2013-05-01
- With the recent release of the movie 42, many are reflecting on Jackie Robinson as a symbol that anyone can succeed if given the opportunity. A baseball historian at U of I, however, points out that racial integration of Major League Baseball (MLB) was far more complex than many of today’s storylines reveal.There’s no doubt that the...
2013-05-01 - A longtime faculty member and associate dean has been selected to serve as interim dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Brian Ross, a cognitive psychologist who came to the University of Illinois in 1982, will guide the U of I’s largest college after the departure of Harry E. Preble Dean Ruth Watkins, who announced her resignation earlier this year. Ross will assume his new role in...
2013-05-01 - You know that something fundamental has changed in the doctor/patient relationship when physicians start receiving special training to learn how to “just say no” to patients. LAS alumna Martha Rosenberg recently attended a national medical conference in Chicago, and she was shocked to discover that many doctors are having trouble coping with patients who come to them expecting, even demanding,...
2013-05-01 - Before he even sits down for an interview in an Urbana coffee shop, Mark Leff feels compelled to say something. He gave another writer a similar warning 15 years ago, after being named professor of the year in Illinois by the Carnegie Foundation. “You hit the jackpot: What has to be the campus’s most boring story,” the history professor replied when...
2013-04-01 - Maybe life just isn’t fair, after all. Not only can elite athletes jump higher and move faster than most of us, but a new study suggests that in some ways they can think faster, too. A study of 87 top-ranked Brazilian volleyball players (some of them medalists in the Beijing and London Olympics) and 67 of their nonathletic contemporaries found that athletes excel in how quickly their brains...
2013-04-01 - When you enter the Illinois Geometry Lab, situated in the lower level of Altgeld Hall, take any assumptions you have about mathematics and leave them at the door. This is where research teams of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty members meet to discuss the latest in mathematics. Just as there are breakthroughs in science and engineering...
2013-04-01 - Sustainability has become a catch phrase in discussions over how to preserve the environment. But what does the concept really mean? Answering that question is one of the purposes of an ongoing series at Illinois that organizers hope will inspire fresh ideas on the issue. This is the third year of the series, called the Scholarship of Sustainability, held once a week for roughly nine weeks each...
2013-04-01 - If you want to understand just how patient the Salvadoran people are, get on a bus there, says LAS alumnus Andrew Piotrowski. Whenever he travels on buses in El Salvador, he is amazed by the number of people they can pack like sardines into the vehicle. But even more amazing, he says, are the attitudes of the passengers. No one complains, no one mutters as the bus stops to take on more riders,...
2013-03-01 - While the end of Saturday delivery will reduce costs for the U.S. Postal Service, the mail carrier must pursue more solutions if it wants to survive, according to a University of Illinois economics professor. It even remains to be seen whether cutting Saturday delivery—due to take effect in August—will hurt or harm the USPS, says Seung-Hyun Hong,...
2013-03-01 - The demand for language translators and interpreters is projected to expand for at least the next decade. That means the U of I’s Center for Translation Studies is going to grow, too. The center has begun accepting applications for a new master’s program set to launch in the fall. It’s a busy yet affirming time for the center, which became the...
2013-03-01 - One needs to look no further than the TV listings to know that history looks great on screen. From the Civil War to the Titanic, today’s viewers have their pick of riveting historical documentaries to choose from. But history and television can be an uneasy mix, with accuracy sometimes at odds with the flair required to keep viewers glued. Few are as familiar with this balancing act as Robert...
2013-03-01 - You might not have known it from the weather, but the U of I campus has been a little more, well, Brazilian this winter. Illinois was one of 18 U.S. universities to host English teachers from Brazil during a new six-week professional development program funded by Brazil’s Ministry of Education. The program is meant to improve scientific and economic ties with the U.S. by improving English skills...
