2015-10-01
- The forests in Alaska’s Yukon Flats are burning at a higher rate than any time in the last 10,000 years. A new analysis by researchers at Illinois finds that so many forest fires are occurring there that the area has become a net exporter of carbon to the atmosphere.This is worrisome, because arctic and subarctic boreal forests like those of the Yukon Flats contain roughly one-third of the Earth’...
2015-10-01 - Every four years the presidential nomination process in the United States comes under a great deal of scrutiny, with critics claiming that the drawn-out primary cycle, scheduled to begin in February 2016 and lasting until June, affords too much influence to a small number of voters in early primary states.But according to new research from a team of University of Illinois economists, the...
2015-10-01 - One particularly telling moment at the ceremony highlighting the U of I’s being named one of the “Milestones in Microbiology” sites actually occurred after the proceedings were over, as those who participated in the event were having their picture taken around a plaque from the American Society for Microbiology.On the plaque were the images of eight “giants” whose work at Illinois during the past...
2015-10-01 - The chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, William Adams, will speak on the University of Illinois campus on Oct. 29 as part of events marking the 50th anniversary of the NEH.Adams’ speech, “The Common Good and NEH at 50,” will be at 7:30 p.m. in the Knight Auditorium at Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana. The event is free and open to the public, and a reception will...
2015-10-01 - Four professors in the College of LAS have been named University Scholars for outstanding contributions to their fields. They were among 14 faculty selected for the honor this year across the three campuses of the University of Illinois.Carla Eva Cáceres, of the Department of Animal Biology, Clare Haru Crowston, of the...
2015-10-01 - Smoking will kill you. Candidate X will destroy the economy. Does that grab your attention? According to a study by a psychology professor at Illinois, fear-based appeals such as these are effective ways of influencing attitudes and behaviors.“There are very few circumstances under which (fear-based appeals) are not effective and there are no identifiable circumstances under which they backfire...
2015-10-01 - A four-year, $1 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will help University of Illinois humanities scholars identify digital publishing options and produce new publications that will best disseminate their research.The collaborative project involves the Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, the...
2015-10-01 - In 559 B.C., the leader of the Rong barbarians in China argued that his people should be regarded as equals to those from the northern state of Jin. As the barbarian leader made his argument, he suddenly began to chant “Blue Flies,” a poetic ode about the dangers of slander.This story appears in the inaugural issue of The Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture, and it illustrates how poetry...
2015-10-01 - The student who chooses English as a major should be prepared—prepared for the questions, concerns and even mocking about the value of their degree.English major Mylissa Zelechowski said she gets it all the time. People she meets are “very quick to judge,” she said. But then the Wilmette, Illinois, sophomore tells them how she’s already using her...
2015-09-01 - Music? Check. Planetarium show? Check. Dinosaurs? You better believe it. The stage was set for alumni from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to reunite with their alma mater and each other this past summer, and they did so in memorable fashion. More than 160 people attended Night at the Museum with LAS, at the Peoria (Ill.) Riverfront Museum in July. Organized by the LAS...
2015-09-01 - Come back to the University of Illinois this fall and celebrate Homecoming with the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Join LAS alumni and friends at our festive event for a lunch buffet, entertainment, displays, prizes, and more. The LAS Homecoming Celebration is open to all LAS alumni and friends. Registration is required in advance. After the event, head over to Memorial Stadium to cheer on...
2015-09-01 - On the surface, it appears that policymakers are faced with a great dilemma. If we grow more biofuel crops, we reduce greenhouse gas emissions but we make it harder to grow food. If we grow more food in our fields, we have less land for environmentally beneficial biofuels.So which will it be? Steve Long, U of I’s Gutgsell Endowed Chair of Plant Biology and Crop Sciences, suggests that maybe we...
2015-09-01 - Baseball was still a relatively young sport when roughly 20,000 people packed the small Oklahoma City stadium that was designed to hold less than 10,000. With the stands filled, a multitude lined the outfield foul lines, leading one reporter to wisecrack that “any guy ought to be able to pitch with 7,000 outfielders.”What made the scene even more remarkable was that thousands of fans had come out...
