2018-04-02
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The Commerce Department has announced that the 2020 U.S. census will include a question on citizenship, which has raised numerous objections. Julie Dowling is a U of I Latina/Latino studies professor who wrote about how people respond to race and ethnicity questions on the census in her 2014 book...
2018-03-28 - Choline intake during pregnancy can influence infant metabolism and brain development, according to a series of studies from the University of Illinois. Although the role of choline in neurodevelopment has been studied before in rodents, the new research, done with pigs, has more relevance to humans. “We know the pig is a good model for humans because they have the same...
2018-03-22 - An alumnus from the University of Illinois has been named the next governor of China’s central bank, where he is expected to continue ambitious reforms to control China’s debt while maintaining the country’s economic growth. The National People’s Congress voted this week to approve Yi Gang (MS, ’84; PhD, ’86; economics) to lead the People’s Bank...
2018-03-22 - Researchers say they can now produce a vast library of unique cyclic compounds, some with the capacity to interrupt specific protein-protein interactions that play a role in disease. The new compounds have cyclic structures that give them stability and enhance their ability to bind to their targets. The study, reported in the journal Nature Chemical Biology, also...
2018-03-20 - By peering at the brains of study subjects prompted to suppress negative emotions, scientists have gained new insights into how emotional regulation influences negative feelings and memories. The researchers hope the findings will lead to new methods to combat depression. The research, reported in the journal Neuropsychologia, relied on functional MRI to track activity in the...
2018-03-19 - Agriculture already monopolizes 90 percent of global freshwater—yet production still needs to dramatically increase to feed and fuel this century’s growing population. Scientists at Illinois have for the first time improved how a crop uses water by 25 percent without compromising yield by altering the expression of one gene that is found in all plants, as reported in Nature Communications. The...
2018-03-15 - Charlie Young sits about 30 feet behind home plate at a University of Illinois baseball preseason practice. He shares the space with a spindly piece of technology, known as a FlightScope, which gathers data about every pitch, swing of a bat, and batted ball and sends it to the tablet in his hand. Young is a sophomore CS + Astronomy...
2018-03-14 - What is justice? When is it achieved? And how is the study of philosophy affecting how we prepare for earthquakes? Meet Colleen Murphy, professor of philosophy, political science, and law, director of the Women and Gender in Global...
2018-03-13 - What’s one item you use every day that you couldn’t live without? Mascara, Nike sneakers, paper towels, or perhaps your daily Starbucks coffee? But what happens to these items once you toss them (or their containers) out? This is one question that English professor Gillen Wood asks students in his English 360: Environmental Writing...
2018-03-08 - New graduates from LAS are increasingly successful at securing a first destination after college, according to the third annual release of a campus initiative to better understand young Illinois alumni. They continue to be in strong demand by employers.These results are according to the Illini Success initiative, a campuswide effort that launched...
2018-03-07 - Kathryn Clancy, professor of anthropology, has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives in a hearing devoted to sexual harassment and misconduct in the sciences. The hearing, held by the Subcommittee on...
2018-03-06 - Former Fighting Illini football player and Fulbright Scholar Stephen Steinhaus is opening a new high school in Solihull, England, this April. Once obsessed with becoming a lawyer like Atticus Finch in “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a long line of teachers in his family—and Lennie in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”—led him instead to become a driving force for...
2018-03-06 - An LAS professor has recently been awarded a position in a prestigious international academic society, and she’s considering how to expand the group’s membership as she prepares for leadership. Germanic languages and literatures professor Mara Wade has been appointed as vice president of The Renaissance Society of America, the...
2018-03-02 - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded the University of Illinois a $10.6 million, five-year grant to transform two of the most productive crops in America into sustainable sources of biodiesel and biojet fuel. The new research project Renewable Oil Generated with Ultra-productive Energycane—or ROGUE—kicked off in late February with a team meeting held in conjunction with...
2018-03-01 - Scientists report in the journal eNeuro that they’ve built an artificially intelligent ocean predator that behaves a lot like the original flesh-and-blood organism on which it was modeled. The virtual creature, “Cyberslug,” reacts to food and responds to members of its own kind much like the actual animal, the sea slug Pleurobranchaea californica, does. Unlike most...
2018-03-01 - McCollum v. Board of Education, the landmark 1948 U.S. Supreme Court case which upheld the separation of church and state in public schools, didn’t originate with a fiery sermon or philosophical debate. It began at a small, wooden desk in a school hallway in Champaign, Illinois.That’s where public school officials would put James (Jim) McCollum when he chose not to attend voluntary fifth-grade...
2018-03-01 - Beautiful art. Monolithic buildings. Microscopic machines. Since humankind first picked up tools, design has been used to create the physical objects that shape our world. But what if the same approaches that enable us to design the physical world could be used to engineer a better life?This past October, the College of LAS took the wraps off of a brand-new program to do just that. Called the...
2018-03-01 - In an ironic twist of science, it took mutant plants, grown in total darkness, to shine a spotlight on how plants respond to sunlight.Joanne Chory (MS, ’80; PhD, ’84; microbiology) used her findings from mutants to trace the complete pathway of what happens at the molecular level when plants sense light, beginning with cell receptors...
2018-02-28 - The number of women writing works of fiction dropped dramatically from the middle of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century, and the prominence of female characters in works of fiction declined as well. At the same time, however, the gender differences between male and female characters became weaker. Ted Underwood, a University of Illinois professor of information sciences and of...
2018-02-27 - Encircling Antarctica, the Southern Ocean is a strange and beautiful place. Full of penguins, icebergs, giant squids, and beset by intense storms, even its clouds are brighter—really. It helps explain why Bob Rauber and Sonia Lasher-Trapp, professors of atmospheric sciences, were recently flying over the area in a research plane....
2018-02-26 - A new study links doing one’s homework, being interested and behaving responsibly in high school to better academic and career success as many as 50 years later. This effect, reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, holds true even after accounting for parental income, IQ and other factors known to influence achievement, researchers report. “Yes,...
2018-02-23 - In fairy tales, step-mothers are often painted as wicked and mean—but for Paula Carter (BA, ’01, English and rhetoric), both the joys and sorrows of being an “almost mother” were the inspiration for her new book, “No Relation.”The book, an essay collection published in November by Black Lawrence Press, focuses on themes surrounding motherhood,...
2018-02-20 - Tipping has become a prominent part of food service culture since it was introduced in the 19th century. That’s not to say it goes without debate—and a mathematics researcher has found that there is a point where restaurants would be better off eliminating the practice altogether. Sara Clifton, a J.L. Doob Research Assistant Professor,...
2018-02-19 - Leah Matchett, of Grand Haven, Michigan, and an alumna of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is one of 49 students selected in the first year of the Knight-Hennessy Scholar program for postgraduate study at Stanford University. Matchett (BA, '16, global studies and ...
2018-02-16 - A College of LAS scientist is among 126 recipients of the 2018 Sloan Research Fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. According to the foundation, the awards “honor early career scholars whose achievements mark them as among the very best scientific minds working today.” Winners receive a two-year $65,000 fellowship to further their research.Two other scientists from Illinois were chosen...