan to go into effect for the next academic year.

The dean of the University of Iowa’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences told The Cedar Rapids Gazette the proposed changes are the result of pragmatic and innovative thinking from faculty, using resources efficiently and serving students better. The university will no longer offer a major in Social Justice. Representative Taylor, who has led efforts in the legislature to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, has criticized that major in the past. “Our constituents should not be on the hook to fund academic programs that have ideological agendas,” Collins says. “…Everybody knows you’re not going to be able to go through an academic program like that and find a reliable job.” Collins says there’s more work to do at all three state-supported universities.

“We’ll be looking at the academic programs. We’ll also be looking at costs. We’ll also be looking at the academic programs that are being offered and determining if they align with our state’s workforce needs,” Collins says. “Our Regents institutions spend over $5 billion if you exclude the UIHC and it’s going be a lot that we’re looking at and it’s simple going to take time to really sift through everything that needs to be changed at our Regents universities.” The operating budget for the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics — which Collins referred to as U-I-H-C — is estimated to be nearly two-point-eight BILLION dollars.

(Radio Iowa) – With just a few business days left in 2024, some Iowans may be scrambling to shore up their tax picture before the year is out and there’s plenty of advice on the internet, though much of it is bad. Christopher Miller, the Iowa spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, says the agency has been tracking a significant boost in the amount of bogus tax advice that’s been appearing on social media lately. “That continues to dupe people into filing inaccurate tax returns,” Miller says, “and of course, that can lead to delayed refunds, penalties and interest, and sometimes even criminal charges, so be on the lookout.” Miller says you should only be getting your tax advice from a licensed professional, and he adds, online crooks are really ramping up their game.

“They promise to magically enrich taxpayers,” Miller says, “scams on social media ranging from the fuel tax credit on federal tax returns to scams that involve investments in fake cryptocurrencies.” Miller says social media influencers are likely offering up their tax tips for a couple of basic reasons, none of which are altruistic. “Criminal profit motive, because they’re wanting people to follow their bad scams,” Miller says. “Others are simply trying to gain attention and clicks, but they have little disregard for the risk that it poses to their followers.”

Find a variety of tax tips and a wealth of more information at I-R-S-dot-gov.

(Radio Iowa) – More businesses are turning to apprenticeships as a way to find workers in a very tight job market in the state. Iowa Workforce Development Director Beth Townsend says the program at Broadlawns Hospital in Des Moines is a good example of that. “I think registered apprenticeship has been historically, the model of workforce training for centuries and Broadlawns is a great example of an employer who you wouldn’t think traditionally would use registered apprenticeship model, because it’s generally in the construction and trades,” Townsend says. She says it helps people enter the workforce quicker with less expenses. “You have a job while you’re doing your training, so you’re the work that you’re doing is helping you earn a credential and is moving you into that skilled worker area,” she says.

Townsend says the businesses that start the apprenticeship programs find it pays off. “You know, 85 to 90 percent of apprentices generally end up getting hired by the employer that trained them once their apprenticeship is completed. So it’s a really good way to build, you know, not only skilled workforce, but a skilled workforce for you specifically,” Townsend says. That also means those students are staying in the state. Townsend says the teacher para-educator apprenticeship is another example. “And that’s a completely nontraditional occupation. You know, teachers, generally, you don’t associate them with a registered apprenticeship program, but, when you think about it, they’re actually working for the school while they’re going to college and they’re getting their degree, but they’re in the classroom and they’re working with students, not just the one semester of student teaching that you normally see at the end,” she says.

Townsend says the apprenticeship can help students decide their future early on. “People who’ve gone through education get to the student teaching and are like, oh, wait a minute, this is not what I thought it would be, and I don’t want to do this. Well, that’s the beauty of apprenticeship, is you’re trying on these occupations before you get too far down the road, and you can figure out whether you want to stay in the field or not,” Townsend says.

(Ames, Iowa) – Researchers from Iowa State University have partnered with Michigan State University to develop a robot that would detect nitrates and monitor tile health to help farmers keep their land productive. The Iowa Capital Dispatch reports nearly half of Iowa’s harvested cropland has tile drainage, according to ag census data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The underground drainage systems help to boost crop productivity, but environmental and water groups have pointed out they can also deliver excessive amounts of nitrate and other nutrients downstream.

Mike Castellano, a professor of soil science at ISU, said the robots and nitrate sensors could help farmers detect where, how and how much nitrate they are losing. Castellano spoke at a virtual field day with Iowa Learning Farms Dec. 19. “That allows farmers to better manage their field at a precision scale, to improve both productivity and environmental performance of our crop production systems,” Castellano said.  Castellano said current technologies limit nitrate testing to the end of the tile pipe, but the robot would be able to pinpoint “exactly when and where those nutrients are being lost.”

