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...
LAS News Archive
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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....
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...
2011-10-01 - A statistics student might tell you that 17.6 percent of the new LAS faculty works in the Department of Mathematics. An English major might describe the literary significance of the number two in regards to the two new faculty members in the Department of English. The fact that the Department of...
2011-10-01 - Assembling chemicals can be like putting together a puzzle. University of Illinois chemists have developed a way of fitting the pieces together to more efficiently build complex molecules, beginning with a powerful and promising antioxidant.Led by...
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...
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...
2011-10-01 - When A. Mark Neuman (BS, '85, economics) first visited the small West African country of Burkina Faso in 2006, he says he was “blown away. I found women owning and controlling cooperatives that grew high-quality, rain-fed, pesticide-free cotton, and the women controlled the money they earned.” But...
2011-10-01 - Grant Krafft (PhD, '80, chemistry) found something completely unexpected while using his lab’s atomic force microscope back in 1995. As his lab probed the causes of Alzheimer’s disease, they examined samples of toxic amyloid proteins, linked to the devastating disease, and they expected...
2011-10-01 - Sidney Ribeau (AM, '73, speech communication; PhD, '79, speech) had no plans to ever become an administrator. “I didn’t even own a suit and tie at the time. I was a faculty member of the ’70s through and through,” says Ribeau, who was a professor at California State University-Los...
2011-10-01 - It begins with an incision in the armpit, creating a hole about 3 inches wide. This opening enables Julie Freischlag (BS, '76, biology) to remove the rib closest to the patient’s collarbone, bringing much-needed relief. In such cases, the rib usually has been compressing nerves, arteries, or...
2011-09-01 - Dave the Potter was openly breaking state law when he inscribed his name, along with poetry and Bible verses, in the pottery he created in South Carolina. That’s because it was illegal in the early 19th century for a slave like Dave to read or write, let alone propagate simple inscribed rhymes such...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...