2015-09-01 - Giving up all liquids and food from dawn to dusk every day for a month sounds difficult enough. But how about trying to fast from food and drink all day when you are a high school football player running wind sprints in full equipment?The complicated pairing of faith and football was the topic of just one of the movies that students viewed while attending the 2015 University of Illinois Summer...
2015-09-01 - No, this story is not about interdisciplinary research between psychologists and astronomers. It turns out, however, that imagining life on a distant (albeit fictional) planet helps shed light on our assumptions about fairness in society.Participants in a study by psychologists at U of I were asked to guess why, on the Planet Teeku, the Blarks were richer than the Orps. The researchers found that...
2015-05-01 - Six professors in or affiliated with the College of LAS have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, one of the highest honors a scientist can receive. Renée Baillargeon, professor of psychology; Gary Dell, professor of psychology; Steve Granick, professor emeritus of materials science and engineering (and affiliated with the...
2015-05-01 - They were called “the Romans of the New World.” The Iroquois, a league of five (and later six) Native American nations in what is now upstate New York and southern Ontario and Quebec, were sometimes compared to Romans because of the scope of their influence and power. European writers from the 17th to the 19th centuries also compared Iroquoian and other Native American languages to Latin and...
2015-05-01 - Driving lessons and scary videos aside, psychologists studying blood flow in the brain have learned that there’s one good way to stop teenage drivers from taking risks behind the wheel: Put mom in the passenger seat.A new study at the University of Illinois found that for teenagers, blood flow to the ventral striatum, a “reward center” in the brain, is affected by a mother’s presence. When...
2015-05-01 - Graduation Day At left, the Commencement procession with two lines of graduates being escorted by a military officer in 1930. Today, a much larger and more diverse Illinois undergraduate student body graduates in iconic blue robes. You can often find robed students waiting in line for hours for their turn to participate in the Illini tradition of taking a photo at the Alma Mater....
2015-05-01 - The Illinois Trial Team is unlike any other organization on campus. The 30-member team receives a case from the American Mock Trial Association (AMTA), and for one academic year they compete against other universities across the nations for who can argue the case better. With practices two or three times a week, for three hours each time, the...
2015-05-01 - During the mid-1990s, with images of starving children in North Korea seared into Byung-Ho Chung’s mind, he met with a North Korean official to offer a shipment of anti-parasitic drugs that could help fight malnutrition. The official brusquely refused.“We do not have such a dirty problem in our republic,” the official told Chung. Undeterred, Chung changed tack, and during the next meeting he...
2015-04-01 - Jerrod Henderson knows how little things make a big difference to a child. He recalls that when he was in the sixth grade, growing up in North Carolina, he traveled with a youth organization to Baltimore, Md., to see the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Conference. At some point, they let the kids wander around the career fair. “They used to give all these free goodies at the career fair,”...
2015-04-01 - In the spring of 2013, a group of U of I college students went to McAllen, Texas on a service trip. The focus of the trip was immigration, and one of the students spent a day working with an immigrant who wanted to become a taxi driver, teaching him the rules of the road. The group also had a trip facilitator to ensure smooth execution of the trip.Little did these two know, they would one day be...
2015-04-01 - The Spanish galleons that ruled the seas some 500 years ago were carrying more than gold, silk, and guns as they circled the globe. They also carried with them colonies of fire ants that exist to this day.A study at the University of Illinois, reported in the journal Molecular Ecology, reveals that 16th-century Spanish galleons shuttled tropical fire ants (Solenopsis geminata) from...
2015-04-01 - An initiative at Illinois known for its animated educational videos is part of an effort to teach subsistence farmers gardening methods that could not only help them put food on their tables but also conserve water, deal with drought, and make an income.This educational effort, led in large part by nonprofit groups and private donors, is getting a boost from Scientific Animations Without Borders...