2013-02-01 - Some 40 years ago, Steve Miller was a chemistry doctoral student at the U of I studying DNA. He knew next to nothing about petroleum, and so it was with some dampened optimism one day that he introduced himself to a campus recruiter from Chevron, one of the largest oil companies on the planet. When the recruiter asked him to tell him something...
2013-02-01 - Charles Schroeder, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, has received a five-year National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, which will help Schroeder and his research team conduct new and cutting-edge molecular-level studies of branched polymer chains. The CAREER grants are given to young faculty in a highly...
2013-02-01 - When the late microbiologist Carl Woese discovered a new domain of life, he touched lives that he didn’t even know. One of them was Mark Martin, a professor of biology at the University of Puget Sound who met Woese only once, in the 1990s, but who spoke so glowingly of the U of I professor’s discoveries and attitude that one of his...
2013-02-01 - If your weight has become an issue, think about driving to your next destination—driving less, that is. A new study by University of Illinois researchers indicates that curbing your driving habits can be just as effective as dieting.The study, led by computer science and mathematics professor Sheldon H. Jacobson, found that reducing the amount of daily...
2013-02-01 - A promising new stem cell study on mice has researchers at the University of Illinois hopeful that they have turned an important corner in the battle against Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). Researchers transplanted stem cells derived from normal mouse blood vessels into the hearts of mice afflicted with the genetic disorder. They found that the treatment prevented or delayed heart problems in...
2013-01-01 - Carl Woese, the microbiology professor credited with the discovery of a “third domain” of life, died Sunday, Dec. 30, 2012, at his home in Urbana, Ill., after a nearly half-century career at the University of Illinois. He was 84. Woese, who also served as a professor in the Institute of Genomic Biology, adopted a molecular approach...
2013-01-01 - Those pesky sulfur compounds in petroleum fuels have met their nano-match. University of Illinois researchers have developed mats of metal oxide nanofibers that scrub harmful sulfur from petroleum-based fuels much more effectively than traditional materials. Such efficiency could lower costs and improve necessary processes that protect engines and fuel cells. Co-led by...
2013-01-01 - For almost a century archaeologists have believed that a treasure-trove of 2,000-year-old Native American pipes unearthed in southern Ohio came from local stone. A new study at the University of Illinois, however, concludes that most stone for the pipes—and perhaps even the finished pipes themselves—came from Illinois. The researchers spent nearly a decade studying the pipes. They found that...
2013-01-01 - The family of Carrie Klaus has been seen around Lincoln Hall for almost as long as the building has existed. Appropriately, her family is among the most frequently featured on memorial pavers in the courtyard of the restored Lincoln Hall. Carrie Klaus is just the most recent graduate from her family from the University of Illinois, where she received her master’s in...
2013-01-01 - When polar bear drills are part of the class schedule, you know that studying abroad has just been taken to a new extreme. And it has—the University of Illinois is bringing students and faculty to the Arctic Circle. Faculty are organizing a second class in the land of ice and never-setting sun after the first one, called “Environment and Society in a Changing Arctic,” was a resounding success...
2013-01-01 - Want a happy retirement? You might start by getting in touch with your personality. Psychologists at the University of Illinois report that changes in social well-being are closely tied to one’s personality, with positive changes in one corresponding to similar changes in the other. Psychology professor Brent Roberts and postdoctoral researcher...
2013-01-01 - It’s funny the things you notice when you come to a new country for the first time. For Cathy (Copeland) Gryczan, it was laundry hung outside windows in southern France when she arrived as a U of I student for a study abroad program in the early 1980s. “That struck me as something that was like a poor neighborhood,” Gryczan recalls. “And I thought to myself, ‘Gee, what kind of neighborhood am I...
2012-12-01 - Since the early part of the 20th century, many scientists have pictured the first microbial life on Earth as a fully formed cell that emerged from a “primordial soup” of simple organic compounds. However, a more complete picture of the origin of life might be that of a “primordial Internet.” According to the groundbreaking work of Carl Woese, LAS professor of...