2023-02-27
- For the past 40 years bug lovers at the University of Illinois have been working to ameliorate some of the negativity associated with insects by hosting the annual Insect Fear Film Festival (IFFF).
This year’s event, with a theme of living fossils, will take place on Saturday, March 4, in Foellinger Auditorium, with doors opening at 6 p....
2023-02-27 - For Rachel J. Whitaker, life tends to feel like it’s all hands on deck. Whitaker, a professor of microbiology, spends much of her time researching the evolution of archaea, bacteria, and viruses in the natural and clinical world—so much time that she tends to get caught up in her research. At a recent investiture ceremony, where...
2023-02-24 - It’s not easy to make sense of quantum-scale motion, but a new mathematical theory could help, providing insight into the various computing, electrochemical, and biological systems. Chenghao Zhang, a physics graduate student at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and chemistry professor Martin...
2023-02-23 - Longtime professor Bruce Fouke, whose work at the intersection of geology, biology, and medicine has widened our understanding of how life has evolved to control mineral growth in diverse natural environments and the human body, has been named the Ralph E. Grim Professor in Earth Sciences and Environmental Change at the University of Illinois. The position was previously named the Ralph E. Grim...
2023-02-21 - A project led by information sciences and English professor Ryan Cordell will examine the way in which stories about racial violence circulated in late 19th century and early 20th century newspapers and how those stories relate to social media reports of racial violence today. "The Virality of Racial Terror...
2023-02-21 - "I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times… In life after life, in age after age, forever. My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs, That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms, In life after life, in age after age, forever." – From "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore...
2023-02-20 - Valerie J. Hoffman, research professor emerita in the Department of Religion, has served at the University of Illinois for more than 39 years. She’s gone from convincing the university that a position in Islamic studies was necessary to being greeted as a star by persecuted Muslims in Africa. She describes her career and how her field has changed in a...
2023-02-15 - Eighteen U of I students enrolled in a fall introductory anthropology course have received Public Anthropology Awards from the Center for a Public Anthropology for their insights on racism and policing. Under the instruction of anthropology professor Andrew Orta, the students were prompted to write stories about how two people of opposing perspectives...
2023-02-10 - The HMS Challenger began a four-year voyage 150 years ago to explore the deep sea and the creatures that lived in it. The scientists aboard the ship discovered thousands of new species and recorded massive amounts of data about the oceans. The treasure trove of information they gathered is now available online in the first comprehensive database of the Challenger findings. A new...
2023-02-10 - The College of LAS has selected 14 professors, graduate students, lecturers, and an advisor as the recipients of the 2023 teaching and advising awards. “The LAS community is extremely proud of these outstanding educators and advisors,” said Venetria K. Patton, Harry E. Preble Dean of the College of LAS. “We're fortunate to have such innovative, empathetic, and dedicated individuals working to...
2023-02-08 - Demolition is underway at Illini Hall, marking a key stage in the $192 million Altgeld and Illini Hall Project to advance learning and research spaces in mathematics, statistics, and data sciences at the University of Illinois. Crews from Alpine Demolition Services are tearing down the 116-year-old building to make way for the...
2023-02-01 - Three professors in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been elected 2022 Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are among seven professors selected at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Psychology professor Kara Federmeier, atmospheric sciences...
2023-01-27 - Aquatic birds, especially ducks, can carry influenza viruses but they don’t often become severely ill, leading scientists to wonder how their immune systems act as a reservoir for a highly infectious and pathogenic virus, but the birds remain relatively unharmed. Additionally, could the immune system be engineered to thwart transmission to other animals and humans, ultimately preventing future...
2023-01-26 - College of LAS alumni Hye Kyung Timken (PhD, '87, chemistry) and Freeman Hrabowski III (MA, ’71, mathematics; PhD, '75, education; honorary PhD, '04, education) have been chosen to receive 2023 National Academy of Science (NAS) awards for leadership and service to society. Timken will...
2023-01-23 - Illinois alumna Laura Rodríguez-Romaní (BA, ’10, anthropology, Spanish; ME, ’14) has a passion for bilingual education and literature. As the curator and owner of the independent online bookstore Los Amigos Books, she specializes in authentic Spanish and bilingual...
2023-01-20 - A phase I clinical trial of PAC-1, a drug that spurs programmed cell death in cancer cells, found only minor side effects in patients with end-stage cancers. The drug stalled the growth of tumors in the five people in the trial with neuroendocrine cancers and reduced tumor size in two of those patients. It also showed some therapeutic activity against sarcomas, scientists and clinicians report in...
2023-01-13 - Science can answer some significant questions. Just ask Rebecca (Becky) Fuller, head of the Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, whose work includes examining links between evolutionary dynamics and environmental change. How does she do it? By studying some of our smaller co-habitants: the bluefin killifish and rainbow and orangethroat...
2023-01-13 - For some women who experience serious and chronic physical or mental health conditions, one of their most daunting challenges is obtaining the belief and validation of health care providers, family members and friends, researchers found in a recent study. Those in the study described prolonged struggles to obtain emotional support, diagnosis, and treatment for a variety of serious, often-painful...
2023-01-06 - The heart of the American Midwest was one of the most important ecological and cultural borderland areas in North America for Indigenous people in early American history, according to a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign historian. Situated in a transition zone between woodlands and grasslands, the transformation of the tallgrass prairie...
2023-01-06 - The Coup d’État Project of the Cline Center for Advanced Social Research initially categorized the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as an “attempted dissident coup d’état.” It also...
2022-12-20 - Scientists have labored for decades to understand how brain structure and functional connectivity drive intelligence. A new analysis offers the clearest picture yet of how various brain regions and neural networks contribute to a person’s problem-solving ability in a variety of contexts, a trait known as general intelligence, researchers report. They detail their findings in the journal Human...
2022-12-16 - A new paper co-written by a team of University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign experts who study the science of personalities points to the important role of personality traits to account for individual differences in experiencing stress. In a meta-analysis synthesizing more than 1,500 effect sizes from about 300 primary studies, the team showed that while all of the “Big Five” personality traits...
2022-12-16 - Baseball may be America’s favorite pastime, but in rankings of the most popular hobbies, reading is more consistently ranked highly. It’s not hard to see why: Reading is simultaneously engaging and relaxing, and it’s fun to do alone and with friends. A team of researchers at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology have uncovered yet...
2022-12-16 - An almost limitless supply of fresh water exists in the form of water vapor above Earth’s oceans, yet remains untapped, researchers said. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is the first to suggest an investment in new infrastructure capable of harvesting oceanic water vapor as a solution to limited supplies of fresh water in various locations around the world. The study...
2022-12-16 - Sandy Hardin’s family has always placed a priority on education so working as the senior business specialist within the Department of English became a natural fit.