2024-07-09
- Many students, said George Deltas, professor and head of the Department of Economics, see his field as a way to prepare for a future in public policy. He describes, however, how economics combines elements of business, engineering, and statistics to be...
LAS News Archive
2024-06-27 - The human body has sophisticated defenses against the deposition of calcium minerals that stiffen heart tissues, researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and collaborators at UCLA Health and the University of Texas at Austin found in a new study that provides the first detailed,...
2024-06-27 - Keerthana Hogirala was born in Tirupati, India. When she was 6 years old, her family moved to Michigan, and when she was 9 years old she moved to Illinois. The transition to the United States was difficult. Hogirala says that her parents had to work multiple jobs and long hours to keep their...
2024-06-27 - By giving artificial intelligence simple associative learning rules based on the brain circuits that allow a sea slug to forage — and augmenting it with better episodic memory, like that of an octopus — scientists have built an AI that can navigate new environments, seek rewards, map landmarks and...
2024-06-25 - English professor José B. Capino spent the summer of 2017 researching in European archives and interviewing people for his book on the late Lino Brocka, an influential Filipino filmmaker. He did not expect that his work would get two of Brocka’s most...
2024-06-24 - The anti-corruption laws enacted in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria created a new economic sector — a lucrative anti-corruption market based on outsourcing public procurement to private sector corporations. Despite millions of dollars of investments in platforms, websites, training...
2024-06-24 - Popular music is associated with youth, newness and originality. Yet such music has a deep relationship with the past through sampling, covers and commemorative reissues of decades-old recordings, tours by artists from the 1960s and ‘70s, and performances by tribute bands. In his new book, “...
2024-06-13 - Researchers have developed a new antibiotic that reduced or eliminated drug-resistant bacterial infections in mouse models of acute pneumonia and sepsis while sparing healthy microbes in the mouse gut. The drug, called lolamicin, also warded off secondary infections with Clostridioides...
2024-06-13 - June is Pride Month, which commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Inn uprisings in Manhattan that brought the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people to the fore. Stefan Vogler, a professor of sociology, is a co-author of a new American Civil Liberties Union...
2024-06-11 - The College of LAS has honored 17 professors with named scholar and professorship positions in recognition of their contributions to research and education at the University of Illinois. The named positions include the Brad and Karen Smith Scholars, the Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors...
2024-06-11 - Six professors from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been named Conrad Humanities Scholars and Clayton and Thelma Kirkpatrick Professors. Angela Calcaterra, Teri Chettiar, Irvin Hunt, and Ghassan Moussawi have each been honored as Conrad Humanities Scholars. The Conrad Humanities...
2024-06-07 - Cong Wang taught English in China for six years before arriving at the University of Illinois, but when she arrived on campus Wang knew that communicating isn’t just about proper spelling and grammar but also a grasp of the cultural nuances around the language. She still had a lot to learn about...
2024-06-07 - Corey Van Landingham’s new book of poems, “Reader, I,” looks at marriage, the tension between being an individual and part of a couple, and how to operate within the constraints of marriage for the better....
2024-06-03 - Advay Gupta always found himself thinking like his father: very technical and drawn to the latest technology. His mother was a different matter. She thinks in a more non-technical way, he said, and Gupta is always helping her understand different types of technology, from downloads to social media...
2024-05-31 - Federal policy toward Native American tribal nations in the first half of the 20th century sought to end the government’s legal and political relationship with tribes. A new book by history professor David Beck looks at one aspect of termination policy —...
2024-05-30 - Exercise prompts muscles to release molecular cargo that boosts brain cell function and connection, but the process is not well understood. New research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign found that the nerves that tell muscles to move also prompt them to release more of the brain-...
2024-05-29 - There’s a sentence from one of Annie Abbott’s students that’s seared into her memory: “I used to think immigration was a problem.” The sentence had been written on an exam in Abbott’s course, SPAN 232: Spanish in the Community. Abbott recalls how powerful it felt to read this sentence as it...
2024-05-24 - Carol Symes, a professor of history, is vice president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors. Symes spoke with News Bureau education editor Sharita Forrest about a trend of state legislation that is changing U.S....
2024-05-23 - The past attempts of honey bee researchers to inventory the fungal diversity in honey bee colonies revealed that Aspergillus flavus is frequently found in hives. In a new study, researchers have discovered that this fungus is uniquely adapted to survive in bee colonies. The western...
2024-05-22 - By converting their data into sounds, scientists discovered how hydrogen bonds contribute to the lightning-fast gyrations that transform a string of amino acids into a functional, folded protein. Their report, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers an unprecedented view of...
2024-05-17 - In 2007, Waïl Hassan was writing a book about the literature of Arab immigrants in the United States and Britain when he uncovered something else that was very intriguing. By reading the works of multiple Latin American writers of Arab descent, he found that Arab immigrants who lived in Latin...
2024-05-06 - Two College of LAS professors have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of a scientist's highest professional honors. Biochemistry professor emeritus Steve Sligar and...
2024-05-06 - Researchers at the University of Illinois have contributed to a large-scale international study that has reconstructed a comprehensive "tree of life" for flowering plants. The study offers new light on the evolutionary history of angiosperms, which account for approximately 90 percent of all...
2024-05-02 - The Tibetan plateau—the world’s highest and largest plateau—poses a challenge to the people who live there because of its extreme climate. In a new study, researchers have discovered stone artifacts that suggest that there were more cultural exchanges between those who lived on the plateau and...
2024-04-30 - Radio ads with an emotional appeal — featuring personal stories of either a happy organ transplant recipient or a sad patient languishing on the waiting list — increase nondonor listeners’ support for organ donation and may be effective at overcoming some of the qualms that deter them from joining...