2012-03-01
- Each year the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences recognizes a handful of staff members and academic professionals for their outstanding contributions to the college and service to others. These individuals, who were nominated by members of the campus community, demonstrate excellence and enhance the image of the college. LAS Academic Professional Award Scott...
2012-03-01 - Talk about jumping into the deep end. Dana Fager was having the time of her life, immersing herself in the Japanese language and culture in Kobe, Japan, during her sophomore year at Illinois. But when a friend signed her up to learn how to scuba dive in the ocean, her language skills were put to the test in a big way. The crash course on how to safely scuba dive was given entirely in Japanese.“...
2012-02-01 - What in the world does the decision-making process of a blind, cannibalistic sea slug have to do with the kind of decisions made by an out-of-control gambler burning through cash in Las Vegas, a shopaholic off on a spending spree, or an addict snorting cocaine?Sea slugs are shedding light on what’s going on in the brain when higher vertebrates, such as humans, make high-risk decisions while...
2012-02-01 - The lessons of Arab Spring keep rewriting themselves. In Egypt, the elation following the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak has been followed by reports of tension between Islamists and the military over the redrawing of power. And while some dictators fell like a deck of cards, the Syrian regime has defied revolutionaries for nine months. Is political change in the region in peril? Milan Svolik...
2012-02-01 - Daniel Simons stayed well out of view behind a giant sign depicting the famous Las Vegas magician, David Copperfield, while the hidden cameras rolled. Simons watched, and so did the camera, as people were recruited from the casino crowd and taken to a counter to sign an agreement to appear on a television show. When the person working at the counter ducked down to retrieve a pen, a completely...
2012-02-01 - When Idun Reiten was only 12 years old, a radio show from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation held a math competition, presenting 10 problem sets over a span of 10 weeks. Only five people in all of Norway solved every single problem set, and 12-year-old Reiten was one of them. Her 16-year-old brother was another one.Reiten received an inscribed pewter bowl for her accomplishment, but that was...
2012-01-01 - Researchers have developed a bandage that stimulates and directs blood vessel growth on the surface of a wound. The bandage, called a “microvascular stamp,” contains living cells that deliver growth factors to damaged tissues in a defined pattern. After a week, the pattern of the stamp “is written in blood vessels,” the researchers report.A paper describing the new approach appears as the January...
2012-01-01 - Those making land use decisions to reduce the harmful effects of climate change have focused almost exclusively on greenhouse gases—analyzing, for example, how much carbon dioxide is released when a forest is cleared to grow crops. A new study led by U of I researchers aims to present a more complete picture—to incorporate other characteristics of ecosystems that also influence climate.“We know...
2012-01-01 - Convincing people that this country needs more attorneys is the least of James Rowader Jr.’s problems. After all, Rowader is talking about Hispanic attorneys, and plenty of statistics indicate that they’re underrepresented in the law profession. The real problem is finding the formula that puts people from this fast-growing segment of society into lawyers’ shoes, where they would be in a unique...
2011-12-01 - No one ever said that star creation was simple. But astronomers led by a professor at the University of Illinois took a galactic-sized step toward understanding the process when they recently mapped star-birthing regions in an area of space that has long offered clues to the history of the universe. Using a 22-meter-diameter radio telescope in Australia, an international team of astronomers...
2011-12-01 - The event was carried off with the secrecy of a CIA operation. LAS alumnus Ken Feldman and his wife, Gayle Gordon, told 50 friends and relatives to show up at their home in the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains on a Monday afternoon in April of this year. Initially, the guests were given no other information. They were simply told, “This was going to be something cool, and you’re really...
2011-12-01 - The lineage of every Greek god and every Roman god, along with the complex connections among them, was first spelled out in a set of 15 books written more than 600 years ago. Called Genealogia deorum gentilium, the massive compendium of more than 700 deities was assembled at the request of King Hugh IV of Cyprus by the Italian poet and scholar Giovanni Boccaccio. To a...
