2011-09-01
- Genetics research has been heralded for its potential to fight disease and understand human history. Since scientists mapped the human genome in 2003, however, the hard part has been building relationships in which people are comfortable turning over their DNA for research.This was the catalyst behind the U of I’s Summer Internship for Native Americans, a week-long workshop exposing participants...
2011-09-01 - You’re chopping wood when the ax slips and you suddenly find yourself staring in shock at a deep gash in your leg. While you call for medical help, your body is already in emergency mode on a microscopic level, ringing its own version of 911 to stop the bleeding. The muscles around your blood vessels contract, attempting to choke off the bleeding. Platelets also become activated and they form a...
2011-09-01 - “One person, one vote” is often the rallying cry for democratic reform, suggesting everyone should get an equal say in their government.Yet in some of the oldest and largest democracies, some votes are worth far more than others by design. A Wyoming voter, for instance, is significantly overrepresented compared with a California voter. Each state has two U.S. senators, but California has 66 times...
2011-09-01 - Darkness truly ruled the night in the Europe of 1500.People feared almost everything about the hours after sunset, says U of I historian Craig Koslofsky.Artificial light was limited and the night was a time of real and imagined danger, of evil, demons, and suspect activity, a “primal force” over which people had little control, Koslofsky says. Cities...
2011-09-01 - Capturing action on camera is difficult. Just ask any sports photographer who has tried to capture a frozen moment in football. But trying to take action shots on the microscopic level, with atom-by-atom detail, has been beyond the current technology—until now. U or I researchers, working with scientists in Germany, have found a way to take the first detailed picture of a ribosome in action.“We...
2011-05-01 - Kenneth Suslick, a professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was one of two U of I professors to receive Guggenheim Foundation Fellowships. He is among 180 award recipients selected from the almost 3,000 scientists, artists, and scholars who applied.Suslick, the Marvin T. Schmidt professor of chemistry, works at the...
2011-05-01 - University of Illinois junior Justin Kopinsky’s studies in math and computer science and numerous qualifications have added up to equal one Barry M. Goldwater scholarship for 2010-2011. The scholarship—awarded to highly qualified sophomores and juniors in the fields of science, mathematics, and engineering who intend to pursue careers in these fields—covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, and...
2011-05-01 - They were called “night commuters.” Thousands of children in Uganda would walk for miles every single night to reach the safety of the nearest town, where they could sleep with less risk of abduction. When daylight came, the children would hike back home, and the next night the search for safety would begin all over again. They had good reason for fear: Children as young as eight years old were...
2011-05-01 - Most people have trouble telling them apart, but bumble bees, honey bees, stingless bees, and solitary bees have home lives that are as different from one another as a monarch’s palace is from a hippy commune or a hermit’s cabin in the woods. A new study of these bees offers a first look at the genetic underpinnings of their differences in lifestyle. The study focuses on the evolution of “...-
2011-05-01 - You can now own a piece of the building that has schooled the last century of Illini. Bring home a slate tile from Lincoln Hall’s roof—and your donation will support student scholarships!Tile Engraved with Column I:$50 donation($20 goes to student scholarships and $30 covers the cost of engraving)Plain Tile$10 donation(100% goes to student scholarships)Of course...
2011-05-01 - After a long winter you may shudder to hear this, but much learning remains to be done in the lands of ice and snow. Thanks to a budding partnership at the University of Illinois, however, that task is getting more exciting, and it leads through Sweden. Researchers and educators across campus are expecting valuable opportunities to rise from a trans-Atlantic collaboration with KTH Royal...
2011-05-01 - Philip Sarnecki never imagined he would have anything to do with an illegal poker tournament run by an Amish farmer in rural Indiana. Granted, the illegal tournament is pure fiction; it’s the central plot point of the recently released screwball comedy, Hitting the Nuts. But Sarnecki never imagined he would be involved in movies either. After...
