2017-04-11
- Many moviegoers were touched deeply by “American Beauty,” the 1999 Academy Award-winning drama about the midlife crisis of a frustrated 40-something dad named Lester Burnham. For Ryan Suffern (BA, ’99, English), now head of the documentary division at The Kennedy/Marshall Company in Santa Monica, California, the film was life-changing.
As the end...
2017-04-07 - A study of the DNA in ancient skeletal remains adds to the evidence that indigenous groups living today in southern Alaska and the western coast of British Columbia are descendants of the first humans to make their home in northwest North America more than 10,000 years ago. “Our analysis suggests that this is the same population living in this part of the world over time, so we...
2017-04-06 - Two LAS students have been honored in U of I's annual Image of Research competition, in which graduate students pair powerful images with compelling descriptions of research. Out of a pool of 20 finalists, Chris Seward, a graduate student in...
2017-04-04 - During a recent evening, professors, staff members, and students gathered to take part in a new school tradition: They got up on their soapboxes before a lively crowd and debated on the books that had most changed the world. A panel of judges then determined the winner from a field of entries ranging from Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto” to Virgil’s “The Aeneid” and the...
2017-04-03 - Twelve students from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences have been offered Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation. An additional 12 students from the college were accorded honorable mention. In all, 22 students from Illinois received the fellowships. Forty received honorable mention. Created in 1952, the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program...
2017-03-31 - Call it a case of history students determined to prevent history from repeating itself. Members of HIST 172/173 at Illinois, influenced by a class section on the Great Depression, recently organized a food drive that generated more than 300 lbs. of food to fight hunger in local areas.It started as Leslie Reagan, professor of history, taught students...
2017-03-30 - Instead of turning carbon into food, many plants accidentally make a plant-toxic compound during photosynthesis that is recycled through a process called photorespiration. University of Illinois and USDA/ARS researchers report in Plant Cell the discovery of a key protein in this process, which they hope to manipulate to increase plant productivity. "Photorespiration is...
2017-03-28 - Timing the harvest and transport of highly perishable, hand-picked crops such as strawberries so these delicate products reach consumers at peak flavor and freshness is an intricate dance that partners Mother Nature with manual labor. However, many of the “smart farming” techniques and technologies that help growers harvest more of what they sow faster and more efficiently have...
2017-03-24 - Refugees seeking entry to the U.S. need “extreme vetting,” says the Trump administration in justifying its proposed travel bans. But U of I anthropology doctoral student Sophia Balakian, in her dissertation research, found that potential refugees already must endure an extensive and time-consuming process that can easily end in failure...
2017-03-23 - Researchers are nebulizing soybean aphids with RNA, which, when incorporated into the body, can hinder the expression of specific genes. The new method of delivering “interfering RNA” in a mist will likely speed the process of discovering the function of many mystery genes in insects, the researchers report in the journal Insect Molecular Biology. The new technique, first tried...
2017-03-21 - What role can the humanities play in science, education, engineering, and mathematics—and vice versa? It can be a significant one, said Antoinette Burton, director of the Illinois Program for the Humanities (IPRH) and professor of history and gender and women’s...
2017-03-20 - Altgeld Tower, home to the carillon bells that delight campus regulars and visitors alike, is closed for repairs for an undetermined length of time. The chimes are limited to an automated quarter-hour timekeeping function.The work is an extension of a larger project to update Altgeld Hall, 1409 W. Green St., Urbana, and nearby Illini Hall, 725 S....
2017-03-20 - It’s an intriguing success story at Illinois: At a time when many language programs are struggling to maintain enrollments, the Arabic studies minor at Illinois has been steadily growing since its launch in 2010. According to the Department of Linguistics, home to the Arabic studies minor, there are 15 students currently pursuing the minor. The...
2017-03-17 - The University of Illinois Library has launched a digital publishing initiative, the Illinois Open Publishing Network, with its first work – a new English translation of a memoir of Claude Monet. “Claude Monet: The Water Lilies” was first published in 1928 by Georges Clemenceau, the former French prime minister and a friend of...
2017-03-16 - Public policy is endlessly complex. One of the most enduring ideas of the late David Linowes, professor of political economy, public policy, and business administration at Illinois who understood policy-making better than virtually anyone else, was this: If it’s going to work, good policy is formed by a vast array of viewpoints. It was sage advice. In fact, the...
2017-03-14 - An anthropology professor and two LAS alumnae have been named recipients of Illinois’ 2016 International Achievement Awards, in honor of their efforts to better the nation and the world. Professor Helaine Silverman, in U of I’s Department of Anthropology, has been awarded the Sheth Distinguished Faculty award for International...
2017-03-14 - Faculty and graduate students at Illinois have been awarded “Paradigms Shifts” Fellowship Awards by the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities (IPRH). The program also announced the first ever New Horizons Summer Research Fellowships, which will support faculty summer research and provide for the hire of an undergraduate...
2017-03-10 - A psychology alumna who has dedicated her career to ending domestic violence and homelessness has been named a 2017 Chicago Illini of the Year.Rebecca A. Darr (BS, ’90, psychology) has grown the Palatine, Illinois-based Women in Need of Growing Stronger (WINGS) program into one of the state’s largest social...
2017-03-09 - As hundreds of kids and their families learned recently, Altgeld Hall is a great place to learn not just mathematics, but how math and numbers can solve problems.On a recent Saturday, large crowds from Champaign-Urbana converged on Altgeld for Math Carnival: Gathering for Gardner. The event’s purpose was to engage the community as well as honor the late Martin Gardner, a famous mathematics and...
2017-03-08 - The National Baseball Hall of Fame has launched a new online platform to celebrate Latino baseball, with University of Illinois history professor Adrian Burgos Jr. as its editor-in-chief.The site, La Vida Baseball (www.lavidabaseball.com), went online last week.Burgos, in a...
2017-03-07 - Two U of I alumni, including an LAS alumna, will be inducted this year into The National Inventors Hall of Fame in Washington, D.C.The late Allene Rosalind Jeanes (PhD, ’38, chemistry) will be inducted posthumously into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in May for, in part, creating a blood plasma extender used by medics in the Korean and Vietnam...
2017-03-06 - One recent evening in the back room of Pizza M in Urbana, with its hand drawn art covering the walls and paper lanterns lining the ceiling, a crowd of parents, children, couples, students, and others gathered around pizzas and beers to hear more about the night’s main topic: antimatter.Laughter, the clinking of glasses, and a mother’s occasional instructions to her eager son –“you have to finish...
2017-03-03 - New graduates from LAS are successful at securing a first destination after college, according to the second annual release of a campus initiative to better understand young Illinois alumni. They’re also in demand by employers upon graduation. These results are according to the Illini Success initiative, a campuswide effort that...
2017-03-01 - Life was hard in southern Arizona in the 19th century, and there wasn’t much reason to expect that a young boy named Wassaja would long be part of it when he was dragged into the mountains by enemy raiders in 1871. Certainly there was no reason to expect that 145 years later a building at the University of Illinois would be named in his honor. Last fall, however, Illinois...