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...
LAS News Archive
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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—...
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-...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
2018-02-15 - The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Illinois International Programs has recognized an alumnus, a graduate student, and an undergraduate student from the College of LAS with International Achievement Awards.Jinwoo Cheon, (PhD, chemistry...
2018-02-14 - The 35th Insect Fear Film Festival will focus on a creature that is important for humans to understand but that is not actually an insect at all.Ticks are arachnids, a class of arthropods that includes spiders, scorpions and ticks’ closest...
2018-02-12 - Gene Robinson, a professor of entomology and director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), has been awarded the 2018 Wolf Prize in Agriculture for “leading the genomics revolution...
2018-02-12 - People today might think twice about going to a doctor or dentist who advertised by hanging a bloody rag outside their office door. But the concept wasn’t exactly cause for alarm a couple hundred years ago, according to Stephanie Hilger, head of the Department of...
2018-02-08 - Professors, teaching assistants, and an advisor are being recognized by the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences for excellence in educating and mentoring students at Illinois. A formal ceremony in honor of the winners will take place April 18.The LAS Dean’s Award for Excellence in Undergraduate...