2011-05-01 - Just as the fall 2010 semester was winding down, junior Andrew McFadden got an email from a friend, alerting him to a video contest on campus. The challenge: Make a short film showing what the world might be like devoid of humanities and the arts. “When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Wow, I never really thought about that,’” McFadden says. “Then I found out that it was kind of a pressing issue.”...
2011-04-01 - It’s official. Coffee breaks can increase performance at work.Actually, any kind of brief break can improve concentration on tasks that require focused concentration, according to research from LAS psychology professor Alejandro Lleras. The University of Illinois study zeroes in on a phenomenon known to anyone who’s ever had trouble doing...
2011-04-01 - Some 150 years after the Civil War erupted, the topic remains a charged topic even if the issues Americans fought over are long gone. Bruce Levine, professor of history and African American studies, says myths regarding the war and its causes persist even today. Myth 1: The Civil War had little to do with...
2011-04-01 - In Jules Verne’s 19th-century science-fiction classic, Journey to the Center of the Earth, explorers climb down volcanic tubes to reach the center of our planet. Along the way, they discover gigantic mushrooms and insects, a vast interior sea, and battling dinosaurs. Today, geophysicists do not spend much time worrying about dinosaurs as they study the inner earth, but they do face an...
2011-04-01 - Taking a 60 percent pay cut to move 14,000 miles to a place where lizards crawl into your refrigerator doesn’t exactly sound like a big break. And eight months after arriving in Vietnam, Emma Swift will admit that her new job has required some, well, cultural adjustment.Yet for someone developing a career in higher education administration, few places are as interesting as Vietnam, as the country...
2011-04-01 - For some plants, it pays to be devoured. When certain herbs are eaten down to the ground, they re-grow even larger, producing significantly more biomass, flowers, fruits, and seeds than plants of the same species that were not eaten. Now, LAS researchers may know the reason why, for they discovered what might be one mechanism behind these comeback plants. Remarkably, these plants increase their...
2011-04-01 - May Berenbaum still recalls how people would come up to her and ask her to sign their “Bambi Berenbaum” collector card from the popular sci-fi television show The X-Files. Bambi Berenbaum was the gorgeous X-Files entomologist that Agent Mulder took a fancy to, and she just happened to be named after May Berenbaum, the head of the University of Illinois...
2011-04-01 - University of Illinois chemistry professor Ryan C. Bailey has been selected to receive a 2011 Sloan Research Fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.Bailey is one of 118 early career scientists and researchers from 54 colleges and universities chosen for a two-year fellowship. In keeping with its goal of recognizing potential groundbreaking...
2011-03-01 - If you’ve sat through sex ed class in high school, you’ve heard it all before: A pregnancy begins when a fertilized egg implants in the lining of the uterus. But University of Illinois researchers have now figured out a key mechanism in this process—a finding that could help explain some forms of female infertility and has implications in understanding diseases such as endometrial cancer.At the...
2011-03-01 - A University of Illinois mathematician has been elected a 2011 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Donald Burkholder, an emeritus professor of mathematics, was among 503 new fellows honored by their peers at the AAAS annual meeting in February. Burkholder was cited for “distinguished contributions to probability theory,...
2011-03-01 - Every generation, it seems that someone in the older population looks around at the new crop of students and announces that we are in the midst of a writing crisis. But Gail Hawisher, director of the University of Illinois Center for Writing Studies, takes issue with this common notion. “More people in the world are writing today than at any other time...
2011-03-01 - Researchers have determined the structure and mechanism of an enzyme that performs the crucial first step in the formation of cholesterol and a key virulence factor in staph bacteria.Chemists at the University of Illinois and collaborators in Taiwan studied a type of enzyme found in humans, plants, fungi, parasites, and many bacteria that begins...
2011-03-01 - When a massive earthquake shook Haiti to its core in January of 2010, it didn’t just unleash deadly geologic forces. The quake also unleashed the first cholera outbreak in decades, due to contaminated water in the wake of disaster. Aid has poured into Haiti, but one of the most unique forms of assistance involves animation and cell phones, and it comes from the University of Illinois. A U of I...