2023-08-25
- Hilary was the first tropical storm to hit California in 84 years. Atmospheric sciences professor Deanna Hence spoke with News Bureau physical sciences editor Lois Yoksoulian about what made this storm unique and if the...
LAS News Archive
2023-08-25 - Office manager Jazmine Summerville wears many hats as an office manager for the School of Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics. After working for three years on campus, she knows that helping someone’s day run smoothly is a gratifying reward for a job well done.
2023-08-23 - As summer storms roll though your region, have you wondered who is behind the science of a weather warning? In west Texas and portions of southeast New Mexico, College of LAS alumnus Devin Chehak (BS, ’18, atmospheric sciences; MS, ‘20, atmospheric...
2023-08-22 - Nineteen faculty members have accepted new leadership positions in departments and other academic units within the College of LAS for the 2023-24 academic year. Executive officers lead each of the almost 70 departments, programs, schools, centers, and other academic units within the College of...
2023-08-22 - Cathy Murphy, the Larry R. Faulkner Endowed Chair in Chemistry, has been named the interim director of the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, pending Board of Trustees approval. Murphy is a highly regarded scientist, experienced...
2023-08-18 - The whaling industry helped drive industrialization in the 19th century, with whale oil used to light lamps and lubricate machinery. Even after petroleum replaced whale oil as an energy source in the U.S., whaling continued to be part of our cultural imagination and helped develop the idea of an...
2023-08-18 - Despite efforts across the globe to move toward a circular plastics economy, more than three quarters of the 400 metric tons of plastic produced worldwide each year still ends up as waste. A group of chemistry researchers at the University of Illinois...
2023-08-11 - The women began to gather in the large living room, flanked on one side by a fireplace, on the other by a grand piano. As they got settled, one could hear the murmuring of soft voices and the whispers of full skirts shifting. Some students sat on the carpeted floor, others on the sofas and chairs...
2023-08-11 - Illinois public schools will be required to teach students about Native American history in the state beginning with the 2024-25 school year. The legislation, which was signed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Aug. 4, requires that schools teach about the contributions of Native Americans in government,...
2023-08-09 - What is selfish behavior? Selfishness is defined as the tendency to act in one's own interests without regard for the impact on others. New research shows that a person’s own behavior is the primary driver of how they treat others during brief, zero-sum-game competitions. Generous...
2023-08-03 - CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Scientists have identified a protein that plays a critical role in the action of several emerging cancer therapies. The researchers say the discovery will likely aid efforts to fine-tune the use of immunotherapies against several challenging cancers. They report their findings in...
2023-07-26 - A new report reveals that U.S. beekeepers lost roughly half of the honey bees they managed last year. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign...
2023-07-26 - When a human consumes a pharmaceutical drug, enzymes in the liver break down the substance into metabolites that are water soluble, so the body can more easily excrete them. In some cases, the resulting metabolites may have potent effects that can be good or bad. Medicinal chemists must test drug...
2023-07-25 - Some students who arrive at the University of Illinois have a hard time finding a place where they feel at home. When Darrell Hunter II, director of first year experience in the College of LAS, arrived in 2022, he decided to change that by launching the We Got Each Other program.The...
2023-07-25 - When you’re as old as Altgeld Hall, you deserve a nice cleansing scrub. The stony skin of the building dates to as far back as 1896, after all, and a lot of history, and other gunk, has built up on the stone. Even a U of I student’s thesis from more than 50 years ago notes the coloration change....
2023-07-20 - When Matthew Deady (BS, ‘75, mathematics and physics; MS, ‘77, mathematics) remembers his time at the University of Illinois, Altgeld Hall stands out as a friendly, inviting place. “Anything I was interested in, someone would tell me, this is who you talk to about what course to take or book to...
2023-07-13 - According to two psychologists who study memory and perception, fraudsters tend to exploit the common habits of thought and decision-making that make us susceptible – and often oblivious – to their fabrications. Their book, “Nobody’s Fool: Why We Get Taken In and What We Can Do About It,” gives...
2023-07-12 - There are things we’ve trained to do, and then there are the things we change for. John Levi Barnard, professor of English and comparative and world literature, and an affiliate faculty member with the...
2023-07-12 - What happens when urban art becomes literally a global invasion? That’s the question addressed by Julie Gaillard, professor of French, who has been tracking the work and significance of a secretive, anonymous artist who has created pixelated characters from...
2023-07-06 - Clinical testing is underway for a potentially groundbreaking new treatment for cystic fibrosis. Pioneered by scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the University of Iowa in partnership with the spin-out biotechnology company cystetic Medicines, this promising inhalable...
2023-06-30 - Like many ecological scientists, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign plant biology professor James O’Dwyer has spent much of his career searching for ways to measure and predict how specific plant communities will fare over time. Which species in...
2023-06-30 - The seemingly stable regions of the Earth’s continental plates – the so-called stable cratons – have suffered repetitive deformation below their crust since their formation in the remote past, according to new research from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. This...
2023-06-30 - Researchers have detected complex organic molecules in a galaxy more than 12 billion light-years away from Earth – the most distant galaxy in which these molecules are now known to exist. Thanks to the capabilities of the recently launched James Webb Space Telescope and careful analyses from the...
2023-06-29 - When individuals share videos about surprise reunions with their intimate partners on the internet, the reaction from viewers may not be the roses and unicorns the posters expected. Viewers’ responses to shared videos have the potential to shape offline relationships, a case study of one such video...
2023-06-29 - Fifteen years of archaeological work in the Tam Pa Ling cave in northeastern Laos has yielded a reliable chronology of early human occupation of the site, scientists report in the journal Nature Communications. The team’s excavations through the layers of sediments and bones that gradually washed...