LAS News Archive

2016-07-08 - Editor’s note: Scenes from oil-rich Venezuela show a country descending into chaos: desperate people looting stores and food trucks, political unrest, rising crime and hyperinflation. Damarys Canache, professor of political science at Illinois, is a native of Venezuela who...

2016-07-07 - Brendan Harley, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s 22nd annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering (USFOE) symposium.The academy invites engineers ages 30 to 45 who...

2016-07-06 -   Ashley Young has spent the better part of every school year since 2012 preparing a group of fellow college students for the ride of a lifetime. The students, all members of a group called Illini 4000, bike from New York City to San Diego every...

2016-07-05 - Until now, simulations of black hole collisions (and the matter that swirls around them) have been built upon simplified approximations. For the first time, however, researchers at Illinois and elsewhere created 3-D simulations of the collision of two supermassive black holes using Einstein's...

2016-07-05 -   In an era of so many scientific and technological breakthroughs—advances in genome editing, the discovery of Higgs boson or the “God particle,” the launching of deep space satellites—two award-winning University of Illinois scientists have teamed up to re-introduce people to a remarkable...

2016-07-01 - Mary-Dell Chilton arrived on the University of Illinois campus in 1956 as a celebrated young scientist—she had just been named a finalist in America’s top high school science competition, the Intel Science Talent Search. A chemistry major, Chilton didn’t take a particular interest in molecular...

2016-06-30 - In less than the blink of an eye, Einstein's theory of relativity is on its way to becoming scientific fact. Scientists have observed gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of spacetime—for the second time, and researchers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and departments of...

2016-06-29 -   A new study has clarified how brain structure and chemistry give rise to specific aspects of “fluid intelligence,” the ability to adapt to new situations and solve problems one has never encountered before. The study, reported in the journal NeuroImage, links higher concentrations of a...

2016-06-27 - Students attending the U of I’s Summer Institute for Languages of the Muslim World’s introductory course in Arabic say that’s it’s been full of pleasant surprises, not the least of which is how tired they are at the end of an intensive day.These high school students, who have limited or no prior...

2016-06-20 - It’s called the latitudinal diversity gradient, a phenomenon seen today in most plant and animal species around the world: Biodiversity decreases from the equator to higher latitudes. But a new study of fossils representing 63 million of the past 65 million years reveals that—for North American...

2016-06-15 - Millions will be vacationing this summer at national parks and hundreds of other sites managed by the National Park Service, which turns 100 this August. Robert Pahre, a political science professor at Illinois, has written extensively about the often-...

2016-06-10 - The U.S. Department of Defense released its Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative program awards last month, and three faculty members from the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences are part of the newly funded research efforts. The annual MURI program encourages cutting edge research...

2016-06-10 -     Bradley Hartmann grew up around lumber yards and construction sites. Now founder and “El Presidente” of Red Angle, Inc., he’s still in the construction business—and putting his degree to use helping builders and suppliers adapt to an industry that communicates...

2016-06-09 - Editor’s note: Rising income inequality has been brought front and center as an issue in this year’s presidential campaign. But do we really know what’s driving it, and the keys to closing the gap? Are popular explanations supported by research and data? Sociologist Kevin Leicht...

2016-06-06 -     Leon Cooper is accustomed to facilitating reunions, but his most treasured ones typically don’t have so many people. The Chicago White Sox and a crowd of more than 28,000 home fans honored Cooper, 96, for his military service and his work advocating for the safe return of World...

2016-06-01 - It is early May in central Belize, nearing the end of the dry season. While farmers anxiously await the beginning of the rainy season vital for crops, archaeologists hope it starts as late as possible. Tropical storms transform the landscape, making it difficult to get around, even in four-wheel-...

2016-05-26 - A new study reveals that police recruits and experienced officers are more likely than others to subscribe to colorblind racial beliefs—the notion that they (and people in general) see no differences among people from different racial groups and treat everyone the same.The findings appear in the...

2016-05-24 -     The U.S. has been a leading voice for human rights. It’s also run prison camps, now and in the past, that denied people those rights. A. Naomi Paik wanted to explore that contradiction—finding out why these camps were organized, how they were justified, how prisoners have been...

2016-05-19 - Occupants of Noyes Laboratory can expect plenty of construction on the third floor during the next 18 months—more noise at Noyes—but the result will be a more productive research environment for dozens of chemists.Construction for the Center for Theoretical Chemistry, a new state-of-the-art hub for...

2016-05-16 -     At the age of seven, Aadeel Akhtar met a little girl during a trip to his home country of Pakistan. They were similar in age and background, but Akhtar noticed something that made them worlds apart. The little girl was missing her right leg. Rather than the support of a prosthetic...

2016-05-16 -     Mental health experts are familiar with associations between clinically depressed parents and their teenagers’ risk taking, but a new study at Illinois has for the first time concluded that parental depression contributes to greater brain activity in areas linked to risk taking in...

2016-05-16 - University of Illinois history professor Harry Liebersohn has been chosen to receive the prestigious Humboldt Research Award honoring a career of research achievements.The Humboldt award is presented by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn,...

2016-05-13 -     Imagine—instead of acres of oil wells on barren land—endless fields of towering green sugarcane, with each stalk producing renewable and sustainable biofuel. The University of Illinois and the University of Florida have been awarded a third round of funding from the U.S....

2016-05-12 - When she headed to campus as a freshman, Donna O’Shaughnessy, who is now a graduating senior, didn’t bring a smart phone.Or a laptop computer.Or a debit card.She hadn’t taken an anti-technology pledge. Those technologies simply didn’t exist when her parents dropped her off at school the summer...

2016-05-11 - Teachers and advisers in the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences have been recognized in the college and across campus for excellence in guiding students through their studies at Illinois.Each year, LAS shines a light on a handful of its outstanding faculty and staff with annual teaching and...