A Marion businessman has launched a new product for those who want to drink wine while reclining outdoors in their lawn furniture or folding chairs. Chuck Kroemer, founder and CEO of Marion-based Kroemer Five Star Enterprises, said Vinaporte fits securely in most standard cup holders. The design secures the wine glass in a steady, vertical [...]

Several contracts for avionics equipment were announced Tuesday by Rockwell Collins at the annual Paris Air Show. Bristow Group, which provides helicopter transport services for offshore oil and gas and government operations, is retrofitting a fleet of 44 helicopters with Rockwell Collins’ traffic alert and collision avoidance system (TCAS). Installations have begun on Sikorsky S-76 [...]

Vanessa Solesbee, an Austin, Texas, native, had worked in Cedar Rapids as the Cedar Rapids Downtown District’s marketing and events director for about a year before returning to Austin. But she was recruited back after the flood of 2008 to become operations director and to take on the city’s downtown parking system, which had suffered [...]

Last week’s intermittent rainfall did not provide enough drying of saturated farmland, forcing many Iowa farmers to plant corn and soybeans in less-than-ideal field conditions as they struggled to get this year’s crop in the ground. There were 2.8 days suitable for fieldwork statewide, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture‘s National Agricultural Statistics Service. [...]

A 20-foot-long sign with the word capitalism in flashing lights is making its way around Cedar Rapids, asking residents whether they believe the economic system works for them. “It’s important (to address this) because not often are we able to take on this question,” said Steve Lambert, the artist behind the project, which popped up at [...]

Rockwell Collins and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has completed initial tests of a new communications system that eventually could enable unmanned aircraft or drones to operate safely in U.S. airspace. The FAA Reauthorization Act of 2012, passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama, orders the Federal Aviation Administration to develop [...]

Sequestration is hitting closer to home, and effects of federal spending cuts are now been seen at Corridor hospices. “For services provided on or after April 1, 2013, hospices face two percent cuts from Medicare. For Iowa City Hospice, this will be a substantial cut as almost 90 percent of our patient days are Medicare,” [...]

NEW HIRES The Meth-Wick Community hired Amber Jedlicka (see photo) as home and health services operation director. MMS Consultants hired Nathan Byers (see photo) as engineering technician and Walter Hurlbutt (see photo) as a land surveyor intern. Vince Ellison (see photo) is now with Bergan Paulsen as chief operating officer. Kyle Galloway (see photo) is [...]

In “Moneyball,” the book and movie, Oakland A’s General Manager Billy Beane and statistician Bill James stop thinking about recruiting baseball players based on time-honored gut instinct and instead begin looking at numbers. Simon Kuper, a Financial Times columnist, and Stefan Szymanski, a University of Michigan kinesiology professor, have taken a similar statistical microscope to [...]