2011-12-01 - A professor credited for technological breakthroughs in materials and electronic components has won one of the world’s largest single cash prizes for invention. John A. Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder Chair in Engineering, with a joint appointment in the Department of Chemistry, will receive $500,000 for the 2011 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which is...
2011-12-01 - An analysis of the remains of ancient midges—tiny non-biting insects closely related to mosquitoes—opens a new window on the past with a detailed view of the surprising regional variability that accompanied climate warming during the early Holocene epoch, 10,000 to 5,500 years ago. Researchers at the University of Illinois and the University of British Columbia looked at the abundance and variety...
2011-11-01 - Douglas A. Mitchell, a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois, is a recipient of the 2011 National Institutes of Health Director’s New Innovator Award. The award recognizes bold ideas from some of the nation’s most promising new scientists.The $1.5 million award, given over a period of five years, supports young investigators who have...
2011-11-01 - Not everyone can see the future of computers in a small tract of remote land along the Minnesota–Wisconsin border, but Shaowen Wang has a view most don’t have.From his desktop computer in Davenport Hall, the geography professor uses Google Maps to focus on about 10 square miles of Minnesotan hills, keys in a few commands, and within minutes the image is...
2011-11-01 - A 16-year-old demands that an entire road be blocked off so a marching band can play while she arrives at her birthday party on a red carpet. Meanwhile, some people hire fake paparazzi to follow them around when they go out at night, while a children’s book explains why plastic surgery can give them a “beautiful mommy.” Anecdotal evidence such as this, backed by research, has been used over the...
2011-11-01 - An ancient Egyptian mummy has had quite an afterlife, traveling more than 6,000 miles, spending six decades in private hands, and finally, in 1989, finding a home at the World Heritage Museum (now the Spurlock Museum) in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois. The mummy’s travels did not end there, however. It has made two trips to a local hospital—once in 1990 and...
2011-11-01 - Researchers report that they have figured out how the cancer–causing bacterium Helicobacter pylori attacks a cell’s energy infrastructure, sparking a series of events in the cell that ultimately lead it to self–destruct. H. pylori are the only bacteria known to survive in the human stomach. Infection with the bacterium is associated with an increased risk of gastric cancer, the...
2011-11-01 - According to one estimate, half of Americans are confronting a civil legal problem at any one time.Without access to the right information or advice, or an advocate in civil court, they may lose a home, a job, maybe custody of a child, says Rebecca Sandefur. They may lose out in a divorce, or in a billing or insurance dispute. For those with limited means, however, getting those services depends...
2011-10-01 - In the not-too-distant future, people might be able to walk into their local pharmacy, pluck a box off the shelf, and after a 10-minute test determine whether it’s possible that they have cancer.LAS researchers have laid the groundwork for such a remarkable scenario by adapting the common glucose meter to test for all kinds of substances, from lead in water and pesticides on our vegetables to...
2011-10-01 - The four alumni award winners in 2011 share local and regional proximity, with two of them coming from the Champaign-Urbana area and the other two hailing from the Great Lakes region. But all of them have made ripples well beyond their hometowns, making their mark on the national and even international stage. The three alumni achievement award winners include one of the top physicians in the...
2011-10-01 - This is probably as close to time travel as most of us will ever get: The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is requesting ideas from alumni, students, faculty, and staff for items or memorabilia to be placed in the Lincoln Hall time capsule during the building’s open house in 2012. The person or family with the most popular idea—as chosen by a vote of alumni—will be invited to install the time...
2011-10-01 - Alex Shakar was in Brooklyn, getting ready to leave his parents’ apartment, when he first heard the news on the radio. He and his father climbed out onto the fire escape and clambered up to the roof, where they could see smoke pouring from the first of the Twin Towers. It was September 11, 2001.When the first tower came down and Shakar absorbed this “sickening loss,” everything that he had been...
2011-10-01 - Many wonder why bullies bully, but a new study looks at the other side of the equation: How do children respond to bullying and why? The answer, researchers say, may lead to more effective interventions to reduce the negative consequences—and perhaps even the frequency—of bullying.“The main question we were interested in is how do children go about selecting strategies for dealing with harassment...