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...
LAS News Archive
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 - 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 - 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 - 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...
2011-11-01 - 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 - 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 - 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...
2011-10-01 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 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...