Liang Dong, the director of the microelectronics research center at ISU has worked with Castellano to develop the nitrate sensor portion of this technology.  Dong said the sensor is completed and is being commercialized to be an affordable technology for farmers.   “When the sensor is small enough and the price is low enough, farmers can put the sensors into their drainage tile, and then they will know what is the waterflow and what is the nitrate loss from their field,” Dong said.

Christian Luedtke, a researcher at Michigan State University, demonstrates a prototype of a tile robot. (Screenshot from Iowa Learning Farms)

The end goal is to put the nitrate sensor, along with a camera and a waterflow sensor, onto a robot that can crawl through an entire tile drainage system and store the information for farmers. The robot, which is being developed by team led by Xiaobo Tan, a professor of electrical engineering at Michigan State University, is still a prototype. Christian Luedtke, a graduate researcher working with Tan on the project, spoke at the virtual field day and demonstrated the current prototype.  The nearly two-foot long robot is currently designed to use several fin-like barbs on the front and back to move through corrugated pipes.

Luedtke said he has learned through this project that not all tile is corrugated and it often will change diameters across a field, which present additional challenges to creating the robot. “We do not know that being engineers and not farmers,” Luedtke said.  These are things he learned while in Iowa this summer while talking about the project with farmers, many of whom have clay or concrete tiles that were installed many generations prior. Luedtke said the robot also needs to be quicker at moving through the pipes, have a battery life of at least a couple of hours and be waterproofed before the research team can begin practical tests in actual tile.

“The water quality issues here in Iowa, if we can help provide a cheap and easy solution for farmers to make decisions to help that, I think that’d be a great effect for our work to have,” Luedtke said.

(Glenwood, Iowa) – The Glenwood Police Department reports a woman was arrested this (Thursday) morning (12/26), on an OWI charge. 44-year-old Katie Church, of Glenwood, was arrested for OWI/1st offense. Her bond in the Mills County jail was set at $1,000.

(Radio Iowa) – Geologists at the University of Iowa are leading a more than 11 MILLION dollar project to see if carbon can be successfully stored deep underground near a power plant in Council Bluffs. The study is exploring whether liquefied carbon could be injected into basalt rock a half mile underground. Ryan Clark is a geologist with the Iowa Geological Survey and the principal investigator of the study. “What we need to do is drill deep enough to grab some of these rocks and do some laboratory experiments to see if this will actually work or not,” he says, “and then use modeling software and other techniques to sort of evaluate if we think that it can be up-scaled to to handle the amount of emissions that the Department of Energy thinks is going to be, you know, beneficial.”

The U-S Department of Energy is funding the research. Clark says one of the most important parts of the project is measuring potential seismic activity. “It’s up to us to gather as much data as we can and really comb through it to see if we can identify any of those potential hazards ahead of time, because injecting again underground is, in some cases, offsetting the natural balance,” he says, “and so we have to make sure that we’re doing this responsibly and that, you know, there aren’t going to be any hazards later on down the line.”

Clark made his comments during a recent appearance on Iowa Public Radio. The federal government offers 85-dollars’ worth of tax credits for every ton of carbon stored in rock.

(Creston, Iowa) – Two women from Creston were arrested recently on separate charges. Creston Police report Tuesday evening, 43-year-old Candy Lee Jones, of Creston, was arrested at her residence. Jones was charged with Assault. She was cited and released at the scene, on a Promise to Appear.

Wednesday night, 50-year-old Christine Lynn Selvy, of Creston, was arrested at her residence on charges that include: Disorderly Conduct, Public Intoxication and Harassment 3rd Degree. She was taken to the Union County Jail and later released after posting a $900 bond.

(Des Moines, Iowa) –  After 42 years since the passing of her husband, an Iowa World War II veteran, Jane Buck finally received the recognition she had been waiting for. The acknowledgment came in the form of a package delivered to her home. Buck’s husband, Yeoman First Class William John Buck Jr., passed away in 1982 from lymphoma, a condition linked to radiation exposure during his service in Japan after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. KCCI reports Jane cherishes a collage of Bill’s medals, uniform patches, and even his diary, which notes his presence in Kure, Japan, on Christmas Day in 1945.

However, one piece had been missing from her collection dedicated to honoring her gold star husband: official recognition of his status as an atomic veteran. Last week, nearly 80 years after his exposure, Jane received official paperwork from the Department of Defense and a new gold medal, confirming his status.

The Buck family were Atlantic residents for 20 years. Mr. Buck worked for Walnut Grove and died in the Cass County Memorial Hospital November 28, 1982. Their children, Linda and Tom both graduated from AHS.